Tag: dhyana

The Light of Higher Consciousness – Osho

Dharana, concentration, is confining the mind to the object being mediated upon.

Dhyan, contemplation, is the uninterrupted flow of the mind to the object.

Samadhi is when the mind becomes one with the object.

The three taken together — dharana, dhyan, and samadhi – constitute samyama. By mastering it, the light of higher consciousness.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Once a Master of Zen invited questions from his students. A student asked. “What future rewards can be expected by those who strive diligently with their lessons?”

Answered the Master, “Ask a question close to home.”

A second student wanted to know, “How can I prevent my past follies from rising up to accuse me?”

The Master repeated, “Ask a question close to home.”

A third student raised his hand to state, “Sir, we do not understand what is meant by asking a question close to home.” “To see far, first see near. Be mindful of the present moment, for it contains answers about future and past. What thought just crossed your mind? Are you now sitting before me with a relaxed or with a tense physical body? Do I now have your full or partial attention? Come close to home by asking questions such as these. Close questions lead to distant answers.”

This is the yoga attitude towards life. Yoga is not meta-physical. It does not bother about the distant questions — faraway questions, about past lives, future lives, heaven and hell, God, and things of that sort. Yoga is concerned with questions close at home. The closer the question, the more is the possibility to solve it. If you can ask the question closest to you, there is every possibility that just by asking, it will be solved. And once you solve the closest question, you have taken the first step. Then the pilgrimage begins. Then by and by you start solving those which are distant — but the whole yoga inquiry is to bring you close at home.

So, if you ask Patanjali about God, he won’t answer. In fact, he will think you a little foolish. Yoga thinks all metaphysicians foolish; they are wasting their time about problems which cannot be solved because they are so far away. Better start from the point where you are. You can only start from where you are. Each real journey can begin only from where you are. Don’t ask intellectual, metaphysical questions of the beyond; ask the questions of the within.

This is the first thing to be understood about yoga, it is a science. It is very pragmatic, empirical. It fulfills all the criteria of science. In fact, what you call science is a little far away because science concentrates on objects. And yoga says, unless you understand the subject, which is your nature, closest to you, how can you understand the object? If you don’t know yourself, all else that you know is bound to be erroneous because the base is missing. You are on faulty ground. If you are not enlightened within, then whatsoever light you carry without is not going to help you. And if you carry the light within then there is no fear: let there be darkness outside; your light will be enough for you. It will enlighten your path.

Metaphysics does not help; it confuses. […]

Metaphysics, philosophy, all distant thinking simply confuse you. It leads you nowhere. It muddles your mind. It gives you more and more to think, and it doesn’t help you to become more aware. Thinking is not going to help: only meditation can help. And the difference is: while you think, you are more concerned with thoughts; while you meditate, you are more concerned with the capacity of awareness.

Philosophy is concerned with the mind; yoga is concerned with consciousness. Mind is that of which you can become aware: you can look at your thinking, you can see your thoughts passing, you can see your feelings moving, you can see your dreams floating like clouds. Riverlike, they go on and on; it is a continuum. The one that can see this is consciousness.

The whole effort of yoga is to attain to That which cannot be reduced to an object, which remains irreducible, to be just your subjectivity. You cannot see it because it is the seer. You cannot catch hold of it because all that you can catch hold of is not you. Just because you can catch hold of it, it has become separate from you. This consciousness, which is always elusive and always stands back and whatsoever effort you make all efforts fail . . . to come to this consciousness — how to come to this consciousness — is what yoga is all about.

To be a yogi is to become what you can become. Yoga is the science of stilling what has to be stilled and alerting what can be alerted. Yoga is a science to divide that which is not you and that which is you, to come to a clear-cut division so that you can see yourself in pristine clarity. Once you have a glimpse of your nature, who you are, the whole world changes. Then you can live in the world, and the world will not distract you. Then nothing can distract you; you are centered. Then you can move anywhere you like and you remain unmoving because you have reached and touched the eternal which never moves, which is unchanging.

Today we start the third step of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Vibhuti Pada. It is very significant because the last, the fourth, Kaivalya Pada, will be just attaining to the fruit. This third, Vibhuti Pada, is the ultimate as far as means are concerned, techniques are concerned, methods are concerned. The fourth will be just the outcome of the whole effort. Kaivalya means aloneness, absolute freedom of being alone, no dependence on anybody, on anything — so contented that you are more than enough. This is the goal of yoga. In the fourth part we will be talking only about the fruits, but if you miss the third, you will not be able to understand the fourth. The third is the base.

If the fourth chapter of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is destroyed nothing is destroyed because whosoever will be able to attain to the third will attain to the fourth automatically. The fourth can be dropped. It is in fact, in a way, unnecessary because it talks about the end, the goal. Anyone who follows the path will reach to the goal, there is no need to talk about it. Patanjali talks about it to help you, because your mind would like to know, “Where are you going? What is the goal?” Your mind would like to be convinced, and Patanjali does not believe in trust, in faith, in belief. He is a pure scientist. He simply gives a glimpse of the goal, but the whole basis, the whole fundamental basis is in the third.

Up to now we were getting ready for this Vibhuti Pada, the ultimate in means. Up to now in two chapters we have been discussing means which help, but those means were outer. Patanjali calls them bahirang — on the periphery. Now these three — dharana, dhyan, samadhi — concentration, meditation, samadhi — these three he calls antarang, internal. The first five prepare you, your body, your character — you on the periphery — so that you can move inwards. And Patanjali moves step by step: it is a gradual science. It is not a sudden enlightenment; it is a gradual path. Step by step he leads you.

The first sutra:

Dharana, concentration, is confining the mind to the object being mediated upon.

The object, the subject, and the beyond — these three have to be remembered. You look at me I am the object; the one who is looking at me is the subject. And if you become a little more perceptive, you can see yourself looking at me — that is the beyond. You can see yourself looking at me. Just try. I am the object; you are looking at me. You are the subject who is looking at me. You can stand by the side within yourself. You can see that you are looking at me. That is the beyond.

First, one has to concentrate on the object. Concentration means narrowing of the mind.

Ordinarily, mind is in a constant traffic — a thousand and one thoughts go on moving, like a crowd, a mob. With so many objects, you are confused, split. With so many objects you are moving in all directions simultaneously. With so many objects you are always, almost, in a state of insanity, as if you are being pulled from every direction and everything is incomplete. You go to the left, and something pulls you to the right; you go to the south, and something pulls you to the north. You are never going anywhere, just a muddled energy, a whirlpool, constant turmoil, anxiety.

This is the state of ordinary mind — so many objects that the subjectivity is almost covered by them. You cannot have a feel [of] who you are because you are so much concerned with so many things you don’t have a gap to look into yourself. You don’t have that stillness, that aloneness. You are always in the crowd. You cannot find a space, a corner, where you can slip into yourself. And the objects continuously asking for attention, every thought asking for attention, forcing exactly that the attention should be given to it. This is the ordinary state. This is almost insanity.

In fact, to divide mad people from non-mad people is not good. The distinction is only of degrees. It is not of quality: it is only of quantity. Maybe you are ninety-nine percent mad and he has gone beyond — a hundred and one percent. Just watch yourself. Many times, you also cross the boundary; in anger you become mad — you do things you cannot conceive of yourself doing. You do things for which you repent later on. You do things for which you say later on, “I did it in spite of me.” You say, “. . . as if somebody forced me to do it, as if I was possessed. Some evil spirit, some devil forced me to do it. I never wanted to do it.” Many times, you also cross the boundary, but you come back again and again to your normal state of madness.

Go and watch any madman. People are always afraid of watching a madman because, suddenly, watching a madman you realize your own madness also. Immediately it happens because you can see at the most the difference is of degrees. He has gone a little ahead of you, but you are also following, you are also standing in the same queue. […]

Just watch yourself and go and watch a madman, the madman goes on talking alone. You are also talking. You talk invisibly, not so loud, but if somebody watches you rightly, he can see the movement of your lips. Even if the lips are not moving, you are talking inside. A madman talks a little louder; you talk a little less loudly. The difference is of quantity. Who knows? Any day you can talk loudly. Just stand by the side of the road and watch people coming from the office or going to the office. Many of them, you will feel, are talking inside, making gestures.

Even people who are trying to help you — psychoanalysts, therapists — they are also in the same boat. In fact, more psychoanalysts become mad than do people of any other profession. No other profession can compete with psychoanalysts in going mad. It may be because living in close quarters with mad people, by and by, they also become unafraid of being mad; by and by the gap is bridged. […]

In the East, we never created the profession of psychoanalysts, for a certain reason. We created a totally different type of man, the yogi, not the therapist. The yogi is one who is qualitatively different from you. The psychoanalyst is one who is not qualitatively different from you. He is in the same boat; he is just like you. He is not different in any way. The only difference is that he knows about your madness and his madness more than you know. He is more informed about madness, about insanity, neurosis, psychosis. Intellectually, he knows much more about the normal state of human mind and humankind, but he is not different. And the yogi is totally a different man, qualitatively. He is out of the madness you are in: he has dropped that.

And the way in the West, you are looking for causes, for ways and means how to help humanity, seems to have from the very beginning gone wrong. You are still looking for causes outside — and the causes are within. The causes are not outside, not in relationship, not in the world; they are deep in your unconsciousness. They are not in your thinking: they are not in your dreams. The analysis of dreams and the analysis of thoughts is not going to help much. At the most it can make you normally abnormal, not more than that. The basic cause is that you are not aware of the traffic and the traffic noise of the mind, that you are not separate, distant, aloof — that you cannot stand as a witness, as a watcher on the hill. And once you look for a cause in a wrong direction, you can go on piling up case histories upon case histories, as it is happening in the West.

Psychoanalysis goes on piling up case histories upon case histories . . . and nothing seems to come out of it. You dig up the mountain and not even a mouse is found. You dig up the whole mountain — nothing comes out of it. But you become experts in digging, and your life becomes an investment in it, so you go on finding rationalizations for it. Always remember, once you miss to look in the right direction, you can go on infinitely — you will never come back home. […]

Coincidences are not causes: and the Western psychology is looking into coincidences. Somebody is sad: you start immediately looking into coincidences why he is sad. There must have been something wrong in his childhood. There must have been something wrong in the way he was brought up. There must have been something wrong in the relationship between the child and the mother or the father. There must have been wrongs, something wrong in the environment. You are looking for coincidences.

Causes are within, coincidences without. That is the basic emphasis of yoga, that you are looking wrongly now and you will not ever find real help. You are sad because you are not aware. You are unhappy because you are not aware. You are in misery because you don’t know who you are. All else is just coincidences.

Look deep down. You are in a misery because you have been missing yourself, you have not yet met yourself. And the first thing to be done is dharana. Too many objects are there in the mind; the mind is much too overcrowded. Drop those objects by and by; narrow down your mind; bring it to a point where only one object remains.

Have you ever concentrated on anything? Concentration means your whole mind is focused on one thing, on a rose flower. You have looked at a rose so many times, but you have never concentrated on a rose. If you concentrate on a rose, the rose becomes the whole world. Your mind becomes narrowed down, focused like a torchlight, and the rose becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. The rose was one in a million objects, then it was a very small thing. Now it is the all, the whole.

If you can concentrate on a rose, the rose will reveal qualities that you have never seen before. It will reveal colors that you have been missing always. It will reveal to you fragrances that were always there, but you were not sensitive enough to recognize. If you concentrate totally then your nose is only filled with the fragrance of the rose — all else is excluded, only the rose is included in your consciousness, is allowed in. Everything excluded, the whole world drops out, only the rose becomes your world.

There is a beautiful story in Buddhist literature. Once Buddha said to his disciple, Sariputra, “Concentrate on laughter.” He asked, “For what am I to look into it?” Buddha said, “You are not to look for anything specially. You simply concentrate on laughter, and whatsoever laughter reveals, you report.”

Sariputra reported. Never before and never after has anybody looked so deeply in laughter. Sariputra defined and categorized laughter in six categories “They are arranged in hierarchical fashion from the most sublime to the most sensuous and unrefined.” The laughter revealed its inner being to Sariputra.

First, he called sita: “a faint, almost imperceptible smile manifest in the subtleties of the facial expression and countenance alone.” If you are very, very alert, only then can you see the laughter he called sita. If you watch Buddha’s face you will find it there. It is very subtle, very refined. If you are very, very concentrated, only then will you see it, otherwise you will miss it because it is just in the expression. Not even the lips are moving. In fact, there is no visible thing, it is invisible laughter. That may be the reason Christians think Jesus never laughed: it may have been sita. It is said that Sariputra found sita on Buddha’s face. It was rare. It was very rare because it is one of the most refined things. When your soul reaches to the highest point, only then sita. Then it is not something that you do it is simply there for anybody who is sensitive enough, concentrated enough, to see it.

Second, Sariputra said, hasita: “a smile involving a slight movement of the lips and barely revealing the tips of the teeth.” Third he called vihasita: “a broad smile accompanied by a modicum of laughter.” Fourth he called upahasita: “accentuated laughter, louder in volume, associated with movements of the head, shoulders and arms.” Fifth he called apahasita: “loud laughter that brings tears.” And sixth he called atihasita: “the most boisterous, uproarious laughter, attended by movements of the whole body, doubling over in raucous guffawing, convulsions, hysterics.”

When you concentrate even on a small thing like laughter, it becomes a tremendous, a very big thing — the whole world.

Concentration reveals to you things which are not ordinarily revealed. Ordinarily, you live in a very indifferent mood. You simply go on living as if half asleep — looking, and not looking at all; seeing, and not seeing at all; hearing, and not hearing at all. Concentration brings energy to your eyes. If you look at a thing with a concentrated mind, everything excluded, suddenly that small thing reveals much that was always there waiting.

The whole of science is concentration. Watch a scientist working; he is in concentration.

There is an anecdote about Pasteur. He was working, looking through his microscope, so silent, so unmoving that a visitor had come and waited for a long time, and he was afraid to disturb him. Something sacred surrounded the scientist. When Pasteur came out of his concentration, he asked the visitor. “How long have you been waiting? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

He said, “I was going to tell you many times. In fact, I am in a hurry. I have to reach somewhere, and some message has to be delivered to you, but you were in such deep concentration — almost as if praying — that I could not disturb. It was sacred.”

Pasteur said. “You are right. It is my prayer. Whenever I feel disturbed and whenever I feel too many worries and whenever I feel too many thoughts, I simply take my microscope. I look through it — immediately, the whole world drops, I am concentrated.”

A scientist’s whole work is of concentration, remember this. Science can become the first step towards yoga because concentration is the first inner step of yoga. Each scientist, if he goes on growing and does not get stuck, will become a yogi. He is on the way because he is fulfilling the first condition, concentration.

Dharana, concentration, is confining the mind to the object being meditated upon.

Dhyan, contemplation, is the uninterrupted flow of the mind to the object.

First, concentration dropping the crowd of objects and choosing one object. Once you have chosen one object, and you can retain one object in your consciousness, concentration is achieved. Now the second step, uninterrupted flow of consciousness toward the object, as if light is falling from a torch, uninterrupted. Or, have you seen? You pour water from one pot to another pot, the flow will be interrupted; it will not be uninterrupted. You pour oil from one pot to another pot: the flow will be uninterrupted, continuous; the thread will not be broken.

Dhyan, contemplation, means your consciousness falling on the object in continuity, with no break — because each break means you are distracted, you have gone somewhere else. If you can attain the first, the second is not difficult. If you cannot attain the first, the second is impossible. Once you drop objects, you choose one object, then you drop all loopholes in your consciousness, all distractions in your consciousness, you simply pour yourself on one object.

When you look at one object the object reveals its qualities. A small object can reveal all the qualities of God.

There is a poem of Tennyson. He was going for a morning walk and he came across an old wall, and in the wall, there was grass growing, and a small flower had bloomed. He looked at that flower. The morning, he must have been feeling relaxed, happy, energy must have been flowing, the sun was rising . . . Suddenly the thought occurred to his mind — looking at this small flower he said, “If I can understand you root and all, I will understand the whole universe.” Because each small particle is a miniature universe.

Each small particle carries the whole universe as each drop carries the whole ocean. If you can understand one drop of ocean you have understood all oceans; now there is no need to understand each drop. One drop will do. Concentration reveals the qualities of the drop, and the drop becomes the ocean.

Meditation reveals the qualities of consciousness, and the individual consciousness becomes cosmic consciousness. First reveals the object: second reveals the subject. An uninterrupted flow of consciousness towards any object . . . In that uninterrupted flow, in that unfrozen flow, just in that flow . . . you are simply flowing like a river, with no interruption, with no distraction . . . suddenly you become for the first time aware about the subjectivity that you have been carrying all along — who you are.

In an uninterrupted flow of consciousness ego disappears. You become the self, egoless self, selfless self. You have also become an ocean.

The second, contemplation, is the way of the artist. The first, concentration, is the way of the scientist. The scientist is concerned with the outside world, not with himself. The artist is concerned with himself, not with the outside world. When a scientist brings something, he brings it from the objective world. When an artist brings something, he brings it out of himself. A poem, he digs deep in himself. A painting, he digs deep in himself. Don’t ask the artist about being objective. He is a subjectivist.

Have you seen Van Gogh’s trees? They almost reach to the heavens; they touch the stars. They overreach. Trees like that exist nowhere — except in Van Gogh’s paintings. Stars are small and trees are big. Somebody asked Van Gogh, “From where do you create these trees? We have never seen such trees.” He said, “Out of me. Because, to me, trees always seem desires of the earth to meet the sky.” “Desires of the earth to meet the sky” — then the tree is totally transformed, a metamorphosis has happened. Then the tree is not an object; it has become a subjectivity. As if the artist realizes the tree by becoming a tree himself.

There are many beautiful stories about Zen Masters because Zen Masters were great painters and great artists. That is one of the most beautiful things about Zen. No other religion has been so creative, and unless a religion is creative, it is not a total religion — something is missing.

One Zen Master used to tell his disciples, “If you want to paint a bamboo, become a bamboo.” There is no other way. How can you paint a bamboo if you have not felt it from within? . . . if you have not felt yourself as a bamboo standing against the sky, standing against the wind, standing against the rains, standing high with pride in the sun? If you have not heard the noise of the wind passing through the bamboo as the bamboo hears it, if you have not felt the rain falling on the bamboo as the bamboo feels it, how can you paint a bamboo? If you have not heard the sound of the cuckoo as the bamboo hears it, how can you paint a bamboo? Then you paint a bamboo as a photographer. You may be a camera, but you are not an artist.

The camera belongs to the world of science. The camera is scientific. It simply shows the objectivity of the bamboo. But when a Master looks at the bamboo, he is not looking from the outside. He drops himself by and by. His uninterrupted flow of consciousness falls on the bamboo, there happens a meeting, a marriage, a communion, where it is very difficult to say who is bamboo and who is consciousness — everything meets and merges and boundaries disappear.

The second, dhyan, contemplation, is the way of the artist. That’s why artists sometimes have glimpses as of the mystics. That’s why poetry sometimes says something which prose can never say, and paintings sometimes show something for which there is no other way to show. The artist is reaching even closer to the religious person, to the mystic.

If a poet just remains a poet, he is stuck. He has to flow, he has to move: from concentration to meditation and from meditation to samadhi. One has to go on moving.

Dhyan is uninterrupted flow of the mind to the object. Try it. And it will be good if you choose some object which you love. You can choose your beloved, you can choose your child, you can choose a flower — anything that you love — because in love it becomes easier to fall uninterruptedly on the object of love. Look in the eyes of your beloved. First forget the whole world; let your beloved be the world. Then look into the eyes and become a continuous flow, uninterrupted, falling into her — oil being poured from one pot into another. No distraction. Suddenly, you will be able to see who you are; you will be able to see your subjectivity for the first time.

But remember, this is not the end. Object and subject, both are two parts of one whole. Day and night, both are two parts of one whole. Life and death, both are two parts of one whole existence. Object is out, subject is in — you are neither out nor in. This is very difficult to understand because ordinarily it is said, “Go within.” That is just a temporary phase. One has to go even beyond that. Without and within — both are out. You are that who can go without and who can come within. You are that who can move between these two polarities. You are beyond the polarities. That third state is samadhi.

Samadhi is when the mind becomes one with the object.

When the subject disappears in the object, the object disappears in the subject, when there is nothing to look at and there is no looker-on, when simply the duality is not there, a tremendously potential silence prevails. You cannot say what exists because there is nobody to say. You cannot make any statement about samadhi because all statements will fall short. Because whatsoever you can say either will be scientific or will be poetic. Religion remains inexpressible, elusive.

So, there are two types of religious expression. Patanjali tries the scientific terminology. Because religion in itself has no terminology — the whole cannot be expressed. To express, it has to be divided. To express, either it has to be put as an object or as a subject. It has to be divided — to say anything about it is to divide it. Patanjali chooses the scientific terminology: Buddha also chooses the scientific terminology. Lao Tzu, Jesus, they choose the poetic terminology. But both are terminologies. It depends on the mind. Patanjali is a scientific mind, very rooted in logic, analysis. Jesus is a poetic mind; Lao Tzu is a perfect poet, he chooses the way of poetry. But remember always that both ways fall short. One has to go beyond.

Samadhi is when the mind becomes one with the object.

When the mind becomes one with the object, there is no one who is a knower and there is none who is known.

And unless you come to know this — this knowing which is beyond the known and the knower — you have missed your life. You may have been chasing butterflies, dreams, maybe attaining a little pleasure here and there, but you have missed the ultimate benediction.

A jar of honey having been upset in a housekeeper’s room, a number of flies were attracted by its sweetness. Placing their feet in it they ate greedily. Their feet, however, became so smeared with honey that they could not use their wings nor release themselves and were suffocated. Just as they were expiring, one of them exclaimed, “Ah, foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves.”

Remember, this is the possibility for you also. You may get smeared with the earth so much that you cannot use your wings. You may get loaded with your small pleasures so much that you forget all about the ultimate bliss, which was always yours just for the asking. In collecting pebbles and shells on the seashore, you may miss the utterly blissful treasure of your being. Remember this. This is happening. Only rarely somebody becomes aware enough not to be caught in this ordinary imprisonment of life.

I am not saying don’t enjoy. The sunshine is beautiful and the flowers also and butterflies also, but don’t get lost in them. Enjoy them, nothing is wrong in them, but always remember, the tremendously beautiful is waiting. Relax sometimes in the sunshine, but don’t make it a life-style. Sometimes relax and play with pebbles on the seashore. Nothing is wrong in it. As a holiday, as a picnic, it can be allowed, but don’t make it your very life then you will miss it. And remember, wherever you pay your attention, that becomes your reality of life. If you pay your attention to pebbles, they become diamonds — because wherever is your attention, there is your treasure. […]

Remember, wherever you pay your attention, that becomes your reality. And once it becomes a reality, it becomes powerful to attract you and your attention. Then you pay more attention to it: it becomes even more of a reality and, by and by, the unreal that is created by your mind becomes your only reality, and the real is completely forgotten.

The real has to be sought. And the only way to reach it is, first, drop too many objects, let there be one object: second, drop all distractions. Let your consciousness fall on that object in an uninterrupted flow. And the third happens by itself. If these two conditions are fulfilled, samadhi happens on its own accord. Suddenly one day the subject and object both have disappeared: the guest and the host both have disappeared: silence reigns, stillness reigns. In that stillness, you attain to the goal of life.

Patanjali says:

The three taken together — dharana, dhyan, and samadhi – constitute samyama.

Such a beautiful definition of samyama. Ordinarily, samyama is thought to be a discipline, a controlled state of character. It is not. Samyama is the balance which is attained when subject and object disappear. Samyama is the tranquility when the duality is no more within you and you are not divided and you have become one.

Sometimes it happens naturally also, because if it were not so, Patanjali would not have been able to discover it. Sometimes it happens naturally also — it has happened to you also. You cannot find a man to whom there have not been moments of reality. Accidentally, sometimes you fall in tune, not knowing the mechanism of how it happens, but sometimes you fall in tune, and suddenly it is there.

One man wrote me a letter and he said, “Today I attained five minutes of reality.” I like the expression “five minutes of reality.” “And how did it happen?” I inquired. He said that he had been ill for a few days. And this is unbelievable, but this is true, that to many people, in illness sometimes, the tranquility comes — because in illness your ordinary life is stopped. For a few days he was ill and he was not allowed to move out of the bed, so he was relaxing — nothing to do. Relaxed, after four, five days, suddenly one day it happened. He was just lying down, looking at the ceiling and it happened — those five minutes of reality. Everything stopped. Time stopped; space disappeared. There was nothing to look at, and there was nobody to look. Suddenly there was oneness, as if everything fell in line, became one piece.

To a few people it happens while they are making love. A total orgasm, and after the orgasm everything silences, everything falls into line . . . one relaxes. The frozenness is gone, one is no longer tense, the storm is gone, and the silence that comes after it . . . and suddenly there is reality.

Sometimes walking in the sun against the wind, enjoying. Sometimes swimming in the river, flowing with the river. Sometimes doing nothing, just relaxing on the sand, looking at the stars, it happens.

But those are just accidents. And because they are accidents, and because they don’t fit in your total style of life, you forget them. You don’t pay much attention to them. You just shrug your shoulders, and you forget all about them. Otherwise, in everybody’s life, sometimes, reality penetrates.

Yoga is a systematic way to reach to that which sometimes happens only accidentally. Yoga makes a science out of all those accidents and coincidences.

The three taken together constitute samyama. The three — concentration, meditation, and samadhi — are as if they are the three legs of a three-legged stool, the trinity.

By mastering it, the light of higher consciousness.

Those who attain to this trinity of concentration, meditation and samadhi, to them happens the light of higher consciousness.

“Climb high, climb far, your goal the sky, your aim the star.” But the journey starts where you are. Step by step, climb high, climb far, your goal the sky, your aim the star. Unless you become as vast as the sky, don’t rest; the journey is not yet complete. Unless you reach and become an eternal light, the star, don’t become complacent, don’t feel contented. Let the divine discontent burn like a fire, so that one day, out of all your efforts the star is born and you become an eternal light.

By mastering it, the light of higher consciousness. Once you master these three inner steps, the light becomes available to you. And when the inner light is available, you always live in that light: “At dusk the cock announces dawn. At midnight, the bright sun.” Then even in the midnight there is bright sun available; then even at dusk the cock announces dawn. When you have the inner light there is no darkness. Wherever you go your inner light moves with you — you move in it, you are it.

Remember that your mind always tries to make you satisfied wherever you are; the mind says there is nothing more to life. The mind goes on trying to convince you that you have arrived. The mind does not allow you to become divinely discontent. And it always can find rationalizations. Don’t listen to those rationalizations. They are not real reasons; they are tricks of the mind because the mind does not want to go, to move. Mind is basically lazy. Mind is a sort of entropy: the mind wants to settle, to make your home anywhere but make your home; just settle, don’t be a wanderer.

To be a sannyasin means to become a wanderer in consciousness. To be a sannyasin means to become a vagabond — in consciousness — go on searching and wandering. “Climb high, climb far, your goal the sky, your aim the star.” […]

Unless you become a god! Take rest sometimes by the way, but always remember: it is only a night’s rest; by the morning we go.

There are a few people who are satisfied with their worldly achievements. There are a few more who are not satisfied with their worldly achievements but who are satisfied by the promises of the priests. Those, the second category, you call religious. They are also not religious — because religion is not a promise. It has to be attained. Nobody else can promise you; you have to attain it. All promises are consolations, and all consolations are dangerous because they are like opium. They drug you. […]

Yoga is self-effort. Yoga has no priests. It has only Masters who have attained by their own effort — and in their light you have to learn how to attain yourself. Avoid the promises of the priests. They are the most dangerous people on earth, because they don’t allow you to become really discontent. They go on consoling you; and if you are consoled before you have attained, you are cheated, you are deceived. Yoga believes in effort, in tremendous effort. One has to become worthy. One has to earn God; you have to pay the cost. […]

The yoga is not just an idea, it is a practice, it is abhyas, it is a discipline, it is a science of inner transformation. And remember, nobody can start it for you. You have to start it for yourself. Yoga teaches you to trust yourself; yoga teaches you to become confident of yourself. Yoga teaches you that the journey is alone. A Master can indicate the way, but you have to follow it.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Science of Living; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.7, Discourse #1 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the twelfth program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.

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 Eight Limbs of Yoga – Osho

By practicing the different steps of yoga for the destruction of impurity, there arises spiritual illumination which develops into awareness of reality.

The eight steps of yoga are: self-restraint, fixed observance, posture, breath regulation, abstraction, concentration, contemplation and trance.

–Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

The light that you seek is within you. So the search is going to be an inward search. It is not a journey to some goal in the outer space; it is a journey in the inner space. You have to reach your core. That which you are seeking is already within you. You just have to peel the onion: layers and layers of ignorance are there. The diamond is hidden in the mud; the diamond is not to be created. The diamond is already there — only the layers of mud have to be removed.

This is very basic to understand: the treasure is already there. Maybe you don’t have the key. The key has to be found, but not the treasure. This is basic, very radical, because the whole effort will depend on this understanding. If the treasure has to be created, then it is going to be a very long process; and nobody can be certain whether it can be created or not. Only the key has to be found. The treasure is there, just nearby. A few layers of locks have to be removed.

That’s why the search for truth is negative. It is not a positive search. You are not to add something to your being; rather you have to delete something. You have to cut something from you. The search for truth is surgical. It is not medical; it is surgical. Nothing is to be added to you; rather on the contrary, something has to be removed from you, negated.

Hence, the method of the Upanishads: neti, neti. The meaning of neti, neti is: go on negating until you reach to the negator; go on negating until there is not any possibility to negate, only you are left, you in your core, in your consciousness which cannot be negated — because who will negate it? So go on negating, “I am neither this nor that.” Go on. “Neti, neti . . .” Then a point comes when only you are, the negator; there is nothing else to cut anymore, the surgery is over; you have come to the treasure.

If this is understood rightly, then the burden is not very heavy; the search is very light. You can move easily, knowing well all the time on the way that the treasure may be forgotten, but it is not lost. You may not be able to know where exactly it is, but it is within you. You can rest assured; there is no uncertainty about it. In fact, even if you want to lose it you cannot lose it, because it is your very being. It is not something external to you; it is intrinsic. […]

The seeker is the sought . . . when one is quiet and still.

Nothing new is achieved. One simply starts understanding that looking out was the whole point of missing. Looking in, it is there. It has always been there. There has never been a single moment when it was not there — and there will never be a single moment — because God is not external, truth is not external to you: it is you glorified; it is you in your total splendor; it is you in your absolute purity. If you understand this, then these sutras of Patanjali will be very simple.

By practicing the different steps of yoga for the destruction of impurity, there arises spiritual illumination which develops into awareness of reality.

He is not saying that something is to be created; he is saying something is to be destroyed. You are already more than your being — this is the problem. You have gathered too much around you, the diamond has gathered too much mud. The mud has to be washed away. And, suddenly, there is the diamond. “By practicing the different steps of yoga for the destruction of impurity . . .” It is not a creation of purity or holiness or divineness; it is just a destruction of impurity. Pure you are. Holy you are. The whole path becomes totally different. Then a few things have to be cut and dropped; a few things have to be eliminated.

Deep down this is the meaning of sannyas, renunciation. It is not to renounce the house, not to renounce the family, not to renounce the children — that looks too cruel. And how can a man of compassion do it? It is not to renounce the wife, because that is not the problem at all. The wife is not obstructing God; neither are the children creating barriers nor the house. No, if you renounce them, you have not understood. Renounce something else that you have been gathering within yourself.

If you want to renounce the house, renounce the real house; that is, the body in which you live and reside. And by renouncing I don’t mean go and commit suicide, because that won’t be renouncing. Just knowing that you are not the body is enough. There is no need to be cruel to the body either. You may not be the body, but the body is also of God. You may not be the body, but the body is alive on its own. It also partakes of life; it is part of this totality. Don’t be cruel to it. Don’t be violent to it. Don’t be a masochist. […]

Renunciation is not self-torture. If it is self-torture, it is only politics standing on its head. It may be you are so cowardly you cannot manage to torture others, so you can torture only your own body. Ninety-nine out of a hundred so-called religious people are self-torturers, cowards. They wanted to torture others, but there was fear and danger, and they couldn’t do it. So they have found a very innocent victim, vulnerable, helpless: their own body. And they torture it in millions of ways.

No, renunciation means knowledge; renunciation means awareness; renunciation means realization — realization of the fact that you are not the body. It is finished. You live in it knowing well that you are not it. Unidentified, the body is beautiful. It is one of the greatest mysteries in existence. It is the very temple where the king of kings is hiding.

When you understand what renunciation is, you understand this is neti, neti. You say, “I am not this body, because I am aware of the body; the very awareness makes me separate and different.” Go deeper. Go on peeling the onion: “I am not the thoughts, because they come and go but I remain. I am not the emotions . . . ” They come, sometimes very strong, and you forget yourself completely in them, but they go. There was a time they were not, and you were; there was a time they were, and you were hidden in them. There is again a time when they have gone, and you are sitting there. You cannot be them. You are separate.

Go on peeling the onion: no, body you are not; thinking you are not; feeling you are not. And if you know that you are not these three layers, your ego simply disappears without leaving a trace behind — because your ego is nothing but identification with these three layers. Then you are, but you cannot say “I.” The word loses meaning. The ego is not there; you have come home.

This is the meaning of sannyas: it is negating all that you are not but are identified with. This is the surgery. This is the destruction.

By practicing the different steps of yoga for the destruction of impurity . . . And this is impurity: thinking yourself to be that which you are not, is the impurity. Don’t misunderstand me because there is always a possibility you may misunderstand that the body is impure. I am not saying that. You can have pure water in one container and pure milk in another. Mix both: now the mixture is not doubly pure. Both were pure: water was pure, was exactly from the Ganges, and the milk was pure. Now you mix two purities, and one impurity is born — not that the purity is doubled. What has happened? Why do you call this mixture of water and milk impure? Impurity means the entering of the foreign element, that which does not belong to it, which is not natural to it, which is an intruder, which has trespassed on its territory. It is not only that the milk is impure, the water is also impure. Two purities meet and become impure.

So when I say renounce the impurities, I don’t mean that your body is impure, I don’t mean that your mind is impure, I don’t mean even that your feeling is impure. Nothing is impure — but when you get identified, in that identification is impurity. Everything is pure. Your body is perfect if it functions on its own and you don’t interfere. Your consciousness is pure if it functions on its own and the body does not interfere. If you live in a noninterfering existence, you are pure. Everything is pure. I’m not condemning the body. I never condemn anything. Make it a point to be remembered always: I am not a condemner. Everything is beautiful as it is. But identification creates the impurity.

When you start thinking you are the body, you have intruded upon the body. And when you intrude upon the body, the body immediately reacts and intrudes upon you. Then there is impurity.

Says Patanjali, “By practicing the different steps of yoga for the destruction of impurity . . . ” For the destruction of identity, identification; for the destruction of the mess that you have got in — the chaos, where everything has become everything else. Nothing is clear. No center is functioning on its own; you have become a crowd. Everything goes on interfering into each other’s nature. This is impurity.

. . . for the destruction of impurity, there arises a spiritual illumination . . . And once the impurity is destroyed, suddenly there is illumination. It doesn’t come from outside; it is your innermost being in its purity, in its innocence, in its virginity. A luminosity arises in you. Everything is clear: the crowds of confusion gone; the clarity of perception arises. Now you can see everything as it is: there are no projections, there is no imagination, there is no perversion of any reality. You simply see things as they are. Your eyes are vacant, your being silent. Now, you don’t have anything in you, so you cannot project. You become a passive onlooker, a witness, a sakshin — and that is the purity of being. ” . . . there arises spiritual illumination which develops into awareness of reality.”

Then, the eight steps of yoga. Follow me very slowly, because here is the central teaching of Patanjali:

Yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahar, dharana, dhyan, samadhiya ashto angani.

The eight steps of yoga are: yam, self-restraint; niyam, fixed observance; asan, posture; pranayama, breath regulation; pratyahara, abstraction; dharana, concentration; dhyan, contemplation; samadhi, trance.

The eight steps of yoga. This is the whole science of yoga in one sentence, in one seed. Many things are implied. First, let me tell you the exact meaning of each step. And remember, Patanjali calls them steps and limbs, both. They are both. Steps they are because one has to be followed by another, there is a sequence of growth. But they are not only steps: they are limbs of the body of yoga. They have an internal unity, an organic unity also, that is the meaning of limbs.

For example, my hands, my feet, my heart — they don’t function separately. They are not separate; they are an organic unity. If the heart stops, the hand will not move then. Everything is joined together. They are not just like steps on a ladder, because every rung on the ladder is separate. If one rung is broken the whole ladder is not broken. So Patanjali says they are steps, because they have a certain, sequential growth — but they are also angas, limbs of a body, organic. You cannot drop any of them. Steps can be dropped; limbs cannot be dropped. You can jump two steps in one jump, you can drop one step, but limbs cannot be dropped; they are not mechanical parts. You cannot remove them. They make you. They belong to the whole; they are not separate. The whole functions through them as a harmonious unit.

So these eight limbs of yoga are both steps, steps in the sense that each follows the other, and they are in a deep relationship. The second cannot come before the first — the first has to be first and the second has to be second. And the eighth will come to be the eighth — it cannot be the fourth, it cannot be the first. So they are steps and they are an organic unity also.

Yam means self-restraint. In English the word becomes a little different. Not a little different, really, the whole meaning of yam is lost — because in English self-restraint looks like suppressing, repressing. And these two words, suppression and repression, after Freud, have become four-letter words, ugly. Self-restraint is not repression. In the days when Patanjali used the word yam it had a totally different meaning. Words go on changing. Even now, in India also, samyam, which comes from yam, means control, repression. The meaning is lost. […]

Each word has a biography, and it changes many times. As life changes, everything changes: the words take new colors. And, in fact, the words which have the capacity to change, only they remain alive; otherwise, they go dead. Orthodox words, reluctant to change, they die. Alive words, who have the capacity to collect a new meaning around them, only they live; and they live in many, many meanings, for centuries. Yam was a beautiful word in Patanjali’s days, one of the beautiful . . . After Freud, the word has become ugly — not only the meaning has changed, but the whole flavor, the whole taste of the word.

To Patanjali self-restraint does not mean to repress oneself. It simply means to direct one’s life — not to repress the energies, but to direct, to give them a direction. Because you can live such a life, which goes on moving in opposite directions, in many directions — then you will never reach anywhere. It is just like a car: the driver goes a few miles to the north, then changes the mind; goes a few miles to the south, then changes the mind; then goes a few miles to the west, then changes the mind; and goes on this way. He will die where he was born. He will never reach anywhere. He will never have the feeling of fulfillment. You can go on moving in many ways, but unless you have a direction you are moving uselessly. You will feel more and more frustrated and nothing else.

To create self-restraint means, first, to give a direction to your life energy. Life energy is limited. If you go on using it in absurd, undirected ways, you will not reach anywhere. You will be emptied of the energy sooner or later — and that emptiness will not be the emptiness of a Buddha; it will be simply a negative emptiness, nothing inside, an empty container. You will be dead before you are dead. But these limited energies that have been given to you by nature, existence, God, or whatsoever you like to call it, these limited energies can be used in such a way that they can become the door for the unlimited. If you move rightly, if you move consciously, if you move alertly, gathering all your energies and moving in one direction, if you are not a crowd but become an individual — that is the meaning of yam.

Ordinarily you are a crowd, many voices inside. One says, “Go to this direction”; another says, “That is useless. Go to this.” One says, “Go to the temple”; another says, “The theater will be better.” And you are never at ease anywhere because wherever you are, you will be repenting. If you go to the theater the voice that was for the temple will go on creating trouble for you: “What are you doing here wasting your time? You would have been in the temple . . . and prayer is beautiful. And nobody knows what is happening there — and, nobody knows, this may have been the opportunity for your enlightenment, and you have missed.” If you go to the temple, the same — the voice that was insisting to go to the theater will go on saying: “What are you doing here? Like a foolish man you are sitting here. And you have prayed before and nothing happens. Why are you wasting your time?” And all around you, you will see fools sitting and doing useless things — nothing happens. In the theater who knows what excitement. what ecstasy was possible? You are missing.

If you are not an individual, a unitary being, wherever you are, you will always be missing. You will never be at home anywhere You will always be going somewhere or other and never arriving anywhere. You will become mad. The life which is against yam will become mad. It is not surprising that in the West more mad people exist than in the East. The East — knowingly, unknowingly — still follows a life of a little self-restraint. In the West to think about self-restraint looks like becoming a slave; to be against self-restraint looks like you are free, independent. But unless you are an individual you cannot be free. Your freedom will be a deception; it will be nothing but suicide. You will kill yourself, destroy your possibilities, your energies; and one day you will feel that the whole life you tried so much but nothing has been gained, no growth has come out of it.

Self-restraint means, the first meaning: to give a direction to life. Self-restraint means to become a little more centered. How can you become a little more centered? Once you give a direction to your life, immediately a center starts happening within you. Direction creates the center; then the center gives direction. And they are mutually fulfilling.

Unless you are self-restrained, the second is not possible – that’s why Patanjali calls them steps. The second is niyam, fixed observance: a life which bas a discipline, a life which has a regularity about it, a life which is lived in a very disciplined way, not hectic. Regularity . . . but that too will sound to you like slavery. All the beautiful words of Patanjali’s time have become ugly now. But I tell you, unless you have a regularity in your life, a discipline, you will be a slave of your instincts — and you may think this is freedom, but you will be a slave of all the vagrant thoughts. That is not freedom. You may not have any visible master, but you will have many invisible masters within you; and they will go on dominating you. Only a man who has a regularity about him can become the master someday.

That too is far away still, because the real master happens only when the eighth step is achieved — that is the goal. Then a man becomes a jina, a conqueror. Then a man becomes a Buddha, one who is awakened. Then a man becomes a Christ, a savior, because if you are saved, suddenly, you become a savior for others. Not that you try to save them: just your presence is a saving influence. The second is niyam, fixed observance.

The third is posture. And every step comes out of the first, the preceding one: when you have regularity in life, only then can you attain to posture, asan. Try asan sometimes; just try to sit silently. You cannot sit — the body tries to revolt against you. Suddenly you start feeling pain here and there. The legs are going dead. Suddenly you feel, on many spots of the body, a restlessness. You had never felt it. Why is it that just sitting silently so many problems arise? You feel ants are crawling up. Look, and you will see there are no ants; the body is deceiving you. The body is not ready to be disciplined. The body is spoiled. The body does not want to listen to you. It has become its own master. And you have always followed it. Now, even to sit silently for a few minutes has become almost impossible.

People pass through such hell if you tell them to just sit silently. If I say this to somebody he says, “Just to sit silently, not doing anything?” — as if “doing” is an obsession. He says, “At least give me a mantra so I can go on chanting inside.” He needs some occupation. Just sitting silently seems to be difficult. And that is the most beautiful possibility that can happen to a man: just sitting silently doing nothing.

Asan means a relaxed posture. You are so relaxed in it, you are so restful in it, that there is no need to move the body at all. In that moment, suddenly, you transcend body.

The body is trying to bring you down when the body says, “Now look, many ants are crawling on,” or you suddenly feel an urge to scratch, itching. The body is saying, “Don’t go so far away. Come back. Where are you going?” — because the consciousness is moving upwards, going far away from the bodily existence. Hmm? . . . the body starts revolting. You have never done such a thing. The body creates problems for you because once the problem is there, you will have to come back. The body is asking for your attention: “Give your attention.” It will create pain. It will create itching; you will feel like scratching. Suddenly the body is no longer ordinary; the body is in revolt. It is a body politic. You are being called back: “Don’t go so far away, be occupied. Remain here,” — remain tethered to the body and to the earth. You are moving towards the sky, and the body feels afraid.

Asan comes only to a person who lives a life of restraint, fixed observance, regularity; then posture is possible. Then you can simply sit because the body knows that you are a disciplined man. If you want to sit, you will sit — nothing can be done against you. The body can go on saying things . . . by and by it stops. Nobody is there to listen. It is not suppression; you are not suppressing the body. On the contrary, the body is trying to suppress you. It is not suppression. You are not saying anything for the body to do; you are simply resting. But the body does not know any rest because you have never given rest to it. You have always been restless. The very word asan means rest, to be in deep rest; and if you can do that, many things will become possible to you.

If the body can be in rest, then you can regulate your breathing. You are moving deeper, because breath is the bridge from the body to the soul, from the body to the mind. If you can regulate breathing — that is pranayam — you have power over your mind.

Have you ever watched that whenever the mind changes, the rhythm of the breath immediately changes? If you do the opposite — if you change that rhythm of the breath — the mind has to change immediately. When you are angry you cannot breathe silently; otherwise the anger will disappear. Try. When you are feeling angry your breath goes chaotic, it becomes irregular, loses all rhythm, becomes noisy, restless. It is no longer a harmony. A discord starts being there; the accord is lost. Try one thing: whenever you are getting angry just relax and let the breath be in rhythm. Suddenly you will feel the anger has disappeared. The anger cannot exist without a particular type of breathing in your body.

When you are making love the breath changes, becomes very violent. When you are very much filled with sexuality, the breath changes, becomes very violent. Sex has a little violence in it. Lovers are known to bite each other and sometimes harm each other. And if you see two persons making love, you will see that some sort of fighting is going on. There is a little violence in it. And both are breathing chaotically; their breathings are not in rhythm, not in unison.

In tantra, where much has been done about sex and the transformation of sex, they have worked very much on the rhythm of the breath. If two lovers, while making love, can remain in a rhythmic breathing, in unison, that both have the same rhythm, there will be no ejaculation. They can make love for hours, because ejaculation is possible only when the breath is not in rhythm; only then can the body throw the energy. If the breath is in rhythm, the body absorbs the energy; it never throws it out. Tantra developed many techniques of changing the rhythm of breath. Then you can make love for hours and you don’t lose energy. Rather on the contrary you gain, because if a woman loves a man and a man loves a woman, they help each other to be recharged — because they are opposite energies. When opposite energies meet and spark, they charge each other; otherwise, energy is lost and, after the lovemaking, you feel a little cheated, deceived — so much promise and nothing comes in the hand, the hands remain empty.

After asan comes breath regulation, pranayam. Watch for a few days and just take notes: when you become angry what is the rhythm of your breathing — whether exhalation is long or inhalation is long or are they the same, or inhalation is very small and exhalation very long, or exhalation very small, inhalation very long. Just watch the proportion of inhalation and exhalation. When you are sexually aroused, watch, take a note. When sometimes sitting silently and looking at the sky in the night, everything is quiet around you. Just take note of how your breath is going. When you are feeling filled with compassion, watch, note down. When you are in a fighting mood, watch, note down. Just make a chart of your own breathing, and then you know much.

And pranayam is not something which can be taught to you. You have to discover it because everybody has a different rhythm to his breathing. Everybody’s breathing and its rhythm is as much different as thumbprints. Breathing is an individual phenomenon, that’s why I never teach it. You have to discover your own rhythm. Your rhythm may not be a rhythm for somebody else, or may be harmful for somebody else. Your rhythm — you have to find.

And that is not difficult. There is no need to ask any expert. Just keep a chart for one month of all your moods and states. Then you know which is the rhythm where you feel most restful, relaxed, in a deep let-go; which is the rhythm where you feel quiet, calm, collected, cool; which is the rhythm when, suddenly, you feel blissful, filled with something unknown, overflowing — you have so much in that moment, you can give to the whole world and it will not be exhausted. Feel and watch the moment when you feel that you are one with the universe, when you feel the separateness is there no more, a bridge. When you feel one with the trees and the birds. and the rivers and the rocks, and the ocean and the sand — watch. You will find that there are many rhythms to your breath, a great spectrum from the most violent, ugly, miserable hell-type to the most silent heaven-type.

And then when you have discovered your rhythm, practice it — make it a part of your life. By and by it becomes unconscious; then you only breathe in that rhythm. And with that rhythm your life will be a life of a yogi: you will not be angry, you will not feel so sexual, you will not feel so filled with hatred. Suddenly you will feel a transmutation is happening to you.

Pranayam is one of the greatest discoveries that has even happened to human consciousness. Compared to pranayam, going to the moon is nothing. It looks very exciting, but it is nothing, because even if you reach to the moon, what will you do there? Even if you reach to the moon you will remain the same. You will do the same nonsense that you are doing here. Pranayam is an inner journey. And pranayam is the fourth — and there are only eight steps. Half the journey is completed on pranayam. A man who has learned pranayam, not by a teacher — because that is a false thing, I don’t approve of it — but by his own discovery and alertness, a man who has learned his rhythm of being, has achieved half the goal already. Pranayam is one of the most significant discoveries.

And after pranayam, breath regulation, is pratyahar, abstraction. Pratyahar is the same as I was talking to you about yesterday. The “repent” of Christians is, in fact, in Hebrew “return” — not repent but return, going back. The toba of Mohammedans is nothing; it is not “repenting.” That too has become colored with the meaning of repentance; toba is also returning back. And pratyahar is also returning back, coming back — coming in, turning in, returning home. After pranayam that is possible — pratyahar — because pranayam will give you the rhythm. Now you know the whole spectrum: you know in what rhythm you are nearest to home and in what rhythm you are farthest from yourself. Violent, sexual, angry, jealous, possessive, you will find you are far away from yourself; in compassion, in love, in prayer, in gratitude, you will find yourself nearer home. After pranayam, pratyahar, return, is possible. Now you know the way — then you already know how to step backwards.

Then comes dharana. After pratyahar, when you have started coming back nearer home, coming nearer your innermost core, you are just at the gate of your own being. Pratyahar brings you near the gate; pranayam is the bridge from the out to the in. Pratyahar, returning, is the gate, and then is the possibility of dharana, concentration. Now you can become capable of bringing your mind to one object. First, you gave direction to your body; first, you gave direction to your life energy — now you give direction to your consciousness. Now the consciousness cannot be allowed to go anywhere and everywhere. Now it has to be brought to a goal. This goal is concentration, dharana: you fix your consciousness on one point.

When consciousness is fixed on one point thoughts cease, because thoughts are possible only when your consciousness goes on wavering — from here to there, from there to somewhere else. When your consciousness is continuously jumping like a monkey, then there are many thoughts and your whole mind is just filled with crowds — a marketplace. Now there is a possibility — after pratyahar, pranayam, there is a possibility — you can concentrate on one point.

If you can concentrate on one point, then the possibility of dhyan. In concentration you bring your mind to one point. In dhyan you drop that point also. Now you are totally centered, going nowhere — because if you are going anywhere, it is always going out. Even a single thought in concentration is something outside you — object exists; you are not alone, there are two. Even in concentration there are two: the object and you. After concentration the object has to be dropped.

All the temples lead you only up to concentration. They cannot lead you beyond because all the temples have an object in them: the image of God is an object to concentrate on. All the temples lead you only up to dharana, concentration. That’s why the higher a religion goes, the temple and the image disappear. They have to disappear. The temple should be absolutely empty, so that only you are there — nobody, nobody else, no object: pure subjectivity.

Dhyan is pure subjectivity, contemplation — not contemplating “something,” because if you are contemplating something it is concentration. In English there are no better words. Concentration means something is there to concentrate upon. Dhyan is meditation: nothing is there, everything dropped, but you are in an intense state of awareness. The object has dropped, but the subject has not fallen into sleep. Deeply concentrated, without any object, centered — but still the feeling of “I” will persist. It will hover. The object has fallen, but the subject is still there. You still feel you are.

This is not ego. In Sanskrit we have two words, ahankar and asmita. Ahankar means “I am.” And asmita means “am.” Just “amness” — no ego exists, just the shadow is left. You still feel, somehow, you are. It is not a thought, because if it is a thought that “I am,” it is an ego. In meditation the ego has disappeared completely; but an amness, a shadowlike phenomenon, just a feeling, hovers around you — just a mist-like thing, that just in the morning hovers around you. In meditation it is morning, the sun has not risen yet, it is misty: asmita, amness, is still there.

You can still fall back. A slight disturbance — somebody talking and you listen — meditation has disappeared; you have come back to concentration. If you not only listen but you have started thinking about it, even concentration has disappeared; you have come back to pratyahar. And if not only are you thinking but you have become identified with the thinking, pratyahar has disappeared; you have fallen to pranayam. And if the thought has taken so much possession of you that your breathing rhythm is lost, pranayam has disappeared: you have fallen to asan. But if the thought and the breathing are so much disturbed that the body starts shaking or becomes restless, asan has disappeared. They are related.

One can fall from meditation. Meditation is the most dangerous point in the world, because that is the highest point from where you can fall, and you can fall badly. In India we have a word, yogabhrasta: one who has fallen from yoga. This word is very, very strange. It appreciates and condemns together. When we say somebody is a yogi, it is a great appreciation. When we say somebody is yogabhrasta, it is also a condemnation: fallen from the yoga. This man had attained up to meditation somewhere in his past life and then fell down. From meditation the possibility of going back to the world is still there — because of asmita, because of amness. The seed is still alive. It can sprout any moment; so the journey is not over.

When asmita also disappears, when you no longer know that you are — of course, you are but there is no reflection upon it, that “I am,” or even amness — then happens samadhi, trance, ecstasy. Samadhi is going beyond; then one never comes back. Samadhi is a point of no return. From there nobody falls. A man in samadhi is a god: we call Buddha a god, Mahavir a god. A man in samadhi is no longer of this world. He may be in this world, but he is no longer of this world. He doesn’t belong to it. He is an outsider. He may be here, but his home is somewhere else. He may walk on this earth, but he no longer walks on the earth. It is said about the man of samadhi, he lives in the world, but the world does not live in him.

These are the eight steps and eight limbs together. Limbs because they are so interrelated and so organically related; steps because you have to pass one by one — you cannot start from just anywhere: you have to start from yam.

Now a few more things, because this is such a central phenomenon for Patanjali you have to understand a few things more. Yam is a bridge between you and others; self-restraint means restraining your behavior. Yam is a phenomenon between you and others, you and the society. It is a more conscious behavior: you don’t react unconsciously, you don’t react like a mechanism, like a robot. You become more conscious; you become more alert. You react only when there is absolute necessity; then too you try so that that reaction should be a response and not a reaction.

A response is different from a reaction. The first difference is: a reaction is automatic; a response is conscious. Somebody insults you: immediately you react — you insult him. There has not been a single moment’s gap to understand: it is reaction. A man of self-restraint will wait, listen to his insult, will think about it. […]

Yam is the bridge between you and others — live consciously; relate with people consciously. Then the second two, niyam and asan — they are concerned with your body. Third, pranayam is again a bridge. As the first, yam, is a bridge between you and others, the second two are a preparation for another bridge — your body is made ready through niyam and asan — then pranayam is the bridge between the body and the mind. Then pratyahar and dharana are the preparation of the mind. Dhyan again, is a bridge between the mind and the soul. And samadhi is the attainment. They are interlinked, a chain; and this is your whole life.

Your relation with others has to be changed. How you relate has to be transformed. If you continue to relate with others in the same way as you have always been doing, there is no possibility to change. You have to change your relationship. Watch how you behave with your wife or with your friend or with your children. Change it. There are a thousand and one things to be changed in your relationship. That is yam, control — but control, not suppression. Through understanding comes control. Through ignorance one goes on forcing and suppressing. Always do everything with understanding and you never harm yourself or anybody else.

Yam is to create a congenial environment around yourself. If you are inimical to everybody — fighting, hateful, angry — how can you move inwards? All these things will not allow you to move. You will be so much disturbed on the surface that that inner journey will not be possible. To create a congenial, a friendly atmosphere around you is yam. When you relate with others beautifully, consciously, they don’t create trouble for you in your inner journey. They become helps; they don’t hinder you. If you love your child, then when you are meditating, he will not disturb you. He will say to others, “Keep quiet. Pop is meditating.” But if you don’t love your child, you are simply angry, then when you are meditating, he will create all sorts of nuisances. He wants to take revenge — unconsciously. If you love your wife deeply, she will be helpful; otherwise, she won’t allow you to pray, she won’t allow you to meditate — you are going beyond her control. […]

If you love a person, the person is always helpful for your growth because he knows, or she knows, that the more you grow, the more you will be capable of love. She knows the taste of love. And all meditations will help you to love more, to be more beautiful in every way. […]

A man of yam controls himself, not others. To others he gives freedom. You try to control the other and never yourself. A man of yam controls himself, gives freedom to others — loves so much that he can give freedom, and he loves himself so much that he controls himself. This has to be understood: he loves himself so much that he cannot dissipate his energies; he has to give a direction.

Then, niyam and asan are for the body. A regular life is very healthy for the body because the body is a mechanism. You confuse the body if you lead an irregular life. Today you have taken your food at one o’clock, tomorrow you take at eleven o’clock, day after tomorrow you take at ten o’clock — you confuse the body. The body has an inner biological clock; it moves in a pattern. If you take your food every day at exactly the same time, the body is always in a situation where she understands what is happening, and she is ready for the happening — the juices are flowing in the stomach at the right moment. Otherwise, whenever you want to take the food, you can take, but the juices will not be flowing. And if you take the food and the juices are not flowing, then the food becomes cold; then the digestion is difficult.

The juices must be ready there to receive the food while it is hot, then immediately absorption starts. Food can be absorbed in six hours if the juices are ready, waiting. If the juices are not waiting, then it takes twelve hours to eighteen hours. Then you feel heavy, lethargic. Then the food gives you life, but does not give you pure life. It feels like a weight on your chest you somehow carry, drag. And food can become such pure energy — but then a regular life is needed.

You go to sleep every day at ten o’clock: the body knows — exactly at ten o’clock the body gives you an alarm. I’m not saying become obsessive — that when your mother is dying then too you go at ten o’clock. I’m not saying that. Because people can become obsessive . . . […]

Niyam and asan, regularity and posture: they are for the body. A controlled body is a beautiful phenomenon — a controlled energy, glowing, and always more than is needed, and always alive, and never dull and dead. Then the body also becomes intelligent, body also becomes wise, body glows with a new awareness.

Then, pranayam is a bridge: deep breathing is the bridge from mind to body. You can change the body through breathing; you can change the mind through breathing. Pratyahar and dharana, returning home and concentration, belong to the transformation of the mind. Then, dhyan is again a bridge from mind to the self, or to the no-self — whatsoever you choose to call it, it is both. Dhyan is the bridge of samadhi.

The society is there; from the society to you there is a bridge: yam. The body is there; for the body: regularity and posture. Again there is a bridge, because of the different dimension of mind from the body: pranayam. Then, the training of the mind: pratyahar and dharna, returning back home and concentration. Then again, a bridge, this is the last bridge: dhyan. And then you reach the goal: samadhi.

Samadhi is a beautiful word. It means now everything is solved. It means samadhan: everything is achieved. Now there is no desire; nothing is left to achieve. There is no beyond; you have come home.

-Osho

From Yoga: A New Direction, Discourse #5; Yoga: Science of the Soul, V.5 (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.5).

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the eighth program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.

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.

This State of No Thought is Meditation – Osho

Thus, by meditation, they achieve the ultimate reality, which is unthinkable, unmanifest, the one of endless forms, the ever-auspicious, the peaceful, the immortal, the origin of the creator, the one without a beginning, a middle and an end, the only one, the non-dual, the all-pervading, the consciousness, the bliss, the formless, the wonderful.

-Kaivalya Upanishad

This sutra is basically concerned with meditation: What is to be attained by meditation? What is meditation, and for what does it stand?

The Hindi word for meditation is dhyana; the connotation is very different. By meditation, one thing is meant in English; by dhyana something else is meant. So first we must understand the basic difference between these two words. Meditation is not a right translation, because by meditation thinking is implied. When we say someone is meditating, it means someone is thinking about something. In meditation an object is implied. In dhyan, no-object is a basic condition. By dhyan is meant a meditative mood without any object.

Objects must cease, mind must become just a pure mirror – a mirroring, not mirroring anything – just a mirror without any object in it, a pure mirror. By dhyan, this purity of the mind is indicated.

So first, no object should be in the mind. Mind must remain alone without thinking about anything – with no thought, just a consciousness, just an awareness, just an alertness. This alertness without any object is meditation.

So go on dropping objects. Even if one has to use some object as a help to withdraw other objects from the mind, that one object has to be dropped ultimately. Unless that is dropped, it is not meditation.

For example, there are many thoughts in the mind. You can use a mantra; so now there are not many thoughts, just one thought. You can use a name – Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Maria, anything. You go on repeating, “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama.” Between two “Ramas” no gap should be left, because only from that gap a thought enters. If your “Ramas” go on overlapping each other there will be no gap for any thought to enter. Now you have a mind with one thought. It is still not meditation, it is still thinking – thinking one thought. Ultimately this “Rama” has to be dropped. When you have become attuned with one thought and other thoughts are not entering the mind, then drop it and remain without thought. Many thoughts have been dropped except one; then drop the one, so you come to a state of no-thought.

This state of no-thought is meditation.

This is dhyana, this is pure consciousness.

In this pure consciousness is achieved that which is known as Brahman. This sutra is concerned with the definition of that indefinable.

It cannot be defined, because definition needs something which becomes impossible with the ultimate reality – definition needs comparison. You cannot define anything without comparing it. That divine is non-dual; it is one, so no comparison is possible. How to define it?

Can you say that the divine is man, or woman? You cannot say, though many religions have defined it in that way. Some religions are man-oriented, so they define God as father. Some religions are woman-oriented, so they define God as mother. But He cannot be defined, because “man” and “woman”… these words are relevant in human language; they become irrelevant for the whole universe. The whole universe is neither male nor female. How to define it? What to say about it?

The moment we use any word to define it, it looks absurd, because every human word implies the contrary also. If you say, “He is light,” then where to put darkness? Then what is darkness? Either you will have to deny darkness absolutely from divine nature, or you will have to imply it somewhere; He must comprehend darkness also. So what to say about Him? – light or darkness? If you say both, they become meaningless. He is both, and He is not both. That is the problem; that’s why He cannot be defined. Every word implies duality: the polar opposite must be there to make the word meaningful. Every word, with the total existence, becomes meaningless.

But this sutra tries to define the indefinable – this is only an effort, it never succeeds. But it has to be made. Even in its unsuccessfulness it helps, it indicates. It may not be able to define the divine; it is capable of indicating it.

Wittgenstein has said somewhere, “There are experiences which cannot be said, but which can be shown.” And he is right. There are experiences – you cannot say what they are, but still, you can indicate them. This sutra is an indication.

Some terms have been used; one is: thus by meditation they achieve the ultimate reality, which is unthinkable – which cannot be thought. Why? – because thinking is not, is not something. It is a process of the known; it never leads to the unknown. The unknown is always beyond thinking: You can think something you know; how can you think something which you don’t know?

And then the whole of thinking becomes absurd. If you can think only that which you know, what is the use of it? You know already, so what is the use of thinking it? If only the known can be thought, then the whole process becomes circular: it leads nowhere, you go on in a circle. You know and you think; and you think and you cannot think the unknown. So you go on in a circle – mind works in a circle.

The mind never achieves anything from the unknown. So mind must cease, thinking must cease; this circle must be broken! You must come to a standstill: not thinking, not thinking at all. And the moment you are in a no-thinking state, suddenly you enter the unknown.

It is not only unknown but unknowable also, because even if you have known it, you cannot make it known to others. By your being, they may feel it – by your movements, by your gestures, by your eyes, by your very presence, they may feel it – but still you cannot make it known to them. You may create a thirst in them for it, but you cannot give them a definition. You may lead them towards it, but you cannot make it known to them – unless they know themselves.

This knowing of the unknown is basically, foundationally, an individual affair. It can never be made collective. You cannot go to it en masse. Alone one has to reach it; alone one has to drop oneself. Alone one has to enter it; alone one encounters it. It becomes known to you, but you cannot make it known to others.

That is the basic difference between science and religion.

A scientist discovers something, and then the discovery becomes that of the whole of humanity. But a religious mystic discovers, and the discovery remains his own. It never becomes a collective phenomenon. A Jesus knows, a Boehme knows, an Eckhart knows, but they are helpless; they cannot make it a common property. It cannot become an object of common knowing; humanity remains in the same grip of ignorance. Each one has to approach it by oneself.

The opening is individual; that’s why it is not only unknown but unknowable. And for one reason more, and that reason is still deeper: even if one comes to know it, one never knows it totally. Even when one comes to know it, no one knows it totally! So the unknowable is infinitely unknowable.

Even if you are satisfied, even if your thirst is no more, the infinite unknowability remains – that’s why it is mysterious. And it is good, and it is beautiful that it is so. Because if you can know the divine totally – if the very moment the divine has been known, you have known it totally – it becomes meaningless.

Anything known totally becomes a thing. Anything known totally creates boredom. Anything known totally will again create a new thirst to know something else.

But once the divine is known, no desire to know anything remains – because you can go on in your knowing . . . deeper, deeper, deeper, infinitely deeper; the abyss is endless. You have a beginning in it, but no end. You drop into it, and then you go on dropping, and there comes no substratum, no bottom where you can stand again and say, “Now the dropping has ended.”

This is the mystery. That’s why this sutra says: the formless, the wonderful . . . the mysterious – God is a mysterium. And when I way a mysterium, I mean that you can know it, but still you cannot say, “I have known it.” You can only say, “I have dropped into it”; you can only say, “I have ceased to be”; you can only say, “Now I am no more and He is.” But you cannot say, “I have known it.”

For one reason more it remains unknowable: because the knower is lost. The moment you enter the divine you don’t enter as a knower; you enter as a drop of water entering the ocean. You become one with it. The knower is not separate, so how can you say, ”I have known it”? How can you say that “I am,” still? You are not; only He is.

This is one of the riddles of religious experience: when the knower is lost, the known is known. When the knower is lost, only then knowledge happens.

Kabir has said, “I was searching and searching and searching. Now He is found but the searcher is not. Now He is there but where is Kabir?” The seeker is no more. There has never been a meeting between the seeker and the sought. Never a meeting! – because the two cannot be together. The seeking ends only when the seeker is lost, and only then the sought is found. You are, then He is not. When you are not, then He is; there is no meeting – or you can call this the meeting. This is the riddle of religious experience.

. . . which is unthinkable, unmanifest, the one of endless forms, the ever-auspicious, the peaceful, the immortal, the origin of the creator, the one without a beginning, a middle and an end, the only one, the non-dual, the all-pervading, the consciousness, the bliss, the formless, the wonderful . . . is known through meditation.

These are just indications, and every indication is a negative. Remember that – every indication is a negative. He is unthinkable – you cannot think about it. He is formless – he is without forms. He has no beginning, no middle, no end. He is non-dual – not two. All these are negatives.

Why use so much negativity for such a positive phenomenon as God? He is the positivity; He is the only positive force. Then why use so many negatives? – without form, without the other, everything – everything that has been used to indicate Him, has remained always negative. Why?

There are reasons. The moment you use a positive word, you create a limitation. If I say that He is beautiful, then the ugly is denied. If I say that He is light, then the darkness is denied. If I say that He is good, then the evil is denied. Whatsoever I say positively will deny something.

To use a negative term is to say that He is so infinite that we cannot use any positive term, because positivity becomes a limitation. We cannot say, “He is one”; rather, it is good to say, “He is not two.” It is better to say that He is not two; then He is left totally without any positive demarcation. If we say, “He is one,” then we have encircled Him.

In meditation, the deeper you go, the more deeply you will come to the positive. But when you want to express it, more and more you will have to use negative terms. The ultimate in using negative terms is Buddha. He has used for this ultimate experience the word nirvana. Nirvana simply means cessation. He has not used moksha, liberation, because it is positive; it says something. He has not used brahmalok; it is positive, it says something. He has not used bliss, consciousness – these are positive. He has simply said, nirvana – cessation of everything, nothingness. And he is right, absolutely right. In meditation you will achieve a positive experience. But when you are expressing it, you will have to use absolute negatives.

If we can create a world consciousness about this use of negatives, there will be no fight between religions. Every fight is because a religion has used something positive. This is strange, but one has to understand it. If you use the negative, then two negatives are never in conflict; but if you use two positives, then two positives are always in conflict.

For example, if Islam says that He is one, and Hinduism says that He is all, one begins to feel some conflict somewhere. Use negatives, and then there is no conflict. If you say that He is not two, then He can be both – He can be one and He can be all. When I say He is not two, I don’t deny that He is not all – He can be all. “He is not two” – He can be all. “He is not two” – He can be one. In saying He is not two, both ends – one and all – are implied. If religions are created around negatives, there will be less fight and more understanding.

In the West, all the three religions which have come out of Jewish mystics have all used positives. Christianity, Islam, and the Jewish religion have all used positives. That is one of the reasons they are mostly fighting religions – too much fighting, too much arrogance. They have never used negatives; they have used positive terms. A linguistic factor has created so much violence . . .

All the Indian religions have used negatives, more and more negatives. And Buddhism is exceptional; Buddhism has used absolute negatives. That’s why Buddhism has been one of the most non-fighting religions.

If you use a negative term to indicate the divine, there is no fight. If you use a positive term, a fight is bound to happen. Someone using another… then two positives are always in conflict. Two negatives are never in conflict. That’s why one other strange phenomenon can be understood: Two theists will always be in a fight, but two atheists will never be in a fight, so there are three hundred types of theists in the world, but only one type of atheist.

What is the reason? An atheist anywhere is the same. What is the reason? – the negative, because he stands only with one statement: that there is no God. So how can there be many types of no- Gods? Only one type, one negative, implies everything. The negative is a universal thing: an atheist anywhere – in Tibet, in Germany, in Japan, in China, anywhere – an atheist is simply an atheist. He stands on a negative.

But theists differ. village to village, neighborhood to neighborhood, theists differ. There are so many brands, and so many types, and so many creeds. Why? The moment you use a positive you have defined an area, and all else is excluded. Unless theists also begin to use negatives more, there will not be a universal religion. If theism also bases itself on a negative definition of the divine, then there can be a universal brotherhood.

Meditation leads you to all. But never define it as positive; always define it as nothingness. […]

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #23.

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

What is Zen – Osho

What is Zen? Zen is a very extraordinary growth. Rarely does such a possibility become an actuality because many hazards are involved. Many times before the possibility has existed – a certain spiritual happening could have grown and become like Zen, but it was never realized to its totality. Only once in the whole history of human consciousness has a thing like Zen come into being. It is very rare.

So first I would like you to understand what Zen is, because unless you do that these anecdotes won’t be much help. You need to know the complete background. In that background, in that context, these anecdotes become luminous – suddenly you attain to the meaning and the significance of them, otherwise they are separate units. You can enjoy them; sometimes you can laugh at them; they are very poetic; in themselves they are beautiful, unique pieces of art, but just by looking at these anecdotes you will not be able to penetrate into the significance of what Zen is.

So first try to follow me slowly through the growth of Zen – how it happened. Zen was born in India, grew in China, and blossomed in Japan. The whole situation is rare. Why did it happen that it was born in India, but could not grow here and had to seek a different soil? It became a great tree in China, but could not blossom there, it had to again seek a new climate, a different climate – and in Japan it blossomed like a cherry tree, in thousands of flowers. It is not coincidental; it is not accidental; it has deep inner history. I would like to reveal it to you.

India is an introvert country, Japan is extrovert, and China is just in the middle of these two extremes. India and Japan are absolute opposites. So how come the seed was born in India and blossomed in Japan? They are opposites; they have no similarities; they are contradictory. And why did China come just in the middle, to give soil to it?

A seed is introversion. Try to understand the phenomenon of the seed, what a seed is. A seed is outgoing; a seed has really turned upon itself. A seed is an introvert phenomenon, it is centripetal – the energy is moving inwards. That’s why it is a seed, covered and closed from the outer world completely. In fact a seed is the loneliest, most isolated thing in the world. It has no roots in the soil, no branches in the sky; it has no connection with the earth, no connection with the sky. In fact, it has no relationships around it. A seed is an absolute island, isolated, caved in. It does not relate. It has a hard shell around it, there are no windows, no doors; it cannot go out and nothing can come in.

Seed is natural to India. The genius of Indian can produce seeds of tremendous potentiality, but cannot give them soil. India is an introverted consciousness.

India says the outer doesn’t exist and even if it exists it is of the same stuff that dreams are made of. The whole genius of India has been trying to discover how to escape from the outer, how to move to the inner cave of the heart, how to be centered in oneself, and how to come realize that the whole world that exists outside consciousness is just a dream – at the most beautiful, at the worst a nightmare; whether beautiful or ugly, in reality, it is a dream, and one should not bother much about it. One should awake, and forget the whole dream of the outer world.

The whole effort of Buddha, Mahavir, Tilopa, Gorakh, Kabir, their whole effort through the centuries, has been how to escape from the wheel of life and death: how to enclose yourself, how to completely cut yourself from all relationships, how to be unrelated, detached, how to move in and to forget the outer. That’s why Zen was born in India.

Zen means dhyan. Zen is a Japanese change of the word dhyan. Dhyan is the whole effort of Indian consciousness. Dhyan means to be so alone, so into your own being, that not even a single thought exists. In fact, in English, there is no direct translation.

Contemplation is not the word. Contemplation means thinking, reflection. Even meditation is not the word because meditation involves an object to meditate upon; it means something is there. You can meditate on Christ, or you can meditate on the cross. But dhyan means to be so alone that there is nothing to meditate upon. No object, just simple subjectivity exists – consciousness without clouds, a pure sky.

When the word reached China it became ch’an. When ch’an reached Japan, it became Zen. It comes from the same Sanskrit root, dhyan.

India can give birth to dhyan. For millennia the whole Indian consciousness has been travelling on the path of dhyan – how to drop all thinking and how to be rooted in pure consciousness. With Buddha the seed came into existence. Many times before also, before Gautam Buddha, the seed came into existence, but it couldn’t find the right soil so it disappeared. And if the seed is given to the Indian consciousness it will disappear, because the Indian consciousness will move more and more inwards, and the seed will become smaller and smaller and smaller, until a moment comes when it becomes invisible. A centripetal force makes things smaller, smaller, smaller – atomic – until suddenly they disappear. Many times before Gautam Buddha the seed was born – Gautam Buddha was not the first to meditate and to become a dhyani, to become a great meditator. In fact he is one of the last of a long series. He himself remembers twenty-four Buddha’s before him. Then there were twenty-four Jaina Teerthankaras and they all were meditators. They did nothing else, they simply meditated, meditated, meditated, and came to a point where only they were, and everything else disappeared, evaporated.

The seed was born with Parasnath, with Mahavir, Neminath, and others, but then it remained with the Indian consciousness. The Indian consciousness can give birth to a seed, but cannot become the right soil for it. It goes on working in the same direction and the seed becomes smaller and smaller, molecular, atomic and disappears. That’s how it happened with the Upanishads; that’s how it happened with the Vedas; that’s how it happened with Mahavir and all others.

With Buddha it was also going to happen. Bodhidharma saved him. If the seed had been left with the Indian consciousness, it would have dissolved. It would never have sprouted, because a different type of soil is needed for sprouting – a very balanced soil. Introversion is a very deep imbalance, it is an extreme.

Bodhidharma escaped with the seed to China. He did one of the greatest things in the history of consciousness: he found the right soil for the seed that Buddha had given to the world.

Buddha himself is reported to have said: My religion will not exist for more than 500 years; then it will disappear. He was aware that it always happened that way. The Indian consciousness goes on grinding it into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces; then a moment comes when it becomes so small that it becomes invisible. It is simply no longer part of this world; it disappears into the sky.

Bodhidharma’s experiment was great. He looked all around the world and observed deeply for a place where this seed could grow.

China is a very balanced country, not like India, not like Japan. The golden mean is the path there. Confucian ideology is to remain always in the middle: neither be introvert, nor be extrovert; neither think too much of this world, nor too much of that world – just remain in the middle. China has not given birth to a religion, just morality. No religion has been born there; the Chinese consciousness cannot give birth to a religion. It cannot create a seed. All the religions that exist in China have been imported, they have all come from the outside; Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity – they have all come from the outside. China is a good soil but it cannot originate any religion, because to originate a religion one has to move into the inner world. To give birth to a religion one has to be like a feminine body, a womb.

The feminine consciousness is extremely introvert. A woman lives in herself; she has a very small world around her, the most minimum possible. That is why you cannot interest a woman in things of great vastness. No. You cannot talk about Vietnam to her, she doesn’t bother. Vietnam is too far away, too outer. She is concerned with her family, her husband, the child, the dog, the furniture, the radio set, the TV. A very small world is around her, just the minimum. Because she doesn’t have a very big world around it is very difficult for man and woman to talk intelligently – they live in different worlds. A woman is beautiful only when she keeps quiet; the moment she starts talking then stupid things come out of her. She cannot talk intelligently. She cannot be very philosophic; no, that’s not possible. These things are too far away, she doesn’t bother. She lives in the very small circle of her own world, and she is the center. And whatsoever is meaningful is meaningful only in concern to herself – otherwise it is not meaningful. She cannot see why you are bothered about Vietnam. What is the matter with you? You are not related to the Vietnamese at all. Whether there is a war happening or not, it is no concern of yours. And the child is ill and you are bothering about Vietnam! She cannot believe that she is present near you and you are reading the newspaper.

Women live in a different world. A woman is centripetal, introvert. All women are Indian – wherever they are it makes no difference. Man is centrifugal, he goes out. The moment he can find an excuse he will escape from the home. He comes to the home only when he cannot go anywhere else; when all the clubs and hotels are closed, then, what to do? He comes back home. Nowhere to go, he comes home.

A woman is always home-centered, home based. She goes out only when it is absolutely necessary, when she cannot do otherwise. When it has become an absolute necessity she goes out. Otherwise she is home based.

Man is a vagabond, a wanderer. The whole of family life is created by women, not by men. In fact, civilization exists because of woman, not because of man. If he is allowed he will be a wanderer – no home, no civilization. Man is outgoing, woman is in-going; man is extrovert, woman is introvert. Man is always interested in something other than himself, that’s why he looks healthier. Because when you are too concerned with yourself, you become ill. Man is more happy looking.

You will always find women sad and too concerned with themselves. A little headache and they are very concerned, because they live inside – the headache becomes something big, out of proportion. But a man can forget the headache; he has too many other headaches. He creates so many headaches around himself that there is no possibility of coming upon his own headache and making something out of it. It is always so little he can forget about it. A woman is always concerned – something is happening in the leg, something in the hand, something in the back, something in the stomach, always something – because her own consciousness is focused inwards. A man is less pathological, more healthy, more outgoing, more concerned about what is happening to others.

That’s why, in all religions, you will find that if there are five persons present, four will be women, and one a man. And that one man may have only come because of some woman – the wife was going to the temple so he had to go with her. Or, she was going to listen to a talk on religion, so he came with her. In all churches this will be the proportion, in all churches, temples, wherever you go. Even with Buddha this was the proportion, with Mahavir this was the proportion. With Buddha there were fifty thousand sannyasins – forty thousand women and ten thousand men. Why?

Physically man can be healthier; spiritually woman can be healthier, because their concerns are different. When you are concerned with others you can forget your body, you can be more physically healthy, but religiously you cannot grow so easily. Religious growth needs an inner concern. A woman can grow very, very easily into religion, that path is easy for her, but to grow in politics is difficult. And for a man to grow in religion is difficult. Introversion has its benefits; extroversion has its benefits – and both have their dangers.

India is introvert, a feminine country; it is like a womb, very receptive. But if a child remains in the womb forever and forever and forever, the womb will become the grave. The child has to move out from the mother’s womb otherwise the mother will kill the child inside. He has to escape, to find the world outside, a greater world. The womb may be very comfortable – it is! Scientists say we have not yet been able to create anything more comfortable than the womb. With so much scientific progress we have not made anything more comfortable. The womb is just a heaven. But even the child has to leave that heaven and come outside the mother. Beyond a certain time, the mother can become very dangerous. The womb can kill, because it will then become an imprisonment – good for a time, when the seed is growing, but then the seed has to be transplanted to the outside world.

Bodhidharma looked around, watched the whole world, and found that China had the best soil; it was just a middle ground, not extreme. The climate was not extreme, so the tree could grow easily. And it had very balanced people. Balance is the right soil for something to grow: too cold is bad, too hot is bad. In a balanced climate, neither too cold nor too hot, the tree can grow.

Bodhidharma escaped with the seed, escaped with all that India had produced. Nobody was aware of what he was doing, but it was a great experiment. And he proved right. In China, the tree grew, grew to vast proportions.

But although the tree became vaster and vaster, no flowers grew. Flowers did not come, because flowers need an extrovert country. Just as a seed is introvert, so a flower is extrovert. The seed is moving inwards; the flower is moving outwards. The seed is like male consciousness. The flower opens to the outer world and releases its fragrance to this outside world. Then the fragrance moves on the wings of the wind to the farthest possible corner of the world. To all directions, the flower releases the energy contained in the seed. It is a door. Flowers would like to become butterflies and escape from the tree. In fact, that is what they are doing, in a very subtle way. They are releasing the essence of the tree, the very meaning, the significance of the tree to the world. They are great sharers. A seed is a great miser, confined to itself, and a flower is a great spendthrift.

Japan was needed. Japan is an extrovert country. The very style of life and consciousness is extrovert. Look . . .  in India nobody bothers about the outside world very much: about clothes, houses, the way one lives. Nobody bothers. That is why India has remained so poor. If you are not worried about the outside world, how can you become rich? If there is no concern to improve the outside world you will remain poor. And India is always very serious, always getting ready to escape from life, with Buddha’s talking about how to become perfect drop-outs from existence itself – not only from society, ultimate drop-outs from existence itself! The existence is too boring. For the Indian eye life is just a grey color – nothing interesting in it, everything just boring, a burden. One has to carry it somehow, because of past karmas. Even if an Indian falls in love he says it is because of past karmas, one has to pass through it. Even love is like a burden one has to drag.

India seems to be leaning more towards death than life. An introvert has to lean towards death. That’s why India has evolved all the techniques how to die perfectly, of how to die so perfectly that you are not born again. Death is the goal, not life. Life is for fools, death is for those who are wise. Howsoever beautiful a Buddha, a Mahavir may be, you will find them closed; around them a great aura of indifference exists. Whatsoever is happening, they are not concerned at all. Whether it happens this way or that way makes no difference; whether the world goes on living or dies, it makes no difference . . . a tremendous indifference. In this indifference flowering is not possible; in this inner-confined state, flowering is impossible.

Japan is totally different. With the Japanese consciousness it is as if the inner doesn’t exist, only the outer is meaningful. Look at Japanese dresses. All the colors of flowers and rainbows – as if the outer is very meaningful. Look at an Indian when he is eating, and look at the Japanese. Look at an Indian when he takes his tea – and the Japanese.

Japanese create a celebration out of simple things. Taking tea, he makes it a celebration. It becomes an art. The outside is very important; clothes are very important, relationships are very important. You cannot find more out-going people in the world than the Japanese – always smiling and looking happy. For the Indian they will look shallow; they will not look serious. Indians are the introvert people and the Japanese are the extrovert: they are opposites.

Japanese is always moving in society. The whole Japanese culture is concerned with how to create a beautiful society, how to create beautiful relationships – in everything, in every minute thing – how to give them significance. Their houses are so beautiful. Even a poor man’s house has a beauty of its own; it is artistic, it has its own uniqueness.

It may not be very rich, but still it is rich in a certain sense – because of the beauty, the arrangement, the mind that has been brought to every small, tiny detail: where the window should be, what type of curtain should be used, how the moon should be invited from the window, from where. Very small things, but every detail is important.

With the Indian nothing matters. If you go to an Indian temple, it is without any windows; there is nothing, no hygiene, no concern with air, ventilation – nothing. Even temples are ugly, and anything goes –dirt or dust, nobody bothers. Just in front of the temple you will find cows sitting, dogs fighting, people praying. Nobody bothers. No sense of the outer, they are not at all concerned with the outer.

Japan is very concerned with the outer – just at the other extreme. Japan was the right country. And the whole tree of Zen was transplanted in Japan, and there it blossomed, in thousands of colors. It flowered.

This is how it has to happen again. I am again talking about Zen. It has to come back to India because the tree has flowered, and the flowers have fallen and Japan cannot create the seed. Japan cannot create the seed: it is not an introvert country. So everything has become an outer ritual now. Zen is dead in Japan. It did flower in the past, but now, if by reading in books – reading D. T. Suzuki and others – if you go to Japan in search of Zen, you will come back empty-handed. Now Zen is here; in Japan it has disappeared. The country could help it to flower, but now the flowers have disappeared, fallen to the earth, and nothing is there any more. There are rituals – the Japanese are very ritualistic – rituals exist. Everything in Zen monasteries is still continued the same way, as if the inner spirit is still there, but the inner shrine is vacant and empty. The master of the house has moved. The God is there no more – just empty ritual. And they are extrovert people, they will continue the ritual. Every morning they will get up at five – there will be a gong – they will move to the tea-room, and they will take their tea; they will move to their meditation hall, and they will sit with closed eyes. Everything will be followed exactly as if the spirit is there, but it has disappeared. There are monasteries, there are thousands of monks, but the tree has flowered and seeds cannot be created there.

Hence, I am talking so much about Zen here –because, again, only India can create the seed. The whole world exists in a deep unity, in a harmony – in India the seed can again be given birth. But now many things have changed around the world. China is no longer a possibility, because it has itself become an extrovert country. It has become communistic: now matter is more important than the spirit. And now it is closed for new waves of consciousness.

To me, if any country can in the future become again the soil, it is England.

You will be surprised, because you may think it is America. No. Now the most balanced country in the world is England, just as in the ancient days it was China. The seed has to be taken to England and planted there; it will not flower there, but it will become a big tree. English consciousness – conservative, always following the middle way, the liberal mind, never moving to the extremes, just remaining in the middle – will be helpful. That is why I am allowing more and more English people to settle around me. It is not only for visa reasons! Because once the seed is ready, I would like them to take it to England. And from England it can go to America, and it will have flowering there, because America is the most extrovert country right now.

I tell you that Zen is a rare phenomenon, because only if all these situations are fulfilled can such a thing happen.

-Osho

From The Grass Grows by Itself, Discourse #1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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What Is God – Osho

What is God?

Prem Sukavi, God is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth.

God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence – like beauty, like joy.

God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience – like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will be just nonsense. And that’s what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques.

Man has lived under this impression of God as a person, and then two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above in the sky and you have to praise him to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world and of the other world. And this is sheer wastage of time and energy.

And on the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists; they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of God.

The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons.

God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no more valid; meditation becomes valid.

Martin Buber says prayer is a dialogue; then between you and God there is an “I-thou” relationship – the duality persists. Buddha is far closer to the truth: you simply drop all chattering of the mind, you slip out of the mind like a snake slipping out of the old skin. You become profoundly silent. There is no question of any dialogue, no question of any monologue either. Words have disappeared from your consciousness. There is no desire for which favors have to be asked, no ambition to be fulfilled.

One is now and here. In that tranquility, in that calmness, you become aware of a luminous quality to existence. Then the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people are all surrounded with a subtle aura. They are all radiating life, and it is one life in different forms. The flowering of one existence in millions of forms, in millions of flowers.

THIS experience is God. And it is everybody’s birthright, because whether you know it or not you are already part of it. The only possibility is you may not recognize it or you may recognize it. The difference between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person is not of quality – they both are absolutely alike. There is only one small difference: that the enlightened person is aware; he recognizes the ultimate pervading the whole, permeating the whole, vibrating, pulsating. He recognizes the heartbeat of the universe. He recognizes that the universe is not dead, it is alive.

This aliveness is God!

The unenlightened person is asleep, asleep and full of dreams. Those dreams function as a barrier; they don’t allow him to see the truth of his own reality. And, of course, when you are not even aware of your own reality, how can you be aware of the reality of others? The first experience has to happen within you. Once you have seen the light within you will be able to see it everywhere.

God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form; only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all the names become his.

Then a person lives in prayer – he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church. Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden; if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine; if he relates then his relating is divine.

The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core, because that is the secret of the whole existence. That’s where the Upanishads are tremendously important. They don’t talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don t bother about prayer. their whole emphasis is on meditation.

Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind – your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams – becoming aware of all that goes on inside you.

Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of.

Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed.

Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is.

It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to live it – that is the only way to know it.

-Osho

From I Am That, Discourse #2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

 

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

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

Samyama: A Synthesis of Consciousness – Osho

What is samyama? That has to be understood. Samyama is the greatest synthesis of human consciousness, the synthesis of three: dharana, dhyan, samadhi.

Ordinarily, your mind is continuously jumping from one object to another. Not for a single moment are you in tune with one object. You go on jumping. Your mind goes on constantly moving; it is like a flux. This moment something is in the focus of the mind, next moment something else, next moment still something else. This is the ordinary state of mind.

The first step out of it is dharana. Dharana means concentration – fixing your whole consciousness on one object, not allowing the object to disappear, bringing again and again your consciousness on the object so that the unconscious habit of the mind of continuous flux can be dropped; because once the habit of continuous change can be dropped, you attain to an integrity, to a crystallization. When there are so many objects moving continuously, you remain so many. Understand it. You remain divided because your objects are divided.

For example, you love one woman today, another woman tomorrow, another woman the third day. That will create a division in you. You cannot be one; you will become many. You will become a crowd. Hence the Eastern insistence to create a love in which you can remain for a longer period, as long as possible. There have been experiments in the East in which a couple has remained a couple for many lives together. Again and again the same woman, the same man: that gives an integrity. Too much change erodes your being, splits you. So if in the West the schizophrenia is becoming almost a normal thing, it is not something to be wondered at. It is not strange; it is natural. Everything is changing.

I have heard that one film actress in Hollywood got married to her eleventh husband. She came home, introduced the new dad to the children. The children brought a register, and they said to the dad, “Please sign it, because today you are here, tomorrow you may be gone; and we are accumulating the signatures, autographs, of all our dads.”

You go on changing houses; you go on changing everything. In America the average limit of a person’s job is three years. The job is also continuously changing. The house – the average limit of a person staying in one town is also three years. And the average limit of marriage is also three years. Somehow three years seems to be very important. It seems if you remain the fourth year with the same woman there is fear that you may get settled. If you remain in the same job more than three years there is fear that you may get settled. So people go on; they have become almost vagabonds. That creates divisions inside you.

In the East we tried to give a job to a person as part of his life. A man was born in a Brahmin house: he remained a Brahmin. That was a great experiment to give stability. A man was born in a shoemaker’s house: he remained a shoemaker. The marriage, the family, the job, the town–people were born in the same town and they would die in the same town. Lao Tzu remembers, “I have heard that in the ancient days people had not gone beyond the river.” They had heard dogs barking on the other side, the other shore. They had inferred that there must be a town because in the evening they had seen smoke rising – people must be cooking. They had heard dogs barking, but they had not bothered to go and see. People were so harmoniously settled. 

This constant change simply says that your mind is feverish. You cannot stay longer at anything; then your whole life becomes a life of continuous change – as if a tree is being uprooted again and again and again and never gets the right time to send its roots deep down into the earth. The tree will be alive only for the name’s sake. It will not be able to bloom, not possible, because before flowers come, the roots have to settle.

So, concentration means bringing your consciousness to one object and becoming capable of retaining it there – any object. If you are looking at a rose flower, you continuously look at it. Again and again the mind wanders, goes here and there; you bring it back. You tame the mind – you tame the bull. You bring it back to the rose. The mind goes again; you bring it back. By and by, the mind starts being with the rose for longer periods. Once your mind remains with the rose for a long period, you will be able for the first time to know what a rose is. It is not just a rose: God has flowered in it. The fragrance is not only of the rose; the fragrance is divine. But you never were en rapport with it for long.

Sit with a tree and be with it. Sit with your boyfriend or girlfriend and be with him or her, and bring yourself again and again. Otherwise, what is happening? Even if you are making love to a woman, you are thinking of something else – maybe moving in a totally different world. Even in love you are not focused. You miss much. A door opens, but you are not there to see it. You come back when the door is closed again.

Each moment there are millions of opportunities to see God, but you are not there. He comes and knocks at your doors, but you are not there. You are never found there. You go on roaming around the world. This roaming has to be stopped; that’s what is the meaning of dharana. Dharana is the first step of the great synthesis of samyama.

The second step is dhyan. In dharana, in concentration, you bring your mind to a focus: the object is important. You have to bring again and again the object in your consciousness; you are not to lose track of it. The object is important in dharana. The second step is dhyan, meditation. In meditation the object is not important anymore; it becomes secondary. Now, the flow of consciousness becomes important – the very consciousness which is being poured on the object. Any object will do, but your consciousness should be poured in a continuity; there should not be gaps.

Have you watched? If you pour water from one pot to another, there are gaps. If you pour oil from one pot to another, there are not gaps. Oil has a continuity; water falls discontinuously. Dhyan means, meditation means, your consciousness should be falling on any object of concentration in a continuity. Otherwise it is flickering. It is constantly flickering; it is not a continuous torch. Sometimes it is there, then disappears; then again is there, then disappears; then again is there. In dhyan you have to make it a continuity, an absolute continuity.

When consciousness becomes continuous, you become tremendously strong. For the first time you feel what life is. For the first time, holes in your life disappear. For the first time you are together. Your togetherness means the togetherness of consciousness. If your consciousness is like drops of water and not a continuity, you cannot be really there. Those gaps will be a disturbance. Your life will be very dim and faint; it will not have strength, force, energy. When consciousness flows in a continuous, river like phenomenon, you have become a waterfall of energy.

This is the second step of samyama, the second ingredient; and then is the third ingredient, the ultimate, that is samadhi. In dharana, concentration, the object is important because you have to choose one object amidst millions. In dhyan, meditation, consciousness is important; you have to make consciousness a continuous flow. In samadhi the subject is important: the subject has to be dropped.

You dropped many objects. When there were many objects, you were many subjects, a crowd, a poly-psychic existence – not one mind, many minds. People come to me and they say, “I would like to take sannyas, but….” That “but” brings the second mind. They think they are the same, but the “but” brings another mind. They are not one. They would like to do something and, at the same time, they would not like to do it – two minds. If you watch you will find many minds in you – almost a marketplace.

When there are too many objects, there are too many minds corresponding to them. When there is one object, one mind arises – focused, centered, rooted, grounded. Now this one mind has to be dropped; otherwise you will remain in the ego. The many has been dropped; now drop the one also. In samadhi this one mind has to be dropped. When one mind drops, the one object also disappears because it cannot be there. They always are together.

In samadhi only consciousness remains, as pure space.

These three together are called samyama. Samyama is the greatest synthesis of human Consciousness.

-Osho

Excerpt from Secrets of Yoga, Discourse #1 (Originally published as Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.8).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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