Tag: Mind

How can You Feel Awareness Without Being Aware – Osho

Daily in each of your talks, you speak of awareness – total awareness, uninterrupted awareness, etcetera. You also said that it cannot be achieved by the mind, by repeating a thought – that it is to be felt. But how can one feel unless one achieves it? What is that feeling which is the precursor of achievement? How to imagine or project that which has not yet happened? Does that too happen by excluding mind? What is the whole process? How can it be made feasible?”

When I say that awareness cannot be attained by mind, I mean that you cannot attain it by thinking about it. You can go on thinking about and about, but you will be moving in a circle. When I say that it cannot be attained by the mind, I mean that it cannot be attained by thinking. You have to practice it; you have to do it. It can be attained only by doing, not by thinking; that is the first thing. So don’t go on thinking about what awareness is, how to achieve it or what will be the result. Don’t go on thinking; start doing it.

When walking on the street, walk with awareness. It is difficult and you go on forgetting, but don’t be afraid. Whenever you remember again, be alert. Take every step with full alertness, knowingly, remaining with the step, not allowing the mind to move somewhere else. While eating, eat; chew with awareness. Whatsoever you are doing, don’t do it mechanically – and that is different. And when I say that it can be felt only, the meaning is this: for example, I can raise my hand mechanically, but then I can also raise my hand with full alertness. My mind is conscious that my hand is being raised. Do it, try it – once mechanically and then with alertness. You will feel the change. The quality changes immediately.

Walk with alertness, and you walk differently; a different grace comes to your walking. You move more slowly, more beautifully. If you walk mechanically – only because you know how to walk and there is no need to be alert – then the walking is ugly, there is no grace in it. Do whatsoever you are doing with alertness and feel the difference. When I say “feel,” I mean observe. First do it mechanically and then with awareness and feel the difference. And you will be able to feel the difference.

For example, if you eat with awareness, then you cannot eat more than is needed by the body. People go on coming to me and they say, “Put us on a diet. My weight is constantly increasing, the body is constantly hoarding. Put us on a diet.”

I tell them, “Don’t think of diet, think of consciousness. By dieting nothing will happen. You cannot do it. You will do it one day and the next day it will go. You cannot continue it. Rather, eat with awareness.”

The quality changes. If you eat with awareness, you will chew more. With unconscious, mechanical habits, you simply go on pushing things into your stomach. You are not chewing at all; you are just stuffing. Then there is no pleasure, and because there is no pleasure, you need more food in order to get the pleasure. There is no taste, so you need more food.

Just be alert and see what happens. If you are alert, you will chew more, you will feel the taste more, you will feel the pleasure of eating, and much more time will be taken. If you take half an hour to eat your meal, then by taking the same quantity of a meal with full awareness you will need one and a half hours – thrice the time. In half an hour you will have eaten only one-third of the quantity, and you will feel more fulfilled; you will have enjoyed the meal more. And when the body enjoys, it tells you when to stop. When the body has not enjoyed at all, it never says when to stop, so you go on. Then the body becomes dull. You never hear what the body is saying.

You are eating without being there; that creates the problem. Be there, and every process will be slowed down. The body will itself say, “No more!” And when the body says it, that is the right moment. If you are aware, you cannot trespass the body’s order. You will stop. So allow your body to say something. The body is saying things every moment, but you are not there to hear it. Be alert and you will hear it.

And when I say, “Feel it!” I know it is difficult. How can you feel awareness without being aware? I am not saying that you can feel Buddha’s enlightenment right now, but one has to start somewhere. You may not get the whole ocean, but a drop – just a drop – will give you the taste, and the taste is the same. If even for a single moment you become aware, you have tasted buddhahood. It is momentary, a glimpse of it, but now you know more. And this will never happen to you through thinking; it will happen only through feeling.

The emphasis is on feeling because the emphasis is on a “lived” experience. Thinking is false, you can go on thinking about love and creating theories. You can even get a doctorate on the thesis of love, on what love is, and without ever being in love. You may not know what love is; you may have never felt it. You can grow in knowledge without in any way growing in being. And these are two different dimensions. You can go on growing in knowledge. Your head will go on growing bigger and bigger, but you will remain the same tiny self.

Then nothing is growing really – only accumulation. When you start feeling things, you grow, your being grows. And one has to start somewhere, so start! There will be errors, there are bound to be. You will go on forgetting, it is natural. But don’t get frustrated, don’t throw the effort away saying, “I cannot do it.” You can do it! The same possibility exists in you that existed in Jesus or Buddha. You are the seed; you are not lacking anything at all. You are just an arrangement; you are just a chaotic whole; everything is there. You can become a buddha, but a reorganization of your qualities is needed.

Right now, you are chaotic because there is no arrangement. The arrangement comes in when you start being aware. Just by your being aware things start falling in line, and this chaos that you are becomes a symphony.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #48, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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The Lotus Remains Untouched – Osho

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal, reflecting equally, without distortion, the perceiver, the perception and the perceived.

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge, knowledge based on words and knowledge based on reasoning or sense perceptions, which all remain in the mind in a mixed state.

–Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

What is mind? Mind is not a thing, but an event. A thing has substance in it, an event is just a process. A thing is like the rock; an event is like the wave: it exists but is not substantial. It is just the event between the wind and the ocean, a process, a phenomenon.

This is the first thing to be understood: that mind is a process, like a wave or like a river, but it has no substance in it. If it has substance, then it cannot be dissolved. If it has no substance it can disappear without leaving a single trace behind. When a wave disappears into the ocean, what is left behind? Nothing, not even a trace. So those who have known, they say mind is like a bird flying into the sky – no footprints are left behind, not even a trace. The bird flies but leaves no path, no footprints.

The mind is just a process. In fact, mind doesn’t exist, only thoughts, thoughts moving so fast that you think and feel that something is existing there in continuity. One thought comes, another thought comes, another, and they go on. The gap is so small you cannot see the gap between one thought and another. So two thoughts become joined, they become a continuity, and because of that continuity you think there is a mind. There are thoughts – no mind – just as there are electrons, no matter. Thought is the electron of the mind. Just like a crowd . . . a crowd exists in a sense, doesn’t exist in another; only individuals exist. But many individuals together give the feeling as if they are one. A nation exists and exists not; only individuals are there. Individuals are the electrons of a nation, of a community, of a crowd.

Thoughts exist, mind doesn’t exist. Mind is just the appearance. And when you look into the mind deeper, it disappears. Then there are thoughts, but when the mind has disappeared and individual thoughts exist, many things are immediately solved. First thing: immediately you come to know that thoughts are like clouds – they come and go – and you are the sky. When there is no mind, immediately the perception comes that you are no more involved in the thoughts. Thoughts are there, passing through you like clouds passing through the sky, or the wind passing through the trees. Thoughts are passing through you, and they can pass because you are a vast emptiness. There is no hindrance, no obstacle. No wall exists to prevent them.

You are not a walled phenomenon. Your sky is the infinitely open; thoughts come and go. And once you start feeling that thoughts come and go and you are the watcher, the witness, the mind is in control.

Mind cannot be controlled. In the first place, because it is not, how can you control it? In the second place, who will control the mind? Because nobody exists beyond the mind. and when I say nobody exists, I mean that nobody exists beyond the mind – a nothingness. Who will control the mind? If somebody is controlling the mind, then it will be only a part, a fragment of the mind controlling another fragment of the mind. That is what the ego is.

Mind cannot be controlled in that way. It is not, and there is nobody to control it. The inner emptiness can see but cannot control. It can look but cannot control. But the very look is the control, the very phenomenon of observation, of witnessing, becomes the control because the mind disappears. It is just like in a dark night, you are running fast because you have become afraid of somebody following you, and that somebody is nobody but your own shadow. And the more you run, the more the shadow is closer to you. Howsoever fast you run makes no difference; the shadow is there. Whenever you look back, the shadow is there. That is not the way to escape from it, and that is not the way to control it. You will have to look deeper into the shadow. Stand still and look deeper into the shadow; the shadow disappears because the shadow is not; it is just an absence of light. Mind is nothing but the absence of your presence. When you sit silently, when you look deep in the mind, mind simply disappears. Thoughts will remain, they are existential, but mind will not be found.

But when the mind is gone then a second perception becomes possible: you can see thoughts are not yours. Of course they come, and sometimes they rest a little while in you, and then they go. You may be a resting place, but they don’t originate in you. Have you ever watched that not even a single thought has arisen out of you? Not a single thought has come through your being. They always come from the outside. They don’t belong to you. Rootless, homeless they hover. Sometimes they rest in you, that’s all; a cloud resting on top of a hill. Then they will move on their own; you need not do anything. If you simply watch, control is attained.

The word control is not very good, because words cannot be very good. Words belong to the mind, to the world of thoughts. Words cannot be very, very penetrating; they are shallow. The word control is not good because there is nobody to control, and there is nobody to be controlled. But tentatively, it helps to understand a certain thing which happens. When you look deeply, mind is controlled. Suddenly you have become the master. Thoughts are there but they are no more masters of you, they cannot do anything to you; they simply come and go. You remain untouched just like a lotus flower amidst rainfall: drops of water fall on the petals but they go on slipping, they don’t even touch. The lotus remains untouched.

That’s why in the East lotus became so much significant, became so much symbolic. The greatest symbol that has come out of the East is the lotus. It carries the whole meaning of the eastern consciousness. It says, “Be like a lotus, that’s all. Remain untouched, and you are in control. Remain untouched and you are the master.”

Few things more about the mind before we can enter Patanjali’s sutras. From one standpoint, mind is like waves – a disturbance. When the ocean is calm and quiet, undisturbed, the waves are not there. When the ocean is disturbed in a tide or strong wind, when tremendous waves arise and the whole surface is just a chaos, mind from one standpoint . . . These are all metaphors just to help you to understand a certain quality inside which cannot be said through words. These metaphors are poetic. If you try to understand them with sympathy, you will attain to an understanding. But if you try to understand them logically, you will miss the point. They are metaphors.

Mind is a disturbance of consciousness, just like an ocean with waves is a disturbance. Something foreign has entered – the wind. Something from the outside has happened to the ocean, or to the consciousness – the thoughts, or the wind, and there is a chaos. But the chaos is always on the surface. The waves are always on the surface. There are no waves in the depth – cannot be because in the depth the wind cannot enter. So everything is just on the surface. If you move inwards, control is attained. If you move inwards from the surface you go to the center; suddenly, the surface may still be disturbed but you are not disturbed.

The whole yoga is nothing but centering, moving towards the center, getting rooted there, abiding there. And from there the whole perspective changes. Now still the waves may be there, but they don’t reach you. And now you can see they don’t belong to you, just a conflict on the surface with something foreign. And from the center, when you look, by and by, the conflict ceases. By and by, you relax. By and by, you accept that of course there is strong wind and waves will arise; you are not worried, and when you are not worried even waves can be enjoyed. Nothing is wrong in them.

The problem arises because you are also on the surface. You are in a small boat on the surface and a strong wind comes and it is [high] tide, and the whole ocean goes mad. Of course you are worried; you are scared to death. You are in danger. Any moment the waves can throw your small boat; any moment death can occur. What can you do with your small boat? How can you control? If you start fighting with the waves you will be defeated. Fight won’t help. You will have to accept the waves. In fact, if you can accept the waves and let your boat, howsoever small, move with them not against them, then there is no danger.

That is the meaning of Tilopa’s – “loose and natural”. Waves are there; you simply allow. You simply allow yourself to move with them, not against them. You become part of them. Then tremendous happiness happens. That is the whole art of surfing: moving with the waves – not against, with them – so much so that you are not different from them. Surfing can become a great meditation. It can give you glimpses of the inner because it is not a fight, it is a let-go. Once you know that even waves can be enjoyed – and that can be known when you look at the whole phenomenon from the center.

Just like you are a traveler and clouds have gathered, and there is much lightning, and you have forgotten where you are moving; you have forgotten the path, and you are hurrying towards home. This is what is happening on the surface: a traveler, lost; many clouds, much lightning . . . Soon, there will be tremendous rain. You are seeking home, the safety of the home. Then suddenly you reach home. Now you sit inside, now you wait for the rains, now you can enjoy. Now the lightning has a beauty of its own. It was not so when you were outside, lost in a forest. But now, sitting inside the house, the whole phenomenon is tremendously beautiful. Now the rain comes, and you enjoy. Now the lightning is there, and you enjoy, and great thunder in the clouds, and you enjoy, because now you are safe inside. Once you reach to the center, you start enjoying whatsoever happens on the surface. So the whole thing is not to fight on the surface, but rather slip into the center. Then there is a control, and a control which has not been forced, a control which happens spontaneously when you are centered.

Centering in consciousness is the control of the mind. So don’t try to control the mind. The language can mislead you. Nobody can control, and those who try to control, they will go mad; they will simply go neurotic, because trying to control the mind is nothing but a part of the mind trying to control another part of the mind.

Who are you who is trying to control? You are also a wave, a religious wave of course, trying to control. And there are irreligious waves. There is sex and there is anger and there is jealousy and possessiveness and hatred, and millions of waves, irreligious. And then there are religious waves: meditation, love, compassion. But these are all on the surface, of the surface. And on the surface, religious, irreligious doesn’t make any difference.

Religion is at the center, and in the perspective that happens through the center. Sitting inside your home you look at your own surface. Everything changes because your perspective is new. Suddenly you are control. In fact, you are so much in control that you can leave the surface uncontrolled. This is subtle. You are so much in control, so much rooted, not worried about the surface . . . In fact, you would like the waves and the tides and the storm – it is beautiful, it gives energy, it is a strength – there is nothing to be worried about it; only weaklings worry about thoughts. Only weaklings worry about the mind. Stronger people simply absorb the whole, and they are richer for it. Stronger people simply never reject anything. Rejection is out of weakness – you are afraid. Stronger people would like to absorb everything that life gives. Religious, irreligious, moral, immoral, divine, devil – makes no difference; the stronger person absorbs everything, and he is richer for it. He has a totally different depth ordinary religious people cannot have; they are poor and shallow.

Watch ordinary religious people going to the temple and to the mosque and to the church. You will always find very, very shallow people with no depth. Because they have rejected parts of themselves, they have become crippled. They are in a certain way paralyzed.

Nothing is wrong in the mind; nothing is wrong with thoughts. If anything is wrong, it is remaining on the surface, because then you don’t know the whole and unnecessarily suffer because of the part and the part perception. A whole perception is needed, and that is possible only from the center, because from the center you can look all around in all dimensions, all directions, the whole periphery of your being. And it is vast. In fact, it is the same as the periphery of existence. Once you are centered, by and by you become wider and wider and bigger and bigger, and you end with being brahman, not less than that.

From another standpoint, mind is like the dust a traveler gathers on his clothes. And you have been traveling and traveling and traveling for millions of lives and never taken a bath. Much dust has collected, naturally – nothing wrong in it; it has to be so – layers of dust and you think those layers are your personality. You have become so much identified with them; you have lived with those layers of dust so long they look like your skin. You have become identified.

Mind is the past, the memory, the dust. Everybody has to gather it. If you travel you will gather dust. But no need to be identified with it, no need to become one with it, because if you become one, then you will be in trouble because you are not the dust, you are consciousness. Says Omar Khayyam, “Dust unto dust.” When a man dies, what happens? – dust returns unto dust. If you are just dust, then everything will return to dust, nothing will be left behind. But are you just dust, layers of dust, or is something inside you which is not dust at all, not of the earth at all? That’s your consciousness, your awareness.

Awareness is your being, consciousness is your being, and the dust that awareness collects around it is your mind. There are two ways to deal with this dust. The ordinary religious way is to clean the clothes, rub your body hard. But those methods cannot help much. Howsoever you clean your clothes, the clothes have become so dirty they are beyond redemption; you cannot clean them. On the contrary, whatsoever you do may make them more unclean. […]

Religious people supply you [with] soaps and chemical solutions; how to wipe, how to wash the dirt, but then those solutions leave their own stains. That’s why an immoral person can become moral, but remains dirty, now in a moral way, but remains dirty. Even sometimes the situation is worse than before.

An immoral man is in many ways innocent, less egoistic. A moral man has all the immorality inside the mind. And new things that he has gathered: those are the moralistic, the puritan, egoistic attitudes. He feels superior. He feels he is the chosen one and everybody else is condemned to hell. Only he is going to heaven. And all the immorality remains inside, because you cannot control mind from the surface – there is no way. It simply doesn’t happen that way. Only one control exists, and that is the perception from the center.

Mind is like a dust gathered through millions of journeys. The real religious standpoint, the radical religious standpoint against the ordinary, is to simply throw the clothes. Don’t bother to wash them, they cannot be washed. Simply move like a snake out of his old skin and don’t even look back. This is exactly what yoga is: how to get rid of your personalities. Those personalities are the clothes.

This word “personality” is very interesting. It comes from a Greek root persona. It means the mask that actors used in ancient Greece, in drama, to hide the face. That mask is called persona, and you have personality out of it. Personality is the mask, not you. Personality, a false face, to show to others. And through many lives and many experiences you have created many personalities – clothes; they have all become dirty. You have used them too much, and because of them the original face is completely lost.

You don’t know what your original face is. You are deceiving others and you have become a victim of your own deceptions. Drop all personalities, because if you cling to the personality you will remain on the surface. Drop all personalities and be just natural, and then you can flow towards the center. And once from the center you look then there is no mind. In the beginning thoughts continue, but by and by, without your cooperation, they come less and less. And when all your cooperation is lost, when you simply don’t cooperate with them, they stop coming to you. Not that they are no more; they are there, but they don’t come to you.

Thoughts come only as invited guests. They never come uninvited, remember this. Sometimes you think, “This thought I never invited,” but you must be wrong. In some way, sometime – you may have forgotten about it completely – you must have invited it. Thoughts never come uninvited. You first invite them; only then they come. When you don’t invite, sometimes just because of old habit, because you have been an old friend, they may knock at your door. But if you don’t cooperate, by and by they forget about you, they don’t come to you. And when thoughts stop coming on their own, this is the control. Not that you control thoughts – simply you reach to an inner shrine of your being, and thoughts are controlled by themselves.

From still another standpoint, mind is the past, the memory, all the experiences accumulated. In a sense, all that you have done, all that you have thought, all that you desired, all that you dreamed – everything, your total past, your memory. Memory is mind. And unless you get rid of memory, you will not be able to control mind.

How to get rid of memory? It is always there following you. In fact, you are the memory, so how to get rid of it? Who are you except your memories? When I ask, “Who are you?” you tell me your name. That is your memory. Your parents gave you that name some time back. I ask you, “Who are you?” and you talk about your family: your father, your mother. That is a memory. I ask you, “Who are you?” and you tell me about your education, your degrees: that you have done the degree of Master of Arts, or you are a Ph.D., or you are an engineer or an architect. That is a memory.

When I ask you, “Who are you?” if you really look inside, your only answer can be, “I don’t know.” Whatsoever you will say will be the memory, not you. The only real authentic answer can be, “I don’t know,” because to know oneself is the last thing. I can answer who I am, but I will not answer. You cannot answer, “Who are you?” but you are ready with the answer.

Those who know, they keep silent about this. Because if all the memory is discarded, and all the language is discarded, then who I am cannot be said. I can look into you; I can give you a gesture; I can be with you with my total being – that is my answer. But the answer cannot be given in words because whatsoever is given in words will be part of memory, part of mind, not of consciousness.

How to get rid of the memories? Watch them, witness them. And always remember that “This has happened to me, but this is not me.” Of course, you were born in a certain family, but this is not you; it has happened to you, an event outside of you. Of course, somebody has given a name to you. It has its utility, but the name is not you. Of course, you have a form, but the form is not you. The form is just the house you happen to be in. The form is just the body that you happen to be in. And the body is given to you by your parents. It is a gift, but not you.

Watch and discriminate. This is what in the East they call vivek, discrimination: you discriminate continuously. Keep on discriminating – a moment comes when you have eliminated all that you are not. Suddenly, in that state, you for the first time face yourself, you encounter your own being. Go on cutting all identities that you are not: the family, the body, the mind. In that emptiness, when everything that was not you has been thrown out, suddenly your being surfaces. For the first time you encounter yourself, and that encounter becomes the control.

The word “control” is really ugly. I would like not to use it, but I cannot do anything because Patanjali uses it – because in the very word it seems somebody is controlling somebody else. Patanjali knows, and later on he will say that you attain to real samadhi only when there is no control and no controller. Now we should enter into the sutras.

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal, reflecting equally, without distortion, the perceiver, the perception and the perceived.

When the activity of the mind is under control . . . Now you understand what I mean by “under control”: that you are at the center and you look at the mind from there; that you are sitting inside the house and you look at the clouds, and the thunder, and the lightning and the rain from there; that you have dropped all your clothes – dusty clothes and dirty clothes – because in fact there are no clothes, only layers of dirt, so you cannot clean them. You have thrown them out, thrown them away. You are simply naked and nude in your being. Or, you have eliminated all that with which you have become identified. Now you don’t say who you are: form, name, family, body, mind, everything has been eliminated. Only that is there which cannot be eliminated.

That is the method of the Upanishads. They call it neti-neti. They say, “I am not this, nor that,” and they go on and on and on . . . A moment comes when only the witness has remained, and the witness cannot be denied. That is the last stratum of your being, the very core of it. You cannot deny it because who will deny it. Now two doesn’t exist, only one. Then there is control. Then the activity of the mind is under control.

So it is not like a small child forced by the parents into the corner, and they have been told, “Sit there silently” – looks under control, but he is not. He looks under control, but he is restless, forced, but inside – great turmoil. […]

You can force your mind to sit outwardly; inside it will go on running. In fact, it will run faster because mind resists control. Everybody resists control. No, that is not the way. You can kill yourself in that way, but you cannot attain to the eternal life. That is a sort of crippling. When Buddha is sitting silently there is no inward running, no. In fact, inside he has become silent, and that silence has overflown to his outside, not the reverse.

You try to force yourself to be silent on the outside, and you think that by silencing the outside, the inner will become silent. You simply don’t understand the science of silence. Inside if you are silent, the outside will be overflowed by it. It simply follows the inside. The periphery follows the center, but you cannot make the center follow the periphery – that is impossible. So always remember the whole religious search is from the inside towards the outside, and not vice-versa.

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal . . .

When there is perfect silence, you are rooted and centered inside, just watching whatsoever is happening. The birds are singing, the noise will be heard; the traffic is there on the road, the noise will be heard. And just the same, your inner traffic of the mind is there – words, thoughts, an inner talk. The traffic will be heard but you sit silently, not doing anything – a subtle indifference. You just look indifferently. You don’t bother this way or that; whether thoughts come or not, it is the same for you. You are neither interested for nor interested against. You simply sit and the traffic of the mind goes on. If you can sit indifferently . . . will be difficult, will take time – but once you know the knack of being indifferent . . . It is not a technique; it is a knack. A technique can be learned, a knack cannot be learned. You have simply to sit and feel it. A technique can be taught, a knack cannot be taught; you have simply to sit and feel. Someday in the right moment when you are silent, suddenly you know how it happened, how you became indifferent. Even for a single moment the traffic was there and you were indifferent, and suddenly the distance was vast between you and your mind.  The mind was at the other end of the world. That distance shows that you were at the center at that moment. If you have come to feel the knack, then anytime, anywhere, you can simply slip out to the center. You can drop in and immediately an indifference, a vast indifference surrounds you. In that indifference you remain untouched by the mind. You become the master.

Indifference is the way to become the master, and the mind is controlled. Then what happens?

When you are at the center, the confusion of the mind disappears. The confusion is because you are at the periphery. Mind is not really the confusion; mind plus you at the periphery is the confusion. When you move inwards, by and by, you see that mind is losing its confusion. Things are settling, things are falling in line. A certain order arises.

 . . . the mind becomes like pure crystal . . .

All the disturbance, confusion, crisscrossing thought currents, they all settle. This is very difficult to understand that because of you at the periphery is the whole confusion. And you, in your wisdom, are trying to settle the confusion by remaining there at the periphery. […]

Nobody can bring order to the mind. The very bringing of the order creates chaos. If you can watch and wait, and you can look indifferently, things settle by themselves. There is a certain law: things cannot remain unsettled for a long time. This law you have to remember. It is one of the foundations, very fundamental, that things cannot remain in an unsettled state for long because the unsettled state is not natural. It is unnatural. A settled state of things is natural; an unsettled state of things is not natural. So the unnatural can happen for the time being, but it cannot remain forever. In your hurry, in your impatience, you may make things worse. […]

Nature abhors chaos. Nature loves order. Nature is all for order, so chaos can only be a temporary state. If you can understand this, then don’t do anything with the mind. Let this mad mind be left to itself. You simply watch. Don’t pay any attention. Remember: in watching and in paying attention there is a difference. When you pay attention, you are too much interested. When you simply watch, you are indifferent.

Upeksha, Buddha calls it: indifference – absolute total indifference. Just sitting by the side, and the river flows by and things settle, and dirt goes back to the bottom, and the dry leaves have flown. Suddenly, the stream is crystal clear.

This is what Patanjali says:

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal . . .

And when the mind becomes like pure crystal, three things are reflected in it.

. . . reflecting equally, without distortion, the perceiver, the perception, and the perceived.

. . . the object, the subject, and the relation between the two.

When the mind is perfectly clear, has become an order, is no more a confusion, things have settled, three things are reflected in it. It becomes a mirror, a three-dimensional mirror. The outside world, the world of objects is reflected. The inside world, the world of subjectivity, consciousness, is reflected. And the relationship – and between the two, the perception . . . and without distortion.

It is because of you meddling too much in the mind that the distortion comes in. What is the distortion? Mind is a simple mechanism, just like the eyes; you look through the eyes and the world is reflected. But the eyes have only one dimension: they can reflect only the world; they cannot reflect you. The mind is a very three-dimensional phenomenon, very deep. It reflects all, and without distortion. Ordinarily it distorts. Whenever you see a thing, if you are not different from the mind the thing will be distorted. You will see something else. You will mix your perception in it, your ideas. You will not look at it in a purity of vision. You will look with the ideas, and your ideas will become projected on it. […]

There have existed tribes which don’t value gold at all. When they don’t value gold at all, they are not gold obsessed. Then the whole world is there, gold-obsessed: just the idea and the gold becomes very valuable.

In the world of things, reality, nothing is more valuable or less valuable. Valuation is brought by the mind, by you. Nothing is beautiful, nothing is ugly. Things are as they are. In their suchness they exist. But when you are on the surface and get mixed with the ideas, and you start saying, “This is my idea of beauty. This is my idea of truth” – then everything is distorted.

When you move to the center and the mind is left alone, and you watch [look] from the center at the mind, you are no more identified with it. By and by, all ideas disappear. Mind becomes crystal clear. And in the mirror, the three-dimensional mirror of the mind, the whole is reflected: the object, the subject, and the perception, the perceiver, the perception, and the perceived.

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge, knowledge based on words and knowledge based on reasoning or sense perceptions, which all remain in the mind in a mixed state.

There are two types of samadhi: one Patanjali calls savitarka, the other he calls nirvikalpa, or nirvitarka. These are two states. First one achieves savitarka samadhi, that is, the logical mind is still functioning – samadhi, yet based on the rational attitude – the reason is still functioning, you are making discriminations. This is not the highest samadhi, just the first step. But that too is very, very difficult because that too will need a little going towards the center.

Just for example: the periphery is there, where you are right now, and the center is there, where I am right now, and between the two, just in the middle, is savitarka samadhi. It means you have moved away from the surface, but you have not reached the center yet. You have moved away from the surface, but still the center is far away. Just in the middle you are, still something of the old is functioning, and something of the new has entered – halfway. And what will be the situation of this halfway state of consciousness?

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge . . .

He will not be able yet to differentiate what is real because the real can be known only from the center. There is no other way to know it. He cannot know what real knowledge is. Something of the real is filtering in, because he has moved from the surface, has come closer to the center, not yet centered, yet has come closer. Something of the center is filtering in – some perceptions, some glimpses of the center, but the old mind still is there, not completely gone. A distance is there but the old mind still goes on functioning. The yogi is still unable to differentiate between the real knowledge . . .

Real knowledge is that knowledge when the mind does not distort at all, when the mind has completely disappeared in a sense. It has become so transparent that whether it is there or not makes no difference. In the mid-state, the yogi is in a very deep confusion. The confusion comes: something from the real, something from his knowledge that he has gathered in the past from words, scriptures, teachers – that too is there. Something from his own reasoning what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, and something from his sense perceptions – eyes, ears, nose – everything is there, mixed.

This is the state where the yogi can go mad. If there is nobody to take care in this state, the yogi can go mad because so many dimensions meeting and such a great confusion and chaos . . . It is a greater chaos than he was ever in when he was on the surface, because something new has come in.

From the center now some glimpses are coming towards him, and he cannot know whether it is coming from the knowledge that he has gathered from the scriptures. Sometimes he suddenly feels aham brahamasmi “I am God.” Now he is unable to differentiate whether this is coming from the Upanishad that he has been reading, or he himself has reasoned it out. It is a rational conclusion that, “I am part of the whole and the whole is God, so of course I am God” . . . whether it is a logical syllogism or it is coming from sense perceptions.

Because sometimes, when you are very quiet and the doors of the senses are clear, this feeling arises of being a god. Listening to music, suddenly you are no more a human being. If your ears are ready and if you have the musical perception, suddenly you are elevated to a different plane. Making love to a woman you love – suddenly, in the peak of the orgasm, you feel you have become a god. It can happen through sense perceptions. It can happen through reasoning. It may be coming from the Upanishads, from the scriptures you have been reading, or it may be coming from the center. And the man who is in the middle doesn’t know from where it is coming. From all the directions millions of things are happening – strange, unknown, known. One can be in a real mess.

That’s why schools are needed where many people are working. Because these are not the only three points. Between the periphery and the center, there are many. A school means where many people of many categories live together. Just a school: the first-grade people are there, the second grade people are there, the third-grade people are there; the primary school, the middle school, the high school, then the university. A perfect school is from the kindergarten to the university. Somebody exists there at the very end, on the center, who becomes the center of the school.

And then many people, because they can be helpful . . . you can help somebody who is just behind you. A person from the high school can come to the primary school and teach. A small boy from the primary school can go to the kindergarten and help. A school means: from the periphery to the center, there are many stages, many points. A school means: where all types of people exist together in a deep harmony, as a family from the very first to the very last, from the beginning to the very end, from the alpha to the omega. Much help is possible that way, because you can help somebody who is behind you. You can say to him, “Don’t be worried. Just go on. This comes and settles by itself. Don’t get too much involved in it. Remain indifferent. It comes and it goes – somebody to stretch a hand to help you. And a Master is needed who can look through all the stages, from the very top to the very valley, who can have a total perception of all the possibilities.

Otherwise, in this stage of savitarka samadhi, many become mad. Or, many become so scared they run away from the center and start clinging to the periphery, because there is at least some type of order. At least the unknown doesn’t enter there, the strange doesn’t come there. You are familiar; strangers don’t knock at your door.

But one who has reached to savitarka samadhi if he goes back to the periphery, nothing will be solved, he can never be the same again; he can never belong to the periphery now, so that is not of much help. He will never be a part of the periphery. And he will be there more and more confused, because once you have known something, how can you help yourself not to know it? Once you have known, you have known. You can avoid, you can close your eyes, but it is still there, and it will haunt you your whole life.

If the school is not there and a Master is not there you will become a very problematic case. In the world you cannot belong, the market doesn’t make any sense to you; and beyond the world you are afraid to move.

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge, knowledge based on words and knowledge based on reasoning or sense perceptions, which all remain in the mind in a mixed state.

Nirvitarka samadhi is reaching to the center: logic disappears, scriptures are no more meaningful, sense perceptions cannot deceive you. When you are at the center, suddenly everything is self-evidently true. This word has to be understood – “self-evidently true”. Truths are there on the periphery, but they are never self-evident. Some proof is needed, some reasoning is needed. If you say something, you have to prove it. If on the periphery you say, “God is,” you will have to prove it, to yourself, to others. On the center God is, self-evidently. You don’t need any proof. What proof is needed when your eyes are open and you can see the sun rising? But for a man who is blind, proof is needed. What proof is needed when you are in love? You know it is there; it is self-evident. Others may demand proof. How can you give them any proof? The man at the center becomes the proof; he doesn’t give any proof. Whatsoever he knows is self-evident. It is so. He has not reached towards it as a conclusion of a reasoning. It is not a syllogism; he has not concluded; simply it is so. He has known.

That’s why in the Upanishads there are no proofs, in Patanjali there are no proofs. Patanjali simply describes, gives no proof. This is the difference: when a man knows, he simply describes; when a man doesn’t know, first he proves that it is so. Those who have known, they simply give the description of that unknown. They don’t give any proofs. […]

Look at the Upanishads – not a single proof exists. They simply say, “God is.” If you want to know, you can know. If you don’t want to know, it is your choice. But there is no proof for it.

That state is nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. That samadhi becomes for the first time existential. But that also is not the last. One more final step exists. We will be talking about it later on.

-Osho

From The Mystery Beyond Mind, Discourse #3; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.3, (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

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

Yoga is the Cessation of Mind – Osho

Now the discipline of yoga.
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
Then the witness is established in itself.
In the other states there is identification with the modifications of the mind.

–Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Yoga is pure science, and Patanjali is the greatest name as far as the world of yoga is concerned. This man is rare. There is no other name comparable to Patanjali. For the first time in the history of humanity, this man brought religion to the state of a science: he made religion a science, bare laws; no belief is needed.

Because so-called religions need beliefs. There is no other difference between one religion and another; the difference is only of beliefs. A Mohammedan has certain beliefs, a Hindu others, a Christian others. The difference is of beliefs.

Yoga has nothing as far as belief is concerned; yoga doesn’t say to believe in anything. Yoga says experience. Just like science says experiment, yoga says experience. Experiment and experience are both the same, their directions are different. Experiment means something you can do outside; experience means something you can do inside. Experience is an inside experiment.

Science says: Don’t believe, doubt as much as you can. But also, don’t disbelieve, because disbelief is again a sort of belief. You can believe in God; you can believe in the concept of no-God. You can say God is, with a fanatic attitude; you can say quite the reverse, that God is not with the same fanaticism. Atheists, theists, are all believers, and belief is not the realm for science. Science means experience something, that which is; no belief is needed. So the second thing to remember: Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed – only courage to experience. And that’s what’s lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation. You may be a Hindu; you can become Christian the next day. Simply, you change: you change Gita for a Bible. You can change it for a Koran, but the man who was holding Gita and is now holding the Bible, remains the same. He has changed his beliefs.

Beliefs are like clothes. Nothing substantial is transformed; you remain the same. Dissect a Hindu, dissect a Mohammedan, inside they are the same. He goes to a temple; the Mohammedan hates the temple. The Mohammedan goes to the mosque and the Hindu hates the mosque, but inside they are the same human beings.

Belief is easy because you are not required really to do anything – just a superficial dressing, a decoration, something which you can put aside any moment you like. Yoga is not belief. That’s why it is difficult, arduous, and sometimes it seems impossible. It is an existential approach. You will come to the truth, but not through belief, but through your own experience, through your own realization. That means you will have to be totally changed. Your viewpoints, your way of life, your mind, your psyche has to be shattered completely as it is. Something new has to be created. Only with that new will you come in contact with the reality.

So yoga is both a death and a new life. As you are you will have to die, and unless you die the new cannot be born. The new is hidden in you. You are just a seed for it, and the seed must fall down and be absorbed by the earth. The seed must die; only then the new will arise out of you. Your death will become your new life. Yoga is both a death and a new birth. Unless you are ready to die, you cannot be reborn. So it is not a question of changing beliefs.

Yoga is not a philosophy. I say it is not a religion, I say it is not a philosophy. It is not something you can think about. It is something you will have to be; thinking won’t do. Thinking goes on in your head. It is not really deep into the roots of your being; it is not your totality. It is just a part, a functional part; it can be trained. And you can argue logically, you can think rationally, but your heart will remain the same. Your heart is your deepest center, your head is just a branch. You can be without the head, but you cannot be without the heart. Your head is not basic.

Yoga is concerned with your total being, with your roots. It is not philosophical. So with Patanjali we will not be thinking, speculating. With Patanjali we will be trying to know the ultimate laws of being: the laws of its transformation, the laws of how to die and how to be reborn again, the laws of a new order of being. That is why I call it a science.

Patanjali is rare. He is an enlightened person like Buddha, like Krishna, like Christ, like Mahavira, Mohammed, Zarathustra, but he is different in one way. Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed no one has a scientific attitude. They are great founders of religions. They have changed the whole pattern of human mind and its structure, but their approach is not scientific.

Patanjali is like an Einstein in the word of Buddhas. He is a phenomenon. He could have easily been a Nobel Prize winner like an Einstein or Bohr or Max Planck, Heisenberg. He has the same attitude, the same approach of a rigorous scientific mind. He is not a poet; Krishna is a poet. He is not a moralist; Mahavira is a moralist. He is basically a scientist, thinking in terms of laws. And he has come to deduce absolute laws of human being, the ultimate working structure of human mind and reality.

And if you follow Patanjali, you will come to know that he is as exact as any mathematical formula. Simply do what he says and the result will happen. The result is bound to happen; it is just like two plus two, they become four. It is just like you heat water up to one hundred degrees and it evaporates. No belief is needed: you simply do it and know. It is something to be done and known. That’s why I say there is no comparison. On this earth, never a man has existed like Patanjali.

You can find in Buddha’s utterances, poetry – bound to be there. Many times, while Buddha is expressing himself, he becomes poetic. The realm of ecstasy, the realm of ultimate knowing, is so beautiful, the temptation is so much to become poetic, the beauty is such, the benediction is such, the bliss is such, one starts talking in poetic language.

But Patanjali resists that. It is very difficult. No one has been able to resist. Jesus, Krishna, Buddha they all become poetic. The splendor, the beauty, when it explodes within you, you will start dancing, you will start singing. In that state you are just like a lover who has fallen in love with the whole universe.

Patanjali resists that. He will not use poetry; he will not use a single poetic symbol even. He will not do anything with poetry; he will not talk in terms of beauty. He will talk in terms of mathematics. He will be exact, and he will give you maxims. Those maxims are just indications what is to be done. He will not explode into ecstasy; he will not say things that cannot be said; he will not try the impossible. He will just put down the foundation, and if you follow the foundation, you will reach the peak which is beyond. He is a rigorous mathematician – remember this.

The first sutra:

Now the discipline of yoga – athayoganushasanam.

Now the discipline of yoga. Each single word has to be understood because Patanjali will not use a single superfluous word.

Now the discipline of yoga.

First try to understand the word “now.” This “now” indicates to the state of mind […] if you are disillusioned, if you are hopeless, if you have completely become aware of the futility of all desires, if you see your life as meaningless – whatsoever you have been doing up to now has simply fallen dead nothing remains in the future, you are in absolute despair – what Kierkegaard calls anguish. If you are in anguish, suffering, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go, not knowing to whom to look, just on the verge of madness or suicide or death, your whole pattern of life suddenly has become futile. If this moment has come, Patanjali says, now the discipline of yoga. Only now you can understand the science of yoga, the discipline of yoga.

If that moment has not come, you can go on studying yoga, you can become a great scholar, but you will not be a yogi. You can write theses upon it, you can give discourses upon it, but you will not be a yogi. The moment has not come for you. Intellectually you can become interested, through your mind you can be related to yoga, but yoga is nothing if it is not a discipline. Yoga is not a shastra; it is not a scripture. It is a discipline. It is something you have to do. It is not curiosity; it is not philosophic speculation. It is deeper than that. It is a question of life and death.

If the moment has come where you feel that all directions have become confused, all roads have disappeared; the future is dark, and every desire has become bitter, and through every desire you have known only disappointment; all movement into hopes and dreams has ceased:

Now the discipline of yoga.

This “now” may not have come. Then I may go on talking about yoga but you will not listen. You can listen only if the moment is present in you.

Are you really dissatisfied? Everybody will say “yes”, but that dissatisfaction is not real. You are dissatisfied with this, you may be dissatisfied with that, but you are not totally dissatisfied. You are still hoping. You are dissatisfied because of your past hopes, but for the future you are still hoping. Your dissatisfaction is not total. You are still hankering for some satisfaction somewhere, for some gratification somewhere.

Sometimes you feel hopeless, but that hopelessness is not true. You feel hopeless because certain hopes have not been achieved, certain hopes have fallen. But hoping is still there: hoping has not fallen. You will still hope. You are dissatisfied with this hope, that hope, but you are not dissatisfied with hope as such. If with hope as such you are disappointed, the moment has come and then you can enter yoga. And then this entry will not be entering into a mental, speculative phenomenon. This entry will be an entry into a discipline.

What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos. As you are, you are totally disorderly. Gurdjieff used to say – and Gurdjieff is in many ways like Patanjali: he was again trying to make the core of religion a science – Gurdjieff says that you are not one, you are a crowd, not even when you say “I”, is there any “I.” There are many “I’s” in you, many egos. In the morning, one “I”; in the afternoon, another “I”; in the evening, a third “I”, but you never become aware of this mess because who will become aware of it. There is not a center who can become aware.

“Yoga is discipline” means yoga wants to create a crystallized center in you. As you are, you are a crowd and a crowd has many phenomena. One is, you cannot believe a crowd. Gurdjieff used to say that man cannot promise. Who will promise? You are not there. If you promise, who will fulfill the promise? Next morning the one who promised is no more. […]

Gurdjieff used to say, “This is the chief characteristic of man, that he cannot promise.” You cannot fulfill a promise. You go on giving promises, and you know well you cannot fulfill, because you are not one: you are a disorder, a chaos. Hence, Patanjali says, now the discipline of yoga. If your life has become an absolute misery, if you have realized that whatsoever you do creates hell, then the moment has come. This moment can change your dimension, your direction of being.

Up until now you have lived as a chaos, a crowd. Yoga means now you will have to be a harmony, you will have to become one. A crystallization is needed; a centering is needed. And unless you attain a center, all that you do is useless. It is wasting life and time. A center is the first necessity, and only a person can be blissful who has got a center. Everybody asks for it, but you cannot ask. You have to earn it! Everybody hankers for a blissful state of being, but only a center can be blissful. A crowd cannot be blissful, a crowd has got no self. There is no atman. Who is going to be blissful?

Bliss means absolute silence, and silence is possible only when there is harmony-when all the discordant fragments have become one, when there is no crowd, but one. When you are alone in the house and nobody else is there, you will be blissful. Right now everybody else is in your house, you are not there. Only guests are there, the host is always absent. And only the host can be blissful.

This centering Patanjali calls discipline – anushasanam. The word “discipline” is beautiful. It comes from the same root from where the word “disciple” comes. “Discipline” means the capacity to learn, the capacity to know. But you cannot know, you cannot learn, unless you have attained the capacity to be. […]

Now the discipline of yoga.

Discipline means the capacity to be, the capacity to know, the capacity to learn. We must understand these three things.

The capacity to be. All the yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. Patanjali says if you can sit silently without moving your body for few hours, you are growing in the capacity to be. Why do you move? You cannot sit without moving even for a few seconds. Your body starts moving. Somewhere you feel itching; the legs go dead; many things start happening. These are just excuses for you to move.

You are not a master. You cannot say to the body, “Now for one hour I will not move.” The body will revolt immediately. Immediately it will force you to move, to do something, and it will give reasons: “You have to move because an insect is biting.” You may not find the insect when you look. You are not a being; you are a trembling – a continuous hectic activity. Patanjali’s asanas, postures, are concerned not really with any kind of physiological training, but an inner training of being, just to be – without doing anything, without any movement, without any activity, just remain. That remaining will help centering.

If you can remain in one posture, the body will become a slave; it will follow you. And the more the body follows you, you will have a greater being within you, a stronger being within you. And, remember, if the body is not moving your mind cannot move, because mind and body are not two things. They are two poles of one phenomenon. You are not body and mind, you are body-mind. Your personality is psychosomatic – body-mind both. The mind is the most subtle part of the body. Or you can say the reverse, that body is the most gross part of the mind.

So whatsoever happens in the body happens in the mind, and the vice versa: whatsoever happens in the mind happens in the body. If the body is non-moving and you can attain a posture, if you can say to the body “Keep quiet,” the mind will remain silent. Really, the mind starts moving and tries to move the body, because if the body moves then the mind can move. In a nonmoving body, the mind cannot move; it needs a moving body.

If the body is non-moving, the mind is non-moving, you are centered. This non-moving posture is not a physiological training only. It is just to create a situation in which centering can happen, in which you can become disciplined. When you are, when you have become centered, when you know what it means to be, then you can learn, because then you will be humble. Then you can surrender. Then no false ego will cling to you because once centered you know all egos are false. Then you can bow down. Then a disciple is born.

A disciple is a great achievement. Only through discipline you will become a disciple. Only through being centered you will become humble, you will become receptive, you will become empty, and the guru, the Master, can pour himself into you. In your emptiness, in your silence, he can come and reach to you. Communication becomes possible.

A disciple means one who is centered, humble, receptive, open, ready, alert, waiting, prayerful. In yoga, the Master is very, very important, absolutely important, because only when you are in close proximity to a being who is centered will your own centering happen.

That is the meaning of satsang. You have heard the word satsang. It is totally wrongly used. Satsang means in close proximity of the truth; it means near the truth, it means near a Master who has become one with the truth – just being near him, open, receptive and waiting. If your waiting has become deep, intense, a deep communion will happen.

The Master is not going to do anything. He is simply there, available. If you are open, he will flow within you. This flowing is called satsang. With a Master you need not learn anything else. If you can learn satsang, that’s enough – if you can just be near him without asking, without thinking, without arguing: just present there, available, so the being of the Master can flow in you. And being can flow. It is already flowing. Whenever a person achieves integrity, his being becomes a radiation. He is flowing. Whether you are there to receive or not, that is not the point. He flows like a river. If you are empty like a vessel, ready, open, he will flow in you.

A disciple means one who is ready to receive, who has become a womb – the Master can penetrate into him. This is the meaning of the word satsang. It is not basically a discourse; satsang is not a discourse. Discourse may be there, but discourse is just an excuse. You are here and I will talk on Patanjali’s sutras. That is just an excuse. If you are really here, then the discourse, the talk, becomes just an excuse for your being here, for you to be here. And if you are really here, satsang starts. I can flow, and that flow is deeper than any talk, any communication through language, than any intellectual meeting with you.

While your mind is engaged, if you are a disciple, if you are a disciplined being, your mind is engaged in listening to me, your being can be in satsang. Then your head is occupied, your heart is open. Then on a deeper level, a meeting happens. That meeting is satsang, and everything else is just an excuse, just to find ways to be close to the Master.

Closeness is all, but only a disciple can be close. Anybody and everybody cannot be close. Closeness means a loving trust. Why we are not close? Because there is fear. Too close may be dangerous, too open may be dangerous, because you become vulnerable and then it will be difficult to defend. So just as a security measure we keep everybody away, never allowed to enter a certain distance.

Everybody has a territory around him. Whenever somebody enters your territory, you become afraid. Everybody has a space to protect. You are sitting alone in your room. A stranger enters in the room. Just watch when you become really scared. There is a point. If he enters that point, beyond that point, you will become scared, you will be afraid. A sudden trembling will be felt. Beyond a certain territory he can move.

To be close means now no territory of your own. To be close means to be vulnerable, to be close means whatsoever happens you are not thinking in terms of security.

A disciple can be close for two reasons. One: he is a centered one; he is trying to be centered. A person who is trying even to be centered becomes unafraid; he becomes fearless. He has something which cannot be killed. You don’t have anything, hence the fear. You are a crowd. The crowd can disperse any moment. You don’t have something like a rock which will be there whatsoever happens. Without a rock, without a foundation you are existing – a house of cards, bound to be always in fear. Any wind, any breeze even, can destroy you, so you have to protect yourself.

Because of this constant protection, you cannot love, you cannot trust, you cannot be friendly. You may have many friends but there is no friendship, because friendship needs closeness. You may have wives and husbands and so-called lovers, but there is no love, because love needs closeness, love needs trust. You may have gurus, Masters, but there is no disciplehood because you cannot allow yourself to be totally given to somebody’s being, nearness to his being, closeness to his being, so that he can overpower you, overflood you.

A disciple means a seeker who is not a crowd, who is trying to be centered and crystallized, at least trying, making efforts, sincere efforts to become individual, to feel his being, to become his own master. All discipline of yoga is an effort to make you a master of yourself. As you are, you are just a slave of many, many desires. Many, many masters are there, and you are just a slave – and pulled in many directions.

Now the discipline of yoga.

Yoga is discipline. It is an effort on your part to change yourself. Many other things have to be understood. Yoga is not a therapy. In the West many psychological therapies are prevalent now, and many western psychologists think that yoga is also a therapy. It is not! It is a discipline. And what is the difference? This is the difference: a therapy is needed if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really, when you are healthy only a discipline can help then.

It is not for pathological cases. Yoga is for those who are completely healthy as far as medical science is concerned, normal. They are not schizophrenic; they are not mad; they are not neurotic. They are normal people, healthy people with no particular pathology. Still, they become aware that whatsoever is called normality is futile, whatsoever is called health is of no use. Something more is needed, something greater is needed, something holier and whole is needed. […]

Yoga is not therapy; yoga is not trying in any way to make you adjusted to the society. If you want to define yoga in terms of adjustment, then it is not adjustment with the society, but it is adjustment with existence itself. It is adjustment with the divine!

So it may happen that a perfect yogi may appear mad to you. He may look out of his senses, out of his mind, because now he is in touch with the greater, with a higher mind, higher order of things. He is in touch with the universal mind. It has happened always so: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, they always look somehow eccentric. They don’t belong to us; they seem to be outsiders.

That’s why we call them avatars, outsiders. They have come as if from some other planet; they don’t belong to us. They may be higher, they may be good, they may be divine, but they don’t belong to us. They come from somewhere else. They are not part and parcel of our being, mankind. The feeling has persisted that they are outsiders; they are not. They are the real insiders because they have touched the innermost core of existence. But to us they appear [as outsiders].

Now the discipline of yoga.

If your mind has come to realize that whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best then the path of discipline opens before you. What is that path?

The basic definition is, Yoga is the cessation of mind – chittavrittinirodha.

I told you that Patanjali is just mathematical. In a single sentence, now the discipline of yoga, he is finished with you. This is the only sentence that has been used for you. Now he takes it for granted that you are interested in yoga, not as a hope, but as a discipline, as a transformation right here and now. He proceeds to define:

Yoga is the cessation of mind.

This is the definition of yoga, the best. In many ways yoga has been defined; there are many definitions. Some say yoga is the meeting of the mind with the divine; hence, it is called yoga – yoga means meeting, joining together. Some say that yoga means dropping the ego: ego is the barrier; the moment you drop the ego you are joined to the divine. You were already joined, only because of the ego it appeared that you were disjoined. And there are many, but Patanjali’s is the most scientific. He says,

Yoga is the cessation of mind.

Yoga is the state of no-mind. The word “mind” covers all – your egos, your desires, your hopes, your philosophies, your religions, your scriptures. “Mind” covers all. Whatsoever you can think is mind. All that is known, all that can be known, all that is knowable, is within mind. Cessation of the mind means cessation of the known, cessation of the knowable. It is a jump into the unknown. When there is no mind, you are in the unknown. Yoga is a jump into the unknown. It will not be right to say “unknown”; rather, “unknowable”.

What is the mind? What is the mind doing there? What is it? Ordinarily we think that mind is something substantial there inside the head. Patanjali doesn’t agree – and no one who has ever known the inside of the mind will agree. Modern science also doesn’t agree. Mind is not something substantial inside the head. Mind is just a function, just an activity.

You walk and I say you are walking. What is walking? If you stop, where is walking? If you sit down, where has the walking gone? Walking is nothing substantial; it is an activity. So while you are sitting, no one can ask, “Where you have put your walking? Just now you were walking, so where has the walking gone?” You will laugh. You will say, “Walking is not something substantial, it is just an activity. I can walk. I can again walk, and I can stop. It is activity.”

Mind is also activity, but because of the word “mind,” it appears as if something substantial is there. It is better to call it “minding” – just like “walking.” Mind means “minding”, mind means thinking. It is an activity.” […]

Yoga is the cessation of mind.

This is Patanjali’s definition. When there is no mind, you are in yoga; when there is mind you are not in yoga. So you may do all the postures, but if the mind goes on functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in yoga. Yoga is the state of no-mind. If you can be without the mind without doing any posture, you have become a perfect yogi. It has happened to many without doing any postures, and it has not happened to many who have been doing postures for many lives.

Because the basic thing to be understood is: when the activity of thinking is not there, you are there; when the activity of the mind is not there, when thoughts have disappeared, they are just like clouds, when they have disappeared, your being, just like the sky, is uncovered. It is always there – only covered with the clouds, covered with thoughts.

Yoga is the cessation of mind.

In the West now, there is much appeal for Zen – a Japanese method of yoga. The word “zen” comes from dhyana. Bodhidharma introduced this word dhyana in China. In China the word dhyana became jhan and then chan and then the word traveled to Japan and became zen.

The root is dhyana. Dhyana means no-mind, so the whole training of Zen in Japan is of nothing but how to stop minding, how to be a no-mind, how to be simply without thinking. Try it! When I say try it, it will look contradictory, because there is no other way to say it. Because if you try, the very try, the effort is coming from the mind. You can sit in a posture and you can try some japa chanting, mantra – or you can just try to sit silently, not to think. But then not to think becomes a thinking. Then you go on saying, “I am not to think; don’t think; stop thinking,” but this is all thinking.

Try to understand. When Patanjali says, no-mind, cessation of mind, he means complete cessation. He will not allow you to make a japa, “Ram-Ram-Ram.” He will say that this is not cessation; you are using the mind. He will say, “Simply stop!” but you will ask, “How? How to simply stop?” The mind continues. Even if you sit, the mind continues. Even if you don’t do, it goes on doing.

Patanjali says just look. Let mind go, let mind do whatsoever it is doing. You just look. You don’t interfere. You just be a witness, you just be an onlooker not concerned, as if the mind doesn’t belong to you, as if it is not your business, not your concern. Don’t be concerned! Just look and let the mind flow. It is flowing because of past momentum, because you have always helped it to flow. The activity has taken its own momentum, so it is flowing. You just don’t cooperate Look, and let the mind flow.

For many, many lives, millions of lives maybe, you have cooperated with it, you have helped it, you have given your energy to it. The river will flow awhile. If you don’t cooperate, if you just look unconcerned – Buddha’s word is indifference, upeksha: looking without any concern, just looking, not doing anything in any way – the mind will flow for a while and it will stop by itself. When the momentum is lost, when the energy has flowed, the mind will stop. When the mind stops, you are in yoga: you have attained the discipline. This is the definition: yoga is the cessation of mind.

Then the witness is established in itself.

When the mind ceases, the witness is established in itself.

When you can simply look without being identified with the mind, without judging, without appreciating, condemning, without choosing – you simply look and the mind flows, a time comes when by itself, of itself, the mind stops.

When there is no mind, you are established in your witnessing. Then you have become a witness – just a seer-a drashta, a sakshi. Then you are not a doer, then you are not a thinker. Then you are simply being, pure being, purest of being. Then the witness is established in itself.

In the other states there is identification with the modifications of the mind.

Except witnessing, in all states, you are identified with the mind. You become one with the flow of thoughts, you become one with the clouds: sometimes with the white cloud, sometimes with the black cloud, sometimes with a rain-filled cloud, sometimes with a vacant, empty cloud, but whatsoever, you become one with the thought, you become one with the cloud, and you miss your purity of the sky, the purity of space. You become clouded, and this clouding happens because you get identified, you become one.

A thought comes. You are hungry, and the thought flashes in the mind. The thought is simply that there is hunger, that the stomach is feeling hunger. Immediately you get identified; you say, “I am hungry.” The mind was just filled with a thought that hunger is there; you have become identified and you say, “I am hungry.” This is the identification.

Buddha also feels hunger, Patanjali also feels hunger, but Patanjali will never say that, “I am hungry.” He will say “The body is hungry”; he will say, “My stomach is feeling hungry”; he will say, “There is hunger. I am a witness. I have come to witness this thought, which has been flashed by the belly in the brain, that ‘I am hungry.’” The belly is hungry; Patanjali will remain a witness. You become identified, you become one with the thought.

Then the witness is established in itself.

In the other states there is identification with the modifications of the mind.

This is the definition:

Yoga is the cessation of mind.

When mind ceases, you are established in your witnessing self. In other states, except this, there are identifications. And all identifications constitute the samsar; they are the world. If you are in the identifications, you are in the world, in the misery. If you have transcended the identifications, you are liberated. You have become a siddha, you are in nirvana. You have transcended this world of misery and entered the world of bliss.

And that world is here and now-right now, this very moment! You need not wait for it a single moment even. Just become a witness of the mind, and you have entered. Get identified with the mind, and you have missed. This is the basic definition.

Remember everything, because later on, in other sutras, we will enter details what is to be done, how it is to be done – but always keep in mind this is the foundation.

One has to achieve a state of no-mind: that is the goal.

-Osho

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

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

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

Beyond the Gateless Gate: Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 2 – Osho

Raja yoga begins with the fourth body. Only hatha yoga begins with the first body; other yogas begin from somewhere else. Theosophy begins from the second body, and other systems begin from the third. As civilization goes on progressing to the fourth body, many persons will be able to begin from there. But only if they have worked through the three lower bodies in their past lives can the fourth be used. Those who study raja yoga from scriptures or from swamis and gurus without knowing whether or not they have worked through their three lower bodies are bound to be disillusioned because one cannot begin from the fourth. The three must be crossed first. Only then does the fourth come.

The fourth is the last body that it is possible to begin from. There are four yogas: hatha yoga for the first body, mantra yoga for the second, bhakti yoga for the third, and raja yoga for the fourth. In ancient days, everybody had to begin with the first body, but now there are so many types of people: one has worked up to the second body in a previous life, another up to the third, et cetera. But as far as dreaming is concerned, one must begin from the first body. Only then can you know the whole range of it, the whole spectrum of it.

So in the fourth body, your consciousness must become like fire – going upward. There are many ways to check this. For example, if the mind is flowing toward sex it is just like water flowing downward, because the sex center is downward. In the fourth body one must begin directing the eyes up, not down.

If consciousness is to go upward, it must begin from a center that is above the eyes, not below the eyes. There is only one center above the eyes from which the movement can be upward: the ajna chakra. Now the two eyes must look upward toward the third eye.

The third eye has been remembered in so many ways. In India, the distinction between a virgin and a girl who is married is made by a color mark on the third eye of the married one. A virgin is bound to look downward toward the sex center, but the moment she is married she must begin to look upward. Sex must change from sexuality to beyond sexuality. To help her to remember to look upward, a color mark, a tilak, is used on the third eye.

Tilak marks have been used on the foreheads of so many types of persons: sannyasins, worshippers – so many types of color marks. Or it is possible to use chandan – sandalwood paste. The moment your two eyes look upward toward the third eye, a great fire is created at the center; a burning sensation is there. The third eye is beginning to open, and it must be kept cool. So in India, sandalwood paste is used. It is not only cool; it also has a particular perfume that is concerned with the third body and the transcendence of it. The coolness of the perfume, and the particular spot where it is placed, becomes an upward attraction, a remembrance of the third eye.

If you close your eyes and I place my finger at your third eye spot, I am not really touching your third eye itself, but you will still begin to feel it. Even this much pressure is enough. Scarcely a touch, just a gentle fingering. So the perfume, the delicate touch of it and its coolness, is enough. Then your attention is always flowing from your eyes to the third eye.

So to cross the fourth body there is only one technique, one method, and that is to look upward.

Shirshasan, the headstand, the reverse position of the body, was used as a method to do this because our eyes are ordinarily looking downward. If you stand on your head, you will still be looking downward, but now the downward is upward. The flow of your energy downward will be converted into an upward flow.

That is why in meditation, even without knowing it, some persons will go into reverse positions. They will begin to do shirshasan because the flow of energy has changed. Their minds are so conditioned to the downward flow that when the energy changes direction they will feel uncomfortable. When they begin to stand on their heads they will feel at ease again, because the flow of energy will again be moving downward. But it will not really be moving downward. In relation to your centers, your chakras, the energy will still be moving upward.

So shirshasan has been used as a method to take you from the fourth body to the fifth. The main thing to be remembered is to be looking upward. This can be done through tratak – staring at a fixed object, through concentration on the sun, through so many objects. But it is better to do it inwardly. Just close the eyes!

But first, the first four bodies must be crossed. Only then can it be helpful, otherwise not. Otherwise, it may be disturbing; it may create all sorts of mental diseases, because the whole adjustment of the system will be shattered. The four bodies are looking downward, and with your inner mind you are looking upward. Then, there is every possibility that schizophrenia will result.

To me, schizophrenia is the result of such a thing. That is why ordinary psychology cannot go deeply into schizophrenia. The schizophrenic mind is simultaneously working in opposite directions: standing outside and looking inside; standing outside and looking upward. Your whole system must be in harmony. If you have not known your physical body from the inside, then your consciousness should be facing downward. That will be healthy; the adjustment is right. You must never try to turn the outward moving mind upward or schizophrenia, division, will be the result.

Our civilizations, our religions, have been the basic cause for humanity’s split personality. They have not been concerned with the total harmony. There are teachers who teach methods to move upward to persons who are not even inside their own physical body. The method begins to work and part of the person remains outside his body while a second part moves upward. Then there will be a split between the two. He will become two persons: sometimes this, sometimes that; a Jekyll and Hyde.

There is every possibility that a person can become seven people simultaneously. Then the split is complete. He has become seven different energies. One part of him is moving downward, clinging to the first body; another is clinging to the second; another to the third. One part is going upward; another is going somewhere else. He has no center in him at all.

Gurdjieff used to say that such a person is just like a house where the master is absent, and every servant claims he is the master. And no one can deny it, because the master himself is absent. When anybody comes to the house and knocks on the door, the servant who is nearby becomes the master. The next day, another servant answers the door and claims to be the master.

A schizophrenic is without any center. And we are all like that! We have adjusted ourselves to society, that’s all. The difference is only of degrees. The master is absent or asleep, and every part of us claims ownership. When the sex urge is there, sex becomes the master. Your mortality, your family, your religion – everything will be denied. Sex becomes the total owner of the house. And then, when sex has gone, frustration follows. Your reason takes charge and says, “I am the master.” Now reason will claim the whole house and will deny sex a home.

Everybody claims the house totally. When anger is there, it becomes the master. Now there is no reason, no consciousness. Nothing else can interfere with the anger. Because of this, we cannot understand others. A person who was loving becomes angry, and suddenly there is no love. We are at a loss now to understand whether he is loving or not loving. The love was just a servant, and the anger too is just a servant. The master is absent. That is why you cannot ordinarily rely on anybody else. He is not master of himself; any servant can take over. He is no one; he is not a unity.

What I am saying is that one should not experiment with techniques of looking upward before crossing the first four bodies. Otherwise, a split will be created which will be impossible to bridge, and one will have to wait for one’s next life to begin again. It is better to practice techniques that begin from the beginning. If you have passed your first three bodies in past births, then you will pass them again within a moment. There will be no difficulty. You know the territory; you know the way. In a moment, they come before you. You recognize them – and you have passed them! Then you can go further. So my insistence is always to begin from the first body. For everyone!

To move from the fourth body is the most significant thing. Up to the fourth body you are human.  Now you become superhuman. In the first body you are just an animal. Only with the second body does humanity come into being. And only in the fourth does it flower completely. Civilization has never gone beyond the fourth. Beyond the fourth is beyond the human. We cannot classify Christ as a human being. A Buddha, a Mahavira, a Krishna, are beyond the human. They are superhuman.

The upward look is a jump from the fourth body. When I am looking at my first body from outside it, I am just an animal with the possibility of being human. The only difference is that I can become human and the animal cannot. As far as the present situation is concerned, we are both below humanity, subhuman. But I have a possibility to go beyond. And from the second body onward, the flowering of the human being happens.

Even someone in the fourth body looks superhuman to us. They are not. An Einstein or a Voltaire looks superhuman, but they are not. They are the complete flowering of the human being and we are below human, so they are above us. But they are not above the human. Only a Buddha, a Christ or a Zarathustra is more than human. By looking upward, by raising their consciousness upward from the fourth body, they have crossed the boundary of the mind; they have transcended the mental body.

There are parables worth our understanding. Mohammed, looking upward, says that something has come to him from above. We interpret this above geographically, so the sky becomes the abode of the gods. For us, upward means the sky; downward means the layer below the earth. But if we interpret it in this way, the symbol has not been understood. When Mohammed is looking upward he is not looking toward the sky; he is looking toward the ajna chakra. When he says that something has come to him from above, his feeling is right. But, ‘up’ has a different meaning for us.

In every picture, Zarathustra is looking upward. His eyes are never downward. He was looking upward when he first saw the divine. The divine came to him as fire. That is why the Persians have been fire worshippers. This feeling of fire comes from the ajna chakra. When you look upward, the spot feels fiery, as if everything is burning. Because of that burning, you are transformed. The lower being is burnt, it ceases to be, and the upper being is born. That is the meaning of “passing through fire.”

After the fifth body you move into still another realm, another dimension. From the first body to the fourth body the movement is from outside to inside; from the fourth to the fifth it is from downward to upward; from the fifth it is from ego to non-ego. Now the dimension is different. There is no question of outside, inside, upward or downward. The question is of “I” and “non-I.” The question is now concerned with whether there is a center or not.

A person is without any center up to the fifth – split in different parts. Only for the fifth body is there a center: a unity, oneness. But the center becomes the ego. Now this center will be a hindrance for further progress. Every step that was a help becomes a hindrance for further progress. You have to leave every bridge you cross. It was helpful in crossing, but it will become a hindrance if you cling to it.

Up to the fifth body, a center has to be created. Gurdjieff says this fifth center is the crystallization.

Now there are no servants; the master has taken charge. Now the master is the master. He is awakened; he has come back. When the master is present, the servants subside; they become silent.

So when you enter the fifth body, crystallization of the ego happens. But now, for further progress, this crystallization must be lost again. Lost into the void, into the cosmic. Only one who has can lose, so to talk about egolessness before the fifth body is nonsense, absurd. You do not have an ego, so how can you lose it? Or you can say that you have many egos, every servant has an ego. You are multi-egoistic, a multi-personality, a multi-psyche, but not a unified ego.

You cannot lose the ego because you do not have it. A rich man can renounce his riches, but not a poor one. He has nothing to renounce, nothing to lose. But there are poor people who think about renunciation. A rich person is afraid of renunciation because he has something to lose, but a poor one is always ready to renounce. He is ready, but he has nothing to renounce.

The fifth body is the richest. It is the culmination of all that is possible for a human being. The fifth is the peak of individuality, the peak of love, of compassion, of everything that is worthwhile. The thorns have been lost. Now, the flower too must be lost. Then there will simply be perfume, no flower.

The sixth is the realm of perfume, cosmic perfume. No flower, no center. A circumference, but no center. You can say that everything has become a center, or that now there is no center. Just a diffused feeling is there. There is no split, no division – not even the division of the individual into the “I” and the “non-I,” the “I” and “the other.” There is no division at all.

So the individual can be lost in either of two ways: one, schizophrenic, splitting into many sub persons; and another, cosmic – lost into the ultimate; lost into the greater, the greatest, the Brahma; lost into the expanse. Now the flower is not, but the perfume is.

The flower too is a disturbance, but when only the perfume is, it is perfect. Now there is no source, so it cannot die. It is undying. Everything that has a source will die, but now the flower is not, so there is no source. The perfume is uncaused, so there is no death and no boundary to it. A flower has limitations; perfume is unlimited. There is no barrier to it. It goes on and on, and goes beyond.

So from the fifth body the question is not of upward, downward, sideways, inside, outside. The question is whether to be with an ego or without an ego. And the ego is the most difficult thing of all to lose. The ego is not a problem up to the fifth body because progress is ego-fulfilling. No one wants to be schizophrenic; everyone would prefer to have a crystallized personality. So every sadhaka, every seeker, can progress to the fifth body.

There is no method to move beyond the fifth body because every type of method is bound with the ego. The moment you use a method, the ego is strengthened. So those who are concerned with going beyond the fifth, talk of no-method. They talk of methodlessness, of no-technique. Now there is no how. From the fifth, there is no method possible.

You can use a method up to the fifth, but then no method will be of use because the user is to be lost. If you use anything, the user will become stronger. His ego will go on crystallizing; it will become a nucleus of crystallization. That is why those who have remained in the fifth body say there are infinite souls, infinite spirits. They think of each spirit as if it were an atom. Two atoms cannot meet. They are windowless, doorless; closed to everything outside themselves. Ego is windowless. You can use a word of Leibnitz: ‘monads’. Those who remain in the fifth body become monads: windowless atoms. Now you are alone, and alone, and alone.

But this crystallized ego has to be lost. How to lose it when there is no method? How to go beyond it when there is no path? How to escape from it? There is no door. Zen monks talk about the gateless gate. Now there is no gate, and still one has to go beyond it.

So what to do? The first thing: do not be identified with this crystallization. Just be aware of this closed house of “I.” Just be aware of it – don’t do anything – and there is an explosion! You will be beyond it.

They have a parable in Zen….

A goose egg is put in a bottle. The goose comes out of the egg and begins to grow, but the mouth of the bottle is so small that the goose cannot come out of the bottle. It grows bigger and bigger, and the bottle becomes too small to live in. Now, either the bottle will have to be destroyed to save the goose, or the goose will die. Seekers are asked: “What is to be done? We do not want to lose either. The goose is to be saved and the bottle also. So what to do?” This is the question of the fifth body. When there is no way out and the goose is growing, when the crystallization has become consolidated, what to do now?

The seeker goes inside a room, closes the door and begins to puzzle over it. What to do? Only two things seem to be possible: either to destroy the bottle and save the goose, or to let the goose die and save the bottle. The meditator goes on thinking and thinking. He thinks of something, but then it will be cancelled because there is no way to do it. The teacher sends him back to think some more.

For many nights and many days the seeker goes on thinking, but there is no way to do it. Finally, a moment comes when thinking ceases. He runs out shouting, “Eureka! The goose is out!” The teacher never asks how, because the whole thing is just nonsense.

So to move from the fifth body, the problem becomes a Zen koan. One should just be aware of the crystallization – and the goose is out! A moment comes when you are out; there is no “I.” The crystallization has been gained and lost. For the fifth, crystallization – the center, the ego – was essential. As a passage, as a bridge, it was a necessity; otherwise, the fifth body could not be crossed. But now it is no longer needed.

There are persons who have achieved the fifth without passing through the fourth. A person who has many riches has achieved the fifth; he has crystallized in a way. A person who has become president of a country has crystallized in a way. A Hitler, a Mussolini, is crystallized in a way. But the crystallization is in the fifth body. If the four lower bodies are not in accordance with it, then the crystallization becomes a disease. Mahavira and Buddha are crystallized too, but their crystallization is different.

We all long to fulfill the ego because of an innermost need to reach the fifth body. But if we choose a shortcut, then in the end we will be lost. The shortest way is through riches, power, politics. The ego can be achieved, but it is a false crystallization; it is not in accordance with your total personality. It is like a corn that forms on your foot and becomes crystallized. It is a false crystallization, an abnormal growth, a disease.

If the goose is out in the fifth, you are in the sixth. From the fifth to the sixth is the realm of mystery. Up to the fifth, scientific methods can be used, so yoga is helpful. But after that it is meaningless, because yoga is a methodology, a scientific technique.

In the fifth, Zen is very helpful. It is a method to go from the fifth to the sixth. Zen flowered in Japan but it began in India. Its roots came from Yoga. Yoga flowered into Zen.

Zen has had much appeal in the West because the Western ego is, in a sense, crystallized. In the West, they are the masters of the world; they have everything. But the ego has become crystallized through the wrong process. It has not developed through the transcendence of the first four bodies.

So Zen has become appealing to the West but it will not help because the crystallization is wrong.

Gurdjieff is much more helpful to the West because he works from the first body to the fifth. He is not helpful beyond the fifth, only up to the fifth, to the crystallization. Through his techniques, you can achieve a proper crystallization.

Zen has been just a fad in the West because it has no roots there. It developed through a very long process in the East, beginning with hatha yoga and culminating in the Buddha. Thousands and thousands of years of humbleness: not of ego but of passivity; not of positive action but of receptivity – through a long duration of the female mind, the receptive mind. The East has always been female, while the West is male: aggressive, positive. The East has been an openness, a receptivity. Zen could be of help in the East because other methods, other systems, worked on the four lower bodies.

These four became the roots, and Zen could flower.

Today, Zen has become almost meaningless in Japan. The reason is that Japan has become absolutely Western. Once the Japanese were the most humble people, but now their humbleness is just a show. It is no longer part of their innermost core. So Zen has been uprooted in Japan and is popular now in the West. But this popularity is only because of the false crystallization of the ego.

From the fifth body to the sixth, Zen is very helpful; but only then, neither before nor beyond. It is absolutely useless for the other bodies, even harmful. To teach university level courses in the primary school not only does not help; it may be harmful.

If Zen is used before the fifth body you may experience satori, but that is not samadhi. Satori is a false samadhi. It is a glimpse of samadhi, but it is just a glimpse. As far as the fourth body – the mental body – is concerned, satori will make you more artistic, more aesthetic. It will create a sense of beauty in you; it will create a feeling of well-being. But it will not be a help in crystallization. It will not help you to move from the fourth body to the fifth.

Only beyond crystallization is Zen helpful. The goose is out of the bottle, without any how. But only at this point can it be practiced, after so many other methods have been used. A painter can paint with closed eyes; he can paint as if it is a game. An actor can act as if he is not acting. In fact, the acting becomes perfect only when it does not look like acting. But many years of labor have gone into it, many years of practice. Now the actor is completely at ease, but that at-easeness is not achieved in a day. It has its own methods.

We walk, but we never know how we do it. If someone asks you how you walk you say, “I just walk. There is no how to it.” But the how takes place when a child begins to walk. He learns. If you were to tell the child that walking needs no method – “you just walk!” – It would be nonsense. The child would not understand it. Krishnamurti has been talking this way, talking with adults who have children’s minds, saying, “You can walk. You just walk!” People listen. They are charmed. Easy! To walk without any method. Then, everyone can walk.

Krishnamurti too has become attractive in the West, and just because of this. If you look at hatha yoga or mantra yoga or bhakti yoga or raja yoga or tantra, it looks so long, so arduous, so difficult. Centuries of labor are needed, births and births. They cannot wait. Some shortcut, something instantaneous must be there. So Krishnamurti appeals to them. He says, “You just walk. You walk into God. There is no method.” But no-method is the most arduous thing to achieve. To act as if one is not acting, to speak as if one is not speaking, to walk effortlessly as if one is not walking, is based on long effort.

Labor and effort are necessary; they are needed. But they have a limitation. They are needed up to the fifth body, but they are useless from the fifth to the sixth. You will go nowhere; the goose will never be out.

That is the problem with Indian yogis. They find it difficult to cross the fifth because they are method-enchanted, method-hypnotized. They have always worked with method. There has been a clear-cut science up to the fifth and they progressed with ease. It was an effort – and they could do it! No matter how much intensity was needed, it was no problem to them. No matter how much effort, they could supply it. But now in the fifth, they have to cross from the realm of method to no-method. Now they are at a loss. They sit down, they stop. And for so many seekers, the fifth becomes the end.

That is why there is talk of five bodies, not seven. Those who have gone only to the fifth think that it is the end. It is not the end; it is a new beginning. Now one must move from the individual to the non-individual. Zen, or methods like Zen, done effortlessly, can be helpful.

Zazen means just sitting, doing nothing. A person who has done much cannot conceive of this. Just sitting and doing nothing! It is inconceivable. A Gandhi cannot conceive of it. He says, “I will spin my wheel. Something must be done. This is my prayer, my meditation.” Non-doing to him means doing nothing. Non-doing has its own realm, its own bliss, its own adjustment, but that is from the fifth body to the sixth. It cannot be understood before that.

From the sixth to the seventh, there is not even no-method. Method is lost in the fifth, and no-method is lost in the sixth. One day you simply find that you are in the seventh. Even the cosmos has gone; only nothingness is. It just happens. It is a happening from the sixth to the seventh. Un-caused, unknown.

Only when it is un-caused does it become discontinuous with what went before. If it is caused then there is a continuity and the being cannot be lost, even in the seventh. The seventh is total non-being: nirvana, emptiness, non-existence.

There is no possibility of any continuity in moving from existence to non-existence. It is just a jump, un-caused. If it were caused there would be a continuity, and it would be just like the sixth body. So to move from the sixth body to the seventh cannot even be talked about. It is a discontinuity, a gap. Something was, and something now is – and there is no connection between the two. Something has just ceased, and something has just come in. There is no relationship between them. It is as if a guest has left from one door and another guest has entered from the other side.

There is no relationship between the going of one and the coming of the other. They are unrelated.

The seventh body is the ultimate, because now you have crossed even the world of causation. You have gone to the original source, to that which was before creation and that which will be after annihilation. So from the sixth to the seventh there is not even no-method. Nothing is of any help; everything can be a hindrance. From the cosmic to nothingness there is just a happening: uncaused, unprepared for, unasked for.

It happens instantaneously. Only one thing is to be remembered: you must not cling to the sixth. Clinging will prevent you from moving to the seventh. There is no positive way to move to the seventh, but there can be a negative hindrance. You can cling to the Brahma, the cosmos. You can say, “I have reached!” Those who say they have reached cannot go to the seventh.

Those who say, “I have known,” remain in the sixth. So those who wrote the Vedas remained in the sixth. Only a Buddha crosses the sixth because he says, “I do not know.” He refuses to give answers to the ultimate questions. He says, “No one knows. No one has known.” Buddha could not be understood. Those who heard him said, “No, our teachers have known. They say Brahma is.”

But Buddha is talking of the seventh body. No teacher can say he has known about the seventh because the moment you say it you lose touch with it. Once you have known it, you cannot say. Up to the sixth body symbols can be expressive, but there is no symbol for the seventh. It is just an emptiness.

There is a temple in China that is totally empty. There is nothing in it: no image, no scriptures, nothing. It is just bare, naked walls. Even the priest resides outside. He says, “A priest can only be outside the temple; he cannot be inside.” If you ask the priest where the deity of the temple is, he will say, “See it!” – And there is emptiness; there is no one. He will say, “See! Here! Now!” and there is only a naked, bare, empty temple.

If you look for objects then you cannot cross the sixth to the seventh. So there are negative preparations. A negative mind is needed, a mind that is not longing for anything – not even moksha, not even deliverance, not even nirvana, not even truth; a mind that is not waiting for anything – not even for God, for Brahma. It just is, without any longing, without any desire, without any wish. Just is-ness. Then, it happens . . . and even the cosmos is gone.

So you can cross into the seventh by and by. Begin from the physical and work through the etheric; then the astral, the mental, the spiritual. Up to the fifth you can work and then, from the fifth on, just be aware. Doing is not important then; consciousness is important. And finally, from the sixth to the seventh, even consciousness is not important. Only is-ness, being. This is the potentiality of our seeds. This is our possibility.

-Osho

From The Psychology of the Esoteric, Discourse #7, Part 2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

For related posts see:

From the Many to the One, Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 1

Also see: The Mysteries of the Seven Bodies

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 Unwavering Mind – Osho

After this the seeker enters the third stage of yoga which is known as non-attachment. He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of scriptural words.

He lives in the monasteries, ashrams, of saints well established in austerities. He occupies himself with the discussion of the scriptures and sleeps on a rocky bed. Thus it is that he lives his life. Because he has attained peace of mind, the man of good conduct spends his time in the enjoyment of pleasures that come naturally to him from his excursion into the forest. He remains detached, however, from the objects of desires.

Through the ritual of meritorious deeds and the cultivation of right scriptures, he attains that clarity of vision which sees reality. On completing this stage, the seeker experiences a glimpse of enlightenment.

-Akshi Upanishad

The second stage is that of thought – purity of thought, intensity of thought, contemplation, meditation. Thought is energy; it can move through desires to the objects of the world, it can become a bondage. If thought is associated with desire, it becomes bondage; if thought is not associated with desire, freed from desire, thought can be used as a vehicle to reach the ultimate liberation.

The way is the same, only the direction changes. When thought moves to objects, to the world, it creates entanglements, it creates slavery, it creates imprisonment. When thought is not moving to objects but starts moving within, the same energy becomes liberation. The second stage is of thought – to make it pure, to become a witness of it.

The third stage is of vairagya – non-attachment. Non-attachment is very significant, the concept is very basic to all those who are in search of the truth. Mind has the capacity to get attached to anything, and once the mind gets attached to something the mind itself becomes that thing. When your mind is moving towards a sexual object and you get attached, mind becomes sex; when the mind is moving towards power and you get attached to it, mind becomes power, mind becomes politics.

Mind is just like a mirror: whatsoever you get attached to becomes fixed in the mirror, and then mind behaves like a film of a camera. Then mind is not just a mirror, it has become a film. Then whatsoever comes to it, the mind clings to it. These are the two possibilities, or two aspects of the same possibility. Mind has the capacity to get attached, identified, with anything whatsoever. […]

Whatsoever the attachment, your life follows that. In this world, the Upanishads say, we are behaving as if we are hypnotized; we are in a deep hypnosis. Nobody else has done that, we have hypnotized ourselves. For millions of lives we have been attached to certain objects of desire; they have become fixed. So whenever you see a woman, immediately your body starts working in a sexual way. […]

Attachment creates the life; a life is created around whatsoever you are attached to. So the Upanishads say it is basic, the third step of sadhana, that the mind should get nonattached; only then this illusory world that you have created around you will disappear. Otherwise, you will remain in a dream.

The world is not a dream, remember. This has been very much misunderstood. In the West it has been very much misunderstood; they think that these Indian mystics have called the world illusory. They have not called the world illusory; they call the world you have created around you illusory. And everybody has created a world around himself that is not the real world, that is just your projection. You have got attached to certain things, then you project your dreams onto the reality. By nonattachment, reality is not going to be destroyed; only your dreams will be destroyed, and reality will be revealed to you as it is. So nonattachment becomes a basic step, very foundational.

Now we will enter the sutra:

After this the seeker enters the third stage of yoga which is known as nonattachment.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of scriptural words. He lives in the monasteries, ashrams, of saints well established in austerities. He occupies himself with the discussion of the scriptures and sleeps on a rocky bed.

Everything has to be understood. These are old symbols; they have to be penetrated deeply; they are not literal, they are symbolic.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly . . . 

This is the first thing in nonattachment, because a wavering mind cannot get non-attached. Only a nonwavering mind, nishkam, a nonwavering mind, can get nonattached. Why? Look at your mind, observe it: every moment it is wavering. It cannot remain with one object for a single moment, every moment a flux is passing; one thought comes, then another, then another – there is a procession.

You cannot remain with one thought even for a single moment, and if you cannot remain for a single moment with one thought, how can you penetrate it? How can you become aware of its full reality? How can you see the illusion that it creates? You are moving so fast that you cannot observe – observation is impossible. It is just as if you come running into this hall. As soon as you enter from one door you go out from the other. You have just a glimpse, and you cannot know later on whether this hall was real or a dream. You had no time here to know, to penetrate, to analyze, to observe, to be aware.

So fixation of the mind on one content is one of the essential requirements for any seeker – that he should remain with one thought for long periods. Once you can remain with one thought for long periods, you yourself will see that this thought is creating attachment, this thought is creating a world around it, this thought is the basic seed of all illusion. And if you can retain a thought for long periods, you have become the master. Now the mind is not the master, and you are not the slave.

And if you can remain with one thought for long periods you can drop it also. You can say to the mind, “Stop!” and the mind stops; you can say to the mind, “Move!” and the mind moves. Now it is not so; you want to stop the process but the mind continues, the mind never listens to you. The mind is the master and you are just following the mind like a shadow. The instrument – mind is just an instrument – has become the soul, and the soul has become the servant. This is the perversion and this is the misery of human beings.

Try to fix your mind on one thing, anything will do. Sit on the ground outside and look at a tree and try to remain with the tree. Whatsoever happens, remain with the tree. The mind will try many waverings, the mind will give you many alternatives to move. The mind will say, “Look! What type of tree is this? What is the name?” Don’t listen to it, because even if you have moved to the name you have moved away from the tree. If you start thinking about the tree you have gone away from the tree. Don’t think about it, remain with the fact that the tree is.

It will be difficult in the beginning because you are not so alert. You are so sleepy that you will forget completely that you were looking at the tree. A dog will start barking and you will look at the dog; a cloud will come in the sky and you have moved; somebody passes and you have forgotten the tree.

But go on, again and again. When you remember again that you have forgotten and fallen asleep, move again to the tree. Do it.

If you go on working, after three or four weeks you will be capable of retaining one content in the mind at least for one minute. And that’s a big capacity! That’s a big phenomenon! – because you don’t know, you think one minute is not much. One minute is too much for the mind, because mind moves within seconds. For not even a full second is your mind on one thing. It is wavering – wavering is mind’s nature; it goes on creating waves. And that is the way the attachment is retained.

You love a woman. Even if you love a woman, you cannot retain the idea of the woman in your mind. If you look at the woman you will start thinking about her – and you have moved away. You may think about her clothes, you may think about her eyes, you may think about her face and figure, but you have moved away from the woman. Just let the fact remain, don’t think about it, because thinking means wavering. To retain a single content means: don’t think, just look. Thinking means moving, wavering. Just look – looking means nonwavering.

That is the meaning of concentration, and all the religions of the world have used it in this way or that. Their methods may look different but the essential is this: that the mind has to be trained to retain one thing for longer periods. What will happen? Once you get this capacity nothing is to be done. You can penetrate, anything becomes transparent. The very look, and in that look your energy moving, goes deep.

There are two ways for the mind. One is linear, from one thought to another – A, B, C, D – the mind moves in a line. Mind has energy. When it moves from A to B it dissipates energy, when it moves from B to C again energy is dissipated, when it moves from C to D energy has been dissipated. If you retain only A in the mind and don’t allow it to move to B, C, D and so forth and so on, what will happen? The energy that was going to be dissipated in movement will go on hammering on the fact A, and then a new process will start – you will move deeper in the A. Not moving from A to B, but moving from A1 to A2, A3, A4. Now the energy is moving directly, intensely, in one fact. Your eyes will become penetrating. […]

We have become completely unacquainted with the penetrating eye. We know only superficial, moving eyes from A to B, from B to C – just touching and moving, touching and moving. If somebody looks at you, stares at you deeply, and he is not moving from A to B, B to C, you will become scared – but that is the real look. And you will become scared because his eyes are going deep within you; he is not moving on the surface, he is moving deep, in the depth. You will become scared because you have become unacquainted with it.

Fixation of the mind will give you a penetrating eye. That eye has been known in the occult world as the third eye. When you start moving on a point, not in a line, you gain a force, and that force works. All over the world mesmerists, hypnotists, and other workers in the psychic field have been aware of it for centuries. You can try it. Somebody, a stranger, is walking on the road. You just go behind him and look at the back of his neck. Stare. Immediately he will look back towards you, the energy hits there immediately if you stare.

There is a center at the back of the neck which is very sensitive. Just stare at the center and the person is bound to look back because he will become uneasy, something is entering there. Your eyes are not simply windows to look through, they are energy centers. You are not only absorbing impressions through the eyes, you are throwing energy – but you are not aware. You are not aware because your energy is being dissipated in movement, is waving, wavering from one to two, two to three, three to four – you go on, and every gap takes your energy.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly . . .

First one has to try to fix this mind unwaveringly on objects, and then on the meaning of the scriptural words.

This is a totally different science. You read a book. Reading is linear: from one word you move to another, from another to another – you go on moving in lines. You may not have observed that different countries have different ways of writing. English is written from the left towards the right, because English is a technical language, not very poetic, a male language, not feminine. Urdu, Arabic, are written from the right to the left. They are more poetic, because the left side is poetry and the right side is mathematics – right is male, left is female.

Chinese is written downwards; neither from left to right, nor from right to left, just from up downwards, because Chinese was developed through Confucian ideology, and Confucius says, “The middle is the goal, the middle is golden – the golden mean.” So they don’t move from left to right, or from right to left; they move from up to down. This is the middle, the mean, neither male nor female.

English is male, Urdu is female – that’s why Urdu is so poetic. No language in the world is as poetic as Urdu. In any language of the world, you will need hundreds of lines, and then too you will not be able to express a poetic thing. In Urdu just two lines will do and they will stop the heart. It moves from right to left, from male to female – female is the end.

All over the world God has always been conceived of as the father. Only in the East are there a few religions which conceive of God as the mother – but Sufis, Mohammedans, are the only ones who conceive of God as the beloved: not mother, beloved. The feminine is the end. From the male they move to the female, to the feminine, but movement is there.

Chinese moves from up to down, into the depth, so Chinese symbols can express things no other language can express – because every language is linear, and Chinese is in the depth. So if you have read Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching in translation, you know that every translation differs. If you read ten translations then all the translations will be different; you cannot say who is wrong and who is right, because Chinese carries so much meaning and depth that ten, or even one hundred meanings are possible. In depth more and more meanings are revealed.

In India it is said that a scripture like the Vedas, the Upanishads or the Gita, is not to be read in a linear way. You have to concentrate on each word. Read a word, then don’t move; look at the word, close your eyes, and wait for the meaning to be revealed. This is a totally different concept of studying a thing, so Westerners sometimes cannot understand that a person goes on reading the Gita every day for his whole life. This looks absurd. If you have read it once it is finished! Why do you go on reading the Gita every day? Once you have read it, what is the meaning in reading it again?

But Hindus say the Gita is not a linear book. Each word has to be looked at with a fixed mind; in each word you have to penetrate deep – so deep that the word disappears and only silence remains. And the word does not have the meaning, remember – the meaning is hidden in you. The word is just a technical support to help the meaning that is within you to come up. So the word is a mantra, or a yantra, a design which will help you to bring up the meaning which is hidden in your soul.

See the difference. In the West if you read a thing, then the word has a meaning; in the East the word has got no meaning – the meaning is in the reader. The word is just a device to bring the reader to his own inner meaning, to encounter the inner meaning. The word will just provoke you inside so that your inner meaning flowers through it. The word has to be forgotten and the inner meaning has to be carried, but you will have to wait; and mind needs fixation, mind needs concentration, only then the inner meaning can be revealed. So one has to go on reading the same thing every day, but it is not the same because you have been changing.

If a boy of fifteen reads the Gita the meaning is going to be boyish, immature, juvenile. Then a man, a young man of thirty reads the Gita – the meaning is going to be different, more romantic. In that meaning sex will be involved, in that meaning love will be projected, in that meaning the youth will project his youth. And then an old man of sixty reads the Gita. He has passed through the ups and downs of life, he has seen misery and glimpses of happiness, he has lived through much. He will see something else in the Gita; in that something else death will be involved; death will be all over the Gita.

And a man of one hundred, to whom even death has become irrelevant, to whom even death has become an accepted fact, not a problem, who is not afraid of death but rather, on the contrary, is just waiting for it so that the imprisonment in the body is broken and the soul can fly – he looks in the Gita and it will be totally different. Now it will transcend life, the meaning will transcend life.

The meaning depends on the state of your mind. So the meaning of a word is not in the dictionary, the meaning of the word is in the reader, and the words are used as devices to bring that meaning up. But if you go on reading fast that will not help. In the West they go on creating more and more techniques for how to read fast, how to finish the book as fast as possible, because time is short. And there are techniques by which you can read very fast; whatsoever your speed right now it can be doubled very easily, and you can even double it again if you work a little harder. And if you are really persistent you can again double that speed.

So if you are reading sixty words per minute, you can read two hundred and forty words per minute if you work hard – but then you will be moving in a linear way. And if you move fast then your unconscious starts reading, the conscious just gives hints. Subliminal reading becomes possible, but then you cannot penetrate.

The question is not to read much, the question is to read very little but to read deep. The depth is significant, because in the depth quality is hidden. If you read fast quantity will be great, but quality will be no more there, it will be mechanical. You will not be imbibing whatsoever you are reading; you will not be changed through whatsoever you are reading; it will just be a memorization.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of the scriptural words.

In Sanskrit every word has multi-meanings. In the West it will be thought that this is not good; a word should mean only one thing, it should have only one meaning. Only then can there be a science of language, only then can the language become technical, scientific. So one word should have only one meaning. But Sanskrit is not a scientific language, it is a religious language. And if the people who spoke Sanskrit claimed that their language is divine it means something. Every word has multi-meanings; no word is fixed, solid, it is liquid, flowing. You can derive many meanings through it – it depends on you. It has many shades, many colors; it is not a dead stone, it is an alive flower.

If you go in the morning it looks different, if you go in the afternoon the same flower looks different, because the whole milieu has changed. When you go in the evening the same flower has a different poetry to it. In the morning it was happy, alive, dancing, filled with so many desires, hopes, dreams, was maybe thinking to conquer the whole world. By the afternoon desires have dropped, much frustration has come, the flower is not hoping so much now, it is a little depressed, a little sad. By the evening life has proved illusory, the flower is on its deathbed, shrunken, closed, no dreams, no hopes.

Sanskrit words are like flowers, they have moods; that’s why Sanskrit can be interpreted in millions of ways. The Gita has one thousand interpretations. You cannot conceive of the Bible having one thousand interpretations – impossible! You cannot conceive of the Koran having one thousand interpretations – not a single interpretation exists. The Koran has never been interpreted. There are one thousand interpretations of the Gita, and still they are not enough. Every century will add many more, and while human consciousness is on the earth interpretations will be added forever and ever. The Gita cannot be exhausted, it is impossible to exhaust it, because every word has many meanings.

Sanskrit is liquid, flowing, moody, and this is good because this gives you freedom. The reader has freedom, he is not a slave; the words are not imposed on him, he can play with those words. He can change his moods through those words, and he can change those words through his moods. The Gita is alive, and every alive thing has moods; only dead things have no moods. In that way English is a dead language. It will look paradoxical, because English scholars go on saying that Sanskrit is a dead language because no one speaks it. They are right in a way – because nobody speaks it, it is a dead language, but really modern languages are dead.

No one speaks Sanskrit now, but it is an alive language, the very quality of it is alive; every word has a life of its own and changes, moves, flows, riverlike. Much is possible through the play of Sanskrit words, and they have been arranged in such a way that if you concentrate on them, many worlds of meanings will be revealed to you.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of scriptural words. He lives in the monasteries . . .

First, he fixes on the Vedas, on the old scriptures. These scriptures are not just books. They are not written for any other reason than this: they have been written to reveal a certain deep secret. They are not for you to read and enjoy and throw just like novels; they are to be pondered, contemplated, meditated on. You have to go so deep in them that this going into depth becomes natural to you. And they were not written by persons who were writers, persons not knowing anything but just through their egoistic feeling writing things.

Gurdjieff divides all scriptures into two divisions: one he calls subjective, the other he calls objective. These scriptures – the Vedas, the Upanishads, are objective, not subjective. The whole literature that we are creating is subjective, the writer is throwing his own subjectivity into it. A poet, a modern poet, or a painter, a modern Picasso, or a novelist, a story-writer – they are writing their own minds there. They are not concerned with the person who is going to read, remember, they are more concerned with themselves. This is a catharsis for them. They are mad inside, burdened – they want to express. […]

A poet may have dreamed, may have taken hashish. And scientists say that poets have some difference, some chemical difference from ordinary persons – they have some hashish in their blood, really, so they can imagine more, they can dream more, they can go on dream trips more than others. So they write, but their writing is imaginative, it is not objective. It may help them as a catharsis, that they are unburdened.

But there is another type of literature, totally different, which is objective. These Upanishads were not written for the joy of the writer, they were written for those who were going to read them – they are objective. What they will do to you if you contemplate on them has been planned; every single word has been put there, every single sound has been used. If someone contemplates on it, then the state of the writer will be revealed to him; the same will happen to him if he contemplates. These scriptures are called holy; that’s why.

A totally different body of literature exists in the East, a totally different body – not meant to be enjoyed but meant to be transforming. And when one has penetrated deep into the meaning of the scriptures . . . And these scriptures belong to those who have known. It was thought to be a great sin to write something which you have not known. That’s why very few books were written in the past. […]

These writings are from those who have known, who have become enlightened, and they have put in these writings their own mind – the mind is hidden there. If you penetrate, the mind will be revealed to you. And only after that . . .

He lives in the monasteries, ashrams, of saints well established in austerities.

The ashram is an Eastern concept, there is no word to express it in English. “Monastery” is not a good word; ashram is totally different. You have to understand the concept. A monastery is where monks live. There are Christian monasteries – there is no need for an enlightened person to be there; abbots are there, administrators are there. The monastery is like a training school. The abbot need not be enlightened, but he will train you, because they have a curriculum, a course. Christian priests are prepared that way. […]

A monastery is a training school; an ashram is not a school; an ashram is a family. And an ashram doesn’t exist as an institution, cannot exist as an institution. The ashram exists around an enlightened person, that is a basic must. If the enlightened person is not there the ashram disappears; it is the person around whom the ashram can come into being. When the person is dead the ashram has to disappear. If you continue the ashram, it becomes a monastery.

For example, Aurobindo is dead and now the Mother is dead – now Pondicherry is a monastery, not an ashram. It will persist as a dead thing, an institute. When Aurobindo was there it was totally different. The person is important, not the institute – institutions are dead. So remember this: a live phenomenon, a master, just by his presence creates a milieu – that milieu is the ashram. And when you move in that milieu you are moving in a family, not in an institute. The master will take care of you in every way, and you will be there in intimate, close proximity.

Eastern ashrams are disappearing, they are becoming monasteries, institutes. The Western mind is so obsessed with institutes that everything is turned into an institute. I was just reading a book on marriage. It begins by saying that marriage is the greatest institute, the greatest institution – but who wants to live in an institute? The ashram is more intimate, more personal.

So every ashram will differ from others, every ashram is going to be unique, because it will depend on the person around whom it has been created. All monasteries will be similar but no two ashrams can be similar, because every ashram has to be individual, unique; it depends on the personality of the master. If you go to a Sufi ashram it will be totally different – much dancing and singing will be there; if you go to a Buddhist ashram, no dancing, no singing, much sitting silently will be there. And both are doing the same, they are leading towards the same goal.

The first thing to remember: an ashram exists with a master; it is his personal influence, his person, the atmosphere, the milieu that he creates through his being. An ashram is his being, and when you enter into an ashram you are not entering into an institution, you are entering a live person, you are becoming part of the soul of the master. Now you will exist as part of the master, he will exist through you. So no forced discipline, but spontaneous happenings will be there.

He lives in the ashrams of saints well established in austerities.

In the third state it is good to move to someone who has known, to live with him. The first two will make you capable, patra; the first two will make you worthy of having a master look at you, of a master allowing you to be in intimacy with him. Without the first two no master will look at you; you will not be allowed, he will avoid you, he will create situations so that you will have to leave his ashram. Only after these two states, when you enter the third, will you be allowed, because a master is not going to waste.  . . . He cannot work with you unless you are ready, and unless you show readiness.

One sannyasin goes on writing letters to me. He is here, he has again written a letter to me, a very long letter, saying, “Give me the method so that I can move into my past lives.” And he is not capable at all even to live in this life! He will go mad if I give him a method to move into the past lives. Why do you think nature prohibits it? Why does nature create a barrier so that you cannot remember the past lives?

Nature is more wise than you. Nature creates the barrier because even one life is too much; it is a burden. You have to forget many things, and if you continuously remember the past life you will be confused, you will be nowhere, you will not be able to decide what is what. Everything will become vague, cloudy, and the past life will remain on your mind like a burden and it will not allow you to live here and now.

Just think, you are in love with a woman and you remember that in the past life she was your mother! So now what will you do? If you go on making love to her you are making love to your mother, and that will create guilt. Or if you think that she is your mother so you should leave her, that will again create guilt because you love her so much. The whole thing will become very difficult and arduous to carry on. And this is how it is happening: your wife may have been your mother, your husband may have been your son, your friend may have been your enemy, your enemy may have been your friend. You have moved in so many lives, it is very complex. Nature creates a barrier: when you die a curtain falls and you cannot remember.

This man goes on writing to me, “Give me a method.” And now he has threatened, “If you don’t give me a method, I am going to leave sannyas.” If you leave sannyas, what is it to me? And if I give you a method and you go mad, then who will be responsible? And you will go mad – you are already mad, just on the brink; any step further, a little more burden on the mind and you will explode.

The ashram, or the master, will accept you only when you are ready, and he will start working only when a certain thing can be done to you, you have come to a certain state; nothing can be done before it. And this should be the attitude of the disciple – that he should not ask. The master knows what is to be done and you have to wait. If you cannot wait you have to leave, because nothing can be done when you are not ripe for it.

The first two stages make you ripe to be accepted by a master.

He occupies himself with the discussion of the scriptures, and sleeps on a rocky bed.

This is actual and symbolic both. In the old ashrams everybody had to sleep on a rocky bed – actually, also because it helps. In yoga, your spine, your backbone, is very important, and not only in yoga but in biology also. Now biologists say man could become man because he started standing erect, his backbone erect. Animals’ backbones are parallel to the earth, only man has a backbone which is not parallel to the earth but makes an angle of ninety degrees. This changed the whole being of man, this angle of ninety degrees with the gravitation created the possibility for the mind to develop. Now biologists say that just by standing on two feet the animal became human – because it changes the whole thing. Less blood flows in the head, so the head and the nervous system there can become more delicate and refined. When more blood flows in the head the subtle tissues are broken, they cannot grow.

So don’t do too much shirshasana. Unless a master suggests it to you don’t do shirshasana, because I have never seen a person who has been doing shirshasana who is not stupid. You will become stupid. You will become more healthy of course, because animals are more healthy; so if you are just after health, shirshasana is good, do it forever. You will become healthy like a bull but at the same time stupid also, because when more blood moves into the head delicate tissues are destroyed, and those delicate tissues are needed for intelligence. When man stood erect, the possibility developed for more delicate tissues in the head.

You see primitives sleep without pillows, and they will remain primitives if they continue to sleep without pillows, because more blood flows in the night. A more intelligent person will need more pillows. He may not be healthier, but intelligence needs a certain mechanism in the mind, a very delicate mechanism. And mind is very complex; seventy million cells are there, and so delicate, bound to be so delicate, when in such a small head there are seventy million. They are very delicate, very small particles, and when blood flows fast, in great quantity, they are destroyed, they are killed. So biologically, and scientifically also, the spine is the most important thing in man. Your head is nothing but a pole to your spine: you exist as a spine – on one pole is sex, on the other is your mind, and your spine is the bridge.

Yoga worked very much on the spine, because yogis became aware of its significance – that the spine is your life. The angle of ninety degrees will be more exact if your spine is straight, so yogis say that when you sit, sit with a straight spine. They worked out many postures, asanas; all their asanas are based on an erect spine, straight. The straighter it is, the more is the possibility to grow in intelligence, awareness.

You may not have observed: if you are listening to me and you are interested your spine will be straight, if you are not interested then you can relax. If you are looking at a movie in a cinema, whenever something interesting comes you will sit straight immediately, because more mind is called for. When the interesting scene has gone you can relax again into your chair.

In the day the spine has to be erect for yogic postures, and in the night also it has to be trained to be more straight. On a rocky bed it is more straight than on a Dunlop mattress. On a rocky bed it is bound to be straight, because the rocky bed is not going to give way for it. If the spine is erect the whole night it will become conditioned to being erect, so in the day also, while walking, sitting, it will remain erect. This is good. So this is physiologically, biologically, and in the eyes of yogis, very helpful. But this is only one part of it, the other part is symbolic.

Whenever a person goes through suffering, we say he is lying on a rocky bed. And the ashram is going to be a long suffering, because many old habits are to be broken and they are hard; many old patterns are to be broken and they are very fixed. Really you have to be destroyed and created again, and in between there is going to be suffering and chaos. That is the rocky bed.

With a master you will have to move through much suffering. You have got many blocks in the body and the mind; they have to be destroyed, and to destroy a block is painful. Unless those blocks are destroyed you cannot flow, you cannot become spontaneous, your energy cannot rise high, it cannot move from the sex center to the sahasrar, it cannot move to the ultimate center of your being. So many things have to be destroyed and every habit has a big pattern, its own system – it takes time.

If you are ready and you trust your master it will not take so much time, because trusting him you can pass through suffering. If you don’t trust, then every suffering becomes a problem, and the mind says, “What are you doing here? Why are you suffering here? Leave this man, go away! You were happy before.” You were never happy before, but when suffering starts you will feel that you were happy before.

For the real happiness to happen you will have to throw all suffering, you will have to pass through it – it is part of growth. And when all suffering has been passed through, only then you become capable of bliss; for the first time you can become happy. And there is no other way.

Thus, it is that he lives his life. Because he has attained peace of mind, the man of good conduct spends his time in the enjoyment of pleasures that come naturally to him from his excursions into the forest.

This is something very significant. In an ashram, under the guidance of a master, you will have to pass through many sufferings. But you are not to create those sufferings, you are not to be masochistic. Many pleasures will also come. Remember, this is the type of our mind – that either we are attached to pleasure and then we demand pleasure, or we can even become attached to suffering and then we say we don’t want any pleasure. We start having pleasure through suffering, and that is dangerous. That’s the masochistic attitude – you can torture yourself and you can enjoy it.

This is a very deep phenomenon in the human psyche, and it has happened because of some association. Every pleasure is with some pain, so if pleasure becomes intense you will feel pain, and the reverse is also true: every pain has its own small pleasure, and if the pain becomes intense you will feel pleasure. Pain and pleasure are not really two things, the difference is only of degree. […]

But in every pleasure some torture, some pain, is involved. You can move to the other extreme, you can start giving pain to yourself and can enjoy it. Go to Benares, you will see the monks lying on a bed of thorns. They are enjoying it; it is a sexual pleasure. They have left the pleasure part and retained the pain part.

So in the ashrams you are not to make yourself suffer, not to be a sadist, not to torture yourself. You have to be hard just to break the old habits, but there is no need to seek pain, and if pleasures come by automatically you are allowed to enjoy them. An ashram is not a torture house; if pleasures come by themselves you are allowed to enjoy them. They are good. You have to be thankful for them.

Because he has attained peace of mind, the man of good conduct spends his time in the enjoyment of pleasures that come naturally to him from his excursion into the forest. He remains detached, however, from the objects of desires.

He remains detached. Pleasures come, moments of enjoyment come; he enjoys them and forgets them. He will not demand them again, he will not say, “Now I cannot live without these pleasures.” Whatsoever God gives, one has to be thankful but never demanding. He remains unattached to desire.

Through the ritual of meritorious deeds and the cultivation of right scriptures, he attains that clarity of vision which sees reality. On completing this stage, the seeker experiences a glimpse of enlightenment.

Just a glimpse – not enlightenment. This glimpse is known in Japan as satori. Satori is not samadhi, satori is just a glimpse. You have not reached enlightenment, you have not reached the peak of the hill, but standing in the valley when there are no clouds, when the sky is clear, you can look at the peak with snow caps – but it is very far away still. You cannot see when the sky is clouded, you cannot see when it is night, you cannot see if you are standing at such a point from where it cannot be looked at.

These three steps will bring you to such a viewpoint from where the peak can be glimpsed. These three stages will make your mind clear. The clouds will disappear and the peak will be revealed – but this is a faraway glimpse, this is not enlightenment. At the third stage a glimpse comes, but remember well, don’t think that this is enlightenment. And this can happen even through chemical help also. Through LSD, marijuana, or other drugs also this is possible, because drugs can create such a chemical situation within you, they can force such a chemical situation where, for a moment, clouds disappear; suddenly you are thrown to a point from where the peak can be glimpsed. But this is no attainment, because chemistry cannot become meditation and chemistry cannot give you enlightenment. When you come back from the trip you are the same again. You may remember it, and that memory may disturb you, and that memory may make you an addict. Then you have to take LSD again and again, and the more you take the less will be the possibility of even the glimpse, because the body gets accustomed and then a greater quantity is needed. Then you are on a path which will lead to insanity and nowhere else.

So don’t try chemical things. If you have tried them, thank God, and don’t try them again. Once you become addicted to chemical help sadhana becomes impossible, because chemicals seem so easy and sadhana seems so difficult. Only sadhana, only spiritual discipline, will help you grow, will give you growth to the point from where the glimpse is not forced but becomes natural. And it is not lost then – any moment you can look, you know from where to look, and the peak will be there. Occupied in your day-to-day activities, any moment you can close your eyes and see the peak and that will become a constant happiness within you, a joy, a continuous joy. Whatsoever you are doing, whatsoever is happening outside, even if you are in misery – for you have built so many jails – you can close your eyes and the peak is there.

After the third stage the glimpse is always available. But the glimpse is not the end – that is only the beginning.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #8

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Let the Mind Go Wherever it Wants to Go – Annamalai Swami

Questioner: I think that I am now beginning to grasp what the ‘I am’ is. It seems that this is something behind the body, behind the mind, and behind the awareness of the body. I think that we don’t automatically make a relationship with this ‘I am’ because we feel that we lack a conscious acquaintance with it. We are accustomed to direct our attention outwards rather than inwards. We think about people and things because we are attached to them and for no other reason. I am beginning to realize just how hard it is to give up this habit.

Annamalai Swami: Let the mind go wherever it wants to go. You don’t have to pay any attention to all its wanderings. Just be the Self and don’t concern yourself with the activities of the mind. If you take this attitude, the activities and wanderings of the mind will become less and less.

The mind only wanders around all day because you identify with it and pay attention to all its activities. If you could establish yourself as consciousness alone, thoughts would no longer have any power to distract you.

When you have no interest in thoughts they fade away as soon as they appear. Instead of attaching themselves to other thoughts, which then spin off countless other thoughts and ideas, they just appear for a second or two and then vanish.

One’s vasanas make thoughts arise. Once they have arisen, they will repeat themselves in regular chains and patterns again and again. If you have any desires or attachments, thoughts about will be constantly appearing in the mind. You cannot fight them because they thrive on the attention you give them. If you try to suppress them, you can only do it by giving them attention. And that means you are identifying with the mind. This method never works. You can only stop the flow of thoughts by refusing to have any interest in it.

-Annamalai Swami

You can see more from Annamalai Swami here.

From Living by the Words of Bhagavan, page 348

Continuous Attentiveness Will Come with Long Practice – Annamalai Swami

You can only stop the flow of thoughts by refusing to have any interest in it. If you remain in the source, the Self, you can easily catch each thought as it rises. If you don’t catch the thoughts as they rise, they sprout, become plants and, if you still neglect them, they grow into great trees. Usually, the inattentive sadhaka only catches his thoughts at the tree stage.

If you can be continuously aware of each thought as it rises, and if you can be so indifferent to it that it doesn’t sprout or flourish, you are well on the way to escaping from the entanglements of the mind.

Questioner:  It is relatively easy to do this for some time. But then inattentiveness takes over and the trees flourish again.

Annamalai Swami:  Continuous attentiveness will only come with long practice. If you are truly watchful, each thought will dissolve at the moment that it appears. But to reach this level of disassociation you must have no attachments at all.

If you have the slightest interest in any particular thought, it will evade your attentiveness, connect with other thoughts, and take over your mind for a few seconds. This will happen more easily if you are accustomed to reacting emotionally to a particular thought.

If a particular thought causes emotions like worry, anger, love, hate, or jealousy to appear in you, these reactions will attach themselves to the rising thoughts and make them stronger. These reactions often cause you to lose your attention for a second or two. That kind of lapse gives the thought more than enough time to grow and flourish.

You must be completely impassive and detached when thoughts of this kind appear. Your desires and your attachments are simply reactions to thoughts that appear in consciousness. You can conquer them both by not reacting to new thoughts that arise.

You can transcend the mind completely by not paying any attention to its contents. And once you have gone beyond the mind you never need be troubled by it again.

After his realization, King Janaka said, ‘Now I have found the thief who has been stealing my happiness. I will not allow him to do this anymore.’ The thief who had been stealing his happiness was his mind.

If you are always watching with open eyes thieves cannot enter. They can only break-in while you are asleep and snoring. Similarly, if you are continuously alert, the mind cannot delude you. It will only take over if you fail to keep your attention on rising thoughts.

-Annamalai Swami

You can see more from Annamalai Swami here.

Here you can read Osho describing the very process that Annamalai Swami is talking about. Osho calls it “thought birth control.”

From Living by the Words of Bhagavan, David Godman, page 348

Psychology Cannot Take You Beyond Mind – Osho

I am a psychologist. I was hoping that studying psychology would help to change my life, but nothing like that has happened. What should I do now?

Psychology is still a very, very immature science. It is very rudimentary; it is only the beginning. It is not yet a way of life – it cannot transform you. It can certainly give you a few insights into the mind, but those insights are not going to be transforming. Why? – because transformation always happens from a higher plane. Transformation never means solving problems – remaining on the same plane – that means adjustment. Psychology is still trying to help you adjust – to adjust to the society which is itself insane, to adjust to the family, to adjust to the ideas that are dominant around you. But all those ideas – your family, your society – they themselves are ill, sick, and to adjust to them will give you a certain normality, at least a superficial appearance of health, but it is not going to transform you.

Transformation means to change the plane of your understanding. It comes through transcendence. If you want to change your mind, you have to go to the state of no-mind. Only from that height will you be able to change your mind, because from that height you will be the master. Remaining in the mind and trying to change the mind by mind itself is a futile process. It is like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings. It is like a dog trying to catch hold of its own tail; sometimes they do, sometimes they behave very humanly. The dog is sitting in the warm sun early in the morning and he looks at the tail just resting by his side – naturally, the curiosity arises: Why not catch hold of it? He tries, fails, feels offended, annoyed; tries hard, fails harder, becomes mad, crazy. But he will never be able to catch hold of the tail – it is his own tail. The more he jumps, the more the tail will jump.

Psychology can give you a few insights into the mind, but because it cannot take you beyond the mind it can’t be of any help.

Sam became a psychiatrist and began to prosper. He bought a big expensive limousine and drove it out for the first time. After he had been riding for a few moments, another car slammed into him. He jumped out of his smashed Cadillac, went over to the car that had rammed his, shook his fist at it, and roared, “You idiot! You moron! You crook of a rat! You son of a . . .!” Then he suddenly remembered he was a psychiatrist and lowered his voice and softly asked, “Why do you hate your mother?”

Psychology cannot help. I have heard another story about this same Sam – a story of when he was no more in the world, he had died.

The widow was tending to the plants around her husband’s grave. As she bent over, some blades of grass tickled the bare flesh under her skirt. Startled, she turned around quickly, but there was no one in sight. Sighing, she turned back to the grave and whispered, “Sam, behave yourself! And remember, you are supposed to be dead.”

Neither in life nor in death is psychology going to help you much. You can be helped only by religion.

Now the psychologist is trying to play the role of the master, which is utterly pretentious. The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the psychiatrist are not masters! They don’t know themselves. Yes, they have understood a little bit about the mechanism of the mind, they have studied, they are well informed. But information never changes anybody, it never brings any revolution. Deep down the person remains the same. He can talk beautifully, he can give you good advice, but he cannot follow his own advice.

The psychoanalyst cannot be the master. But in the West particularly he has become so successful professionally that even the priest is in tremendous awe. Even the priests – the Catholic and the Protestant – are studying psychoanalysis and other schools of psychology, because they see that people are not coming to the priest anymore, they are going to the psychoanalyst. The priest is becoming afraid that he is losing his job.

The priest has dominated people for hundreds of years. He was the wise man – he has lost his attraction. And people cannot live without advisors; they need somebody to tell them what to do because they never grow up. They are like small children, always in need of being told what to do and what not to do. Up to now the priest used to do that; now the priest has lost his charm, his validity. He is no longer contemporary; he has become out of date. Now the psychoanalyst has taken his place, he is the priest now.

But as the priest was false, so is the psychoanalyst. The priest was using religious jargon to exploit people; the psychologist is using scientific jargon to exploit the same people. Neither was the priest awakened, nor is the psychoanalyst awakened. Man can be helped only by somebody who is a buddha already; otherwise, he cannot be helped.

All your advisors will make more and more mess out of you. The more you listen to advisors, the more you will become messed up – because they don’t know what they are saying! They don’t even agree amongst themselves. Freud says one thing, Adler says another, Jung says still another. And now there are a thousand and one schools. And every school is fanatical about its philosophy – that it has the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not only does it say that it is true; it says it has the truth, and everybody else is lying, deceiving.

If you listen to these psychoanalysts, if you go from one psychoanalyst to another, you will be more puzzled. The only help that they can give to you is that if you are intelligent enough you will become so fed up with them, so bored with them, that you will simply drop the idea of being transformed, and you may start living your life normally, without bothering much about transformation – if you are intelligent, which is very rare, because intelligence is crushed from the very beginning. You are made mediocres. From the very beginning, intelligence is destroyed. Only a few people somehow escape the society and remain intelligent.

Nagesh, you ask me, “What should I do now?”

My suggestion is: you have done enough. Now learn something which is not doing but non-doing. Be here, and learn – not to do but to be. Sit silently, doing nothing. Within three to nine months, if one is patient enough and if one can simply go on sitting for hours together every day – as much as one can find time just sit . . . In the beginning, great turmoil will arise in your mind; everything from the unconscious will start surfacing. You will see it as if you are going mad. Go on watching – don’t be worried. You cannot go mad because you are already mad, so there is nothing to lose and nothing to fear.

A politician, a great politician, was consulting a psychoanalyst. The politician was suffering from an inferiority complex – all politicians suffer from inferiority complexes. If they don’t suffer from inferiority complexes, they will not be politicians in the first place. To be a politician means striving to be superior, to be in power, so one can prove to others and to oneself, “I am not inferior. Look! I am the prime minister. Look! Only I am the prime minister of the country and nobody else – how can I be inferior?”

Politics arises out of the inferiority complex – all power politics arises out of the inferiority complex. So it was not rare that the politician was suffering from an inferiority complex.

The psychoanalyst worked on the politician year in, year out. After two or three years, listening to all his gibberish nonsense . . . because what can a politician say? For hours together he would lie down on the couch and talk nonsense.

After three years, one day when he came, the psychoanalyst received him with great joy and said, “I am glad to declare, after three years’ research on you, that you don’t suffer from an inferiority complex. I have come to this conclusion after such a long effort that it can’t be wrong. You don’t suffer from an inferiority complex – simply forget all about it.”

The politician was very happy and he said, “I am grateful to you, but can you tell me how you arrived at this conclusion?”

The psychoanalyst said, “Because you are simply inferior – how can you suffer from an inferiority complex?”

Nagesh, you need not be worried. If sitting silently you start feeling madness arising, don’t be worried – you can’t be more mad than you already are. Man cannot fall more. He has fallen to the rock bottom. Now there is no further to fall.

Sitting silently you will see madness arising in you, because it has remained repressed. And you keep occupied with things – psychology etcetera – now you will become occupied with meditation and sannyas, but these are all occupations and you are not allowing your unconscious to reveal itself to you. It is frightening.

My suggestion to you is, just sit silently as much as you can find time to. Zen people sit silently at least six to eight hours per day. In the beginning it is really maddening. The mind plays so many tricks on you, tries to drive you crazy, creates imaginary fears, hallucinations. The body starts playing tricks on you . . . all kinds of things will happen. But if you can go on witnessing, within three to nine months everything settles, and settles of its own accord – not because you have to do something. Without your doing, it simply settles, and when a stillness arises, uncultivated, unpracticed, it is something superb, something tremendously graceful, exquisite. You have never tasted anything like it before – it is pure nectar . . .

You have transcended the mind! All mind problems are solved. Not that you have found a solution, but simply they have fallen by themselves – by witnessing, by just witnessing.

You are already too knowledgeable. No more knowledge is needed; you need unlearning. Knowledgeable people are very cunning people – they can always go on finding excuses to remain the same.

A professor of philosophy and psychology was addicted to moonshine whiskey. One night, after guzzling a large amount, he went into his cabin, undressed for bed, and tried to blow out the candle. His alcoholic breath burst into flame.

Sadly, shaken by the experience, he called out to his wife, “Bring me the Bible, Martha. This here has been a terrible lesson to me. I am going to swear off.”

The happy housewife brought the Bible in a hurry, stood by while her man put his hand on it and looked heavenward: “I swear by all that is holy,” intoned he, “that I will never again blow on a lighted candle.”

Mind is cunning. You have to go beyond mind – that’s what meditation is all about.

-Osho

From The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, V.2, Discourse #8, Q3

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.

That is Your Pure Gold – Osho

Is it useful for those of us with you to try to understand what is happening in our meditation and growth, and to be able to articulate it? Or do we just need to watch?

Maneesha, you just need to watch. The moment you start thinking, “What is happening?” mind will come back. If you start analyzing, mind will come back. Whatever you do, except watching, mind will come back. That is the only enemy to be avoided, and watching is the only shelter in which the mind cannot enter.

Your question is significant. One tends to think, “What is happening?” and analyze it. But one is unaware of the fact that in this effort of analyzing, finding explanations, mind has come back from the back door. By watching, we are trying to get free from mind. All other activities belong to the mind.

So you need only to watch, you need only to get as deep in watching as you can. Go deeper and deeper to such an extent that mind is left miles back, and only a pure witness is there. That is your pure gold, that is your buddha.

-Osho

From Rinzai: Master of the Irrational, Discourse #5

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.

Seeing Directly What We Are – J. Krishnamurti

One is aware, and naturally so, of the danger of physical insecurity – not having enough money, proper health, clothes and shelter, and so on – but we are hardly aware of our inner psychological structure. One feels that one lacks the finesse, sensitivity and intelligence necessary to deal with the inward problems. 

Why is it that we are not as aware of the psychological dangers as the physical ones? We are well aware of the outward dangers – a precipice, poison, snakes, wild animals, or the destructive nature of war. Why is it that we are not completely aware inwardly of the psychological dangers such as nationalism, conflict within oneself, accepting ideologies, concepts and formulas, the danger of accepting authority of any kind, the danger of the constant battles between people no matter how closely they are related? . . . Either we escape from them, suppress them, try to forget them, or leave it to time to resolve them. We do all this because we do not know what else to do . . . there is never direct contact with the problem. There is never direct communication with the issue. We have to understand ourselves by seeing what we actually are; understanding it . . . through our own eyes, with our own hearts, our own minds. When we do that, all sense of following another, all sense of authority comes to an end. I think it is very important. Then do something directly for its own sake, not because someone tells us. I think this is the beginning of what it means to love. 

– J. Krishnamurti 

From the Brockwood Park talks, 1969; second talk