Category: on Witnessing

Witnessing the Monster – Osho

You have said much lately about inner silence and emptiness. After two years as your disciple, much of the time, particularly during the meditations at the ashram, my mind seems more than ever to be out of control and working like a computer gone mad. I try to be a witness to the whole absurdity, but the monster goes on and on!

Let the monster go on and on and don’t you be worried. The very worry is the problem, not the monster.

The whole world is going on and on: rivers go on flowing; clouds go on moving in the sky; birds go on chattering in the trees. Just why are you so against only the mind? Let it also go on and on – you be unconcerned.

Witnessing is not an effort. When you are unconcerned the witness arises. Be indifferent to the mind; in the climate of indifference the witness arises. The very idea that you have to stop it is wrong, that you have to still it is wrong, that you have to do something about this constant ongoing process is wrong. You are not required to do anything. If you do anything it won’t help – it will help the trouble, not you. That’s why when you meditate you feel the mind going more mad; when you don’t meditate it is not so mad. When you are meditating you are too concerned with the mind, trying your hardest to make it still. Who are you? And why should you be worried about the mind?

What is wrong with it? Allow the thoughts, let them move like clouds.

When you are indifferent, suddenly you are watching. With nothing left to do, what will you do?

You can only watch, you can only witness – and in witnessing mind stops. Not that you can stop it. Nobody has ever been able to stop the mind because the stopper is also part of the mind. The idea of meditation is part of the mind too – the idea that if you become silent you will attain to the ultimate is also of the mind. So don’t be stupid! The mind cannot silence the mind.

Who is asking this question, you or the mind?

You are not aware of yourself at all; it’s the mind playing tricks. The only thing that can be done, and which is possible, is to be indifferent and let the mind go. When you are indifferent suddenly a distance arises between you and the mind. You still listen to it because it is knocking continuously at your doors, but now you are indifferent. Now, inside, you are not worried whether it goes on or stops, you don’t choose. You say to the mind, “If you want to go, you go on; if you want to stop, you can stop. It is none of my concern.” This unconcern is needed. In this climate of unconcern and indifference the witness arises. Suddenly you see that the mind never belonged to you; it is a computer, it is a mechanism. You are absolutely separate from it.

Drop all efforts to still it and just remain passive, looking at whatsoever is going on. Don’t give direction to the mind; don’t say, “Be like this.” Don’t be a guide to the mind and don’t be a controller.

The whole existence is going on, nothing disturbs you – why only this mind, a small computer, a small mechanism? Enjoy it if you can. If you cannot, then be indifferent. And then suddenly one day you find that something which was fast asleep within you is awakening; a new energy is coming up in you – a distance from the mind. And then by and by the mind goes on – far away, far away, far away. Then still it goes on chattering, but you know that somewhere far away, near a star it is chattering; you cannot even make sense out of it, what it is saying. And this distance goes on and on and on, and one day, suddenly, you cannot find where the mind has gone.

This silence is qualitatively different from a silence that you can practice. The real silence comes spontaneously; it is not something to be practiced. If you practice it, you can create a false silence.

The mind is so tricky, it can give you a false notion of silence – and that too will belong to the mind.

So don’t try hard to still it. Rather, stand aside, by the side of the road, and let the traffic pass.

Just watch it, just look at it with eyes of unconcern, indifference, and the thing that you have been desiring will happen – but not through desire. Because desire will not allow you to be indifferent.

Buddha has used a word upeksha; the word means absolute indifference. And he says that you can never become meditative unless you have attained to upeksha, to indifference. That is the very soil.

In that soil the seeds of meditation sprout – and there is no other way.

-Osho

From Absolute Tao, Discourse #8, Q1, and previously published as Tao: The Three Treasures, V.1, Discourse #8, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Witnessing the Monster.

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.

A New Awakening on the Horizon of Our Consciousness – Osho

I believe that this talk was from a meditation camp held at Ranakput, Rajashthan in 1964. It would become part of the first book published of Osho’s talks. It has appeared with various titles: Sadhana Path, The Path of Self Realization and The Perfect Way.

The First Morning, June 4, 1964.

It is a delight to see you. In this solitary place you have come together to realize God, to find the truth, to know your own selves. But may I ask you a question? Is what you are seeking separate from you? You can search for someone who is away but how can you seek that which is your own self? Your own self cannot be sought in the sense in which everything else is sought because in this case there is no difference between the one who is seeking and the one who is being sought. You can seek out the world but you cannot seek your self. He who goes out in search of his self goes farther away from his self. It is important to understand this fact fully. Only then the search may be possible. If you want the material things of the world you have to look outside yourself, but if you want to find your self you have to be composed, unruffled, and to abandon all seeking. What you really are can only be seen in perfect calm and emptiness.

Remember that a search is also an excitement, a tension that it is a desire and a passion as well. But the soul cannot be realized through passion. This is the difficulty. Passion indicates that one desires to become something or to attain something, while the soul is already there within one. The soul is what I, myself, am. Passion and the soul lie in the opposite directions. They are opposite dimensions.

Therefore, understand fully that the soul can be realized but it cannot be the object of desire. There cannot be any desire as such for the soul. All desire is worldly; no-desire is spiritual. It is desire and passion that make up the world. Whether this passion or desire is for money or for religion, for authority or for the realization of God, for worldly pleasures or for the liberation of moksha, it makes no difference. All passion is ignorance and bondage.

I do not ask you to desire the soul. I only ask you to comprehend the nature of desire. The understanding of passion frees one from passion because it reveals its painful character. The knowledge of pain is freedom from pain. Nobody, having known pain, can want it. And when there is no desire, when the mind is neither disturbed by passion nor searching for anything, then at that very moment, at that calm and tranquil moment you experience your real authentic being. The soul declares itself when passion disappears.

Therefore, my friends, I ask you not to hanker after the soul but to understand desire itself and to rid yourselves of it. Then you will know and will realize the atman, the soul.

What is religion? Religion, dharma, has nothing to do with thoughts or with thinking. It has to do with no-thinking. Thinking is philosophy. It gives you results or conclusions but does not bring you satisfaction. Dharma is contentment. The process of logic is the doorway to thought while samadhi is the gateway to contentment.

Samadhi is the result of shunya and chaitanya, of emptiness and consciousness. The mind must be empty but watchful, and in that state of tranquility the door to truth opens. Truth is realized only out of emptiness and one’s whole life is subsequently transformed.

We reach the stage of samadhi through meditation, but what is generally understood as meditation is not true meditation. It too is thinking. Possibly the thoughts relate to the soul or to God but they are still thoughts. To what the thoughts relate makes no difference. In reality all thoughts pertain to another, to an outsider. They relate to what is not the self, to the material. There cannot be thought about the self because for thought to exist, two are needed. Therefore, thought cannot take you beyond duality. If one is to realize this unity, to live in the self and to know it, then meditation, not thinking, is the way. Thought and meditation are in diametrically opposite directions. The former moves outward, the latter inward. Thought is the way to know the other; meditation, the way to know the self. But thought is generally taken for meditation. This is a very serious and widespread mistake and I want to caution you against this fundamental error. Meditation means becoming action-less. Meditation is not action but a state of being. It is being steady in one’s own self.

In action we come into contact with the outside world; in inaction, with ourselves. When we are not doing anything, we become aware of what we are, but we are constantly involved in different activities and do not know ourselves. We do not even remember that we exist.

We are deeply preoccupied. At least the body rests but the mind does not rest at all. Awake, we think; asleep, we dream. Engrossed in these constant preoccupations and activities, we simply forget ourselves. In the press of our own affairs, we lose ourselves. How strange this is! But it is a fact. We have become lost, not in the crowds of other people, but in our own thoughts, in our own dreams, in our own preoccupations and activities. We have become lost in ourselves. Meditation is the way to extricate ourselves from this self-created crowd, from this mental wanderlust.

By its nature meditation cannot involve any action. It is no-action. It is a term for an unoccupied mind. This is what I teach. It may look rather odd to say that I teach no-action and to say that we have gathered here to practice no-action, but the language of man is very poor and very limited. Designed to express action only, it is never able to express the soul. How can that which is fashioned for speech express silence?

The word “meditation” suggests that it is some sort of action, but it is by no means action of any kind. It would be wrong of me to say I was “practicing” meditation; it would be correct to say I was “in” meditation. It is just like love. I am in love, but love cannot be manufactured. Hence, I say meditation is a state of mind. It is of prime importance to be clear about this at the outset.

We have not gathered here to do anything but have come to experience that state where we simply are, where no action takes place, where there is no smoke to suggest action and only the burning flame of being remains, where only the self remains, where even the thought that “I am” no longer remains, where simply “being” remains. This is shunya, emptiness. This is the point where we see not the world, but the truth. It is in this void, in this emptiness, that the wall that keeps you from knowing your self topples; that the curtains of thought rise and wisdom dawns. At this point you do not think, you know. Then there is vision; then there is realization.

But the words “vision” and “realization” are not quite appropriate because here there is no difference between the knower and the known, no difference between the subject and the object. Here there is neither the known nor the knower, simply knowing. In this context no word is suitable. “No-word” is the only appropriate word. If anyone asks me about this state I remain silent – or you might say I convey my answer through my silence.

Meditation is no-action. Action is something we may or may not do according to our wishes. But there is a difference between one’s nature and one’s actions. One’s nature is not action; it is neither doing nor non-doing. For example, understanding and sight are parts of our nature, parts of our being. Even if we do nothing, they will still be there. Nature is constantly present in us and only that which is constant and continuous can be called natural. Nature is not something of our making, it is our foundation. It is our selves. We do not create it, it is an intrinsic cohesion. We call it dharma. Dharma means our nature; it means pure existence.

This constant and continuous nature of ours is suppressed by the scattered direction of our actions. Just as the sea is covered by waves and the sun by clouds, we are covered by our own actions. The layer of activities on the surface hides that which is deep inside. Insignificant waves hide from our view the unfathomable depths of the ocean. How strange it is that the mighty is suppressed by the trivial, that a speck in the eye renders mountains invisible! But the sea does not cease to exist because of the waves. It is the soul of the waves and is present in them as well. Those who know even recognize it in the waves, but those who do not know must wait until the waves subside. They can only look at the ocean after the waves disperse.

We have to dive into this ocean, into nature itself. We have to forget about the waves and jump into the sea. We have to know our own depths where there is the sea without waves, where there is being without becoming.

This world of wave-less and motionless knowing is always present in us but we are not aware of it. We have turned our faces away from it – we look outside, we look at things, we look at the world. But bear one thing in mind – we are looking, and what is seen is of the world. But the one who sees is not the world, it is the self.

If sight is related to the object that is seen it is thought; if sight is free from the object that is seen and turns towards the seer himself, it is meditation. Do you follow my distinction between thought and meditation?

Seeing is present in both thought and meditation but in the former it is objective and in the latter it is subjective. But whether we are in thought or in meditation, whether we are in action or in no-action, seeing is a constant factor. Awake, we see the world; asleep, we see dreams; in samadhi, we see our selves – but in each of these conditions there is seeing. Seeing is constant and continuous. It is our nature. It is never absent no matter what the condition.

Seeing is even present in fainting. After we come out of a faint we say, “I don’t know anything. I don’t know where I was.” Please do not think this is ignorance. This is also knowledge. If seeing had been totally absent, the knowledge of “I don’t know anything” would not have been possible, and in that case the time that passed by in the faint would not have existed for you. It would not have been part of your experience; it would not have left any trace on your memory. But you know you were in a state where you were not aware of anything. This too is knowledge. And seeing is also present here. The memory has not recorded any internal or external phenomena during this period, but our seeing has definitely noted, has definitely experienced this gap, this interval. And this experience of the interval, of the gap in the recording of events is later known to the memory as well. Similarly, during sleep, even when there are no dreams, seeing is always present. When we awaken in the morning, we are able to say we had such a sound sleep that we did not even dream. This condition too has been observed.

You must realize from all of this that conditions change that the content of consciousness changes, but that seeing does not change. Everything in the realm of our experience changes; all things are in a flux. Seeing and seeing alone is ever-present. The seer alone is the witness to all this change, to all this fluidity. To know this constant and eternal seer is to know one’s self. All else is alien, the other. All else is samsara, the world.

This seer or witness cannot be attained or realized by any action, by any kind of worship or adoration, by any mantra or technique, because he is the witness of all these things as well. He is different and apart from all these things. Whatever can be seen or whatever can be done is different from and other than the witness. He cannot be realized by action but by no-action; not by effort but by stillness. He will be realized only when there is no activity, when there is no object to be seen, when only the seer or witness remains, when only seeing remains. When we are seeing but nothing is being seen, when we know but nothing is being known, then in this consciousness-devoid-of-content the knower of all is known. When there is no object to be seen the curtain in front of the seer drops away, and when there is no object to be known knowledge becomes aware of itself. When there are no waves we can see the ocean; when there are no clouds we can see the blue sky.

This ocean and this sky are there in everyone and if you wish to know this sky, this space, you can. There is a path that leads there and it is present in everyone, available to everyone. And each one knows how to walk on this path. But we only know how to walk on it in one direction. Have you ever thought of the fact that a road cannot lead in one direction only? Inevitably each road travels in two directions, in two opposite directions. Otherwise, it is not a road; it cannot exist. The road that has brought you here to the seclusion of these hills is the same road that will take you back. There is only one road for coming as well as for going. The same road will serve both purposes. The road will be the same but the direction will not be the same.

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.

In the final analysis I wish to say that in this Sadhana Camp we must make this one experiment – and that is not to allow our vision to be smothered by words. I call this the experiment of right-mindfulness. You must remember you must stay aware so that words are not formulated. It is possible to stop words evolving because they are just a habit of ours after all. A newborn child views the world without the intermediary of words. This is pure, direct vision. Later he gradually forms the habit of using words because words are helpful and useful in his external life and in the world outside. But what is useful in the outer life becomes an impediment in knowing the inner life. It is because of this that even the old must reawaken in themselves a child’s capacity of pure vision in order that they may know their selves. They knew the world with the help of words and now they must come to know their selves with the help of the void, of emptiness.

What are we to do in this experiment? We will sit quietly, keeping the body relaxed and the spine erect. We will stop all movement of the body. We will breathe slowly and deeply and without any excitement. We will silently observe our own breathing and we will listen to any sounds falling on our ears from outside. We will not react in any way; we will not give them a second’s thought. We will let go into a state of mind where, without the interference of words, we will simply be a witness. We will stand at a distance and watch whatever is taking place. Don’t try to concentrate at all. Simply be quiet and watch whatever is happening. Listen. Just close your eyes and listen. Listen quietly in silence. Listen to the chirping off the sparrows, to the swaying of the trees in the wind, to the cry of a child, to the sound of the water wheel at the well. Simply listen. And do nothing else.

First, within yourself, you will experience a throbbing of the breath and a beating of the heart – and then a new kind of quiet and peace will descend upon you. You will find that although there is noise outside there is silence inside. You will find you have entered a new dimension of peace. Then you will find that there are no thoughts, that only pure consciousness remains.

And in this medium of emptiness your attention turns towards the place that is your real abode. From the outside you turn towards your home.

Your vision has led you inwards. Simply keep watching. Watch your thoughts, your breath and the movement at the navel. No reaction. The result will be something that is not a creation of the mind that is not of your creation at all. This is in fact your being, your existence. This is the cohesion that sustains us all. It reveals itself unto us and then one’s own self, the biggest surprise of all, appears.

I recall a tale. A sadhu, a seeker, was once standing on a hill. It was early morning and the sun was beginning to shine. Some friends were out for a walk. They saw the sadhu, standing all alone. They asked each other, “What can this sadhu be doing here?” One of them said, “Perhaps his cow often gets lost in the jungle and he is standing on the hill looking for her.” The other friends did not agree. Another said, “From the way he is standing, he does not seem to be looking for something. He rather seems to be waiting for somebody, perhaps a friend who accompanied him and has been left behind somewhere.” But the others did not agree with this either. A third one said, “He is neither searching for any one nor waiting for anyone. He is absorbed in the contemplation of God.”

They could not agree so they approached the sadhu himself to clarify the situation. The first one asked, “Are you looking for your lost cow?” The sadhu replied, “No.” Another asked, “Are you waiting for someone then?” To this he answered, “No.” The third one asked, “Are you contemplating God?” Again the sadhu replied in the negative. All the three were amazed. Together, they asked him, “Then what are you doing here?” The sadhu said, “I am doing nothing. I am just standing. I am just being.”

We have to exist this simply. We have to do nothing. We have to give up everything and just be. Then something that cannot be put into words will happen. The experience that will come to pass cannot be expressed in words. It is the epitome of experiences. It is the realization of the truth, of one’s self, of God.

-Osho

From the edition titled The Perfect Way

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.

Witnessing is the Beginning, No-Mind is the Fulfillment – Osho

How does watching lead to no-mind? I am more and more able to watch my body, my thoughts and feelings and this feels beautiful. But moments of no thoughts are few and far between. When I hear you saying, “Meditation is witnessing,” I feel I understand. But when you talk about no-mind, it doesn’t sound easy at all. Would you please comment?

Prem Anubuddha, meditation covers a very long pilgrimage. When I say, “Meditation is witnessing,” it is the beginning of meditation. And when I say, “Meditation is no-mind,” it is the completion of the pilgrimage. Witnessing is the beginning, and no-mind is the fulfillment. Witnessing is the method to reach the no-mind. Naturally you will feel witnessing is easier. It is close to you.

But witnessing is only like seeds, and then is the long waiting period; not only waiting, but trusting that this seed is going to sprout, that it is going to become a bush; that one day the spring will come and the bush will have flowers. No-mind is the last stage of flowering.

Sowing the seed is of course very easy; it is within your hands. But bringing the flowers is beyond you. You can prepare the whole ground, but the flowers will come on their own accord; you cannot manage to force them to come. The spring is beyond your reach – but if your preparation is perfect, spring comes; that is absolutely guaranteed.

It is perfectly good, the way you are moving. Witnessing is the path, and you are starting to feel once in a while a thoughtless moment. These are glimpses of no-mind . . . but just for a moment.

Remember one fundamental law: that which can exist just for a moment can also become eternal. You are not given two moments together but always one moment. And if you can transform one moment into a thoughtless state, you are learning the secret. Then there is no hindrance, no reason why you cannot change the second moment, which will also come alone, with the same potential and the same capacity.

If you know the secret, you have the master key which can open every moment into a glimpse of no-mind. No-mind is the final stage, when mind disappears forever, and the thoughtless gap becomes your intrinsic reality. If these few glimpses are coming, they show you are on the right path, and you are using the right method.

But don’t be impatient. Existence needs immense patience. The ultimate mysteries are opened only to those who have immense patience.

I am reminded . . .

In old Tibet it was customary, respectful, that every family should contribute to the great experiment of expanding consciousness. So the first child of each family was given to the monasteries to be trained in meditation. Perhaps no country has done such a vast experiment in consciousness.

The destruction of Tibet at the hands of communist China is one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to humanity. It is not only a question of a small country; it is a question of a great experiment that was going on for centuries in Tibet.

The first child was given to the monasteries when he was very small, five or at the most six years old. But Tibet knew that children can learn witnessing better than grownups. The grown-ups are already utterly spoiled. The child is innocent and yet the slate of his mind is empty; to teach him emptiness is absolutely easy.

But the entrance of a child into a monastery was very difficult, particularly for a small child. I am reminded of one incident . . . I am telling you only one; there would have been hundreds of incidents like it. It is bound to be so.

A small child, six years old, is leaving. His mother is crying because life in a monastery for a small child is going to be so arduous. The father tells the child, “Don’t look back. It is a question of our family’s respectability. Not even once has a child in the whole history of our family ever looked back. Whatever is the test to be given for entrance into the monastery – even if your life is at risk, don’t look back. Don’t think of me or your mother and her tears.

“We are sending you for the ultimate experiment in human consciousness with great joy, although the separation is painful. But we know you will pass through all the tests; you are our blood, and of course you will keep the dignity of your family.”

The small child rides on the horse with a servant riding on another horse. A tremendous desire arises in him when the road turns, just to have a look again back to the family house, its garden.

The father must be standing there, the mother must be crying . . . but he remembers that the father has said, “Don’t look back.”

And he does not look back. With tears in his eyes, he turns with the road. Now he cannot see his house anymore, and one never knows how long it will take – perhaps years and years – until he will be able to see his father and mother and his family again.

He reaches the monastery. At the gate of the monastery the abbot meets him, receives him gracefully as if he is a grown-up, bows down to him as he bows down to the abbot. And the abbot says, “Your first test will be to sit outside the gate with closed eyes, unmoving, unless you are called in.”

The small child sits at the gate, outside the gate with closed eyes. Hours pass . . . and he cannot even move. There are flies sitting on his face, but he cannot remove them. It is a question of the dignity that the abbot has shown to him. He does not think any more like a child; so respected, he has to fulfill his family’s longing, the abbot’s expectations.

The whole day passes, and even other monks in the monastery start feeling sorry for the child.

Hungry, thirsty . . . he is simply waiting. They start feeling that the child is small but has great courage and guts.

Finally, by the time the sun is setting, the whole day has passed, the abbot comes and takes the child in. He says, “You have passed the first test, but there are many more peaks ahead. I respect your patience, being such a small child. You remained unmoving; you did not open your eyes. You did not lose courage; you trusted that whenever the time is right you will be called in.”

And then years of training in witnessing. The child was only allowed to see his parents again after perhaps ten years, twenty years had elapsed. But the criterion was that until he experiences no-mind, he cannot be allowed to see his parents, his family. Once he achieves no-mind, then he can move back into the world. Now there is no problem.

Once a man is in a state of no-mind, nothing can distract him from his being. There is no power bigger than the power of no-mind. No harm can be done to such a person. No attachment, no greed, no jealousy, no anger, nothing can arise in him. No-mind is absolutely a pure sky without any clouds.

Anubuddha, you say “How does watching lead to no-mind?”

There is an intrinsic law: thoughts don’t have their own life. They are parasites; they live on your identifying with them. When you say, “I am angry,” you are pouring life energy into anger because you are getting identified with anger.

But when you say, “I am watching anger flashing on the screen of the mind within me,” you are not anymore giving any life, any juice, any energy to anger. You will be able to see that because you are not identified, the anger is absolutely impotent, has no impact on you, does not change you, does not affect you. It is absolutely hollow and dead. It will pass on and it will leave the sky clean and the screen of the mind empty.

Slowly, slowly you start getting out of your thoughts. That’s the whole process of witnessing and watching. In other words – George Gurdjieff used to call it non-identification – you are no more identifying with your thoughts. You are simply standing aloof and away – indifferent – as if they might be anybody’s thoughts. You have broken your connections with them. Only then can you watch them.

Watching needs a certain distance. If you are identified, there is no distance; they are too close. It is as if you are putting the mirror too close to your eyes: you cannot see your face. A certain distance is needed; only then can you see your face in the mirror.

If thoughts are too close to you, you cannot watch. You become impressed and colored by your thoughts: anger makes you angry, greed makes you greedy, lust makes you lustful, because there is no distance at all. They are so close that you are bound to think that you and your thoughts are one.

Watching destroys this oneness and creates a separation. The more you watch, the bigger is the distance. The bigger the distance, the less energy your thoughts are getting from you. And they don’t have any other source of energy. Soon they start dying, disappearing. In these disappearing moments you will have the first glimpses of no-mind.

That is what you are experiencing. You say, “I am more and more able to watch my body, my thoughts and feelings, and this feels beautiful.” This is just the beginning. Even the beginning is immensely beautiful – just to be on the right path, even without taking a single step, will give you immense joy for no reason at all.

And once you start moving on the right path, your blissfulness, your beautiful experiences are going to become more and more deep, more and more wide, with new nuances, with new flowers, with new fragrances.

You say, “But moments of no thoughts are few and far between.” It is a great achievement because people don’t know even a single gap. Their thoughts are always in a rush hour, thoughts upon thoughts, bumper-to-bumper, the line continues, whether you are awake or asleep. What you call your dreams are nothing but thoughts in the form of pictures . . . because the unconscious mind does not know alphabetical languages. There is no school, no training institute which teaches the unconscious language.

The unconscious is very primitive; it is just like a small child. Have you looked at the books of your small children? If you want to teach the child, you have to make a big picture first. So you will see, in children’s books, pictures, colorful pictures with very little writing. The child is more interested in the pictures. He is primitive; he understands the language of pictures.

Slowly, slowly you make the pictures and the language associated – whenever he sees the mango he knows, “It is a mango.” And he starts learning that underneath the picture of the mango there is a certain word describing it. His interest is in the mango, but the word “mango” slowly becomes associated. As the child grows, pictures will become smaller and language will become more. By the time he enters the university, pictures will have disappeared from the book; only language will remain.

By the way, it reminds me to tell you that television has taken humanity back into a primitive stage because people are again looking at pictures. There is a danger in the future – it is already apparent that people have stopped reading great literature. Who bothers to read when you can see the film on the TV? This is a dangerous phenomenon because there are things which cannot be reproduced in pictures. Great literature can be only partially reproduced in pictures. The danger is that people will start forgetting the language and its beauty and its magic, and they will again become primitives, watching the television.

Now the average American is watching television for seven and a half hours every day. This is going to destroy something which we have achieved with great difficulty. Now, this man who is watching television for seven and half hours per day . . . you cannot expect him to read Shakespeare, Kalidas, Rabindranath Tagore, Herman Hesse, Martin Buber or Jean Paul Sartre.

The greater the literature, the less is the possibility of putting it into pictures.

Pictures are colorful, exciting, easy, but they are no comparison to language. The future has to be protected from many things. Computers can destroy people’s memory systems because there will be no need – you can keep a small computer the size of a cigarette packet in your pocket. It contains everything that you will ever need to know. Now there is no need to have your own memory; just push a button and the computer is ready to give you any information you need.

The computer can destroy the whole memory system of humanity that has been developed for centuries with great difficulty. Television can take away all great literature and the possibility of people like Shelley or Byron being born again in the world. These are great inventions, but nobody has looked at the implications. They will reduce the whole of humanity into a retardedness.

Anubuddha, what you are feeling is a great indication that you are on the right path. It is always a question for the seeker whether he is moving in the right direction or not. There is no security, no insurance, no guarantee. All the dimensions are open; how are you going to choose the right one?

These are the ways and the criteria of how one has to choose. If you move on any path, any methodology, and it brings joy to you, more sensitivity, more watchfulness and gives a feeling of immense well-being – this is the only criterion that you are going on the right path. If you become more miserable, more angry, more egoist, more greedy, more lustful – those are the indications you are moving on a wrong path.

On the right path your blissfulness is going to grow more and more every day, and your experiences of beautiful feelings will become tremendously psychedelic, more colorful – colors that you have never seen in the world, fragrances that you have never experienced in the world. Then you can walk on the path without any fear that you can go wrong.

These inner experiences will keep you always on the right path. Just remember that if they are growing, that means you are moving. Now you have only a few moments of thoughtlessness . . . It is not a simple attainment; it is a great achievement because people in their whole lives don’t know even a single moment when there is no thought.

These gaps will grow.

As you become more and more centered, more and more watchful, these gaps will start growing bigger. And the day is not far away – if you go on moving without looking back, without going astray, if you keep going straight – the day is not far away when you will feel for the first time that the gaps have become so big that hours pass and not even a single thought arises. Now you are having bigger experiences of no-mind.

The ultimate achievement is when twenty-four hours a day you are surrounded with no-mind.

That does not mean that you cannot use your mind; that is a fallacy propounded by those who know nothing about no-mind. No-mind does not mean that you cannot use the mind; it simply means that the mind cannot use you.

No-mind does not mean that the mind is destroyed. No-mind simply means that the mind is put aside. You can bring it into action any moment you need to communicate with the world. It will be your servant. Right now it is your master. Even when you are sitting alone it goes on, yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak – and you cannot do anything, you are so utterly helpless.

No-mind simply means that the mind has been put in its right place. As a servant, it is a great instrument; as a master, it is very unfortunate. It is dangerous. It will destroy your whole life.

Mind is only a medium for when you want to communicate with others. But when you are alone, there is no need of the mind. So whenever you want to use it, you can use it.

And remember one thing more: when the mind remains silent for hours, it becomes fresh, young, more creative, more sensitive, rejuvenated through rest.

Ordinary people’s minds start somewhere around three or four years of age, and then they go on continuing for seventy years, eighty years without any holiday. Naturally they cannot be very creative. They are utterly tired – and tired with rubbish. Millions of people in the world live without any creativity. Creativity is one of the greatest blissful experiences. But their minds are so tired . . . they are not in a state of overflowing energy.

The man of no-mind keeps the mind in rest, full of energy, immensely sensitive, ready to jump into action the moment it is ordered. It is not a coincidence that the people who have experienced no-mind, their words start having a magic of their own. When they use their mind, it has a charisma, it has a magnetic force. It has tremendous spontaneity and the freshness of the dewdrops in the early morning before the sun rises. And the mind is nature’s most evolved medium of expression and creativity.

So the man of meditation – or in other words, the man of no-mind – changes even his prose into poetry. Without any effort, his words become so full of authority that they don’t need any arguments.

They become their own arguments. The force that they carry becomes a self-evident truth. There is no need for any other support from logic or from scriptures. The words of a man of no-mind have an intrinsic certainty about them. If you are ready to receive and listen, you will feel it in your heart: The self-evident truth.

Look down the ages: Gautam Buddha has never been contradicted by any of his disciples; neither has Mahavira, nor Moses, nor Jesus. There was something in their very words, in their very presence, that convinced you. Without any effort of converting you, you are converted. None of the great masters have been missionaries; they have never tried to convert anyone, but they have converted millions.

It is a miracle – but the miracle consists of a rested mind, of a mind which is always full of energy and is used only once in a while.

When I speak to you, I have to use the mind. When I am sitting in my room almost the whole day, I forget all about the mind. I am just a pure silence . . . and meanwhile the mind is resting. When I speak to you, those are the only moments when I use the mind. When I am alone, I am utterly alone, and there is no need to use the mind.

Anubuddha, you say, “When I hear you say ‘Meditation is witnessing,’ I feel I understand. But when you talk about no-mind, it doesn’t sound easy at all.”

How can it sound easy? – Because it is your future possibility. Meditation you have started; it may be in the beginning stages, but you have a certain experience of it that makes you understand me. But if you can understand meditation, don’t be worried at all.

Meditation surely leads to no-mind, just as every river moves toward the ocean without any maps, without any guides. Every river without exception finally reaches to the ocean. Every meditation, without exception, finally reaches to the state of no-mind.

But naturally, when the Ganges is in the Himalayas wandering in the mountains and in the valleys, it has no idea what the ocean is, cannot conceive of the existence of the ocean – but it is moving toward the ocean because water has the intrinsic capacity of always finding the lowest place. And the oceans are the lowest place . . . so rivers are born on the peaks of the Himalayas and start moving immediately toward lower spaces, and finally they are bound to find the ocean.

Just the reverse is the process of meditation: it moves upward to higher peaks, and the ultimate peak is no-mind. No-mind is a simple word, but it exactly means enlightenment, liberation, freedom from all bondage, experience of deathlessness and immortality.

Those are big words, and I don’t want you to be frightened, so I use a simple word, no-mind. You know the mind . . . you can conceive of a state when this mind will be non-functioning.

Once this mind is non-functioning, you become part of the mind of the cosmos, the universal mind. When you are part of the universal mind, your individual mind functions as a beautiful servant. It has recognized the master, and it brings news from the universal mind to those who are still chained by the individual mind.

When I am speaking to you, it is, in fact, the universe using me. My words are not my words; they belong to the universal truth. That is their power, that is their charisma, that is their magic.

-Osho

From Satyam Shivam Sundram, Discourse #7, Q1

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 online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from Viha Osho Book Distributors.

 

Witnessing is Enough – Osho

I have always heard you say, “Stop doing, watch.” Several times lately I’ve heard you say that the mind should be the servant instead of our master. It feels that there is nothing to do except watch. But the question still arises: Is there anything to do with this unruly servant but to watch?

Prem Niren, there is nothing else to do with this unruly servant but just to watch. Apparently, it appears too simple a solution for too complex a problem, but these are part of the mysteries of existence. The problem may be too complex; the solution can be very simple.

Watching, witnessing, being aware seem to be small words to solve the whole complexity of mind. Millions of years of heritage, tradition, conditioning, prejudice – how will they disappear just by watching?

But they do disappear because as Gautam Buddha used to say, “If the lights of the house are on, thieves don’t come close to that house, knowing that the master is awake.” Because the light is showing from the windows, from the doors, you can see that the light is on and it is not the time to enter into the house. When the lights are off, thieves are attracted to the house. Darkness becomes an invitation. As Gautam Buddha used to say, the same is the situation about your thoughts, imaginations, dreams, anxieties, your whole mind.

If the witness is there, the witness is almost like the light; these thieves start dispersing. And if these thieves find there is no witness, they start calling their brothers and cousins and everybody, “Come on.”

It is as simple a phenomenon as the light. The moment you bring the light in, the darkness disappears. You don’t ask, “Is just light enough for darkness to disappear?” or, “When we have brought the light, will we have to do something more for the darkness to disappear?”

No, just the presence of the light is the absence of the darkness, and the absence of the light is the presence of darkness. The presence of the witness is the absence of the mind, and the absence of the witness is the presence of the mind.

So the moment you start watching, slowly, slowly as your watcher will become stronger your mind will become weaker. The moment it realizes that the watcher has come to maturity, the mind immediately submits as a beautiful servant. It is a mechanism. If the master has arrived, then the machine can be used. If the master is not there or is fast asleep, then the machine goes on working things, does whatsoever it can on its own. There is nobody to give orders, there is nobody to say, “No, stop. That thing should not be done.”

Then the mind becomes slowly convinced that it is the master itself. And for thousands of years, it has remained your master, so when you try to be a witness it fights because it has completely forgotten that it is only a servant. You have been so long absent that it does not recognize you. Hence the struggle between the witness and the thoughts.

But final victory is going to be yours because nature and existence both want you to be the master and the mind to be the servant. Then things are in harmony. Then the mind cannot go wrong. Then everything is existentially relaxed, silent, flowing toward its destiny.

Prem Niren, you don’t have to do anything else but to watch. […]

Mind has become accustomed to being a master. It will take a little time to bring it to its senses. Witnessing is enough. It is a very silent process, but the consequences are tremendously great. There is no other method which can be better than witnessing as far as dispersing the darkness of the mind is concerned.

In fact, there are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have gone through all those methods – and not intellectually. It took me years to go through each method and to find out its very essence, and after going through one hundred and twelve methods I was amazed that the essence is witnessing. The methods’ non-essentials are different, but the center of each method is witnessing.

Hence, I can say to you, Niren, there is only one meditation in the whole world and that is the art of witnessing. It will do everything – the whole transformation of your being. It will open the doors of satyam, shivam, sundram: the truth, the godliness and the beauty of it all.

-Osho

From Satyam Shivam Sundram, Discourse #22, Q3

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.

Established in One’s Own Witnessing Nature – Osho

To be established in one’s own witnessing nature is akshat – the unpolished and unbroken rice used for the worship.

Witnessing is the technique for centering. We discussed centering. A man can live in two ways: he can live from his periphery, or he can live from his center. The periphery belongs to the ego and the center belongs to the being. If you live from the ego, you are always related with the other. The periphery is related with the other.

Whatsoever you do is not an action, it is always a reaction. You do it in response to something done to you. From the periphery there is no action – everything is a reaction; nothing comes from your center. In a way, you are just a slave of the circumstances. You are not doing anything; rather, you are being forced to do. From the center the situation changes diametrically: from the center you begin to act. For the first time you begin to exist not as a relata but in your own right. […]

The moment you begin to act from the center, every act is total, atomic. It is there and then it is not there. You are completely free from it. Then you can move with no burden, unburdened. And only then can you live in the new moment that is always there – by coming to it fresh.

But you can come to it fresh only when there is no past to be carried. And you will have to carry the past if it is unfinished. The mind has a tendency to finish everything. If it is unfinished, then it has to be carried. If something has remained unfinished during the day, then you will dream about it in the night – because the mind has a tendency to finish everything. The moment it is finished, the mind is unburdened from it. Unless it is finished, the mind is bound to come to it again and again.

Whatsoever you are doing – your love, your sex, your friendship – everything is unfinished. And you cannot make it total if you remain on the periphery. So how to be centered in oneself? How to attain this centering so that you are not on the periphery? Witnessing is the technique.

This word “witnessing” is a most significant word. There are hundreds of techniques to achieve centering, but witnessing is bound to be a part, a basic part, in every technique. Whatsoever the technique may be, witnessing will be the essential part in it. So it will be better to call it “the technique of all techniques.” It is not simply a technique. The process of witnessing is the essential part of all the techniques.

One can talk about witnessing as a pure technique also. For example, J. Krishnamurti: he is talking about witnessing as a pure technique. But that talk is just like talking about the spirit without the body. You cannot feel it, you cannot see it. Everywhere the spirit is embodied; you can feel the spirit through the body. Of course, the spirit is not the body, but you can feel it through the body.

Every technique is just a body, and witnessing is the soul. You can talk about witnessing independent of any body, any matter; then it becomes abstract, totally abstract. So Krishnamurti has been talking continuously for half a century, but whatsoever he is saying is so pure, unembodied, that one thinks that one is understanding, but that understanding remains just a concept.

In this world nothing exists as pure spirit. Everything exists embodied. So witnessing is the spirit of all spiritual techniques, and all the techniques are bodies, different bodies. So first we must understand what witnessing is, and then we can understand witnessing through some bodies, some techniques.

We know thinking, and one has to start from thinking to know what witnessing means because one has to start from what one knows. We know thinking. Thinking means judgment: you see something, and you judge. You see a flower and you say it is beautiful or not beautiful. You hear a song, and you appreciate it or you don’t appreciate it. You appreciate something or you condemn something.

Thinking is judgment. The moment you think, you have begun to judge. Thinking is evaluation.

You cannot think without evaluation. How can you think about a flower without evaluating it? The moment you start thinking you will say it is beautiful or not beautiful. You will have to use some category because thinking is categorizing. The moment you have categorized a thing – labeled it, named it – you have thought about it. Thinking is impossible if you are not going to judge. If you are not going to judge, then you can just remain aware – but you cannot think.

A flower is here, and I say to you, “See it, but don’t think. Look at the flower, but don’t think.” So what can you do? If thinking is not allowed, what can you do? You can only witness; you can only be aware. You can only be conscious of the flower. You can face the fact. The flower is here – now you can encounter it. If thinking is not allowed you cannot say, “It is beautiful. It is not beautiful. I know about it,” or, “It is strange – I have never seen it.” You cannot say anything. Words cannot be used because every word has a value in it. Every word is a judgment.

Language is burdened with judgment; language can never be impartial. The moment you use a word, you have judged. So you cannot use language, you cannot verbalize. If I say, “This is a flower– look at it, but don’t think!” then verbalization is not allowed. So what can you do? You can only be a witness. If you are there without thinking, just facing something, it is witnessing. Then witnessing means a passive awareness. Remember – passive. Thinking is active. You are doing something. Whatsoever you are seeing, you are doing something with it. You are not just passive; you are not like a mirror – you are doing something. And the moment you do something, you have changed the thing.

I see a flower and I say, “It is beautiful!” I have changed it. Now I have imposed something on the flower. Now, whatsoever the flower is, to me it is a flower plus my feeling of its being beautiful. Now the flower is far away. In between the flower and me is my sense of judgment, my evaluation of its being beautiful. Now the flower is not the same to me. The quality has changed. I have come into it. Now my judgment has penetrated into the fact. Now it is more like a fiction and less like a fact.

This feeling that the flower is beautiful doesn’t belong to the flower, it belongs to me. I have entered the fact. Now the fact is not virgin. I have corrupted it. Now my mind has become part of it. Really, to say that my mind has become part of it means: my past has become part, because when I say, “This flower is beautiful,” it means I have judged it through my past knowledge. How can you say that this flower is beautiful? Your experiences of the past, your conceptions of the past, that something like this is beautiful – you have judged it according to your past.

Mind means your past, your memories. The past has come upon the present. You have destroyed a virgin fact; now it is distorted. Now there is no flower. The flower as a reality in itself is no more there. It is corrupted by you, destroyed by you. Your past has come in between. You have interpreted. This is thinking. Thinking means bringing the past to a present fact. That’s why thinking can never lead you to the Truth – because Truth is virgin and has to be faced in its total virginity. The moment you bring your past in you are destroying it. Then it is an interpretation, not a realization of the fact. You have disrupted it. The purity is lost.

Thinking means bringing your past to the present. Witnessing means no past, just the present; no bringing in of the past. Witnessing is passive. You are not doing anything – you are! Simply, you are there. Only you are present. The flower is present, you are present – then there is a relationship of witnessing. When the flower is present and your whole past is present, not you, then it is a relationship of thinking.

So start from thinking. What is thinking? It is the bringing of the mind into the present. You have missed the present then you have missed it totally! The moment past penetrates into the present, you have missed it. When you say, “This flower is beautiful,” really, it has become the past. When you say, “This flower is beautiful,” it is a past experience. You have known, you have judged. When the flower is there, and you are there, even to say that this flower is beautiful is not possible. You cannot assert any judgment in the present. Any judgment, any assertion, belongs to the past. If I say, “I love you,” it has become a thing that is past. If I say, “This flower is beautiful.” I have felt, I have judged – it has become past.

Witnessing is always present, never the past. Thinking is always the past. Thinking is dead, witnessing is alive. So the next distinction: first, thinking is active – doing something; witnessing is passive – non-doing, just being. Thinking is always the past, the dead which has gone away, which is no more; witnessing is always the present – that which is. So if you go on thinking, you can never know what witnessing is.

To stop, end thinking, becomes a start in witnessing. Cessation of thinking is witnessing. So what to do? – Because thinking is a long habit with us. It has become just a robot-like, mechanical thing.  It is not that you think; it is not your decision now. It is a mechanical habit – you cannot do anything else. The moment a flower is there, the thinking has started. We have no non-verbal experiences; only small children have. Non-verbal experience is really experience. Verbalization is escaping from the experience.

When I say, “The flower is beautiful,” the flower has vanished from me. Now it is my mind, not the flower I am concerned with. Now it is the image of the flower in my mind, not the flower itself. Now the flower itself is a picture in the mind, a thought in the mind, and now I can compare with my past experiences and judge. But the flower is no more there. When you verbalize, you are closed to experience.

When you are non-verbally aware, you are open, vulnerable. Witnessing means a constant opening to experience, no closing. What to do? This mechanical habit of so-called thinking has to be broken somewhere. So whatsoever you are doing, try to do it non-verbally. It is difficult, arduous, and in the beginning, it seems absolutely impossible, but it is not. It is not impossible – it is difficult. You are walking on the street: walk non-verbally, just walk, even if just for a few seconds, and you will have a glimpse of a different world – a non-verbal world, the real world, not the world of the mind man has created in himself. […]

You are not! If you are a witness, then you are not. The “I” forms itself through thoughts. So one thing more: accumulated thoughts, piled-up memories, create the feeling of ego – that you are.

Try this experiment: cut your whole past away from you – no memory. You don’t know who your parents are; you don’t know to whom you belong – to which country, to which religion, to which race. You don’t know where you were educated, whether you were educated or not. Just cut the whole past – and remember who you are. You cannot remember who you are. You are, obviously. You are, but who are you? In this moment, you cannot feel an “I”. The ego is just accumulated past. The ego is your thought condensed, crystallized. […]

In witnessing, there is no sense of I; in thinking there is. So if the so-called thinkers are so deeply rooted in their egos it is not just a coincidence. Artists, thinkers, philosophers, literary persons, if they are so egoistic, it is not just a coincidence. The more thoughts you have, the greater the ego you have. In witnessing there is no ego, but this comes only if you can transcend language. Language is the barrier. Language is needed to communicate with others; it is not needed to communicate with oneself. It is a useful instrument – rather, the most useful instrument. Man could create a society, a world, only because of language – but because of language, man has forgotten himself.

Language is our world. If for a single moment man forgets his language, then what remains? Culture, society, Hinduism, Christianity, communism – what remains? Nothing remains. If only language is taken out of existence, the whole humanity with its culture, civilization, science, religion, philosophy, disappears.

Language is a communication with others; it is the only communication. It is useful, but it is dangerous – and whenever some instrument is useful, it is in the same proportion dangerous also.  The danger is this: that the more mind moves into language the farther away it goes from the center: So one needs a subtle balance and a subtle mastery to be capable of moving into language, and also to be capable of leaving language, of going out of language, of moving out of language.

Witnessing means moving out of language, verbalization, mind. Witnessing means a state of no-mind, no-thinking. So try it! It is a long effort, and nothing is predictable – but try, and the effort will give you some moments when suddenly language disappears. And then a new dimension opens. You become aware of a different world – the world of simultaneity, the world of here and now, the world of no-mind, the world of reality.

Language must evaporate. So try to do ordinary acts, bodily movements, without language. Buddha used this technique to watch the breath. He would say to his bhikkhus, “Go on watching your breath. Don’t do anything: just watch the breath coming in, the breath going out, the breath coming in, the breath going out.” It is not to be said like this – it is to be felt. Mm? The breath coming in, with no words. Feel the breath coming in, move with the breath, let your consciousness go deep with the breath. Then let it move out. Go on moving with your breath. Be alert!

Buddha is reported to have said, “Don’t miss even a single breath. If a single breath is missed physiologically, you will be dead; and if a single breath is missed in awareness, you will be missing the center, you will be dead inside.” So Buddha said, “Breath is essential for the life of the body, and awareness of the breath is essential for the life of the inner center.”

Breathe, be aware. And if you are trying to be aware of your breathing, you cannot think, because the mind cannot do two things simultaneously – thinking and witnessing. The very phenomenon of witnessing is absolutely, diametrically opposite to thinking, so you cannot do both. Just as you cannot be both alive and dead, as you cannot be both asleep and awake, you cannot be both thinking and witnessing. Witness anything, and thinking will stop. Thinking comes in and witnessing disappears. Witnessing is a passive awareness with no action inside. Awareness itself is not an action.

[…]

If you become dead to your past, totally dead, then you can only witness. What else can you do?

Witnessing means becoming dead to your past, memory, thought, everything. Then in the present moment, what can you do? You can only witness. No judgement is possible. Judgement is possible only against past experiences. No evaluation is possible; evaluation is possible only against past evaluations. No thinking is possible; thinking is possible only if the past is there, brought into the present. So what can you do? You can witness.

In the old Sanskrit literature, the Teacher is defined as the death acharya mrityuh. The Teacher is defined as death! In the Katha Upanishad, Nachiketa is sent to Yama, the god of death, to be taught.

And when Yama, the death god, offers many, many allurements to Nachiketa – “Take this, take the kingdom, take so much wealth, so many horses, so many elephants, this and this,” a long list of things – Nachiketa says, “I have come to learn what death is, because unless I know what death is, I cannot know what life is.”

So a Teacher was known in the old days as a person who can become a death to the disciple – who can give death, who can help you to die so that you can be reborn.

Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can I attain to the Kingdom of God?”

Jesus said, “Unless you die first, nothing can be attained. Unless you are reborn, nothing can be attained.”

And this being reborn is not an event, it is a continuous process. One has to be reborn every moment. It is not that you are reborn once and then it is okay and finished. Life is a continuous birth, and death is also continuous. You have to die once because you have not lived at all. If you live, then you will have to die every moment. Die every moment to the past whatsoever it has been, a heaven or a hell. Whatsoever – die to it and be fresh and young and reborn into the moment.

Witness now! You can only witness now if you are fresh.

This sutra says:

To be established in one’s own witnessing nature is akshat – the unpolished and unbroken rice used for the worship.

This Upanishad is giving deeper meaning to every symbol of worship. Akshat – unpolished rice – is used in worship. What is akshat? The word is very meaningful. But translated into English it becomes just an ordinary thing. Akshat means “that which has not been penetrated.” Akshat means “virgin.” We say akshatkanya – virgin. Akshat means virgin, unpenetrated, and the unpolished rice is used just as a symbol – virgin, fresh, raw. But the word akshat means unpenetrated. What is akshat in you, what has not been penetrated ever? That is your witnessing nature.

Everything has been corrupted; only one thing in you remains uncorrupted. Your body is corrupted, your mind is corrupted, your thinking, your emotions, everything is corrupted. Everything has been influenced, impressed, by the outside. Only one thing remains in you totally uncorrupted, untouched akshat – and that is your witnessing nature. The world cannot touch it. Your thoughts can be influenced, manipulated, but not your witnessing consciousness.

Your thoughts can be changed, you can be converted; you are being converted every moment.

Every influence is a converting influence, because either for or against you react. And even if you react against a particular influence, you have been converted, you have been manipulated. Every moment you are being manipulated by outside situations, impressions, influences. But one thing remains untouched, and that is your witnessing nature.

The sutra says, “It is your nature, it is you.” It is not something taught, it is not something constructed, it is not something given. It is you! When we say nature, it means it is you. You and it cannot be separated. So the last thing: witnessing nature, witnessing consciousness, is not something which has to be achieved. You have it already; otherwise, it cannot be said to be your nature.

A child is born. If no language is taught, then the child will not be able to know any language. It is not nature – it is nurture. If the child is taught nothing, he will know nothing; if he is taught Hinduism, he will be Hindu; if he is taught communism, he will be a communist. Whatsoever he is taught he will be. It is not his nature. So no one is born as a Hindu, no one is born as a Mohammedan. These are not natures – these are conditionings You are forced to be conditioned into a particular pattern.

So Hinduism is a habit, not nature. Mohammedanism is again a habit, not nature. By “habit” I mean something taught, something learned. You are not born with it.

Witnessing is not like that. You are born with it. Of course it is hidden. In the deepest depths of your being is the seed. Everything is taught except the witnessing nature. Knowledge is taught, but not knowing. A child is born with knowing, not with knowledge. He has the capacity to know – that’s why you can teach him – but that capacity belongs to him. You will go on conditioning. Many things will be taught, and he will learn many things – languages, religions, ideologies. He will be burdened; and the more burdened, the more experienced, the more he will have a mind. And the society will value it, respect it.

Mind is respected in the society because it is a social product. So whenever there is a brilliant mind – that means one who is efficient in accumulating – society appreciates, respects it. This mind created by society will be there, and this mind will go on growing. And you can die with this mind, burdened with this mind, without knowing the inner nature that you were born with. Witnessing, the effort towards it, means breaking this mind, creating a crack in this mind, to have a peek, a probe into nature – into your nature. You are born as an unknown witnessing energy. Then the society encrusts you, clothes you all around. That clothing is your mind, and if you are identified with this clothing then you will never be able to know that which you are, that which you always have been. And one can die without knowing oneself. That capacity is there. But in a way it has a beauty of its own also.

One has to throw the society from inside; one has to be free from society. And when I say that one has to be free from society, I don’t mean to be free from the outside society. You cannot be. Wherever you move, the outside society will be there. Even if you move to a forest, the trees and the animals will become your society. And when a monk, a hermit, moves to a forest and begins to live with animals, you say, “What beauty!” But he is again creating a society. When a hermit lives in the forest and begins to talk with trees, you say, “What a religious man!” But really he is again creating a society.

You cannot live without society as far as your outside world is concerned. You exist in society! But you can throw the society from inside, you can be free from society inside. And those who try to free themselves from the society which exists outside are just in a futile effort. They are in a futile effort – they cannot succeed. and they are deceiving themselves, because the real problem is not how to get away from the society which exists outside; the real problem is how not to be burdened inside by the society.

If there are no thoughts, if there are no memories, if there are no past burdens of experience, you are freed from society inside. You become virgin, pure, innocent. You are reborn. And then you know what your nature is, what your Tao is, what your dharma is. Dharma is translated again and again as “religion.” It is not; it is not religion. Dharma means nature; dharma means that which you are already – your essence.

Two words will be useful to understand: Gurdjieff uses these two words – “essence” and “personality.” Essence is your nature and personality is the construct, the social structure given to you. We are all personalities, unaware, completely unaware of the essence. This sutra saying “witnessing nature” means essence – the essential you. So witnessing is not something which you achieve; it is not something like an attainment. Rather, it is a discovery, an uncovering. Something is there which you have forgotten – you uncover it. So Gurdjieff never uses the word “witnessing”; rather, he uses “remembering.”

Kabir, Nanak, they also use “remembering” – surati. Surati means remembering. Surati is smriti – remembering. Nanak, Kabir or Gurdjieff, they use the word “remembering” only because, really, your essence is not a new thing to be achieved – it is already there. You have only to remember it; you have only to become aware of something which is already present. But you cannot be aware of it if you are crowded by thoughts, if you are lost in the crowd of thoughts.

The sky is there – but when there are clouds, dark clouds all over, you cannot see the sky. Clouds are just incidental. They are now, they were not before, and they will not be again. They come and go, and the sky remains always. And the sky is akshat; no cloud can corrupt it. The sky remains virgin, pure, innocent. No cloud can corrupt it. Clouds come and go, but the sky is that which is always – unperturbed, untouched, just an inner space, an inner sky is there. That is called your nature.

Societies will come and go. You will take birth and you will die, and many lives will come and go, and many, many clouds will pass through you. But the inner sky – akshat – remains uncorrupted, virgin. But you can become identified with clouds. You can begin to feel that “I am the clouds.”

Everyone is identified with his own thoughts which are nothing more than clouds. You say, “my thought,” and if someone attacks your thought, you never feel that your thought is being attacked – you are being attacked. The sky is fighting – fighting for clouds because some cloud has been attacked. The sky feels, “I am attacked”! The sky was there when there was no cloud, the sky will be there when there is no cloud. Clouds add nothing to the sky. And when clouds are no more, nothing is lost. The sky remains itself totally.

This is the nature – the inner sky, the inner space. One uncovers it, discovers it, through witnessing.

Witnessing is the basic, essential thing. It can be used in many, many techniques.

In the Chinese Taoist tradition, they have a method known as “Tai-Chi.” It is a method of centering, a method of witnessing. They say do whatsoever but remain conscious of the center at the navel. Walking, be conscious of the center at the navel. Eating, be conscious of the center at the navel. Fighting, be conscious of the center at the navel. Do whatsoever you are doing but remain conscious of one thing: that you are centered in the navel. Again, if you are conscious of the navel, you cannot think. The moment you begin to think, you will not be conscious of the navel. This is a body technique.

Buddha uses breathing, breath; Taoists use hara. They call the center at the navel hara. That’s why Japanese suicide is known as hara-kiri. It means committing suicide remaining centered in the hara, so it is not suicide, it is not just suicide. They call it hara-kiri only if a person commits suicide remaining continuously aware of the center at the hara. Then it is not suicide at all – he is doing it so consciously. You cannot commit suicide so consciously. With you, suicide is committed only when you are so much disturbed that you have become absolutely unconscious.

Whether you use the hara or you use breathing, you must remain conscious. Krishnamurti says, “Remain conscious of your thought process.” Whether it is the process of breathing or the palpitation of the hara or the thought process, it makes no difference. The basic thing remains the same.

Remain conscious of your thought process. A thought arises: know that it has arisen. A thought is there: know that the thought is there. When the thought moves and goes out of existence, then know, witness that it has disappeared. Whenever a thought goes and another thought comes, there is a gap in between. Be conscious of the gap. Remain conscious of the thought process – a thought moving, a gap, again a thought. Be conscious!

Use thought as an object for your witnessing. It makes no difference: you can use breathing, you can use thought, you can use the hara – you can use anything. There are many methods, and each country has developed its own. And sometimes there is very much conflict about methods, but if you go deep, one thing is essential and that is witnessing, whatsoever the method may be. The difference is only of the body.

And Krishnamurti says, “I have no method,” but he has. This witnessing of the thought process is as much a method as the witnessing of breathing. You can witness breathing; you can witness the thought process. And then, then you can appreciate that if someone is using a rosary, he can witness it. Then there is no difference between witnessing the movement of the rosary or witnessing breathing or the thought process.

Sufis use dancing, dervish dancing. They use dancing as the method. You might have heard the name “whirling dervishes.” They move on their heels just like children move sometimes. If you move like that you will get dizzy – just moving on your heels, whirling. And they say, “Go on whirling, know that the body is whirling, and remain conscious. Inside, remain aware! Don’t get identified with the whirling body. The body is whirling – don’t get identified, remain conscious. Then the witnessing will happen.”

And I think that the Sufi method is more sudden than any, because to witness thought process is difficult, it is very subtle. To witness breathing is again difficult because breathing is a non-voluntary process. But whirling you are doing voluntarily. Dancing, whirling round and round and round, the mind gets dizzy. If you remain aware, suddenly you find a center. Then the body becomes a wheel and you become the hub, and the body goes on whirling and the center stands alone, untouched – akshat – uncorrupted. So there are hundreds and hundreds of methods, but the sole, the significant, the essential, the foundational thing in all of them, is witnessing.

This sutra says that unless you go to worship with a witnessing nature inside, your going is futile. Unpolished, raw rice will not do. That can be purchased, that is only a symbol, a symbolic thing. Unless you bring something unpolished, untouched by society, uncreated, from your own nature, your worship is just stupid, it is foolish. And you can go on worshipping, and you can go on using symbols without knowing what they mean.

Remember this word akshat – uncorrupted, fresh, virgin. What is virgin in you? Find it out and bring it to the Divine feet. Only that virginity can be used – only that virginity, that freshness, that constant youngness, can be used for worship.

This witnessing you can understand intellectually. It is not difficult. But that is the difficulty! If you understand it intellectually and think that the work is done – that is the difficulty. You can understand it. Then again it becomes a theory in the mind; then again it becomes a thought in the mind; then again you have made it a part of the accumulation. Then you can discuss it, you can philosophize about it, but then it is still a part of the mind – it is not virgin.

If I say something about witnessing, it goes into your mind, becomes part of your mind, but it is not from you; it has come from the outside. If you read this Upanishad and then you are impressed, convinced, and you say inside yourself, “Right, this is the thing,” it becomes a theory. It is not from you, it has come from outside. It is not akshat; it is not virgin. No theory can be virgin. No thought can be virgin. Every thought is borrowed. Thought can never be original – never! The very nature of it is borrowed. No one’s thought is original. It cannot be because language is not original, concepts are not original. You learn them.

Akshat means “the original” – that which you have not learned, the discovery within yourself of something which belongs to you, which is unique to you, individual to you, which has not been given to you.

So intellectual understanding won’t do. Practice it! Only then, someday, something explodes in you, and you become aware of a different realm of purity, innocence, bliss.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #15

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Established in One’s Own Witnessing Nature.

For a related post see Witnessing is Not a Mental Activity.

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.

No Way – Osho

Osho, the Fourth Way, as taught by Gurdjieff, has been called the way of conscience. What place has conscience in your teaching?

The question is from Cecil Lewis.

No place at all. I don’t believe in conscience, I believe only in consciousness. I don’t believe in morality, I believe only in religion. I am amoral. Conscience is a trick of the society played upon you. The society creates conscience so that you may never need consciousness. You have been deceived. For example, when Jesus says ‘Love is God’ it is not out of his conscience, it is out of his consciousness. He knows it. It is not a belief, it is his experience. When a Christian says ‘Love is God’ it is his conscience, not his consciousness. He has not known it, he has not lived it. He has only heard it repeated again and again – he has become hypnotized by it.

Each child is being hypnotized by the parents, the priests, the politicians, the society. Constant repetition of a certain thing becomes conscience. You go on teaching to the child, ‘this is right. This is right. This is right.’ Hearing it again and again, his mind is being conditioned. After many years he will also say ‘This is right’ – it will be automatic. It will not be from his own being, it will come from the gramophone record that the society has placed in his being. It is like an electrode of Delgado. It is the dangerous trick that the society has been playing on everybody, down the centuries.

That’s why there are so many consciences in the world – the Hindu has one type of conscience, the Mohammedan has another type of conscience. How can consciences be so many? Truth is one. And consciences are so many?

From my childhood I was taught a very, very, strict vegetarianism. I was born in a Jaina family, absolutely dogmatic about vegetarianism. Not even tomatoes were allowed in my house, because tomatoes look a little like red meat. Poor innocent tomatoes, they were not allowed. Nobody has ever heard of anybody eating in the night; the sunset was the last limit. For eighteen years I had not eaten anything in the night, it was a great sin.

Then for the first time I went on a picnic with a few friends to the mountains. And they were all Hindus and I was the only Jaina. And they were not worried to cook in the day. Mm? The mountains were so beautiful and there was so much to explore – so they didn’t bother about cooking at all, they cooked in the night. Now it was a great problem for me to eat or not to eat? And I was feeling really hungry. The whole day moving in the mountains, it had been arduous. And I was really feeling hungry – for the first time so hungry in my life.

And then they started cooking. And the aroma and the food smell. And I was just sitting there, a Jaina. Now it was too difficult for me – what to do? The idea of eating in the night was impossible – the whole conditioning of eighteen years. And to sleep in that kind of hunger was impossible. And then they all started persuading me. And they said, ‘There is nobody here to know that you have eaten, and we will not tell your family at all. Don’t be worried.’ And I was ready to be seduced, so they seduced me and I ate. But then I could not sleep – I had to vomit two or three times in the night, the whole night became nightmarish. It would have been better if I had not eaten.

Conditioning for eighteen years that to eat in the night is sin. Now nobody else was vomiting, they were all fast asleep and snoring. They have all committed sin and they are all sleeping perfectly well. And they have been committing the sin for eighteen years, and I have committed it for the first time and I am being punished. This seems unjust!

Conscience is created; it is a conditioning. All that you think is good or bad is nothing but a conditioning. But this conditioning can go on managing your whole life. The society has entered in you and controls you from there, from within. It has become your inner voice. And because it has become your inner voice, you cannot hear your real inner voice. So my suggestion is: Unburden yourself of conscience. Throw all the conditioning out, cathart it, be free from it. That’s what I mean when I say don’t be a Christian, a Hindu, a Jaina, a Buddhist.

Just be. And be alert. In that alertness you will always know what is right and what is wrong. And the right and the wrong is not a fixed thing – something may be right in the morning and may be wrong in the evening, and something may be wrong in the evening and may be right in the night. Circumstances change. An alert man, a conscious man, has no fixed ideas. He has spontaneous responses but no fixed ideas. Because of fixed ideas you never act spontaneously. Your action is always a kind of reaction – not action really.

When you act out of spontaneity, with no idea, with no prejudice, then there is real action. And action has passion in it, intensity in it. And it is original and it is first-hand. And action makes your life creative and action makes your life continuously a celebration; because each act becomes an expression of your being. Conscience is a false being.

I think the French language is the only language which has only one word for consciousness and conscience – a single word, meaning both. That is beautiful. Real conscience should be only consciousness, nothing else. You should become more conscious.

But about consciousness also, I have differences with George Gurdjieff. When he says ‘be conscious’ he says ‘Be conscious that you are.’ He insists for self-remembering. Now, this has to be understood. Your consciousness has two polarities. One polarity is the content. For example, a cloud of anger is inside you – that is the content. And you are aware of the cloud of anger – that is consciousness, the witness, watchfulness, the observer. So your consciousness can be divided in two – the observer and the observed.

Gurdjieff says: Go on remembering the observer – self-remembering. Buddha says: Forget the observer, just watch the observed. And if you have to choose between Buddha and Gurdjieff, I will suggest choose Buddha. Because there is a danger with Gurdjieff you may become too self-conscious – rather than becoming self-aware, you may become self-conscious. You may become an egoist. And that I have felt in many Gurdjieff disciples – they have become very, very, great egoists. Not that Gurdjieff was an egoist – he was one of the rarest enlightened men of this age. But the method has a danger in it: it is very difficult to make a distinction between self-consciousness and self-remembering. It is almost impossible to make the distinction, it is so subtle. And for the ignorant masses it is almost always self-consciousness that will take possession of them; it will not be self-remembering.

The very word ‘self’ is dangerous – you become more and more settled in the idea of the self. And the idea of the self isolates you from existence.

Buddha says: Forget the self, because there is no self. The self is just in the grammar, in the language; it is not anything existential. You just observe the content. By observing the content, the content starts disappearing. Once the content disappears, watch your anger – and watching it, you will see it is disappearing. Once the anger has disappeared there is silence. There is no self, no observer, and nothing to be observed. There is silence. This silence is brought by vipassana, Buddha’s method of awareness.

Ordinary man does both. He goes on changing his gear – sometimes he observes the self, sometimes he observes the content. He goes on moving from this to that, he is a constant wavering. Gurdjieff says the one thing is: Be settled in the observer. Buddha says: Look at the observed.

My own approach is different from both. My approach is that Gurdjieff’s method is more dangerous than Buddha’s method, but even in Buddha’s method there is bound to be some tension – the effort to watch. The very effort to watch will make you tense.

A Buddhist monk was brought to me from Ceylon. He was unable to sleep – for three years he had not slept. And all kinds of medications had been tried upon him but nothing was helping, no tranquillizer was of any help. And nobody had bothered that he goes on doing vipassana, the Buddha’s method of insight – nobody had thought about it. When he came to me, the first thing I asked him was, ‘Are you doing vipassana?’– Because he is a Buddhist monk, he must be doing it. He said, ‘Yes – for three years.’ I said, ‘Then that is the cause of your sleeplessness.’

If you are continuously making effort to watch, then in the night you will not be able to relax and fall into sleep – the watching will become continuous. And if you are watching even in the night, how can you fall asleep? You cannot relax, the tension has become fixed. It is a known fact that Buddhist monks sleep only three, four hours at the most. It is not a gain. They think, and others also think, that this is a gain – they have attained something, they sleep only three, four hours. It is not. They are losing something very valuable – relaxation. And they will look tense; on their faces they will look tense. They will look very quiet, but tense. They will look very silent – but their silence is not the silence of relaxation, but of effort. You can see the effort in the comer, defining them.

My own method is: You relax. Neither watch the watcher nor watch the watched. Just relax, be passive. If something floats and you cannot help seeing it, see it. But don’t make any effort to see it deliberately. If you are relaxed like a mirror, if some cloud passes by, it will be reflected. Be like a mirror – lucid, passive. Drop both – the Gurdjieffian method of self-remembering, and the Buddhist method of watching.

But if you have to choose between Gurdjieff and Buddha, choose Buddha. If you have to choose between Buddha and me, choose me.

Relax. And just see things. And there is nothing much – if you miss something, it is not of worth. You can miss, you are allowed to miss. Take life easy, take it easy.

So people who have been in some kind of effort – and Gurdjieff’s work is of great effort – will be puzzled here. That’s why Lewis is puzzled, a little bit confused. And sooner or later, either he has to understand me or he has to condemn me – both are open. And condemnation will be easier.

Because for thirty years working hard – and now suddenly he has become attracted to a man who does not believe in effort at all. Who does not believe in improvement, who does not believe in growth, who does not believe in going anywhere, who does not believe in any way.

He says, the Fourth Way, as taught by Gurdjieff.

What I am teaching here is: No Way. There is really no way, because truth is not a goal. All ways lead away from where we are. All roads, all ways, all paths, distract you from truth. And there is nowhere to go, either, and nobody to go. There is no way of being here and now but to be here and now. When I say, ‘Be here and now’ don’t ask how – the ‘how’ will take you away. When I say, ‘Be here and now’ don’t ask ‘What is the way to be here and now?’ There is no way of being here and now but to be here and now. There is no way to be still, and no need of any way. To see, wholly to see, that there is no way, is at once to be still. Seeing that – is stillness. All ways lead everywhere but here.

To live one’s life as it comes and goes, is awareness; passive, lucid, mirror-like, with no tension. So I don’t teach you attention, because attention has the word ‘tension’ in it. And the phenomenon of attention has the feeling of tension in it – hence the word ‘attention’. Enjoy, relax. Just understanding this, that there is nowhere to go, is liberation. Liberation is not like a goal somewhere else waiting for you. Liberation is understanding that you are already liberated.

It is impious for us to assert so flatly what should be, in the face of what is. What is, is the truth. Yatha Bhutam – that which is, is the truth. To assert what should be, is impious, sacrilegious, it is a sin. ‘Should’ is a sin. That which is – relax with it, float with it. I don’t teach even swimming, I simply say float with it. It is our responsibility to know how to accept and live through that which is.

So I don’t teach any way – fourth or fifth or sixth. And I don’t teach conscience, I teach a lucid relaxed consciousness. Out of that, many flowerings happen. Out of that, many songs are born.

But they are born on their own. You cannot be the doer of them and you cannot feel enhanced that ‘I have done’. You cannot feel your ego fulfilled through them. The more those flowers will come, the more you will disappear. And one day there is flowering, but you are not. That is the day, the moment, of liberation.

– Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #4

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.

The Royal Way – Osho

The belief in the myth of change is the most dangerous kind of belief. Man has suffered much from it – much more than from any other kind of belief. The myth of change – that something better is possible, that man can improve upon himself, that there is some place to go to, that there is somebody to be, and that there is some kind of utopia – has corrupted human mind infinitely down the centuries. It has been a constant poisoning.

Man is already there. Man has been all along that which he wants to be. Man need not change in order to be. All that is needed is an understanding, an awareness – not a change. Becoming is never going to give you being. Through becoming you will remain constantly in anguish, in tension – because becoming means that the goal is somewhere else, that the goal is never here, never now, that the goal is far away. You have to strive for it and your whole life is wasted in striving. And you can go on striving and you will not find it because the goal is here and now, and you are looking then and there.

Your being is in the present, and all ideas of becoming are projections into the future. By projecting into the future, you go on missing the present. That is a way of escaping from the reality. The idea that you have to become something is the idea that takes you away from your real being, from your authentic being. You are already that – that’s why I say the myth of change is one of the most dangerous myths.

It has two dimensions to it. One is political, the other is religious.

The political dimension is that the society can be improved, that revolution can help, that there is a utopia that can be realized. Because of this, politicians have been able to torture, to murder, to exploit, to oppress. And people have suffered in the hope that revolution is going to happen. That revolution never happens. Revolutions come and go and society remains as it has always been.

Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, can exploit people for their own sake. And if you want to get to the utopia, to the wonderland, to paradise, you obviously have to pay for it. This is the secular dimension of the myth – that something better is possible. Right now it is not there, but some day it can be – you have to sacrifice for it. Millions of people were killed in Soviet Russia, tortured inhumanly, for their own good. And logic says that if you want to have a better society, who is going to pay for it? You are going to pay for it, naturally. So the people cannot even revolt, they cannot even resist. If they resist, they look like enemies of the revolution. And the myth is so deep-rooted in the mind that they accept all kinds of humiliations in the hope that maybe if they cannot live in a golden age, their children will. This is the secular direction of the same neurosis.

The religious dimension is that you can have a better future – if not in this life, then in the next. Of course, you have to sacrifice. If you sacrifice the present, you will have the future.

That future never comes. The future in itself cannot come. The tomorrow is not possible, it is always today. It is always the present that is there. The future is just in the mind, in the imagination. It is a dream; it is not part of reality.

The political myth has been taken up by the sadists – those who want to torture others; and the religious myth has been taken up by the masochists – those who want to torture themselves. Torture yourself. Fast. Don’t sleep. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. This is the whole secret of the so-called ascetic attitude towards life: torture yourself. And naturally, your body is helpless, your body is defenseless. It cannot protest. It cannot go against you.

There is a possibility that people may revolt against the politicians, but what is the possibility that your body may revolt against you? There is no possibility. The body is very innocent, helpless. You can go on torturing it and you can go on feeling that you have immense power because you can torture it. You can go on killing it, and feel powerful. And you can attain to a great ego.

There are two kinds of people in the world: the sadists and the masochists. Sadists are those whose enjoyment consists of torturing others, and masochists are those whose enjoyment consists of torturing themselves – but it is the same violence, it is the same aggression. The sadist throws it on somebody else; the masochist turns it upon himself. Because the sadist throws it on others, sooner or later they will revolt. But when the masochist throws it upon himself there is nobody to revolt.

In fact, all revolutionaries; once they are in power, by and by lose respect. Sooner or later they are dethroned; sooner or later their power is destroyed; sooner or later they are thought to be criminals. Your whole history consists of these criminals. Your history is not the history of humanity because it is not the history of humanness. How can it be the history of humanity? It is not the history of humanity; it is only the history of politics, political conflicts, struggles, wars.

It is as if you write the history of robbers and murderers and you call it the history of humanity. The revolutionaries are great murderers, they are no ordinary murderers – otherwise they would have been in the jail or sentenced to death. They are powerful people. They possess power. Until their power goes, they are worshipped like God. But their power goes sooner or later. A day comes when Hitler is no longer honored; he becomes an ugly dirty name. A day comes when Stalin is no longer honored. Just the reverse happens.

But with the other dimension, the religious dimension, of the myth – the ascetic, the self-torturer, the masochist – people never come to know their reality because they never torture anybody else. They torture only themselves. And people go on respecting them. People respect them very much because they are not harmful to anybody except to themselves. That is their business. The ascetics have always been worshipped. But ascetism is a kind of neurosis; it is not normal.

To eat too much is abnormal; to fast is also abnormal. The right amount of food is normality. To be in the middle is to be normal. To be exactly in the middle is to be healthy and whole and holy.

If you go to one extreme, you become a politician. If you go to the other extreme, you become a religious fanatic, an ascetic. Both have missed balance.

So the first thing to be understood is that the religion that we are creating here – and it has to be created again and again because it becomes corrupted again and again – the religion that we are invoking here is not political and is not in the ordinary sense even religious. It is neither sadistic nor masochistic. It is normal. It is to be in the middle.

And what is the way to be in the middle? The way to be in the middle is to be in the world but not to be of it. To be in the middle means to live in the world but not to allow the world to live in you. To be exactly in the middle and to be balanced means you are a witness to all that happens to you. Witnessing is the only foundation for a real authentic religion. Whatsoever is, has to be witnessed – joyfully, ecstatically. Nothing has to be denied and rejected. All denial, all rejection, will keep you in limits and you will remain in conflict. Everything has to be accepted as it is.

And you have to be a watcher. Pleasure comes – watch. Pain comes – watch. Neither be disturbed by pleasure nor be disturbed by pain. Let your calm remain unperturbed. Let your silence, your tranquility, remain undisturbed. Pain will come and go and pleasure will come and go. Success will come and go and failure will come and go. And soon you will come to understand the point that it is only you who remains. That is eternal. This witnessing is eternal.

The contents that flow in the consciousness are temporary. One moment they are there, another moment they are gone. Don’t be worried about them; don’t be either in favor of them or against them. Don’t try to possess them; don’t hold onto them, because they are going to go. They have to go. It is the very nature of things that they cannot be permanent.

Something pleasant is happening. It cannot be permanent. It will have to go. And following it, something unpleasant is already getting ready to happen. It is the rhythm of life – day and night, life and death, summer and winter. The wheel goes on moving.

Don’t hold on and don’t try to make something very, very permanent. It is not possible. The more you try, the more frustrated you will become, because it cannot be done. And when it cannot be done, you feel defeated. You feel defeated because you have not understood one simple thing: nothing can be static. Life is a flux. Only one thing is eternally there and that is your consciousness, that innermost watcher.

Sufis call it ’the watcher on the hills’. The valleys go on changing but the watcher remains on the top of the hill. Sometimes the valley is dark and sometimes the valley is light and sometimes there is dancing and singing and sometimes there is weeping and crying – and the watcher sits on the hill-top and just goes on watching.

By and by the content of consciousness does not matter only consciousness becomes significant. That is the essential foundation of all true religion. And this is the understanding of the Sufis.

Before we enter into this small parable today; let me tell you that there are four ways to approach truth, to be connected with truth.

The first is known in the East as karma yoga – the way of action. Man has three dimensions in him: action, knowing, feeling; so three ways use these three directions: action, knowing feeling.

You can act, and you can act with total absorption, and you can offer your act to God. You can act without becoming a doer. That is the first way – karma yoga: being in action without being a doer. You let God do. You let God be in you. You efface yourself.

In this, the path of action, consciousness changes the content. These two things have to be understood: consciousness and content. This is all that your life consists of. There is something which is the knower in you and something which is the known. For example, you are listening to me. Now two things are there: whatsoever I am saying will be the content, and whatsoever you are inside, listening, watching, that is the consciousness. You are looking at me. Then my figure in your eyes is the content and you, who are looking at that figure in the eye, are consciousness – the object and the subject.

On the path of action, consciousness changes the content. That is what action is. You see a rock. Somebody may stumble upon it – because it is getting dark, night is falling. So you remove the rock from the path. This is action. What have you done? Consciousness has changed the content. On the path of action, content is important and has to be changed. If somebody is ill and you go and serve him and you give him medicine, you are changing the content. If somebody has fallen in the river and is drowning, you jump in and you save him from drowning. You have changed the content.

Action is content-directed. Action is will – something has to be done. Of course, if the will remains ego-oriented, then you will not be religious. You will be a great doer, but not religious. And your path will be of action but not towards God. When you allow God to become your will, when you say, ‘Let thy will be mine,’ when you surrender your will to the feet of god and his will starts flowing through you, then it is the path of action – karma yoga.

The goal of karma yoga is freedom, moksha – to change the contents so much that nothing antagonistic is left there; nothing harmful is left there; to change the content according to your heart’s desire, so that you can be free of limitations. This is the path of Jainism, yoga, and all action-oriented philosophies.

The second path is the path of knowledge, knowing – gyana yoga. On the second path consciousness is changed by the content. On the first, content is changed by consciousness; on the second it is just the reverse – consciousness is changed by the content.

On the path of knowledge you simply try to see what is the case – whatsoever it is. That’s what Krishnamurti goes on teaching. That is the purest path of knowing. There is nothing to be done.

You have just to attain to clarity, to see what is the case. You have just to see that which is. You are not to do anything. You have simply to drop your prejudices and you have to drop your concepts, notions, which can interfere with reality, which can interpret reality, which can color reality. You have to drop all that you carry in your mind as a priori notions – and then let the reality be there. Whatsoever it is, you just see it. And that changes you.

To know the real is to be transformed. Knowing the real as the real, you cannot act in any other way than the way of reality. Once you have known the reality, reality starts changing you. Consciousness is changed by the content.

The goal of the path of knowledge is truth. The goal of karma yoga, the path of action or will, was freedom. The goal of the path of knowing – Vedanta, Hinduism, Sankhya, and other paths of knowing, Ashtavakra, Krishnamurti – is truth, Brahman. Thou art that. Let that be revealed, then you become that. Once you know that, you become that. By knowing God, one becomes God. Thou art that – that is the most essential phenomenon on the second path.

The third is bhakti yoga – the way of feeling. Love is the goal. Consciousness changes the content and the content changes consciousness. The change is mutual. The lover changes the beloved, the beloved changes the lover. On the path of will, consciousness changes content, on the path of knowing, content changes consciousness; on the path of feeling, both interact, both affect each other. The change is mutual. That’s why the path of feeling is more whole. The first path is half, the second path also half, but the path of love is more round, more whole, because it has both in it.

Vaishnavas, Christianity, Islam, and other paths; Ramanuja, Vallabha, and other devotees – they say that subject and object are not separate. So if one changes the other, then something will remain unbalanced. Let both change each other. Let both meet and merge into each other, let there be a unity. As man and woman meet and merge into each other, let there be a unity. As man and woman meet and there is great joy, let there be an orgasm between consciousness and content, between you and reality, between that and thou. Let it not be only a knowing, let it not be only partial – let it be total.

These are the three ordinary paths. Sufism is the fourth. One of the greatest Sufis of this age was George Gurdjieff. His disciple, P. D. Ouspensky, has written a book called The Fourth Way. It is very symbolic.

What is this fourth way? If it is neither of action, nor of knowing, nor of feeling – because these are the three faculties – then what is this fourth way? The fourth way is the way of transcendence. In India this is called raja yoga – the royal path, the fourth way. Neither consciousness changes the content, nor the content changes consciousness. Nothing changes nothing. All is as it is with no change. Content is there, consciousness is here, and no change is happening. No effort to change is there.

This is what I mean by being. With all the three paths something remains in the mind that has to be done. With the fourth, all becoming disappears. You simply accept whatsoever is. In that acceptance is transcendence. In that very acceptance you go beyond. You remain just a witness.

You are no longer doing anything here, you are just-being here.

A goal is not possible with the fourth way. There is no goal. With the first, the goal is freedom; with the second, truth; with the third, love. With the fourth there is no goal. Zen and Sufism belong to the fourth. That’s why Zen people say ‘the pathless path, the gateless gate’ – because there is no goal. The goal-less goal. We are not going anywhere. We are not striving for anything. All that is needed is already here. It has been here all along. You have just to be silent and see. There is no need to change anything. With the fourth, the myth of change disappears.

And when there is no need to change, joy explodes – because the energy that gets involved in changing things is no longer involved anywhere; it is released. That released energy is what is called joy.

Sometimes it happens to you too, unknowingly. Sometimes sitting alone, doing nothing, you feel something happen. You cannot believe what it is. You cannot even trust what it is. It is so incredibly new, so unknown. It happens to everybody – in rare moments, for no reason at all. You cannot figure it out; you cannot reckon why it has happened.

You have been lying in your bathtub and suddenly something happens. The mind is not rushing in its usual way; the body is relaxed in the hot water. You are not doing anything; you are just being there. Suddenly it comes – the silence of the house, the birds singing outside, the children playing in the street. All is there as it has been, but with a new quality. There is great restfulness, a relaxation. Something in you is no longer striving for anything. You are not goal-oriented, you are just herenow.

If you start thinking about what it is, you miss it immediately. If you start trying to get hold of it again, you will never get hold of it again. It comes when it comes. It comes when the right situation is there. But you cannot create that right situation. If you try to create it, you will fall into one of the first three ways. If you try to change the content, you will become a follower of the path of action. If you try to change your consciousness through the content, you will become a follower of the second path – the path of knowledge. If you try to make both meet and mingle and merge, then you will become a follower of the third path.

But if you don’t do anything – not willing, not knowing, not feeling – if you just relax, then there is witnessing. Witnessing is not knowing; witnessing is totally different. In fact, it cannot be said that you are witnessing. You are not doing anything – not even witnessing. You are just there. Things are happening. Suddenly a bird starts singing outside and you hear it – because you are there, you hear it. There is no effort to hear it, there is no deliberate concentration for it.

Just the other day I came across a Shankhya sutra of immense beauty: Dhyanam Nirvishayam Manah – that’s how Shankhya sutras define dhyana. Meditation is mind without thoughts, without feelings, without will. Meditation is consciousness without any striving. Dhyanam Nirvishayam Manah. There is no longing for any object. You are not striving for anything. Then you are in dhyana, then you are in meditation. You are not doing anything; on no plane are you doing anything. All doing has simply disappeared. There is utter silence inside you, and absolute rest.

Let this word ‘rest’ be remembered by you; relaxation. You cannot do it, remember. How can you do it? If you do it you cannot relax, because then relaxation becomes a goal and you become a doer. You can only understand it. You can only allow it to happen; you cannot do it, you cannot force it. It has nothing to do with your doing. You can only understand how it happens and you can remain in that understanding. And it comes.

Dhyanam Nirvishayam Manah. When the mind is, with no desire, no object, no goal, not going anywhere, then how can it be tense? It is not a state of concentration. It is not concentration at all because concentration will need striving; concentration is a kind of tension. It is not even attention, because attention is also a kind of tension.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines the word ’meditation’ as concentration. That is absolutely wrong. Meditation is not concentration. Concentration means mind striving, forcing, willing, trying to do something. Putting one’s whole energy into one direction – that’s what concentration means. Meditation means you are not putting your energy into any direction; it is simply overflowing. It is not going in any particular direction; it is simply overflowing like a fragrance, a fragrance overflowing from a flower, unaddressed – neither to the north nor to the south. It is not going anywhere, or, it is going everywhere. Wherever the winds will take it, it is ready to go. It is utterly relaxed.

This moment happens sometimes to you. I would like you to remember that it is not something rare that happens only to religious people. It happens in ordinary life too but you don’t take note of it. You are afraid of it.

Just a few days ago, I received a letter from a woman. She had been here, and then she went home. For six months she was trying and trying to meditate and it did not happen according to her idea of meditation. She must have had some desire about what it should be like. She must have had some expectations, and it was not happening.

She has written a letter to say that one day she was just sitting in the room. There was nothing to do. The husband had gone to the office; the children had gone to school; the house was empty. She was just sitting, not doing anything; there was no desire to do. She was just sitting in the chair with closed eyes – and it happened. It was suddenly there, with all its benedictions. But she became frightened. She became frightened because when it happened suddenly a fear came to her – because it was there, meditation was there, but she was not there. That became a great fear and she simply pulled herself out of it. It felt as if she was disappearing.

Yes, it happens. Your ego cannot exist there. Your ego is not possible there. Your ego is nothing but all your tensions together. Your ego is nothing but a bundle of past tensions, of present tensions, and of future tensions. When you are non-tense, the ego simply falls to the ground in pieces.

She became afraid. For six months she had been trying to meditate and nothing was happening, and then one day it happened. It came while she was completely unaware of it. She was taken aback. It was there. And she had been provoking it and desiring and asking and praying, and it had not come. And then it came. But she missed. It was there but she became frightened. It was too much. She felt as if she might disappear into it and might not be able to come out of it. She pulled herself out of it. Now she writes that she is crying and weeping, and wants it back.

Now this wanting it back won’t help – because it came that day without any wanting. Without any idea of what was going to happen, suddenly it came. It always comes like sudden lightning.

This is the fourth way, that’s why it is called raja yoga – the royal path. The king is not supposed to do anything. Servants do. The king is not supposed to do anything. He simply sits on his throne and things happen. There are so many people to do it. That’s why it is called raja yoga – the path of the king. The other three are ordinary; the fourth is really exceptional. The king is not expected to do anything; he simply sits there relaxed. That’s what we mean by one who is a king. Doing has disappeared, knowing has disappeared, feeling has disappeared – the king is utterly relaxed. In that relaxation it happens.

Sufi and Zen are raja yogas – the royal paths. Neither consciousness changes the content nor the content changes consciousness. This is the fundamental principle: nothing changes, there is no change happening. Things are. The flower is there and you are there. You don’t change the flower and the flower does not change you. Both exist together. It is existence with no motive.

Zen people call it nirvana, the goal, the no-goal – nirvana. One simply ceases to be. The word ‘nirvana’ is beautiful. It means: as if somebody has blown out a candle. Just a few minutes before it was there, the lamp was burning bright, and then you blew it out. Now the flame has disappeared into the infinity. It has become part of the cosmos. You cannot find it. You cannot trace where it has gone, where it is. It has simply disappeared.

There is a Sufi parable.

A Sufi mystic was entering a village and he came across a small boy who was carrying a lit candle. The boy was going to the mosque. The night was coming and the boy was going to the mosque to put the candle there – as an act of worship.

The mystic saw the boy, the innocent boy, his face lighted by the light of the candle. The mystic asked the boy, ‘Have you yourself lighted the candle?’ And the boy said, ‘Yes, sir.’ The mystic jokingly asked, ‘Then you must have seen from where the flame comes. Can you tell me from where the flame comes?’ The boy laughed and blew out the candle and said, ‘Now you have seen it going. Can you tell me where it has gone?’

Nobody knows from where it comes and nobody knows to where it goes. It comes out of nothingness or out of all – which means the same – and it goes back into nothingness or into the all – which is the same. That is nirvana.

Sufis have the word for it – Fana. It means exactly the same. One is utterly lost.

There is no need to do anything on the path of will or on the path of knowledge or on the path of feeling. Nothing is needed to be done – because if you do something you will remain, you will persist a little. Something of the ego may linger on. No change, no improvement, no effort to make you better is needed – just be.

Mohammed says: ‘Be in this world as a stranger or as a passer-by.’ Be in this world but don’t be of it. Be in this world but don’t allow the world to be in you. ‘Be for this world as if thou were to live a thousand years, and for the next as if thou were to die tomorrow.’ Live this moment as if you are going to live forever and yet be mindful that the next moment may not come. So live totally, and yet remain a witness. Be involved in it, but still keep yourself like a watcher on the hill.

– Osho

Excerpt from: Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol. 2, Discourse #11

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt The Royal Way.

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.

Why Meditation? – Osho

What is the best way to encourage people in meditation?

The first thing: for a patient to go to the doctor you must make him realize that he is sick; otherwise there is no need to go to the doctor.

So the people you want to encourage into meditation: first you have to make them aware that they are frustrated, perhaps for so long that they have forgotten that they are sad. They cannot remember when they laughed from their very hearts. They have become robots – they do things because they have to be done but there is no joy in doing them.

They are living an accidental life. Their birth is accidental, their marriage is accidental, their children are accidental, their job is accidental. Their life has no sense of intrinsic growth and direction. That’s why they cannot feel like rejoicing.

So first you have to make them aware where they are – and almost everybody is in the same situation. Death is coming close – you cannot even rely on your being here tomorrow. And your life is an absolute desert – it has not found any oasis, it has not felt any meaning, any significance – and death may destroy all possibilities in the future.

So first you have to make them aware of their meaningless, accidental, frustrated life. They know it, but they try to suppress their knowing in many ways, because to know it continuously is a torture. So they go to the movies to forget it. They go to parties, they go to picnics, they drink alcoholic beverages; they do everything – just to somehow not remember the reality of their life, their hollowness, futility.

This is the most important part – to remind them. And once a person remembers all this, then to lead him towards meditation is a very simple thing, because meditation is the only answer to all the questions of man. It may be frustration, it may be depression, it may be sadness, it may be meaninglessness, it may be anguish: The problems may be many but the answer is one.

Meditation is the answer.

And the simplest method of meditation is just a way of witnessing. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation, but witnessing is an essential part of all one hundred and twelve methods. So as far as I am concerned, witnessing is the only method. Those one hundred and twelve are different applications of witnessing.

The essential core, the spirit of meditation is to learn how to witness.

You are seeing a tree: You are there, the tree is there, but can’t you find one thing more? – that you are seeing the tree, that there is a witness in you which is seeing you seeing the tree.

The world is not divided only into the object and the subject. There is also something beyond both, and that beyond is meditation.

So in every act… and I don’t want people to sit for one hour or half an hour in the morning or in the evening. That kind of meditation is not going to help, because if you meditate for one hour, then for twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite of it.

Meditation can be victorious: witnessing is such a method that can spread over twenty-four hours of your day.

Eating, don’t get identified with the eater. The food is there, the eater is there, and you are here, watching. Walking, let the body walk but you simply watch. Slowly, the knack comes. It is a knack, and once you can watch small things….

This crow, crowing… you are listening. These are two – object and subject. But can’t you see a witness who is seeing both? – The crow, the listener, and still there is someone who is watching both. It is such a simple phenomenon. Then you can move into deeper layers: you can watch your thoughts; you can watch your emotions, your moods.

There is no need to say, “I am sad.” The fact is that you are a witness that a cloud of sadness is passing over you. There is anger – you can simply be a witness. There is no need to say, “I am angry.” You are never angry – there is no way for you to be angry – you are always a witness. The anger comes and goes; you are just a mirror. Things come, get reflected, move – and the mirror remains empty and clean, unscratched by the reflections.

Witnessing is finding your inside mirror.

And once you have found it, miracles start happening. When you are simply witnessing the thoughts, thoughts disappear. Then there is suddenly a tremendous silence you have never known. When you are watching the moods – anger, sadness, happiness – they suddenly disappear and an even greater silence is experienced.

And when there is nothing to watch – then the revolution. Then the witnessing energy turns upon itself because there is nothing to prevent it; there is no object left. The word “object” is beautiful. It simply means that which prevents you, objects you. When there is no object to your witnessing, it simply comes around back to yourself – to the source. And this is the point where one becomes enlightened.

Meditation is only a path: the end is always Buddhahood, enlightenment. And to know this moment is to know all.

Then there is no misery, no frustration, no meaninglessness; then life is no longer an accident. It becomes part of this cosmic whole – an essential part. And a tremendous bliss arises that this whole existence needs you.

Man’s greatest need is to be needed. If somebody needs you, you feel gratified. But if the whole existence needs you, then there is no limit to your bliss. And this existence needs even a small blade of grass as much as the biggest star.

There is no question of inequality. Nobody can substitute for you. If you are not there, then existence will be something less and will remain always something less – it will never be full. That feeling – that this whole immense existence is in need of you – takes all miseries away from you.

For the first time, you have come home.

-Osho

From Light on the Path, Discourse #1

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.

Your Real Being, the Master – Osho

In the mind, in the process of thinking, there is so much energy. How can we use that energy in a creative and constructive way?

The question is very complex. It sounds simple, but it is not simple.

You are asking: The mind is full of energy, how to use this energy in a creative and constructive way?

Who is going to use this energy?

If mind itself is going to use this energy, it can never be creative and can never be constructive.

That is what is happening all over the world. That is what is happening in science. The whole misery of science is that mind is using its energy. But mind is a negative force; it cannot use anything creatively; it needs a master. Mind is a servant. Do you have a master?

So to me the question is . . . meditation brings the master in. It makes you fully aware and conscious that the mind is your instrument. Now, whatever you want to do with it you can do. And if you don’t want to do anything with it, you can put it aside and you can remain in absolute silence.

Right now, you are not the master – even for five minutes. You cannot say to the mind, “Please, for five minutes, just for five minutes be silent.” Those will be the five minutes when mind will be faster, rushing more than ever – because it will have to show you who is the master.

There is a famous story in Tibet. A man wanted to learn the art of miracles, so he served a saint who was thought to be a knower of all the secrets. He served the saint day in, day out; he closed his business. The old saint told him again and again, “I don’t know anything. You are unnecessarily wasting your business, and you are becoming a burden to me because whenever I look at you . . . Twenty-four hours a day you are sitting here, on my head, and I don’t know any miracles. What to do?”

The man said, “You cannot avoid me so easily. I have heard that you have been hiding those secrets. But if you are stubborn, I am also stubborn. I will die sitting here, but I will learn the secret.”

Finally, the saint said, “Listen. This is the mantra” – it was not much, it was a simple mantra – “Just repeat Om, Om, Omkar and all the secrets of all the miracles will be available to you as you become more and more attuned with the mantra.”

The man rushed toward his home. While he was going down the steps of the temple the saint said, “Wait! I have forgotten one thing. After taking the bath, when you are sitting to chant the mantra, remember not to let any monkey enter into your mind.”

That man said, “You must be getting senile! In my whole life no monkey has ever entered into my mind. Don’t be worried.”

He said, “I am not worried. It is just to make you aware, so you don’t come later on and tell me that a monkey disturbed everything.”

The man said, “There is no fear about the monkeys. Everything has entered into this mind, but a monkey? I don’t remember this at all, not even in a dream.”

But as he started moving toward his house he was amazed; monkeys started appearing on the screen of his mind – big monkeys, giggling. He said, “My God!” He tried to push them away, “Get out! Get lost! I don’t have anything to do with monkeys, and particularly today!” But he was surprised that it was not one monkey, it was a vast line; they were coming from all sides.

He said, “My God, I had never thought that in my mind so many monkeys are hidden. But first let me take a bath.” But it was so difficult to take a bath because continually he was shouting “Get out! Get lost!”

Finally, his wife knocked on the door – “What is the matter? Who is inside the bathroom? Are you alone?”

He said, “I am alone.”

“But then why are you shouting so loudly, get out, get lost?”

He said, “About these monkeys . . .”

The woman said, “You have gone mad. What monkeys? There are no monkeys here; keep quiet.”

He said, “Strange. This woman has never been so hard on me, but in a way, she is right because there is nobody in the bathroom. But to say that they are in my head looks even worse.”

He sat in his worshipping place, but the monkeys were inside. He closed his eyes; they were sitting all around him. He said, “I have never thought that monkeys are so interested in me. Why are you bothering me? A few are inside the mind, and if I close my mind, a few are sitting all around me. They push me from this side and from that side, and giggling! I am a silent man, and this is not gentlemanly behavior.”

And again the wife looked into his worshipping place and she said, “With whom are you talking?”

He said, “My God, now I have to explain something which I do not understand myself. Just don’t you disturb me tonight. Tomorrow morning I will go and I will see that old man.”

The whole night he took showers many times, rubbed the soap as much as he could to clean himself, but there was no way. In fact, the bathroom was so full of monkeys that to make his way into the bathroom was difficult; to come out of the bathroom was difficult. And when he came back to his worshipping place they were sitting all over – even in his place a big monkey was sitting chanting Om, Om, Om.

That man said, “I cannot wait for morning.” It was midnight. He rushed to the temple, woke up the old man and told him, “What kind of mantra have you given to me?”

He said, “I have told you, that was the condition. That’s why for so many years I have not told it to anybody – because that condition is unfulfillable. You simply drop this idea of miracles, and the monkeys will disappear.”

The man said, “Just . . . I have come for that. I don’t want any miracles; I don’t want any secrets. Just please help me to get rid of these monkeys because they are sitting all over the place, and if I open my shop tomorrow, they will be sitting all over the shop. I am a poor businessman. I got into the wrong business; this is not my business. You do your business but please, if you can help me . . .”

The saint said, “There is no problem. If you drop the idea of miracles those monkeys will disappear. They are the guardians of the miracles.”

If you try even for five minutes to stop thinking, more thoughts will rush in than ever – simply to show you that you are not the master. So first one has to get the mastery, and the way to become the master is not to say to the thoughts, “Stop.” The way to become the master is to watch the whole thought process.

If the man had simply watched the monkeys, had allowed them to giggle, had allowed them to do whatsoever they were doing; if he had been simply a witness, those monkeys would have gone – seeing that this man seemed to be absolutely indifferent, not interested at all.

Your thoughts have to understand one thing: that you are not interested in them. The moment you have made this point you have attained a tremendous victory. Just watch. Don’t say anything to the thoughts. Don’t judge. Don’t condemn. Don’t tell them to move. Let them do whatsoever they are doing, any gymnastics let them do; you simply watch, enjoy. It is just a beautiful film. And you will be surprised: just watching, a moment comes when thoughts are not there, there is nothing to watch.

This is the door I have been calling nothingness, emptiness.

From this door enters your real being, the master.

And that master is absolutely positive; in its hands everything turns into gold.

If Albert Einstein had been a meditator, the same mind would have produced atomic energy not to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki but to help the whole of humanity to raise its standard of living. Without meditation the mind is negative, it is bound to be in the service of death. With meditation the master is there, and the master is absolute positiveness. In its hands the same mind, the same energy, becomes creative, constructive, life affirmative.

So you cannot do anything directly with the mind. You will have to take a little roundabout way; first you have to bring the master in. The master is missing, and for centuries the servant has been thinking he is the master. Just let the master come in, and the servant immediately understands. Just the presence of the master and the servant falls at the feet of the master and waits for any order, for anything the master wants to be done – he is ready.

The mind is a tremendously powerful instrument. No computer is as powerful as man’s mind – cannot be because it is made by man’s mind. Nothing can be because they are all made by man’s mind. A single man’s mind has such immense capacity: in a small skull, such a small brain can contain all the information contained in all the libraries of the earth, and that information is not a small amount.

Just one library, the British library, has so many books that if we put those books in a line side by side, they will go three times around the earth. And a bigger library exists in Moscow, a similar library exists in Harvard; and there are similar libraries in all the big universities of the world. But a single human mind can contain all the information contained in all these libraries. Scientists are agreed that we may not be able to make a computer comparable to the human mind which can be put in such a small space.

But the result of this immense gift to man has not been beneficial – because the master is absent and the servant is running the show. The result is wars, violence, murders, rape. Man is living in a nightmare, and the only way out is to bring the master in. It is there, you just have to get hold of it. And watchfulness is the key: just watch the mind. The moment there is no thoughts, immediately you will be able to see yourself – not as mind, but as something beyond, something transcendental to mind.

And once you are attuned with the transcendental then the mind is in your hands. It can be immensely creative. It can make this very earth paradise. There is no need for any paradise to be searched for above in the clouds, just as there is no need to search for any hell – because hell we have created already. We are living in it.

I have heard that a great politician died. Naturally, he was afraid that he would be taken to hell. He knew his whole life: it was absolutely criminal and nothing else. It is impossible without crimes to succeed in getting political power. In going higher on the ladder of power, you have to crush, kill, destroy – you have to do everything. But if you succeed then you are forgiven, nobody remembers that you have done anything wrong. And he was a successful politician. But as he was dying, he was afraid; he remembered his whole past, and he was certain that “I am going to hell. Now nothing can help. Those political tricks will not be helpful here.”

But when he opened his eyes, he was in front of heaven. He could not believe it. He asked the angels who had brought him there, “There seems to be some mistake, some bureaucratic mistake. This is heaven and you have brought me here?”

“This is, certainly. And there is no mistake, you have earned it.”

The man said, “What are you talking about? I have done everything wrong that can be done.”

They said, “We know, but your whole life you lived in hell, and now to send you to hell again will not be justified. Moreover, our hell will look very old-fashioned. You have been living in a very ultramodern hell, and we don’t want to feel ashamed. Our hell is very ancient, our methods of torture are very ancient, and you have refined everything so well that in fact you will laugh – ‘Is this hell?’ So the only way . . . even God was puzzled. You are three days late. You must have died three days ago, but it took three days for God to make the decision about where to take you. Finally, we decided, ‘It is better to take him to heaven because hell he has lived enough.’”

People still go on thinking that hell is somewhere down underneath the earth – and you are living in it, this is the beauty – and heaven is somewhere above.

You can change this hell into heaven if your mind can be under the guidance of the master, of your self-nature. And it is a simple process . . .

But don’t try directly with the mind; otherwise you will be getting into trouble. One can even get into insanity. If you try to put your mind energy into creative directions – you are not capable even of stopping it for one moment and you are trying to put it into a creative dimension – you will go crazy. You will have a nervous breakdown.

Don’t touch the mind. First just find out where the master is. It is a complicated mechanism. Let the master be there, and the mind functions as a servant so perfectly.

In the East we have done this. Gautam Buddha could have become Albert Einstein without any difficulty; he has a far greater genius. But his whole life was concerned with transforming people, into awareness, into compassion, into love, into blissfulness.

-Osho

From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse #4, Q2

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.

Witnessing and the Heart – Osho

Would you please speak a little on witnessing and the heart. Can they be experienced simultaneously?

Witnessing and the heart are one and the same thing. Witnessing is not of the mind. Mind can never be a witness. When you start witnessing, mind becomes the witnessed not the witness. It is the observed not the observer. You see your thoughts moving, your desires, your fantasies, your memories, your dreams, just as you see things moving on the screen of a film. But you are not identified with them. That non-identification is what is meant by witnessing. Then who is the witness? Mind is being seen then who is the seer? It is the heart.

So heart and witnessing are not two things. If you witness, you will be centered in the heart, or if you are centered in the heart, you will become the witness. These are two processes to reach to the same goal. The lover, the devotee never thinks of witnessing. He simply tries to reach to the heart, to the source of his being. Once he has reached the heart, witnessing comes on its own accord. The meditator never thinks of love and the heart. He starts by witnessing, but once witnessing is there, the heart opens. Because there is no other place from where to witness.

The path of the meditator and the path of the devotee are different, but they culminate into one experience. At the ultimate point, they reach to the same peak. You can choose the path, but you cannot choose the goal. Because there are not two goals, there is only one goal. Of course, if you have followed the path of a devotee, you will not talk of witnessing when you have arrived. You will talk of love. If you have followed the path of meditation, you will not talk of love when you have arrived. You will talk of witnessing. But the difference is only of words, language, expression. But that which is expressed is the one and the same reality.

-Osho

From The Fish in the Sea is not Thirsty, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Witnessing and the Heart.

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.