Tag: Kundalini Meditation

These are Simply Cleansing Methods – Osho

The Western mind is very speedy, fast, because the conditioning is for only one life – seventy years – and so much to do. One third of your life goes into sleep, one third of your life goes into education, training – what is left?

Much of it goes into earning your livelihood. If you count everything, you will be surprised: out of seventy years you cannot even have seven years left for something that you want to do. Naturally there is hurry, a mad rush, so mad that one forgets where one is going. All that you remember is whether you are going with speed or not. The means becomes the end.

In the same way, in different directions . . . the Eastern mind has cultivated itself differently than the Western mind. Those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation developed in the East have never taken account of the Western man; they were not developed for the Western man. The Western man was not yet available. The time that Vigyan Bhairava Tantra was written – in which those one hundred and twelve techniques have come to perfection – is nearabout five to ten thousand years before us.

At that time there was no Western man, no Western society, no Western culture. The West was still barbarous, primitive, not worth taking into account. The East was the whole world, at the pinnacle of its growth, richness, civilization.

My methods of meditation have been developed out of an absolute necessity. I want the distinction between the West and the East to be dissolved.

After Shiva’s Vigyan Bhairava Tantra, in these five or ten thousand years, nobody has developed a single method. But I have been watching the differences between East and West: the same method cannot be applied immediately to both. First, the Eastern and the Western mind have to be brought into a similar state. Those techniques of dynamic meditation, kundalini meditation, and others, are all cathartic; their basis is catharsis.

You have to throw out all the junk that your mind is full of. Unless you are unloaded you cannot sit silently. It is just as if you tell a child to sit silently in the corner of the room. It is very difficult; he is so full of energy. You are repressing a volcano! The best way is, first tell him, “Go run outside around the house ten times; then come and sit down in the corner.” Then it is possible, you have made it possible. He himself wants to sit down now, to relax. He is tired, he is exhausted; now, sitting there, he is not repressing his energy, he has expressed his energy by running around the house ten times. Now he is more at ease.

The cathartic methods are simply to throw all your impatience, your speediness, your hurry, your repressions.

One more factor has to be remembered, that these are absolutely necessary for the Western man before he can do something like vipassana – just sitting silently doing nothing and the grass grows by itself. But you have to be sitting silently, doing nothing – that is a basic condition for the grass to grow by itself. If you cannot sit silently doing nothing, you are going to disturb the grass. […]

So these methods are absolutely necessary for the Western mind. But a new factor has also entered: they have become necessary for the Eastern mind too. The mind for which Shiva wrote those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation no longer exists – even in the East now. The Western influence has been tremendous. Things have changed.

So now my methods are applicable to both. I call them preliminary methods. They are to destroy everything that can prevent you from going into a silent meditation. Once dynamic meditation or kundalini meditation succeeds, you are clean. You have erased repressiveness. You have erased the speediness, the hurry, the impatience. Now it is possible for you to enter the temple.

It is for this reason that I spoke about the acceptance of sex, because without the acceptance of sex, you cannot get rid of repression. And I want you to be completely clean, natural. I want you to be in a state where those one hundred and twelve methods can be applicable to you. This is my reason for devising these methods – these are simply cleansing methods.

-Osho

From Light on the Path #16, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Waiting with Full Awareness – Osho

What is meditation?

Now this is strange. It reminds me of a story.

A cricket fan took his girlfriend for a date – it was a full moon night, and the beach was silent, and they were sitting on the beach, and it was beautiful. They were holding hands and hugging each other. And the cricket fan continued to talk about cricket for three hours. Then, suddenly he became aware that he must be boring the girl. Three hours is too long! So he said, “Sorry, forgive me. I have been talking for three hours about my hobby. I am a fan; I am mad about cricket. I must have bored you utterly?”

The girl said, “Not at all, not at all. But do tell me what is cricket?”

Now you ask, “What is meditation?” and my whole life I have been talking about meditation. But still, I understand why the question arises. You listen, but you can’t get it. You understand intellectually what meditation is, but still, it remains elusive. You cannot catch hold of it. And you cannot catch hold of it!

It is not that something is wrong with you. Meditation cannot be caught hold of, you have to allow it to happen so that it can catch hold of you. Meditation is not something that you have to do; meditation is something for which you have to wait! It is something that comes and comes on its own. It is like a breeze. It is not that you can pull it in, that you can manage and order it. You cannot order anything that is valuable. Ordered things are ordered things.

You cannot order God. So meditation, satori, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana, God – they cannot be ordered. The very idea is silly. You cannot order. You can receive. Certainly, you can receive. You can invite, you can wait in patience. So whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling joyous, whenever you are feeling harmonious, in tune, then just sit silently. Wait for it. Just wait for it! Nothing else is needed to be done.

Meditation is not an action. You just wait. Relax and wait. Lie down or sit or stand – as you feel good – and wait for it. Wait, alert, and soon you will hear the whisperings, the silent steps of something which is coming closer to you. Soon you will see something is entering into your heart, into your being. You cannot see it, but it is there. You can feel it. It is like a fragrance that fills your nostrils. It is like light. Keep the window open. That’s all you need to do; just keep the window open, so when the light arises and the clouds are not there and the sun is high, the rays can enter in you. About meditation you can do only negative things. Keep the door open, keep the eyes open, keep yourself alert, and it comes. It certainly comes. It immediately starts flowing in you. It is a benediction. You cannot pull; you cannot manipulate it. A manipulated meditation will not be of any value. That’s what people are doing. Somebody is doing TM, somebody is doing something else – trying to manipulate.

Here, when you are doing the Chaotic [Dynamic] Meditation or the Kundalini or the Nadabrahma, these are not really meditations, you are just getting in tune. If you have seen them, it is like Indian classical musicians playing. For half an hour, or sometimes even more, they simply go on fixing their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will make the strings tight or loose, and the drum player will go on checking his drum – whether it is perfect or not. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music; this is just preparation.

Kundalini is not really meditation; it is just preparation. You are preparing your instrument. When it is ready, then you stand in silence. Then meditation starts. Then you are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting – these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.

Waiting is meditation – waiting with full awareness. And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you, it transforms you.

-Osho

From I Say Unto You, V.2, Discourse #6, Q8

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

They will Remove the Barriers – Osho

Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow? I am so tired of trips. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either? I know the problem is in me and I know there is no problem. So now what?

Celebrate now. Sing, dance, love, be.

You say: Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Because you cannot trust me, that’s why. You cannot trust me. I go on declaring that you are Buddhas, already enlightened, but you are skeptical about it. You can believe – that too very grudgingly – that a Gautam Buddha may have become enlightened, maybe, perhaps. A Jesus became enlightened, maybe. You can grudgingly concede that much, but to concede that you are enlightened is too much. You cannot give such a gift to yourself: you are so against yourself; you are so condemnatory toward yourself. You can immediately accept it if somebody says that you are a sinner. Just think of it; if somebody says you are a sinner, you are ready to bow down. Even if on the surface you deny it, deep down you know that he is right because from the very beginning you have been taught – you have been poisoned – that you are a sinner. The teaching has gone into your very blood and bones and marrow; it has become part of you that ‘you are a sinner’. All the religions of the world have been teaching this; for centuries, generations upon generations have been doing only one work: condemning man.

You are not even aware of the self-condemnation that you have for yourself, the hate that you have for yourself. You don’t love yourself, how can you allow yourself to be a Buddha?

Releasement can happen this moment, but you won’t allow it, hence methods are needed. If people can trust me, then there is no need for any method. The method is not going to help the releasement. Let me remind you, the method is only going to help you trust me. So I send you into therapy groups. Teertha and Divya and Siddha and Amitabh and Pradeepa – these people will work on you. They will help only one thing: they will help you to trust me.

The whole function of therapy groups here is totally different than it is in the West; it has a totally different meaning and significance. It is to create trust, it is to create a little love for yourself, it is to create acceptance. Then I send you into meditations; those meditations are cathartic.

A cathartic meditation is just throwing all the repressed energy that is boiling in you, that won’t allow you to trust. Dynamic, Kundalini, and others will take away much energy that hinders; it will be released. Slowly, slowly you will become capable of trusting. It is only because of lack of trust that methods have to be invented. If you trust already, then there is no need for any method.

You ask me: Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Releasement will always happen instantly; whether it happens today or tomorrow it will always happen instantly, suddenly. It is a sudden experience, a lightning, and the whole past disappears; you are abruptly cut from the past, you become discontinuous with it. The old disappears and the new is born. And the new is not a modification of the old; it has no relationship with the old, it is simply unrelated with the old. The old has not caused it either, it is not an effect of the old; it is utterly unrelated with the old.

Krishnamurti has been saying the same thing for at least fifty years, but nothing much has happened. He goes on saying that it is possible just now – be aware, be awake. And people go on listening, because the problem is they cannot trust Krishnamurti that this can be just now. Their minds are spinning and weaving inside, “This is not possible – how can it be possible? What will happen to my past karmas? I have to undo them. And what about all the crimes and the sins I have committed? I have to be punished for them. And what about the Judgement Day? How can it happen right now?” Deep inside these unconscious rumblings go on and on. And you go on listening . . .

Seeing the failure of Krishnamurti, I have invented methods. I am saying essentially the same thing, because the message cannot be different. But I had to invent methods so that they can destroy your mistrust. Methods will help you to become unblocked; they will help you to become more flowing; they will help you to be less frozen – they will melt you; they will warm up the process of your being.

Releasement is going to happen instantly, any moment it is going to happen. But if you are ready, it can happen this very moment – not even a single moment more do you have to wait.

Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Because of you, not because of me. From my side I am very much puzzled why it is not happening to you. It should happen, why is it not happening? Why do you go on listening without understanding it? Why do you listen only intellectually? Why can’t you listen from the heart, from your totality? It is a constant wonder to me – a miracle – that people can go on listening every day and can remain the same, hence the methods. The methods are not for the releasement, you are not going to become enlightened through any meditation, no; nobody has ever become enlightened through any meditation, but the meditations help. In a negative way they help; they remove the rocks and the stream starts flowing. They don’t create the stream; they can’t create it – how can rocks create the stream? They have nothing to do with the nature of the stream, but they can prevent it.

Because there are things which are preventing you from trusting the moment, trusting God, trusting life, trusting existence, you are shrunk in fear, in doubt. In doubt and fear you have armored yourself just to be secure, safe; you have created a great armor around yourself. Your body is no more an opening to existence; it has become closed. Your windows, your doors, are all closed. The sun rises – yes, the sun rises in the evening – but it cannot penetrate in you. It goes on rising, it goes on knocking on your door, but the knock is subtle – so subtle, so silent, that you cannot hear it in your noisy mind, in that constant chatter that goes on inside you.

These methods are negative methods; they will not give you enlightenment, but they will remove the barriers. And once the barriers are removed, once all the barriers are removed, enlightenment happens. It is nothing that you have to achieve; when you are available . . . the release, the liberation.

You say: I am so tired of trips.

Really? I don’t think so. If one is really tired, then one’s trips are finished. You are still hoping – maybe there is still some trip, some way of tripping so that you can attain. You are still hoping. You are looking out of the corner of the eye. “Maybe I have failed ninety-nine times; but who knows? I may succeed the hundredth time. I have failed up to now, but who knows? I may be trying the wrong methods, and there may be some right method. I have failed because I may have been with wrong Masters, and there may be some right Master. I have failed because I have not put all of my energy into it; if I put all of my energy into it I may succeed. I have failed because the time was not ripe for it and now the time may be ripe.” And a thousand and one excuses you can always find when you want to go on a new trip. If you are really tired, then who is preventing you? Then forget all about trips, relax, celebrate, be.

I am so tired of trips. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either?

Nothing ever works; nothing has ever worked, because nothing is needed for it to work. Life is going perfectly well – there is no need to do anything whatsoever. But this vision comes slowly, slowly, when you have failed again and again and again. It sinks in very slowly. Our minds are very stubborn, hard, rock-like; they are not soft soil – they don’t allow anything to sink in easily. Hence sometimes it takes lives for a person to realize that nothing ever works. And that is a great moment when one realizes that nothing ever works, nothing can work. “My whole effort to attain was absolutely wrong from the very beginning. It was wrong because what I am trying to achieve is already the case. It is wrong because I am searching and it is already there inside me.”

All efforts are meaningless. If a person is intelligent, he will understand it soon. If he is not intelligent, he will take a little longer; it depends on your intelligence. A very intelligent person, attentive, alert, aware, will see the point in a single moment; with a single blow his head will disappear. He will see the point and all is finished – all misery, all hell, all search.

I am so tired of trips, you say. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either?

It all depends on you. You can make a trip out of me.

Now, the question is from Hal Duggan, and he is taking sannyas on the twentieth. It depends on you; that too can become a trip. From my side it is not; it is the end of all trips. It is just a declaration that enough is enough. Sannyas is a declaration that “I am not going into any more trips”, that all methods have failed, and all paths have failed, that all paths lead astray, that “I am not going to be caught into any method, into any path, anymore.” Sannyas is a renunciation of all methods, all paths, all trips – psychedelic or otherwise.

But you can also make sannyas a trip – it depends on you – and then you will miss again. Sannyas is not a trip. It is the realization that all trips are bound to fail. It is coming out of all trips; it is coming home. It is realizing the fact that you don’t waste your energy and time in searching for anything anymore; you don’t go on waiting for anything to happen in the future, because it is already happening – it has always been happening. Dance, sing, celebrate, be.

God is, he has not to be searched for. God already is, you are not to discover him. All you have to do is dance a mad dance, you have to dance in such a mad way that all the doors are thrown open. You have to sing with such totality that the ego dissolves into that totality. You have to be in prayer, in gratitude, with such passion and intensity that the whole starts flowing toward you; your waiting becomes a magnetic field.

Sannyas is not a trip. So, Hal Duggan, remember it, it is not a trip. Don’t reduce sannyas to a trip.

I am not a trip. I am not here to create new bondages for you, I am here to make you free, totally free. That’s why I don’t give you any discipline, I give you only awareness. That’s why I don’t give you any character, I give you only alertness. And out of alertness if a character arises, good. And out of awareness a character certainly arises, but a very fluid and flowing character. It is not a fixed mode of life, because all modes are dead, stagnant. A character arises out of consciousness, but the consciousness goes on changing, so the character goes on changing; the consciousness goes on reflecting each moment the new reality that is happening, and the character goes on corresponding to the new reality that is happening. There is continuous adjustment, spontaneous adjustment, between you and the whole.

The people who have fixed characters are always maladjusted, because they have a fixed character, and life has no fixed character. God is characterless, and if you have a character, you will never meet God, because your character will confine you into a certain strait jacket; you will become a stereotype, you will not be a living being anymore; you will be a noun not a verb.

God is a verb not a noun. God is a process, a dynamism; and a man of character, the so-called man of character, is dull, dead. He has to be dull and dead, because if he were aware he would have to see the changes that are happening around him and he would have to change accordingly. He has to remain drugged in his unconsciousness, he has to remain fixed with his character because he is always afraid that something may happen and he may have to change his character. He does not want to change his character so he goes on remaining unaware of all that is changing. He also creates a society which is unchanging. That’s why in the East the society has remained unchanging; it is because of the so-called ‘character obsession’. If a man has to have a fixed character, then the society has also to be a fixed pattern; only then will he be adjusted, otherwise there will be difficulty.

In the East thousands of years have passed and things have remained almost the same; they have not changed – they have not been allowed to change because then there is fear. And that’s what is happening in the West now: because things are changing, people are losing character, and the Western religious leaders are very much worried. Life is changing fast; science has released so many energies that life goes on changing. And one has to change with it, one has to keep pace with life. And if one has to keep pace with life, one cannot stay in a fixed mode. It is very easy to live in an Indian village and remain in a fixed mode; it is very difficult to live in New York with a fixed mode of life – you have to be more fluid.

So the Eastern people think that Western people don’t have any character. What the reality is, in fact, is that the West has become more alive, more changing, and the East is still dull and dead, fixated, obsessed and afraid. “If anything changes on the outside then I will have to change inside too, because my inside has to correspond with the outside.”

Small changes bring difficulties. For example, since electricity came to India, many Jainas have started eating in the night. Now, for centuries they have not eaten in the night – they had a fixed mode – but when electricity came, suspicions arose, doubts arose. Now, what is the problem? Electricity is there, light is there – there is no fear of any insect or any ant entering into your food; you will not be killing anything. Now in the night you can have more light than you have in the day, so many Jainas started eating in the night. Now, what is the problem? And when one thing falls, then other things start falling, because everything is connected; all things are connected with each other. If you can eat in the night and Mahavir is wrong about it, maybe he is wrong about other things too.

That’s why the church has been fighting against science, because it creates suspicion. The church has believed that the earth is flat, and then science started saying it is not flat, it is a globe. Now, if Jesus is wrong about one thing, why can’t he be wrong about other things? Then he is no more infallible; suspicion will arise. He may be wrong about God too, he may be wrong about the Judgement Day, he may be absolutely wrong, who knows? because he is fallible.

Religions have always insisted that nothing should change; these religions are all in the service of death. I am giving you a totally new vision: a religion of life not of death, a religion of intelligence not of stupidity, a religion of dynamism not of stagnancy, a religion which will keep you flowing with the flow of the total and will not in any way hold you back from the movement of the total. It will keep you in tune with the whole. I don’t give a character to you, I only give consciousness. My whole emphasis is on consciousness.

Sitting is Zen, walking is Zen, talking is Zen, being silent is Zen. All should be only awareness. Awareness should be your God. Let awareness be the only fundamental law, and then you will be out of all trips; otherwise, it is difficult. You can go on changing from one trip to another. A Christian can become a Hindu; this is just changing the train – the trip remains. A Hindu can become a Christian, and nothing changes, only words; he will not go to the temple, he will go to the church.

And the same can be done with me too but remember that will be your responsibility. I can also become a trip to you. I don’t want to become a trip to you; I want to become a liberation to you. From my side I want you to be liberated, but still, your cooperation will be needed. The very idea of liberation, and you can catch hold of it and make a trip out of it. And your mind is very, very efficient in making trips out of everything. Beware.

Hal Duggan, on the twentieth you are going to become a sannyasin. Remember, this is not a trip, this is the end of all trips. Let it be the end of all trips. How long are you going to journey and journey and journey? Now, come home. Now, come to rest. Enough of the trips. Learn from me how to rest, how to relax, how to be.

-Osho

From The Sun Rises in the Evening, Discourse #8, Q3

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

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

 

 

The Non-Doing of Meditation – Osho

A few things before we enter this sutra of Sosan. In the West, just a few years back, there was a French hypnotist, Emile Coué – he happened to rediscover one of the basic laws of the human mind. He called it “the law of reverse effect” – that is one of the oldest sutras in Taoist and Zen thinking. Sosan is talking about this law. Try to understand this law, then his sayings will be simple to understand.

For example, if you don’t feel sleepy what will you do? You will try to get into sleep – you will make efforts, you will do this and that, but whatsoever you do will bring just the reverse; just that which you need will not come. Just the opposite will happen, because any activity, any effort, is against sleep.

Sleep is a relaxation. You cannot bring it; you cannot do anything for it to happen. You cannot force it; you cannot will it. […]

So when you make efforts to go into sleep, it is a self-destructive thing. You are doing something which will become just the opposite – you will become more awake. The only way to enter into sleep is: not to do anything.

If it is not coming, it is not coming. Wait . . . don’t do anything! Otherwise, you will push it further away and a distance will be created. Just wait on the pillow, put off the light, close your eyes, relax and wait. Whenever it comes, it comes. You cannot bring it by any act of your will. […]

And this happens in many things in life: just the opposite comes out of it. If you want to be silent, what will you do? – because silence is just like sleep. You cannot force it. You can allow it to happen, it is a let-go, but there is no way to work it out. What will you do if you want to be silent? If you do anything you will be less silent than ever.

If you want to be quiet, what will you do? – because quietness means non-doing. You simply float, you simply relax! And when I say simply relax, I mean simply. No method is to be used for relaxation, because method means again you are doing something. […]

If something is to be done, howsoever difficult, you can find the know-how, how to do it. You can learn the technique; there are experts, you can be trained. But in Zen nobody can be trained. In God there are no experts and no authorities – cannot be, because it is not a question of know-how, it is a question of relaxing into your being, not doing. The greatest thing will happen to you only when you are not there. And if you are doing something you are bound to be there.

Sleep comes when you are not there. Enlightenment also follows the same rule – it comes when you are not there. But when you are doing, how will you be absent at the same time? If you are doing something you will be there. Action feeds the ego. When you are not doing anything, the ego cannot be fed. It simply disappears, it dies, it is not there. And when the ego is not there, the light descends.

So whatsoever you are doing willfully will be the barrier. In my meditations here, do them, but not willfully. Don’t force them; rather, let them happen. Float in them, abandon yourself in them. Be absorbed, but not willfully. Don’t manipulate, because when you manipulate you are divided, you become two: the manipulator and the manipulated. Once you are two, heaven and hell are created immediately; then there is vast distance between you and the truth. Don’t manipulate, allow things to happen.

If you are doing the kundalini meditation, allow the shaking – don’t do it! Stand silently, feel it coming, and when your body starts a little trembling, help it, but don’t do it! Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don’t will it.

If you force, it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise. Then the shaking will be there, but just on the surface. It will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, stonelike, rocklike within. You will remain the manipulator, the door, and the body will only be following. The body is not the question, you are the question.

When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rocklike being should shake to the very foundations, so it becomes liquid, fluid, melts, flows. And when the rocklike being becomes liquid your body will follow. Then there is no shaker, only shaking; then nobody is doing it, it is simply happening. Then the doer is not.

Enjoy it, but don’t will it. And remember, whenever you will a thing you cannot enjoy it. They are reverse, opposites; they never meet. If you will a thing you cannot enjoy it, if you enjoy it, you cannot will it.

For example, you can will your love. You can do it according to the manuals, but then you will not enjoy it. If you enjoy it you will have to throw all manuals, all Kinseys and Masters and Johnsons – you have to throw them all. You have to forget completely about all that you have learned about love. In the beginning you will be at a loss, because there are no guidelines, no maps. How to start?

Just wait . . . and let your inner energy move and follow that energy wherever it leads. It may take a little time, but when love comes it overtakes you. You are no more there. Love is there but there is no lover. Love happens as an energy, but it has no ego within it. Then it is tremendous, then it is a great release. And then love becomes an ecstasy, and you know something that has been known to those who have come to the divine. You know a fragment of it, a drop of the ocean. You know a ray – and then the taste comes to you.

Meditation, God, enlightenment, nirvana, they all came into being through love, because through love a glimpse was achieved. And when the glimpse was there, daring souls went on an adventure to find the source from where this glimpse comes. Through love, God has been discovered. That’s why Jesus goes on saying . . . whenever somebody asks, “What is God?” he says, “God is love,” because through love the first glimpse comes.

But the process is the same: you cannot will love. If you will, the whole beauty is lost, the whole thing becomes mechanical. You go through the whole ritual, but nothing happens. There is no ecstasy – it is something to be done and be finished. It never reaches to your center, it never shakes your foundations, it never becomes an inner dance. It is not a throbbing of your being; it is just an act on the periphery.

Remember, love cannot be willed, and neither can meditation.

-Osho

From Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Awareness and Relaxation – Osho

Relaxation has always been one of the most valuable states of being for me. “Watchfulness” seems to be possible only then, or at least so much easier. Beloved Master, would you like to comment on how “relaxation” is connected to “awareness”?

Sadhan, they are not only connected with each other, they are almost two sides of the same coin. You cannot separate them. Either you can begin with awareness, and then you will find yourself relaxing . . . What is your tension? Your identification with all kinds of thoughts, fears, death, bankruptcy, the dollar going down . . . all kinds of fears are there. These are your tensions, and they affect your body also. Your body also becomes tense, because body and mind are not two separate entities. Body-mind is a single system, so when the mind becomes tense, the body becomes tense.

You can start with awareness; then awareness takes you away from the mind and the identifications with the mind. Naturally, the body starts relaxing. You are no more attached, and tensions cannot exist in the light of awareness.

You can start from the other end also. Just relax . . . let all tensions drop . . . and as you relax you will be surprised that a certain awareness is arising in you. They are inseparable. But to start from awareness is easier; to start with relaxation is a little difficult, because even the effort to relax creates a certain tension. […]

Hence, in the East we have never started meditation from relaxation; we have started meditation from awareness. Then relaxation comes on its own accord, you don’t have to bring it. If you have to bring it there will be a certain tension. It should come on its own; then only will it be pure relaxation.

And it comes . . . […]

There are political, religious, sociological, economic problems, all torturing you. To begin with relaxation is difficult; hence, in the East we have never started from relaxation. But if you want to, I have a certain idea how you should start. I have been working with my Western sannyasins and I have become aware of the fact that they don’t belong to the East and they don’t know the Eastern current of consciousness; they are coming from a different tradition which has never known any awareness.

For the Western sannyasins especially, I have created meditations like dynamic meditation. While I was taking camps of meditators, I used a gibberish meditation and the kundalini meditation. If you want to start from relaxation, then these meditations have to be done first. They will take out all tensions from your mind and body, and then relaxation is very easy. You don’t know how much you are holding in, and that that is the cause of tension. […]

So there are two kinds of tension, the body tensions and the mind tensions. Both have to be released before you can start relaxation, which will bring you to awareness. But beginning from awareness is far easier, and particularly for those who can understand the process of awareness, which is very simple. The whole day you are using it about things – cars, in the traffic – even in the Poona traffic you survive! It is absolutely mad. […]

You are using awareness without being aware of it, but only about outside things. It is the same awareness that has to be used for the inside traffic. When you close your eyes there is a traffic of thoughts, emotions, dreams, imaginations; all kinds of things start flashing by.

What you have been doing in the outside world, do exactly the same with the inside world and you will become a witness. And once tasted, the joy of being a witness is so great, so other-worldly that you would like to go more and more in. Whenever you find time, you would like to go more and more in.

It is not a question of any posture; it is not a question of any temple, of any church or synagogue. Sitting in a public bus or in a railway train, when you have nothing to do just close your eyes. It will save your eyes being tired from looking outside, and it will give you time enough to watch yourself. Those moments will become moments of the most beautiful experiences.

And slowly, slowly, as awareness grows your whole personality starts changing. From unawareness to awareness is the greatest quantum leap.

-Osho

From Satyam Shivam Sundram, #25, Q2

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