Category: on Witnessing

Watching is Not a Doing – Osho

Whatsoever is going on in your mind, don’t interfere, don’t try to stop it. Do not do anything, because whatsoever you do will become a discipline.

So do not do anything at all. Just watch.

Watching is not a doing. Just as you watch the sunset or the clouds in the sky or the people passing on the street, watch the traffic of thoughts and dreams, nightmares – relevant, irrelevant, consistent, inconsistent, anything that is going on. And it is always rush hour. You simply watch; you stand by the side unconcerned.

The pseudo-religions don’t allow you to remain unconcerned, because, they say, greed is bad. So if a thought of greed comes you jump to prevent it; otherwise you will become greedy. Anger is bad; if an angry thought passes by, you immediately jump – you have to change it, you have to be kind
and compassionate, and you have to love your enemy just like yourself. If something against your neighbor comes up… no, you have to love your neighbor just like yourself. So all the old religions have given you ideas of what is right and what is wrong – and if the wrong thing is passing by, you
certainly have to stop it. You have to interfere, you have to jump in and pull that thing out. You miss the point.

That’s why I don’t say to you what is right and what is wrong. All that I say is: to watch is right; not to watch is wrong.

I make it absolutely simplified: Be watchful.

It is none of your business – if greed is passing by, let it pass; if anger is passing by, let it pass. Who are you to interfere? Why are you so much identified with your mind? Why do you start thinking, “I am greedy . . . I am angry”? There is only a thought of anger passing by. Let it pass; you just watch.

There is an ancient story . . . A man who has gone out of his town comes back and finds that his house is on fire. It was one of the most beautiful houses in the town, and the man loved the house. Many people were ready to give double price for the house, but he had never agreed for any price, and now it is just burning before his eyes. And thousands of people have gathered, but nothing can be done.

The fire has spread so far that even if you try to put it out, nothing will be saved. So he becomes very sad. His son comes running, and whispers something in his ear: “Don’t be worried. I sold it yesterday, and at a very good price – three times . . . The offer was so good I could not wait for you.
Forgive me.”

But the father said, “Good, if you have sold it for three times more than the original price of the house.” Then the father is also a watcher, with other watchers. Just a moment before he was not a watcher, he was identified. It is the same house, the same fire, everything is the same – but now he
is not concerned. He is enjoying it just as everybody else is enjoying.

Then the second son comes running, and he says to the father, “What are you doing? You are smiling – and the house is on fire?”

The father said, “Don’t you know, your brother has sold it.”

He said, “He had talked about selling it, but nothing has been settled yet, and the man is not going to purchase it now.” Again, everything changes. Tears which had disappeared, have come back to the father’s eyes, his smile is no more there, his heart is beating fast. But the watcher is gone. He is
again identified.

And then the third son comes, and he says, “That man is a man of his word. I have just come from him. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter whether the house is burned or not, it is mine. And I am going to pay the price that I have settled for. Neither you knew, nor I knew that the house would catch on fire.’” Again the father is a watcher. The identity is no more there. Actually nothing is changing; just the idea that “I am the owner, I am identified somehow with the house,” makes the whole difference. The next moment he feels, “I am not identified. Somebody else has purchased it, I have nothing to do with it; let the house burn.”

This simple methodology of watching the mind, that you have nothing to do with it . . . Most of its thoughts are not yours but from your parents, your teachers, your friends, the books, the movies, the television, the newspapers. Just count how many thoughts are your own, and you will be surprised that not a single thought is your own. All are from other sources, all are borrowed – either dumped by others on you, or foolishly dumped by yourself upon yourself, but nothing is yours.

The mind is there, functioning like a computer; literally it is a bio-computer. You will not get identified with a computer. If the computer gets hot, you won’t get hot. If the computer gets angry and starts giving signals in four letter words, you will not be worried. You will see what is wrong, where something is wrong. But you remain detached.

Just a small knack . . . I cannot even call it a method because that makes it heavy; I call it a knack. Just by doing it, one day suddenly you are able to do it. Many times, you will fail; it’s nothing to be worried about… no loss, it is natural. But just doing it, one day it happens.

Once it has happened, once you have even for a single moment become the watcher, you know now how to become the watcher – the watcher on the hills, far away. And the whole mind is there deep down in the dark valley, and you are not to do anything about it.

The most strange thing about the mind is, if you become a watcher it starts disappearing. Just like the light disperses darkness, watchfulness disperses the mind, its thoughts, it’s whole paraphernalia. So meditation is simply watchfulness, awareness. And that reveals – it is nothing to do with inventing. It invents nothing; it simply discovers that which is there.

And what is there? You enter and you find infinite emptiness, so tremendously beautiful, so silent, so full of light, so fragrant, that you have entered into the kingdom of God.

In my words, you have entered into godliness. And once you have been in this space, you come out and you are a totally new person, a new man. Now you have your original face. All masks have disappeared. You will live in the same world, but not in the same way. You will be among the same people but not with the same attitude, and the same approach. You will live like a lotus in water: in the water, but absolutely untouched by water. Religion is the discovery of this lotus flower within.

-Osho

From From Unconciousness to Consciousness, Discourse #19

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

 

What is Satsang? – Osho

Last night someone asked me what satsang was. I answered that satsang meant the company of one’s self, of the truth, and that the truth was not to be found outside. Neither guru, nor teachers, nor shastras can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself. But we are always in the company of someone or other, and never at all on our own.

Eckhart was once sitting all alone under a grove of trees in a lonely field. A friend who was passing by saw him sitting there. He went up to him and said, “I saw you sitting all alone and I thought I would keep you company and so I have come over to join you.” Do you know what Eckhart replied? He said, “I was with myself, but you have come and now I am all alone.”

Are you ever in your own company like this? This is satsang. This is prayer. This is meditation.

When I am all alone within myself and when there is no thought, no thought of anyone, I am in the company of my Self. When the outer world is absent, inside there is the company of one’s Self. In that companionless-ness and solitude, in your pure being the truth is realized because in your innermost being you yourself are that truth.

-Osho

From The Perfect Way, Session seven

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Osho asks “Who am I?”

I used to ask myself, “Who am I?” It is impossible to count how many days and nights I passed in this query. The intellect gave answers heard from others or born of conditioning. All of them were borrowed, lifeless. They brought no contentment. They resonated a little at the surface, and then disappeared. The inner being was not touched by them. No echo of them was heard in the depths. There were many answers to the question, but none was correct. And I was untouched by them. They could not rise to the level of the question.

Then I saw that the question came from the center, but the replies touched only the periphery. The question was mine, but the answers came from outside; the question arose from my innermost being, the replies were imposed from outside. This insight became a revolution. A new dimension was revealed.

The responses of the intellect were meaningless. They had no relevance to the problem. An illusion had shattered. And what a relief it was!

It seemed as if a closed door had been flung open, filling the darkness with light. The intellect had been providing the answers – that was the mistake. Because of these false answers, the real answer could not arise. Some truth was struggling to surface. In the depths of consciousness some seed was seeking the way to break open the ground in order to reach the light. Intellect was the obstruction.

When this was made plain, the answers began to subside. Knowledge acquired from outside began to evaporate. The question went ever deeper. I did not do anything, only kept on watching.

Something novel was happening. I was speechless. What was there to do? I was, at the most, simply a witness. The reactions of the periphery were fading, perishing, becoming nonexistent. The center now began to resonate more fully.

“Who am I?” My entire being was throbbing with this thirst.

What a violent storm it was! Every breath quaked and trembled in it.

“Who am I?” – Like an arrow, the question pierced through everything and moved within.

I remember – what an acute thirst it was! My very life had turned into thirst. Everything was burning. And like a flame of fire the question stood forth, “Who am I?”

The surprise was that the intellect was completely silent. The incessant flow of thoughts had stopped. What had happened? The periphery was absolutely still. There were no thoughts, no conditioning of the past.

Only I was there – and there was the question too. No, no – I myself was the question.

And then the explosion. In a moment, everything was transformed. The question had dropped.

The answer had come from some unknown dimension.

Truth is attained through a sudden explosion, not gradually.

It cannot be compelled to appear. It comes.

Emptiness is the solution, not words. Becoming answer-less is the answer.

Someone asked yesterday – and someone or the other asks every day – “What is the answer?”

I say, “If I mention it, it is meaningless. Its meaning lies in realizing it oneself.”

-Osho

From Seeds of Wisdom #13

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Awareness and Effort – Osho

For me, there is no earth, water, fire, air or sky. Only the one who has realized the godliness which dwells in the cave of the heart, which is formless, which is beyond the web of illusion, which is the witness to the whole and which is beyond existence and non-existence, will know my pure and godly nature.

Thus ends the Kaivalya Upanishad.
Om, Shantih Shantih Shantih.

The most significant thing to be understood in this sutra is that only one who becomes capable of knowing the formless, the witness to the whole – which is beyond both existence and non-existence – will know the God that lives in the cave of the heart. One must either first become the ultimate witness, and then he will enter the cave of the heart; or first enter the cave of the heart and then he will become the ultimate witness. Either the one who knows the ultimate reality will enter the cave of the heart, or the one who enters the cave of the heart will be able to know the ultimate reality – these are the only two ways. This is why there are only two disciplines for man’s spiritual search.

India has recognized only two disciplines that lead to knowing the truth of life. One is called Sankhya. Sankhya means that if you realize the ultimate reality, then you will enter the cave of the heart. The other is called yoga. Yoga means that if you enter the cave of the heart, then you will come to know the ultimate reality.

Sankhya is direct knowing. Yoga is an effort, a doing. Sankhya says that nothing has to be done; it only has to be realized. Yoga says that much has to be done and only then can realization happen. Both are right, and both can also prove to be wrong. It all depends on you, on the seeker. If a seeker can ignite the fire to know so totally that his ego is burned to ashes, and only the fire to know is left, then nothing else needs to be done. If there is only knowing and there is no knower, if there is no nucleus of ego left within the seeker – only knowing, only awareness, only consciousness – then nothing needs to be done. In this penetrating fire, everything else will happen on its own. Just to see is enough, just to become more aware is enough. To go on growing in awareness is enough. If awareness grows, if wakefulness flowers, that is enough.

But this happens very rarely, only to one in tens of millions. When this happens, it is the result of the efforts of many, many lifetimes. But whenever the phenomenon of Sankhya happens to someone, that person experiences that awareness is enough, that all has happened just through awareness. He has also lived an endless number of lives, and in those many lifetimes he has moved with an endless number of streams of effort.

Sankhya has always spoken against yoga. It is bound to be so, because when the state of Sankhya happens to someone, he feels that nothing else needs to be done – just to be totally aware is enough. But for someone who is unconscious, simply to become totally aware is very, very difficult. Someone whose sleep has broken can say, “Nothing was needed to be done. I simply woke up and saw the light!” But for someone who is asleep – not only asleep, but drunk, almost in a coma; who has taken poison and has become unconscious – you can go on shouting, “Wake up! Wake up! All that you need is to wake up! Just wake up out of your sleep and that is enough. Nothing else needs to be done and you will know the truth!” – But he cannot even hear your shouts. Someone who is drunk from alcohol will first have to clean his whole system of it. Someone who is unconscious will first have to be revived so that he can at least hear what you are saying. At least what you are saying about him opening his eyes needs to reach him.

This is why this concept of Sankhya, although true, does not help. It is only sometimes that someone has a mind-set for Sankhya, and he goes on speaking in the Sankhya way. My own mind structure has been of Sankhya. For fifteen years I went on saying that nothing needs to be done, that just to become aware is enough. Continuously saying this to people, I realized that they are incapable of hearing it. They are not just asleep, they are unconscious. And even if they understand, their understanding is only intellectual, only on the surface. They hear the words, the teaching, and they even start repeating those same words and teachings, but no transformation happens in their lives.

Then I saw that Sankhya is like a flowering – and when a flower blooms, you have no remembrance of its roots at all. The roots are hidden in the darkness, under the earth; they don’t even come to your mind. But for years the roots are growing, the tree is growing, and only then does the flower bloom. Perhaps the flower can say, “Simply to bloom is enough. One just has to bloom; and the fragrance begins to spread everywhere on the winds. What else needs to be done?” The blooming of the flower is the result of a long process – but when the flower blooms, the process is forgotten. When the flower blooms the process remains hidden. When the final fruition happens, then all else, the whole long journey, is forgotten in its shadow.

I began to feel that only once someone’s flower has already bloomed is it okay to say, “All that is needed is for the flower to bloom.” But to go on saying this to someone whose flower has not yet bloomed can be dangerous, because then that man will not even do what little he could have done to care for the roots. He will not even do what little he might have done to nurture the plant, to take care of the plant. Now he will also think in his mind that, “Simply to flower is enough, so I will!” and he will not be able to flower because the flowering is part of a long process. That long process is called yoga.

This is the mistake that Krishnamurti has been making for his whole life: he is telling people that nothing needs to be done. People even understand it, but it is the kind of understanding that instead of destroying ignorance, only hides it. People start to think that nothing has to be done, so they even stop doing what little they might have done. This is why the flower that Krishnamurti says can bloom does not bloom, and the people who listen to him fall into a tremendous dilemma.

So many of his longtime listeners – people who have been listening to him for thirty years or forty years – come to me and say, “We are in a great difficulty. We have heard this idea so much that there is nothing to do. Now even if we want to do something, we can’t. The moment we do something, we immediately remember that doing is futile and that the flower blooms without doing anything; it blooms through non-doing, through effortlessness; there is no need for any spiritual practice. This idea has gone so deep within us that now we can’t do anything at all! We have also stopped doing what we used to do, and by not doing anything at all we have not had even a glimpse of what Krishnamurti says will happen through non-doing. The flower has not bloomed at all.”

The problem has gone even deeper, because they never reached to the same state as a tree reaches when its flowers bloom on their own. Perhaps there are only roots, or their tree has just sprouted, or the branches and leaves have just begun to grow. Now they are not ready to do anything, either to water the plant or even to put a fence around the plant to protect it. Now they no longer actively try to grow towards the sun. Their beings are restless and their flowers don’t bloom, but deep down the flower wants to bloom. The pain in their being is the pain of the flower that wants to bloom – but they have been told that there is nothing to do.

So on one side there is this problem in the approach of Sankhya, that it talks about the ultimate flowering. On the other side, yoga creates a different problem: yoga searches deeply for the roots in the soil, for the water and the sun, but the danger is that you become lost in all the techniques and rituals of yoga. The flowering that you have been doing the rituals for is forgotten, and the rituals themselves take over so much that you begin to feel as if these rituals are your very life. The rituals and practices have become a habit.

Patanjali has mentioned the Eightfold Path of Yoga, and the last three points are dharana, conception, dhyana, meditation and samadhi, enlightenment. These three are the really significant ones, and the other five are the basic steps that lead to them. Samadhi, enlightenment, is the flower, and the other seven are the tree. But often yogis go on doing body postures and pranayama, breath exercises, for their whole lives. They go on doing these same things for their whole lives: they forget the flower of samadhi completely and these rituals become an end in themselves. The means becomes the goal; the path itself starts to become the destination.

The mistake of Sankhya is that the goal becomes all-important, as if no path is needed. And the folly of yoga is that the path becomes so important that even if the goal has to be abandoned in favor of the path, it is done. Even if God were to stand in front of a man who is obsessed with rituals, he would ask God to wait until he has finished doing his rituals! This idea that on the path of yoga rituals are everything misleads thousands of people. The mistake of Sankhya rarely happens, because people with a Sankhya personality are rarely born. Not many people fall into that trap.

Krishnamurti spoke for his whole life, but I don’t think that there are more than five thousand people in India who really hear or understand him. And these five thousand are also the same people who have been listening to him regularly, for the past thirty years – but there seems to be no transformation in their lives. Yes, they accumulate some words, like transformation or words of this sort, and they just start repeating those words. But they always feel the pinch, that the real thing has not happened within them yet; their flower has not bloomed yet.

The danger in yoga is even greater, because whenever people on the Earth become interested in religion, most of them immediately become interested in some activity, in some techniques. It is natural – because man does not achieve anything in life without activity, so naturally he thinks that religion will also have to be an activity. They approach religion in the same way that they approach money. If God is what they seek, that too will have to happen only by doing something. This is how most people think. But the other side of this danger is that man becomes so obsessed with these rituals and the mind enjoys the rituals so much that it becomes difficult to let them go. They lose sight of the destination and the path becomes a trap.

So what can be done to experience the cave of the heart? I say that instead of taking sankhya and yoga as two separate disciplines, take them as two parts of one discipline: take yoga as the beginning part and sankhya as the end part. Take yoga as the tree and Sankhya as the flower. I join the two together for you: sankhya-yoga.

You will certainly have to do something, because as you are, nothing can happen unless you do something. But also, keep in mind that if you remain stuck only in doing, then too, nothing will happen. Much will have to be done, and at a certain moment, all doing will simply have to be dropped. It is like someone climbing a ladder: he climbs it, but then he also leaves it. When someone takes medicines, when the disease is cured he stops taking them; or when someone walks on a path, when he arrives at his destination he leaves the path.

It is not right to say that then he leaves the path, because in reality, the meaning of a path is that you have to go on leaving it at each step – this is the exact meaning of a path. To get closer to your destination you have to go on leaving the path. One has to go on abandoning the path each day so that the destination will keep coming closer. When I say that your destination will come closer as you walk on the path, it means that it comes closer as you constantly leave the path behind. If you have walked one step ahead, it means that you have left one step of path behind you, and this has also brought the destination one step closer.

You have to walk on a path, you have to accept a path, but you also have to let go of it; only then will you come closer to the destination. But people find it easier to get stuck with one of these two. You say, “If I have to abandon the path, why walk on it in the first place?” This is the mistake of Sankhya. Or the other way that makes sense to you is, “Why let go of something that I have already started? Once I start, I should go on forever. I will go on holding on to it and never let go of it.” This is the mistake of yoga.

If both ways – Sankhya and yoga – are in the seeker’s awareness, the cave of the heart can be found very easily.

-Osho

Excerpt from Flight of the Alone to the Alone, Discourse #17

You can read a related post at: The Door to Sankhya is Open.

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Shiva’s 112 Meditation Techniques

Following are the 112 meditation techniques, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, that Shiva gave to his partner Devi (Shakti).

These techniques are the basis for Osho’s The Book of Secrets.

I have numbered them in the order that Osho gave them. The entire discourse series contains 80 discourses. The even number discourses were answers to questions. The techniques were given in odd numbered discourses after the first which was an introduction. Usually more than one technique was described in each of the discourses.

On the following list, the numbers in brackets at the end of the technique, for example (#3-1), signify the discourse number and which technique in that discourse. Some of them have links to posts of the discourses in which Osho describes the techniques.

  1. Radiant one, this experience may dawn between two breaths. After breath comes in (down) and just before turning up (out)—the beneficence. (#3-1)
  2. As breath turns down from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down—through both these turns, realize. (#3-2)
  3. Or, whenever in-breath and out-breath fuse, at this instant touch the energy-less, energy-filled center. (#3-3)
  4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stopped – in such universal pause, one’s small self vanishes. This is difficult only for the impure. (#3-4)
  5. Attention between eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Let form fill with breath essence to the top of the head and there shower as light. (#5-1)
  6. When in worldly activity, keep attention between two breaths, and so practicing, in a few days be born anew. (#5-2)
  7. With intangible breath in center of forehead, as this reaches heart at the moment of sleep, have direction over dreams and over death itself. (#5-3)
  8. With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower. (#5-4)
  9. Lie down as dead. Enraged in wrath, stay so. Or stare without moving an eyelash. Or suck something and become the sucking. (#5-5)
  10. While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caress as everlasting life. (#7-1)
  11. Stop the doors of the senses when feeling the creeping of an ant. Then. (#7-2)
  12. When on a bed or a seat, let yourself become weightless, beyond mind. (#7-3)
  13. Or, imagine the five-colored circles of the peacock tail to be your five senses in illimitable space. Now let their beauty melt within. Similarly, at any point in space or on a wall—until the point dissolves. Then your wish for another comes true. (#9-1)
  14. Place your whole attention in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your spinal column. In such be transformed. (#9-2)
  15. Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes all-inclusive. (#11-1)
  16. Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the lotus. (#11-2)
  17. Unminding mind, keep in the middle—until. (#11-3)
  18. Look lovingly at some object. Do not go to another object. Here in the middle of the object—the blessing. (#13-1)
  19. Without support for feet or hands, sit only on the buttocks. Suddenly, the centering. (#13-2)
  20. In a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. Or in a still vehicle, by letting yourself swing in slowing invisible circles. (#13-3)
  21. Pierce some part of your nectar-filled form with a pin, and gently enter the piercing and attain to the inner purity. (#13-1)
  22. Let attention be at a place where you are seeing some past happening, and even your form, having lost its present characteristics, is transformed. (#15-1)
  23. Feel an object before you. Feel the absence of all other objects but this one. Then, leaving aside the object-feeling and the absence-feeling, realize. (#15-2)
  24. When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered. (#15-3)
  25. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. (#17-1)
  26. When some desire comes, consider it. Then suddenly, quit it. (#17-2)
  27. Roam about until exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole. (#17-3)
  28. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of deprivation, transcend. (#19-1)
  29. Devotion frees. (#19-2)
  30. Eyes closed, see your inner being in detail. Thus see your true nature. (#21-1)
  31. Look upon a bowl without seeing the sides or the material. In a few moments become aware. (#21-2)
  32. See as if for the first time a beauteous person or an ordinary object. (#21-3)
  33. Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity. (#23-1)
  34. Listen while the ultimate mystical teaching is imparted. Eyes still, without blinking, at once become absolutely free. (#23-2)
  35. At the edge of a deep well look steadily into its depths until – the wondrousness. (#23-3)
  36. Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw your thought from it. Then. (#23-4)
  37. Devi, imagine the Sanskrit letters in these honey-filled foci of awareness, first as letters, then more subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free. (#25-1)
  38. Bathe in the center of sound, as in the continuous sound of a waterfall. Or by putting the fingers in the ears, hear the sound of sounds. (#25-2)
  39. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you. (#27-1)
  40. In the beginning and gradual refinement of the sound of any letter, awake. (#27-2)
  41. While listening to stringed instruments, hear their composite central sound; thus omnipresence. (#27-3)
  42. Intone a sound audibly, then less and less audibly as feeling deepens into this silent harmony. (#29-1)
  43. With mouth slightly open, keep mind in the middle of the tongue. Or, as breath comes silently in, feel the sound HH. (#29-2)
  44. Center on the sound a-u-m without any a or m. (#29-3)
  45. Silently intone a word ending in AH. Then in the HH, effortlessly, the spontaneity. (#31-1)
  46. Stopping ears by pressing and the rectum by contracting, enter the sound. (#31-2)
  47. Enter the sound of your name and, through this sound, all sounds. (#31-3)
  48. At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end. (#33-1)
  49. When in such embrace your senses are shaken as leaves, enter this shaking. (#33-2)
  50. Even remembering union, without the embrace, transformation. (#33-3)
  51. On joyously seeing a long absent friend, permeate this joy. (#33-4)
  52. When eating or drinking, become the taste of food or drink, and be filled. (#33-5)
  53. O lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living. (#35-1)
  54. Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this. (#35-2)
  55. At the point of sleep, when the sleep has not yet come and the external wakefulness vanishes, at this point being is revealed. (#35-3)
  56. Illusions deceive, colors circumscribe, even divisibles are indivisible. (#35-4)
  57. In moods of extreme desire, be undisturbed. (#37-1)
  58. This so-called universe appears as a juggling, a picture show. To be happy, look upon it so. (#37-2)
  59. O beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these. (#37-3)
  60. Objects and desires exist in me as in others. So accepting, let them be transformed. (#37-4)
  61. As waves come with water and flames with fire, so the universal waves with us. (#39-1)
  62. Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this. (#39-2)
  63. When vividly aware through some particular sense, keep in the awareness. (#39-3)
  64. At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware. (#41-1)
  65. The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us. In reality, know nothing as pure or impure. (#42-1)
  66. Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor. (#43-1)
  67. Here is the sphere of change, change, change. Through change consume change. (#43-2)
  68. As a hen mothers her chicks, mother particular knowings, particular doings, in reality. (#45-1)
  69. Since, in truth, bondage and freedom are relative, these words are only for those terrified with the universe. This universe is a reflection of minds. As you see many suns in water from one sun, so see bondage and liberation. (#45-2)
  70. Consider your essence as light rays from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises livingness in you. (#47-1)
  71. Or in the spaces between, feel this as lightning. (#47-2)
  72. Feel the cosmos as a translucent ever-living presence. (#47-3)
  73. In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity. (#49-1)
  74. Shakti, see all space as if already absorbed in your own head in the brilliance. (#49-2)
  75. Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light. (#49-3)
  76. In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms. (#51-1)
  77. When a moonless rainy night is not present, close eyes and find blackness before you. Opening eyes see blackness. So faults disappear forever. (#51-2)
  78. Wherever your attention alights, at this very point, experience. (#51-3)
  79. Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes but not you. (#53-1)
  80. Meditate on the make-believe world as burning to ashes, and become being above human. (#53-2)
  81. As, subjectively, letters flow into words and words into sentences, and as, objectively, circles flow into worlds and worlds into principles, find at last these converging in our being. (#53-3)
  82. Feel: my thought, I-ness, internal organs – me. (#55-1)
  83. Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am? Consider. Dissolve in the beauty. (#55-2)
  84. Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous. (#57-1)
  85. Thinking no thing will limited-self unlimit. (#57-2)
  86. Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – you. (#59-1)
  87. I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O beloved, even in such know illimitably. (#59-2)
  88. Each thing is perceived through knowing. The self shines in space through knowing. Perceive one being as knower and known. (#61-1)
  89. Beloved, at this moment let mind, knowing, breath, form, be included. (#61-2)
  90. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart and there permeates the cosmos. (#63-1)
  91. Kind Devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form. (#63-2)
  92. Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart. (#65-1)
  93. Consider any area of your present form as limitlessly spacious. (#65-2)
  94. Feel your substance, bones, flesh, blood, saturated with the cosmic essence. (#67-1)
  95. Feel the fine qualities of creativity permeating your breasts and assuming delicate configurations. (#67-2)
  96. Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. Thence comes the end of mind pressures. (#69-1)
  97. Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss. (#69-2)
  98. In any easy position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace. (#71-1)
  99. Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near. (#71-2)
  100. The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlightened person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood, not lost in things. (#73-1)
  101. Believe omniscient, omnipotent, pervading. (#73-2)
  102. Imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe spiritualizes. (#75-1)
  103. With your entire consciousness in the very start of desire, of knowing, know. (#75-2)
  104. O Shakti, each particular perception is limited, disappearing in omnipotence. (#75-3)
  105. In truth forms are inseparate. Inseparate are omnipresent being and your own form. Realize each as made of this consciousness. (#75-4)
  106. Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. So, leaving aside concern for self, become each being. (#77-1)
  107. This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists. (#77-2)
  108. This consciousness is the spirit of guidance of each one. Be this one. (#77-3)
  109. Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin—empty. (#79-1)
  110. Gracious one, play. The universe is an empty shell wherein your mind frolics infinitely. (#79-2)
  111. Sweet hearted one, meditate on knowing and not-knowing, existing and not-existing. Then leave both aside that you may be. (#79-3)
  112. Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. (#79-4)

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation: A Course in Witnessing

Osho’s discourses on the meditation techniques of Vigyan Bhairava Tantra

Here you can find one hour meditations based on Osho’s The Book of Secrets. They consist of alternating periods of Osho’s words and silence.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Breath is the Bridge – Osho

Truth is always here. It is already the case. It is not something to be achieved in the future. You are the truth just here and now, so it is not something which is to be created or something which is to be devised or something which is to be sought. Understand this very clearly; then these techniques will be easy to understand and also to do.

Mind is a mechanism of desiring. Mind is always in desire, always seeking something, asking for something. Always the object is in the future; mind is not concerned with the present at all. In this very moment the mind cannot move – there is no space. The mind needs the future in order to move. It can move either in the past or in the future. It cannot move in the present; there is no space. The truth is in the present, and mind is always in the future or in the past, so there is no meeting between mind and truth.

When the mind is seeking worldly objects it is not so difficult, the problem is not absurd; it can be solved. But when the mind starts seeking the truth the very effort becomes nonsense, because the truth is here and now and the mind is always then and there. There is no meeting. So understand the first thing: you cannot seek truth. You can find it, but you cannot seek it. The very seeking is the hindrance.

The moment you start seeking you have moved away from the present, away from yourself, because you are always in the present. The seeker is always in the present and the seeking is in the future, you are not going to meet whatsoever you are seeking. Lao Tzu says, “Seek not; otherwise you will miss. Seek not and find. Don’t seek and find.”

All these techniques of Shiva’s are simply turning the mind from the future or the past to the present.  That which you are seeking is already there, it is the case already. The mind has to be turned from seeking to non-seeking. It is difficult. If you think about it intellectually it is very difficult. How to turn the mind from seeking to non-seeking? – Because then the mind makes non-seeking itself the object! Then the mind says, “Don’t seek.” Then the mind says, “I should not seek.” Then the mind says, “Now non-seeking is my object. Now I desire the state of desirelessness.” The seeking has entered again, the desire has come again through the back door. That is why there are people who are seeking worldly objects, and there are people who think they are seeking non-worldly objects.

All objects are worldly because “seeking” is the world.

So you cannot seek anything non-worldly. The moment you seek, it becomes the world. If you are seeking God, your God is part of the world. If you are seeking moksha – liberation – nirvana, your liberation is part of the world, your liberation is not something that transcends the world, because seeking is the world, desiring is the world. So you cannot desire nirvana, you cannot desire non-desire. If you try to understand intellectually, it will become a puzzle.

Shiva says nothing about it; he immediately proceeds to give techniques. They are non-intellectual.  He doesn’t say to Devi, “The truth is here. Don’t seek it and you will find it.” He immediately gives techniques. Those techniques are non-intellectual. Do them, and the mind turns. The turning is just a consequence, just a by-product – not an object. The turning is just a by-product.

If you do a technique, your mind will turn from its journey into the future or the past. Suddenly you will find yourself in the present. That is why Buddha has given techniques, Lao Tzu has given techniques, Krishna has given techniques. But they always introduce their techniques with intellectual concepts. Only Shiva is different. He immediately gives techniques, and no intellectual understanding, no intellectual introduction, because he knows that the mind is tricky, the most cunning thing possible. It can turn anything into a problem. Non-seeking will become the problem.

There are people who come to me who ask how not to desire. They are desiring non-desire. Somebody has told them, or they have read somewhere, or they have heard spiritual gossip, that if you do not desire you will reach bliss, if you do not desire you will be free, if you do not desire there will be no suffering. Now their minds hanker to attain that state where there is no suffering, so they ask how not to desire. Their minds are playing tricks. They are still desiring, it is only that now the object has changed. They were desiring money, they were desiring fame, they were desiring prestige, they were desiring power. Now they are desiring non-desire. Only the object has changed, and they remain the same and their desiring remains the same. But now the desire has become more deceptive.

Because of this, Shiva proceeds immediately with no introduction whatsoever. He immediately starts talking about techniques. Those techniques, if followed, suddenly turn your mind: it comes to the present. And when the mind comes to the present it stops, it is no more. You cannot be a mind in the present, that is impossible. Just now, if you are here and now, how can you be a mind?

Thoughts cease because they cannot move. The present has no space in which to move; you cannot think. If you are in this very moment, how can you move? Mind stops, you attain to no-mind.

So the real thing is how to be here and now. You can try, but effort may prove futile – because if you make it a point to be in the present, then this point has moved into the future. When you ask how to be in the present, again you are asking about the future. This moment is passing in the inquiry, “How to be present? How to be here and now?” This present moment is passing in the inquiry, and your mind will begin to weave and create dreams in the future: some day you will be in a state of mind where there is no movement, no motive, no seeking, and then there will be bliss – so how to be in the present?

Shiva doesn’t say anything about it, he simply gives a technique. You do it, and suddenly you find you are here and now. And your being here and now is the truth, and your being here and now is the freedom, and your being here and now is the nirvana.

The first nine techniques are concerned with breathing. So let us understand something about breathing, and then we will proceed to the techniques. We are breathing continuously from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Everything changes between these two points. Everything changes, nothing remains the same, only breathing is a constant thing between birth and death.

The child will become a youth; the youth will become old. He will be diseased, his body will become ugly, ill, everything will change. He will be happy, unhappy, in suffering; everything will go on changing. But whatsoever happens between these two points, one must breathe. Whether happy or unhappy, young or old, successful or unsuccessful – whatsoever you are, it is irrelevant – one thing is certain: between these two points of birth and death you must breathe. Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why YOU are not required to breathe, because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, and then nothing could be done.

So, really, You are not breathing, because you are not needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. YOU are not required; breathing is something which goes on in spite of you.

It is one of the constant factors in your personality – that is the first thing. It is something which is very essential and basic to life – that is the second thing. You cannot be alive without breath.

So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it prana. We have given one word for both – prana means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath.

Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you.

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe – every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath, therefore, becomes very significant – the most significant thing. So the first nine techniques are concerned with breath. If you can do something with the breath, you will suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it.

Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe. We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the “no-body,” from the “no-body” to the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, transplanted into a different dimension.

But remember, what Shiva is going to say is not yoga, it is tantra. Yoga also works on breath, but the work of yoga and tantra is basically different. Yoga tries to systematize breathing. If you systematize your breathing your health will improve. If you systematize your breathing, if you know the secrets of breathing, your life will become longer; you will be more healthy and you will live longer. You will be more strong, more filled with energy, more vital, alive, young, fresh.

But tantra is not concerned with that. Tantra is concerned not with any systematization of breath, but with using breath just as a technique to turn inward. One has not to practice a particular style of breathing, a particular system of breathing or a particular rhythm of breathing – no! One has to take breathing as it is. One has just to become aware of certain points in the breathing.

There are certain points, but we are not aware of them. We have been breathing and we will go on breathing – we are born breathing and we will die breathing – but we are not aware of certain points.

And this is strange. Man is searching, probing deep into space. Man is going to the moon; man is trying to reach farther, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the nearest part of his life. There are certain points in breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors – the nearest doors to you from where you can enter into a different world, into a different being, into a different consciousness. But they are very subtle.

To observe a moon is not very difficult. Even to reach the moon is not very difficult; it is a gross journey. You need mechanization, you need technology, you need accumulated information, and then you can reach it. Breathing is the nearest thing to you, and the nearer a thing is, the more difficult it is to perceive it. The nearer it is, the more difficult; the more obvious it is, the more difficult.

It is so near to you that again there is no space between you and your breathing. Or, there is such a small space that you will need a very minute observation, only then will you become aware of certain points. These points are the basis of these techniques.

-Osho

From Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, Chapter Three

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com  or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Mind as a Master is a Disaster – Osho

When I listen to your discourses, you take me on an indescribable journey. If afterwards someone asks me about what you have said, I hardly remember. But when people ask me personal questions, answers are coming out of my mouth which astonish me the most. Osho, am I becoming a parrot of your words?

Listening to me is less like listening and more like drinking. Although it is a verbal communication, that is only the superficial part of it. Hidden beneath it is the real communion where meanings are absorbed and words are forgotten.

You cannot become my parrot – at least while I am alive.

It is impossible to become my parrot. You will go crazy! My words are so full of contradictions that the poor parrot will be crushed under those contradictions. And it is a sure signal that you are not becoming a parrot because you don’t remember my words. The parrot only remembers words, but whatever is being communicated to you is absorbed.

It has to become part of your blood, your bones, your marrow – not part of your memory. Unless it becomes your blood, your bones and your marrow, it cannot transform you.

And the transformation is happening. You are aware of it, that in answering a personal question or responding to a situation, something comes out of you that is not yours. You are surprised even by your own words – because listening silently, not paying attention to the words but to the wordless message contained in them, you are slowly, slowly moving your very consciousness.

You will not become more knowledgeable here. You will become a new man, a man who knows the meaning of life, a man who has experienced the great benediction of silence and serenity. His actions are bound to reflect his consciousness.

And if you cannot remember my words, don’t be worried about it. You are nourished by the meaning, and it is the meaning that will change you, your actions, your responses. It is not the power of the words that transforms anybody. There is no need to be afraid, you are on the right track.

One thing has to be understood: you remember only things which you have not understood. Things that you have understood need not be remembered – they will act, they will be in your eyes. They will be in your gestures, they will be in your life, they will be in your love, they will be in everything that you do; but they will not be part of your memory system. They are far higher than the memory because they don’t belong to the mind.

Mind is the lowest part of your consciousness. It is good enough as far as the world is concerned, but it is not of any use if you are thinking to go on an inner pilgrimage. You will have to leave that mind behind. Its whole training is for the outside world. It will create all kinds of hindrances if you start moving inwards.

It is a trained outsider.

So it is good that words are not being caught by your memory system. Your listening is so total that the words go directly to your very being, to your consciousness – they don’t need the mechanism of the mind.

The mechanism of the mind is good as far as the objective world is concerned but in the inner, in the interior of your being, mind has no entry. Mind has never entered into the innermost core of any human being in the whole of history; the very nature of its functioning prohibits it. It is by nature, extrovert. The moment you start moving inwards, you are separating from your mind system, you are leaving it behind. Now you are moving on the wings of consciousness.

If what I am saying to you is becoming a reality in your life, who cares whether you remember my words or not? It is perfectly right not to remember them; any remembrance of the words will be an obstruction. Let only pure meaning spread to the deepest core of your being where words have no access, where only wordless meaning is able to enter.

A bishop, thinking to convert a Zen master – because he saw thousands of disciples, he thought it better if this old man were converted; then naturally all these disciples would be converted too. With great respect he approached the master. He had brought with him THE HOLY BIBLE. He opened the chapter containing the Sermon on the Mount. He wanted to show the Zen master the best of Jesus and if he agrees… and it is very difficult to disagree with the Sermon on the Mount. The argument inside his mind was that it is very difficult, almost impossible, to disagree with the Sermon on the Mount unless you have a superb, logical mind, something parallel to the genius of Friedrich Nietzsche – then perhaps you may be able to disagree.

Nietzsche is the only man in the whole of history who has disagreed with Jesus, and not on weak points but on the strongest. The ordinary way is to find loopholes, weaknesses, and hammer on them. If you cannot find them, create them – nobody is so much interested in going to the original sources to look.

The world lives on newspapers.

Jesus says “Man cannot live by bread alone.” I say to you, a man can live without bread but not without the newspaper. The newspaper is his whole wisdom. These are people who cannot argue against Jesus, Zarathustra or Lao Tzu.

For example, Jesus says, that God is love, God is just, always fair, always compassionate. The Old Testament’s God is a very angry God – never forgiving, never forgetting; nobody is going to avoid the punishment for his evil acts. The concept of Jesus’ God seems to be far more refined.

Loving, just, fair, compassionate… it seems to be closer to the human heart. But Friedrich Nietzsche criticizes it and his criticism is foundational and crucial. He says, “You cannot say God is love because wherever love is, hate is and if your God knows no hate, he cannot know love. How will he find it out that this is love? To define love, a certain experience of hate is needed. To define silence, noise is needed. To define beauty, ugliness is needed. You are alive because every day many people are dying and you can see the distinction. If nobody was dying, you would not even be able to imagine what life is.”

His criticism is very psychological. He is saying that you are taking one part, one side of a coin, and leaving the other side. This is impossible. You cannot have a coin with only one side. You can go on making it thinner but the other side will remain – either both or none.

Nietzsche says Jesus’ God is nothing but the completion of the Jewish concept of God. He was anger, he was hate, he was rage. Jesus has taken the other side of the coin, but both are halves and God is whole. If there is any God, he can only be whole. Jesus says, ”If somebody slaps you don’t be angry, but with humbleness give him the other cheek also.” It is such a beautiful idea, but a man like Friedrich Nietzsche has an insight and maturity which the common masses cannot have. His criticism is one of the examples of the highest reaches of logic.

Nietzsche says, “If somebody hits me on one of my cheeks, I am not so inhumane as to give him my other cheek. That is egoistic. It is trying to prove that ‘you are just an ordinary human being

– I am a messiah, a messenger of God. I forgive you and if you enjoy hitting me, you can hit me more.’ Nietzsche’s point is that you are reducing the other person to utter humiliation. Nobody in two thousand years’ history has raised this question.

Nietzsche says, “If somebody hits me, I will hit him as hard as I can because I am just as human as you are. I don’t want to prove myself holier than you, higher than you, superior to you. I respect your humanity and I accept your challenge. You have slapped my face. You have given the challenge to me.”

He is saying that Jesus’ idea is disrespectful. And certainly if you look deep into its psychology, you will find it is insulting. You are not accepting the other man as a man equal to you. He is an ignorant man, unenlightened. You are awakened. You are creating a distance between yourself and the person who has slapped you.

Nietzsche says, “I cannot create that distance. That distance is nothing but fulfillment of a very subtle kind – and fulfillment not of your being but only of your ego.”

But this bishop thought that by reading from the Sermon on the Mount, the old man was bound to be convinced that Jesus was as enlightened as Gautam Buddha. He read two lines and the old man said, “That’s enough. Whoever has written these will become enlightened in some future life but as far as this life is concerned, forget all about it.”

The bishop said, “But the lines are so beautiful – each word a diamond unto itself.”

The Zen master said, “It is not a question of words. While you were reading, I was also listening to the gaps. The man was articulate as far as words are concerned but the gaps expose him completely. What he is saying is only mind stuff, it is not his experience. But the man is good. Don’t be worried; in some future life he will become an enlightened person.”

Look – life is not a difficult matter. It becomes a problem when your life wants to go one way and your mind drags you in another and you are in a conflict, torn apart. You can go to neither side… because half of you is trying to go in another direction.

Life becomes absolutely simple once you start functioning from something that is higher than your mind. In the beginning for any seeker the whole search is to find a space above the mind.

Once you have found a small space above the mind, all dualism disappears, all tensions, all anxieties disappear. And strangely enough, the mind which was never in your control, suddenly surrenders itself to you.

Mind as a master is a disaster.

Mind as a servant is a beautiful gift of nature. You just have to find the master – and it is not far away.

It is just above the mind.

Only one step.

-Osho

From Sermons in Stones, Discourse #9

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com  or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Osho on “Who am I?”

Would you please talk about the sadhana based on holding as much as possible to the “I” thought or the sense “I AM” and on asking oneself the questions, “Who am I?” or “From where does the ‘I’ arise?”

In what way does this approach to meditation differ from that of watching the gaps between one’s in-breath and out-breath? Does it make any difference whether one witnesses the breath focusing on the heart center or on the lower belly center?

It is an ancient method of meditation, but full of dangers. Unless you are alert, the greater possibility is that you will be led astray by the method rather than to the right goal. The method is simple — concentrating yourself on the concept of I, closing your eyes and inquiring, “Who am I?”

The greatest problem is that when you ask “Who am I”. . . who is going to answer you? Most probably the answer will come from your tradition, from your scriptures, from your conditioning. You have heard that “I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am the soul, I am the ultimate, Brahma, I am God” — all these kinds of thoughts you have heard before.

You will ask a few times, “Who am I? Who am I?” — And then you will say, “I am ultimate, brahma.” And this is not a discovery, this is simply stupid. If you want to go rightly into the method, then the question has not to be verbally asked. “Who am I?” has not to be repeated verbally. Because as long as it remains a verbal question, you will supply a verbal answer from the head. You have to drop the verbal question. It has to remain just a vague idea, just like a thirst. Not that “I am thirsty,” — can you see the difference? When you are thirsty, you feel the thirst. And if you are in a desert, you feel the thirst in every fiber of your body. You don’t say, “I am thirsty, I am thirsty.” It is no longer a linguistic question, it is existential.

If “Who am I?” is an existential question, if you are not asking it in language but instead the feeling of the question is settling inside your center, then there is no need for any answer. Then it is none of the mind’s business. The mind will not hear that which is non-verbal, and the mind will not answer that which is non-verbal.

All your scriptures are in the mind, all your knowledge is gathered there.

Now you are entering an innocent space. You will not get the answer. You will get the feel, you will get the taste, you will get the smell. As you go deeper, you will be filled more with the feeling of being, of immortality, blissfulness, silence . . . a tremendous benediction.

But there is no answer like, “I am this, I am that.” All that is from the scriptures. This feeling is from you, and this feeling has a truth about it. It is a perfectly valid method.

One of the great masters of this century, Raman Maharshi, used only this method for his disciples: “Who am I?” But I have come across hundreds of his disciples—they are nowhere near the ultimate experience. And the reason is because they know the answer already.

I have asked them, “Do you know the answer?”

They said, “We know the answer.”

I said, “If you know the answer, then why are you asking? And your asking cannot go on very long — do it two or three times and the answer comes. The answer was already there, before the question.” So it is just a mind game. If you want to play it, you can play it. But if you really want to go into it as it was meant by Raman Maharshi, and by all the ancient seers, it is a nonverbal thirst.

Not knowing oneself hurts, it is a wound. Not knowing oneself makes the whole of life meaningless. You may know everything, only you do not know yourself — and that would be the first thing to know. So if you can avoid the danger of falling into a verbal question, it is perfectly good, you can go ahead.

You have also asked about witnessing, watching the breath and where one should watch. Anywhere — because the question is not where you are watching, the question is that you are watching. The emphasis is on watching, watchfulness. All those points are just excuses. You can watch the breath at the tip of the nose where the breath goes in, you can watch it while it is going in, you can watch it when it returns — you can watch it anywhere. You can watch thoughts moving inside. The whole point is not to get lost in what you are watching, as if that is important. That is not important. The important thing is that you are watchful, that you have not forgotten to watch, that you are watching . . . watching . . . watching.

And slowly, slowly, as the watcher becomes more and more solid, stable, unwavering, a transformation happens. The things that you were watching disappear. For the first time, the watcher itself becomes the watched; the observer itself becomes the observed. You have come home.

-Osho

From Beyond Enlightenment, Discourse #9, Q3   

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

An audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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Meditation Will Make You Awake – Osho

Meditation will make you awake, strong and humble. Meditation will make you awake because it will give you the first experience of yourself. You are not the body; you are not the mind – you are the pure witnessing consciousness. And when this witnessing consciousness is touched, a great awakening happens – as if a snake was sitting coiled up and suddenly it uncoils, as if somebody was asleep and has been shaken and awakened. Suddenly a great awakening inside: for the first time you feel you are. For the first time you feel the truth of your being.

And certainly, it makes you strong; you are no longer fragile, not like a frail tree that any wind can overturn. Now you become a mountain! Now you have a foundation, now you are rooted – no wind can overturn a mountain. You become awake, you become strong, and still you become humble. This strength does not bring any ego in you. You become humble because you become aware that the same witnessing soul exists in everybody, even in animals, birds, plants, rocks.

These are only different ways of sleeping! Somebody sleeps on the right side, and somebody sleeps on the left side, and somebody sleeps on the back . . . these are only different ways of sleeping. A rock has its own way of sleep, a tree a different way of sleep, a bird still a different way – but only differences in the ways and methods of sleeping; otherwise deep down at the core of every being is the same witnessing, the same God. That makes you humble. Even before a rock you know you are nobody special because the whole existence is made of the same stuff called consciousness. And if you are awake, strong, and humble, this gives you a mastery over yourself.

-Osho

From The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, V. 1, Discourse #1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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Thought Birth Control – Osho

The road that leads to samsara, to the world, is the same as the road that leads to the self. Only the direction is different. What has been in front of you for so long will now be behind you and you will have to direct your sight to what was at your back. The road is the same. We must simply turn, do an about-face. We must turn our backs on what we were facing and face that which was at our backs.

Please ask yourself where your face is turned now. What are you seeing? In what direction is the current of your vision, of your consciousness, flowing? Experience it. Observe it. You will find it is flowing outwardly. All your thoughts are about the world outside. All the time you are thinking about external things, about the world outside. When your eyes are open you see outside; when they are closed you see the same outside – because the forms and images of outside things that are imprinted on the mind rise up and surround us even when our eyes are closed. There is a world of objects outside and inside us there is another world of thoughts, the echo of outside things. Although it is inside this other world it is also outside, because the “I”, the ego, is outside as well. The witness also sees the “I”, the ego, so, therefore, that too is outside.

We are surrounded by objects and by thoughts, but you will see on deeper consideration that being encircled by objects is no hindrance on the path of self-realization, while being surrounded by thoughts is an obstacle. Can objects encircle the soul? Objects can only encircle objects. The soul is surrounded by thoughts. The current of vision, of consciousness, flows towards thoughts. Thoughts and thoughts alone are in front of us everywhere and our sight is curtained by them.

We must turn our faces from thoughts towards thoughtlessness. But this change of direction is revolutionary! How can it be done? First we must know how thoughts are born and only then can we stop them from coming into being. Generally so-called seekers begin to suppress thoughts before they understand how they are born. Some of them may go crazy trying but none of them; will ever be free of thoughts. The suppression of thoughts does not help because new thoughts arise every moment. They are like those giants of mythology who, when one head was lopped off, grew ten more.

I do not ask you to destroy thoughts because they die of their own accord every moment. Thoughts are very short-lived; no thought endures for long. A particular thought does not last long but the thought-process does. Thoughts die one after another but the flow of thoughts persists. No sooner does one thought die than another takes its place. This process takes place very quickly and this is the problem. It is not the death of a thought but its quick rebirth that is the real problem. Therefore I do not ask you to kill thoughts. I want you to understand the process of their birth and how you can rid yourselves of this process. One who comprehends the process of the birth of thoughts can easily be freed from it. But one who does not understand the process goes on creating fresh thoughts and at the same time tries to resist them. Instead of thoughts coming to an end, the consequence is that the person fighting them breaks down himself.

Again I repeat: thoughts are not the problem but the birth of thoughts is the problem. How they are born is the problem. If we can stop their coming into being, if we can exercise thought birth-control, the thoughts that have already been born will disappear in a moment. Thoughts die out every second but their total destruction does not happen because new thoughts spring up incessantly. I say it is not that we have to destroy thoughts but that we have to stop their coming into being. Stopping their birth is as good as their destruction. We all know that the mind is fickle. But what does this mean? It means that no thought endures for long. It is born and it passes away. If we can only stop its birth we will be saved from the violence involved in killing it and it will die of its own accord.

How is thought born? The conception and birth of a thought is the result of our reaction to the outside world. There is a world of events and objects outside and our reaction to this world is alone responsible for the birth of thoughts. I look at a flower. Looking is not thinking and if I simply go on looking no thought will be created. But if as soon as I look at it I say, “It is a very beautiful flower,” a thought has been born. If on the other hand I continue looking at the flower I will experience and enjoy its beauty, but no thought will be born. But as soon as we have an experience we begin to express it in words. With this expression of experience through the symbols of words, thought comes into being.

I am looking at you, and if I just keep on looking at you without expressing it in words, what will happen? As you are now you cannot even imagine what will happen. There will be a great revolution, the likes of which has never been seen before. Words get in the way and stop that revolution from taking place. The birth of thoughts hinders that revolution. If I keep on looking at you and do not give it any expression in words, if I simply keep on looking I will find during the process that a wonderful and divine grace descends upon me and that a quality of emptiness, of the void, is spreading all around. And in this emptiness, in this absence of words, the direction of consciousness takes a new turning and then I do not see only you but even the one who watches over us all gradually begins to appear. There is a new awakening on the horizon of our consciousness, as if we are waking from a dream, and our minds are filled with pure light and infinite peace.

-Osho

Excerpted from The Perfect Way, Discourse #2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.