Category: Prem’s Notes

Podcast Episode: A Way Out

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post
Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: A Way Out.

 

click to play or download audio file:

A Way Out Podcast

Pip: Welcome to Sat Sangha Salon — where the inner landscape gets more airtime than the outer one, which honestly seems fair at this point.

Mara: Today we’re working through a piece by Purushottama that asks a question most of us quietly carry: if conditioning is everywhere and unavoidable, is there actually a way out? Let’s start with that territory.

A Way Out

Pip: The premise here is almost vertiginous — not that we have some conditioning, but that there is no version of a human life that escapes it. Political, religious, cultural, generational — the post maps the full sweep and lands somewhere uncomfortable.

Mara: The setup earns that discomfort. After cataloguing every flavor of conditioning a person might inherit, the post arrives here: “There seems to be no way out of this quagmire.”

Pip: And that’s the real stakes — not a personal complaint but a structural diagnosis. If the mind itself is built from accumulated impressions, then thinking your way out just adds another layer. You cannot use the conditioned instrument to uncondition itself.

Mara: Which is exactly where the post turns. The mystics — Buddhas, Christs, Zen masters, Krishnamurti, Ramana, Osho — are cited not as authorities to believe but as a provocation to investigate personally. The move is from received wisdom to direct experiment.

Pip: And the experiment has a specific character. This isn’t positive visualization or philosophical detachment — it’s closer to just staying put.

Mara: The post is precise about this: meditation here means “giving a little time and space to have a look at what presents itself, what arises in my inner landscape and to stay with it totally, not by thinking about it, analyzing it, judging it, but by being with unconditionally.” No rejection of the uncomfortable, no clinging to the pleasant.

Pip: So the way out is in — which sounds like a bumper sticker until you sit with what it’s actually asking. It’s asking you to watch the machinery without touching the controls.

Mara: And the reported result is that the stream of conditioning slowly loses momentum. Not through suppression but through witnessing — dense matter, as the post puts it, becoming spaciousness.

Mara: There’s also a candid acknowledgment that most people have no interest in this project, because the end of conditioning is, in a real sense, the end of the self built around it.

Pip: That honesty is what keeps the whole thing from tipping into prescription. It’s offered as a personal discovery, not a mandate.

Mara: Exactly — the closing note is that intellectual understanding alone isn’t enough. It has to become lived experience, which is the whole point of the experiment.

Pip: And if spaciousness is what’s on the other side, the question becomes what we do with the quiet once we find it.

Pip: Conditioning as the water we swim in — and meditation as the first moment you notice you’re wet.

Mara: That’s the thread. Next time, we’ll see where the inquiry goes from here.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

and Here is the original Post from Purushottama, A Way Out.

Podcast Episode: Unconditional Forgiveness

An imaginary conversation discussing a real post
Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: Unconditional Forgiveness.

 

click to play or download audio file:

Unconditional Forgiveness Podcast

 

Pip: Sat Sangha Salon — where the questions worth sitting with eventually find you, whether you invited them or not.

Mara: Today we’re working through one post from Purushottama, and it goes deep into forgiveness — not as a transaction, but as something you extend without requiring anything in return.

Pip: Let’s start with that territory — unconditional forgiveness, and what it actually costs.

Unconditional Forgiveness

Pip: The central tension here is whether forgiveness is something you grant to someone else, or something you do entirely for yourself — and whether waiting for the other party to show up first is even a viable option.

Mara: The post frames it plainly. Approaching his 72nd year, the writer reflects: “My wholeness, my at peaceness, is not dependent upon anyone else’s forgiveness, but it is wholly dependent on the unconditional forgiveness that I, myself, give.”

Pip: That’s a significant shift in where the work lives. It moves the whole project of becoming whole out of someone else’s hands and back into your own.

Mara: And the post follows that logic to its uncomfortable end — someone you harmed may still be carrying pain even after you’ve forgiven yourself. Someone who harmed you may still carry guilt even after you’ve forgiven them. The ledgers don’t automatically reconcile just because one side has settled.

Pip: So the only exit from that loop, for anyone, is to forgive without waiting for the other party to move first.

Mara: The post draws on Matthew 6:14-15 to anchor this — “For if you forgive men their trespass, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” — and then deliberately reframes it, swapping “heavenly Father” for “existence” or “the whole,” so the principle holds even outside a religious frame.

Pip: What I find sharp about that move is it doesn’t dismiss the scripture — it just strips it down to the mechanism: self-forgiveness and forgiving others are, as the post puts it, “glued together, and inseparable.”

Mara: The post closes on a practical consequence that’s hard to argue with. If wholeness depends on a reckoning with people who have already shown they can harm you, you’ve handed your wellbeing to exactly the wrong party.

Pip: Holding out for the apology is, structurally, a second injury you inflict on yourself.

Mara: That’s the post’s real argument — not that forgiveness is noble, but that withholding it is a form of captivity you choose.

Pip: Forgiveness as self-governance — that’s the frame that sticks.

Mara: It reorients the whole question. Not who deserves it, but who suffers without it.

Pip: More from Sat Sangha Salon next time.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

and Here is the original Post from Purushottama, Unconditional Forgiveness.

Watching Without Involvement

For me, the key to Osho’s watching/witnessing meditation is his instruction to watch without any involvement. He says to watch without analyzing, without judging, without grasping or rejecting. All of those activities are how I watch with involvement.

So, what happens when I watch without involvement? What I notice is that as long as I am adding thought to the stream of thought by the above involvement, then I am supplying energy to the stream. But when I watch without involvement, then the energy that had been fueling the movement of thought begins to return home. It is in this energy returning home that the stream of thought begins to lose its potency. It begins to lessen and it is here that the gaps start to appear, gradually increase in size, until only the gap remains.

I just can’t see any way to move from a steady stream of thoughts passing, to an empty screen, without passing through this window of non-involvement. Of course, the window is just a metaphor. In reality, there is no window, except the one that I create through my own effort of thinking. So rather than passing through the window, I can simply stop creating it and then, I am out.

-purushottama

Responsibility for My Own Meditativeness

As many of you know, much of my time living at the Ranch was spent traveling around the U.S. and Canada selling Osho’s books to bookstores and distributors. With the smaller stores, that always involved speaking about Osho and the Ranch. This work even continued after the Ranch once we moved the books to Boulder, CO. At some point during one of my sales trips from Boulder, I remember having the realization that I was going around the country talking about Osho and his teaching, but I wasn’t living it myself. It was a turning point for me. I started to take responsibility for my own meditativeness.

After being out in the world, away from the daily bathing in innerness of the Poona discourses and the collective high of the Ranch, I had to start finding my own way in. I had to begin discovering for myself that same no-mind that Osho delivered daily on a silver platter.

How many of us were feeling blissful while we were in the communes, and now many years later find ourselves without a hint of that wonder and are questioning whether what we experienced was real or just a dream? Osho addresses this in this question that Osho answers.

“Listening to me you can feel that you are levitating, but you cannot levitate. The feeling is not the thing, not the real thing. Listening to me you can feel very happy, but that happiness is like a reflection. It is my happiness reflected in your mirror; it is not your happiness. You are bound to land somewhere in dog shit.

One should not depend on anybody else. You need your happiness. Listening to me, you can become engulfed, you can be overwhelmed, but the farther you go from me, that music will start disappearing from you. It was not yours in the first place.

It is as if I am sitting here: in my light your darkness disappears. Then you go away; the farther away you go, the darkness starts surrounding you again.

It is as the Sufis say:

Two travelers were going into a forest. One had a lamp, a lantern of his own, the other had none. But the other was not even aware of the fact. They both walked in light because one had the lantern, so the other also had the light on the path. Then came the moment where they had to depart; their paths were going separately. And when the man with the lantern went on his path, suddenly the other traveler recognized, realized, that there was immense darkness all around.

You can walk with me to a certain extent. The disciple can walk with the Master to a certain extent, but then the paths separate. Then you have to go on your own way. Suddenly you will find you are in darkness.

So while you are with a Master, don’t just enjoy his bliss. Enjoy, but learn also how to create your own bliss and your own light. Those moments with a Master have to be tremendously enjoyed — good. But just enjoyment is not enough. You have to learn the secret of how to create your own light — so when the Master departs, or you have to go on your own way and paths are separate, you are not lost in darkness. Otherwise, this will happen again and again. […]

In Zen they say: The art of meditation is almost the art of being a thief.

You have to be so aware that you can walk into somebody else’s house where you may never have been before; not only can you walk, you can remove things without making any noise; not only that, but without any light in the dark night. You have to be like a thief: very aware, very conscious.

What happened to this questioner? — he was floating, he was no more in this world, he had moved into another world. A vision had dawned on him; he was in a dream, he was not aware, he was drunk. Hence, he stepped into dog shit.

This is very, very meaningful; remember it. Otherwise, there are many ways to land in wrong places. Unless you are tremendously aware, many times you will come nearer to home and again you will miss the door.”

This is just an excerpt. To read the entire post click on the link below.

You have to be Like a Thief – Osho

Witnessing where Mindfulness and Self-Inquiry Meet

At first glance, one might think that there is a significant difference between Ramana’s Self-Inquiry and Osho’s Witnessing Meditation. But in my own experience I have found that not to be the case. What I discovered is that Osho’s Watching/Witnessing Meditation incorporates Ramana’s enquiry but also extends out to reach a much larger field of practitioners. How so? you might ask. Okay, here goes.

Ramana Maharshi’s method of self-inquiry is often described as such:
A thought appears.
The question is asked, “To whom does the thought appear?”
The answer, “Me,” arises.
And then the question, “Who is this me? Or who am I?” is enquired into.

Osho has described the following three steps for his watching meditation:
We begin with watching the activities of the body.

With this awareness we then turn inwards to watch the movement of mind, thought.

Even deeper still and ever more subtle we then begin to watch the feelings of the heart.

So where do these seemingly very different approaches to realizing the self overlap, and how are they related?

Ramana begins with “a thought appears.” So, for a thought to appear it presumes that one is watching the movement of mind. For many of us, this is not as easy as one might, excuse the pun, think.

And this is where Osho extends the field. He instructs us to begin with watching the activities of the body. Meaning: we watch, we bring awareness to daily activities, eating, walking, talking, showering, etc. By this bringing awareness we are reclaiming our consciousness. We are increasing our own capacity of being aware. We are learning the art of watching. We are beginning to be more conscious.

His next step is to take this awareness and begin to watch the movement of mind. First, we watch our continual getting lost into thought and then remembering which brings us momentarily out of the stream. This process takes time because we have to gradually increase our capacity to watch all that appears in consciousness. Soon we are able to see thought as something separate from our watching and slowly disidentification begins, but still we are drawn out into the fray again and again. But then there is one more instruction that Osho adds and that is to watch without grasping or rejecting, to watch without judging the thoughts, to watch without analyzing the thought stream. Through this quality of watching, we begin to see that it is “the grasping and rejecting, the judging and analyzing” that is keeping us tethered to the stream of thought. It is how we remain identified with thought. A thought appears and we grab onto it because we like it and go for a ride. Or a thought appears that we find unpleasant and we push it down not to be looked at. Or we judge our getting lost into a thought or even analyze why we are attracted to such a thought.

But when we discover watching without grasping or rejecting, without judging or analyzing we are able to disengage, disidentify with thought and remain the watcher. And it is the same process for feelings, moods, emotions.

It is here that Ramana’s second step comes in. He says, we ask, “To whom does the thought appear?” We are not able to ask this as long as we are glued together with the stream of thought, as long as we are grasping, judging, etc. With the quality of watching that Osho has instructed there is space for the inquiry, “To whom does the thought appear?” Here we are in the double-pointed arrow that Osho speaks about. The arrow pointing back is the enquiry – to whom does that thought appear.

Osho instructs us to remain in this watching with the double-pointed arrow, watching without judging, analzying … and slowly, slowly the content that the outward-pointing arrow is pointing to begins to disappear. It no longer has the fuel to continue because it was being supplied by the identification, by the engagement.

And it is here that Ramana’s inquiry of “who am I” is relevant. Here in this disengaged awareness, this witnessing without an object, one’s own true nature as the witnessing consciousness is revealed. And it is indeed who we are.

I have been known to say that Osho’s witnessing meditation is the bee’s knees of meditation because it incorporates both mindfulness and self-enquiry. And so it is, and so it does.

A big shout to those who have persisted in their questions requiring me to articulate ever more clearly this insight.

-purushottama

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

The Double-Pointed Arrow of Watchingness

Osho speaks often about watching the mind without grasping or rejecting, without judging, without analyzing. And he also speaks about watching with a double-pointed arrow of awareness.

After experimenting with these two viewpoints, it has been my discovery that they are two ways of describing the exact same phenomenon. When we manage to watch without grasping or rejecting, without judging, without analyzing we find ourselves watching with a double-pointed awareness. If we find ourselves in watching with the double-pointed arrow we discover that we are indeed watching without grasping or rejecting, etc., and we see that it is the grasping, the rejecting, the judging, the analyzing that is preventing us from having the double-pointed awareness

So whichever viewpoint we are more suited to, they both will be describing the same quality of watchingness. The key is watching without being drawn out (grasping, rejecting …) into the fray. This watching without being drawn out creates the second arrow of awareness.

-purushottama

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

The End of Seeking?

These days on every corner you can find a teacher holding “satsang” and telling you that they have come to the end of seeking.

Ask them how they came to the end of seeking. Did they come to this realization without seeking, or did they first go through many trials and tribulations of seeking to finally arrive at the end of seeking.

And if they did, in fact, come through seeking, what is the value of telling others about their own non-seeking? Is it to brag? Are they not doing a disservice to those who are still in the midst of their journey? Should they not encourage others to continue to the end of their own seeking without trying to cut short the journey through some false non-existent short cut?

Or was it just some accidental happening, in which case, what is the value of telling others about that which is only a personal event and which cannot be reproduced?

There are probably many who have discovered their own inner landscape spontaneously, or even accidentally, but they are not of much help to others. No, rather than hang out with these satsang teachers, seek out the teachings of masters who are skilled at guiding others out of their delusions, confusions and misunderstandings. Once out of the quagmire, one finds the light shining with ever such splendor and it is then, and only then that seeking disappears.

-purushottama

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

Watching and also Forgetting the Content

This last week’s meditation program, Program #05: Like the Empty Sky it has No Boundaries, inspired the latest posting on another koan.

Osho speaks about both watching the mind and forgetting the content. The two together seem to be quite a paradox. If I watch the mind, how can I forget the content? And if I forget the content, how can I watch the mind? When I first try to put into practice both of these instructions, I find that I am constantly flipping back and forth. So how can I simultaneously watch the activities of the mind and forget the content?

What I have found is that if I watch the mind in the same way as I watch a movie or a television show then indeed there is no way to both watch and forget the content. But if I watch with the qualities that are prescribed by Osho, that is watching without grasping and without rejecting, watching without analyzing, and watching without judging and at the same time remember that I am the watcher and not the content (the double-pointed arrow), then slowly, slowly the content begins to evaporate and I am left with only a watchingness without content. And so, here I am watching, and the content is forgotten, or more accurately the content has disappeared on its own, and there is no more flipping back and forth, at least until of course I fall out of watching with these qualities.

-purushottama

For more on this topic, you may wish to explore:

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Meditation Involves all Three

Awakening Before Enlightenment

After Awakening Before Enlightenment

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

Meditation Involves all Three

Osho often talks about the difference between concentration, contemplation and meditation or dhyana. Mostly, he is making a distinction in order to prod us on into real meditation or dhyana. But just this morning, and it is so obvious I am almost embarrassed to say that it was a realization, I did, in fact, realize that meditation involves all three.

 

Many times, when I begin my sitting, I first gather myself to move out of identification with the mind and into being able to watch the mind. This gathering myself may involve watching the movement of breath or doing a body scan to feel any tension within the body. These are ways that I am bringing my mind into a state of watching. So first, I am focusing my energy into watching. This is concentration. In concentration there is very little self-awareness.

Only after the watching is concentrated am I able to begin to watch the mind. At first this watching the mind involves a constant movement between watching, getting involved with the stream of thought, remembering and the cycle repeating. Sometimes there is some topic that arises that I think about from every angle allowing it to be seen in its totality. I would call this stage contemplation. In contemplation there arises just the beginning glimpses of self-awareness, it is a continual movement from being aware to being lost in thought, remembering and again lost into the stream of thought. Here there is more self-awareness than in concentration hence the remembering, the continual re-joining, re-membering with awareness.

The more that I bring watching into the equation the more self-awareness is present and the less I find myself lost in the flow, until finally I am able to begin watching without any involvement or identification at all. This watching without involvement or watching with indifference is like watching a river flow but remaining on the bank as the objects float past. Here I allow all that wants to surface and just watch without judging the contents, without analyzing from where the thoughts come, without choosing the pleasant ones and rejecting the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. I remain with whatever appears without adding any new thought to the stream. This watching without any involvement at all is what I am referring to as dhyana, as meditation. In this watching there is more self-awareness than identification hence I am able to watch without involvement.

And when I am able to watch without grasping, without rejecting, without judging and without analyzing, then even this flow of thought begins to subside. I see that it is the grasping, rejecting, judging, interfering that perpetuates the movement thought. When I am able to watch without doing those things and thought subsides, that is when the witness begins to be revealed. When there is nothing to be seen and there is only watchingness, awareness aware of itself, that is the ground on which the three stages of meditation have built their abodes. Coming out of those abodes, awareness is able to remain in its ground of being, consciousness without any objects, awareness just being aware, witnessing.

But for awareness to find its home ground, the I, the me has to always begin from where it finds itself in the moment. If I am lost in chaotic dreaming without any center, I begin with gathering my watching in concentration. If I am lost in contemplation, thinking about some problem, some question from every angle, I can begin to be aware of this whole movement. And when I see a movement of thought and am able to remain indifferent, I stay with this non-involved indifference until it too begins to disappear.

And when I am able to watch without any involvement and stay with the movement until it completely subsides on its own, then the I is absorbed into awareness without an I, and only awareness, only witnessing remains.

-purushottama

For more on this topic, you may wish to explore:

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Watching and Forgetting the Content

Awakening Before Enlightenment

After Awakening Before Enlightenment

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

 

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

It seems to me that the awakening of the double-pointed arrow is the fulcrum point, the nexus, of meditation. Before the awakening, all meditation is an exercise in creating and realizing the double-pointed arrow. After the awakening of the double-pointed arrow, meditation is about stabilization, and then with this stabilized awareness – the witness – the transformation occurs.

 

 

What is the double-pointed arrow? The simplest definition is awareness, or the witness. It is not only awareness of objects but also awareness of our own subjectivity, hence the witness. Without this element, there is no possibility of transformation. In fact, it is because of this element of a double-pointed arrow, the witness, that transformation takes place.

When we begin by watching the activities of the body or watching the breath, we are endeavoring, knowingly or unknowingly, to create the level of awareness where one is also aware of oneself, the double-pointed arrow.

It is in the activity of watching the mind that the turning point happens. It is by watching the mind that one becomes aware of being something other than the mind, and this is precisely the awakening of the double-pointed arrow, the awakening of the witness. It is important to point out that this awareness of being something beyond the mind is not just an intellectual or conceptual understanding. But rather it is the experience of there being thought (mind) but also the knowingness, the actual experiencing of being something beyond the mind, hence the double-pointed arrow.

And it is here after one first becomes aware of this double-pointed arrow that the work of stabilization takes place. For some time, one finds oneself shifting back and forth between pre-awakening and post-awakening until finally this state of double-pointed arrow is stabilized. This shifting back and forth is natural to the stabilization process.

From this stabilized watching, we witness the heart, and transformation gains momentum until finally what is watched is watchingness itself, being, the witness. At this point there is no longer a double-pointed arrow, just a single all-encompassing awareness. Here the observer is the observed. Here there is no center and no periphery, there is only oneness.

Bodhi Svaha!

-purushottama

For more on this topic, you may wish to explore:

Meditation Involves all Three

Watching and Forgetting the Content

Awakening Before Enlightenment

After Awakening Before Enlightenment

See all 0f Prem’s notes.