Gurdjieff – Sat Sangha Salon

Make Haste to Become the Fourth – Osho

Gurdjieff used to say that there are seven types of men. Let me explain those seven types to you.

The first three types are very ordinary. You will find them everywhere, within and without.

The first, man number one, Gurdjieff calls ‘body-oriented’. He lives in the body. He is ninety-nine percent body. His whole life is body-oriented. He eats not to live; he lives to eat.

The second type of man, number two, is emotional – the feeling type, sentimental.

Number three is the intellectual.

These are the three common types. They are almost on the same level.

These three, in India, we have known long before. The body-oriented we have called the sudra. The feeling-oriented, the emotional we have called the kshatriya, the warrior. And the intellect oriented we have called the brahmin, the intellectual, the intelligentsia.

The fourth, the vaisya, the businessman, is in fact not a type – but an amalgamation of all the three. Something of the sudra exists in him, something of the intellectual also exists in him. He is not a pure type; he is a mixture. And, in fact, he is the majority, because to find a pure type is very difficult. To find a really perfect sudra is rare. To find a perfect brahmin is also rare. To find a pure warrior, a samurai, is also rare. The world consists of the fourth, which is a mixture, which is not really a type, just a crowd.

These are the three types. Unless you go beyond the three you will not be able to see. They are all blind.

One is blinded by the body. Another is blinded by feelings, emotions. Another is blinded by the intellect, thinking. But they are all blind.

Number four Gurdjieff calls: one who has become aware. Up to number three they are all unaware, unconscious, fast asleep. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know from where they come. They don’t know where they are going. Number four is the one who has become a little alert, who can see. […]

Only number four can be called to the window. Only with number four can the Master share his experience.

With the first it is almost impossible to talk. To the first you can give prasad. The first one you can invite for a feast. Religion is nothing for him but a feast. Whenever a religious day comes, he eats better, he dresses well, he enjoys it.

To the second you can give emotional food: prayer, tears flowing down, sentimentality.

To the third you can talk much. He will appear to understand but will never understand. He is the intelligentsia, the intellectual.

Only with the fourth is a sharing possible – only with one who is a little alert, or is just on the brink of being alert. He is asleep, but turning in his sleep, and you know, now he is going to wake up; now any moment he is going to wake up. In this moment only, can a Master share his vision. When he sees that you are just on the brink of waking up, or are already awake and just lying down with closed eyes, or if just a little shaking is needed and you will open your eyes. […]

God is the possibility only for those who can see: the fourth, number four. With number four, religion enters into the world.

Up to number three the world is materialistic. Number three may be found in prayer houses, churches, temples, gurudwaras – but that makes no difference. With number four, religion becomes alive – throbs, beats, breathes. […]

I’m here only for those who belong to number four. Make haste to become number four, because if you are a little alert, I can lend my being. You can have a vision through it. I can bring you to my window and can ask you: ‘Do you see?’ But this is possible only with number four.

Then there is number five, whose awareness has become settled. Now for number five there is no need of lightning; he has his own inner light burning.

Then there is number six, all of whose discontent has disappeared, who is absolutely content. Nothing is there for him to achieve any more.

Then you will be surprised – then why does number seven exist? For number six everything is attained, fulfilled; there is nothing to attain. There is no higher than number six; number six is the highest. Then why number seven?

With number seven even contentment disappears. With the sixth, there is the feeling of fulfillment, a deep content, and arrival. With number seven, even that disappears. No content, no discontent; no emptiness, no fullness. Number seven has become God Himself. Number seven we have called the avatara: a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Krishna, a Christ. They are number seven.

-Osho

From The True Sage, Discourse #7

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Toward the Silence of the Innermost Center – Osho

Nischalatwam pradakshinam.

Stillness is pradakshina, the movement around That for worship.

Silence is meditation and silence is basic for any religious experience. What is silence? You can create it, you can cultivate it, you can force it, but then it is just superficial, false, pseudo. You can practice it, and you will begin to feel and experience it – but your practice makes it auto-hypnotic. It is not the real silence. Real silence comes only when your mind dissolves: not through any effort, but through understanding; not through any practice, but through an inner awareness.

We are filled with sounds, outside and inside. In the outside world it is impossible to create a situation which is silent. Even when we move to a deep forest, there is no silence – only new sounds, natural sounds. At midnight everything stops, but it is not silence – only new sounds, sounds you are not acquainted with. They are more harmonious, of course, more musical, but they are still sounds, not silence.

Silence is impossible in the outside world. [. . . .]

The real inside is absolutely silent. If you allow me, I will say that the absolute point of silence is the inside. Sound is outside, silence is inside. “Silence” and “inside” are synonymous. If you move out, then you move in sound. If you move in, then you move in silence. You must reach a point where no-sound is, or as the Zen Masters say, the soundless sound. The Hindu yogis have always called it anahat nada; the uncreated sound of silence.

But one need not use these paradoxical words: it will be easy to understand with simple words.

Outside is sound, inside there is silence, soundlessness. [. . . .]

If you are thinking in terms of objective silence, there is no possibility of silence. If you are thinking of silence as being somewhere other than your inner center, then there is no possibility of it. But you can create a pseudo silence very easily. You can cultivate it; you can practice it.

For example, you can use any mantra. Constant repetition will give you a pseudo-feeling of silence, a false feeling of silence. Constant repetition of a mantra hypnotizes you. You begin to feel dull, your awareness is lost, you become more and more sleepy. In that sleepiness you may feel that you have become silent, but it is not silence. Silence means that the mind is dissolved through understanding. The more you understand your mind, the more you become aware of its mechanism and working, and the more you are disidentified with your mind.

It is identification which creates inner noise. Anger is there in the mind: you are identified with it; you do not see it as an object. The anger is there somewhere outside you, but you begin to feel angry, you begin to become one with it. Then you miss your inner center, you have moved. Many thoughts are flowing in the mind continuously, the thought process is on, and you are identified with each and every thought. Any thought is yours; you become one with it. Then you have moved.

Not only with thought do you become one, but with things still further from your center. Your house is not only your house: you have become your house. Your possessions are not just your possessions: you are identified with them. When your car is damaged, your innerness is also damaged. When your house is on fire, you are also on fire. If all of your possessions are just taken away, you will die.

We are identified with our possessions, we are identified with our thoughts, we are identified with our emotions, we are identified with everything except ourselves. We are identified with everything except with the innermost center. Because of this identification, noise is created, conflict, a continuous anguish, tension.

It is bound to be there because you are not your house. There is a gap and you have forgotten the gap. You are not your wife; you are not your husband. There is a gap: you have forgotten the gap. You are not your thoughts, your anger or your love or your hatred. There is a gap. When you begin to feel this gap, you are always outside it, a witness, not involved in it. With anything in which you are not involved, you are outside it. [. . . .]

There is a gap. And the moment your focus of consciousness is transferred from object to sounds, to the soundless center of awareness, you are in silence. So I would like to say that you are silence, and everything else except you is sound. If you are identified with anything, then you will never attain this soundlessness.

This sutra says: “Silence, stillness, is pradakshina, the movement around That for worship.” You go to a temple and then you move around the altar of the deity seven times. This is a ritual of worship, but every ritual is symbolic. Why seven rounds? Man has seven bodies, and with each body there are identifications. So when someone moves in, he has to leave seven bodies and the identification with each body. There are seven rounds; when these seven rounds are complete, you are in the center.

The altar in the temple is not something outside you. You are the temple, and the altar is your inner center. If the mind moves around the center and comes nearer and nearer and nearer and, ultimately, is established in the center, this is pradakshina. And when you happen to be at your center, everything is silent. This silence is achieved through understanding – understanding of your anger, your passion, your greed, your sex, everything. It is an understanding of your mind. But we are identified with our minds; we think we are our minds. That is the only problem: how to be detached from our own minds, how to be divorced, so to speak, from our own minds.. . . .]

The mind is the problem, and the mind is always looking outside, never in. A divorce is needed not with a particular mind, not with this or that mind, but with mind itself. With “minding” itself a divorce is needed, and only then do you enter silence.

So what is to be done? You can do two things: one is to transform mind itself. Another, which is very ordinary, and which is done everywhere, is not to try to change this mind, but to use some technique to drug this mind. Then the mind remains as it is; no transformation is needed. A mantra is given to you, a method, a certain technique: you do it with this very mind.

You are capable of dulling it and drugging it. Then it will be less active on the surface, but it will be more active in the deeper realms. It may become absolutely inactive on the surface, and you may be befooled by it, but the activity will continue inside. Use a mantra: go on repeating Rama-Rama or Krishna – any name – and on the surface the mind will become silent. But inside you will feel the activity.

Just below the surface of the mind much activity is going on. Thinking continues in subdued terms, in subdued tones. Everything continues; it just goes underground. This is very easy. That is why mantra yoga is a very prevalent thing. It has appeal. Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation is just this sort of self-deception. It is just a trick; you can play it. It will help in the beginning, and for a few days you will feel very much edified, elevated. Then everything stops. A plateau is reached. When the surface has become a little bit silent, then you cannot do this technique; you cannot do anything with it. And then, by and by, the subdued notes will become again clear.

This is simple autohypnosis. Even if you think, “I am silent, I am silent, I am getting more silent every day,” you will begin to feel a certain silence. But that feeling is just thought-created. Stop thinking and it will evaporate. This is Coué’s method: just go on thinking repeatedly, continuously, that you are silent, that you are getting more and more silent day by day. Go on continuously repeating this. Constant repetition will befool you. You will begin to think, “Of course, now I am silent.” This is self-deception, and it leads nowhere. You remain the same; there is no transformation.

This sutra is not concerned with such stillnesses. This sutra is concerned with the authentic silence which comes not through techniques but through understanding. And what do I mean by understanding? Do not fight with the mind; try to understand it. Anger is there: do not be angry against anger, do not fight anger. Rather, try to understand what anger is: what this energy is, why it comes, what the cause of it is, what the origin of it is, and where the source is. Meditate upon anger, and the more you become aware of it, the less and less anger will come to you. And when there is no anger, you are thrown into your inner silence.

Sex is there: do not fight it; try to understand it. But we are fighting with ourselves. Either we are identified with the mind, or we are fighting with the mind. In both the cases we are the losers. If you are identified, then you will indulge in anger, in sex, in greed, in jealousy. If you are fighting, then you will create anti-attitudes. Then you will create inner divisions. Then you will create inner polarities. And you will be divided – no one else, because the anger is your anger. Now if you fight it, you will have double anger – anger plus this angriness against anger – and you will be divided. You can go on fighting, but this fight is just absurd.

It is as if I am trying to fight my right hand with my left hand. I can go on fighting. Sometimes my right hand will win, sometimes my left hand will win – but there is no victory. You can play the game, but there is neither defeat nor victory . . . because you are fighting from both the sides. No victory is possible because there is no one except you. You are playing with yourself, dividing yourself. This fight, this inner fight, is the curse of all religious persons, because the moment they become aware of the hell their minds have created, they begin to fight it. But through fight, you will never move anywhere.

Many reasons are there. When you fight with your mind, you have to remain with it, and when you fight with your mind, it shows ignorance. The mind is there only because you have a deep cooperation with it. If the cooperation is withdrawn, the mind dissolves. Then there is no need to fight. The mind is not your enemy. It is just the accumulation of your own experiences. It is your mind because you have accumulated it. And you cannot fight with your experiences. If you do, then the greater possibility is this – that your experiences may win. They are more weighty than you.

This happens every day. If you fight with your mind, your mind wins in the end – not ultimately, but it wins and you have to yield. Real, authentic stillness is not achieved through fight. Fight is suppressive, repressive. And whatsoever is repressed has to be repressed again and again, and whatsoever is repressed will try to rebel against you. You will become a madhouse – fighting with yourself, talking with yourself, taking revenge upon yourself, yielding to yourself, being defeated by yourself. You will become a madhouse!

Do not be in a fight with the mind. This will create such noise that even ordinary persons are not so filled with inner noise as religious persons are. Ordinary persons are not even bothered like this. They go on, they take it easy. They know it is a hell, but they accept what is. A religious person knows the mind is a hell, so he denies it, fights with it, and then a double hell is created.

You cannot create heaven by fighting hell. If you want to transcend, fight is not the way. Awareness, knowing what this mind is, is the way. So what is to be done? Be aware of suppressive methods. Only one thing is essential – whatsoever you are doing, do it with full awareness. If you are angry, then be angry with awareness.

Gurdjieff used to create situations for his disciples. He would just create situations! You would have just come into the room, and Gurdjieff would create a situation in which you were insulted. Someone would say something very abusive about you, someone else would say something else that is abusive, and you would begin to get angry. The whole group would help you to get angry, and you would be unaware of what was happening. And Gurdjieff would push you into more and more anger, and then suddenly you would burst, you would explode, you would become mad.

And then Gurdjieff would say, “Now be angry with full awareness. Do not go back, do not fall back from the anger. Just be angry.” And it is easy to fall back from it. Then he would say, “Be alert inside and see what is happening in you. Close your eyes and see what is happening. From where are these clouds of anger coming? From where is this smoke coming? Find the inner fire inside from where this smoke is coming.”

Gurdjieff was always creating situations. He was of the opinion that if we want a more silent world, we must teach our children how to be angry, how to be jealous, how to be filled with hate, how to be violent. We must teach them! We are doing quite the opposite. We say, “Do not be angry!” No one tells what anger is. No one teaches that if you are going to be angry, then be angry in a tactful way, then be angry efficiently, then be a master of anger. No one is teaching this! Everyone is against anger, and everyone is saying, “Do not be angry!” The child is even unaware of what anger is, but we tell him, “Don’t be angry,” and we go on laying down commandments: “Don’t do this, don’t do that.”

A child was asked what his name was, and he said, “‘Don’t,’ because whenever I do anything, either my mother or my father shouts, ‘Don’t!’ So I think this is my name. I am always called by Don’t.”

This creates a fighting attitude. Without knowledge you are against certain things. And if you are ignorant, you cannot win because knowledge is power. Not only scientifically in the outside world, but inwardly also knowledge is power.

There is electricity in the clouds. It has always been there, but we were ignorant in the past. The electricity in the clouds would only create fear in us and nothing else. Now we know about it. Now the electricity has become our slave, so there is no fear. Otherwise, the Vedas say that when God is angry with you, he will send thunder, he will send storms, lightning. When he is angry this will happen with you. It was “God’s anger,” they said. Now we have channelized it. Now it is no more God’s anger; it is no more at all related with God. We are manipulating it. Thus, knowledge becomes power.

Inner anger is just like electricity, like lightning. Previously the lightning in the clouds was “God’s anger”; then we came to know about it. Knowledge became power, and now there is no “God’s anger” in the clouds. Your anger is again an inner electricity. The moment you know about it, there will be no anger inside you. And then you can channelize your anger: it will become your servant.

A person who has no real anger will really be impotent. Anger is energy. If you do not know it, it becomes suicidal. If you know about it, you can transform the energy. You can use it. Then it is just your slave. And the same for everything. Your thoughts, they are energy; they can be used. If you become silent, you become the master of your thoughts. At present you have thoughts but no thinking – many thoughts and no thinking. When you have no thoughts, you have become the master of your process of thinking; you can think for the first time. Thinking is energy, but then you are the master.

With the discovery of the inner still point, you become the master. Without this discovery, you will remain a slave to your instincts, to anything. Knowledge will lead you in, so make yourself a laboratory. You are a universe. Find out what your energies are – they are not your enemies – what are your energies?

Choose your chief characteristic. Remember this: choose the chief characteristic. Find out whether anger is your chief characteristic or sex or greed or jealousy or hate. What is your chief characteristic? Find out first, because if you go on without knowing the chief characteristic, it will be a difficult process to go in – because the chief characteristic has your energy in it. It is the central thing; everything else is just secondary to it, subsidiary to it.

If your anger is the chief characteristic, then all else will be just a support to it. Find the center of your energies, and then begin to be aware of it. Then forget everything else. If greed is your chief characteristic, then be aware of greed and forget everything else. When greed is solved, everything else will be solved. And remember this: do not imitate anyone else because another’s chief characteristic may be a different thing.

Because of this imitative tendency, we create unnecessary problems. For example, Buddha had one thing to transform. Mahavir had another thing, Jesus something else. If you blindly follow Jesus, then you will begin to fight with the chief characteristic of Jesus rather than with your own, and that will misguide you. If you blindly follow Buddha, then again you are misguided. Understand Buddha, understand Jesus, but find your own disease and concentrate your awareness on that particular disease. If the main disease is solved, minor diseases will dissolve by themselves.

We go on fighting with minor diseases. Then you can waste lives together. You change one minor disease, and another minor disease will be created, because the source of energy, the central source of your disease, remains intact. [. . . .]

So you can go on cutting the leaves of a tree, and the tree will again put out new leaves. You cut one and the tree will supply two, and the tree will be greener for your effort, more green. You cannot cut leaves; you can only cut roots. Leaves and roots are different things. When I say, “the chief characteristic,” I mean the root. When I say, “minor problems,” I mean leaves. And the problem becomes more difficult to solve because leaves are apparent and roots are underground. They are the source of all the leaves. You cut the whole tree, and a new tree will come out because the roots are intact. You cut the roots, and the tree will disappear automatically. There is no need to be bothered with the tree.

But the roots are underground; your chief characteristic will always be found underground. So whatsoever you say is your problem is never the case. It can be taken for granted that that is not the case. Rather, quite the opposite may be the case, because we go on hiding our inner weaknesses. And just to distract the mind, just to forget the real problems, we create minor problems. [. . . .]

In your inner world, you go on avoiding problems which you cannot solve. You try to forget problems which you cannot solve; you begin to focus your mind on problems which you can solve. Because of that, your chief diseases go underground. Ultimately, you are not even aware of them, and you go on fighting with phony problems that are not real problems. These phony problems can take much energy and dissipate your energies, destroy them, and you remain the same because you go on fighting with the leaves.

So the first thing toward inner stillness is to find out what the root of your problems, of your conflicts, of your tension, is – what the root is! Do not think about how to solve it, because if you think of solving you will be afraid. Do not think of solving it. First, there must be a simple finding out of what the chief characteristic of the mind is, what the center of the mind is. No question about solving it, no idea about changing it, just take a simple inventory to find out what the chief problem of your mind is.

Do not go on escaping from the chief characteristic and do not create phony problems. It will not help. Even if you solve them, it will not help. Once you know the chief characteristic of your mind, just be aware of it: how it works, how it creates inner nets, how it goes on working inside and influencing your whole life. Just be aware. Still do not think about how to change it, because the moment you begin to think about how to change it you miss the opportunity of being aware.

Anger is there, greed is there, sex is there: do not think of changing them, do not think of transcending them. They are there: be aware. Transcendence is not a result; it is a consequence. Remember this difference. The difference is subtle. Transcendence is not a result: it is a consequence! What do I mean? You cannot think about transcendence; you cannot think how to go beyond mind. By thinking you will never go. If I say, “Be aware,” I do not mean that by awareness you can go beyond mind. [. . . .]

So if I say that by awareness you will transcend, do not think that awareness is a method and that because you want to transcend then you will transcend. Do not think, “Of course, if awareness is the method, then I am going to practice it; through it I will transcend.” Then you will never transcend. If awareness is attained, transcendence happens. It is a consequence; it comes. If awareness is there, transcendence will come. Then you will go beyond your mind; you will reach the inner center of stillness. But you cannot desire it.

That is what I mean when I say that it is not a result. A result can be desired, but a consequence follows. It cannot be desired! A result can be manipulated, planned, but a consequence cannot be manipulated, cannot be planned. If you are really aware, you will transcend. Awareness is not a method for transcendence. Awareness is transcendence. This constant awareness of your mind dissolves your greed, your anger, your sex, your hate, your jealousy, by and by. They dissolve automatically. There is no effort to dissolve them, not even any intention to dissolve them, not any longing to dissolve them. They are there, so rather than an intention to dissolve them, acceptance is more helpful.

Accept your anger. It is there: accept it and be aware of it. These are two things: acceptance and awareness. And you can be aware only if you accept totally. If you do not accept me, you cannot look at my face. If you do not accept me, you will try to avoid me in subtle ways. Even if I am present in the room, you will look in some other direction, you will think of something else. If you do not accept me, if you reject me, your whole mind will try to avoid me. If you reject anger, you cannot be aware. You cannot encounter it face to face. And when anger is encountered face to face, it dissolves. When sex is encountered face to face, the energy is released into a different dimension. Encounter your mind and accept it. [. . . .]

This is the secret. If a madman can accept his madness totally, madness will disappear. With whatsoever you can accept totally, a new phenomenon happens inside. Through acceptance, conflict is dissolved, and the energy that was being dissipated in conflict is not dissipated now. You become stronger. With this strength and awareness, you go higher than your mind.

So you should have acceptance of the mind and awareness of the mind – and a third thing: you should move in this world, live in this world, not from the periphery, but from the center.

Someone abuses you; he is speaking against your name. The man who lives from the periphery will think, “He is saying something against me.” The man who lives from the center will think, “He is speaking against the name, and I am not the name. I was born without any name. The name is just a label on the periphery, so why become disturbed? He is saying something not against me, but against the name.”

If you are identified with the name, then you become disturbed. If you can feel the gap between the name and you, between the periphery and you, then the periphery is hurt, but the hurt never reaches to the center.

One Hindu sannyasin, Swami Ramateertha, was in America. Someone abused him, but he came laughing and told his disciples, “Someone was abusing Rama very much. Rama was in great difficulty. He was being abused, and he was in great difficulty.”

So the disciples asked, “About whom are you talking? Rama is your name.”

Ramateertha said, “It is, of course, my name – but not me. They do not know me at all. How can they abuse me? They know only my name.”

Even if your action is abused, it is not you – only the action. If you can maintain a gap – and that is not difficult with awareness; it is the most easy thing – then the periphery is touched, but the center remains untouched. If the center remains untouched, sooner or later you are bound to discover the point of deep stillness which is not only your point, but the point, the central point, of the whole Existence.

I was reading a story just this morning. It is one of the most beautiful stories. One young seeker, after a long and arduous journey, reached the hut of his Master, the Master of his choice. It was evening, and the Master was just sweeping fallen leaves. The seeker greeted the Master, but the Master remained silent. He asked many questions, but there were no replies. He tried in every way to get the attention of the Master, but the Master was there as if he were alone. He went on sweeping the fallen leaves.

Seeing no possibility of getting the attention of the Master, the disciple decided to make a hut in the same forest and to live there. He lived there for years. After a time, the past dropped, because in order for it to continue one has to go on creating it daily. You have to create your past again and again daily in order to continue it. But in the forest everything was silent. No man was there; only the Master was there who was just like no man. There was no communication. He would not even reply to a greeting; he would not even look at the disciple. His eyes were just vacant, an emptiness.

So after a time, the past dissolved. The disciple continued to be there. Thoughts were there; then by and by they slowed down because you have to feed them daily for them to continue. If you do not feed them, they cannot continue forever. With nothing to do, he would relax, sit silently, sweep the fallen leaves. One day, after many years, he was sweeping the fallen leaves and he became Enlightened. He stopped everything, and he ran to the master’s hut and went in. The Master was sweeping fallen leaves. The disciple said, “Thank you, sir!”

Of course, the Master never replied. But this “thank you” is beautiful. He went to the Master and said, “Thank you, sir.” Only because of this Master not replying to him – not giving any intellectual answers, not even looking at him, remaining so silent – only because of this did he learn something from the Master. He learned this silence; he learned this living in the center without being bothered by the periphery.

Someone is greedy: this is a peripheral matter; let him be greedy. Someone is asking something: this is a peripheral matter; let him ask. The Master remained undisturbed. He went on sweeping his dead leaves. He didn’t say anything, but he showed a way. He did not say anything, but he answered. He was the answer! Such a silence the disciple had never before known! Such an absent presence he had never witnessed! It was as if the man was not there, as if the man was a nothingness, not a man; a nobodiness, not a man.

Without saying anything, the Master had said much. Rather, he showed much, and the disciple followed. It was only one lesson, but a very secret one: to remain in the center and not be bothered by the periphery. For years together, the disciple tried to remain in the center not being bothered by the periphery. One day, while sweeping the fallen dead leaves, he was Awakened. Years had passed, and now there was such gratefulness! He stopped everything, ran to the Master and said, “Thank you, sir!” Just by following a hidden answer, it happened.

But it depends on you. Someone else in his place might have felt humiliated, insulted, might have felt that this man is mad, might have got angry. Then he would have missed a great opportunity. But he was not negative. He took it very positively. He felt the meaning of it, he tried to live it, and the thing happened. It was a consequence; it was not a result. He could have imitated, but this was not imitation. He never came again. He was in the same forest, but he never came again until the happening. He came only twice: first he came to greet the Master, and then he came to thank him.

What was he doing for all these years? It was a simple lesson. There was only one secret, but it was the most basic one. He tried not to be bothered by the periphery. He accepted himself. Not bothering with the periphery, not being bothered by the periphery, he remained aware. He was so aware, really, that it was as if these twenty years were not there. And when the thing happened, when the happening was there, he ran as if nothing had happened within these twenty years. Twenty years before, the Master had shown him a way, but it was as if these twenty years were not there. He reached the Master to thank him – as if he had shown him the way just a moment before.

If silence is there, time disappears. Time is a peripheral matter. If silence is there, you become grateful to everything – to the sky, to the earth, to the sun, to the moon, to everything. If silence is there, any moment the old world disappears, the old you is no more there. The old man is dead, and a new life, a new energy, is born.

This sutra says that this is pradakshina. If you can enter into the center of your Being, this is stillness – where there is no sound. Only then have you entered the temple, worshipped the deity, encircled, done the ritual. In a temple, we can go on continuously doing the ritual without ever being aware of what this ritual means. Every ritual is a secret key. The ritual in itself is childish. If you do not know that a key is a key, you can play with it. But then you might as well throw it, since in the end you will come to realize that this is meaningless – because you do not know the lock and you do not know the key or that something can be opened by it. These are secret languages.

Rituals are secret languages. Through them something has been communicated. Books can be destroyed because languages become dead; the meaning of words goes on changing. Because of this, whenever there has been an Enlightened One he has created certain rituals. They are more permanent languages. When the scriptures disappear, when religions become dead, when old languages cannot be understood or can be misinterpreted, the rituals continue.

Sometimes a whole religion disappears, but the rituals go on. They become transplanted into new religions. They enter new religions without anyone being aware of what is happening. Rituals are a permanent language, and whenever one goes deep in them the secrets are discovered. This Upanishad is basically concerned with the ritual of worship, and every act is meaningful.

In itself it looks childish. It is stupid to go into a temple and make rounds around the altar or around the image of the deity. It looks stupid! What are you doing? In itself it is stupid because we have forgotten that the key is a key. Its meaning is in knowing the lock; its meaning is in opening the lock. These seven rounds around the altar are concerned with the seven bodies, and the altar is concerned with the innermost center.

Move around your center, go on moving inwards, and a moment comes when every movement stops. Then there is no sound; you have entered silence. This silence is Divine, this silence is bliss, this silence is the aim of all religions, and this silence is the purpose of all life. And unless you attain this silence, whatsoever you may attain is useless, meaningless; even if you can attain the whole world, it is of no use.

But if you attain this inner silence, this center, and you lose the whole world, even then it is worth attaining. No bargain is bad – even if everything is staked, sacrificed. When you achieve the inner silence, you know that whatsoever you have paid for it was nothing. What you receive is invaluable; what you have lost for it was just rubbish.

But the rubbish is wealth to us, the rubbish is very valuable to us. And I will repeat again: if you think that you can purchase with this rubbish, then you will never be able to get to the center. The center cannot be a result. If you throw this rubbish, you attain to it – that is a consequence.

Stillness is pradakshina, the movement around That for worship – around That, the inner center or the innermost center. “This” is the periphery, “That” is the center. So go on leaving “This” and go on moving toward “That.” This is all that sadhana consists of; this is the path.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #7

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The Great Dance of Suchness – Osho

Brahman is well known by the name Tatvanam – that – so it is to be meditated upon as Tatvanam – that. All beings love him who know Brahman as such.

“Sir, teach me the Upanishad.”

“The Upanishad has been imparted to you. We have, verily, imparted to you the Upanishad relating to Brahman.”

Of the Upanishad, tapas – austerities; daman – self-restraint; and karma –dedicated work; form the support. The Vedas are its limbs, and truth its abode.

One who realizes it – knowledge of Brahman – thus destroys sin and is well established in Brahman, the infinite, the blissful and the highest.

-Kenopanishad

The word god is not God, because the ultimate cannot have a name. It is nameless – because names are given by others. A child is born. The child is born nameless, then a name is to be given. That name doesn’t come from the inner source of the child’s consciousness. It comes from without. It is a label – useful, utilitarian, but artificial. The child will become a victim. He will identify himself with this name, which is given, which really doesn’t belong to him.

But who will give a name to the Brahman? There are no parents, no society, no ‘other’. And what is the use when the Brahman alone is? A name is needed because you are not alone. You need to be categorized, named, defined, so that others can call you, remember you. If you are alone on the earth, you will not need a name. And Brahman is alone, so who will give him a name? There is no other and there is no utility in it either.

So that is the first thing to be understood and very basic to the Upanishad – because all the religions have given certain names. Hindus have given thousands of names. They have a book, Vishnu Sahastranam – God’s one thousand names. The whole book consists only of names. Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, all have given certain names to God to make prayer possible. The name remains false but how are you going to call the divine? How are you going to invoke him? How are you going to relate yourself to him? You need a name for the divine, but the Upanishads are not ready to give a name.

The Upanishads are the purest teaching possible; they do not make any compromise. They do not make any compromise for you. They are rigorous, very hard and they try to remain totally pure. So what do the Upanishads call Brahman? They simply call him Tat – that. They do not give him a name. ‘That’ is not a name; ‘that’ is an indication. And there is a great difference. When you do not have a name, then you indicate and say “That.” It is a finger pointing toward the unknown. ‘That’ is a finger pointing toward the unknown, so the Upanishads call him Tat.

You may have heard one of the most famous sentences of the Upanishads: Tat-vam-asi – That art thou. You are also the Brahman, but the Upanishads go on calling him ‘that’. Even to say calling him is not good because the moment we use he, him, the ultimate becomes a person. The Upanishads do not say that he is a person; he is just a force, energy, life, but not a person. So they insist on calling him Tat – that. That is the only name given by the Upanishads to the ultimate.

Many things are implied, of course. One: if there is no name, or if Tat, that, is the only name, prayer becomes impossible. You can meditate on that, but you cannot pray. The Upanishads really do not believe in prayer; they believe in meditation. Prayer is something addressed to a person. Meditation is simply sinking, drowning, within yourself. The person is somewhere outside you but that, the Brahman, the ultimate force, is within you. You need not relate to it as the other; you can simply drown yourself inwardly. You can simply sink within yourself and you will find that – because “That art thou.”

To take Brahman as the other is false for the Upanishads. Not that the other is not Brahman: everything is Brahman; the other also, the outer also, is Brahman. But the Upanishads say that if you cannot feel him within, it is impossible for you to feel him without – because the nearest source is within; the without is far away. And if the nearest has not been known, how can you know the faraway, the distant? If you cannot feel him in yourself, how can you feel him in others? It is impossible.

The first step must be taken within. From there the Brahman, that, is nearest. You are that. To say nearest is false; there is not even that much distance – because even when someone is near there is distance. Nearness shows a certain distance; nearness is a sort of distance. He is not even near you – because you are that. So why go wandering without? He is in the home. You are looking for the guest and he is the host. You are waiting for the guest to come, and he is already the host. He is you.

So the first implication is: for the Upanishads there is no prayer; there is meditation. Prayer is a relationship between two, just like love. Meditation is not a relationship between two. It is just like surrender. Meditation is going withinwards, surrendering yourself unto yourself – not clinging to the periphery but sinking deep to the center. And when you are at your center you are in that – Tat, Brahman.

The second implication: when the Upanishads call him that, it means he is not the creator; rather, he is the creation – because the moment we say, “God is the creator,” we have made him a person. And not only have we made him a person: we have divided existence into two – the creator and the created. The duality has entered. The Upanishads say that he is the creation. Or to be more accurate, he is the creativity – the very force of creation.

I always like to illustrate this point by the phenomenon of dance. A painter paints but the moment he has painted his picture, the painter is separate from the picture. Now the painter can die, and the picture will remain. Or you can destroy the picture but by doing that the painter will not be destroyed – they are separate. Now the picture can exist for centuries without the painter. The painter is not needed. Once painted, it is finished; the relationship is broken.

Look at the dancer! He dances but the dance is not separate; it cannot be separated. If the dancer is dead, then the dance is dead. Dance is not separate from the dancer; the dance cannot exist without the dancer. And the dancer cannot exist without the dance either because the moment there is no dance, the person may be there, but he is not a dancer.

God’s relation to the world, for the Upanishads, is that of dance and the dancer. Hence, we have pictured Shiva as Nataraj, the dancer. A very deep meaning is there – that this world is not something secondary that God has created, then forgotten about and become separate from. The world is not of a secondary order. It is as much of the first order as the divine himself because this world is just a dance, a leela, a play. It cannot be separated.

Calling Brahman That says all that is is Brahman, all that is, is he – the manifested and the unmanifested, the creation and the creator. He is both.

The word that – Tat – also has a very subtle meaning. Buddha has used that meaning very much and Buddhists have a separate school of teaching just based on this word. Buddha has called that suchness, he has called it tathata; hence Buddha’s name, Tathagata – the man who has achieved suchness, who has achieved That.

This word suchness is very beautiful. What does it mean? If you are born, Buddha will say, “Such is the case that you are born.” No other comment. If you die, he will say, “Such is the case – you die!” No other comment, no reaction to it; things are such. Then everything becomes acceptable. If you say, “Things are such that now I have become old, ill; things are such that I am defeated; things are such that I am victorious; things are such . . .” then you don’t claim anything, and you don’t feel frustrated because you don’t expect anything. Such is the nature of things. Then one who is born will die, one who is healthy will become ill, one who is young will become old, one who is beautiful will become ugly. Such is the nature of things.

Unnecessarily you get worried about it; this suchness is not going to change because of your worry. Unnecessarily you get involved in it; your involvement is not going to change anything. Things will go on moving in their own way. The suchness, the river of suchness, will go on moving in spite of you. Whatsoever you do makes no difference; whatsoever you think makes no difference. You cannot make any difference in the nature of things.

Once this feeling settles within your heart, then life has no frustration for you. Then life cannot frustrate you, then life cannot disappoint you. And with this feeling of suchness a subtle joy arises in your being. Then you can enjoy everything – you are no more, really. With the feeling that “Such is the nature, such is existence, such is the course of things,” your ego disappears.

How can your ego exist? It exists only when you think that you can make certain changes in the nature of things. It exists only when you think that you are a creator – you can change the course, you can manipulate nature. This very moment, when you think that you can manipulate nature, ego enters, you become egoistic. You start functioning and thinking as if you are separate.

Someone asked Rinzai, “What’s your sadhana – what’s your meditation?”

So he said, “No meditation. When I feel hungry, I feel hungry, and I go begging. When I feel sleepy, I fall asleep. When sleep is gone and I feel awake, I am awake. I have no other sadhana – no other meditation, no other practice. I move with things as they are. When it is hot, I move into the shadow of a tree; the very nature moves towards shadow. When it becomes cold under the shadow of a tree, I move under the sun – but I am not doing anything. Such is the nature of things.”

Look at the beauty: he says, “Such is the nature of things. When feeling hungry, I go begging – not that I go begging . . . such is the nature of things. The hunger goes begging. Not that I move from the hot sun towards the shadow of a tree – such is the nature of things. The body moves and I allow it all to happen, and I am happy because I allow everything to happen. Nothing can make me miserable.”

Misery enters into you because you start interfering, you become resistant. You don’t allow the suchness to move; you start creating blocks for it. You want to change the course of things, then misery enters.

Someone gives you respect, honors you – you feel elated. You think something very great is within you and now it is being appreciated. It was always there – that was your feeling – but now people have become recognizant, now people have become more understanding so they can recognize the greatness of your being. But then dishonor follows… and such is the nature of things, that dishonor follows honor, it is the shadow of it. It is just the other part, the other aspect of the same coin. And when it follows you feel dejected, you feel depressed, you feel like committing suicide. The whole world has gone wrong around you; the whole world has become inimical to you.

The person who understands the nature of things will enjoy both. He will say, “Such is the nature of things, that people honor me. And such is the nature of things, that dishonor follows honor, defeat follows victory, happiness is followed by unhappiness, health is followed by disease – such is the nature of things! Youth is followed by old age and birth is followed by death – such is the nature of things!”

So whatsoever is the case, if you can feel it is so and nothing else is possible, then that which is possible happens. It is always happening – that which is possible. And that which is impossible is never happening. And if you start asking for the impossible, you are trying to move against the nature of things. The philosophy of suchness or that, thatness, is simply this statement: “Do not try for the impossible; move with the possible and you will never be unhappy.” Bliss happens to those who can move with a feeling of suchness.

Buddha became old and his followers thought, “Buddha should not become old. A buddha becoming old?” The followers could not conceive of this because followers have their own fantasies. They think Buddha is not part of the nature of things. They think he must not die, that he must always remain young. So Ananda said to Buddha, “It is very depressing that now old age is settling upon you. We never imagined that you, one who has become awakened, one who has realized the ultimate, should become old.”

Buddha said, “Such is the nature of things. For everyone, whether a buddha or non-buddha, enlightened or ignorant, the nature of things is the same – equal. I will become old and I will die, because whosoever is born will die. Such is the nature of things.” Ananda is unhappy; Buddha is not. Ananda is unhappy because he is expecting something impossible, against the nature of things.

When Shri Aurobindo died, the whole ashram of Shri Aurobindo was not ready to accept the fact that Aurobindo could die. They couldn’t believe it. The followers all over the world were surprised that Shri Aurobindo could die. For a few months this was the rumor – that he will resurrect again. And for a few days they tried to preserve the body. This was the rumor around the circle of his followers – that he is in deep samadhi, in deep meditation, and he has not died. But after three days, the body started deteriorating and a bad smell started coming out of it. He was really dead. Such is the nature of things.

Nature is a great equalizer; it makes no distinctions. And it is good that it doesn’t make any distinctions. It is not partial. If you are awakened, the only change will be this – that you will accept this suchness. If you are ignorant, the only difference will be this – that you will go on resisting, fighting with the suchness. This is the only difference – the only, I say. And this difference is great, the greatest, because the moment you realize that things move in their own way, that nature has its own law, its own order, you are freed from it. Not that it will change its laws for you, but that you will have changed, your attitude will have changed. You will say, “Such is the nature of things.”

Brahman is the ultimate nature of things, the very suchness. With this comes total acceptance. In total acceptance, suffering disappears. Suffering is your resistance, suffering is your nonacceptance. You create your own suffering. Bliss is always available but because of your attitudes you are not available to it. Now we will enter the sutra.

Brahman is well known by the name Tatvanam – that – so it is to be meditated upon as Tatvanam – that. All beings love him who know Brahman as such.

Brahman is well known by the name that – Tat – so it is to be meditated upon as Tat – as that. Do not meditate upon him as a person. Then your imagination will have entered. There is no person there. Do not meditate upon him as sagun – with attributes. That is not the teaching of the Upanishads. Do not conceive of him in some form. Just remember him as that.

But this is very difficult. How do you remember him as that? You can remember him as Krishna, as Rama, as Christ, as Buddha, but how can you remember him as that? The very concept of ‘that’ shatters your mind. It will stop. If you remember him as that, as the suchness of things, as this great cosmos – and all is implied in it – your mind will stop through shock. You cannot think about that – or can you? You can think about Krishna because you can picture, you can imagine, that he is playing on his flute or he is dancing and his girlfriends, gopis, are dancing around him – or can you picture him making love to Radha?

You can picture him but how to picture ‘that’? There is no flute, there are no girlfriends, there is no dance. There is nothing to be pictured. How can you imagine that? Imagination stops. If you really try to conceive of that, through that very effort mind will stop and you will enter meditation. This that is just like a Zen koan. That which cannot be conceived – if you try to conceive of it your mind will stop and stopping of the mind is meditation.

The very effort to meditate on that is absurd. You cannot meditate upon that: there is nothing to meditate upon; there is no object. That is not an object. But if you try hard, in the very effort . . . because you cannot meditate upon it . . . Not that you will succeed in meditating upon that – in the very effort, in the very failure that you cannot think about it, thinking will stop . . . Because thinking has no goal it cannot move with that and when thinking stops you are in meditation.

It is not that Tat, the Brahman, will appear before you; it is not that you will come to know and realize the truth in front of you – no! The moment your thinking has stopped, you have become that, you have fallen into it. The wave has disappeared into the ocean. And this disappearing always happens within because you fall from there. The wave disappears in the ocean. you are that. Meditating upon that, you will become that.

The Upanishads go on saying that one who knows the Brahman becomes the Brahman; one who meditates upon him becomes him: he becomes that.

Brahman is well known by the name that, so it is to be meditated upon as that. All beings love him who know Brahman as such.

And the person who comes to know Brahman as that, as the suchness of existence, all beings naturally fall in love with him.

Why does this happen? You suddenly feel love arising within your heart and flowing toward the person who has come to attain suchness. Why does it happen? It is not that it is necessarily so; you can even hate such a person because hate is a form of love. But you cannot be indifferent to such a person, that is the point. If such a person is there, either you can love him or hate him, but you cannot be indifferent. Hate is possible because hate is the opposite form, the reverse, of love. It is just love doing shirshasan – standing on its head. But you cannot be indifferent.

Why does love happen? Why does hate happen? And why is indifference not possible? Because the very being of such a person touches your heart deeply. It goes on playing on your heart; your heart becomes a musical instrument. Just the presence of such a person stirs something within you. The very presence of such a person makes your own ‘that’ alive. It becomes a magnetic force, and your own sleeping Brahman feels its sleep disturbed. Your own sleeping Brahman opens his eyes and looks at this awakened Brahman and a love or hate happens.

If you are receptive, surrendering, trusting, then love will happen. If you are doubtful, skeptical, non-surrendering, egoistic, then hate will happen. But indifference is impossible. You cannot conceive of Buddha moving in a town and someone being indifferent. Either love or hate is bound to happen. But both are relationships; you will start being related.

Love says, “I am ready to move with you.” Hate says, “Do not pull me. I am not ready to surrender; I will resist.” Love says, “I am ready to follow you and fall with you.” Hate says, “I cannot surrender my ego. And just because I cannot surrender my ego I will hate you, because the moment I love the surrender will happen.” And sometimes it happens that when you are in love with a person you may not be so deeply related as when you hate him.

There is one anecdote I have heard: one rishi got angry with someone. He was so angry that he cursed the man. The curse was terrible, and this man would have to be born again and again and suffer. The man fell down at the feet of that rishi and asked forgiveness. But a curse cannot be reversed. The rishi said, “Now nothing can be done to reverse the curse. You will have to pass through it. Only one thing can be done. If you remember God’s name, then the curse will not have such a terrific effect upon you. You will remain detached; you will not suffer so much. But you will have to pass through suffering.”

So the man asked, “Tell me the secret of remembering the name so that I may not forget it.”

Then the rishi said, “Then hate God. Do not love – because love can forget, but hate cannot. Hate God, and go on cursing and cursing him, swearing against him. Just by cursing him you will remember him.”

Love may forget; hate cannot forget. Love can forget because love, by and by, becomes one with the object of love. Hate is a constant vigilance; you have to protect yourself. The pull is there – a buddha is pulling you – you have to struggle. If you lose for a single moment, if you are forgetful for a single moment, you will be in the current. So you have to be constantly alert. Hate is just a love relationship in the reverse order.

A person who happens to be enlightened will attract you – either your love or your hate. But one thing is certain: you cannot be indifferent to him, because he has gone so deep that his depth will resonate within you, will resound, reflect. His depth will call your depth. He will become an invocation. It is not that he will do something: just his being, just his very being, will do something – no effort on his part.

Just looking at a flower, you say, “Beautiful!” Something has happened within you. It is not that the flower has done anything; the flower is completely unaware that you are passing. But you say, “Beautiful!” When your heart says that something is beautiful, something has happened within your heart; the flower has touched you deep down. You see the full moon in the night and suddenly you become silent. The depth, the beauty, the grace, has touched you.

Similar is the case here: when a person who has achieved Brahman, who is enlightened, touches you, it is deeper than any flower can touch. It is deeper than any full moon can touch, it is deeper than anything in the world can touch you because the feeling of Brahman is the deepest, the ultimate core, the very ground. Just by being near such a person you are changed.

Hence so much insistence in India just to be near the master – just to be near the master! The very nearness goes on changing you because the depth calls your depth, the inner silence calls your inner silence, the bliss invokes your bliss. The very presence of a master is seductive. He goes on changing you, transforming you.

“Sir, teach me the Upanishad.”

Now speaks the disciple. Up to now the master was speaking, and now the disciple asks the first and the last question – the only question. This is beautiful . . . because he was simply waiting. You must not have even been aware that there was a disciple. Only the master was speaking, as if the disciple was not. He must have been just ears and eyes; he has not interrupted at all. Now, in the last moment, he asks for something:

“Sir, teach me the Upanishad.”

The word upanishad means the esoteric teaching, the hidden teaching, the secret teaching. Upanishad means the secret path, the secret key – the esoteric, the hidden, the unknown. Upanishad means the mystery. Asks the disciple: “Sir, teach me the Upanishad.”

And the master says,

“The Upanishad has been imparted to you. We have verily imparted to you the Upanishad relating to Brahman.”

Here there is a very subtle and delicate point to be understood. The master has been teaching, talking, and the disciple must have been intensely, intellectually alert, aware, to understand whatsoever was said. And all that can be said has been said. All the knowledge relating to Brahman has been imparted. All that can be verbalized, all that can be spoken has been spoken.

And the student asks, the disciple asks, “Now teach me the Upanishad, the secret of secrets. What is the meaning of it?”

And the master says, “The Upanishad has already been imparted to you.” The master is talking – this is on one level – and while the disciple is engaged in listening, on another level the secret is being imparted.

That is why the disciple is not aware: he is intellectually engaged. His attention is on the words but deep down something else is being transferred. And that transfer is the secret: that is the real Upanishad. But that cannot be said. It is a transfer without words, a communication without language.

Bodhidharma, one of the greatest masters India has ever produced, went to China. It is said about him that he came to China with a scripture that didn’t exist – with a scripture that didn’t exist! He transferred the scripture without transferring anything at all. He must have been a past master in communicating things, silently, without words.

He used to sit looking at the wall; he would never look at his audience. Just his back would be toward you. He would never look at you; he would just look at the wall. And many people would ask Bodhidharma, “What type of way is this? What type of manners? What type of man are you? We have never seen anyone looking at the wall and we have come to listen to you.” Bodhidharma used to say, “When the right man comes, I will turn toward him. And the right man is one who can understand me in silence. I am not interested in you at all.”

And then one day a right man came, and that right man said to Bodhidharma, “Turn toward me; otherwise, I will cut off my head.”

So Bodhidharma turned immediately and said, “So you have come? Now sit in silence and I will impart.”

Not a single word was uttered in imparting and the other was made a master. And Bodhidharma disappeared. He had said, “I was waiting for this man for nine years.” And the other became a master but not a single word was used.

There are layers in your being. The uppermost layer, the most superficial, understands language, and the deepest understands silence. And masters have to create devices. These teachings, verbal teachings, are just devices. I have just been talking to you . . .

One young man came to me just the other day and he said, “You are very contradictory. You go on saying nothing can be said and you go on talking every day continuously for three hours in the morning and in the evening. You are very contradictory. You say nothing can be said about that and yet you go on saying.”

He is right, I am contradictory. Nothing can be said about that, and still I go on saying something. This something is just to catch your attention on one level so that on another level something can penetrate in silence.

The master says, “The Upanishad has already been imparted to you, and you are saying, “Teach me, sir, the Upanishad.” And what have I been doing all the time?” But the disciple was engaged intellectually. He is not yet aware what has happened to him. The news has not yet reached to his intellect. It will take time.

So it happens. While you are here you may not have understood me but that doesn’t make any difference. If there has been a contact in silence, it will take time for you to realize that something has happened within. The news will take time because intellect is very far away from the deepest center of you. If something happens there, you will not become aware. Rather, I will become aware first. So I go on looking at you while you are meditating, just to feel what is happening – because you are not yet able to feel what is happening. It will take time. The message will come one day; it will travel; it will pass through all the centers and layers. And then it will come to your mind and then you will recognize – but it may take years.

Someone very near to me was saying just the other day, “You have not done anything for me, and I have been with you for two years.” The news has not yet reached. It will take time.

The master says:

“The Upanishad has been imparted to you. We have verily imparted to you the Upanishad relating to Brahman.”

Of the Upanishad, tapas – austerities; daman – self-restraint; and karma – dedicated work; form the support. The Vedas are its limbs and truth its abode.

In short, the master defines what the Upanishad calls tapas. Tapas means effort – intense effort. When you bring your total energy to any effort it becomes tapas – any effort! If your total energy is brought to it, it becomes tapas.

While doing meditation, if you withhold yourself it is not tapas. You are just making an effort which is so-so, on the surface. You are not deep in it, not moving in it totally. When you move in it totally, it creates heat; hence, the name tapas. Tapas means heat. When you move totally in any effort, it creates heat within you. Exactly that: it creates heat, and that heat changes many things chemically. You become a different being. You become a different person through tapas because that heat changes you chemically. It makes a different type of personality for you.

Gurdjieff used methods of tapas very much in this age. He would give some method to you, and he would say, “Bring your total effort to it. Not a single fragment should be left behind to watch it. Bring yourself totally in it, become the effort.” And you may be surprised that any effort . . .

Gurdjieff would say to someone, “Go into the garden and dig a hole and bring total effort into the digging. Forget the digger completely; become the digging.” And the man would go, and he would dig and he would dig. The whole day he would have been digging. Then Gurdjieff would come and throw all the mud back and he would say, “This was useless. Start again tomorrow morning.”

And the man would start again the next morning and this would go on for days and days. And he would come every evening and he would throw the mud back, and he would say, “Start again.”

When the digger becomes the digging, when there is no one left behind, when the whole being has moved into effort, it becomes tapas; it becomes a subtle heat.

The master says tapas and daman. Daman is self-restraint, not suppression. This word daman has been very wrongly used. It is not suppression; it is self-restraint. And there is a deep difference.

While doing meditation, while standing in silence, you may feel a sneeze coming. You can suppress it, you can start fighting with it, then it is suppression. But if you simply remain indifferent, if you do not do anything about it, if you do not suppress and you do not express, if you do not do anything about it and you simply remain indifferent, this is self-restraint. You remain in yourself. You don’t move towards the sneeze to do anything.

If you move to express it, you have come out of yourself. If you move to suppress it, again you have come out of yourself. You simply remain in yourself as if the sneeze is happening to someone else – you are not concerned. You don’t suppress it, you don’t fight with it. You simply remain indifferent, a witness. That is self-restraint.

Suppression is easy because you are allowed to do something. Self-restraint is very difficult because you are not allowed to do anything. You are to remain passive, a non-doer, non-active, simply watching.

. . . Tapas, daman and karma – dedicated work – form the support. These three

things form the support of the secret teaching, of the Upanishad. Dedicated work – all karma, all action, is not karma. When a karma is dedicated; when a karma is egoless; when a karma becomes a sort of prayer, a meditation; when a karma is only outwardly a karma and inwardly something else is reaching toward the divine; then it is karma – then it is dedicated work.

For example, you are serving an old man or an ill man. If you can make it a meditation, if you can make it a prayer; if you can see the divine, ‘that’, in that old, ill man; if you serve not to achieve anything, you serve to be in deep meditation – in this moment your service becomes meditation. Then it becomes karma. If you want to achieve anything out of it, it will create a chain of cause and effect.

If you want this old man – he may even be your father – to have property, a bank balance, if your eyes are on the bank balance, then it is not karma. But the bank balance can be there in many shapes: you may be serving this old man to achieve heaven; that again is a bank balance. You may be serving this old man because you have been taught that service leads to God; then again it is a sort of bank balance. You are not here. Your mind is somewhere else.

When karma is totally here and now, when your mind is not moving anywhere else into the future, then it doesn’t create any chain. In this very moment it becomes a meditation.

These three – tapas – austerities; daman – self-restraint; and karma – dedicated work, form the support. The Vedas are its limbs.

Veda is a beautiful word: it simply means knowledge. Whatsoever has been known about the Brahman, wherever, it is all Vedas. So I call The Bible a Veda and I call the Koran a Veda; to me there are thousands and thousands of Vedas. And whenever a person becomes enlightened, whatsoever he says is a Veda. So the Vedas are not only four. The word Veda comes from vid; vid means to know. And wherever this knowing is accumulated, wherever this knowing is symbolized, it becomes a Veda.

The Vedas are its limbs and truth its abode.

These three things have to be remembered: make intense effort so that an inner heat is born and changes you chemically; be in a self-restraint so that you become more self-centered, unmoving, unwavering, centered, rooted; and make your work a karma – a dedicated prayer, a meditation. Try to know all that has been known before. Not that through it you will come to truth but all that will become a help. It can also become a barrier if you become too much attached to it. Otherwise, it will be a help, an indicator.

Ultimately truth is the abode – and truth means that. And that comes to you when you live a life of suchness.

One who realizes it – knowledge of Brahman – thus destroys sin and is well established in Brahman, the infinite, the blissful and the highest.

-Osho

From The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #16

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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Bring the Dawn, Dispel the Darkness – Osho

When I was a student at a Japanese Buddhist University I heard the word consciousness. Beloved Osho, what does it mean?

Kranti Satbodha, consciousness you already have, but only in a very small proportion. It is just like an iceberg – one tenth is above water and the rest is under water. Just a little bit is conscious in you.

I am saying something and you are listening to it; without consciousness it is not possible. These pillars of Chuang Tzu Auditorium are not listening – they don’t have consciousness. But we are aware only of a very small piece of consciousness.

Meditation is the whole science of bringing more and more consciousness out of darkness. The only way is to be as conscious as possible twenty-four hours a day. Sitting, sit consciously, not like a mechanical robot; walking, walk consciously, alert to each movement; listening, listen more and more consciously, so that each word comes to you in its crystal-clear purity, its definitiveness. While listening, be silent, so that your consciousness is not covered by thoughts.

Just this moment, if you are silent and conscious you can hear small insects singing their song in the trees. The darkness is not empty, the night has its own song; but if you are full of thoughts then you cannot listen to the insects. This is just an example.

If you become more and more silent, you may start listening to your own heartbeat, you may start listening to the flow of your own blood, because blood is continuously flowing all through your body. If you are conscious and silent, more and more clarity, creativity, intelligence, will be discovered.

There are millions of geniuses who die without knowing that they were a genius. There are millions of people who don’t know why they have come, why they lived and why they are going.

It happened . . . George Bernard Shaw was traveling from London to some other place in England. The ticket checker came and Bernard Shaw looked in all his pockets, opened his suitcase – he was perspiring – the ticket was missing.

The ticket checker said, “I know you; everybody knows you, there is no need to be worried. You must have put it somewhere, don’t be so tense”. Bernard Shaw said, “Who is being tense about the ticket?” The ticket checker said, “Then why are you perspiring and looking so nervous?”

He said, “The problem is that now the question arises of where I am going. It was written on the ticket. Now, are you going to tell me where I am going? Who is going to tell me?” The ticket checker said, “How can I tell you where you are going?”

So Bernard Shaw said, “Then you should go and leave me alone. I have to find the ticket. It is a question of life and death. Where am I going? I must be going somewhere, because I have come to the station, purchased the ticket, entered the compartment. So one thing is certain, I must be going somewhere.”

This is the situation most people never come to know – their consciousness is a hidden treasure. One does not know what it contains unless you awaken it, unless you bring it into light, unless you open all the doors and enter into your own being and find every nook and corner. Consciousness in its fullness will give you the idea of who you are, and will also give you the idea of what your destiny is, of where you are supposed to go, of what your capacities are. Are you hiding a poet in your heart, or a singer, or a dancer, or a mystic?

Consciousness is something like light. Right now you are in deep darkness inside. When you close your eyes there is darkness and nothing else.

One of the great philosophers of the West, C.E.M. Joad, was dying, and a friend, who was a disciple of George Gurdjieff, had come to see him. Joad asked the friend, “What do you go on doing with this strange fellow, George Gurdjieff? Why are you wasting your time? And not only you . . . I have heard that many people are wasting their time.”

The friend laughed. He said, “It is strange that those few people who are with Gurdjieff think that the whole world is wasting its time, and you are thinking that we are wasting our time.” Joad said, “I don’t have much longer to live; otherwise, I would have come and compared.”

The friend said, “Even if you have only a few seconds more to live, it can be done here, now.” Joad agreed. The man said, “You close your eyes and just look inside, and then open your eyes and tell me what you find.”

Joad closed his eyes, opened his eyes and said, “There is darkness and nothing else.” The friend laughed and he said, “It is not a time to laugh, because you are almost dying, but I have come at the right time. You said that you saw only darkness inside?” Joad said, “Of course.”

And the man said, “You are such a great philosopher; you have written such beautiful books. Can’t you see the point, that there are two things – you and the darkness? Otherwise, who saw the darkness? Darkness cannot see itself – that much is certain – and darkness cannot report that there is only darkness.” Joad gave it consideration and he said, “My God, perhaps the people who are with Gurdjieff are not wasting their time. This is true, I have seen the darkness.”

The friend said, “Our whole effort is to make this “I,” the witness, stronger and more crystallized, and to change the darkness into light. And both things happen simultaneously. As the witness becomes more and more centered, the darkness becomes less and less. When the witness comes to its full flowering, that is the lotus of consciousness – all darkness disappears.”

Satbodha, we are here in a mystery school, doing nothing else than bringing more and more crystallization to your witness, to your consciousness; so that your inner being, your interiority, becomes a light, so full and overflowing that you can share it with others.

To be in darkness is to be living at the minimum. And to be full of life is to live at the maximum.

– Osho

From The Razor’s Edge, Discourse #11

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 Truth? – Osho

What is Truth?

This is the question every man has to answer on his own. And unless a man answers this question he is not truly a man.

This question has haunted humanity down the centuries. It is as old as man himself because man became man only when he asked this question. Unless we know what truth is, our whole effort to live, our whole effort to make a meaning out of life is futile.

It is ultimate, but urgent also, to know from where life has arisen, and to want to know the source and the goal, to know the inner running current that holds everything, to know the thread which is the ultimate law of existence.

When we ask the question, “What is truth?” we are entering into the world of man for the first time. If you have not asked the question yet then you live below human beings. Ask the question, and you become part of humanity. And when the question is dissolved you go beyond humanity, you become a God.

Below the questioning you remain part of the animal kingdom; with the question you enter on the path; and again being without the question you have come to realize that you have come home. The question is very difficult because just by asking, it cannot be solved. One has to put one’s whole life at the stake.

This is the question that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus. At the last moment, when Jesus was going to be crucified, Pontius Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” And Jesus did not answer him. Christian mystics have pondered over it. Why did Jesus not answer it? Why did he remain silent?

There are three possibilities. One, that the question was not sincere. A man like Jesus answers only when the question is sincere. When is a question sincere? A question is sincere when a questioner is ready to do something about it. If it is just curiosity then it is not worth answering. If it has an intense passion, a deep desire, so deep that the questioner is ready to put his whole life at the stake – nothing less will do – then only is the question sincere. A man like Jesus will answer only when the question has been asked from the very core of one’s being. So the first possibility is that Pilate’s question was not sincere. Seeing the insincerity, Jesus remained silent.

Pilate was a well-educated man, a man who had succeeded at least in the eyes of the world. He was the viceroy, a Roman Governor-general. He was at the peak of his career – power, prestige, wealth, everything was his. Whatsoever he had been doing in his life had paid him well. Facing him was Jesus, almost a hobo, a failure, one who had not achieved anything at least in the eyes of the world. He had no power, no prestige, not even respectability. He was just at the other end of life, a tremendous failure, mocked, jeered, insulted. Whatsoever he had been doing had all failed. It had not paid him in any way. His life was futile, at least for others.

The successful man asked the failure, “What is truth?”

There are two types of successes in the world. One, the worldly, which is not really a success but just trying to deceive yourself, just trying to keep up faces, appearances. The eyes are full of tears but you go on smiling; the heart is miserable, but you go on showing something else, just the opposite, to the world. They say “nothing succeeds like success” but I would like to tell you “nothing fails like success.” As far as the inner journey is concerned, as far as the transcendental is concerned, nothing fails like success and nothing succeeds like failure.

The first possibility is that the question was not sincere, it was asked just by the way. The man was well-educated, well-trained in philosophical concepts. He could have asked the question as a philosophical question. Then Jesus remained silent because the question was not really asked and there was no need to answer it.

The second possibility is that the question was sincere, that the question was not just a childish curiosity, that there was passion behind it, that it was authentic. Then why did Jesus remain silent? He remained silent because if this ultimate question is authentically asked then silence is the answer, because there is no way to answer it except silence. The question is so profound that words will not be capable of answering it. The question is so deep that words will not be able to reach it, to touch it – only silence will.

If the second is the case then Jesus did answer it, but he answered it by silence.

A third possibility is also there: that the question was sincere and yet not so sincere – that it was ambiguous, split, which was probably the case because where can you find a man who is total? A part of him was authentically asking, another part was pretending, “Even if you don’t answer I am not in a hurry. And even if you don’t answer, I don’t mind because in fact I don’t need it. In fact, I know the answer already, I am asking just to test you.”

The question was ambiguous, Janus-faced. That seems to be more probable because that is how man is and has always been – split. A part of Pilate feels the truth of this man who is standing before him – a complete, utter failure but yet his eyes are luminous, yet he has a glow. Pilate can feel it, can almost touch it. Yet another part, the egoist part, is not ready to surrender so he pretends he is asking only casually, “Even if you don’t answer, don’t be worried. It is not my need. In fact, I already know the answer.”

If this ambiguity was the case, then Jesus would also remain silent because when a question is ambiguous and the person is divided, no answer is possible. Because the answer can be understood only in your undivided consciousness, the question can be answered only when you are no longer split, when you are one, when you are in a unison, unity. Only then can you understand it.

Jesus’ silence before Pontius Pilate is very significant, pregnant with many meanings. But Jesus has answered the question somewhere else, it is recorded in the New Testament. Somewhere else he says, “I am the Truth.”

I would like you to go a little bit into history then it will be very easy to understand today’s parable.

Homer asked the same question in 850 B.C. and he answered that ‘the Whole is supported by Fate and Fate is the Truth’.

This is not really an answer; in fact, it is avoiding. When you say, ‘It is Fate,’ you don’t say much; in fact, you are not saying anything, you are simply playing with a word. You have simply shifted the question. It doesn’t answer. If somebody is miserable and you say, “It is Fate,” how have you answered it? Your answering has not added anything to the already known situation. You have simply labelled it. “One is suffering because it is Fate.” But why is it so? Why is Fate so? No, it is not a real answer. In fact, it is a lie. But one can believe in such things. Many people still do as Homer did. They have not risen above that level of consciousness.

Then came Thales, 575 B.C. He said that the whole consists of nothing but water. Water is the basic element of truth, of life, of existence.

Better than Fate, something more tangible, but very fragmentary. Water does not go very deep, does not explain much. It is reducing the higher to the lowest. Thales must have had a scientific mind; that’s what science goes on doing. You ask about mind and they say it is nothing but matter. The higher is reduced to the lower; the sky is explained by the earth. Mind is a great evolution. To explain the mind by matter is a scientific fallacy.

Thales was the first scientist of the world. He tried to explain the unknowable by something known: he called it water, the liquid element, the liquidity, the flow. But the answer is very fragmentary. It has something of truth in it but not all of it. And a fragmentary truth is almost more dangerous than a lie because it has a certain appearance of truth and it can deceive more. That fragment of truth can become very deceptive; it can cover the whole lie and make it appear as if it is the truth.

Then came Pythagoras, 530 B.C. He says that the whole consists only of numbers, mathematical symbols. He has even more of a scientific attitude than Thales – mathematics. Meaningful, but mathematics is not life. In fact, all that is very alive is nonmathematical. Love is non-mathematical, you cannot reduce it to numbers. Poetry is nonmathematical. Just think of a life consisting only of numbers – one, two, three, four – all poetry disappears, all love disappears, all dreaming disappears. Life will not be worth living.

That’s how it is happening today. Scientists have reduced everything to mathematics. Life is not equal to equations howsoever accurate the equations; life is more than mathematics can ever explain. The mathematics cannot explain the mathematician, the mathematician who deals in numbers is higher and bigger than numbers. It has to be so; those numbers are just toys in his hands. But who is this player? Whenever life is reduced to mathematics it loses charm, it loses charisma, it loses mystery. And suddenly everything seems to be worthless. Mystery is needed; it is subtle nourishment for growth.

I have heard two mathematicians talking. One said to another, ‘Is there any meaning in life? Is there any worth? Is there any purpose?’

The other said, ‘But what else can you do with it?’

The first asked, ‘Is there any meaning to live for in life?’ and the other says, ‘What else can you do with it?’ If life has to be lived just as if you are a victim, as if somebody is playing a trick upon you, as if you are being thrown into this torture chamber, into this concentration camp called the earth, then even if you live, you don’t live enough. You slowly commit suicide. You by and by, by and by, go on disappearing. Suicide becomes a constant thought in the mind if life has no mystery.

Then came Anaxagoras, 450 B.C. and his answer is mind. Certainly he took a great leap from water, number, fate; he took a great jump. Anaxagoras is a great milestone in the history of humanity. ‘Mind,’ he says. ‘The whole existence is made up of the stuff called mind.’

Better, but Jesus would not agree, Buddha would not agree. Yes, certainly better than what others were saying, but Zen would not agree. Matter, mind . . . Zen says no-mind. One has to go higher still because mind still carries the duality with matter.

Good, great in a way, a radical step; from object Anaxagoras turns to the subject, from the outer he turns to the inner. He opens the door. He is the first psychologist in the world because he emphasizes mind more than matter. He says matter is also made of mind: he explains the lower with the higher.

You can explain in two ways. Go and see beautiful white lotus flowers in a pond; they come out of the dirty mud. Then there are two possibilities: either you explain the lotus by the dirty mud or you explain the dirty mud by the lotus. And both will lead you in totally different dimensions. If you say that this lotus is nothing but dirty mud because it comes out of it, your life will lose all significance, meaning, beauty. Then you will live in the dirty mud.

That’s what Freud has been doing; that’s what Marx has done. They have great skill in reducing everything to the dirty mud. Buddha attains to enlightenment, ask Freud and he will say it is nothing but sex energy. There is a truth in it, because it arises out of sex, but the sex functions like dirty mud and out of it arises the lotus.

Ask Buddha;. He will say sex is nothing but the beginning of enlightenment, the very first steps of nirvana. That’s how Tantra was born.

These are two ways and you will have to remember that your life will depend more or less on the way you interpret, on the way you choose. You can try to reduce the lotus to dirty mud, it can be done and it is very scientific. It can be done very scientifically because all that this lotus has was in the mud. It can be dissected and everything can be found, and then the mud can be dissected, and whatsoever the lotus has, everything will be found in the mud; nothing special, nothing extra, nothing from the outside has entered into the lotus so it is nothing but the mud. If you are choosing your life with this attitude, your life will be just nothing but mud.

And the person who says that the mud is nothing but potential white lotuses, that the mud is nothing but a waiting to manifest its beauty in lotuses, has a higher standpoint, the standpoint of a religious man. Then the whole life becomes full of splendor, significance, glory. Then wherever you look, you can find God, you can find the white lotus. Then everything is moving towards a peak. Then there is evolution. Then there is future, possibility. Then even the impossible becomes possible.

With the first attitude – the dirty-mud-attitude I call it – even the possible seems to be impossible. But with the second attitude – the lotus-attitude I call it – you can see deeply into mud and you can see hidden lotuses there. And the dirty mud is no more dirty mud, it is just potentiality. Then sex becomes potentiality for samadhi, the body becomes potentiality for the soul, the world becomes the abode of God.

Anaxagoras was one of the greatest revolutionaries, a radical thinker. This word radical is beautiful. It means: pertaining to the roots. He changed the outlook. He said mind. He took a necessary step, but that too was not enough.

Then came Protagoras, 445 B.C. and he said “Man.” Now his standpoint is more total. Mind is a fragment of man. Man is many things more, mind plus. If Anaxagoras is thought to be absolutely true then you will remain in the head; that is what has happened to many people. They have not moved beyond Anaxagoras. They go on living in the head because mind is all. Then mind becomes dictatorial, it goes on a great ego trip. It starts dominating everything and crippling everything. It becomes a destructive force.

No, you are not only mind. You are mind, certainly, but plus. Many more things are there.

A lotus cannot exist alone; the flower cannot exist alone. It will need many more things to exist: the pond, the water, the air, the sun, its connection with the mud, and leaves, and a thousand and one things. So if you think only in terms of the lotus and you forget all connections with the universe, your lotus will be a plastic lotus. It will not be a real lotus, it will not be inter-connected, it will not be rooted in existence.

Protagoras has a more holy attitude, wholistic attitude. Man, and the totality of man – the body, the mind, the soul – becomes truth.

Then came Socrates, 435 B. C. and he said: wisdom, knowing, knowledge. When man attains to maturity, he becomes wise; when man comes to fulfillment, then wisdom arises.

Wisdom is the essence of man, the fragrance of the lotus flower. A still higher attitude.

And then came Jesus who says, “I am the truth.” This one statement is one of the greatest statements ever made in the world. Either it is the greatest truth ever uttered or it is the most egoistic and arrogant statement ever made. “I am the truth.” It depends how you decode it. Ordinarily, when you hear that Jesus says, “I am the truth,” you think this man is a megalomaniac, has gone mad. He is uttering nonsense. This man is truth? Jesus is truth? Then what about us all?

Jesus is not saying that, you have misunderstood him. When he says, “I am truth,” he is not saying, “Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, is the truth.” What he is saying is totally different. He is saying “I am-ness, I am, is the truth,” so wherever there is this “I am-ness” there is truth. When you say “I am” you are uttering truth. Your “I am” and my “I am” are not two things, we both participate there. Your name is different, your form is different, my name is different, my form is different, but when I say “I, I am” and you say “I am” we refer to some common experience, we refer to some common root. Your “I am-ness” and my “I am-ness” are not different, are not separate, they belong to one “I am-ness” of God. When Jesus says “I am the truth” he means wherever this integration is felt of being totally “I am”, there is truth.

Ordinarily you are many I’s – you don’t have any capital I; you have many I’s, lower case. Gurdjieff used to say that we should not use the word I, only God can use it because you don’t have any single I, you have many i’s like a crowd. For one moment one I comes on the top, and becomes the ruler; in another moment it is gone and another I comes over and rules.

You can watch it. It is so simple. One moment you say, “I am happy. I am tremendously happy, at the top of the world” and the next moment you are unhappy, at the lowest bottom of the world, in the seventh hell. Are both these I’s the same? One moment you were flowing and you were compassionate and loving and another moment you were closed and frozen and dead. Are these two I’s the same? One moment you could have forgiven anything and another moment just any small tiny thing and you cannot forgive. Are these two I’s the same? One moment you are sitting in silence, in zazen, meditating, and you look so Buddha-like, and another moment, for a small thing, you are nagging, fighting. You will yourself feel ridiculous later on. For what were you getting so hot? For what were you creating so much fuss? It was not worth it. But another i was ruling over you.

You are like a wheel of many I’s; those I’s are like spokes. The wheel goes on moving, one spoke comes on top; hardly before it has come it starts declining. It goes on changing. Again it will come up and again you will feel a different being existing there within you. Watch. Have you got an I? Any substantial I? Any essential I? Can you say that you have some permanent I in you? A crystalized I in you?

You promise, and next moment you have forgotten your promise. Gurdjieff used to say that unless you have a permanent I, who will promise? You will not be able to fulfil it. Who will fulfil it? You say to a woman, “I love you and I will love you forever and forever.” Wait! What are you uttering? What nonsense! Forever and ever? How can you promise? You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, you don’t know who is going to rule you tomorrow. Your promises will create trouble for you. You cannot promise because you are not there. Only a man like Gurdjieff or Jesus can promise. Yes, he can promise because he knows that he will remain the same; whatsoever changes in the world will not affect him. He will remain the same, he has come to a crystalized soul. Now he knows that his wheel has stopped. He is in total possession of his being. He can promise.

But ordinarily people go on promising, and you never see the fact that no promise has ever been fulfilled by you. You completely forget about it. You don’t even remember it because that remembrance will be like a wound. You find out ways and means to rationalize: you cannot fulfil it because the other person has changed, you cannot fulfil it because the circumstances have changed, you cannot fulfil it because you were foolish at the time you made it. And again you will make promises.

Man is an animal who goes on promising, never fulfilling any promise because he cannot fulfil it; man as he exists has too many I’s. When Jesus says “I am the truth” he is saying that whosoever attains to “I am-ness” is truth.

And this truth is not something philosophical, this truth is something existential. You cannot come to it by logic, argumentation; you cannot come to it by finding a right premise and then moving to a right syllogism and then reaching to a right conclusion. No, that is not the way. You will have to come to it through an inner discipline. That’s what Zen is all about.

-Osho

From Dang Dang Doko Dang, Discourse #9

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

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

Your Identification Breaks in the Fifth Body, Now You will be the Master – Osho

On which plane does the meditator reach the no-thought state? Are thoughts possible without identifying the consciousness with objects or is identity essential for thought?

The perfect no-thought state is attained in the fifth body but small glimpses begin from the fourth body. Thoughts continue in the fourth body but one begins to observe the gaps between two thoughts. Before the fourth there are thoughts and thoughts and only thoughts; we do not see the gap between the thoughts. In the fourth the intervals begin to appear and the emphasis changes. If you have observed gestalt images you will be able to understand this. Suppose there is a picture of a flight of steps: it can be so drawn that if you look attentively you will observe the steps going up; then if you look again you will see the steps coming down. But the most interesting part is that you cannot observe the steps going up and down simultaneously. You can see only one of the two. When you observe the second picture the first picture will have vanished.

We can make a picture in which two faces can be seen facing each other, complete with nose, eyes and beard. First it will appear as if two men are facing each other. Now paint the faces black leaving the intervening space white. Now you will say that there is a flower pot in this intervening space, and the nose and eyes become the outlines of the pot. You will not be able to see the pot and the two faces at one time. When you see the two faces the pot will not be seen; when the pot is observed the faces will vanish. No matter how hard you try to see them all together the gestalt will change its emphasis. When your emphasis shifts to the faces the pot will vanish; when the emphasis is on the pot the faces will vanish.

Up to the third body the gestalt of our mind has its emphasis on thought. Rama comes, so Rama is visible and his coming is visible. The empty space between Rama and his coming, or the empty space before Rama’s coming and after Rama’s going, is not visible to us. The emphasis is on Rama’s coming; the intervening space is not observed. The change starts from the fourth body. All of a sudden it will strike you that Rama’s coming is no longer very important. When Rama was not coming there was the empty space; when Rama has gone there is the empty space. The empty space begins to come within the focus of your mind: faces disappear; the pot becomes visible. And when your attention is on the empty space you cannot think.

You can do only one of the following two things: as long as you see thoughts you will think, but when you see the empty space you will be empty within. However, this will keep alternating in the fourth body. Sometimes you will see the two faces and sometimes the pot: that is, sometimes you will see thoughts and sometimes the gap. Silence will come and so will thoughts.

The difference between silence and emptiness is only this: silence means thoughts have not yet ended, but the emphasis is changed. The consciousness has shifted from thought and takes pleasure in silence, but thought still remains. It is only that the consciousness has shifted: the attention has shifted from thoughts. Then the attention is on silence. But thought returns sometimes – and when it manages to draw your attention, again silence is lost and thought begins.

In the last moments of the fourth body the mind will keep alternating between the two. On the fifth plane all thoughts will be lost and only silence will remain. This is not the ultimate silence, because this silence exists in comparison to thought and speech. Silence means not speaking; emptiness means a state where there is neither silence nor speech. Neither the faces remain nor the flower pot; only the blank paper. Now if you are asked whether the faces are there or the flower pot, you will say neither.

The state of no-thought occurs in its totality in the fifth body. At the fourth we get glimpses of this state; it will be observed off and on between two thoughts. At the fifth the no-thought state will become evident and thoughts will disappear.

Now the second part of your question is, “Is identification necessary for the formation of thoughts, or can thoughts occur without any identification?” Up to the third body identification and thought come simultaneously. There is your identification and there is the coming of thought: there is no interval between the two. Your thoughts and you are one – not two. Now when you are angry it is wrong to say that you are angry. It would be more correct to say that you have become anger, because in order to be angry it should also be possible for you not to be angry.

For instance, I say, “I am moving my hand.” Then suppose you say, “Now stop your hand,” and I say, “That is not possible; the hands keep moving” – then you may well question what I mean when I say, “I am moving my hand.” I should say, “The hand is moving,” because if I am moving the hand I should be able to stop it. If I cannot stop my hand I cannot claim to be its owner. It has no meaning. Because you cannot stop your thoughts, your identification with them is complete up to the third body. Up to there you are thought.

So up to the third body, by hitting someone’s thoughts we are hitting the person himself. If you tell such a person, “What you say is wrong,” he will never feel that what he says is wrong; he will feel he is wrong. Quarrels and fights take place not because of a statement but because of the ‘I’ – because there is complete identification. To attack your thoughts is to attack you. Even if you say, “It is all right if you do not agree with my way of thinking,” within you will feel that you have been opposed. Many times it happens that the idea in question is left aside and we begin to fight for it merely because we put forth the view and not for any other reason. You support it merely because you have put it forth as your viewpoint – because you have declared it as your scripture, your principle, your argument.

Until the third body there is no distance between you and your thoughts. You are the thought. In the fourth wavering begins. You will begin to get glimpses of the fact that you are something apart and your thoughts are something apart. But so far you are unable to stop your thoughts, because deep within the roots the association still exists. Above on the branches you feel the difference. You sit on one branch and the thoughts on the other and you see they are not you. But deep within you and thoughts are one. Therefore, it seems that thoughts are separate, and it also seems that if my association with them is broken thoughts will stop. But they do not stop. At some deeper level the association with thoughts will continue.

Changes begin to take place on the fourth plane. You begin to get a vague notion of thoughts being different and you being different. You still cannot proclaim this, however, and the thought process is still mechanical. You cannot stop your thoughts, nor can you bring them about. If I can say to you, “Stop anger and show that you are the master,” it can also be said, “Bring about anger and prove that you are the master.” You will ask, “How can this be done? We cannot bring about anger.” The moment you can you are its master. Then you can stop it at any moment. When you are the master the process of bringing on anger and stopping it are both in your hands. If you can bring on anger you can stop it also.

It is also interesting to note that stopping it is a little difficult, but bringing it on is easier. So if you want to be the master first begin by bringing on anger, because this is easier. In the situation of bringing it on you are tranquil, but in the situation of having to stop it you are already angry and so you are not even aware of yourself. Then how will you stop it? Therefore, it is always easier to start the experiment by bringing on anger rather than by stopping it. For instance, you begin to laugh but then you find that you cannot stop laughing; it is difficult. But if you are not laughing and you want to bring on laughter you can do it in a minute or two. Then you will know the secret of laughter – from where it comes and how – and then you will know the secret of stopping it also, and it can be stopped.

At the fourth plane you will begin to see that you are separate and thoughts are separate; that you are not your thoughts. Therefore, whenever the no-thought state occurs – as I said before – the witness also comes, and wherever there are thoughts the witness will be lost. In the intervals between thoughts – that is, in the gaps between thoughts – you will realize your separate identity from the thoughts. Then there is no association between you and the thoughts. But even then you will be a helpless observer. You will not be able to do much, though all efforts are to be made in the fourth body only.

So I have defined two possibilities of the fourth body – one that is natural and the other that is obtained through meditations. You will be alternating between these two. The first possibility is thought and the second is understanding. The moment you attain the second potential of the fourth body – vivek, or understanding – the fourth body will drop as well as the identification of consciousness with mind. When you attain the fifth body two things will drop: the fourth body and this identification.

In the fifth body you can bring on thoughts or not bring them on, as you wish. For the first time thoughts will be a means and will not depend on identification. If you wish to bring on anger you can bring on anger; if you wish to bring on love you can do so. If you do not wish to bring on anything you are at liberty not to do so. If you wish to stop anger that is half-formed you can order it to stop. Whatever thought you want to bring will come to you, and that which you do not wish to bring will not have any power to invade your mind.

There are many such instances in the life of Gurdjieff. People considered him a peculiar man. If two people were sitting before him, he would look toward one with the utmost anger and toward the other with the utmost love. So quickly would he change his expression that the two would carry away different reports about him. Though both had met him together, one would say, “He looks like a dangerous man,” while the other would say, “How full of love he is.” This is very easy on the fifth plane. Gurdjieff was beyond the understanding of people around him. He could instantly bring any kind of expression to his face. There was no difficulty for him in this, but there was difficulty for others.

The reason behind this is that in the fifth body you are the master of yourself; you can bring about any feeling you please. Then anger, love, hatred, forgiveness, all your thoughts, become mere play things; therefore, you can relax when you please. To relax after play is very easy but to relax from life is difficult. If I am only playing at anger I will not sit in anger after you leave the room.

If I am playing the game of talking I will no longer be talking after you go. But if talking is my life-breath, then I shall keep on talking even after you leave. Even if nobody listens, I will listen. I will keep on talking because that is my very life; it is not a play after which I can relax. It is my very life, it has taken hold of me. So such a man will talk even at night. In dreams also he will gather a crowd and speak. In dreams also he will quarrel, he will fight and do all that he has been doing in the daytime. He will keep doing this all the twenty-four hours, because that is his life; that is his very existence.

Your identification breaks in the fifth body. Then for the first time you are at peace, you are empty, by your own free will. But when the need arises you think also. So in the fifth body, for the first time you will be putting your power of thinking to use. It would be better to say that before the fifth body thoughts make use of you; after the fifth you make use of thoughts. Before that it is not correct to say, “I think.” In the fifth body you also come to know that your thoughts are not your own: thoughts of people around you also enter your mind. However, you are not even aware that the thoughts you think to be your own could be someone else’s.

A Hitler is born and the whole of Germany is permeated with his thoughts – but each German feels it to be his own thought. A very dynamic person diffuses his thoughts into the minds of others and they become echoes of the same. This dynamism is as serious as it is deep.

For example, it is two thousand years since Jesus died. The thought waves that he left in the world still grasp the minds of Christians who think that these are their own thoughts. The same is the case with Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna and others. Any kind of dynamic person’s thoughts, whether they are of a good person or an evil one, can catch the hold of the human mind. The hold of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan upon our minds has not yet been released, nor has the hold of Krishna and Rama. Their thought waves move forever around us, and you are able to catch those thought waves that are conducive to your particular state of mind.

It always happens that a man who is very good in the morning becomes evil by noon. In the morning he moves in the waves of Rama; in the afternoon he may be caught by the waves of Genghis Khan. Receptivity and time cause the difference. The beggar always comes to beg in the morning, because the effect of evil vibrations is at the minimum at the time of the rising sun. As the day progresses and as the sun gets tired of its long journey in the skies the influence gains strength, so the beggar has no hope of charity from others in the evening. If a beggar asks a man early in the morning to give two rupees he will not be able to refuse right away; as the day progresses it is more difficult to say yes to the beggar. By evening the man is tired with the day’s work so now he is fully prepared to refuse. The condition of his mind is quite different now; so also is the entire atmosphere of his surroundings. So the thoughts we feel to be our own also do not belong to us.

This you will experience only in the fifth body, and you will be surprised to see the way thoughts come and go. The thought comes, then it goes; it catches hold of you, then it leaves you alone. There are a thousand kinds of thoughts – and very contradictory ones too; therefore, there is confusion in our minds. Every single person is confused. If thoughts were entirely yours there would be no question of confusion. Your one hand catches hold of Genghis Khan and the other catches hold of Krishna, so there is bound to be confusion. Both of these sets of thought waves lie in wait for you, and as soon as you show your readiness they enter within. They are present all around you.

All this you will come to know when your identification with thoughts breaks completely. The biggest change will be that until this time you will have thoughts, but now you will have thinking. There is a difference between the two. Thoughts are atomic: they come and go and they are always alien. To say that thoughts are always alien is quite correct. Thinking is ours, but thoughts are alien. This thinking will start within you after the fifth body. Then you will be able to think; you will no longer be merely collecting the thoughts of others. Therefore, the thinking of the fifth body is never a burden upon you, because it is your own. This thinking that is born in the fifth body may be called wisdom or understanding or whatever you like to call it.

At the fifth plane you have your own intuition, your own understanding, your own intelligence. At the fifth the influence of all outside thoughts will end, and in this sense you will be the master of yourself; you will attain your being; you will become your self. Now you will have your own thoughts, your own power of thinking, your own eyes and your own vision. After this only what you wish will come to you; what you do not wish will never come near you. You can think just what you want to think; other thoughts cannot invade you. Now you will be the master. Here the question of identification does not arise.

In the sixth body thinking is also not required. Thoughts are necessary up to the fourth body; thinking and wisdom are necessary in the fifth. On the sixth plane even these end, because there they are not required at all. You become cosmic; you become one with the Brahman. Now there is no other.

In fact, all thoughts are always related to the other. The thoughts before the fourth body are unconscious links with others. The thoughts of the fifth body are conscious links but they are still related to others. After all, why are thoughts necessary? They are required only to establish a relationship with others. Until the fourth they are unconscious links; at the fifth they are conscious links. But at the sixth no “other” remains for establishing links. All relatedness is finished; only the cosmic remains. I and thou are now one. Now there is no place, no reason for thought to exist.

The sixth is the Brahman – the cosmic reality, where there are no thoughts. In the Brahman there are no thoughts; therefore, it can be said that in the Brahman there is knowing. Actually, the thoughts which exist up to the fourth body are unconscious thoughts; they contain a deep ignorance. It shows that we need thoughts to fight with this self-ignorance. At the fifth there is knowing of the self within, but we are still ignorant about that which is other to us; the other is still there for us. Therefore, there is the need to think in the fifth body. At the sixth there is no inside or outside, there is no I or thou, there is no this or that. Now there is no distance to justify thoughts. Now what is, is. Therefore, at the sixth there is only knowing, not thoughts.

At the seventh knowing also does not exist, because he who knew is no more and that which could be known is no more. So even knowing is not on the seventh plane. The seventh plane is not knowing-less, but beyond knowing. If you like you can call it a state of ignorance also. That is why it is always the case that a man of ultimate consciousness and an absolutely ignorant person seem identical – because their behavior is often similar. This is why there is always a great similarity between a small child and an old man who has attained enlightenment: they are not actually the same but superficially they seem alike. Sometimes an enlightened sage acts in a childlike way; sometimes in the behavior of a child we get a glimpse of saintliness. Sometimes an enlightened one looks like an absolutely ignorant person, an absolute fool, and it would seem that no one could be as foolish as he. But the sage has gone beyond knowledge and the child is still below knowledge. The similarity lies in the fact that they both are outside of knowledge.

-Osho

From In Search of the Miraculous, Discourse #20, Q3

Related post: Mysteries of the Seven Bodies

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

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

No-Mind and Being Present – Osho

Is there any difference between the state of no-mind and being present?

It is an intellectual question, nothing to do with your experience; because if you have experienced even a glimpse of no-mind, all questions including this will simply disappear.

Questions belong to the territory of the mind. No-mind means absolute silence – no question, no answer, no thought at all. Hence we call it no-mind.

First you have to understand the mind, because that’s where you are, that’s from where the question is arising. Unless you understand your space – the point from where you are raising the question – you will not be able, even intellectually, to comprehend some difference between no-mind and being present. There is no difference in experience, just two names for the same experience from two different aspects, two different angles.

No-mind is experienced within you. Nobody else can see it; it is purely subjective. With no-mind comes tremendous presence. When you are in the mind you are almost absent. The quantity of your presence or absence has to be measured by your consciousness. You have such a small layer of consciousness – that’s your only presence. Otherwise, ninety percent you are absent.

But the man of no-mind is one hundred percent present. You can feel his presence from the outside.

You cannot see his no-mind. The presence of his being is a radiation of a silent state within. That is beyond you, but if you are available, receptive, you can experience something of the tremendous presence of his being. In each of his gestures, in each of his looks, in each of his words, or even in his silence, you can be touched by his presence of being.

The presence of being comes into existence only when the person as such disappears. It is the melted state of the person – the presence – as if the flower has disappeared and only the fragrance has remained. You cannot catch hold of it, but you can be surrounded by it. Such people who have their being absolutely present – one hundred percent alert – are known in the world of language as having charisma. There is no other charisma. There is only one charisma and one charismatic aura and that aura comes from no-mind. But no-mind is the center within and the aura is the circumference of that mind, that no-mind.

When inside you everything becomes silent, you are no more as you used to be – a person. Now you are just a fragrance, a presence . . . But your presence has deepened. It has become a solid pillar of light.

Anybody who is intelligent is bound to feel something new that he has never experienced before. So these are two viewpoints: one is the inner experience of no-mind, and the other is from outside. It is the by-product of no-mind, the presence of being.

But first you have to understand the mind, because that’s where you are and that’s from where the journey has to start towards no-mind, culminating finally into a beautiful fragrance – awareness – a magic aura around you.

People have named it in different ways, because people are different. Somebody will say, “It is a hypnotic force.” Somebody will say, “It is something like magnetism.” Somebody will say, “It is mesmerism.” Somebody will say, “It is charisma.” Somebody will say, “We don’t know exactly what it is.” One thing is certain: it has a tremendous gravity, it pulls you towards itself. And if you ar courageous you can be drowned in it and you can be transformed in that drowning. It will be your death and your resurrection, both. As you are, you will die, as you should be, you will be born.

But mind is a very dark place. To comprehend light from there is almost like a blind man trying to comprehend light.

A young English gentleman returns from a stay at a stately home.

“How was your weekend?” asks a friend.

“Well,” he replies, “if the soup had been as warm as the wine, and the wine had been as old as the chicken, and the chicken had been as tender as the maid, and the maid had been as willing as the duchess, it would have been a perfect weekend.”

This is how the mind functions. If you look into your mind you will start laughing at your own mind. It is never in the present. It can’t have presence because the basic quality is missing. It is never in the present. Either it is in the past, which is no more – just a memory, a faded memory, a faraway echo; perhaps a dream that you had seen sometime, but not more than that – signatures on the water.

You have not even completed your signature and it has disappeared. That’s how the past goes on disappearing. You have not even lived it and it slips out of your hands. And then the mind goes on thinking about it.

So either the mind is past-oriented or it is future-oriented. Because it has missed the past, out of sheer necessity a projection arises about the future. The past is no more in your hands, it is gone, and gone forever. There is no way to bring it back. All that you can do is to project into the future whatever you wanted to do, however you wanted to live . . . Naturally, while you are thinking about the future, making it fuller than your yesterdays, you are missing the present moment.

Your mind moves like a pendulum from the past to the future, from the future to the past. It never stops just in the middle, where reality is. You are always real, but your mind is always unreal. You are always in the present, you cannot be anywhere else. But your mind is never here, it is all over the world. It will not be just at the point where you are. Except for that place, it can roam all over the world. It can go to the moon, it can go to Everest . . . Everything is possible for it, whether it is memory or imagination, but the mind has no contact with the present. Your body is far more present; it is totally different from your mind.

And very strangely, all the religions have condemned the body, not the mind; because they themselves were using the mind for the faraway future, farther away than ordinary people think about. You think about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, or the next year at the most. But all the religions were thinking about a future beyond death. Their heaven and their hell and their God are all so far away from the present moment.

And remember: you will always be in the present moment. And the distance between you and those imaginary spaces in the future will remain the same. It won’t change.

Because all the religions were using mind as their foundation, they had to deny the body. It is very unfortunate, but nothing can be done about it. It has happened.

Your consciousness is exactly in the present, just like your body. So I am in favor of your body, because it shares one thing in common with your being: your being is in the present, your body is also in the present. Only the mind is continuously moving here and there, never coming home.

There is a reason for it not to come home: in the present the mind has no function. What can the mind do in the present? The mind’s capacities consist of memory, which is the past, or imagination, which is the future. That is the whole capacity of your mind. There is no place for the present moment. The mind will not know what to do.

In the present you cannot remember, you cannot imagine; in the present you can be! But in the present you can be only when mind is no longer functioning. Hence, my approach is totally different from all religions: I want you to respect your body, because it is in the present, and that will give you the clue – a direct route to your being; because the being is also in the present.

Just leave the mind aside . . . But we are against the body, we are very condemnatory of the body, not knowing at all that this condemnation of the body is breaking the bridge to your being. A man of authentic spirituality is deeply in love with his body, because he knows body shares many things with being. Mind shares nothing, either with body or with being. It is an absolute stranger that has been forcibly put into you by the culture, the religion, the society. They are using the mind to enslave you.

And because you are in the mind you continuously go on asking about things of which you have no experience. You don’t know what no-mind is, except a word. You don’t know what presence of being is, except that you have heard about it. Just words won’t do.

Move away from the mind . . . And when I say to move away from the mind, I am saying to move away from the inner chattering. That is the only disturbance that is preventing you from knowing yourself and this beautiful existence. Because your body is in the present, you are in the present, existence is in the present . . . They are all here-now. Only the mind is a strange phenomenon. But you have been manipulated by others so much . . . Your educational systems, your friends, your family – everybody is trying to make you a great mind. In other words, everybody is trying to pull you away from the present moment. […]

The mind is very impotent in a way. It cannot give you any existential juice, any existential experience, and that is the only thing that matters. So please move away from mind. Don’t ask the difference, because there is no difference between no-mind and being present. No-mind is the inner subjective experience and being present is available for everybody. It is the circumference and no-mind is the center. But they are both together. Neither the circumference can be without the center nor the center can be without the circumference.

But the circumference can be experienced, and that’s what has attracted millions of people to a man like Gautam Buddha or Chuang Tzu or Jesus or Moses . . . It was their integrity, their individuality, their solidity. In comparison to them, people felt hollow. They had immense presence. Other people looked just like shadows, without any souls.

George Gurdjieff started saying to his disciples for the first time in the whole of history – he just died in the year nineteen hundred and fifty . . . He started saying a very strange thing, and although it is not right, he is not wrong. He started saying to people, “You don’t have souls.” What he meant was: “You don’t have any presence, your being is hollow. Inside you there is nothing but darkness, unconsciousness, absence. Everything is absent.”

You have been told for centuries that you are born with a soul. It is absolutely wrong according to Gurdjieff. I know and he knows that what he is saying is not the truth, but it is a device. He is making you aware of your hollowness, of your emptiness, and he has chosen the best way to hit the nail on the head. He is saying, “You don’t have souls! Forget all that nonsense that tradition has been telling you. That was a deception, but you accepted the tradition that, ‘We have souls already, there is no need to seek and search.’”

He said, “You will have to create the soul, you cannot have it just through birth! Through birth you get only the body. Through your upbringing you get your mind. And through a conscious effort to transcend into the beyond, you will achieve the soul.”

He said definitively that only a very few people have lived with souls. And without a soul, what are you? A cabbage, a cauliflower? I have heard there is some difference between cabbages and cauliflowers. And the difference is that the cabbage is uneducated and the cauliflower has college degrees. But that does not make much difference – both are vegetables. Your life is a vegetation.

Of course I cannot agree with Gurdjieff as far as the truth is concerned. But I agree with him and his compassion – that he did not bother about the truth, he bothered more about you. He wanted to make you aware that unless you do something, you are not going to create a soul. Soul is your own creation. But he went too far. I am not ready to deny you the soul; I only deny you the awareness of it. You are born with the soul as you are born with the body. Mind is a social product. You are not born with the mind. That’s why a Mohammedan has a different mind and a Hindu has a different mind and a Christian has a different mind. You can see their differences of mind.

Since India’s freedom, for forty years Hindus have been fighting for only one thing, as if that is going to solve all human problems . . .

The greatest rich man of India, Jugal Kishore Birla – he is dead now – had been hearing about me. Finally, he could not resist the temptation, and he invited me to his palatial house in New Delhi.

The man who had brought me the invitation – I was staying with him – was the M.P. from my constituency, and I could not say no to him. He was an old man, seventy-five years old. And he was the only man other than Winston Churchill who had remained a member of parliament for sixty years continuously without any gap. He was called ‘the Father of Parliament’. He entered parliament when he was only fifteen. He belonged to one of the richest families himself and they belonged to the same caste, Jugal Kishore Birla and he himself.

He persisted. I was reluctant. I said, “What purpose is going to be served by my meeting that old man? I know about him . . . Perhaps he does not know as well about me.”

But he insisted, “He is not far away, and he has been very interested in you and he wants to talk to you.”

So I went, and what was the first thing he asked me? He said, “I can give you a blank checkbook. You can use as much money as you want. All that has to be done is somehow to create a movement in the country so that cow slaughter is stopped.”

I said, “What is going to happen if cow slaughter is stopped?”

“All problems of the world will be solved.”

Only a Hindu mind can think that: that by not killing cows all problems will be solved. This is such a stupid idea. But the Hindu has been so much influenced for centuries, continuously conditioned that the cow is the mother – although they don’t accept the bull as their father, which is a logical and rational approach.

I asked Jugal Kishore Birla, “Do you accept the bull as your father?”

He said, “What are you talking about?” He became angry.

I said, “Don’t become angry. If the cow is your mother, then some bull is bound to be your father.”

He looked at the M.P. who had brought me and I said, “You can keep your checkbook. Perhaps you will find some idiot who can do this work. I cannot say to anybody that the cow is my mother.”

He said to the M.P., “What is the matter? Is he not a Hindu?” Because a Hindu cannot think that anybody can deny that the cow is the mother.

I would have no objection if they were accepting all animals as mothers, as fathers, as brothers, as sisters, at least as faraway cousins. It would have been acceptable; it would have been a beautiful world if people accepted animals as their brothers and sisters. But just choosing the cow – that is the Hindu conditioning, that is the Hindu mind.

Every person gets a mind ready-made, and that mind is being forced into him by all methods and means. That is the only part that has not been given to you by existence. Existence has given you the body: love the body, rejoice in the body, let the body dance without any guilt and without any fear of these religions, and you will be coming closer to your being through the body.

Nobody has come closer to the being through the mind. Mind is the most arbitrary, artificial creation by the society to subdue the individual, to destroy his individuality, and to destroy the discovery of his own being.

You are born with the soul, but you are absolutely unaware of it – because of the mind. The mind never allows you to be in the present. That’s the reason my insistence on meditation is so strong – because meditation simply means a method to get rid of the mind.

The moment the mind is not there, suddenly you are in a new space: so fresh, so beautiful, so blissful. That is your soul; that is your no-mind. And once you have entered that space, that space starts growing around you and creates a certain energy field. That becomes your presence of being.

-Osho

From Sat Chit Anand, Discourse #19, Q1

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Self-remembering vs Witnessing

The technique of self-remembering seems easier for me than witnessing. Do they both lead to the same goal?

They both lead to the same goal, but the technique of self-remembering is harder, longer and dangerous. Only very few people in the whole history of mankind have attained to enlightenment through the technique of self-remembering.

Many have tried, but utterly failed – it looks easy. The reason is that your self-remembering is not going to be your self-remembering, it will be your ego remembering; that’s why it looks easy.

You don’t know the distinction between the self and the false self. The false self is our ego, and the ego is very subtle, very cunning, and tries in every way to pretend to be the real self. That’s why in the beginning it will look easier than witnessing, because in witnessing there is no place for the ego. From the very beginning the ego is avoided.

In witnessing, the ego cannot enter. But in self-remembering, there is every possibility of the ego pretending to be your Self. Then the more you will practice, the more your ego will become stronger.

If somebody wants to travel on the path of self-remembering, he absolutely needs a master. He cannot move alone, because he cannot make a clear-cut distinction of what is false and what is true.

He knows only the false; he is not acquainted with his true being. Unless he is under a very rigorous master it will be very difficult to create a separation between the ego and the self.

I will explain it to you by an ancient Chinese story….

A great master had a big monastery – five hundred monks – and they were all practicing the path of self-remembering. Self-remembering is one of the paths Buddha has recommended.

One man entered into the monastery – he wanted to become a disciple. The master accepted him, but he was a very simple man from a village, almost uneducated. The master told him, “Your job is cleaning the rice in the kitchen.”

It was a big kitchen – five hundred monks. The poor man was cleaning the rice before sunrise and late into the night. He had no time to go to the sermons, to go to the prayers; he had no time to read the scriptures or listen to the wise talks. Those five hundred monks were great scholars, and the monastery was known all over the country.

Twenty years passed and the man continued just cleaning the rice and doing nothing. He forgot even to count the years – what was the point? He forgot the days, the dates, and finally he became suspicious about his own name. For twenty years nobody had used it, nobody had called him by his name – perhaps it was his name, perhaps it was not. For twenty years continuously he was doing one small thing: cleaning the rice, from the moment he woke up until he went back to bed again.

The master declared that his time to depart from the body had come. He wanted to choose his successor, and the way he did it was this: “Anybody who thinks he has succeeded in self-remembering should write on the wall of my hut some insight which shows that he has seen the truth.”

One person, who was thought to be the greatest scholar in the commune, tried. But he was so afraid to write that sentence there, because it was not his insight. He knew – how could he not know it – he knew it was not his insight, it was just borrowed from scriptures. It was not his experience – and it was difficult to deceive the old man.

In the morning the old man came out, asked the servant to erase what had been written, and said, “Find out who this idiot is who has spoiled my wall.”

It is said that the great scholar had not even signed, out of fear that he would be caught. If the master appreciated that this was really a great insight, then he would come out and say, “I have written it.” Otherwise he would remain silent… who knows? Out of five hundred people anybody could have done it!

Almost one dozen great scholars tried, but none of them had the courage to sign his name. And the master behaved in the same way; he erased the line and said, “None of you has come to the point of self-remembering. You have all been feeding the ego in the name of self. I reminded you again and again, but having a big ego is such a joy. And a spiritual ego, the otherworldly ego, the divine ego, becomes even more delicious. Now I will have to find the person myself.”

In the middle of the night the master went to the man who had come twenty years ago. For twenty years the master had not seen him, he had simply been cleaning rice. He woke the man up. The man asked the master, “Who are you?” Because twenty years… he had just seen him once for a few seconds when he was initiated – “And what is the idea of disturbing my sleep?”

The master said, “I am your master. You have forgotten…? Do you remember your name?”

The man said, “That is the difficulty. The work you have given me is such that it needs no name, no fame, no scholarship, no austerities. It is so simple that I have forgotten everything. I cannot be certain that this is my name. A few names come to my mind and I cannot decide which one is mine, but I am grateful to you.” He touched the feet of the master. “Please don’t change my job. I have forgotten everything, but I have also achieved everything. I know a peace that I had never dreamed of, a silence that no word can express. I have known such moments of ecstasy that even if I had died there would not have been any complaint that life has not been fair to me. It has given me more than I was worthy of. Just don’t change my job. I am doing it perfectly well. Has somebody complained about my work?”

The master said, “No, nobody has complained, but your job has to be changed because I am choosing you as my successor.”

The man said, “I am only a rice cleaner. I don’t know anything about being a master or a disciple. I know nothing. Please forgive me, I don’t want to be your successor because I cannot handle such a big job, I can only handle this rice cleaning.”

The master still insisted, “You have achieved that which others have been trying to achieve but have failed. You have achieved it because you were not trying. You were simply doing your small work. Slowly, slowly there was no need for thinking, no need for emotions, no need for anger, no fight, no comparison, no ambition – your ego died. And with the ego died your name. You are not born with a name. It is the ego that is given a name – that is the beginning of the ego. With the death of the ego, you even forgot your own master, because it was the ego that brought you to me.

“Up to that moment you were on a spiritually ambitious trip. You are absolutely the right person, so take my robe, my hat, my sword, which have always been given by the master to the successor. But remember one thing: take them and escape from this monastery as far away as you can, because your life will be in danger. All these five hundred egoists will kill you. You are so simple and you have become so innocent that if they ask you for the robe, the sword, the cap, you will give them. You simply take them and go as far away as you can into the mountains.

“Soon people will start arriving to you just as bees start finding their way towards the flowers when the flowers blossom. You have blossomed. You need not bother about the disciples, you simply remain silently in a faraway place. People will come to you; you simply teach them whatever you have been doing.”

“But,” he said, “I have received no teaching and I don’t know what to teach them.”

The master said, “Just teach them to do small things, silently, peacefully, without any ambition, without any motivation to gain something in this world or in the other world, so that you can become innocent like a child. That innocence is real religiousness. Not being Hindu, not being Mohammedan, but being utterly innocent – just a tabula rasa, a clean sheet on which nothing is written. No Bhagavad Gita, no Koran, no Bible…”

It is possible… a few people have attained through self-remembering. One of the great masters of this age, George Gurdjieff, used the method self-remembering, but you have to be aware that not a single person of his disciples became enlightened – and he was one of the most perfect masters.

But the problem is that the ego and the self are so close and so similar that whatever you think is your self is most probably, in ninety-nine percent of cases, just your ego. The master’s function is absolutely necessary for this method, because he has to destroy your ego. And he has to be hard, harsh. Unless he destroys your ego, self-remembering is going to lead you, not to enlightenment, but to darker spaces of being.

It will strengthen your ego more – you will become a very strong ego, very assertive. In any ordinary field of life you will be very successful. You can become an Adolf Hitler; you can become a Joseph Stalin… Stalin was not his real name, it was given to him because he was such a strong man. ‘Stalin’ means man of steel.

But these people are not a benediction to humanity, they are a curse. If they had not been there man would have been in a far better space, in a far better consciousness.

So if you feel that it is easier for you, then be very careful. I will still suggest that though witnessing may be difficult in the beginning, it is the most safe method without any dangers. It cannot lead you anywhere other than towards enlightenment. So it can even be practiced without a master.

I would like to give you something in which you are not to be dependent on somebody else.

How long have you lived, how many lives? In all these lives you may have come across many saints, many masters, but where have you reached? Your darkness is the same, your unconsciousness is the same. Perhaps they all gave you methods, but the methods were such that they needed constant supervision. Those methods are called school methods. You have to enter into a monastery, live in a monastery, function under a strict discipline – then perhaps you may be able to achieve something from a school method. And there are such monasteries.

In Europe, there is a monastery in Mount Athos; it is one thousand years old. There are almost three thousand monks inside the monastery, and anybody who wants to become a monk in that monastery can decide to enter, but only his dead body will go out.

If there is such a commitment, only then is a person accepted. Once a person enters Mount Athos, you will never see him till he is dead. This is a school for absolute self-remembering, but you cannot put the whole world in monasteries. Who will take care of these monasteries? Hence my preference is to use a method which keeps you free from any commitment, from any dependence – which keeps you in the world and yet not of the world.

Witnessing is the most simple and the most infallible method; it is the essence of all meditations. Even self-remembering, finally, is witnessing – but at a later stage, when you have dropped the ego. And if you start looking inside yourself, you can understand what I am saying. Can you see your ego and self separately? You simply know one thing: that is I. You don’t know two things: that I is the ego, and that the ego is capable of nursing itself through anything.

I have heard…

A small child was passing by the side of a palace. He had failed his examination and was feeling very angry with the teachers. He was ready to do something, and suddenly, he found a pile of stones by the side of the road. He took one big stone from the pile and threw it at the palace. Now the palace had nothing to do with his failing, nor had the stone anything to do with it, but he was in such anger he wanted to do something; the energy was there, and it needed to be released. The boy went on his way, but what happened to the stone?

As the stone started rising up he looked down – his brothers and sisters and cousins were all there. And the stone said to them, “I am going on a pilgrimage. I have been thinking about it for a long time. God willing, I will succeed in my adventures and come back to you to relate all that I experience on the way.”

All the other stones looked at this stone with their mouths open: “What is happening? He has no wings.” He was just a stone like themselves. They also wanted to fly, but they knew that they could not. “But he is flying, you cannot deny it…” So they all said, “Okay, just remember us; don’t forget us. You are a hero. In the centuries of time sometimes one stone gets wings the way you have, and we are proud that you belong to us, to our family.”

They were even feeling great pride because one of the stones was flying towards the palace. The stone hit against a glass window, and naturally, when a stone hits glass it is the glass that is broken, not the stone – it is just the nature of things. But the stone said to the pieces of glass, “You idiots. I have always said, ‘Never come in my way. Whoever comes in my way will be shattered to death.’ Now look what happened to you. Let this be a lesson to everyone who is listening.”

At that very moment the guard on the gate heard the noise of the stone falling on the floor, the glass being broken… he rushed in. He took the stone in his hands, and the stone said – although the guard could not understand his language, because he talked in Nepalese…! He said, “Thank you my lord, you are the owner of this palace – I can see from your beautiful dress. I will never forget this honor that you have given to me – taken me in your own hands.”

The situation was totally different, but the ego goes on turning every situation in its favor.

The guard was afraid that if the king came to know then he would be caught: “What are you doing? Who has thrown the stone?” He threw the stone back out of the window.

And these are the ways of the ego: the stone said, “Thank you! You are not only a great host; you understand the hurts of other people too. You know I am longing to meet my friends. I want to tell them the whole story of my visiting the palace of the king – the meeting with the king, the conversation with the king, the destruction of the enemies who came in my way.” And as he was falling back into the pile of the stones, he said to them, “Brothers and sisters, I am back. You should all be proud. My name should go down in history, and with me, my family’s name. This pile of stones is no ordinary pile, it is something historical.”

The ego has its ways of fulfilling itself even in situations where it should be shattered. So beware of it.

Self-remembering can be done only in a school where you are devoting yourself to the discipline twenty-four hours a day, because it is the moment you remember yourself… While walking you remember, “I am walking” – then walking is no longer natural. It becomes divided: you are separate, and the walking is separate.

Walking is a simple process, but in life you are doing a thousand and one things which are very complex. If you are going to remember yourself while using a machine, while driving a car… it could be very dangerous because your whole focus is in remembering yourself. You could cause an accident which could be dangerous to you, which could be dangerous to others.

Life has its own wisdom. The body has its own wisdom. For example, try one thing and you will understand what I mean: you have been eating every day your whole life but you have never thought about what happens to the food when it goes down your throat – you forget about it. Don’t forget about it. Just for three days try to remember that the food has gone in. Remember that the food is being digested, that juices, chemicals and other things are coming in from different directions, that the food is being mixed with them and the food is being transformed into different things. It is becoming blood, it is becoming your flesh, it is becoming your bones.

In three days’ time you will have such a disturbed stomach, you cannot imagine. It will take at least three months to get it back to its normal state. You are not needed to remember it. It knows its function, and it does its function perfectly well without your remembering.

That’s why when you are sick it is better to rest, because the body needs you to sleep so it can work better without any disturbance from you.

You must have heard the famous story about a centipede….

A centipede has one hundred legs – that’s why it is called centipede. And for centuries, centipedes have been in the world, walking perfectly well – no problem. But one day a rabbit became curious. He saw the centipede, he tried to count his legs and said, ”My God! One hundred legs! How does he manage to remember which one to put first, which one to put second?

“If I had one hundred legs,” the rabbit thought, “I would get entangled and I would fall immediately; I could not walk at all. This centipede is performing a miracle.”

He said, “Uncle, uncle, wait, wait! I have a question if you don’t mind…”

The centipede said, “There is no hurry. I was just going for a morning walk. You can ask your question.”

He said, “My question is simple: you have one hundred legs…?”

The centipede said, “One hundred? In fact, I have never counted. It would be too difficult for me to count them, but if you say so then perhaps I must have.”

The rabbit said, “My curiosity is: how do you manage to walk with such a trail of one hundred legs? How do you manage which one comes first, then second, then third, then fourth…?”

The centipede said, “I have never thought about it. I will try. Just now – I will try here.”

And then and there he fell on the ground. He called the rabbit and said, “You idiot! Never ask another centipede such a question, otherwise centipedes will die. We cannot live with this curiosity. I have been doing perfectly well up to now, and just as I started becoming alert about what leg is going when… as I started remembering one hundred legs, my mind got very much puzzled.”

Self-remembering is a school method. And school method means you are in a safe monastery, not doing work that could be dangerous. Otherwise your remembering… working in a factory, working in a carpentry shop and trying to remember, you are bound to get into the same position as the centipede.

I don’t want anybody to get into any trouble in the name of spirituality, hence my suggestion again is just pure witnessing – no question of I. And that too, very playfully, not seriously, with a sense of humor.

If you forget, there is no harm. Whenever you remember, again you start. You will forget many times, you will remember many times. There is no question of guilt; it is human.

Very slowly, bigger and bigger gaps of witnessing will arise in you, and as the gaps of witnessing become bigger, your thoughts will become smaller, less. The moment your witnessing comes to a peak – at certain times with a crystal clarity – the thoughts will simply disappear. You will be in an absolute silence. Whatever you are doing will not be disturbed by your silence, but on the contrary, your workmanship, your creative effort will be enhanced.

If you are making statues, or painting, or playing music… with such a mad mind, with all kinds of thoughts running around, and you can still manage to create beautiful music – just think of a silent mind, how much deeper and higher music you could create.

The same applies to every area of life. I make it a point to be remembered that if your meditation is right, everything in your life will start falling into better shape. That is the only criterion. No need to ask anybody else; you can see yourself.

Everything in your life will become better with your meditation. When your meditation is at its highest peak, all your efforts will have a beauty and a grace and a creativeness that you cannot imagine. That’s why I say; don’t divide spiritual life from the ordinary life. Don’t create any division at all. Let this life remain one single whole.

So if your consciousness changes, then everything that surrounds you also changes.

I cannot imagine a man of meditation renouncing his wife. No, a man of meditativeness will love his wife more. Perhaps his love will become more and more purified, less and less sexual, more and more prayerful. But he cannot renounce her, that is ugly.

Leaving a poor woman and escaping – that is not the work of a brave man. It fits to a coward, but not to a man who is meditating.

In my village I loved to sit in an old man’s small shop. He used to sell sweets. I was attracted, not by his sweets, but by the sweetness of the man. He would say, “The cost price of this many sweets is one rupee, and if you are willing, just for my labors and for my family, you can give me one anna more – that is my profit.”

First he would tell the cost price, and then he would tell his profit. And that too he would leave up to you: “If you don’t want to give it to me, you can take it at the cost price – of course, I am a poor man, I cannot give it to you below the cost price. I can give you my labor, I can give you my profit, but I cannot go below the cost price.”

And I inquired – because it was a sweet market and there were many shops, I inquired in other shops about what he was saying cost one rupee. And others were selling for two rupees, two and a half rupees – the same quantity, but not the same quality, not the same love.

While he was preparing his sweets, I used to sit. He even asked me, “You are the only one. Why do you come and sit here?”

I said, “I simply like it – to see you work. You work so lovingly, as if you were preparing these sweets for your beloved who is coming after many years – and you don’t know who the customer will be.”

And he laughed. He said, “As far as I know it is the same customer who always comes – different faces, but the customer is the same. That’s why I cannot deceive. I cannot cheat, I cannot exploit because it is the same customer with different faces. I have recognized him.”

His whole life I would describe as the life of a great saint, although nobody in the world would recognize him as a saint because we have this idea so deeply rooted in our minds that a saint should renounce life, get away from life. That anti-life attitude has proved so poisonous that it has destroyed the whole beauty of human existence. It has taken away the whole dignity of man.

Hence I still insist – even if you feel self-remembering is easier – that you try witnessing. Even though it is difficult in the beginning, it becomes very easy as you go ahead.

Gautam Buddha has said, “My teaching is bitter in the beginning but sweet in the end.”

-Osho

From The Sword and the Lotus, Discourse #10

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My Approach is Individual – Osho

Many small groups of sannyasins are forming around the world. Would you comment on Gurdjeff’s words, that people who want to wake up, and who are living together in a group, can function as alarm clocks for each other?

George Gurdjieff is right, but right only about his own system. It is true: if you are following Gurdjieff’s ideology and his methods, then a group is an absolute necessity; you cannot work alone.

Then people can function as alarm clocks to each other. If somebody starts falling asleep, somebody can shake him up. When you are starting to fall asleep, somebody else can shake you up and wake you.

Gurdjieff’s method is a school method. He himself was trained in different schools of the Sufis. They are all school methods. School methods have a difficulty – that you have to depend on the group, that if the group is not the right group they can function in just the opposite way: rather than being alarm clocks, they can all become drugs for each other. You may have watched it: if one person starts falling asleep, immediately something in you also starts falling asleep.

Sleep is contagious.

Awakening is not.

It is possible that twenty people may remain asleep and one person awake, but his awakening is not going to be contagious. Most probably, seeing twenty people asleep he will himself fall asleep. So unless you have a very awakened master, the group method is not going to help much.

But in Gurdjieff’s system the group is absolutely necessary; alone you cannot do it. For example, he had his school near Paris…. He told one of the new disciples to dig a trench. The whole day, from the morning – from sunrise to sunset – he was not allowed to go to eat or leave for anything; he had to dig the trench. That was the most important thing.

Now, it needs somebody to watch; otherwise the man may rest sometimes. The whole day is a long time, a hot day… he may go to have a drink or to eat something; or under the tree there is such beautiful shade and coolness… he may fall asleep.

Gurdjieff himself walked continuously the whole day, just by the side of the man. Now, when Gurdjieff himself was walking by his side continuously, the whole day, of course the man could not leave. By sunset he had made the big trench. And Gurdjieff said, “This is only half the work: now you fill it, and then you can go and sleep.”

This was too much. Through great effort the whole day, against all temptations to leave it, he managed, because of Gurdjieff’s presence, to continue, knowing one thing, that it could not kill him: “I cannot die by just not eating for one day or not drinking water. I cannot die – that much is certain. So let us try.”

Now Gurdjieff says, “It is only half the work – you have now to fill it completely, as it was before you started digging. Then you can go and do whatsoever you want.” And Gurdjieff remained there. It took a few hours for the man again to fill the trench – by midnight he was freed.

That new disciple remembers that that night was the most precious in his life; and only after that night could he understand Gurdjieff’s methods.

Man’s energy has layers. The first layer is for day-to-day work. It is soon exhausted, and you start feeling tired. If you don’t listen to this tiredness, and you continue, then the second layer of energy – which is an emergency reservoir of energy – starts functioning. Suddenly you will feel an onrush of new energy becoming available to you, which refreshes you continuously. You cannot believe what has happened: all tiredness is gone. You are more fresh than you were before you started the work.

But the emergency reservoir also is not very big; it is only for emergency situations which don’t last for long. So for one hour or two hours you will be full of energy, more than ever; then again the tiredness comes – and this is a greater tiredness than the first one.

If you don’t listen to this tiredness… it is really difficult not to listen to it, almost impossible. But if you manage not to listen – and that’s what Gurdjieff wants, that you continue – then you touch the third layer, which is vast, which is universal. And once that layer becomes available to you, you are a new man. Just within a day Gurdjieff could take you to the emergence of the basic power, of the basic energy, the universal energy in you.

But for this kind of method you need a group. If twelve persons are working, then everyone is watching you. Then each person is watched by eleven persons; you cannot escape easily. Alone, it is impossible; you will stop after your day-to-day energy is finished, and you will feel immensely tired, hungry…. That will be the stoppage because there is nobody who can prevent you or whose presence can prevent you; nobody is watching you. So for Gurdjieff’s methods it is perfectly true that groups are needed.

My method can be used in a group, but the group is not necessary; you can use it alone. Any group can become a dependence – so that you can work only in the group. Out of the group, you are back to your usual self. When you are in the group you are a certain person; when you leave the group you are a different person.

I don’t want my sannyasins to be dependent.

It is perfectly good to have small groups, but the methods I have given to you are individual; you can work alone. You don’t need anybody to watch you, because my method is that you have to be the watcher.

Under somebody’s watching eye, out of fear of somebody – and of course when Gurdjieff himself is watching you, you cannot escape – but it is something like slavery. Although he is taking you towards deeper layers of your energy, there is some kind of violence, some kind of enforcement, enslavement.

It is possible for you to do almost the impossible in such a situation. But once Gurdjieff is not there, you will become an ordinary person as you have been before. That has happened to almost all his disciples. Even though they have small groups, they are all mediocre, the same.

Rather than helping each other to be awake, they help each other to fall asleep. When one starts snoring, rather than being an alarm clock, he helps you to snore too.

It can function both ways. The group can be a space where you can become more alert; it can be a space where you can become more asleep. And because people started becoming more asleep in Gurdjieff’s groups after Gurdjieff’s death, those groups have disappeared. People have moved alone. But alone you cannot do those methods.

This is a very spiritual kind of slavery.

The master cannot guarantee to be with you forever; sometime he will be leaving. Then you should not be left in a space where you cannot function without him. And for that, a preparation is needed: from the very beginning you work alone. Even if you are working in a group, you are not dependent on the group; your work, your method, is basically individual.

So my approach is individual.

I am not giving you school methods:

I am giving you individual methods, which can be done together with friends, which can be done alone. So you have freedom.

But there is nothing wrong if sannyasins are making small groups, because those small groups cannot hinder the methods that I have given to you or the work that you have to do upon yourself. It is available in both situations – alone or in groups.

But Gurdjieff had no idea – because he was trained always in schools. Sufis don’t have individual methods; all the methods are group methods. He was trained by Sufis, and he went from one school to another; he learned much from those schools, and he developed and polished many methods which had become old and were not contemporary.

But he could not help many people, for the simple reason that he was the only person who was really awake. All the persons were working under him, under pressure – not out of freedom and joy – working with the motivation that someday they will become awakened like Gurdjieff.

He was certainly a very strange and powerful man. When he was dying, he got up from his bed and started walking in the corridor. His disciples said, “What are you doing? You are so sick – it is better to rest.”

He said, “It is not sickness, it is death – and I don’t want death to find me a weak person. I want to meet death not lying on the bed, but walking on the verandah.”

He died walking. To the last moment he was still working. And he was certainly very awake because he could see death, he could see it was very imminent. But he was a very proud man – he did not like to die like every ordinary man, in the bed, he wanted to die in his own way. […]

All his methods are to bring you to the basic source of power. If that basic source of power becomes available to you continuously, it will transform your whole being. But it was not continuously available even to him. […]

This is a totally different path than what I am teaching to you. It is a path of power.

What I am teaching to you is the path of awareness.

… Because the path of power has great dangers in it. It can crystallize your ego. It can make you feel very egoistic because you have so much power – you can do this, you can do that. And that is a danger.

To avoid the ego even in ordinary life is so difficult. If you get in touch with extraordinary sources of power, it will become more and more difficult to get rid of the ego, because the ego will take possession of all your powers.

My work is totally different: you have to be aware. And awareness is not a power. You have to be aware even of your powers. If you come across them, you have to be aware, and you have to remain detached, only a watcher.

That’s where Gurdjieff and I use different words. His methods can be described as “self-remembering.” That’s what he uses – the word “self-remembering.” I do not want to use that word. It is dangerous because the self can be just the ego – it is playing with fire. I simply use the word “witnessing,” with no place for self, ego, or even a faraway cousin.

Just to avoid the most probable possibility, you have just to be a witness. It may not lead you to power – there is no need – but it will lead you to understanding. That is what is needed.

Gurdjieff’s disciples became power-oriented and forgot completely about just being watchful. But he was not telling them to be just watchful. There is a possibility of somebody becoming enlightened through his path also, but it goes in a very zigzag way, with more possibility of being lost than of reaching.

What I have been telling you is something which cannot be misused in any way by you.

And witnessing is a purely individual phenomenon.

-Osho

From Light on the Path, Discourse #29

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The Mind is the Watched – Osho

I have come to a dead end. I see the impotence of the mind and feel all action useless. Does the mind totally die only in samadhi?

Please say something about mind and action in witnessing.

Vinod Bharti, you say, “I have come to a dead end”— but I don’t feel it so. Not yet, because when you really come to a dead end, a transformation immediately happens. You are coming closer to it; of that much I am certain. The dead end is not far away, but you have not come to it yet. Your whole question proves it.

You are coming closer, you are feeling intuitively that it is not far away —but it has not been reached yet. Still, there is hope. Still, deep down, you are dreaming that this is not going to be the dead end; hence the question arises.

You say, “I see the impotence of the mind….” You have not seen it yet, you only think you have. Seeing and thinking are totally different, but one can get mixed up very easily. Thinking can pretend to be seeing. You are not seeing the impotence of the mind; otherwise even this question would not arise. If the mind is really impotent, what can it ask? What can it think about? It simply falls from you, it withers away.

But the shadow is on you, and that’s a good sign. The day is not far away when you will see the impotence of the mind — and then immediately the transformation. Then, immediately, a sudden enlightening experience. All questions disappear; all answers disappear, because when the mind is seen, really seen as impotent, what is there to ask and what is there to find? The mind simply evaporates. Then life is left, pure life, unhindered, undistorted by the mind.

Then you will not say that you feel all action useless. If you see the impotence of the mind, the mind disappears but action becomes for the first time tremendously beautiful. There is no question of utility at all. Life has no utility in itself. What is the use of a rose flower? — but still it goes on growing, still it goes on opening, still it goes on releasing its fragrance. What is the use of it? What is the use of the sun rising every day? Is there any use for the sun itself? What is the use of the starry night?

The word “use” is part of the paraphernalia of the mind. Mind always thinks in terms of utility. The mind is a Jew; it always thinks in terms of purpose, profit, utility. When the mind disappears, action does not disappear, activity disappears — and there is a great difference between the two. Activity has utility; action is pure joy, pure beauty. You act not because something has to be achieved, you act because action is a dance, is a song. You act because you are so full of energy.

Have you watched a child running on the sea beach? You ask him, “Why are you running? What is the purpose of your running? What are you going to gain out of it?” Have you watched the child collecting seashells on the beach? You ask him, “What is the utility of it all? You can use your time in a more utilitarian way. Why waste your time?”

The child is not concerned about utility at all, he is enjoying his energy. He is so full of energy, so bubbling with energy that it is a sheer dance — any excuse will do. These are just excuses — seashells, pebbles, colored stones. These are just excuses — the sun, the beautiful beach…just excuses to run and to jump and to shout with joy. There is no utility at all. “Energy is delight” — that is a statement made by William Blake, one of the most mystical poets of the West. Energy IS delight. When there is great energy, what are you going to do with it? It is bound to explode.

Action comes out of energy, out of delight. Activity is businesslike. Action is poetry. Activity creates a bondage because it is result oriented: you are doing it not for its own sake, you are doing it for some goal. There is a motive, and then there is frustration. Out of a hundred cases, ninety-nine times you will not achieve the goal, so ninety-nine times you will be in misery, frustration. You did not enjoy the activity itself, you were waiting for the result. Now the result has come, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is frustration. And don’t hope for the remaining one percent, because when you achieve the goal, there is frustration also. The goal is achieved, but suddenly you realize that all the dreams you have been dreaming about the goal are not fulfilled.

You have achieved the money, but where is the joy that you have always been hoping for when the money was there? You have that great marble palace, but you are the same poor man — the same emptiness inside, the same hollowness. You used to live in a hut, now you start living in a palace — but the same person. You were miserable in the hut, and you will be even more miserable in the palace, because the palace has more space and of course when there is more space you will be more miserable. What else can you do with that space? All that you know is how to be miserable.

So you see poor people and you see rich people. The only difference is that the poor people are still hoping. There is hope; hence poor people are not so frustrated. Rich people have lost all their hopes; they are more frustrated. The poor person can still dream — he can still go on counting in his mind how great a bank balance he will have next year and the year after. Soon the day will come when he will be rich and he will have a car and a good house and a good wife, and the children will be going to good schools. But what can the rich man dream? All that he can dream about he has already, and nothing is happening out of it. The money is there, but he is as empty as ever.

There are two kinds of poor people: the poor poor and the rich poor. And remember, the second category is far worse.

Activity means there is a goal; activity is only a means to that end. Action means that the means and the end are together in it. That’s the difference between action and activity.

Vinod Bharti, activity will become useless, but then action arises and action has a totally different dimension. You act for the sheer joy of acting. For example, I am speaking to you — it is not activity, hence I am not concerned with the result at all. It is a pure act. I enjoy communicating with you, I enjoy communing with you. I am grateful to you that you allow me. If you don’t allow me, I will have to talk to the trees or to the rocks, or I will have to talk to myself! I am obliged to you; you need not be obliged to me. It is a pure act. There is something in me that wants to relate. There is no goal orientation — I am not expecting anything from you. If something happens, good; if nothing happens, even better! If you become enlightened, good; if you don’t become enlightened, far out! — for the simple reason that if you all become enlightened, who am I going to talk to? So please, delay your enlightenment as long as you can — this much of a favor you have to do for me! It is a simple act. No motive, no future in it — just the present.

Hence I am not trying to create a system of thought — I cannot, because to create a system of thought you have to be motivated. Then you have to link everything in a certain logical order. I can enjoy fragments.

When P. D. Ouspensky wrote his first book on Gurdjieff, he gave it the title In Search of the Miraculous. He was a man of a philosophic bent, a great mathematician, logician and philosopher.

When he showed the book to George Gurdjieff, his master, Gurdjieff just looked here and there for a few minutes and then he said, “Give it a subtitle too: Fragments of a Teaching.”

He was a little puzzled, because he had tried to make a whole system and Gurdjieff was suggesting an extra title. “The main title, In Search of the Miraculous,” Gurdjieff said, “is okay, but it needs the subtitle, Fragments of a Teaching — in fact, Fragments of an Unknown Teaching.”

Ouspensky asked, “Why?”

Gurdjieff said, “Because I cannot create a system of thought — these are all fragments.”

And you can see it happening here. You can collect all my thoughts, but they will be only fragments — fragments but not a system. To create a system, you need to be goal oriented. You have to follow a certain structure, and you have to go on like an arrow towards a target.

That is not possible either for a man like me or Gurdjieff. We cannot follow any goal. Our every act is complete in itself, entire in itself. It has no relationship with the past and no relationship with the future. It is total. If I die this very moment, there will be no desire in me even to have completed the sentence.

Action is an end unto itself; it has no utility. When the mind is seen to be impotent, the mind disappears. In that very seeing, the mind disappears. And, of course, with it all utilitarian activities will also disappear, because mind is the cause of goal orientation. It contains all your motives. It contains your past and the future; it does not contain the present at all. And when there is no mind, all that is left is pure present. You act moment to moment, and each moment is enough unto itself. Hence the beauty of the statements of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, because each statement is in itself perfect, it needs nothing. You can take any statement from anywhere, and you can meditate over it and it will give you the taste of Tao, Dhamma — truth.

Buddha used to say again and again that the taste of the sea is the same. You can taste it from anywhere, from any shore — the taste is the same. This shore or that makes no difference. Each statement of a buddha has the taste of truth. But it is not concerned with utility….

Vinod Bharti, you are feeling in an intuitive way that something is coming closer of which you are afraid: “the dead end.” Everybody becomes afraid, and out of fear the question has arisen. You ask, “I have come to a dead end. I see the impotence of the mind and feel all action useless. Does the mind totally die only in samadhi?”

Just the reverse is the case: when the mind dies totally, what is left is samadhi. So I cannot say that the mind dies totally only in samadhi; that will be putting things upside down. The mind dies first, and then what is left is called samadhi. That state of no-mind is called samadhi.

But the death of the mind frightens, scares one. That’s what you are feeling: the shadow of death. It is not your death, it is the death of the mind which is not you. But for many lives we have lived identified with the mind, so when the death of the mind comes closer it feels as if we are going to die. It is not a dead end for you, it is certainly a dead end for the mind. That too has not come yet, but the mind is freaking out, because once it has come, then there is no way out for the mind. If it can escape just before the dead end, then there is a possibility of surviving…hence the question.

You say: “Please say something about mind and action in witnessing.” In witnessing, mind remains only as a biocomputer, a mechanism, but separate from you; you are no longer identified with it. When you want any memory you can use the mind just as you can put on your tape recorder. Mind is really a tape recorder. But it is not continuously on, not twenty-four hours on. When needed, the witness, the man of meditation, the man of awareness, is capable of putting the mind on or off. He puts it on when there is some need.

If I am talking to you, I have to put the mind on; otherwise language will not be possible. No-mind is silent; there is no language; only mind can supply the language. I have to use the mind to relate with your mind; that’s the only way to relate with your mind, so I put it on.

When I go back and sit in the car, I put it off. Before Heeren turns the ignition on, I turn my ignition off! In my room I don’t need my mind. When my secretary comes with the letters, or with some work, I say to her, “Hello!” And inside I say, “Hello, mind. My secretary has come!” Otherwise there is no need for the mind.

When you are witnessing, the mind remains, but not constantly working. Your identity is broken. You are the watcher; the mind is the watched. It is a beautiful mechanism, one of the most beautiful mechanisms that nature has given to you. So you can use it when needed for factual memory — for phone numbers, for addresses, for names, for faces…. It is a good tool, but that’s all it is. It need not sit upon you continuously twenty-four hours a day. Even while you are sleeping, it is sitting on your chest torturing you, giving you nightmares. All kinds of relevant and irrelevant thoughts go on and on.

It does two harms. One: you lose your purity of witnessing, you don’t remain a mirror. Your mirror becomes so covered with the dust of thoughts that you start becoming closed to existence, you cannot reflect existence. The full moon is there, but your mirror does not reflect it. How many people are there who see the full moon? Even if they see it, they don’t SEE — their seeing is not of any value. They don’t rejoice, they don’t dance. How many people are there who see the flowers? Just now the birds are singing, but how many people are there who are aware of the birds and the wind passing through the trees?

When the mind is no longer hovering over you continuously, you become aware of infinite beauty, of truth, of the celebration that goes on and on in existence. But the mind is there, put aside — you can put it on when needed.

And when activity ceases, action is born. Action means response; activity means reaction. When you are in action, it means the mind is put aside and your consciousness is in a direct contact with existence; hence the response is immediate. Then whatsoever you do is not ready-made. It is not a ready-made answer given by the mind; you are responding to the reality as it is. Then there is beauty, because your action is true to the situation.

But millions of people in the world are simply living through ready-made answers. They are already carrying the answer; they don’t listen, they don’t see the situation confronting them. They are more interested in the answer that they are carrying within themselves than in the question itself, and they go on living their answer again and again. That’s why their life becomes a boredom, a repetitive boredom, a drag. It is no longer a dance, it cannot be a dance.

Action is a dance; activity is a drag. Activity is always untrue to the situation; action is always true to the situation. And activity is always inadequate because it carries an answer from the past, and life goes on changing every moment, so whatsoever you bring from the past is never adequate, it always falls short. So whatsoever you do, there is frustration; you feel that you have not been able to cope with reality. You always feel something is missing, you always feel your reaction was not exactly as it should have been. And the reason is that you have simply repeated, parrot-like, a ready-made answer, cheap but untrue – untrue because the situation is new.

Vinod Bharti, the mind will be there but with a new status, with a new functioning. It will be under your control: you will be the master, not the mind. You will use it when it is needed; you will not use it when it is not needed. It cannot insist that you have to listen to it, that you have to go on listening to it. Even if you are sleeping, it goes on knocking on your doors; it does not allow you even to have a beautiful sleep.

The second loss is that because the mind is working twenty-four hours a day, from the cradle to the grave, it becomes mediocre, it becomes stupid. It never has enough energy, it becomes very weak; hence the impotence. If the mind has time to rest, it will again become rejuvenated, it will again be fresh.

The mind of a buddha is always fresh, it is always young. It is always responding with such freshness, with such newness that it seems unbelievable. Your questions may be the same, but the answers of a buddha always have a new nuance to them, a new flavor, a new fragrance. You can go on listening to the Buddha for years, and still you will remain enchanted. Even if he repeats something it is never the same — the context is different, the color is different, the meaning is different.

The mind will be there, more alive, more potent, more restful, younger, fresher — not your master but a good servant, an obedient servant. Activity will disappear totally; there will arise action.

Action means there is no goal to it. Just as the poets say “poetry for poetry’s sake” or “art for art’s sake,” the same is the situation with the mystic. His action is for action’s sake; there is no other goal to it. He enjoys it just like a small child, innocently he enjoys it.

Vinod Bharti, witnessing is the miracle that changes everything in your life. Then the dead end is only a new beginning, a death and a birth — the death of the old, a total death; a discontinuity with the old, and the arrival of something absolutely unknown, the arrival of the new. It is a resurrection — a crucifixion and a resurrection. But the resurrection is possible only after crucifixion.

The dead end is going to come, but it is the beginning also. And you will see the beginning immediately, when the dead end has come. If you are just thinking about it, that it is coming, it is coming…the mind can even say, “It has come — beware, escape! While there is time, run away!” Then you will miss the other side of it. You will see only the cross, you will miss the resurrection.

You are thinking the mind is impotent. Your thinking is on the right track, but thinking will not help, seeing is needed. Become a witness so that you can see that the mind is impotent. Feel that activities are useless, but not action. Action continues. Buddha lived for forty-two years after his enlightenment. Action continued, activities disappeared.

-Osho

From Come, Come, Yet Again Come, Discourse #1

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

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

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