Podcast Episode: A Map from Mind to No-Mind

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: A Map from Mind to No-Mind.

click to play or download audio file:

A Map from Mind to No-Mind Podcast

Pip: Sat Sangha Salon — where the territory being mapped is the distance between thinking and the silence on the other side of it.

Mara: Today we’re working through a piece by Purushottama that traces that exact journey — the mechanics of moving from ordinary mind into no-mind, step by careful step.

Pip: Let’s start with the map itself.

A Map from Mind to No-Mind

Mara: The question this post is sitting with is a practical one: not whether no-mind is real, but how you actually get there — what the stages are, in order, with honest notes on where it gets hard.

Pip: The post lays out the sequence plainly, and here is the hinge of it: “We move from watching the objects of awareness — the thoughts of mind and the feelings of the heart — to seeing the watching itself.”

Mara: That shift is the crux. You stop being absorbed in what you’re watching and turn attention onto the act of watching — and that reorientation is what lets the objects quietly fade out.

Pip: It starts earlier, though. The first stage is just watching other people — the easiest available object. Then your own body, then your thoughts and moods. Each layer builds the watcher’s independence from whatever it’s watching.

Mara: And the post is specific about how to watch at that middle stage — thoughts and feelings require what it calls “indifferent watching, a watching without involvement, a watching without judging and also without analyzing.” That quality of watching is what earns the autonomy needed for the next move.

Pip: Which is the subtle one. Once the watching itself becomes the object, the original contents drift to the background and, without attention feeding them, begin to dissipate — until only seeing remains.

Mara: The post names that endpoint directly: “A seeing that is totally conscious because no energy is being lost in objects. This is no-mind.” And it’s careful to say this isn’t a one-time crossing — the map gets misplaced, the journey repeats, sometimes home is elusive, sometimes as present as the midday sun.

Pip: The companion pieces linked in the post — including Watching and also Forgetting the Content and The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow — fill out the surrounding territory, but this piece is the spine: a sequential, first-person account of the mechanics.

Mara: What strikes me is how the post holds both the precision of a map and the honesty that maps are not always at hand.

Pip: A map you occasionally lose is still a map.

Mara: The through-line here is attention itself — what it does when it turns back on itself, and what becomes possible in that turning.

Pip: Something worth sitting with — maybe more than once, from different directions.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

Here is the original Post from Purushottama, A Map from Mind to No-Mind.

Podcast Episode: Watching and also Forgetting the Content

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: Watching and also Forgetting the Content.

click to play or download audio file:

Watching and also Forgetting the Content Podcast

Pip: Welcome to Sat Sangha Salon — where the mind watches itself, forgets what it was watching, and somehow calls that progress.

Mara: Today we’re working through a genuine meditation puzzle from Purushottama — the paradox of watching the mind while simultaneously letting its content disappear. Let’s start with that tension between watching and forgetting.

Watching and also Forgetting the Content

Pip: The question here is whether two instructions that seem to cancel each other out can actually be practiced together — watch the mind, and forget its content. Those feel like opposites, so what resolves the contradiction?

Mara: The post sets up exactly that friction, and here is the core of the answer: “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, then slowly, slowly the content begins to evaporate and I am left with only a watchingness without content.”

Pip: So the resolution is not a technique so much as a quality of attention. The content does not get suppressed or ignored — it dissolves on its own when the watching is clean enough.

Mara: Right, and the post names what makes that watching clean: no grasping, no rejecting, no analyzing, no judging. What it calls the double-pointed arrow — that simultaneous awareness of being the watcher, not the watched — is treated as the hinge the whole practice turns on.

Pip: There is something almost counterintuitive there. Most people assume watching means engaging, tracking, following the thread. This says the opposite — the less you grip the content, the more clearly you see.

Mara: The post is honest that it is not a stable achievement. The phrase is “at least until of course I fall out of watching with these qualities” — which is a candid acknowledgment that the state is recoverable but not permanent.

Pip: That honesty is doing real work. It keeps this from reading as a solved problem and frames it instead as a koan that stays live in practice.

Mara: The post itself grew out of a meditation program session titled Like the Empty Sky it Has No Boundaries — and it points toward related explorations, including The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow and Meditation Involves all Three, for anyone who wants to follow the thread further.

Pip: The sky metaphor earns its keep here — boundless but not empty of weather.

Mara: The watching-without-gripping idea is one that tends to stay with you after the episode ends.

Pip: Which is either proof it works, or proof we forgot to analyze it properly. Either way — more from Sat Sangha Salon next time.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

Here is the original Post from Purushottama, Watching and Also Forgetting the Content.

The Atomic Moment – Osho

Remember two words which will be very important to understand this strange but immensely valuable book, The Secret of the Golden Flower: one word is “essence,” the other word is “personality.”

“Personality” comes from a root, persona which means a mask. In ancient days, the actors in Greek dramas used to wear masks. Persona means a mask. “Personality” comes from persona. The actors used to wear one mask, you are wearing many, because for different situations you need different masks. When you are talking to your boss you need one kind of mask. And when you are talking to your servant, of course, you need another kind of mask. […]

You have to use many masks, and you have many faces, and you go on changing them as circumstances change. Your personality consists only of false faces.

And what is essence? Essence is your original face, without any masks. Essence is that which you brought into the world when you were born. Essence is that which was with you in the womb.

Essence is that which has been given to you by God – or whatsoever you call totality, the whole, existence. Essence is a gift from existence to you.

Personality is a gift of the society, parents, school, college, culture, civilization. Personality is not you; it is pseudo.

And we continue to polish this personality, and we have completely forgotten the essence. And unless you remember the essence, you will have lived in vain because real life consists of essence. A real life is the life of essence. You can call it “soul,” or “God within you,” or whatsoever you will. But remember the distinction.

You are not your clothes – not even your psychological clothes. […]

Essence is that which you bring into the world. The personality is that which the world imposes upon the essence. The world is very afraid of the essence because the essence is always rebellious, the essence is always individualistic. And the world does not need any individuals, it needs sheep. It does not need rebellious people, it does not need people like Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, no; these people are dangerous. It wants people who are obedient – obedient to the status quo, obedient to the vested interests, obedient to the organized church, obedient to the state and the stupid politicians.

But society requires obedience, and society requires efficiency. The more mechanical you are, the more efficient you are. When you are more alive, you cannot be so efficient. A machine is more efficient than man. The society’s effort is to reduce every man into a machine. And how to reduce a man into a machine? Make him more and more unconscious, make him more and more robot-like. Let his essence completely disappear from his consciousness. Let him become perfectly pseudo. Let him be a husband, let her be a wife; a servant, a boss, this and that, but never let him be his essential self. Don’t allow that because that essential self is not obedient to anybody except to God. It has no other commitment. Its sole commitment is to the source. It knows no other masters. […]

The moment you encounter your essence […] You will have to put off all that is hiding your essence. That is revolution, metanoia. That is the turning point in a life: the society disappears and you become an individual. And only individuals can relate with God.

But a great consciousness will be needed. […]

Now the sutras.

Master Lu-tsu said:

Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

What I have been telling you about essence, Master Lu-tsu calls the primal spirit. The primal spirit is your essential soul, that which you have brought from God, untaught, unconditioned – as you were in your mother’s womb. How did you exist in your mother’s womb? Nothing was taught to you, you had no mind, you existed in a state of no-mind, hence the blissfulness of it.

Psychologists say that because of the experience of the mother’s womb – those nine months – man has been searching for God because of that nine months’ experience. The memory haunts him. Those nine months were the most beautiful that you have known. Maybe you have forgotten consciously, but deep down in the very cells of your body, in the very fibers of your being, those days are still pulsating. Those days are still carried by your existence. They may not be conscious in your mind, but they are there. Just as when in the night you fall into deep sleep, you don’t know where you go and what happens to you, but in the morning, you feel the relaxation, the freshness, the joy. Life has again happened to you. All the dust that you had gathered has disappeared. You are again fresh, you are rejuvenated.

Your body carries the feeling. Your body is calm and quiet and remembers something. The remembrance is not in the brain; you don’t know what happened exactly – where you had gone. Only a buddha knows where he goes in his deep sleep, because even in his deep sleep he remains alert. You are not alert even when you are aware, the so-called awareness. You are not alert when you are in that so-called wakeful state. Your eyes are open, but your mind goes on weaving and spinning a thousand and one thoughts. The inner talk continues, the inner noise continues. You see and yet you don’t see and you hear and yet you don’t hear, because deep inside there is a wall of thoughts – dreams continuously floating in the sky of your consciousness. You are not alert even when you are awake. The Buddha is alert even when he is fast asleep. Only he knows where he goes.

Where does he go? He goes to the essence, to the source, to the primal spirit. And even if for a few moments at night you fall into the primal source, you are rejuvenated. The man who cannot fall into deep sleep is really in hell. He goes to bed tired, exhausted, bored with life, and gets up in the morning even more tired, more bored, more exhausted. His life is hell.

In deep sleep you simply slip back into the primal source of your being. That primal source is always there; you have not lost it; you have only forgotten it. And that primal source is beyond all dualities. It is neither light nor darkness, it is transcendental. It is neither the life nor the death that you know, it is transcendental. It is neither man nor woman, it is transcendental. It is beyond all kinds of dualities. It is God.

Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

When you are in the primal spirit you are in your true nature. When you are in your personality you are untrue, you are just a plastic phenomenon. Watch, and you will be surprised how many things are plastic in you. You smile when there is no smile in the heart, then it is plastic. You sympathize when there is no sympathy in you, it is plastic. You show joy when there is no joy in you, it is plastic. You can even cry and weep without your heart feeling anything, then those tears are plastic. Just watch how many things are plastic in you. And remember, whatsoever is plastic is not you. God has not made you a plastic thing. God has given you eternal life. But that eternal life you can find only when you put off your shoes.

Put off your personality. Drop all personas all masks. Let all masks disappear. It will be painful because you have become identified with those masks; you think they are your faces. It is going to be almost a very painful process of death; and not only once – you will have to die many times, because each time a face falls you will find a death has happened. But again, new life will be released in you, fresher, deeper, more vibrant.

When all the faces disappear and the essence is left alone, you have transcended all duality, even the duality of time and space. When you enter deep meditation, when you enter your essential being, there is no space and no time. You cannot say where you are – all “wheres” disappear – you cannot pinpoint the place. Either you are nowhere, or you are everywhere: these are the only two possibilities. Both mean the same.

A few people have chosen to say one is everywhere – Vedanta has chosen to say that in deep meditation one is everywhere: Aham Brahmasmi, “I am God.” “God” means one who is everywhere, who permeates the whole existence. You become space itself. And “I am always, I am eternal.” It means you permeate time. This is one way of expressing it, the positive way.

Buddhism has chosen the other: the negative way.

Buddha says, “In deep meditation you are nowhere.”

All space has disappeared. And there is no time; you are in a timeless state. And when there is no time and no space, how can you exist?

Man exists only at the crossing point of time and space. One line of time, another line of space cross, and at that crossing the ego arises. Take away these two lines and the point of the ego disappears. It was only a crossing of two lines. It was a fallacious idea.

So Buddha says, “There is nobody.”

In deep meditation, time disappears, space disappears, and you disappear. All disappears, there is only nothingness, shunya, zero. This is the negative way of saying the same thing.

Either you can say, “I am God,” if you choose the positive expression – which has its own dangers, its own beauties too – or you can choose the negative expression, anatta, no-self, nothingness, nirvana. It has its own beauties and its dangers too. The very idea of nothingness puts people off – that is the danger. Who wants to be nothing?

In his forty years of ministry again and again Buddha is asked, “Why should one try to be nothing? That would be a death, ultimate death.”

And Buddha says, “Yes, it is an ultimate death. But it is beautiful.”

And the questioners ask, “But to whom is it beautiful – because there is nobody?”

And Buddha says, “There is only beauty, beatitude, and nobody to experience it.”

Naturally, the human mind says, “But then what is the point? If I am not there . . . And it is very beautiful, so let it be beautiful, but I am not there, so whether it is beautiful or not makes no difference to me. Why should I lose myself? It is better to be in a world which is not so beautiful but where at least I am.”

The goal of nothingness puts people off. That’s why Buddhism disappeared from India. And it learned a lesson: in China it dropped the negative language, in Tibet it dropped the negative language. Indian Buddhism, the original Buddhism, was absolutely negative. Under the influence of Buddha thousands were transformed, but you cannot find a man like Buddha every day.

The impact of Buddha was such that people were even ready to die and become nothing. That was because of Buddha, otherwise there is no enchantment, no charm in being nothing. But Buddha’s magnetism was such, his charisma was such, that thousands of people were ready to become nothing. “If Buddha says it, it must be right.” His word was so important, his eyes were a witness to it. “He has disappeared, so let us also disappear. And if he says so then we can trust.”

But once Buddha disappeared from the Earth, Buddhist priests could not convince people. They had to disappear from India completely. Then they learned a lesson. Outside India Buddhism started using positive language, started using all that Buddha had denied. It survived; but it did not really survive as Buddhism, it survived as Vedanta, it survived as a positive language. And Buddha’s greatest contribution was the negative expression.

The beauty of the negative expression is that it never allows your ego any satisfaction, any gratification. That is the danger of the positive language. If you say, “Aham Brahmasmi, ‘I am God,’” “Ana’l haq, ‘I am truth,’” the danger is that truth may become secondary and the “I” may become primary. Truth may become your shadow. The emphasis may start concentrating on the word “I”: I am God. If the emphasis remains on God and the “I” remains just a shadow to God, it is perfectly good. But that is very difficult. The “I” is very cunning, the ego’s ways are very subtle. It will use the opportunity, it will jump upon the idea, it will say, “Right, I am God and nobody else is. I am truth and everybody else is a lie.” But then the whole point is missed.

But one thing is certain: time and space disappear. Either you have to declare, “I am all” – the whole space, the whole time – “I am everywhere and everywhen,” or you have to use the Buddhist expression, “I am not. Time is not. Space is not. There is only an absolute silent nothing from eternity to eternity. A silence, not even a ripple.” But both statements indicate the same thing. Expressions are different, fingers are different, but they point to the same moon. That moon is your essence.

Master Lu-tsu said:

Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

And unless you overcome time and space you will not overcome death. Death exists in time, and death exists in space. Unless you overcome time and space you will not overcome mind and body.

Try to understand: body corresponds to space and mind corresponds to time. Mind is a time phenomenon and body is a space phenomenon. Body exists somewhere and mind exists “somewhen.” Think of mind without time and you will not be able to think of it. Mind is either past, present, or future: either memory or imagination or the present facticity. Mind exists in three tenses.

You are listening to me attentively, alert: mind is in the present. If you are here thinking of other things – you have read something in the Bible and it corresponds with me or does not correspond with me – you have gone into your imagination or into your memory. You cannot think of mind if time disappears; time is synonymous with mind.

Man is a miniature cosmos, a miniature universe. All that exists outside on a greater scale exists on a small scale in man. If you can understand man, you will have understood the whole universe. As above, so below. Man is the atomic constituent of this whole universe. If one atom is understood you have understood all matter. If one man is understood, if you can decipher your own mystery, you have deciphered all the mysteries possible, past, present, future – all.

And these two things have to be remembered: body is space, mind is time. When you meditate you disappear from the body, you don’t know who you are: man, woman, ugly, beautiful, black, white; you simply don’t know who you are. When you go in, the body is left far behind. A moment comes when you cannot even locate your body, and you cannot even feel its presence. You are no more attached to the form; you have become formless. And the same happens with the mind: you don’t know where your mind is, where that mind has gone. All that noise, that traffic noise that was constantly inside, becomes distant, distant, distant, and disappears. Suddenly a great silence explodes in you. In this state of no space and no time, you come to know your essence. And to know one’s essence is to have the first glimpse of Tao.

The primal spirit is beyond the polar differences.

All the polar differences disappear: man-woman, summer-winter, hot-cold, love-hate, positive-negative, time-space, life -death; all polar opposites disappear.

The primal spirit is beyond the polar differences.

And that’s why I insist again and again that you don’t get attached to any polarity. You have been taught to become attached to some polarity. Your so-called religions have been teaching you: either be worldly or renounce and go to the monasteries. I say remain in the world and don’t be of it, otherwise, you will become attached to a polarity. If you go to the monastery, you will be afraid of the marketplace. What kind of attainment is this? If there is fear there is no attainment.

And I know people who have lived in the Himalayas. Then they become afraid. Then they don’t want to come to the world because whatsoever they have been experiencing in the Himalayas disappears when they come to the marketplace. If it disappears in the marketplace it is no attainment. It may have been just the silence of the Himalayas that you mistook for your silence. It was borrowed. Certainly, the Himalayas are silent, and if you live in that silence, slowly, slowly that silence starts permeating you. But it is not your music; it is borrowed. Go away from the Himalayas and it will disappear.

This is creating a fallacy. This is enjoying a reflected glory. This is not your own glory. Live in the marketplace and create a Himalaya in the heart. Become silent in the noise. Remain a householder and yet be a sannyasin. That’s why I emphasize so much that I don’t want my sannyasins to renounce. Nothing has to be renounced. The way of renunciation is the way of the escapist, and the way of renunciation will make you attached to a polar phenomenon. That will not give you freedom. Freedom is in transcendence, and transcendence comes only when you live in the polar opposites simultaneously, together. So be in the world, but don’t let the world be in you.

Love, and yet don’t be lost in it. Relate, and yet be alone, utterly alone. Know perfectly well that all relationship is a game. Play the game and play it as beautifully as possible and as skillfully as possible. A game is after all a game and has to be played beautifully. And follow all the rules of the game because a game cannot exist without rules. But remember always that it is just a game. Don’t become attached to it. Don’t become serious in it. Always allow the sense of humor to remain alive in you. Remain sincere but non-serious. And then, slowly, slowly you will see that the polarities are disappearing. Who is worldly, and who is other-worldly? You are both or neither.

The primal spirit is beyond the polar differences. Here is the place whence heaven and Earth derive their being. When students understand how to grasp the primal spirit they overcome the polar opposites of light and darkness and tarry no longer in the three worlds.

The world of heaven, the world of Earth, and the world of hell – the three worlds – they all disappear for the person who knows how to transcend polarities.

I told you just a few moments ago that past, present, future – these are the three worlds. Past is hell, because it is dead it is ghostly: ghosts following you. Present is the Earth: the facticity, the fact, that which is right now and here. And future is heaven: hopes, aspirations, desires, longings. These are the three worlds, and you have to move in these three worlds constantly; you are shuttled back and forth. From the past you jump to the future, from the future you jump to the past. And this goes on. And the present is so minute that you are not very aware of it. It is sandwiched between the past and the future, and they are vast. And the present is a very minute, atomic moment – so small that you don’t even see it. The moment you become aware of it; it is already past.

To be present to the present one needs to be very attentive, utterly attentive. And that’s why to be present to the present becomes the door to go beyond time. You cannot go from the past because the past is so vast – infinite. You can go on and on, you will not find the end of it. That’s why I say psychoanalysis will not help. It goes into the past, and it goes on unravelling the past, digging up the past. You can go on . . . Psychoanalysis continues for years: three years, seven years, then too it is not complete. One simply becomes bored with the psychoanalyst and then changes the psychoanalyst and goes to somebody else and starts from ABC again.

And one thing I would like to say to you: sooner or later psychoanalysis is bound to discover that this life is not the end of the past. You can go on moving backwards, and you can come to what Janov calls “the primal scream.” Primal scream is the ultimate of psychoanalysis: the first scream of the child when he started breathing – through it he started breathing – the first scream. But once you have reached there you will be surprised: that is not the beginning either. Then you have to move into the womb.

In the East we have tried it. We have a very, very deep-going method called prati prasav – going back, going back. Mahavir used it, Buddha used it – they went through the womb. And then again, you have to go through death, because before the womb you died, and then the whole life again . . . layer upon layer. It is through deep psychoanalysis that the East became aware of the phenomenon of many lives. Christianity, Judaism, Islam are not aware of it. They never tried so hard. They have never tried psychoanalysis.

Freud is the first Jew to have tried it, and of course, Christians and Jews and all the so-called religious people were against him. The fear is that if psychoanalysis goes deeper, sooner or later the Hindu idea of rebirth will be proved right. That is the fear. If you go on digging you will find layer upon layer. Where will you end? Thousands of lives you have lived as man. And we have tried to penetrate all those. But then too there is no end. One day suddenly you see that before this life you were not a man; you were an elephant or a tiger or a dog. And then you start moving into animal lives. And before that, after millions of lives, one day you will suddenly discover that you were a bush or a tree, and then a rock.

In India, we say you have passed millions of lives. Where can it lead? The analysis of the past cannot lead anywhere. It can drive you crazy, but it leads nowhere. And so is the case with the future. Where to stop? How far is far enough? Where to make a point that “Now we will not look ahead”? In the East we have tried that too because we have worked tremendously on the concept of time. And both are unending: memory is unending, imagination is unending. Between the two is the present moment, very tiny, so tiny that you cannot become aware of it if you are not absolutely alert. It goes so fast, it is so fleeting.

But if you become aware of the present, then a door opens, the door to eternity. It is from there that mind moves into no-mind. It is from there that personality moves beyond personality into essence.

You know perfectly well Jesus was crucified. There were two thieves who were crucified with him: one was on his left side, the other was on his right side. You may not have ever thought of it as a tremendously significant symbol but Jesus represents the present moment. One thief is the past; the other thief is the future. And Jesus represents the present moment – closest to God, closest to essence. One thief mocked Jesus – the past always mocks you – he condemned Jesus. The past always condemns you. The other thief asked Jesus about the future, “What will happen after death? Will I be able to see you in heaven?” One is past, the other is future, and Jesus is just sandwiched between these two thieves.

And why call them thieves? Past is a thief, future is a thief, because they go on stealing your present. They are thieves. To me this is a parable. I don’t know whether any Christian will agree with me or not, but that is not my business at all. I don’t care whether anybody agrees with me or not.

Jesus is present, herenow, closest to the essence, just ready to die and disappear from the body and the mind. He hesitates a little bit – everybody hesitates. When you come to the present, you will see eternity facing you – no past, no future, but eternity – a totally different dimension.

Past, present, future are horizontal; eternity is vertical. Again, to me, the cross is the symbol of these two lines crossing. A cross is made of two lines: one horizontal, the other vertical. This is a representation of time and eternity. Everybody hesitates when one faces eternity, nowhereness, nothingness, or all-ness. It is so much. One is going to disappear into it like a drop. And the ocean is so big, one will not be found again. Even a dewdrop falling into the ocean from a grass leaf hesitates.

Jesus hesitated, and I love this man because he hesitated. His hesitation shows that he was human. His hesitation shows that he belonged to us – he was son of man. He cried to God, “Have you forsaken me? What are you doing to me? Have you abandoned me? Are you no more with me? I am disappearing and I don’t see your hands protecting me.” The dewdrop is falling in the ocean. “Where are you? I am falling into a deep nothingness. Death has arrived, and I had always hoped that in death you would be there waiting and you would embrace me, you would take me in your fold, you would be warm and loving. But where are you? Have you forsaken me? Have you abandoned me? I don’t see you anywhere.”

In fact, there is no God to be seen. God is not a person; God is a positive name for this absolute nothingness. But Jesus has lived with the Jewish idea of God as a person, hence this turmoil in his mind, the fear in his mind. He can’t see – he was waiting to see the beloved, the Father. He used to call the Father abba. He was waiting to find his father, but there seems to be nobody. The world is finished and beyond is nothing but a yawning nothingness, an abyss with no bottom.

It is very human. The life of Jesus is very human, and that is the beauty of it. That’s why it has impressed so many people – his very humanity is touching. But then he saw the point. He must have looked deep into the eternity, the nothingness. He must have seen the point: that “God cannot have a human face, this is his face,” that “God cannot have human hands, this nothingness is ready to embrace me, to take me deep into its heart.” And then he said to God, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. So, be it so. Let it be so. So you are nothingness. I am ready, I trust you. I will trust even your nothingness.”

Every Christian, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, every Jew – whosoever has lived with the idea of God’s personality will have to face this, will have to go through this anxiety period, this anguish. That is the beauty of the Buddha’s idea, and the Taoist idea, that God is nothingness, another name for nothingness. One who has lived with that idea of nothingness from the very beginning will not hesitate; he will simply disappear into it.

Unless you have been able to see your own inner nothingness you will not be able to do it. First meditate and go into your inner nothingness, then you will be able to enter into the nothingness of existence itself.

When men are set free from the womb, the primal spirit dwells in the square inch . . .

This is a Taoist map. Don’t get puzzled. There are different maps of human consciousness. Different maps use different symbols. This is a Taoist map.

Taoists say that after a child is born from the womb, the primal spirit starts dwelling in the third eye. Between the two eyes, between the two exists the third, exactly in the middle. What the Yoga map calls ajna chakra, the third-eye center, that’s what Taoists call the dwelling place of the primal spirit.

. . . The primal spirit dwells in the square inch, but the conscious spirit dwells below in the heart . . .

. . . but the conscious spirit dwells below in the heart . . ., the ordinary physical heart.

This heart is dependent on the outside world. If a man does not eat for one day even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If it hears something terrifying it throbs; if it hears something enraging it stops; if it is faced with death it becomes sad; if it sees something beautiful it is dazzled. But the heavenly heart in the head . . .

. . . that is in the third-eye center.

. . . when would it have moved in the least? Dost thou ask: “Can the heavenly heart not move?” Then I answer: “How could the true thought in the square inch move!”

This physical heart is constantly dependent on the outside world. It is affected by the outside world; it is part of the outside world inside you. This is not the true heart. Taoists say the true heart is in the third eye; it moves not, it is unmoving; it is always the same. The physical heart is always in chaos, and the spiritual heart in the third eye is always in order. It is order itself. That’s why Hindus have called it ajna chakra – the center from which orders arise, discipline arises. If something comes from the third eye it is immediately followed; the whole body follows it, the whole being follows it. It is the center from which commandments are issued. But it is fast asleep. You live from the physical heart. You have not known your spiritual heart yet.

The lower heart moves like a strong, powerful commander who despises the heavenly ruler because of his weakness . . .

But the physical heart thinks that the spiritual heart is weak because it moves not. And because it moves not you remain unaware of it. You only become aware of things when they move. If something remains absolutely unmoving you become oblivious to it. And the lower heart thinks itself very strong and thinks the heavenly heart, the spiritual heart, as being weak, almost dead, because it moves not.

. . . and has usurped the leadership in affairs of state.

And because of this, the lower heart has become the master of you.

But when the primal castle can be fortified and defended, then it is as if a strong and wise ruler sat upon the throne.

But if you start becoming more and more alert and more and more conscious, you will find that you have fortified the primal castle in the third eye. Whenever you become aware, you will be surprised: you start functioning from the third eye. Just become a little bit aware and you will see a little strain on the third eye. Whenever you become alert, the strain is more on the third eye. Something starts throbbing in the third eye, something starts pulsating in the third eye.

Once awareness has made the third eye function, once awareness has moved in the third eye and the third eye starts functioning, becomes alive… That’s why Hindus call it a chakra. Chakra means a wheel. The wheel needs energy; once the energy comes in, the wheel starts moving. By “movement” is meant that it starts functioning. Then a great revolution happens in your being: immediately the lower heart bows down to the higher heart. When the higher comes, the lower always bows down. It rules only when the higher is not present.

And that is the difference between a real religion and an unreal religion. The unreal religion says to you, “Try to control yourself. Do this, don’t do that. Control your senses. Discipline your body.” The real religion says, “Just go into the third eye center and let the spiritual heart function, and all will be controlled, and all will be disciplined. Let the master arrive, and everything will be settled immediately.”

The eyes start the light circulating like two ministers at the right and left who support the ruler with all their might. When rule in the center is thus in order, all those rebellious heroes will present themselves with lances reversed ready to take orders.

Just let the master come in, and there is no need to make any effort to create an order in your life, there is no need to cultivate character. That’s why I say don’t be worried about character. Simply put all your energy into being more conscious. Consciousness is followed by character as you are followed by your shadow. If you try to cultivate a character, your character will be false, pseudo, and you will become a hypocrite. And this is not the way to reach to the ultimate.

The way to the Elixir of Life knows as supreme magic . . .

This is the supreme magic. Why call it magic? – because once the higher heart has started functioning – it is as if a magical miracle happens . . . Your senses were never in order; your mind was always confused. You were always hesitating: to do this or to do that? to be or not to be? You were in constant tension: where to go? what to choose? Suddenly, as if somebody has done a miracle, all confusion disappears, clarity arises, life becomes transparent. You simply do that which has to be done. In fact, once the heavenly heart has started functioning, all that you do is good; you cannot do wrong – it is impossible.

The way to the Elixir of Life knows as supreme magic . . .

And three are the constituents of this supreme magic:

. . . seed-water, spirit-fire, and thought-earth . . .

These are Taoist symbols.

. . . these three. What is seed-water? It is the true, one energy, eros. Spirit-fire is the light, logos. Thought-earth is intuition.

You will have to understand these three.

Seed-water is eros, the energy that you know now as sexual energy, the energy of passion. Right now, it creates only troubles for you and nothing else. Right now, it pretends to be your friend but proves to be your foe. The more you follow it, the more it takes you into miseries. That’s why it is said that love is blind.

Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me, “Love is blind and marriage is an eye-opener.”

Love is blind because you don’t have eyes yet, and a great energy that could have become a great blessing to you becomes only misery. Eros is your energy. And Freud is right to seek and search for everything in your eros, in your sexual energy. But he is wrong because he does not know that this ordinary state of sexual energy is not its natural state; it is a perverted state.

In its natural state sexual energy rises higher and higher, it takes you upwards not downwards. In its natural state sexual energy becomes the golden flower within you. In the so-called ordinary, perverted state it simply takes you into new prisons because it moves outwards and downwards. It dissipates you; it only brings your death closer and closer. If the same energy starts moving upwards, it brings a new life, life in abundance. It becomes the Elixir of Life.

Just as the mud can become a lotus – the mud contains the lotus, the seed of it – so your sexual energy contains the seed of the golden flower. But the energy has to move upwards, you cannot move it upwards. There are people who try to make it move upwards; they become sexual perverts and nothing else. You cannot do it directly, but you can do it indirectly. Once your third eye, your spiritual heart, starts functioning, energy starts moving of its own accord. You have created the third eye, and the energy is attracted as if towards a magnet.

Right now, your energy moves outwards because you have magnets outside, far greater than you have inside. You see a beautiful woman and the energy starts moving outwards; the woman functions as a magnet. When your third eye functions you have such a strong magnet that nobody can pull you outwards. It is just a question of having a bigger magnet inside than the one which exists outside. Then the energy moves upwards, inwards.

If you go outwards you will move into the world of duality. If you go inwards you will move into the world of non-duality; you will become non-polar.

This is exactly the foundation of what I call metapsychology, or the psychology of the Buddhas. This is pure religion – not the religion of the rituals but pure religion: nothing to do with Christianity and Hinduism but something to do with your energy source.

The second is spirit-fire. It is light, logos; it is conscious mind. Eros moving upwards takes you beyond conscious and unconscious mind. Logos is conscious mind. It is psychology, it is science.

Thought-earth is darkness, unconsciousness, intuition. It is parapsychology, art. Thought-earth is intuition, darkness. Women live in thought-earth, in the intuitive vision. Women live as unconscious, illogical beings. Men live in spirit-fire, logos, logic, conscious mind. Artists are feminine, scientists are masculine. And the seed-water, eros, the one energy, is non-dual. It takes you beyond art and beyond science. It takes you beyond the conscious and the unconscious. It takes you beyond man and beyond woman. It takes you into the non-dual, the transcendental.

But the secret of the magic is to let your heavenly heart, which exists between your two eyes, function. Later on, we will go into the methodology of it – how to help it function.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #3

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 Great Scream will Arise in Your Heart – Osho

Why is every human being full of problems and unhappy?

The first thing: because man can be tremendously happy, the possibility exists, hence, his unhappiness. Nobody else – no animal, no bird, no tree, no rock – can be so happy as man. The possibility, the tremendous possibility that you can be happy, eternally happy, that you can be at the top of a bliss mountain, creates unhappiness. And when you see around you, you are just in the valley, a dark valley, and you could have been at the top of the peak: the comparison, the possibility, and the actuality.

If you were not born to be Buddhas, then there would be no unhappiness. So, the more perceptive a person is, the more unhappy. The more sensitive a person is, the more unhappy. The more alert a person is, the more he feels the sadness, the more he feels the potentiality and the contradiction, that nothing is happening and he’s stuck.

Man is unhappy because man can be tremendously happy. And unhappiness is not bad. It is the very drive that will take you to the peak. If you are not unhappy, then you will not move. If you are not unhappy in your dark valley, why should you make any effort to climb uphill? It is going to be arduous – unless the sun shining at the top becomes a challenge, unless the very existence of the top creates a mad urge to reach, unless the very possibility provokes you to seek and search.

People who are not very alert, sensitive, are not very unhappy. Have you seen any idiot unhappy? – Impossible. An idiot cannot be unhappy because he cannot be aware of the possibility that he is carrying within himself.

You are conscious that you are a seed, and the tree can happen. It is just by the corner. The goal is not very far away; that makes you unhappy. It is a good indication. To feel unhappiness deeply is the first step. Certainly, Buddha feels it more than you. That’s why he renounced the valley and he started climbing uphill. Small things that you come across every day became great provocations for him. Seeing a man ill, seeing an old man leaning on his staff, seeing a dead body, was enough; that very night he left his palace. He became aware of where he was: “The same is going to happen to me. Sooner or later, I will become ill and old and dead, so what is the point of being here? Before the opportunity is taken away from me, I should attain to something which is eternal.” A great desire arose in him to reach to the peak. That peak we call God; that peak we call kaivalya, that peak we call moksha, nirvana; but that peak exists within you like a seed. It has to unfold. So great sensitive souls suffer more. Idiots don’t suffer; dullards don’t suffer. They are already happy in their ordinary life: earning a little money, making a small house – finished. Their whole possibility is only that.

If you are aware that this can’t be the goal, this can’t be the destiny, then a great suffering will enter into your being like a sharp sword. It will penetrate to the very core of your being. A great scream will arise in your heart and that will be the beginning of a new life, of a new style of life, of a new foundation of life.

-Osho

Excerpt from Yoga: The Supreme Science, Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V. 10, Discourse #10, Q1 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V. 10).

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 Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life – Osho

The book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is one of the eternal sources where one can again become alive, one can again find the door to the divine.

The sutras:

Master Lu-tsu said: That which exists through itself is called the way (Tao).

The word “Tao” essentially means “the Way.” Nothing can be said about the goal. The goal remains elusive, inexpressible, ineffable. But something can be said about the Way. Hence, Taoists have never used the word “God,” “truth,” nirvana, no; they simply use the word “Way.” Buddha says, “Buddhas can only show you the Way. If you follow the path, you will reach to the truth.” Truth will have to be your own experience. Nobody can define the truth, but the Way can be defined; the Way can be made clear. The Master cannot give you the truth, but the Master can give you the Way. And once the Way is there then all that is needed is to walk on it. That has to be done by the disciple.

I cannot walk for you, and I cannot eat for you. I cannot live for you, and I cannot die for you. These things have to be done by oneself. But I can show the Way, I have walked on the Way.

Tao simply means “the Way.”

That which exists through itself is called the way.

And the definition is beautiful.

Lu-tsu says, “That which exists by itself, that which needs nobody else’s support, that which has always existed whether you walk on it or not . . .” Whether anybody walks on it or not does not matter, it always exists. In fact, the whole existence follows it unknowingly. If you can follow it knowingly your life will become a great blessing. If you follow it unknowingly, then you will go on stumbling, then you cannot enjoy it as it should be enjoyed.

A man can be brought into the garden, and he may be unconscious; he may be drunk or he may be in a coma or under the impact of chloroform. He can be brought into the garden, he is unconscious, the songs of the birds will be heard but by his ears, but he will not know. And the fragrance of the flowers will come riding on the breeze to his nostrils, but he will not know. And the sun will shine on him and will shower light on him, but he will not know. And the breeze will caress him, but he will not know. And you can put him under the shade of a big tree and the coolness of it, but he will not know. That’s how man is.

We are in Tao because where else can we be? To live is to be on the Way. To live is to live in God. To breathe is to breathe in God. Where else can we be? But just as the fish lives in the ocean and is completely oblivious of the ocean, we are living in Tao and are completely oblivious of Tao. In fact, it is so obvious, that’s why we are so oblivious. The fish knows the ocean so well . . . the fish is born in it, the fish has never been out of it, the fish takes it for granted, hence the fish is not aware of it. We are on the Way, we are in God, we live in Tao, through Tao, but we are not aware of it. The Tao exists because without the Tao trees will not grow, and stars will not move, and the blood will not circulate, and the breath will not come in. Life will disappear.

Life is possible only if there is a fundamental law holding it. Life is possible only if there is something that supports it. Look at the immense order in existence. It is not a chaos; it is a cosmos. What makes it a cosmos? Why is there so much harmony? There must be a law that keeps the harmony going, flowing, keeps everything in accord. But we don’t know about it. We don’t know anything about our own being, and we are joined through our being with Tao.

Tao has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the primal spirit.

It is the ocean of life that surrounds us. It is within and with-out – the pure essence. It is existence, it is the primal spirit. No name can contain it. All names are its name, and no shape is particular to it because all shapes are Tao’s shape. Tao exists in millions of forms. In the tree it is green, in the flower it is red. In man it is man, in fish it is fish. It is the same law. You can replace the word “Tao” with “God,” and it will be the same. What Christians and Mohammedans call God, Taoists call Tao, Buddhists call it Dharma, Jews used to call it Logos, but they mean the same thing. No name can contain it, or it can be expressed by any name.

Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

You can see the form, you can see the body – the body is the form, the substance that surrounds the essence – but you cannot see the essence. The essence is invisible to the eyes, unapproachable by the senses. It has to be felt immediately, not through any media.

You see my body, I see your body – it is through a medium. My eyes are telling me you are here. Your eyes are telling you that I am here. But who knows? the eyes may be deceiving – they do deceive sometimes. In the night, in the dark, you see a rope as if it were a snake. And when you see it as a snake it affects you as a snake. You are afraid; you start running. Or you can see in the desert an oasis which is not there, which is only a projected phenomenon because you are so thirsty that you want it to be there, so you create it there. Eyes deceive many times, so who knows?

If truth is known through a medium, then it will always remain suspect, doubtful; it can’t have any certainty – absolute certainty it can’t have. And a truth which is not absolutely certain is not truth at all. The truth has to be absolutely certain; it cannot be approximately certain. Then there is only one way: it should be known without a medium. One should know it directly, immediately. One should know it without any senses. And that’s how it is known. You cannot see life, but you can feel it. It is a subjective experience, not an object.

Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

You have these two eyes. These two eyes for the Taoist are very significant. Only modern science has been able to see the truth of it. These two eyes are not only the visible eyes. These two eyes represent the male and the female in you. Now modern science says that the brain of man is divided into two hemispheres, and one hemisphere is male, the other is female. The right side of your mind is feminine, and the left side is masculine. So your one eye represents the male in you, and your other eye represents the female in you. And when your male and female meet inside you, that meeting is what is called “heaven” – that meeting, that inner communion of your male and female.

Jesus says, “When your two eyes become one there will be light.” He is talking like a Taoist alchemist. When your two eyes become one, there will be light. When your two eyes become one – when your male and female disappear into each other – that is the ultimate orgasmic experience. What you feel making love to a woman or to a man is only a glimpse of it, a very fleeting glimpse. It is so momentary that by the time you become aware of it, it is already gone. You become aware of it only in the past, it is so fleeting. But it is a glimpse, a glimpse of the meeting of the man and the woman.

This is an exterior meeting. It is a miracle that it happens even for a single moment, but there is a deep possibility. And that has been the work of Tantra, Tao, Yoga, and all the great secret teachings of the world: to help you become aware of your feminine and your masculine inside – what tantrikas call Shiva and Shakti, and what Taoists call “yin” and “yang.” The polarity, the positive and negative in you, the day and night in you – they have to meet there.

The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

But unless they become one you will not become aware of it.

It is contained in the two eyes.

But you cannot see it unless they become one, then it is released. Then there is a great explosion of light. Zarathustra calls it “explosion of fire.” Lao Tzu calls it “explosion of light.” It is the same.

You must have come across the statement of John the Baptist. He used to say to his disciples, “I baptize you with water. After me shall come one who will baptize you with fire.” That’s what he meant when he said, “After me there will come one who will baptize you with fire.”

The baptism of water is an outer baptism. To John the Baptist water represents the outward flow.

Remember this, that the outward and the downward are synonymous, and the upward and the inward are synonymous. Whatsoever goes downward also goes outward, and whatsoever goes upward also goes inward, and vice versa. Water always goes downward; hence it represents an outward flow. It goes away from itself. Its journey is an exterior journey. Fire goes upward, always upward. And upward is synonymous with the inward. Its journey is always interior.

John the Baptist is saying: I am baptizing you with water, I am giving you the outer body of the religion. After me will come Christ who will give you the inner baptism, the baptism of fire.

Jesus himself again and again says, “Repent. Repent ye.” And the word has fallen into a wrong interpretation with the Christians. They have made it “repentance for misdeeds.” It has nothing to do with misdeeds. The word “repent” actually means return, go in, go back. It means turning back . . . restore your-originality. The word “repent” means metanoia, turning back – a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. If you go on flowing outwards, you remain water. If you turn in you become fire.

And when the two eyes, when these two flames, when these two hemispheres of your consciousness join together, are absolutely bridged and you become one flame, that one flame is what Plotinus calls “the flight of the alone to the alone.”

The Great One is the term given to that which has nothing above it.

And if you can become that one, you have become the Great One. This is the Taoist way of saying something about God without using the word ’”God.” If you become one, you have become God.

The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain non-action.

These are potential words What is the secret of making these two eyes one? How to make the male and the female one in you? How to let your woman and man dissolve into each other so that you are no more a duality, so that you are no more a house divided against itself, so that there is no longer any conflict and tension, so that all is one? In that oneness is bliss because all tension disappears, all conflict disappears, all anxiety disappears. How to become that one?

The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain non-action.

Man represents action, woman represents non-action. You have to use action to attain non-action. You have to make effort to become effortless. You have to go and put in all your energies, you have to become so active that nothing is left behind. All energy becomes involved into that creativity, and then, suddenly, when all energy is involved, there happens a transformation. Just as at a hundred degrees water evaporates, action, when it becomes total, evaporates, and non-action is left behind.

First you have to learn how to dance, and you have to put all your energies into dancing. And one day that strange experience happens when suddenly the dancer disappears in the dance, and the dance happens without any effort. Then it is inaction. first you have to learn action to go into inaction. That’s what meditation is all about.

People come and ask me why I teach active meditations – because that is the only way to find inaction. Dance to the uttermost, dance in a frenzy, dance madly, and if your whole energy is involved in it, a moment comes when suddenly you see the dance is happening on its own – there is no effort in it. It is action without action.

The Golden Flower is the light. One uses the Golden Flower as a symbol. The phrase the “lead of the water region has but one taste” refers to it.

The Golden Flower is a symbol, the symbol of when your energies are no more dual and have become one. Great light is released, and the light is golden: it is as if a flower of golden light has opened in you. And it is not just a symbol – it is a symbol, but it is almost literally true. It happens exactly like that. Right now, you exist as a darkness, as a dark night. Then you exist as a sunrise. You cannot see the sun anywhere, but the light is there. There is no source to it – it is a sourceless light. But once you have known that golden light in you, you have become an immortal. Then there is no death because the light never dies.

The whole of life, the whole existence consists of nothing but light. All are forms of light. You can ask modern physics too, and modern physics is in perfect agreement with Tao that all is light; forms go on changing, but the light continues. Light is eternal.

Many scriptures of the world begin with the word “light.” “In the beginning . . . God said, “Let there be Light . . .” That is the beginning. If there was ever a beginning, it could not have been otherwise, it had to have been with light. But there has never been a beginning. This is just a parable. Light has existed always. The Koran says, “God is light.” One of the names of God given by the Sufis is noor. Noor means light.

And the taste is the same – whether it happens in me or it happens in you the taste is the same. The taste of Buddhahood is the same. Buddha has said, “The taste of Buddhahood is like the ocean. You can taste it from the north or from the south, or from this part or from that part, from the shore or from the middle, but the taste of the ocean is the same. So is the taste of Buddhahood.” The moment a person attains to this eternal light, his life has a single flavor. That flavor is contained by absolute awareness. His unconscious has disappeared. There is no longer any dark part in his being.

Now if a Freudian looks into such a man, he will find only consciousness, only consciousness; he will not find the unconscious. If a Freudian looks in you, only one part is conscious. Against this one part there are nine parts which are unconscious – only one-tenth of your mind is conscious. A Buddha is one hundred percent consciousness.

The work on the circulation of the light depends on the backward-flowing movement, so that the thoughts are gathered together. The heavenly heart lies between the sun and moon.

Again remember, the sun represents the male energy, the moon represents the feminine energy. And the heart lies between the two. The heart is neither male nor female. And that is the beauty of the heart: the heart is divine, neither male nor female. And it lies exactly between the two.

If you are leaning too much towards the male energy you are too active and you don’t know how to be passive. That’s what has happened in the West. The West is sun-oriented – too much activity. People are driving themselves mad with their activity. Too much speed – everything has to be done immediately, no patience – no waiting. They have forgotten how to be passive, how to be patient, how to wait for things. They have lost all capacity to be inactive. They don’t know how to go on a holiday. Even if they go on a holiday, they are more active than ever.

More people have heart attacks on Sunday in the West than on any other day because it is a holiday, and people are too occupied. The whole working week they think they will rest when the holiday comes, and when the holiday comes, they have a thousand and one things to do. Not that they have to do them, that they are needed – no, not at all – but they cannot live in rest. They cannot just lie down on the lawn and be with the earth. They cannot just sit silently under a tree and do no-thing. No, they will start doing a thousand and one things around the house. They will fix this and unfix that; they will open their car engines and start doing things to it. They will do something. But they will remain active.

Their whole life people think that when they are retired then they will enjoy. But they cannot enjoy, they cannot rest. People die very fast once they become retired. Psychologists say they die ten years earlier because they don’t know what else to do. Death seems the only way to get rid of a life which has become meaningless, which has always been meaningless, which has been just a rush. People are rushing not knowing where they are going. All that they know is they have to go fast and faster and faster without ever being worried Where exactly are you going? You may be running in a circle. That is exactly what is happening: people are running in a circle.

The West is sun-oriented. The East is moon-oriented. The East has become too passive, too fatalistic: “Nothing has to be done. Simply wait, God will do it.” This is another kind of foolishness and stupidity. The East is poor, lazy, lousy, and people are not worried by anything. The misery all around, the poverty, the beggars, the illness – nobody is worried. Everything is accepted. “What can you do? It is God’s will. We have to accept. We have just to wait. When things get too much, God will come. What else can we do?” This is the feminine mind.

The Secret of the Golden Flower says you have to be exactly in the middle, neither male nor female, no leaning to any extreme. Then there is balance. Then one is active and yet remains inactive deep inside. Then one is inactive and yet remains active on the outside. On the outside be sun-oriented, on the inside be moon-oriented. Let sun and moon meet in you, and you be just exactly in the middle. And in the middle is transcendence.

The work on the circulation of the light depends entirely on the backward flowing movement, so that the thoughts are gathered together.

Man is a center and also a circumference. If you move towards the circumference, then you will have many thoughts. The circumference consists of the many. The center is one. If you move towards the center, thoughts start disappearing. At the very core, all thoughts disappear; there is only awareness. That’s what this secret treatise says:

. . . so that the thoughts are gathered together.

The light has to move inwards.

When you look at a tree your eyes are throwing their light on the tree – the light is moving outwards.

When you close your eyes, the light starts turning inwards – metanoia, repent, return. And when the light falls on your own being, there is self-knowledge, self-knowing. And that self-knowing brings you freedom – freedom from all entanglements, freedom from all attachments, freedom from death, freedom from body. It creates the soul in you.

That’s what Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples: that you are not born with a soul, you have to create it by metanoia.

The book of the yellow castle says: “In the square inch field of the square foot house, life can be regulated.”

In this small temple of your body life can be regulated.

In the middle of the square inch dwells the splendor. In the purple hall of the city of jade dwells the god of utmost emptiness and life.

Just see the contradiction: emptiness and life. Life is male, emptiness is female. Life and emptiness – both are two aspects of the inner God. When you have not chosen either in preference to the other, when you have not chosen at all – you have been just a watcher – you become that God whose one aspect is life and whose other aspect is death, whose one aspect is perfection and whose other aspect is nothingness.

Therefore when the light circulates, the energies of the whole body appear before its throne . . .

And when the light moves inwards and circulates inside your being, because there is no outlet left . . . that’s what meditation is. That’s what Buddha is doing under the Bodhi Tree. You sit silently, you close all the doors, and the light circulates within. Then for the first time you become aware of the body and all that the body contains – all its mysteries. This small body contains all the mysteries of the universe. It is a miniature cosmos.

Therefore when the light circulates, the energies of the whole body appear before its throne, as, when a holy king has established the capital and has laid down the fundamental rules of order, all the states approach with tribute; or, as when the master is quiet and calm, men-servants and maids obey his orders of their own accord, and each does his work.

And when this light is there moving inside you, the body becomes a servant. The senses become obedient servants. You need not try to control them. They follow you on their own accord.

This is the beauty of Tao: it never enforces anything; it does not want to cultivate any character. It says: Simply become full of light and all else will follow.

Therefore you only have to make the light circulate; that is the deepest and most wonderful secret. The light is easy to move but difficult to fix. If it is made to circulate long enough, then it crystallizes itself. It is the condition of which it is said: “Silently thou fliest upward in the morning.”

A very significant thing is being said in this sutra: The light is easy to move; it is difficult to fix it. So don’t try to fix it.

That’s where Yoga tries to do something which cannot be done easily. Hence the difficulty, the arduousness of Yoga – Yoga tries to fix the light. It also tries to fix the light between the two eyes – just exactly between the two eyebrows at the third-eye center. Yoga tries to fix it. That is the difference between Tao and Yoga: Yoga wants to fix it. “Concentrate on the third eye” – in a nutshell, that is the whole philosophy of Yoga. “If you can concentrate your whole consciousness on the third eye you will be transformed, your two eyes will become one and you will be full of light.”

And just beyond the third eye – the third eye is the sixth center in the Yoga map of consciousness – beyond the sixth is the seventh. The seventh is called “the one-thousand-petalled lotus.” If the light is concentrated at the third eye, when it becomes too much, it will give a push to the seventh center. It will start rising like water in a reservoir. And the push to the seventh center will open the bud that has remained a bud for centuries, for millions of lives. Tao works from a different standpoint. Tao says: To fix the light is very difficult. Don’t become concerned with fixing it. The easy way is to circulate it. Mind always finds circulation easy. It is mind’s nature to move. Mind always finds it difficult to concentrate, so why not use mind’s capacity? Why not ride on it?

Tao is a spontaneous science. Don’t cultivate, don’t force, don’t create unnecessary troubles for yourself. Use the natural capacity of the mind: that it moves, that it likes movement, that it is a wanderer. Use it. Let light circulate – we will come to know how to circulate it later on – find paths and let it circulate.

Through its circulation Taoists came to discover the seven hundred points of acupuncture. Circulating it all over the body, they became aware that there are seven hundred points where light becomes very, very aflame. And they counted them exactly. Now science corroborates it: there are exactly seven hundred points. Now even machines have been invented which can just picture your seven hundred points and where the light is missing in your points, where the energy is not moving in the right meridians. How did the Taoists come to know about it? They had no machines, no technology. Their only technique was to go in and circulate the light.

We will come to know about the actual method – how to circulate it. This is just to make a background, so you understand what exactly their approach is.

They say if you circulate the light and go on circulating it, at a certain point it crystallizes on its own. You need not worry about fixing it. Circulating, circulating, circulating, one moment, suddenly, you find all has stopped, and the thing has happened that Yoga tries to make happen. In Tao it is a happening. In Yoga it is a hard, long journey of effort. Yoga is male-oriented.

Tao is not female-oriented. Tao is both – a synthesis. Circulation is masculine energy, and fixation is feminine energy. Reach to the non-active, reach to the passive through action. Through effort attain to effortlessness.

In carrying out this fundamental principle you need to seek for no other methods but must only concentrate your thoughts on it. By collecting the thoughts, one can fly and will be born in heaven.

The Golden Flower is the elixir of life.

It is the secret of all immortality. This is what the Western alchemists used to call “the philosopher’s stone,” what in India is called amrit, elixir, nectar. This is an alchemical treatise: it gives you the secrets for transforming your chemistry into alchemy, for transforming the baser metal into gold. Right now you are only a baser metal. But you contain the secrets. If those secrets are worked out, you are transformed into gold. The gold is immortal.

The Golden Flower is the elixir of life. Although it works very accurately, it is yet so fluid that it needs extreme intelligence and clarity, and most complete absorption and tranquility. People without this highest degree of intelligence and understanding do not find the way, people without this utmost capacity for absorption and tranquility cannot keep fast hold of it.

Two requirements . . .. First, one needs intelligence and clarity. Don’t be worried about it. Don’t start thinking that if you are not intelligent then what? Everybody is born intelligent. Intelligence is an intrinsic quality – just as everybody is born breathing, everybody is born intelligent. The idea that a few people are intelligent and a few are not is utterly wrong – and has been dehumanizing many, many people – is very insulting, degrading.

All are born intelligent, although their intelligences may differ in their expression. One is intelligent in music, another is intelligent in mathematics, but if you make mathematics the criterion then the musician looks unintelligent. If you put them both into one examination where mathematics is the criterion, the musician fails. Change the criterion, let music be the criterion, and put them both into the examination where music will decide, then the mathematician looks stupid.

Because we have chosen certain criteria, that’s why many people have been condemned as stupid – they are not. I have never come across a single person who is stupid – it does not happen – but his intelligence may be a different kind of intelligence. Poetry needs a different kind of intelligence than being in business. A poet cannot be a businessman, and the businessman will find it very difficult to be a poet. One kind of intelligence is needed in being a politician, another kind of intelligence is needed in being a painter. And there are millions of possibilities.

Remember: everyone is born intelligent, so that is not debarring anybody. You just have to find your intelligence – where it is. And once you have found your intelligence you will be clear. People are living with unclarity because they are living with wrong ideas about themselves. Somebody has told you – a schoolmaster, a headmaster, a university – that you are not intelligent. But their criterion is only a chosen criterion; their criterion is not applicable to all. The universities are not yet universal. They don’t allow every kind of intelligence; they don’t accept all manifestations of intelligence. Once you have accepted your intelligence and you start respecting it, you will become clear; there will be no problem.

The poet feels stupid because he cannot be a good businessman. Now this creates confusion. He becomes inferior in his own eyes, disrespectful, condemning. He tries to succeed in business, but he cannot. This creates great smoke around him. If he simply understands that he is a poet and he is not meant to be a businessman, and to succeed as a businessman will be a suicide to him, he has to succeed as a poet . . . That is his intelligence, and his intelligence has to flower in his own way. He has not to imitate anybody else. Maybe the society will not pay for it because poetry is not needed as much as bombs are needed. Love is not needed as much as hatred is needed.

That’s why in the films, on the radio, and on the television, murder is allowed; it is not called obscene. But love making is not allowed; it is called obscene. This society lives through hate not through love. If somebody is murdering, it is perfectly okay. If somebody puts a dagger into your heart and the blood rushes like a fountain, it is perfectly okay. But if somebody hugs you, kisses you, loves you, the society is afraid. This is strange that love is obscene and murder is not, that lovers are condemned and soldiers rewarded, that war is right and love is wrong.

If you accept your intelligence, if you accept yourself, you will become clear, absolutely clear; all clouds will disappear.

And the second thing: you need absorption and tranquility. Intelligence and clarity are part of the male mind. Absorption and tranquility are part of the feminine mind. Only a woman can absorb, that’s why she becomes pregnant – she has the womb.

These two things are needed together. If you are not intelligent, you will not be able to understand what is being said to you, you will not understand what the master is imparting to you. And if you are not feminine, you will not be able to absorb it, you will not be able to become pregnant with it. And both are needed. You have to be intelligent, utterly intelligent, to see the point. And you have to be utterly absorptive to keep it in you, so that it becomes part of you. This is just a background. Slowly, slowly we will go into the techniques of how to circulate the light. Listen attentively, intelligently. Absorb it. It can be one of the greatest experiences of your life.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #1, Part 2

Here you can read A Door to the Divine, which is part one of this discourse.

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.

Podcast Episode: Be a Light unto Yourself

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: Be A Light Unto Yourself

click to play or download audio file:

Be a Light unto Yourself Podcast

Pip: Sat Sangha Salon — where the beach walk leads somewhere you didn’t expect.

Mara: Today we’re following a single insight from Purushottama: what it means to stop seeking attention from the outside world and turn it inward. Let’s start with that realization on the beach.

Be a Light unto Yourself

Pip: The setup here is deceptively ordinary — a working holiday in Mexico, walks on the beach, swimming in cenotes. But something lands mid-stroll that reframes a pretty fundamental human habit: the need to be seen.

Mara: The post traces it back to a specific moment of noticing. The observation is that “we seek attention in many ways and that it is natural to seek attention until we are ourselves giving attention to our true being in self-remembering or right-remembering.”

Pip: So the hunger for outside attention isn’t a character flaw — it’s a placeholder. It fills the space until something else does. That’s a meaningful distinction, because it shifts the question from “what’s wrong with me” to “what am I actually missing.”

Mara: And the post names what replaces it. Once you begin nourishing your being with your own attention, the need for external validation doesn’t get managed or suppressed — it simply evaporates. That’s the word used: evaporates.

Pip: Evaporates is doing a lot of work there. Not “diminishes,” not “becomes manageable.” Gone. Which is either very reassuring or a very high bar, depending on where you’re standing.

Mara: The post ties this directly to the Buddha’s instruction “Be a light unto yourself” — reading it as at least one answer to why that phrase matters. Self-remembering isn’t a spiritual luxury; it’s the actual source that makes external approval unnecessary.

Pip: What I find interesting is the framing of attention as nourishment. You’re not fighting the craving — you’re feeding the thing that was hungry all along, just from a different direction.

Mara: Right, and the setting isn’t incidental. The observation arrives mid-walk, surrounded by suntans and tattoos and what the post calls “undulating buttocks” — all of it display, all of it a bid for eyes. The insight emerges from inside the phenomenon it’s describing.

Mara: The idea that self-remembering makes external attention unnecessary — that’s not a small claim.

Pip: No. It’s the kind of thing that sounds simple until you actually try it. More from Sat Sangha Salon next time.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

Here is the original post from Purushottama, Be a Light Unto Yourself

Podcast Episode: Meditation Involves all Three

An imaginary conversation discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: Meditation Involves all Three.

click to play or download audio file:

Meditation Involves all Three Podcast

Pip: Sat Sangha Salon — where the questions are ancient and the answers keep arriving fresh, usually before breakfast.

Mara: Today we’re working through a piece by Purushottama on what meditation actually is — how concentration, contemplation, and dhyana relate to each other, and what it takes for awareness to find its own ground.

Pip: Let’s start with how those three stages fit together.

Meditation Involves all Three

Mara: The post opens with a distinction Osho draws between concentration, contemplation, and meditation — but the real claim here is that all three aren’t competing alternatives. They’re a sequence, a natural progression that unfolds within a single sitting.

Pip: And the writer lays out exactly where each stage lives. Here’s the spine of it: “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.”

Mara: So the upshot is that dhyana isn’t a separate technique you switch into — it’s what concentration and contemplation are building toward. Each stage increases self-awareness and loosens identification until the watcher can simply remain on the bank.

Pip: The river metaphor does a lot of work here — you’re not stopping the current, you’re just refusing to jump in. Which sounds effortless until you’ve spent twenty minutes narrating your own grocery list.

Mara: Right, and the post is honest about that friction. Contemplation is described as “a continual movement from being aware to being lost in thought, remembering and again lost into the stream of thought.” The re-membering — spelled out with a hyphen — is doing something deliberate there: rejoining awareness, piece by piece.

Pip: What strikes me is the practical instruction buried in the final section. You don’t start from some ideal state — you start from wherever you actually are. Chaotic and scattered? Begin with concentration. Already thinking hard about a problem? That’s contemplation — you can work with it.

Mara: And the post follows that logic all the way through. When watching becomes truly non-involved, thought doesn’t get suppressed — it subsides on its own. The interference itself, the grasping and rejecting and judging, is what keeps the stream moving. Remove that, and the witness is what remains: “awareness aware of itself.”

Pip: Three stages, one ground. The architecture was always there — the sitting just maps it.

Mara: What stays with me is the idea that you begin from wherever you are — not from some prepared, settled place.

Pip: Awareness finding its own address. We’ll keep following that thread next time.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

and Here is the original Post from Purushottama, Meditation Inovles all three.

Morality is Invented Religion – Osho

Is moral character absolutely useless?

Vadan, moral character simply means something imposed by others on you: it is not really religious.

It is a form of domination, a form of slavery, because you have not come to the understanding of what is right and what is wrong; you have been simply told by others. You don’t know really whether what you are calling “moral” is moral or immoral. One thing is moral in one society and the same thing is immoral in another society.

Just look around the earth, have a little bigger vision, and you will be surprised: there are so many moralities. How can there be so many moralities? Right is right and wrong is wrong! There is no possibility of many moralities. There is no possibility of a Hindu morality or a Mohammedan morality or a Jaina morality, but there are different moralities. That simply shows all these moralities are inventions – inventions by different societies to dominate the individuals which make up those societies. It is a strategy for imprisoning the individual.

The whole process is a very subtle trick. Now we have even found a shortcut to it. One great scientist, Delgado, has found that electrodes can be put into the human brain, and you will not know anything about it, because the brain is the most insensitive part in your body.

It happened once; a bullet was found in a man’s skull – after eleven years. When he went for some other operation and an X-ray was taken, there was the bullet inside his skull. He had been in the army and for eleven years the bullet had been inside, and he had not even been aware of it, because the brain has no sensitivity; it is absolutely – insensitive.

An electrode, a small electronic mechanism just like a small button can be put inside your head, and you will never know that it is there. And you can be controlled from far away; you can be controlled by anybody who knows about that electronic mechanism inside your brain. He can have a small remote-control unit: he can push one button on it and you will be angry; he can push another button, and you will be full of love; he can push a third button, and you will become very quiet, and a fourth button and you will become utterly violent.

Delgado has proved it. He inserted one electrode in a bull’s brain, and with his remote-control unit he was standing there, the bull was let loose, and he pressed one button. The bull became so enraged that nobody had seen any bull so enraged, for no reason at all. And he charged towards Delgado.

Thousands of people had gathered to see the experiment, and they thought the bull was going to finish Delgado, that this experiment was over. Their breaths stopped. The bull reached so close, just one foot away; one second more and he would have killed Delgado, but he pushed another button and there was a sudden stop. The bull stopped as if frozen, became just a statue – just one foot away. All rage simply disappeared. He was standing there in a yoga posture, frozen, not moving at all!

And Delgado says the same can be done with man. Now Delgado, sooner or later, is going to deliver the secret to the politicians, just as Albert Einstein did, and then you need not wonder what will happen. Then it is absolutely certain that in countries like Russia and China, children when they are born will be immediately changed into slaves – just a small operation in the skull. And from the Kremlin, from Moscow or Peking, the president of the country or whosoever rules the country can control the whole country. He can send waves and there will be great peace, and he can send other waves if he wants the country to fight some other country and people will be so violent, so murderous that one single individual will prove to be like ten or a hundred murderers. This is going to happen because now the secret cannot be kept away from the politicians.

The same thing has been done by the so-called moralists down the ages, but their process was a bullock-cart process. This is a jet-set age. Delgado is saying that this is the way to control human behavior. There is no need to teach morality – for what? Simply insert one electrode and let everybody be controlled.

That’s what the priests have been doing for centuries, but of course they were not aware of such a subtle mechanism. They were creating conscience in you; that is also an electrode. Every child was being told, “This is right, this is right, this is right . . .” continuously, and what is wrong: “You have to do this and you have not to do that.” This creates a conscience, an auto-hypnotic state. By the time the child comes of age they have created a certain idea of good and bad in him. Now his whole life he will be in trouble. If he follows the morality he will become a hypocrite, because the morality has never taken any consideration of his nature, of his uniqueness, of his individuality. No account has ever been taken of him; he has not been considered at all.

Some guy, Manu, five thousand years ago, decided what is right and wrong for the Hindus; it is still valid – for the Hindus it is still valid. Still there are women who commit suicide by jumping into the fire at the funeral of their husbands, because Manu said that to be a sati – to die with your husband – is the greatest virtue a woman can ever attain. Still today, every day, almost every day, somewhere or other some woman commits suicide, burns herself alive. And these women are worshipped by the Hindus; they are worshipped like saints. And all that they have done is to commit suicide. It is illegal, it is a crime, because the Britishers who ruled India for two centuries could not conceive any morality in it; they could see that it was just suicide. Their mind was not created by Manu; their mind was created by Moses. And in the Ten Commandments there is no commandment which says that the woman has to commit suicide, so they were very much against it. They made a law against it; the law is still there. But in spite of it, every day the crime happens. And the woman who is committing suicide believes she is doing something really great, something belonging to the high order of values.

The Mohammedan has his own morality. Just a few days ago in Moradabad a riot happened, because a pig, an innocent pig, entered into the sacred prayer place – Id–Ghah – of the Mohammedans; while they were doing their prayer the pig entered. Now some stupid person somewhere in their history has said to them that the pig is the most unholy animal on the earth.

Pigs are just poor people, maybe a little bit Polack, but poor people and very innocent! How can a pig make the holy place unholy? That means the unholiness of the pig is far more powerful than thousands of Mohammedans praying in a holy place. Their prayer is not great enough to transform the pig! The pig changes their whole atmosphere.

They killed the pig and they killed the constable who was standing outside because they thought he had allowed the pig to enter – because he was a Hindu. And the riot broke. One hundred and thirty people died, immediately. And this is the official number; and whenever there is an official number given, multiply it by four – then you will have the right number. At least six hundred people must have died, or more.

The Hindus believe in the cow, that it is the holiest animal in the world, even holier than many human beings. The sudras, the untouchables, who constitute the major part of the Hindu society, are not as important as the holy cow. To murder a sudra, says Manu, is not a big crime; to murder a cow is the greatest crime one can commit. You can commit hundreds of other crimes – it is nothing – but to kill a cow . . . Now that is Hindu morality, and every Hindu believes that the cow is his mother. This has become his conscience. And the same is true about everybody.

Morality is invented religion, not discovered religion. Discovered religion has to be your own, then certainly a great revolution happens in you. Then certainly your character has a virtue, but then it is not moral; it is religious, it is spiritual. Moral character has value to those who want to enslave you, but it is against you. You need a spiritual character, and spiritual character is not born out of moral education; it is born out of meditation. You need more awareness, not more moral education.

Vadan, that’s why I am not emphasizing moral character at all; my whole emphasis is on the essential. If at the very center of your being some knowing, some clarity arises, your life will be different, totally different. It will have a beauty, a grace. It will not be Hindu because you will not live according to Manu; only stupid people do that. Living according to somebody else is stupidity.

You are not here to live according to me. I can only help you to find your own insight, that’s all. I am not going to give you my insight – that would be moral character if whatsoever I think is right I impose upon you. But one man’s nectar may prove poison to another; something which is a medicine to one man may kill somebody else. So what is right for me, what is true for me, is only true for me. But I can help you to discover the source from where you can also see.

For example, a blind man can be helped in two ways. One is that you can give him detailed information: “Go a hundred feet forward, then turn to the left ninety degrees, then go two hundred feet, then turn to the right a hundred feet again,” and so on in this way, in detail. This is morality. The blind man remains blind, but he starts functioning, starts moving.

To give meditation is to give a blind man eyes. Then you need not give him this detailed information: “First go right and then left and then this and that.” There is no need; you have given him eyes. Now he can see where he has to go, where the path turns towards the left and where the path turns towards the right – because life is such a complexity.

You cannot guide the blind man forever. He is bound to stumble somewhere or other, he is bound to commit many mistakes, he is bound to forget many things. Every moment new situations go on arising, and he will be simply following your information that may not be true anymore. Life goes on changing. […]

A smart New York career girl married Stefano, a handsome young Italian farmer. She was not too happy with his social manner and started trying to improve him immediately. Throughout the wedding reception she continuously corrected his mistakes, telling him what to say, which knife to use at the table and how to pass the butter.

Finally, the celebrations were over, and they were in bed at last. Stefano fidgeted between the sheets, unsure of himself, but finally he turned towards his new wife and stuttered, “Could you pass the pussy, please?”

That is bound to happen! That is inevitable.

A moral person remains stupid and unintelligent because he depends on others’ guidance. And guidance that Manu gave five thousand years ago is no more relevant at all, the whole context has changed. The moral person lives according to the past and the meditator lives according to the present. The meditator responds to the real situation and the moral person only goes on reacting according to ready-made formulas.

These puritans and moralists have stuffed your minds and your beings with rubbish. They have made you junk-yards!

A housewife adorned with a head full of curlers, puffy eyes, no make-up, covered in a tatty old dressing-gown and worn-out furry slippers runs out of the house with the garbage just as the garbage truck is about to move on. She rushes up to the truck and, panting, asks the garbage man, “Am I too late?”

“No, ma’am, just jump right in!”

Drop conscience and create consciousness, and then you will be living an authentic life. And to be authentic is to be divine. To be authentic is to know what God is all about. To be authentic is to be true to Tao, the ultimate nature. Ais Dhammo Sanantano, Buddha says: This is the ultimate law.

Be conscious, be a light unto yourself.

-Osho

From Guida Spirituale, Discourse #12, Q2

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 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.

Awareness is My Successor – Osho

You have said that you don’t care if there is any successor when you are gone. What do you see happening to your sannyasins, to Rajneeshism, the moment you die?

I don’t at all think about it. Never does the thought occur to me, for the simple reason that the very idea goes against my approach. The people who are living with me are enjoying the moment. Do you want me alone not to enjoy the moment?

I am teaching everybody to enjoy the moment, and don’t be bothered by tomorrow. Living in the moment intelligently, consciously, meditatively, will take care of the future. There is no need for me to give you directives, guidelines for what you have to do when I am gone. That’s what all the old religions have done.

Manu gave all the guidelines for Hindus five thousand years ago, and they are still following them. Everything has changed, nothing of Manu is applicable any more. In fact it is a hindrance to the evolution of Hindus to become contemporaries. Now, Manu has committed a crime against humanity by giving these directives. He did not prove a blessing, he proved himself a curse. But the same is done by Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, Buddha. On one thing they are all agreed: that when they are gone they have still to control the people who had come into contact with them, who had trusted them. But they don’t trust their people.

I trust my people. I know that they are living fully, joyously. They know how to live joyously, how to live fully, and that’s enough. I have given them the experience; now the experience will be decisive. And they will have a freedom, because things will change, situations will change. I could give directives that will become hindrances to their growth, but I cannot do that. That is criminal, very criminal. […]

Nobody should try to make any guidelines for the future. The future is always open. I am not willing to be a participant in a crime which has been committed for thousands of years. I absolutely decline to stand with Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Mohammed, Jesus, Moses. No, that is not my company.

I want to make a complete breakthrough about everything, and this is one of the most fundamental things. There is hidden in it a deep desire to dominate people, even when you are gone —to put it in other words, that the dead should be dominating the living. That’s what has been happening all around the world. The living are not given freedom even to choose their own course, to choose their own moralities, to choose, according to the time, what is right and what is wrong.

Those people were very much concerned, because they were writing, they were dictating rules and regulations in detail. In Buddhist scriptures there are 33,000 rules for a monk. People have come to seek freedom, they have come to seek truth. What they are getting is a strange psychological slavery in its place, and that too even for coming generations.

So when I am asked whether I am going to make somebody my successor, I say absolutely no. I am giving my people clarity, understanding, awareness. That is going to be my successor. Every one of my sannyasins has to decide for himself. I have given him that much understanding, and I am making every effort to make him more and more conscious, so there is no need for him to be dictated to about things which are absolutely new by people who are dead, and who had no idea about those things. […]

I am not going to give a single instruction about anything. In fact there is no need. These people had to give instructions because they left people blind. They gave only beliefs to them; they never gave them consciousness, awareness. They never gave them the capacity to decide on their own. They never made them responsible for their own life.

Yes, they gave them a blind man’s stick, and directions on how to move so you can get to the door. But the house is being continuously renovated, continuously remade. Doors are being changed, windows are being changed, and the old blind man goes on finding the way with the old instructions.

No, I don’t want to give my people sticks. I want to give them eyes. And the people who ask me who is going to be my successor are asking because that’s how it has always been: somebody should succeed, and I should give clear-cut instructions about what you have to do and what you have not to do when I am gone. The people who ask me the question think that I am very irresponsible that I will simply die and leave the sannyasins without any instructions, without any moral code, without any ten commandments. They do not understand me. I love my people so much that I cannot create any hindrance in their life in the future. I cannot give them any instructions. I am giving them eyes so they can see where the door is for themselves. Why should I give them a map of the house when the house is continuously changing? And it has been proved by these five thousand years that all codes, all religions, all ethical systems have failed for the simple reason that they were trying to decide the future, which was not in their hands. Their intention was good, but their understanding was not enough.

I want my sannyasins to inherit my freedom, my awareness, my consciousness. And each sannyasin has to be my successor, has to be me. There is no need for anybody to dominate. There is nobody for anybody to dictate to. They are on their own. If they want to be together, they can be together. Out of their own freedom, it is their choice and their decision. If they want to move free, they have all the rights to move free.

So the thought never occurs to me. All that occurs to me is that the sooner I can make my people more clear about life and its complexities the better, because nobody knows when I may be gone. Before that my people have to be capable of blissfully and joyously giving me a send-off.

And I will not be leaving any ethical code, any structure to be followed. They will have to make it. And they will have to remember that they make it only for themselves, not for the future. They will have to do the same as I am doing for them. They will have to keep alert, because it is very easy to be tempted so that the new generation does not get lost. It is better to get lost than to be imprisoned.

So I am not giving you any structure, any instructions, but only clarity, understanding, consciousness. Remember, the same thing has to be done for the future generation. One day the same question will be before you. What are you going to decide for the younger generation of sannyasins for when you are gone?

Nobody has the right to decide for anybody else. Help the person to grow, to mature. Help the person to stand on his own feet, this is real compassion. And my compassion does not allow me to say a single word about the future. I am absolutely concerned with the present. And if the present is golden, the future born out of it will be even more golden.

-Osho

From The Last Testament, V. 1, Talk #6

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.

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