To Remove the Obstacles – Osho

Is it possible to meditate without any technique?

Deva Maturo, the question you have asked is certainly of great importance because meditation, as such, needs no technique at all. But techniques are needed to remove the obstacles in the way of meditation. So it has to be understood very clearly: meditation itself needs no techniques, it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness. Neither alertness is a technique, nor is awareness a technique.

But on the way to being alert, there are so many obstacles. For centuries man has been gathering those obstacles – they need to be removed. Meditation itself cannot remove them; certain techniques are needed to remove them. So the work of the techniques is just to prepare the ground, is just to prepare the way, the passage. The techniques in themselves are not meditation. If you stop at the technique, you have missed the point.

Krishnamurti was insisting his whole life that there is no technique for meditation. And the total result was not that millions of people attained to meditation; the total result was that millions of people became convinced that no technique is needed for meditation. But they forgot all about what they were going to do with the obstructions, the hindrances. So they remained intellectually convinced that no technique is needed. I have met many followers of J. Krishnamurti, very intimate ones, and I have asked them, “No technique is needed – I agree absolutely. But has meditation happened to you or to anyone else who has been listening to J. Krishnamurti?”

Although what he is saying is essentially true, he is saying only the positive side of the experience. There is a negative side also. And for that negative side all kinds of techniques are needed – are absolutely needed – because unless the ground is well prepared, and all the weeds and wild roots are taken away from the ground, you cannot grow roses and other beautiful flowers. Roses are in no way concerned with those roots, with the wild plants that you have removed. But the removal of those weeds was absolutely necessary for the ground to be in a right situation where roses can blossom.

You are asking, “Is it possible to meditate without any technique?” It is not only possible; it is the only possibility. No technique is needed at all – as far as meditation is concerned. But what are you going to do with your mind? Your mind will create a thousand and one difficulties. Those techniques are needed to remove the mind from the way, to create a space in which the mind becomes quiet, silent, almost absent. Then meditation happens on its own accord. It is not a question of technique. You don’t have to do anything.

Meditation is something natural, something that is already hidden inside you and is trying to find its way to reach to the open sky, to the sun, to the air. But mind is surrounding it from all sides; all doors are closed, all windows are closed. The techniques are needed to open the windows, to open the doors. And immediately the whole sky is available to you, with all its stars, with all its beauty, with all its sunsets, with all its sunrises.

Just a small window was preventing you . . . just a small piece of straw can go into your eye and it will prevent you from seeing the vast sky because you cannot open your eyes. It is absolutely illogical that just a small piece of straw or sand can prevent you from seeing the great stars, the infinite sky. But in fact they can – they do.

Techniques are needed to remove those straws, those pieces of sand, from your eyes. And meditation is your nature, is your very potential. It is another name for alertness.

The young father, taking his baby for a walk in the pram in the park, seemed quite unperturbed by the wails emerging from the pram. “Easy now, Albert,” he said quietly. “Keep calm, there’s a good fellow.”

Another howl rang out. “Now, now, Albert,” murmured the father, “keep your temper.”

A young mother, passing by, remarked, “I must congratulate you. You certainly know how to speak to babies.” Then, patting the baby on the head, she cooed, “What is bothering you, Albert?”

“No, no,” cried the father. “His name is Johnnie; I am Albert.”

He was simply trying to keep himself alert: “Albert, don’t lose your temper.” He does not want to forget; otherwise he would like to throw this baby into the lake.

Meditation is simply awareness without any effort, an effortless alertness; it does not need any technique. But your mind is so full of thoughts, so full of dreams, so much of the past, so much of the future – it is not here-now, and awareness has to be here-now. The techniques are needed to help you to cut your roots from the past, to cut your dreams from the future, and to keep you in this moment as if only this moment exists. Then there is no need of any technique.

Hymie Goldberg was visiting his friend, Mr. Cohen, who was dying. “Do us a favor,” said Hymie Goldberg, “when you go to heaven could you find a way of letting me know whether they play baseball up there?” Mr. Cohen said he would certainly try to contact his old friend if at all possible.

Only a few days after Mr. Cohen died, Hymie Goldberg had a phone call. “Hello, Hymie,” said Mr. Cohen. “It is your old friend here.”

“Cohen? Is it really you?” asked Hymie.

“Sure,” answered his friend. “I have some good news and some bad news. First, there sure is baseball in heaven. And the bad news is that you are pitching next Sunday.”

Life is a complicated affair. There is good news, and there is bad news. The good news is that there is no need of any technique; but the bad news is, without any technique you are not going to get it.

-Osho

From The Rebel, Discourse #24, Q1

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A Space Where Blessings Shower – Osho

Does psychological therapy help to go beyond the mind?

Vijen, psychological therapy can help you to understand the mind, but it cannot lead you beyond the mind.

Only one thing leads you beyond the mind and that is meditation. Meditation has nothing to do with psychotherapy, but psychotherapy can create a ground by giving you a better understanding of your mind to go into meditation. It cannot lead you directly into the transcendental, but it can be a help, just the way you prepare a garden. First, you prepare the soil, but that is not the garden. And just preparing the ground, removing the weeds, the grass, any wild growth, stones, roots, still it is not the garden — this much psychotherapy can do.

Now you will have to put seeds, give nourishment to those seeds, care and love and protection. And slowly, slowly the bare ground will start becoming greener. One day there will be flowers and fruits.

Psychotherapy is only a cleansing process, but it is like all cleansing processes. You have to clean your house every day; it is not as if once you have cleaned it you have cleaned it forever. Within twenty-four hours again dust gathers. You have to take a bath every day, or twice; otherwise you will start getting dirty.

Psychotherapy is good as a cleaning method, but it does not go beyond that. And if you remain addicted to psychotherapies you will have to clean yourself again and again. You will have a better understanding of the mind but just that much is not enough to create the world of the beyond. For that, seeds of meditation, awareness, watchfulness are absolutely necessary.

And once you have gone beyond the mind, psychotherapy becomes meaningless. Going beyond the mind simply means you have realized your own being. Now mind is left far behind. Going beyond the mind also means that now mind is going to function as a servant and you are the master. So whenever you need to, you can use it. Right now the situation is just the reverse. You are not the master, and the mind uses you. The mind is almost blind and it directs your life and sooner or later you are going to fall into a ditch. All minds lead finally to misery, to suffering.

Meditation is the only possibility for creating a space where blessings shower.

I am not against psychotherapies. I am simply telling you they can be used as a foothold to jump into meditation. You can jump into meditation directly too, but you will find it a little difficult because you don’t have a clean mind and a clean understanding. The mind will put every weight on you and drag you backwards. Psychotherapy is instrumental, helpful, but alone it is meaningless. I am using psychotherapy in this commune as a means towards meditation, as a help, as a preparation.

But in the West psychotherapy is used as an end to itself; hence psychotherapy in the West is not of much use. Unless it becomes a stepping-stone for meditation, you are moving in a circle. Every day you will have to clean. Once in a while you will have to go to a psychotherapist. People become addicted because it gives you a clean feeling, but that clean feeling remains only for a few days; again you have gathered all the rubbish.

Psychoanalysts ordinarily give their patients two sessions per week, for years, ten years, fifteen years, and still nobody is beyond the mind. After fifteen years of psychoanalysis one simply becomes addicted to psychoanalysis; now it has become a necessity. If you don’t go twice a week to a psychoanalyst you gather too much tension, too much dust, you feel too dirty, too heavy. Now you have created a new problem. Psychology rather than giving you freedom has given you new chains. It is as addictive as any alcohol or any drug. Nothing is wrong in it; in itself it is helpful and beautiful, but you should use it for something better.

Psychoanalysis is good but the good is the enemy of the best. You should not get addicted to the good. You should use the good as a stepping-stone for the best; otherwise it turns into an enemy.

Even psychoanalysts are very embarrassed by the fact that there is not a single man in the whole world who has been perfectly psychoanalyzed. And I am amazed at their stupidity. Hoping that someday some man will be perfectly psychoanalyzed is exactly like hoping that someday some house will be perfectly clean and there will be no need to clean it again. It is absolutely absurd. The house will need cleaning continually, because as time passes dirt gathers.

Even the cleanest mirror needs cleaning once in a while because dirt gathers on it, vapor gathers on it; it does not reflect clearly, it starts reflecting distortions. There will never be any man perfectly psychoanalyzed, because the process in itself is only of cleaning. Can you get your clothes cleaned forever, perfectly cleaned? They will again become ready to go into the laundry. So the people who are going continuously into psychotherapies are going into a kind of laundry, dry cleaning. It is good, but good is not enough.

Vijen, in a sense it can help if you use it as a means and you don’t forget that it is not all. In another sense it can be a disturbance, a barrier, if you think that this is all and there is nothing else beyond it.

That’s what is happening in the West. Psychotherapists think this is the ultimate, but they have not produced a single buddha. Even their founders, Freud or Jung or Adler are not awakened people. They are living in the same misery, in the same suffering as you are living. They are full of fear. They don’t know anything about death, that it is a fiction. They have not experienced their own being. They are just scratching on the surface. Mind is your surface; your being is in the center. How much you clean your surface does not matter, it is not going to lead you to the center. If you can use psychotherapy as a means it is good. If you think it is the end it is the enemy of your transcendence. It all depends on your intelligence.

A Jew asks his rabbi, “I have two problems. I have asked my boss a dozen times already, but he is determined to fire me at the end of the month.”

“And what is the other problem?” asks the rabbi.

“Ah well, my wife does not get pregnant, although she stays home and prays all day,” answers the Jew.

“You are doing it wrong,” suggests the rabbi. “Next time you stay at home to pray and send your wife to ask the boss.”

Three months later the happy Jew thanks the rabbi: “Your help has worked! The boss has rehired me and my wife is pregnant!”

The rabbi was certainly a great psychoanalyst and did help the poor fellow. If you need this kind of help then psychotherapy is good, but don’t ask for more.

-Osho

From The Invitation, Discourse #17

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You Cannot Go Beyond It – Osho

What is witnessing?

Whatever you are doing….

For example, right now you are writing. You can write in two ways. The ordinary way that you always write…. You can try another method: you can write it and you can also inside witness that you are writing it.

Does that mean some kind of detachment?

A detachment. You are a little distant, away, watching yourself writing.

So any act, just moving my hand, I can watch. Walking on the road, I can watch myself walking. Eating, I can watch.

So whatever you are doing, just remain a witness.

But doesn’t that have a tendency to develop some kind of super-ego, a watcher, a watcher, a watcher?

Not at all. If you have any ego, it will destroy it, because this watching is very much poisonous to the ego. It is not ego that watches. The ego is absolutely blind. It cannot watch anything. You can watch your ego.

For example, somebody insults you and you feel hurt, and your ego feels hurt. You can watch it. You can watch that you are feeling hurt, your ego is feeling hurt, that you are angry. And you can still remain aloof, detached, just a watcher on the hills. Whatever goes on in the valley you can see.

So all these methods are basically different ways of witnessing. I have condensed in a very simple way. First, watch your actions of the body. Second, watch your actions of the mind: thoughts, imaginations. Third, watch your actions of the heart: feelings, love, hate, moods, sadness, happiness.

And if you can succeed in watching all these three, and as your witnessing grows deeper and deeper, a moment comes that there is only witnessing but nothing to witness. The mind is empty, the heart is empty, the body is relaxed.

In that moment happens something like a quantum leap. Your whole witnessing jumps upon itself. It witnesses itself, because there is nothing else to witness. And this is the revolution which I call enlightenment, self-realization. Or you can give it any name, but this is the ultimate experience of bliss. You cannot go beyond it.

-OSHO

From The Last Testament, V.3, Chapter Eighteen

October 8, 1985 Evening in Sanai Grove, Rajneeshpuram, OR

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Watchfulness-The Shortest Way to Enlightenment – Osho

A while ago I realized that it is not situations but rather people that I can react to – Because if someone I feel good about does something, it doesn’t bother me, but if someone I don’t like does the same thing, I may think, “What an awful thing to do.”

Intellectually I have come to understand that the reason I don’t like certain people is simply that they reflect certain characteristics in myself that I would rather not know about.

I was hoping that gradually, deep inside, I would come to accept this rather unpalatable fact, and that my judgments would miraculously disappear without my having to face anything unpleasant in myself. Unfortunately, so far this hasn’t happened. I still react strongly to some people, and find it difficult sometimes even to remember to turn my energy into watching myself rather than judging. I have been comforting myself by saying, “Nothing to do, just keep watching,”

But as my watching is so wishy-washy and this is taking so long, I was wondering if you could suggest some trick to help me – preferably a shortcut through the whole process.

There is no trick and there is no shortcut because watchfulness is the shortest way to enlightenment. And the question of tricks does not arise at all.

No trick can help you.

Tricks are good in playing cards and cheating people, but you cannot cheat existence, you cannot deceive life.

If you want to go a longer way, that can be found; because you can be shown some unnecessary, non-essential things and the path becomes longer.

Religions have done that. They have made the path very long, so that it cannot be achieved in one life, many lives are needed. It was a strategy of the priests to deceive people because if it is said that it can be achieved right now, then the question is why are you not achieving it, perhaps you don’t want it, perhaps you want to wait a little, perhaps you want to finish some other jobs first, perhaps you think that enlightenment should be the last thing in life. And the trivia, the mundane things of life, keep you engaged.

But there may be a few people who may try and still will not get it. Then the priest will be in trouble because he himself is as far away as you are. To be a priest is just a profession for him, he is not a seeker. And you may start asking him, “Why is it not happening?” And he cannot really answer you relevantly because he does not know himself what it is, what can prevent it, what can help it.

So the easiest way for him is to say, “It is such a long way. It will happen but in several lives. So don’t be in a hurry, it is not something that you can manage now. Go on working, go on praying; when the time is ripe in some life it will happen.” This was just a shelter for the priest.

Watchfulness is the shortest way. It does not need lives to attain it. It needs not length of time but intensity of longing, the way you feel thirst; when you feel thirsty for truth – as if it is a question of life and death – you put your whole energy to this moment and the door is bound to open.

And remember never to think of tricks because you cannot get anywhere through tricks as far as reality is concerned.

The simple truth is that watchfulness is the shortest possible way. It cannot be made shorter.

What is expected of you in watchfulness . . . just try to see, nothing is expected. You already watch things; you know what watchfulness is. You watch a football match, you watch a movie, you watch the television. You know what watchfulness is, there is no need to tell you; just the same watchfulness has to be applied to the screen of the mind. Close your eyes and let your mind function as a screen of a movie or a television, and whatever passes on the mind you simply remain watchful, doing nothing, not even judging.

And this is the only miracle I know of, that as your watchfulness becomes more and more stable, the screen becomes empty. Soon the watcher is there but there is nothing to be watched, the screen is completely empty.

And when the watcher is left alone, it starts watching itself – because that is its nature, to watch. And to watch oneself is the greatest happening in anyone’s life. Everything else happens through it – blissfulness, silence, peace, ecstasy, and finally going beyond even all these experiences and just remaining in a pure isness.

Those who have attained that pure isness have fulfilled the mission of human life.

-Osho

From The Transmission of the Lamp, Discourse #23

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

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The Groove Goes Deep – Osho

Last night you said that desires move between the dead past and the imaginary future. Please explain how and why this dead past proves so dynamic and powerful that it compels a person to flow into the process of endless desire. How can one be free from this dynamic past, the unconscious and the collective unconscious?

The past is not dynamic at all: it is totally dead. But still it has a weight – a dead weight. That dead weight works; it is not dynamic at all. Why the dead weight works has to be understood.

The past is so forceful because it is the known, the experienced, and mind always feels fearful of the unknown, the unexperienced. And how can you desire the unknown? You cannot desire the unknown. Only the known can be desired. So desires are always repetitious. They repeat, they are circular. You always move in the same pattern, in the same circle. The mind becomes just a groove of repetitions, and the more you repeat a particular thing, the more weighty it becomes, because the groove goes deep.

So the past is important not because it is dynamic; it forces you to do something and to desire not because it is forceful, powerful, alive – but only because it is a dead groove. And the past has been repeated so many times that to repeat it has become easy and automatic. The more you repeat a particular thing the more convenient and easier it becomes. The basic convenience is this: that if you are repeating a thing, you need not be aware.

Awareness is the most inconvenient thing. If you are repeating a particular thing, then you need not be aware. You can be just deep asleep, and the thing can be repeated automatically, mechanically. So it is convenient to repeat the past because you need not be aware. You can go on sleeping, and the mind will repeat itself.

That’s why those who say that desirelessness is the state of bliss also say that desirelessness is synonymous with awareness. You cannot be desireless unless you are totally aware. Or, if you are aware you will find that you are desireless, because desires can have a repetitive force upon the mind only when you are not aware. So the more asleep the mind is, the more repetitive and the more mechanical. So the past has the grip only because it is a repetition – and because it is the known. How can you desire the unknown?

For the unknown there can be no desire. The unknown is inconceivable. That’s why, even when we begin to desire God, we are not desiring the unknown. By “God” we must mean something which I known. So go deep: what do you mean by “God”? – Particularly your God. What do you mean by it? You will find under the garb of “God” something known, something experienced.

It may be eternal pleasure. So the so-called religious persons go on saying, “Why are you wasting your life in desires which are momentary? Come to us! Here is the fulfillment; here is the possibility to achieve permanent, eternal pleasure.” The language can be understood. You know the momentary pleasure, so you can desire permanent pleasure – but under the garb of God there is pleasure.

You may be seeking God only because you are fearful of death. Then, under the garb of God, you are really asking for immortality, not to die ever, an eternal life. You know this life – that is your experience – now you want to make it eternal. So whenever we talk about God, the Divine, Liberation, mokhsa, don’t be deceived by the words because the words may be hiding something totally different. And they are hiding it – because how can you desire the unknown? How can you conceive of it? How can you ask for it?

Really, the phenomenon is quite different. When you are not in desire, the unknown comes to you – you cannot desire it. When you are desireless the unknown comes to you. You cannot desire it! The state of desirelessness is the opening for the unknown to come. You cannot desire it because the very desire will become the hindrance.

So mind goes on repeating; it is a mechanical thing. So the dynamism is not in the mind – mind is just a dead, mechanical thing – the dynamism is in your consciousness, and if your consciousness is identified with the mind then the dead mind becomes dynamic. The dynamism belongs to your energy; it is not part of your mind. You are the dynamism behind it. If you are identified with the mind, if you think that you are the mind, then the mind begins to be dynamic. If you are not identified with the mind, then the mind is just dead – just a dead weight, just a mechanical accumulation.

It is a long accumulation – millennia of evolution, many, many, many lives are accumulated there. It is not only that your mind belongs to this life – it belongs to life as such. It has evolved, so it has deep grooves. It is not only that you fall in love: your father and mother have fallen in love before you; their fathers and their mothers and theirs and theirs – they have all fallen in love. The mind has a deep groove of falling in love, so when you fall m love don’t be deceived that you are falling in love. The whole humanity is behind you; the whole humanity has made the groove. It is in your bones, it is in your cells, it is in your very metabolism. Every cell has a sex part in it, and every cell has a groove, and every cell has a mind, memory – long memories, beginningless memories. So if you are identified with this mind, it becomes a force – a dynamic force. You give the energy, but the dead machine begins to move. You pedal it.

So remember: energy belongs to you; dynamism belongs to you. Mind is a mechanical thing produced by millennia of evolution, but it has deep grooves. And if you are identified, then you will have to flow through those grooves. There is no escape then.

So the first thing is how not to identify, how to remember constantly that mind is one thing and you are something else. It is difficult, it is arduous – but it is possible. It is not impossible. And once, if you have even a moment’s glimpse of unidentified Existence, then you will never be the same again. Once you come to know that mind is not the force: “I am the force, the vitality comes from me,” if even for a single moment you have the glimpse of your mastery, then mind will never be master again. And only then can you move into the unknown.

Mind cannot move into the unknown: it is produced by the known. It is a product of the known, so it cannot move into the unknown. That’s why mind can never know what Truth is, what God is. Mind can never know what freedom is, mind can never know what life is – because intrinsically mind is dead. It is dead: dust accumulated through centuries and centuries – just dust, memory dust.

It seems that mind forces you. It doesn’t force you really; it only gives you the easiest grooves.

It supplies to you only the repeated routine tracks, and you fall victim to convenience – because to break a new route and to create a new track and to move in a new groove is very difficult and inconvenient. That is what is meant by tapa – austerity. If you begin to move in some new grooves which are created not by the mind but created by consciousness, then you are in tapascharya – in austerity. It is arduous.

Gurdjieff had many exercises. One exercise was to deny the mechanism sometimes. You are hungry: just deny and let your body suffer. You be just calm and quiet, and remember that the body is hungry. Don’t suppress it; don’t force it not to be hungry. It is hungry; you know. But at the same time say to it, “I am not going to fulfill this hunger today. Be hungry, suffer! Now, I am not going to move today in this supplied groove. I will remain aloof.”

And, suddenly, if you can do this, you begin to feel a gap. The body is hungry, but somewhere there is a distance between you and it. If you try to occupy your mind, then you have missed the point. If you go to the temple and begin to do kirtan and singing just to forget the hunger, then you have missed the point. Let the body be hungry. Don’t occupy your mind to escape from hunger. Remain hungry, but just tell the body, “Today I am not going to fall in the trap.” You remain hungry, you suffer.

There are persons who are doing fasting, but meaninglessly because whenever they fast they try to occupy the mind so that the hunger should not be known and should not be felt. If the hunger is not felt, the whole point is missed! Then you are playing tricks. Let the hunger be there in its totality, in its intensity. Let it be there; don’t escape from it. Let the fact of it be there, present, and remain aloof and tell the body, “Today I am not going to give you anything.” There is neither conflict nor suppression nor any escape.

If you can do this, then suddenly you become aware of a gap. Your mind asks for something. For example, someone has become angry. He is angry with you, and the mind begins to react, to be angry. Just tell the mind, “I am not going to fall in the trap this time.” Be aloof. Let the anger be there in the mind, but be aloof. Don’t cooperate, don’t be identified, and you will feel that anger is somewhere else. It surrounds you, but it is not in you, it doesn’t belong to you. It is just like smoke around you. It goes on, goes on, and waits for you to come and cooperate.

There will be every temptation. This is what is really meant by temptation. Mm? – no devil is there to tempt you. Your own mind tempts you, because that’s the most convenient way to be and to behave. Convenience is the temptation; convenience is the devil. The mind will say, “Be angry!” The situation is there and the mechanism is just on. Always, whenever this situation was there, you have been angry, so the mind supplies you again with the same reaction.

As far as it goes it is good because mind makes you ready to do something you have always been doing; but sometimes just stand off, off the track, and tell the mind, “Okay, anger is there outside. Someone is angry with me. You are supplying, me with an old reaction, a stereotyped reaction, but this time I am not going to cooperate. I will just stand here and observe and see what happens.” Suddenly the whole situation changes.

If you don’t cooperate the mind falls dead, because it is your cooperation which gives it dynamism, energy. It is your energy, but you only become aware when it is used by the mind. Don’t give it any cooperation, and the mind will just fall down as if without a backbone – just a dead snake with no life. It will be there, and for the first time you will become aware of a certain energy in you which doesn’t belong to the mind but belongs to you.

This energy is pure energy, and with this energy one can move into the unknown. Really, this energy moves into the unknown if it is not associated with the mind. If it is associated with the mind, then it moves into the known. If it moves into the known, then it takes the shape of desire. If it moves into the unknown, then it takes the shape of desirelessness. Then there is sheer movement – a play of energy, a sheer dance of energy, an overflowing energy moving into the unknown.

Mind can only supply the known. If you can be detached from your mind, the energy will have to move, it cannot remain static. That is what is meant by energy: it has to move! Movement is its very life. Movement is not a quality of energy: movement is the very life! It is not that energy cannot be without movement – no! It is the very life, intrinsic.

Energy means movement, so it moves. If mind supplies its grooves, then it moves into the grooves. If there is no supply of grooves and if you have just put off the mind, then too it moves, but now the movement is into the uncharted. This movement is the play, the leela this movement is creative; this movement is spiritual. And it is desireless. It is not because there is some desire that you move. It is because you cannot do anything else but move: you are energy and movement. So see the difference.

When mind works, it works as a dead weight, a mechanical weight, through the past. It pushes you towards the future. Because the past is pushing towards the future, the past again projects its own desires. So first understand the repetitiveness of desires.

There are not so many desires. Really, there are very few. You go on repeating them. Just count how many desires you have. They are not many – very few! You will not even be able to find enough to count on your fingers. How many desires do you have? Very few! And, really, if you look deeply, you may even find that only one desire is there. There are modifications of it, but really only one desire, and the same desire is being repeated continuously. Life after life it is being repeated. You go on repeating and then it begins to seem, it begins to appear, that you are helpless, that the wheel is moving and you cannot do anything. It is not so. You are helpless only because you have forgotten totally that the energy by which the wheel is moving is given by you.

Because of the past, the future is just a repetition. It is the projected past. You again desire the same thing, and you go on again and again. That’s why I said that past and future are parts of mind, not parts of time. Time is just here and now, the present. If mind is not working, then energy will be here and now in the moment. It will move because it is energy, but now the movement will be into the unknown. The known is not there at all. Mind is not, so the known is not.

Someone asked Hui-Hai, “How did you achieve? How did you reach?”

Hui-Hai said, “When I became a no-mind, then I achieved, then I reached.”

We are minds. That means: tethered to the past. If we can become no-minds that means untethered to the past – then the moment is free, fresh, and energy moves – not for something but because it is energy. Remember the difference exactly: it moves not for something; it moves because it is energy.

A river is moving; ordinarily we think it is moving for the sea. How can it know? It is not moving for the sea. It is moving because it is energy. Ultimately, the sea happens to be there; that is another thing. So when you move into the unknown, ultimately you reach to the Divine. It happens to be there. If your movement is pure, you reach it.

The river goes on moving without knowing, without any map. The past cannot supply the map because the river is not going to move on the past tracks again, so every step is into the unknown. And where it is going, there is no way to know. It is not moving because of any desire; it is not moving for something. The future is unknown – just unknown, dark. It moves. Why does it move? It moves because it is energy.

A seed is moving, a tree is growing, stars are moving. Why do they move? Have they to reach somewhere? No! They move because they are energy; pure energy is moving. Because pure energy cannot do anything else, it moves. So when you become just pure energy, not mind but no-mind energy, you move; and then every step is just into the unknown. Then life becomes bliss, it becomes ecstatic, because the old is never repeated again. Never will the morning be the same again, never again this moment. Now it is a sensation, a thrill every time. This thrill creates Meera’s dance; this thrill creates Chaitanya’s singing with this thrill, every moment something new is bursting, exploding. A Buddha is never bored. He looks fresh.

Maulingputta came to Buddha. He was a very inquiring young man, a great scholar, one who knew all that can be known from scriptures, a great pundit. When he came to Buddha he began to ask many questions. The second day again he asked many questions. The third day again he asked many questions. Ananda, another disciple of Buddha’s, was just bored. He asked Buddha, “Are you not bored? He is repeating the same questions again and again.”

Buddha asked Ananda, “Has he repeated? Has he repeated a single question?”

Every moment is so new for a Buddha-conscious mind. For a Buddha-like mind, everything is so new, how can you repeat the old question again? Even the questioner does not remain the same. How can you ask the same question you asked yesterday? The Ganges has flowed so much, so how can you ask the same question again? You will never be the same again yourself.

And Buddha said, “Even if he is asking the same questions, he is not asking the same person. So how can I say he is repeating? He must have asked someone else. Yesterday where was l? The energy has moved.”

Someone was very angry, insulted Buddha; then felt sorry, and the next day came to ask Buddha’s forgiveness. Buddha was just bewildered, and he said, “You are a strange man! You insult one person and then you ask pardon from somebody else.”

The man said, “What are you saying? Am I strange, or are you? I came yesterday and insulted you. I felt very sorry and I couldn’t sleep.”

Buddha said, “That’s why you are still repeating. But I could sleep and now I am a different man. The river has gone on. It is not the same bank again, and I will never be the same so now you are in difficulty, because you cannot ask pardon of a man you will never meet. If I ever meet him I will tell him whatsoever you have said to me.”

This energy moves into the unknown. It is fresh, young, so a Buddha can never be old. The body, of course, will become old, but a Buddha can never be old. He will remain young. That’s why we have never pictured Ram, Krishna or Buddha as old. They became old, but we have no pictures of Krishna’s old age, of Ram’s old age, of Buddha’s old age, of Mahavir’s old age. We have no pictures!

It is not that they never became old – the body has to follow the common lot – but by not creating pictures of their old age we have just meant something more. Really, they were never old because they were so moving – so moving and so young. For such persons death is not an end. It is again a further movement. It is not an end at all.

So mind is not dynamic: mind is mechanical. It can become dynamic if you cooperate with it. Don’t cooperate with it! Remember your aloofness, create a distance. Be aware, and then the mind will be there but you will be outside.

The English word “ecstasy” is very beautiful and meaningful. You may not have even conceived of what this word means – “ecstasy”. It means to stand outside; the word means to stand outside. If you can stand outside of yourself, if you can be outside of yourself, you are in ecstasy. Someone has suggested that to translate “Samadhi” as ”ecstasy” is not good because the word “Samadhi” doesn’t mean to stand outside. Really, Samadhi means to stand inside. So someone has suggested a new word, he has coined a new word: instead of ecstasy he says it is better to translate Samadhi as “instasy” – to stand inside.

Really, these two words mean two different things, but in a certain way they mean the same. If you can stand out of your mind, then you will be able to stand in yourself. If you can stand outside yourself – the so-called self – then you will be, for the first time, inside. So ecstasy is “instasy”. Then you will be in your center.

If you are out of your mind, then you will be centered in yourself. So going out of the mind is going into consciousness. That’s why mind has to be understood as mechanical, as a mechanism, as accumulation, as the past. And once you feel it, you are out of it. But we go on, we continue to identify ourselves with it.

Whenever you say, “This is my thought,” you are identifying. Change the language, and sometimes it helps very much – if you can just change the language! Language has such a deep grip. Say, “This belongs to my past mind,” and feel the difference. When you say, “This is my thought,” you are identified. Say, “This belongs to my mind, my past mind,” and feel how only a change of language creates a distance.

For example, we say, “My mind is tense.” Then you are identified. We even say, “I am tense.” Then there is even more identification. When I say, “I am tense,” there is no gap. When I say, “My mind is tense,” there is a little gap. If I can say, “I am aware that the mind is tense,” then there is a greater gap, and the greater the gap, the less will be the tension.

When we say, “I am tense,” it looks as if someone else is responsible. So psychology suggests never to say “I am tense,” because subtly it makes someone else responsible. They say that rather than to say “I am tense,” one should say, “I am tensing.” Then the responsibility is yours.

So break the old habits of language, mind, thoughts, and then your energy will move. And once the mind is not there, you are free for the first time.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #4, Q1

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

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Meditation is Your Mastercard – Osho

The other night during darshan, listening to your answer to Nivedano’s question, I had tears running down my face. For the first time in the seven years I’ve been with you, I could not only intellectually understand but really feel that to look inside oneself is the only way to find the real treasures of life. Even though I am feeling this so strongly, it doesn’t make it easier to meditate, to look inside.

In the past my favorite subject for you to talk about has always been love and relationships. Now, I can’t get enough of hearing you talk about meditation. Beloved Master, could you please speak about vipassana meditation?

Prem Sampurna, there are hundreds of methods of meditation, but perhaps vipassana has a unique status; just the same way as there have been thousands of mystics, but Gautam Buddha has a uniqueness of his own. In many ways he is incomparable, in many ways he has done more for humanity than anybody else. In many ways his search for truth was more sincere, more authentic than anybody else’s.

Why am I reminded of Gautam Buddha? I am reminded of Gautam Buddha because you have asked a question about vipassana meditation. That is the meditation through which Gautam Buddha became enlightened.

The very word vipassana in Pali, the language in which Gautam Buddha spoke . . . he was perfectly acquainted with Sanskrit – as a prince he was well educated in the highest literature of those days. But when he started speaking, he never used Sanskrit because Sanskrit was the language of the intellectuals, of the brahmins, of the priests, not of the people.

It has never been a living language. It has a uniqueness among all the languages of the world – it has been spoken only by the learned, by the scholarly amongst themselves; and because of its unknowability, the masses have been mystified by it. Translated, it contains nothing special, and sometimes it contains nothing but bullshit, but it has a very musical sound.

Its construction is the most perfect of any language in the world. It is very exhaustive – fifty-two letters in the alphabet, English has only twenty-six; it means the other twenty-six sounds are unavailable in English. Sanskrit is twice as rich because it can express all possible sounds; it has not left a single sound out of its alphabet. Subtle nuances have also been taken into account – sounds which are very difficult to pronounce, sounds which are rarely used by anyone, but which are possible to use, have been included.

But Gautam Buddha decided to speak in the language of the masses. It was a revolutionary step because the languages of the masses are not grammatically right. Just by use, by ordinary people changing their tone, their sound, the words become easier; they are not complicated.

We have seen this happen to English in India. English was the language of the bureaucracy, of the people who were in power, of the British Empire. But a few words were bound to enter into the local people’s languages. And the transformation is worth seeing; it will explain to you the difference between a language which is really living, alive, because rough people use it . . . it has the quality of a wildflower, the quality of a forest, not of a well-clipped British garden.

People have an uncanny sense to change words into their simplest form; for example, the English word “report.” Even the faraway villagers who don’t come in contact with educated people have to use that word – once in a while they have to go to the police station. But in the villages of India the word “report” has become rapat. Report is a little difficult, rapat is more alive.

“Station” is a word that is bound to be used by the people of the lowest education or no education. In Punjab it has become satation; in other parts it has become teshan, but nowhere is it station.

Pali is a language of the simple, and in a way, innocent and ignorant people. Vipassana is their word. In Sanskrit it has its parallel which the public has changed according to their convenience. In Sanskrit it is vipashyana – that is a little difficult. But in Pali it is simply vipassana. The meaning is the same. The meaning – the literal meaning – of the word is “to look” and the metaphorical meaning is “to watch, to witness.”

Gautam Buddha has chosen a meditation which can be called the essential meditation. All other meditations are different forms of witnessing, but witnessing is present in every kind of meditation as an essential part; it cannot be avoided. Buddha has deleted everything else and kept only the essential part – to witness.

There are three steps of witnessing – Buddha is a very scientific thinker. He begins with the body because that is the easiest to witness. It is easy to witness my hand moving, my hand being raised. I can witness myself walking on the road, I can witness each step as I walk. I can witness while I am eating my food.

So the first step in vipassana is witnessing the actions of the body, which is the simplest step. Any scientific method will always begin from the simplest.

And while witnessing the body, you will be amazed at the new experiences. When you move your hand with witnessing, watchfulness, alertness, consciousness, you will feel a certain grace and a certain silence in the hand. You can do the movement without witnessing; it will be quicker, but it will lose the grace.

The Buddha used to walk so slowly that many times he was asked why he was walking so slowly.

He said, “This is part of my meditation: always to walk as if you are walking in winter into a cold stream . . . slowly, alert, because the stream is very cold; aware because the current is very strong; witnessing each of your steps because you can slip on the stones in the stream.”

The method remains the same, only the object changes with each step. The second step is watching the mind. Now you move into a more subtle world – watching your thoughts. If you have been successful in watching your body, there is not going to be any difficulty. Thoughts are subtle waves – electronic waves, radio waves – but they are as material as your body. They are not visible, just as the air is not visible, but the air is as material as the stones; so are your thoughts – material but invisible.

That is the second step, the middle step. You are moving toward invisibility, but still, it is material . . . watching your thoughts. The only condition is, don’t judge. Don’t judge because the moment you start judging you will forget watching.

There is no antagonism against judging. The reason it is prohibited is that the moment you start judging – “This is a good thought” – for that much space you were not witnessing. You started thinking, you became involved. You could not remain aloof, standing by the side of the road and just seeing the traffic.

Don’t become a participant, either by appraising, valuing, condemning; no attitude should be taken about what is passing in your mind. You should watch your thoughts just as if clouds are passing in the sky. You don’t make judgments about them – this black cloud is very evil, this white cloud looks like a sage. Clouds are clouds; they are neither evil nor good.

So are thoughts – just a small wavelength passing through your mind. Watch without any judgment and you are again in for a great surprise. As your watching becomes settled, thoughts will come less and less. The proportion is exactly the same: if you are fifty percent settled in your witnessing, then fifty percent of your thoughts will disappear. If you are sixty percent settled in your witnessing, then only forty percent of thoughts will be there. When you are ninety-nine percent a pure witness, only once in a while will there be a lonely thought – one percent, passing on the road – otherwise the traffic is gone. That rush-hour traffic is no longer there.

When you are one-hundred-percent nonjudgmental, just a witness, it means you have become just a mirror because a mirror never makes any judgments. An ugly woman looks into it – the mirror has no judgment. A beautiful woman looks into the mirror, it makes no difference. Nobody looks into it . . . the mirror is as pure as when somebody is being reflected in it. Neither reflection stirs it, nor no-reflection. Witnessing becomes a mirror.

This is a great achievement in meditation. You have moved halfway, and this was the hardest part. Now you know the secret, and the same secret has just to be applied to different objects.

From thoughts you have to move to more subtle experiences – emotions, feelings, moods . . . from the mind to the heart, with the same condition: no judgment, just witnessing. And the surprise will be that most of your emotions, feelings and moods which possess you . . .

Now, when you are feeling sad, you become really sad, you are possessed by sadness. When you are feeling angry, it is not something partial. You become full of anger; every fiber of your being is throbbing with anger.

Watching the heart, the experience will be that now nothing possesses you. Sadness comes and goes; you don’t become sad. Happiness comes and goes; you don’t become happy either.

Whatever moves in the deep layers of your heart does not affect you at all. For the first time you taste something of mastery. You are no longer a slave to be pushed and pulled this way and that way, where any emotion, any feeling, anybody can disturb you for any trivia. […]

People become disturbed with absolute trivia, meaningless things. Somebody just passes by you twitching his eye. He has not done anything. It is his eye; he has every right to twitch it. It is his constitutional right. Nobody can prevent anybody from twitching his eyes – but why do you get disturbed? And if he makes it a practice that whenever he sees you he twitches his eyes, you will start becoming enraged. Our consciousness is so small, it gets overpowered and possessed by anything – any mood, any feeling, any emotion.

When you become a witness of the third step, you will become, for the first time, a master: nothing disturbs you, nothing overpowers you, everything remains far away, deep below, and you are on a hilltop.

These are the three steps of vipassana. Vipassana has many kinds of methods – this is only one method. Because Buddhism spread all over Eastern Asia, the Far East vipassana has a different structure in Japan. It is watching the belly as you breathe in and out. That’s why the Japanese statues of Buddha have big bellies. No Indian statue of Buddha will have a big belly – that is unathletic, does not look beautiful.

But the Japanese Buddha has to have it because the whole method of vipassana is to practice the belly coming up, not the chest. The chest remains silent, unmoving; only the belly goes up as you breathe in, and the belly goes in as you breathe out. Watching it is a single-step vipassana prevalent in Japan.

In Ceylon there are two steps: first watching the same breathing, not at the belly point, but at the nose point. When you breathe in, the air touches your nostrils, be aware of it. And when the hot air goes out, be watchful. This is the first step.

And the second step: when you breathe in, there is a gap before the breath returns back – just a rest period, a few seconds – watch those few seconds when the breath is not moving. If you become capable of watching those moments, you will be able to watch them outside also. When the breath goes out, before it comes in, there is a small interval – the same interval as inside. Watch that too, just be aware of it.

In Tibet they have a different way, in Korea another way, in China another way, but the essential point is to be a witness. And my feeling is that what I have described as three steps is the most easy, most simple – everybody can do it. It needs no scholarship, no austerity, no great understanding.

And after these three steps comes the real experience. These three steps take you to the door of the temple, which is open.

When you have become perfectly watchful of your body, mind and heart, then you cannot do anything more, then you have to wait. When perfection is complete on these three steps, the fourth step happens on its own accord as a reward. It is a quantum leap from the heart to the being, to the very center of your existence. You cannot do it; it happens – you have to remember that.

Don’t try to do it because if you try to do it your failure is absolutely certain. It is a happening. You prepare three steps; the fourth step is a reward from existence itself. It is a quantum leap.

Suddenly your life force, your witnessing, enters into the very center of your being. You have come home. You can call it self-realization, you can call it enlightenment, you can call it ultimate liberation, but there is nothing more than that. You have come to the very end in your search, you have found the very truth of existence and the great ecstasy that it brings as a shadow, by and around itself.

The Jew and the Irishman are arguing about sex. The Irishman says, that according to his priest, sex is work and solely for the purpose of procreation.

“No,” says the Jew, “my rabbi says sex is pleasure. If it was work, we would let the Irish do it.”

Meditation is not work.

Meditation is purest blissfulness.

As you go deeper, you come across more and more beautiful spaces, more and more luminous spots. They are your treasure . . . deeper and deeper silences which are not only the absence of noise but the presence of a soundless song – musical, alive and dancing.

As you reach to the ultimate point of your being, the center of the cyclone, you have found God – not as a person but as light, as consciousness, as truth, as beauty – as all that man has been dreaming of for centuries. And those dreamed-of treasures are hidden within himself.

It is not a troublesome, torturous, ascetic practice; it is very pleasant, musical, poetic, and it goes on becoming more and more of a sheer joy. It is not work; it is prayer – the only prayer I know of. To me prayer means: when you have achieved your being, you feel a tremendous gratitude toward existence. That gratitude is the only real, authentic prayer; all other prayers are fake, pseudo, manufactured. This gratitude will arise within you just like a fragrance arising out of roses.

It is good that you are dropping your childish questions about boyfriend, girlfriend, your so-called relationships; you don’t know yourself and you have started relating with another!

It is good that you are asking about meditation. That will not only bring transformation to you, it will also bring transformation to your relationships. It will also bring an authentic overflow of love, and only then will you be able to see that what you used to call love was not love; it was simply lust, biological lust, based on your hormones. Only a meditator knows a love that is not biological, that comes as a spiritual abundance with a great urge to share – because the more you share it, the more you have it.

A Jewish swami, Goldstein, takes a gorgeous ma out to dinner. They go to the most expensive restaurant in Poona and feast on Italian spaghetti, Japanese sushi and French wine. For dessert they choose German chocolate cake and finish with Brazilian coffee.

When the waiter brings them the bill, Goldstein finds he has left his wallet at home. So he takes out his picture of Rajneesh and hands it to the waiter.

“What is this?” demands the waiter.

“My Mastercard,” replies Goldstein.

Meditation is your Mastercard!

-Osho

From The Rebel, Discourse #17, Q2

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

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The Bell Tolls for Thee – Osho

What is the ego?

It is a false entity. It is not. There are two great falsities in the world. One is ego and another is death. These two things exist not. And they are not separate, they are joined together. They are aspects of the same coin; two aspects of the same untruth.

If you have ego, then you will be afraid of death, then death is bound to come – because you are clinging to a falsity. How long can you cling to it? Sooner or later you will have to see that it is false.

You can go on avoiding; you can go on delaying and postponing, but not for ever.

Death is the death of the ego. And ego is not in the first place. So a person who becomes free of ego also becomes free of death. Then there is nobody to die!

It is like: a great wave in the ocean believes that “I am, and I am separate from the ocean.” This is ego. Soon the great wave will disappear in the ocean. Then it will feel death. And even while it is there, high in the sky, dancing the dance, whispering with the winds, having a dialogue with the sun, still the fear will be there, that sooner or later it is going to die. Because other waves are dying! And just a moment before, they were alive.

You are living amongst people who are dying, continuously somebody or other dies. The bell tolls for thee. Don’t send anybody to ask for whom the bell tolls – it tolls for thee. Whenever somebody dies, it brings home the truth that you are going to die. But why did somebody die? Why in the first place? Because the wave believed itself to be separate from the ocean. If the wave knew that “I am not separate from the ocean,” where is death? That wave becomes a Sufi. That wave becomes a Buddha, the wave who knows that “I am not separate from the ocean. I am the ocean. So hum – I am that;” then there is no death.

Ego is a false entity. It is needed – just as your name is needed. Your name is a false entity.

Everybody is born without any name. But we have to give a certain name, otherwise it will be impossible in the world – how to call him? How to address him? How to send a letter to him? How to give money or borrow money from him? How to drag him to the court? It will be so impossible if everybody is nameless. It will be sheer chaos! This world cannot exist; it will be a totally different kind of world.

And it will be very difficult to remember who your wife is and who your son is and who your husband is. All will be chaos. Names are needed, labels are needed. But they are false. They are utilitarian, but they are not true. When you give the name to the child, you are giving a name to the nameless. And exactly like that is the ego. The name is for others to use and the ego is for yourself to use. You will have to say ‘I’. You will have to say, “I am thirsty.” The reality is only that there is thirst. But if you go and suddenly declare in the marketplace, “There is thirst!” then it will be very difficult – who is thirsty? Where is it? You have to say, “I am thirsty.” That “I am thirsty” is just utilitarian. In reality all that is, is thirst, hunger, love. These things are true, but the ‘I’ is just needed to manage your life.

If you understand this, there is no problem. You can use it and you can know that you are not separate from existence. I also use the word ‘I’ – Buddha uses it, Krishna uses it, Christ uses it. It cannot be dropped. There is no need to drop it! You just have to see the point that the word is utilitarian – useful in day-to-day life, but has no existential status.

Don’t be befooled by the word. Don’t start believing that the word is the reality. But it happens. I have heard Charles de Gaulle was a very egoistic person, as politicians are bound to be. A story is told about him:

One winter night upon retiring, his wife shivered and said, “My God, it’s cold.”

Yielding slightly, de Gaulle replied, “In bed, Madam, you may call me Charles.”

People can start believing. Then you have given the word a reality which is not there, which does not belong there.

The MacGregors of Scotland were all big, husky, country men. They knew the wilds of their own surroundings, but had little use for the finer aspects of civilization. When a problem arose with respect to their land rights, the head of the clan – known as The MacGregor – sent to the university in Edinburgh for an attorney.

The city lawyer was pale and slight next to the clansmen, but he had the expertise they needed, so he was generously thanked and invited to share the MacGregor’ gargantuan dinner. Entering the huge dining hall, the lawyer was pointed to one end of the table overflowing with food.

The lawyer, not wanting to usurp the master’s place at the head of the table, said, “Oh, sir, I could not sit in the chair of The MacGregor himself.”

“You may sit,” The MacGregor assured him, “since it is he himself who invites you to do so.”

Looking around at the tall sons beside him, the lawyer backed off further. “Only The MacGregor should sit at the head of the table,” he said.

The MacGregor laughed heartily and clapped the attorney on the back. “Sit where you are told, you foolish little man, for wherever The MacGregor sits, there is the head of the table.”

The ego is just a belief in your specialness, in your personality, a belief in yourself – and the belief is utterly false, not based in truth at all.

I am not. You are not. Only God is. Know it, and then you can use the word. But then it is just a word. It does not denote any reality. Only one is. Many are appearances. Many are false. Falseness consists of many and multiplicity. Truth consists of one.

-Osho

From The Perfect Master, V.2, Discourse #8

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

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Meditate Constantly – Osho

Meditate constantly.

The person who is a seeker will not really be interested in getting only philosophical answers from others; he will be interested in knowing on his own. He will not be interested in philosophy; he will be interested in religion. That is the difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy is juggling with words, the art of hairsplitting, arguing endlessly about abstract ideas, arriving nowhere. Religion is more like science: it experiments, it emphasizes experience. Science is the religion of the objective world, and religion is the science of the subjective world.

Philosophy is going to die one day; it is already on its deathbed. You can go to the universities and see: every year less and less people are turning to the departments of philosophy. Many philosophy departments are empty, deserted. People are going to science or to religion. Those who are interested in knowing the truth about the world are going to scientific inquiries, to physics, to chemistry, to mathematics, to biology. Or, people who are interested in their own interiority, in their own subjectivity, in their own consciousness, are moving towards religion, more and more towards religion.

Religion is the science of the inner. Philosophy is neither: it is neither the science of the outer nor the science of the inner; it is just in between. It only thinks; it thinks about everything — about science, about religion — but it only thinks. And just by thinking, nothing ever happens. You can make very clever answers, but they are not going to solve your real problems; the problems are real and the answers are just abstract. Real problems can be solved only by real answers.

Hence Buddha says: The seeker can be persuaded to meditate — only the seeker can be persuaded to meditate. Meditation means you start changing your inner world. You start removing dust from the inner world, you start removing all that is unnecessary in the inner world. You remove all that clutter, all the rubbish you are full of. Meditation means emptying yourself of all that the society has put inside you so that you can have a clean, clear vision, so that you can have a mirror-like quality. When a mirror is without any dust it reflects reality; so is the case with meditation.

Meditation means making your consciousness a mirror. Thoughts are like dust, they have to be removed. And thoughts contain everything belonging to the mind: desires, ambitions, memories, fantasies, dreams . . . all mindstuff is different forms of thoughts, different kinds, different layers of dust. And the dust is so thick that the mirror is not functioning at all — hence you have to ask others. Once the dust is removed you need not ask anyone, you yourself can see. Existence has given you the magic mirror — it is within you.

I have heard a beautiful parable; it must be a parable, it cannot be an historical phenomenon:

When Alexander the Great came to India he collected many valuable treasures. And when he was leaving he came across a fakir, a naked fakir. He asked him, “Do you see my treasures? Have you ever seen anybody with so many treasures?”

The fakir said, “All your treasures are nothing, but I can give you one thing that will really make you rich!”

Alexander could not imagine what this naked fakir could give him. In his begging bowl he had a small mirror. He gave the mirror to Alexander.

Alexander said, “This mirror will make me the richest man in the world? You must be mad!”

The fakir said, “First look in the mirror.”

And Alexander looked into the mirror: it did not show his face — it showed his inner being, it showed his interiority, it showed his subjectivity. His being was reflected in the mirror. He touched the feet of the fakir and said, “You are right — all my treasures are nothing before this mirror.”

And it is said he kept that mirror continuously with him.

The parable is beautiful. That mirror represents meditation. The fakir must have given him some meditation because only meditation can make you aware of who you are.

But Buddha says meditation has to become something constant. Buddha brings a totally new vision of meditation to the world. Before Buddha, meditation was something that you had to do once or twice a day, one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, and that was all. Buddha gave a totally new interpretation to the whole process of meditation. He said: This kind of meditation that you do one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, you may do five times or four times a day, is not of much value. Meditation cannot be something that you can do apart from life just for one hour or fifteen minutes. Meditation has to become something synonymous with your life; it has to be like breathing. You cannot breathe one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening, otherwise the evening will never come. It has to be something like breathing: even while you are asleep the breathing continues. You may fall into a coma, but the breathing continues.

Buddha says meditation should become such a constant phenomenon; only then can it transform you. And he evolved a new technique of meditation. His greatest contribution to the world is vipassana; no other teacher has given such a great gift to the world. Jesus is beautiful, Mahavira is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, Zarathustra is beautiful, but their contribution, compared to Buddha, is nothing. Even if they are all put together, then too Buddha’s contribution is greater because he gave such a scientific method — simple, yet so penetrating that once you are in tune with it, it becomes a constant factor in your life.

Then you need not do it; you have to do it only in the beginning. Once you have learned the knack of it, it remains with you; you need not do it. Then whatsoever you are doing, it is there. It becomes a backdrop to your life, a background to your life. You are walking, but you walk meditatively. You are eating, but you eat meditatively. You are sleeping, but you sleep meditatively. Remember, even the quality of sleep of a meditator is totally different from the quality of the sleep of a non-meditator. Everything becomes different because a new factor has entered which changes the whole gestalt.

Vipassana simply means watching your breath, looking at your breath. It is not like Yoga Pranayama: it is not changing your breath to a certain rhythm — deep breathing, fast breathing. No, it does not change your breathing at all; it has nothing to do with the breathing. Breathing has only to be used as a device to watch because it is a constant phenomenon in you. You can simply watch it, and it is the most subtle phenomenon. If you can watch your breath then it will be easy for you to watch your thoughts.

One thing immensely great that Buddha contributed was the discovery of the relationship between breath and thought. He was the first man in the whole history of humanity who made it absolutely clear that breathing and thinking are deeply related. Breathing is the bodily part of thinking and thinking is the psychological part of breathing. They are not separate; they are two aspects of the same coin. He is the first man who talks of body-mind as one unity. He talks for the first time about man as a psychosomatic phenomenon. He does not talk about body and mind; he talks about body-mind. They are not two; hence no ‘and’ is needed to join them. They are already one – body-mind — not even a hyphen is needed; bodymind is one phenomenon. And each body process has its counterpart in your psychology and vice versa.

You can watch it, you can try an experiment. Just stop your breathing for a moment and you will be surprised: the moment you stop your breathing, your thinking stops. Or you can watch another thing: whenever your thinking is going too fast your breathing changes. For example, if you are full of sexual lust and your thinking is getting too hot, your breathing will be different: it will not be rhythmic; it will lose its rhythm. It will be more chaotic, it will be unrhythmic.

When you are angry your breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are loving your breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are peaceful, at ease, at home, relaxed, your breathing is different. When you are restless, worried, in turmoil, in anguish, your breathing is different. Just by watching your breath you can know what kind of state is happening in your mind.

Meditators come across a point: when the mind really completely ceases, breathing also ceases. And then great fear arises — don’t be afraid. Many meditators have reported to me, “We became very much afraid, very much frightened, because suddenly we became aware that the breathing has stopped.” Naturally, one thinks that when breathing stops death is close by. It is only a question of moments — you are dying. Breathing stops in death; breathing also stops in deep meditation. Hence deep meditation and death have one thing similar: in both the breathing stops. Therefore, if a man knows meditation he has also known death. That’s why the meditator becomes free of the fear of death: he knows breathing can stop and still he is.

Breathing is not life; life is a far bigger phenomenon. Breathing is only a connection with the body. The connection can be cut; that does not mean that life has ended. Life is still there; life does not end just by the disappearance of breathing.

Buddha says: Watch your breathing; let it be normal, as it is. Sitting silently, watch your breath. The sitting posture will also be helpful; the Buddha posture, the lotus posture, is very helpful. When your spine is erect and you are sitting in a lotus posture, your legs crossed, your spine is aligned with the gravitational forces, and the body is at its best relaxed state. Let the spine be erect and the body be loose, hanging on the spine — not tense. The body should be loose, relaxed, the spine erect, so gravitation has the least pull on you.

Have you watched it? If you want to go to sleep you have to lie down, for the simple reason that when you are lying down flat on the ground you are in touch with the gravitational forces at the maximum, because all over the body the gravitational pull works, it pulls you. You immediately start falling asleep. It is difficult to fall asleep standing. The most difficult posture to fall asleep in is the lotus posture. The body is so relaxed there is no need to fall asleep, and the gravitational forces are at the minimum; hence they cannot pull you downwards; they can’t make you heavy and dull and lethargic. You are bright, you are full of life. You are more intelligent in the lotus posture than you can ever be in any other posture. The body affects your mind.

Scientists now agree with this: that it is only because a few of the monkeys somehow… they have not been able to find the reason why and how it happened, and monkeys are monkeys — it may have just happened out of curiosity, a few monkeys tried to stand on two legs and these are the monkeys who became the original men; they were the originators. That was the greatest innovation; nothing else has been greater than that. A few monkeys standing erect on their two legs created a great revolution; the revolution happened in the growth of the mind. The erect posture helped the mind to come out of sleep. It became more intelligent, it became more alert, it became more conscious.

Other animals who move on their four legs have not been able to develop intelligence, although many of them have a mind of almost the same capacity as man. For example, the elephant has a mind of almost the same capacity as man, but has not been able to develop it and I don’t think it is ever going to happen. In circuses they try hard to teach the elephant to sit in a chair or to stand even for a few seconds on two feet, but the body is so heavy the elephant cannot manage to be on two feet. Hence the brain remains clouded; the gravitational pull keeps it unconscious.

Hence this lotus posture is something valuable. It is not just a body phenomenon; it affects the mind, it changes the mind. Sit in a lotus posture — the whole point is that your spine should be erect and should make a ninety-degree angle with the earth. That is the point where you are capable of being the most intelligent, the most alert, the least sleepy.

And then watch your breath, the natural breath. You need not breathe deeply, you don’t change your breathing; you simply watch it as it is. But you will be surprised by one thing: the moment you start watching, it changes — because even the fact of watching is a change and the breathing is no more the same.

Slight changes in your consciousness immediately affect your breathing. You will be able to see it; whenever you watch you will see your breathing has become a little deeper. If it becomes so of its own accord it is okay, but you are not to do it by your will. Watching your breath, slowly, slowly, you will be surprised that as your breath becomes calm and quiet your mind also becomes calm and quiet. And watching the breath will make you capable of watching the mind.

That is just the beginning, the first part of meditation, the physical part. And the second part is the psychological part. Then you can watch more subtle things in your mind — thoughts, desires, memories.

And as you go deeper into watchfulness, a miracle starts happening: as you become watchful less and less traffic happens in the mind, more and more quiet, silence; more and more silent spaces, more and more gaps and intervals. Moments pass and you don’t come across a single thought. Slowly, slowly, minutes pass, hours pass….

And there is a certain arithmetic in it: if you can remain absolutely empty for forty-eight minutes, that very day you will become enlightened, that very moment you will become enlightened. But it is not a question of your effort; don’t go on looking at the watch because each time you look, a thought has come. You have to again count from the very beginning; you are back to zero. There is no need for you to watch the time.

But this has been the experience in the East of all great meditators: that forty-eight minutes seems to be the ultimate point. If this much of a gap is possible, if for this much of a gap thinking stops and you remain alert, with no thought crossing your mind, you are capable of receiving God inside. You have become the host and the guest immediately comes.

-Osho

From The Dhammapada, the Way of the Buddha, V. 11, Discourse #5

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.

How I Came to One-Mind – Swami Dayanand Bharati

How I Came to One-Mind

Transcending addiction and sobriety

In 2007 I had to face that I was getting drunk every evening for the past 10 years, not that I was knocking myself out, just enough to be in a state of pleasant? unconsciousness from 6pm to bedtime almost every day (happy hour!) Getting drunk was nothing new I basically spent the years from 16 – 21 in a state of intoxication.

My life as a teenager was void of any meaning (except looking to get laid) it seemed there was no good reason for being alive, so I hang with my good friend’s alcohol and cigarette’s they kept me company, taking the edge of my misery.

I was born 2 years after the war to a young 19 year old mother, no money, no job, a gigolo as a husband, of course I was not received with love and joy, I was a burden, a mistake. I got that very early and became invisible, didn’t want to make a fuss, who knows? But my mother was also a very responsible person and took care of me in spite of it all.

When I was 5 years old I did experience unconditional Love from strangers that took me in to give my mother a break and they sweetly nourished my young soul until I was returned to my parents (now with a new father) 6 years later, no embrace, no, we are so happy to have you back.

Anyway that is just a short introduction why alcohol was so easy to fall back on for me when I was lost, scared or lonely.

There was a huge change in my life at the age of 22. I was mysteriously initiated into the tantric path and had the first experience of my true self. Later I came to understand that it had to be my master that had initiated me 3 years before I actually met him, because it was synchronized with the same date and time when he gave his first Sannyas initiation, in Manali India, 26.9.1970, of course this I found out only much later.

It cut my hippie experiment of sex, drugs and rock and roll short, to walk the spiritual path. In 1973 I had the strong urge to travel to India, boarding the orient express to Istanbul a small group of Sannyasins sat next to me, drop outs, freaks like me,

I let them take me to my master.

I had finally come home. Living closely with my beloved Master, in Bombay, Pune 1, the Ranch and some of Pune 2 until 1989, there was no need for alcohol, his presence, his unconditional love and care was enough intoxication. After he left his body I was not ready yet to walk alone, even though I did believe for a while that I was. Something was missing and keeping me stuck, I did not know what.

I put my head at the feet of another Sat-guru and asked for truth, no matter what. Consequently my relationship (marriage), which had provided me with a sense of security and mutual love by overriding my primal conditioning for 12 years, had been falling apart and my early childhood wounds of feeling rejected and a burden where bleeding again, it was painful and I reached back for my old helpful friend, my old drinking habit, sitting in front of the TV with a bottle of wine getting drunk and indulging in self-pity.

Finally, after accepting and understanding that this love need, that had disappointed me again, will never be fulfilled from anyone outside, I surrendered and embraced my aloneness.

I had passed consciously through all the pain and confusion again in this intense separation process that I had experienced when I was a child. Only later on did I realize that I was free now of my conditioning of rejection and worthlessness, an individual, my own person and did not have to compromise anymore for love and safety. I was responsible now for myself.

I kept up the drinking habit somehow maybe as a reward for my freedom, a declaration to myself that I can do now what I like and it is no one’s business. It was somehow tied up with being “ME” holding on to something, that I could control, that was mine alone, my choice. The self-imposed “fuck you all” attitdude of a rebel.

I enjoyed being me, there was a freedom that I never had felt before, I travelled, lived like a gypsy for a while out of my van, found a gorgeous young woman to love without the primal need for mother love and security. I was free to dive deep into my passion without guilt or pretense, no inner mother looking over my shoulder anymore, I could love now for the joy of it, for the passion of it, the play of it and I still held on to the the bottle of Vino for some reason.

This relationship went on for some years I slowly freed myself of my sexual conditioning by not compromising who I was. When the dance was complete with my beautiful partner,

I experimented some more with my new found sexual freedom but soon realized that it was repetitive and draining, it naturally faded slowly out. I was tired and done chasing woman for romantic love and sex. I was maybe 55 then and I wanted to relax with someone, have a friend, enjoy simple things like cooking, house making, fixing things, gardening, have a dog. When the time is right and the desire fits with the natural flow of life it will always happen, I met just the right beautiful woman to share the next stage of my life with, but still 2 bottles of wine every evening and maybe a shot or two of vodka to top it off. The old drinking habit was growing bigger and a problem. I felt not fully available to my beloved and to myself. I was watching the weakening of body and clarity of mind by getting intoxicated every evening, there was a subtle spiritual sarcasm arising too.

The addiction

I tried to stop but could only do it for a few days, tried again, failed after a week, slowly I realized that I was addicted, this was hard to admit, I always thought I was still in control, “Oh, I can stop whenever I want.” Well I could not!

It hurt and I knew I had to get out of this now! But how??

I called for help and I heard my beloved master who I had not heard from in a while, whisper in my inner ear “watch”, so I watched what happens when I drink, I watched, first glass of wine a little happiness, some satisfaction, then blurriness, scrambled thoughts, unfocused and at the end of the bottle numbness, finally sleep, every day the same. I also heard my Master say, “Do not judge, do not condemn, just watch.” Why did I still get drunk? It seemed there was actually no more reason for it. It seemed the reason was already dissolved, the meaninglessness, the worthlessness, the need for love and safety and recognition already history. My body would get sick I was sure, I could feel it, my mind was anxious about my future, I would spiral down into the final “fuck it all” and loose everything, I was certain of this and the love I wanted to share with my beloved was crippled. I could feel it, plus my spiritual path was almost non-existent. All these reasons stood against getting drunk and be oblivious for a few hours, I had to gather all my determination to watch, I had no other options.

Watch…and when you watch you have to remember that while watching, don’t judge. If you judge, watching is lost. While watching, don’t evaluate. If you evaluate, watching is lost. While watching, don’t comment. If you comment, you have missed the point.

You don’t say this is good, you don’t say this is bad, and you don’t say this should not have been, and you don’t say this should have been. You don’t say anything – you simply watch. You are not asked to comment. You are not a judge – just a watcher.

– Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Discourse #3

I watched!

Every morning I would wake up around 4 am and feel my body was poisoned and I promised myself, today I am done, no more, but come noon next day I forgot and I had to decide between Merlot and Cabernet, I watched! I watched the dance, when the desire to get drunk was conscious the desire to stop drinking was in the unconscious, totally absent. When the urge to stop was up the desire to get drunk was down in the basement non-existent. They never met at first, like day and night, the game of the mind, hide and seek.

To watch I had to accept to keep drinking, by and by it was obvious that to stop drinking, was not possible anyway, I could control it for some time, maybe even years like some people can, but this would just keep the lid on for a while and I might be under the illusion that I had beat drinking but that would only be a deception and deep down the addiction would wait for its day to come.

After a while of watching looking deeply into my mind I became conscious of a strange fact, that the addiction was 100% determent to get drunk and the anti -addiction part was also 100% sure it wanted to be sober. Before my mind made me believe that it is 50%-50% and if I am strong enough I can swing the sober one to 75% and the addict to 25% and if I really stay on it, I can win the war, 100% sobriety and zero% addiction, that was the logic of the mind, but now the picture looked very different.

So it seemed there where two people in me, one that was 100% happy to get drunk and one that was 100% unhappy to get drunk and demanded to stop. Each wanted domination and would not give an inch. They were both me and they had equal power, like my left hand and my right hand fighting, which will win? They are both me! They are one, two halves of the whole, and they were causing each other.

I had a favourite theme when I was painting or sometimes sculpting in the past, a man rooted in the earth like a tree, his arms, wings, attempting to take off into the sky. This was the exact situation I was in now. It represented my conflict my dilemma to the core.

The addict rooted, settled unmoving in the ground and the anti-addict struggling to fly away from it, equally strong, the anti-addict arising out of the addict, it was the inevitable reaction to the addict and he in turn holding back the energy, the attempt to fly away demanding to get his fix. They are both one dynamic process, they are one circle!

Like night and day, good and bad, birth and death……one cannot exist without the other and I had no idea what to do.

Seeing this over and over made any choice futile. Either I had to live with both or get rid of both, but how? No matter what my choice it would eventually always include both, but that was crazy, that was not possible.

I had always felt this conflict this struggle deep inside, with everything. I am the roots, and I also have wings, wanting to fly away from me, but it was “all” Me, I was at war with myself, I was tearing myself apart inside!

And I saw no way out, no solution that I could come up with! I was hopelessly stuck, that was for certain, I did see it, I was aware of it, that is all, I saw no end to this dilemma.

I could not stop choosing either, because that was also a choice. I saw the goose in the bottle, but how to get her out?

The transformation!

Another evening, not a new one, just the old routine again. ahhh I am getting my fix now. Like it was my reward for having managed to live through another day. Caught in this endless circle of wanting to be sober and getting drunk and whichever side I chose didn’t matter, because I would always end up running the full course of the conflict.

At the moment I was on the getting high side. I had to accept that, OK, so now I drink another bottle. At least I can stop judging myself or hoping for a way out. There wasn’t one.

There was no point feeling bad or guilty, I also sincerely wanted to be free of this addiction as much as following the urge to get drunk. Fighting and judging myself was useless. I had no answer, I felt both, saw both the options, equally strong, I had to keep drinking, at least I could keep my eye on the addict, watch!

I knew that sometime long ago there was a good reason for getting drunk.

I remember that it actually got me through some very hard, meaningless and painful situations.

But now I was over that. I had spent years nourishing my spiritual side, all that time with my master I hardly ever got drunk, at least not out of need or habit, why is it back now with such vengeance?

I sat back in my chair.

I was thinking about my life, remembering my Master, his love, his compassion, his care for me, the incredible incomparable adventure living in his presence for 17 years.

And Poonjaji, being invited to his table, accepted and blessed.

All the other awakened ones I had sat briefly before, that had also blessed and enriched my life, Anandamayi Ma, Jean Klein and others.

The sweet old couple that had given me the gift of unconditional love and a real childhood as a little boy and had awakened my heart.

My beautiful wife, I loved and deeply cared about and all the other women that I had loved and that had allowed me to be part of their lives, the miracle of my initiation, the struggle to wake up.

What an incredible life!

Tears were welling up; I took some deep breaths.

What a fool I am, I am so sorry, I am such an idiot!

How can I be so stupid?

So much magic and mystery and I pissed it all away by getting drunk every evening for the last 10 years.

I had forgotten how fortunate I was.

More and more tears from nowhere rolling down my face.

I felt a pressure in my chest, I stood up and raised my arms reaching for something invisible, maybe god or the master.

Some force pushed me down on my knees, like in prayer.

Suddenly the dam broke and my heart burst wide open.

The beautiful heart exploded, unbelievable Love flooded me! Gratitude, overwhelming gratitude filled every fibre in my body.

Thank you, thank you for everything and everyone, thank you for this Life, this amazing gift. I was loved, had always been loved by this existence unconditionally and I was blind to it, I had blinded myself by holding on to this old pattern of anxiety and addiction.

I knew with absolute certainty that the whole addiction drama was suddenly over, gone forever.

The goose was out!

I will never need to take another sip of alcohol in this or any other life, the addict and the anti-addict vanished into oblivion like a dream after waking up.

I was loved by existence I was part of this amazing existence, I had remembered and was invited back home. I was free, the habitual mind had cracked and my heart lit up.

Not enlightened, the mind not gone, but the first fully conscious separation happened of mind and heart, a small satori with a huge impact.

I had almost lost the thread again, the love I had for my wife and the remembrance of my master, made me eventually question my addiction

Love is powerful it kept pushing me, thank You!

I am still in awe!

I understand now,

I had been holding on to this old habit of escaping from myself, it was a defense I had put into place all by myself in my youth a self-imposed rebel conditioning to cover up this deep seated anxiety that I am unloved and not safe in this world, that no one cares about me and I may not survive on my own.

I was holding on to this self-destructive identity, because it was mine, it belonged to me, it was all I had for a while. I fought everything, parents, school, work and myself, I fought it by not caring and drinking made me forget myself and this anxiety, and it was also saying to the world, look what you have done to me! fuck you all!

Maybe I hoped that my master at some point would save me, without me doing my part. Maybe I was disappointed in him, why didn’t you save me? or maybe I just felt ashamed that I was such a looser disciple.

I resisted the transformation I somehow knew was just around the corner, just behind a veil, I didn’t know what would happen if I let this go, this was all I had left, of my conditioned child identity so I kept myself stupidly in the dark instead, until blessedly It hurt too much and I had to face it.

This was not enlightenment, this was not the end of the mind, this was the end of confusion, holding on and blindly cooperating with the unconscious movement of the mind.

Once you know that between the opposites balance is possible, once you have a glimpse of it, then you know the art. Then everywhere in life, in every dimension of life, you can attain that balance very easily. Really, to say that you can attain is not good. Once you know the knack of it, whatsoever you do, the balance follows you like a shadow. This inner balance between the opposites is the most significant thing that can happen to a man.

-Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Discourse #4

About 12 years have passed since that event. The impact is permanent. That day I turned around, I turned in, naturally, and a whole new journey began.

The addict and the anti-addict have never been seen again. I am still in awe of the mystery. I was given the key to transformation.

In Love and gratitude

– Dayanand Bharati

See a related post Being a Light Unto Myself.

Watching the Thinking or Thinking of Watching – Osho

Is it possible that instead of watching the thinking, I am thinking of watching?

It is not only possible, it is absolutely certain that instead of watching the thinking you are thinking of watching. But if you have become aware of it, the change is possible. If you can think of watching, why can’t you watch thinking? Just try. It is not a difficult process, it is simple.

But most people do that. They are thinking of watching and are deceived by themselves and start feeling that great things are happening: The watcher has come in and soon all these thoughts will disappear and the no-mind is not very far away.

When people say to me that meditation is going very well, I am a little suspicious. If the meditation is going very well, you don’t have to say it to me; I can see it. It will change your eyes, it will change your posture, it will change your walk, it will change your speaking, it will make you more and more silent – a pool of peace without any ripples of thoughts.

But human mind is very cunning; it tries to the very end to deceive you. And you are very naive, you go on being deceived.

Sadie Moskovitz took her old grandmother to the movies. It was an epic about the Roman Empire. In one scene a lot of unarmed prisoners were thrown to the lions. The old grandmother broke out into loud wails, crying out, “Ah, those poor people.”

Sadie was very embarrassed and whispered fiercely, “Don’t scream like that, Grandma. Those are Christians.”

Choked, Grandma said, “I see.” She was quiet at once, but then began wailing louder than before.

“Grandma,” demanded Sadie, “what is it now?”

“Over there,” said Grandma, pointing, “that poor little lion at the back. He’s not getting any Christian.”

Beware of your mind more than anything else in the world. It is the greatest deceiving device which has been created by your body, physiology, chemistry, biology. It keeps you tethered to the body and does not allow you to open your eyes to your consciousness. It keeps you engaged; it does not give you even a little holiday. The danger is that if you are given a little holiday, you may become aware of your inner grandeur, the beauty of your being and the enormous truth and the glory of it. And once you have seen that splendor, you are not going to be deceived anymore.

Now change it. Instead of thinking of watching, start watching the thinking. Even if the thinking is about watching, watch. It does not matter what is the object of thinking – it can be watching – don’t get at all disturbed. You go on watching even thinking about watching and the watching that you will be doing will reveal secrets and the mystery of your being. And as they are revealed, mind disappears.

Mind is only there while you are utterly unconscious and ignorant. When more light is brought by meditation – watching – mind disappears like darkness. It is not a strong enemy; it is just that you have never tried to go beyond it.

Watching is simply a process of going beyond the mind, far away, looking at the mind, watching what is going on. Whatever the mind is doing you simply see it; don’t appreciate, don’t condemn, don’t judge, because all these things are part of thinking.

Watching knows no judgment, no condemnation, no justification, no appreciation. Watching is simply like a mirror; standing before the mirror you may have a beautiful face but the mirror does not smile at you. You may have an ugly face but the mirror does not feel disgusted. You may have no face at all; the mirror is unconcerned.

Watching is simply exactly like a mirror reflecting the mind. Whatever is going on, the mirror reflects but makes no comments. This is the secret to getting beyond the mind, farther and farther away from it. Soon you will see that your mind is just a faraway echo – you can’t even figure out what it is muttering – and then it disappears.

The attachment with the mind is through your condemnation or appreciation. Even when the mind disappears, don’t say to yourself, “Aha, this is it.” Then the mind has come back from the secret door that it knows.

Just remain silent.

There is no need to say “Aha!”

There is no need to say “This is it!”

Relish and enjoy the silence that has come around you. Where mind was just a marketplace, you have entered into the silences of the heart.

Enjoy, dance, but don’t say a single word.

-Osho

From Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Discourse #27, Q2

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

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

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