Tag: Meditation

A Door to the Divine – Osho

A parable.

Once there was a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant.

Secondly, he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place, he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it.

Further, the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians. And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and their skins.

George Gurdjieff loved this parable very much. His whole philosophy is contained in this small parable. And this parable represents man in the ordinary state of unconsciousness. It is one of the most beautiful illustrations of man as he is.

Man is a machine. Man is not born to be a machine, but man lives like a machine and dies like a machine. Man has the seed of a great flowering of consciousness, man has the possibility to become God, but that doesn’t happen. It does not happen because man has been hypnotized – by the society, by the state, by the organized church, by the vested interests. The society needs slaves and man can remain a slave only if he is not allowed to grow to his uttermost flowering. The society needs your flesh and your skins and naturally, nobody likes it. Hence, the whole process of socialization, of civilization, is nothing but a deep hypnosis.

Man is being hypnotized from the very moment he is born. He is being hypnotized to believe that the society exists in his favor, for his good. That is utterly wrong. He is being hypnotized to believe that he is immortal. He is not. He can be, but he is not. And if the hypnosis persists he will never be immortal.

You live only as a mortal being, because you live in the body. The body is going to die. That which is born is bound to die. Birth is the beginning of the body and death the end. Do you know anything in you which is more than the body? Have you experienced anything higher than the body, deeper than the body? Have you seen anything in you which was even before you were born? If you have seen that, then you are immortal. If you know your face, your original face, the face that you had before you were born, then you know you will be there after death too; otherwise not.

Man can be an immortal, but man lives surrounded by death because man lives identified with the body. The society does not allow you to know more than the body. The society is interested only in your body – your body can be put to use – your soul is dangerous. A man of soul is always dangerous because a man of soul is a free man. He cannot be reduced to slavery. A man who has an immortal soul in him has a deeper commitment to existence itself, to God himself. He does not care a bit about the man-made structures of society, civilization and culture; these are prison cells for him. He does not exist as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. He cannot be part of a crowd. He exists as an individual.

The body is part of a crowd, your soul is not. Your soul is deeply individual. Its flavor is that of freedom. But your soul cannot be put to any use in the market-place. The society needs only your body. And it is very dangerous for the society if you start striving for the soul, because then your interest changes. You turn from being an extrovert into an introvert; you start moving inwards. The society is outside, the society wants you to remain an extrovert, interested in money, power, prestige, and all that, so that your energy goes on moving outwards. If you start moving inwards, that means you have become a drop-out, you are no more part of the game that is being played on the outside. You don’t belong to it. You start diving deep within your own being. And there is the source of immortality.

The society prevents you from going inwards. And the best way is to give you a false idea that you are going inwards. The magician told the sheep that they were lions, suggested to them that they were immortals, hypnotized them into believing that they were not only men but great magicians.

When you go to a church you are not going inwards. When you go to the temple you are not going inwards. But the society has hypnotized you to believe that if you want to go inwards, go to the church. But the church is as much outside as anything else. The society has hypnotized you to believe that if you want to go inwards, go to the priest. And the priest is an agent of the state and the society. The priest has always been against the mystics, because if you go to a mystic you will start moving inwards.

A mystic lives in a totally different way. His energy moves in a different gestalt: his river moves inwards. So one who comes to a mystic, falls in tune with the mystic, will start moving inwards naturally, simply, spontaneously. That is the whole purpose of being with a Master, with a mystic.

This book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is one of the most esoteric treatises in the world. It will show you the way to become more than the body. It will show you the way to go beyond death. It will show you the way to bloom – how not to remain a seed but to become a Golden Flower. What in India we have called the one-thousand-petalled lotus, in China they call the Golden Flower. It is a symbol.

The flower represents perfection, totality. The flower represents the uttermost expression of the potential, the actualization of the potential. The flower represents the beauty, the grandeur, the splendor of being. And unless you have become a thousand-petalled lotus or a Golden Flower . . ..

Remember you have to go far. Remember that you have to get out of the traps that the society has put around you. Remember that you have not yet done the work for which you have come to the earth. Remember you are just a seed, not yet a soul.

This treatise, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is very ancient – possibly one of the most ancient treatises in the world certainly twenty-five centuries old, and the possibility is that it is older than that. But twenty-five centuries can be traced back very easily. And this treatise is also a great synthesis of all the great religions. That is rare, unique. The Bible belongs to the Christians, the Talmud belongs to the Jews, the Vedas belong to the Hindus, the Dhammapada to the Buddhists, the Tao Te Ching to the Taoists. But this small book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, belongs to no one in particular, or, it belongs to all.

It is deeply based in Taoist teachings. It is a flowering of the Taoist approach to life and existence. But it is not only that – Zarathustra has played a role. Zarathustra’s teachings have been incorporated in it. Buddhist teachings have also been incorporated in it. And a certain esoteric school of Christians, the Nestorians, they have also played their part. So Christianity and Judaism also have become part of it.

It is one of the most synthetical approaches. It combines all that is beautiful in all the traditions of the world. For centuries it was only transmitted orally, and the book remained esoteric. It was not available to the public because it has something very secret to teach; it was available only to the disciples. The Master would tell to the disciple only when the time was ripe, because it gives you such a potential secret that if you don’t understand rightly, if you do something wrong with it, there are found to be harmful effects from it. It has to be understood rightly, and it has to be worked at only in the presence of a Master. It is a powerful method it is as powerful as atomic energy.

Now, the secrets of atomic energy are kept hidden from the public. Once they start leaking out to the public there is going to be great danger. If people can manufacture atom bombs privately, there is bound to be great chaos. Great secrecy is maintained about atomic research. Exactly in the same way this book teaches you one of the most potential methods of inner explosion. For centuries the secrets were guarded – only given to the disciples in privacy, in intimacy. And the people who followed this particular esoteric school resisted all temptations to write the book. In fact, all the religions of the world have long resisted writing their spiritual teachings.

There is some beauty when something is transferred really. It is alive – one thing – the Master is behind it. it is not a dead word, the word has soul, wings. The experience of the Master supports it; the master is a witness to it. It is not just speculation, not only a philosophy, but something existential, experienced, lived. And the Master has travelled the path; he knows the dangers of the path, he knows the pitfalls, he knows the points at which people go astray, and he will take every care so that the disciple cannot go astray.

The closer you come to the truth, the more is the possibility of going astray, because when you come closer to the truth, you can become very egoistic: that ’Now I know,’ that ’Now I am.’ And if the ego exploits the situation, you will fall back to your old dark valley, you will lose the peak. When you come closer to the truth, a great desire arises to share it with people. But you have not attained it in its wholeness; and it is dangerous to share half-truths because half-truths are more dangerous than lies, because they are powerful. Lies are impotent. Sooner or later people will themselves find that it is a lie. But the half-truth can persist for centuries, can have effects for centuries.

Nobody can reach through the half-truth, and the person who travels half the way will belong neither to this world nor to the other. He will be in a limbo, and that is a very strange situation to be in: you lose the old and you don’t gain the new; you become a chaos. The old order is gone and the new has not happened. You become a cloud, you become confusion. Rather than becoming more clear, rather than becoming more alive, rather than becoming more light-full, your life becomes a conflict between two polarities. You are pulled apart, you start falling into pieces. Half of you belongs to the earth and half of you belongs to the sky. Now you are nowhere. Now you are nobody. This can create madness. So, for centuries The Secret of the Golden Flower was only conveyed orally.

Secondly, with an oral tradition the book remains always alive. That’s how it became a synthesis. Basically, it was born in the Taoist climate of China. But then Bodhidharma reached China – a new master with a new message from India, Buddha’s message. And the people who were following The Secret of the Golden Flower were very open people; they were not part of any established church. They could immediately see that Bodhidharma also had it – it was so apparent, so manifest. They allowed Bodhidharma’s teachings to be part of their teaching. And the same happened with Zoroastrian Masters, with Nestorian Christians. Again and again something came to China, and if it was worthwhile, it was incorporated.

An oral teaching remains alive, growing, like a river. New streams of water come and become part of it. Once a teaching is written, then it cannot incorporate anything anymore. Then it becomes rigid, it loses fluidity, it becomes dead; it is a corpse. Now The Secret of the Golden Flower is not growing. For centuries it has not grown. Since it has been written it has not grown.

Why have I chosen to speak on it? – so that it can still grow. It is such a beautiful message to the world, it should not die. I would like to revive it. And now I can talk to people who are disciples, who have come to me and who are ready to die in order to be reborn, who are ready to die for flowering. The seed has to die, only then can it grow. The seed has to disappear; only then can the tree happen.

I will be speaking to you on this small but immensely valuable book so that the book can become alive again. It can become alive between me and you. It can again start flowing. And it has something of immense importance. If you understand it and if you practice it, you will be enriched.

But the first thing to understand is: remember that you have been hypnotized, and you have to go through a dehypnotizing process. Remember that you have been conditioned and you have to be unconditioned. Remember that death is coming. Don’t think that it is not going to happen today; it can happen any moment.

In fact, all that happens always happens now. The seed dies now, the bud becomes the flower now, the bird starts calling now. All that ever happens, happens only in the space made available by now, this moment. Nothing ever happens in the past, and nothing ever happens in the future. All that happens always happens in the present – that is the only way for things to happen because the present is the only time there is.

Past is just your memory and future is just your imagination. But you have been hypnotized to live in the past, and you have been hypnotized to live in the future. Choose either past or future, but no society allows you to live in the present.

Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans – they condition you to live in the past. Their golden age was in the past. Communists, socialists, fascists – they condition you to live in the future, their golden age is in the future, the utopia is coming: when the revolution comes, then you will be able to really live, then there will be a golden age. Either you are taken to the past, which is false, or to the future, which is again false. No society tells you to live in the present, in the herenow.

To be a sannyasin, to be a real seeker means to live herenow. And there is no other life. But for that you will have to de-automatize yourself, you will have to become a man and not a machine. You will have to become a little more conscious. You are not conscious.

Once I was sitting by the side of a dying man – he was a professor in the same university where I was a professor. He was at the pinnacle of his successful career. And then came the heart attack – which always comes when you are at the pinnacle. Success is always followed by a heart attack. What else can you have after it? So he had a heart attack and he was dying. I went to see him. He was very sad – who wants to die? – and he was in great despair and anguish. I told him, “You need not worry. You’re not going to die.”

He said, “What are you saying? But the doctors… all the doctors say that there is no possibility of my survival. On what grounds are you saying that I am not going to die?”

I said, “You cannot die in the first place, because you never lived. You have not fulfilled the first requirement for dying. For these fifty-five years you have been sleep-walking, you have dreamt; you have not lived. I have watched you for years.”

He was shocked, he was angry – so angry that for a moment he forgot all about death. His eyes were aflame with anger and he said, “Is this the way to treat a dying man? Can’t you be a little courteous? Why are you so hard on me? I am dying and you are talking such great philosophy – ‘You never lived.’ Is this the time to say such things?”

I listened silently. I just became absolutely silent. Then the rage disappeared and he started crying, and great tears came to his eyes. He held my hand with great love, and then he said, “Maybe you are right. I never lived. Maybe you are not rude, you are just being true. And I know nobody else would have said this to me.” And then, great gratitude, and for a moment he became so conscious that one could have seen the light on the face – it was there, he was all aura. And he thanked me. That night he died. I remained with him to the last moment.

And he said, “If you had not been here, I would have missed my death too, as I have missed my life. But I am dying consciously. At least one thing I am happy about – I am not dying unconsciously. “And his death was beautiful. He died without any regret; he died in a relaxed way. He died almost with a welcoming heart; he died full of gratitude. He died prayerfully. His next life is bound to have a different quality. If death is so beautiful it brings a new life to you.

But one has to live each moment, whether it is of life, of love, of anger, of death. Whatsoever it is one has to live each moment as consciously as possible.

A peasant, carried away by his imagination, found himself in a vegetable garden stealing cucumbers.

“I’ll carry off this sack of cucumbers,” he thought, “and with the money I get for them I’ll buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, she will sit on them and hatch a brood of chicks, and I’ll feed the chicks till they grow, then I’ll sell them and buy a suckling pig. I’ll feed the suckling pig till it grows into a sow, I’ll breed her, and she’ll have a litter of pigs and I’ll sell them. With the money I get for the pigs I’ll buy a house with a garden; I’ll plant cucumbers in the garden, and I won’t let anyone steal them – I’ll keep guard over them. I’ll hire a strong watchman, and from time to time I’ll go out to the garden and shout, ‘Hey, you! Take care!’”

The peasant was so carried away by this thought that he shouted at the top of his voice. The watchman heard him and came running. He caught the peasant and gave him a good thrashing.

But this is how man lives: in dreams, in imagination, in projections. This is how you live. And this is not the way to live this beautiful, tremendously valuable life! This is sheer wastage! You have to become more attentive to the moment, to the present. You have to gather your consciousness. Consciousness is your treasure, and all the methods that have been invented, devised, down the centuries are nothing but ways to create more consciousness in you, to create more fire in you, to make your life a passionate affair, a flame. People are living dull lives, people are living absentmindedly, people are living inattentively. How can you live with so much inattention around you? Inattention is darkness, attention is light. And this treatise will teach you how to create more light in you, so that one day . . . the Golden Flower.

Two psychiatrists met on the street. “You are feeling fine,” said one. “How am I doing?”

People are asking each other. Nobody knows how they are doing, they are looking into each other’s eyes, gathering information about themselves from others. That’s why the opinion of others has become so important. If somebody says you are a fool, you become angry. Why? Or you become sad. Why? You are shattered. You were thinking you are a wise man, because others had told you that you are wise. It was the opinion of others that you depended on. Now somebody else says you are a fool. He can easily shatter your wisdom, very easily. He has thrown a stone and you had made a palace with playing cards. Now all is shattered. That’s why one becomes so angry, so enraged, so violent, and one becomes so worried, anxious. You are continuously looking for what others are thinking, because you know only that which others think about you, you don’t know anything about yourself. Now what kind of situation is this? If I cannot know about myself, who else can know about me? From the outside nobody can watch me, I am not available that way. From the outside only my body can be watched. From the inside I can know my consciousness.

Even when you stand before a mirror you see only your body, you cannot see your consciousness in the mirror. Even you cannot see it in the mirror – your own consciousness. You have to see it directly. It is never mirrored; it is never reflected in anything; it is invisible. You have to close your eyes and be it. And that is the only way of knowing it. But people live so unconsciously. They simply live by the opinion of others. What others say becomes their soul. Others can take it away any moment. People remain beggars.

Have you known anything about yourself directly? Have you ever encountered yourself directly without bringing the opinion of others into it? If you have not done it, you have not yet lived. Life starts only by encountering oneself, by seeing oneself directly, immediately. Life exists only when you are capable of seeing yourself as you are, not as others think about you. What can they think about you? What can they say about you? They can watch your behavior, they cannot watch you. If you want to watch yourself, only you can do that, nobody else. It cannot be done by servants. It cannot be delegated to somebody else. It cannot be done by the experts either. But we are so much interested in others’ opinions because we are absolutely absent – there is nobody awake inside. Deeply asleep, we are snoring inside.

The absent-minded professor went in for a haircut. He sat down in the barber’s chair, but didn’t remove his hat.

“I’m afraid you will have to take off your hat,” said the barber. “Oh, I’m sorry!” said the professor, “I didn’t know there were ladies present.”

Watch your own absent-mindedness. Watching it will create attentiveness in you. Watch what is happening within you: thoughts passing, memories arising, a cloud of anger, a dark night of sadness, or a beautiful morning of joy. Watch all that passes in you. Become more and more watchful. Slowly, slowly you will become an integrated watchfulness. And the method taught by The Secret of the Golden Flower is how to become integrated in your inner light. This is the story of this book before we enter into the sutras.

The book comes from an esoteric circle in China. The founder of this esoteric circle is said to have been the well-known Taoist adept, Lu Yen. Where did Lu Yen get this secret teaching? He himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi, for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his Tao Te Ching.

Lao Tzu never wrote a single word in his whole life. He declined again and again the invitation to write anything. He conveyed to his disciples what he had come to know, but he was not ready to write, because he said, “The Tao which can be said is not the true Tao.” The Tao which can be expressed is already falsified. It can be learned only in intimate contact with the Master. There is no other way of communicating it. It can only be learned in a deep communion where the disciple and the Master meet, where the disciple holds nothing back, where the disciple and the Master overlap, where their consciousnesses merge into each other. Only in such a meeting, communion, can Tao be conveyed. So he refused again and again.

He lived a long life. But when he was going to die he left China on a water buffalo. Why on a water buffalo? His whole teaching had been the teaching of the watercourse way.

He said: One should be like water – flowing, fluid, fresh, always moving towards the ocean. And one should be like water – soft, feminine, receptive, loving, non-violent. One should not be like a rock. The rock appears to be very strong but is not, and water appears to be very weak but is not. Never be deceived by appearances. Finally, the water wins over the rock and the rock is destroyed and becomes sand and is taken to the sea. The rock disappears finally – against the soft water.

The rock is masculine; it is the male mind, the aggressive mind. Water is feminine, soft, loving, not aggressive at all. But the non-aggressive wins. The water is always ready to surrender, but through surrender it conquers – that is the way of the woman. The woman always surrenders and conquers through it. And the man wants to conquer and the ultimate result is just a surrender and nothing else. Hence, he chose a water buffalo when he left the country. Where was he going? He was going to the Himalayas to die into that eternal beauty.

A real man knows how to live and how to die. A real man lives totally, dies totally. A real man lives in benediction and dies in benediction.

He was going into absolute aloneness in the Himalayas. But he was caught on the border. And the man who caught him on the border was Master Kuan Yiu-hsi. He was a guard at the last post of the Chinese border. Lao Tzu had to pass that post; there was no other way to get out of the country. And Kuan Yiu-hsi persuaded him: “You are going to die, you are leaving the country forever, and soon you will be leaving the body. Please write just a few words. And I won’t allow you to get out of the land if you don’t write them. This price you have to pay.” And Lao Tzu had to sit in Kuan Yiu-hsi’s hut for three days, and there he wrote the Tao Te Ching.

The tradition of The Secret of the Golden Flower is said to have originated with Lu Yen. Lu Yen himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his Tao Te Ching. Kuan means “the Han-ku pass”, hence he is called Master Kuan, that is “Master of the Han-ku pass.” And he must have been a great adept, otherwise it would have been impossible to persuade Lao Tzu to write. His whole life he had declined – he could not decline the invitation of this man. This man must have had something that it was impossible even for Lao Tzu to say no to.

This is how the tradition of The Golden Flower is connected with Lao Tzu. But it didn’t start with Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu himself says that whatsoever he is saying has been said before, again and again, down the centuries. He is not bringing a new truth in the world but only a new expression. It is always so. Truth is the same, only expressions differ.

What Lao Tzu said is the same as what Krishna had said before him. What Krishna said is the same as what Buddha said later on. What Buddha has said is the same as Mohammed, as Jesus, as Zarathustra have said although their expressions are so different that you will need great intelligence to see to the very core. The structure is different, the language is different, their ways of saying it are different; naturally, because they are different persons, different individuals, with their own uniqueness. But truth is neither new nor old; and wherever truth is, it is eternal.

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

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #1, part 1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can read The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life, which is part two of this discourse.

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

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

Podcast Episode: The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

An imaginary podcast discussing a real post

Following is an A.I. generated conversation discussing Purushottama’s post: The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow.

click to play or download audio file:

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow Podcast

Pip: Sat Sangha Salon — where the arrow points both ways and somehow that’s the whole point.

Mara: Today we’re working through a piece from Purushottama on the mechanics of meditative awakening — specifically what shifts when awareness turns back on itself, and what the path looks like from there.

Pip: Let’s start with the double-pointed arrow itself.

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Mara: The central question here is structural: what actually changes at the turning point in meditation, and why does that change matter for everything that follows?

Pip: The post names it directly. Here’s the spine of the whole argument: “It is in the activity of watching the mind that the turning point happens. It is by watching the mind that one becomes aware of being something other than the mind, and this is precisely the awakening of the double-pointed arrow, the awakening of the witness.”

Mara: So the stakes are real and practical. Until that shift happens, you are the mind watching objects. After it, there is a witness — something that knows it is not the mind. That gap is where transformation becomes possible at all.

Pip: And the post is careful to say this is not a conceptual upgrade. You do not think your way into it.

Mara: Right — the language is precise on that point. It is “not just an intellectual or conceptual understanding” but the actual experience of there being thought and simultaneously a knowingness beyond it. The double-pointed arrow is awareness that points outward at objects and inward at its own subjectivity at once.

Pip: Which is why the stabilization phase gets its own chapter. You find the witness, and then you lose it, and then you find it again — apparently that oscillation is the work, not a sign you’re doing it wrong.

Mara: The post calls the shifting back and forth “natural to the stabilization process.” And it maps a trajectory: stabilized witnessing, then witnessing the heart, then transformation gaining momentum, and finally awareness watching awareness itself — what the post calls watchingness.

Pip: At which point the arrow dissolves entirely. No observer, no observed, just oneness. The double-pointed arrow was always a transitional tool — scaffolding that the building eventually no longer needs.

Mara: That’s the arc the post traces: from body-watching, to breath-watching, to mind-watching, to the witness stabilizing, to the witness dissolving. Each stage is preparation for the next, and the awakening of the double-pointed arrow is the fulcrum the whole sequence turns on.

Pip: Awareness becoming aware of itself — and then, eventually, just awareness.

Mara: The through-line is transformation requiring a witness before it can outgrow one.

Pip: Next time, we’ll see what else is waiting on the other side of that arrow.

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

Here is the original post from Purushottama, The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow.

Podcast Episode: Meditation Involves all Three

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

 

click to play or download audio file:

Meditation Involves all Three Podcast

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

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

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

Meditation Involves all Three

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

Pip: And the writer lays out exactly where each stage lives. Here’s the spine of it: “This watching without any involvement at all is what I am referring to as dhyana, as meditation. In this watching there is more self-awareness than identification hence I am able to watch without involvement.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

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

Podcast Episode: A Way Out

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

 

click to play or download audio file:

A Way Out Podcast

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

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

A Way Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here you can listen to the podcast on Youtube.

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

Watching Without Involvement

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

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

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

-purushottama

Responsibility for My Own Meditativeness

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is as the Sufis say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to be Like a Thief – Osho

Only the Heart Knows the Answer – Osho

Could you please comment on how to deal with a continuous questioning mind that is not interested in any answer anyway? Or am I just a Greek donkey?

The disciple who can wait will find all his questions answered at the right moment.

But waiting is a great quality: it is deep patience; it is great trust. The mind cannot wait; it is always in a hurry. It knows nothing about patience; hence it goes on piling questions upon questions without getting the answer.

It is something very delicate to understand: that it is not the answer that is significant but the right timing, your readiness to receive it; otherwise, it will just go above your head. The impatient mind is too much occupied in questioning. It forgets that questioning in itself is a meaningless activity — the real thing is the answer, but for the answer you need a certain silence, peace, openness, receptivity. The mind is incapable of these qualities; hence, for thousands of years the mind has been asking and asking but it finds no answer.

In the world of the mind there are only questions.

And in the world of the heart there is only the answer, because the heart knows how not to ask, how to wait: let the spring come by itself; wait like a thirsty earth . . . the rainclouds will come; they have always been coming. There is no need to distrust, because there is not even a single exception where trust has failed, where waiting is not fulfilled, where patience is not immensely rewarded.

The functioning of the heart and the mind are totally different; not only different, but diametrically opposite. The mind creates philosophies, theologies, ideologies — they are all questions that don’t have any answer. The heart simply waits. At the right moment, the answer blossoms by itself.

The heart has no question, yet it receives the answer.

The mind has a thousand and one questions, yet it has never received any answer because it does not know how to receive.

Your mind is full of questions yet you have been observing that by and by, they are being answered. This should create in you a new insight, a new trust. A new dimension is opening: that you have just to wait, alert and awake, and if it is needed the answer will come to you.

You are also seeing that most of the questions that the mind is filled with are silly.

They are—not most of them, all of them are silly for the simple reason that mind does not go through the discipline of asking receptively. It is more concerned with questions.

Even while the answer is being given, it has moved on to another question. Perhaps, listening to the answer, it has created ten more questions out of the answer itself.

Questions arise out of the mind just like leaves grow on the trees. And slowly, slowly, they become more and more silly — because it is very difficult to find many significant questions, and the mind is not satisfied with a small quantity of questions. It is greedy. It wants to ask everything; it wants to know everything without being ready to understand anything.

There are few significant questions.

And there is only one really fundamental question.

But that small quantity does not satisfy the greed of the mind. […]

The mind is a vulture. It is never satisfied with anything. You go on giving to it, it goes on taking, and it goes on asking for more. It never feels grateful; it is always complaining that it is not enough. Nothing is enough to the mind. Question after question — meaningful, meaningless, relevant, irrelevant — and not even a small space for any answer to enter into your mind. It is so crowded with questions.

The heart knows no questions.

And this is one of the mysteries of life: that the mind questions the whole life long and never receives any answer, and the heart never asks but receives the answer.

But there is one thing to be remembered: the mind is noisy, there is maddening noise. The heart may be receiving the answer, but because of the noise of the mind you may not come to feel that the answer has been received, that you are carrying it with you, that you are pregnant with it.

Not only does the mind disturb your peace, your silence; it disturbs it to such an extent that the heart — which is capable of listening to silence, waiting, receptive — is denied all connection with your being. The mind monopolizes your being; it simply puts the heart aside. And because the heart is silent, and a gentleman, it does not quarrel; it simply goes down the street, waits by the side of the road.

Mind wants to occupy the whole space.

The disciple has to understand this whole situation — that the dictatorship of the mind has to be destroyed, that the mind is only a servant, not a master. The master is the heart, because all that is beautiful grows in the heart; all that is valuable comes out of the heart — your love, your compassion, your meditation.

Anything that is valuable grows in the garden of the heart.

Mind is a desert, nothing grows there — only sand and sand and barren land. It has never given any fruit, any flower. You have to understand it: mind should not be supported as much as you have been supporting it up to now. Mind has to be put in its right place.

The throne belongs to the heart.

And this is the revolution through which the disciple becomes a devotee: when the heart becomes the master, and the mind becomes a servant.

This has to be remembered: that as a servant, the mind is perfect. As a master . . . it is the worst master possible; as a servant, it is the best.

And the heart — wherever it is, either on the throne or on the street — is your only hope, the only possibility for you to be bridged with your being, to be bridged with existence. It is the only possibility for songs to arise in you, stars to descend in you, for your life to become a rejoicing, a dance.

You are asking me how to stop this mind, its constant questioning, its silly crowd of questions.

That is where everybody takes the wrong step. If you try to stop it, you will never be able to stop it. Ignore it. Be indifferent to it. Let it chatter.

Be aloof, unconcerned — as if it does not matter whether it chatters or not, whether there are questions or not. Only this aloofness, this ignoring — Buddha has given it the right name, upeksha — this indifference slowly, slowly makes the miracle happen.

What you want to achieve by fighting is not possible, because when you fight with someone you are giving energy to the enemy. You are giving attention, and attention is food; you are getting entangled with the mind, and mind enjoys a good fight. It has never happened that anybody has been able to stop the mind by fighting with it. That is the most important thing to understand: don’t take any step towards fighting.

Just ignore, just be aloof, just let the mind do whatever it wants to do. When the mind feels unwelcomed, when the mind sees that you are no more interested in it, that it is pointless to go on shouting; you are not even hearing it, that you are not even curious about what is going on in the mind — it stops. […]

When you are indifferent, the mind starts feeling as if there is nobody — what is the point of all the questions? Because you are interested, curious, you get involved, you are giving juice to the mind.

Indifference to the mind is meditation.

And all those questions will disappear, because they are absolutely meaningless. And when the chattering of the mind has disappeared, there is a silence, a peace, so that you can hear the still, small voice of your heart.

Only the heart knows the answer . . . it already knows it.

And if you are with a master, the heart simply says yes to the master, because the heart knows the answer already. Perhaps the master is putting it in a better way, more articulate, but the heart is in complete agreement. And that agreement dissolves all distances between the master and the disciple.

Then silence is not only silence, it is also communion.

Then things are not said but heard; then things are not said but shown.

And when the heart is totally willing, life is such a simple, uncomplicated phenomenon that you cannot conceive of anything more simple.

It is the mind which creates complications, goes on creating complications and questions.

Mind’s whole expertise is to create complications.

If you want to live a simple, a beautiful, a silent, a joyful, a blissful life, let the mind be ignored and let the heart be restored to its status as master. This is the whole work of a religious seeker; nothing more is needed.

-Osho

From Beyond Enlightenment, Discourse #8, 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.

Trance is Always Unconscious – Osho

Can trance-like states be higher or lower than the conscious?

The trance-like state is always lower than the conscious. It is always unconscious. It is a very significant question, because for centuries it has been avoided and not discussed.

There have been people like Ramakrishna who used to go into a trance very easily. Ultimately Ramakrishna became enlightened, but he became enlightened when he met a master who taught him witnessing. Before that he was not an enlightened man. But he was a very simple, very spontaneous, very loving person, and he would go into a trance just by seeing something. For example, he was passing by the side of a lake. It was evening time, the sun was setting, and there was a black cloud – the rains were just going to come. And as he passed by, he disturbed almost two dozen cranes that must have been sitting by the side of the lake. Because of Ramakrishna’s coming there, they suddenly flew away – against the black clouds, the two dozen white cranes in a row and a beautiful sunset underneath. Then and there he fell suddenly into a trance. He had to be carried back to his home. It took three hours for him to come back. Just the beauty of it was enough. But it was not a superconscious state. It was tremendously relaxing, but it was below consciousness. […]

Trance is possible but for that you need a certain training in auto-hypnosis. Or, you may have a natural tendency of falling unconscious. You may have a very thin layer of consciousness, and anything that affects you very deeply – like Ramakrishna – may make you go unconscious; otherwise, you need a training. But the training will lead you to the unconscious – it is not a spiritual growth.

You have to be conscious, more conscious. That’s why my process is to first reach to the highest point of consciousness, then turn backwards. Now go down with the light that you have, the insight that you have, into the deeper, dark parts of your being. Now you will be going with light, and wherever you are, there will be light.

Your unconscious has treasures, your collective unconscious has treasures, your cosmic unconscious has treasures, but you need light and you need alertness. If you yourself are unconscious, how can you find any treasures in the three layers of your deep unconscious mind?

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Discourse #13

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.

The Double-Pointed Arrow of Watchingness

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

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

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

-purushottama

See all 0f Prem’s notes.

Don’t Start with Love, Start with Meditation – Osho

Your silence goes so deep into my heart that it makes my love unconditional. Beloved Master, is this what “satsang” is?

Satyam Svarup, there are two ways to look at life. One is the way of the schizophrenic. That has been followed by the crowds around the world down the centuries. It divides things. It is very uneasy without dividing them. And because for thousands of years the teaching has penetrated into every mind it seems to be the only way.

It looks neat and clean divided, but existence does not follow it. It has its own undivided melting, merging into each other without making any demarcations. I am against the first because it has destroyed so much that the crime is incalculable. […]

The old way, the wrong way, the ugly and the insane way, divides love from silence, divides silence from ecstasy, divides ecstasy from self-realization and so on, so forth. But they are not divisions. It is a simple flow of energy moving into different spaces.

You are asking, “Your silence goes so deep into my heart that it makes my love unconditional.” To any logician, to any follower of the first path it will look absurd. What has silence to do with unconditional love? They seem to be worlds apart.

But, Satyam Svarup, you gathered courage to say something which goes against your training of logic. It was possible because it is not an intellectual question, it is your existential experience. And logic cannot overrule existential experiences.

Man is a miniature cosmos, everything intertwined. If your love deepens, your silence will deepen; your blissfulness will deepen, your innocence will deepen, your sensitivity, your aesthetic potentiality will come to flowering.

Just as your hands are not separate from your eyes, neither are your feet separate from your head; you are an organic unity – the same is the situation in the inner world. Your love, your meditation, your silence, your blissfulness – they are simply waves in the same ocean of consciousness. So don’t be disturbed by the mind, which is pretending to be the master. Listen to the heart and you will never be on a wrong track. And the more you listen to the heart, the more and more your life will go beyond intellect, beyond logic, beyond dialectics, beyond all kinds of discriminations.

It is beautiful that you have brought it into a question: “As your silence goes so deep into my heart, there it makes my love unconditional.”

Start from anywhere. You are a perfect circle, and so deeply interconnected, with everything in your life. You can start by being more meditative, which is the simplest because it does not involve other human beings. The others are a little complex; it is better to let them come on their own.

My own understanding is, don’t start with love, because your understanding of love is not the authentic love. It is simply biological infatuation, and if you start with that you have gone astray. Start with meditation because meditation is the only thing that biology has not given to you. It has a tremendous force of its own. That’s why the physiologist or the biologist will account for everything but will never mention the word ‘meditation’.

Meditation is the only bridge between you and the beyond. Start with meditation – and that’s what is happening to you, effortlessly. Sitting with me, listening to me, a silence enters into your heart and suddenly you feel springs of love unaddressed, radiating in all directions. It is not love to someone; it is simply being loving.

But if it comes from meditation, from silence, it will have purity, because it is not coming from biology.

It is not coming from your past, it is not coming from all your conditionings; it is coming from the spontaneous experience of silence. And suddenly you see a great aroma of love around you. You have known love, but it was always conditional. Anything conditional is not worth a penny, because the conditional will disappear. Once the condition is fulfilled there is no purpose in it. […]

Any love which has some conscious or unconscious conditions is bound to bring frustration, because those conditions cannot be fulfilled. The very nature of conditions is such. […]

When I say love has to be unconditional it means you are not expecting from the other anything. You are not expecting the other to be someone else. You are simply loving to the other, as he or she is. And your unconditional love will make you unattached to individuals; it will be just an aroma around you. You will be a loving person. You will love the trees, you will love the sunset, you will love a woman, you will love all that this universe provides you.

Right now, the conditional love is like an imprisonment. Two persons who don’t like each other are holding each other in imprisonment. It is a strange thing. If you don’t like the other, say good-bye.

But you cannot say good-bye because you are afraid he may enjoy himself somewhere else. It does not fit with your jealousy, he has to be happy with you. A husband does not like his wife to be laughing, to be happy with another man. Neither does the wife like such a situation.

So it is a very strange situation in which we have placed humanity. And unless a great awareness happens that this is our fundamental misery, you cannot be freed from this hell that you have made of the earth. Lovers – the so-called lovers, I mean – are more like detectives to each other than lovers. Jealously watching what the other is doing . . . every letter is opened; every pocket is searched.

One night, a woman heard . . . in sleep her husband was again and again saying, “Kamala, darling.”

The woman was listening to exactly what he was saying. In the morning, she asked, the first thing, “Who is this ‘Kamala darling’?”

The man said, “It is nothing, it is just the name of a female horse. I have been thinking to bet on that horse – you know the racing season is coming.”

And then, just when they were talking about this, the phone rang. The husband ran towards the phone; the wife said, “Stop, I will take it.” And then she handed over the phone to the husband: “That female horse ‘Kamala darling’ wants to talk to you.”

Even in sleep you are not free to say things. And people say there is freedom of speech! If there were a small window which God had managed to make into every head, the wife would have been looking through the window into your dreams. “What are you seeing? Who is this woman?” […]

This whole society is boiling with jealousy. Nobody says it, everybody hides it. But the more you hide it, the more it goes on like a cancerous growth, expanding in your interior being. Just look how many things you are jealous of: somebody has a beautiful house and somebody has a beautiful physique, and somebody has a beautiful strong body. Somebody is an intellectual giant and somebody has the most wealth that one could ever think of. So on, so forth, there are people all around who will make you jealous.

Instead of your life being in an oceanic love, it is suffering in a gutter of dirty jealousy. But unless you start looking inwards and finding the roots, you will not be able to transform it.

You are blessed, Svarup, that just without any effort my silence reaches to your heart. It will purify you; it will destroy all that is poisonous in you – jealousy, anger, greed, attachment, possessiveness.

It will make you just a beautiful flower of love.

What is happening has been called in the East satsang, being with a man who has attained the truth. Yes, this is satsang – where, without any effort on your part, just the grace of your master starts alchemical changes . . . so silently that you become aware only when the work is done.

And there are a few things . . . for example if you have known unconditional love, you cannot undo it. It is so vast and it is so beautiful that what you used to think was love looks like just an ugly nightmare compared to it. You would not like to go back to it; your whole being will resist going back to it.

My speaking to you is not especially to give you any philosophy or any dogma, or any creed or any theology or any religion. My talking to you is a device so that you can experience my presence, my silence. In an unaware moment perhaps, you can come closer to my heart without any fear.

This is a device for meditativeness.

I am not interested in any kinds of doctrines; they have tortured humanity long enough. I am interested in a loving humanity, in a humanity fragrant with silence, rejoicing this immense gift of life and existence. […]

-Osho

From Om Mani Padme Hum, Discourse #28

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.