Tag: Osho

Prajna or Samadhi? – Osho

Beloved Osho,

Once, when Obaku was sitting in Nansen’s reception room, Nansen asked him, “It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Obaku answered, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.”

Nansen then asked, “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own. “

Of course not!” said Obaku.

Nansen then said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water for the moment, let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to?”

To this question, Obaku made no reply.

Maneesha, although this anecdote seems to be very simple, it is not so. In these few words a tremendously important question has been raised. And unfortunately nobody has discussed that question up to now. I would like to go in detail into what I mean. Once, when Obaku was sitting in Nansen’s reception room, Nansen asked him, “It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Before we go into the answer of Obaku, you have to understand the meaning of samadhi and prajna.

It is a very intricate and complex question. Samadhi can be understood watching Ramakrishna. That will give you the basic symptoms which can be observed from the outside.

Ramakrishna used to go into samadhi for hours. Once for six days he was in samadhi. And samadhi to him and to his followers – and there is a great tradition from Patanjali, five thousand years old, which believes in samadhi – means to become perfectly unconscious. To every outsider he was almost in a coma; to the psychologist he had gone deeper into the unconscious layers of the mind.

And there was no way to bring him back.

Automatically, whenever his consciousness surfaced again, he would become aware. And whenever he came out of this samadhi, this deep coma-like unconsciousness, he would weep and cry, “Why have you taken away that great beauty, that great bliss, that great silence that I was experiencing. Time had stopped, the world was forgotten, I was alone and everything was at its perfection. So why have you taken it away?” He was asking the question to existence. “Why don’t you let me continue it?”

Now, Buddha himself would not consider it a samadhi. His samadhi means prajna, and prajna means awareness. You have to become more and more conscious, not unconscious; just two polarities, samadhi and prajna. Prajna is perfect awareness of your being. And samadhi in Ramakrishna’s case means absolute oblivion. Nobody has gone into the deeper search for what exactly is the difference deep inside.

Both talk about great blissfulness, both talk about eternity, truth, beauty, goodness as their ultimate experience. But one is completely unconscious – you can cut his hand and he will not know – that much unconsciousness; and Buddha is so conscious that before sitting on the floor, first he will look to see if there is any ant or anything that may be killed by his sitting there. In his every act he showed immense awareness.

I have told you the story that one day passing through a street in Vaishali, a fly came and sat on his head. He was talking to Ananda about something. So just automatically the way you do it, he simply waved his hand. Then he suddenly stopped talking to Ananda and again waved his hand. Now there was no fly.

Ananda said, “What are you doing? The fly has gone.”

He said, “The fly has gone, but I acted unconsciously. I waved my hand automatically like a robot. Now I am moving as I should have moved, with full consciousness, awareness.”

So these seem to be two polarities. Both have become a point of great debate as to who is right, because the experience they talk about is the same. My own experience is that mind can be crossed from both ends. One tenth of the mind is conscious, nine tenths of the mind is unconscious. Just think of mind: the upper layer is conscious and nine layers are unconscious. Now mind can be passed from both the ends. You cannot pass from the middle; you will have to travel to the end.

Ramakrishna passed the mind by going deeper and deeper into the unconscious layers. And when the final unconscious layer came, he jumped out of the mind. To the world outside he looked as if he was in a coma. But he reached to the same clear sky although he chose a path which is dark, dismal; he chose the night part of consciousness. But he reached to the same experience.

Buddha never became unconscious in this way. Even walking he was stepping every step fully conscious and gracefully, every gesture fully conscious, gracefully. He transformed his consciousness to such a point that unconscious layers started becoming conscious. The final enlightenment is when all unconscious layers of the mind have become conscious. He also jumps out of the mind.

Both samadhi and prajna are no-mind states, going outside the mind. So the experience is the same but the path is different, very different. One is the white path of light that Buddha followed; one is the path of darkness that Ramakrishna followed. And it is obvious that the people who cannot understand both, who have not followed both the paths and come to the same experience, are going to debate and discuss to no end.

One will say that Ramakrishna’s samadhi is a coma, that he has lost consciousness. Another will say that because Buddha never goes into Ramakrishna-like samadhi, he does not know anything about samadhi. But my experience is, both know the samadhi, both know the prajna.

Ramakrishna first knows samadhi and out of samadhi prajna is born. Buddha knows first prajna and then out of prajna samadhi is born. It is only a question of understanding that existence is always contradictory, made of opposites – night and day, life and death.

Ramakrishna’s path is of unconsciousness. Nobody has deliberately considered the point. And Buddha’s path is of pure light, of continuous awareness. Even in sleep Buddha sleeps consciously.

So Nansen has raised a very meaningful question.

“It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Obaku answered, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.”

Obaku was not a master, Obaku was a scholar. And this question cannot be decided by any scholarship; no intelligence will do, only experience. So what he answers is absolutely irrelevant.

He says, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.” Can you see any relevance to the question? It has nothing to do with samadhi, nothing to do with prajna. He is not only a teacher, but a blind teacher. The question has gone above his head.

Nansen then asked – immediately, which shows what I am saying – “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own.” Anybody could have seen that this is so stupid, it has nothing to do with the question. He could have said, “I don’t know, I have not experienced either samadhi or prajna. I don’t know whether they end up into the same experience or they lead to different experiences. It is not my own experience, so I can’t say anything.”

That would have been more honest. But looking at his answer, Nansen immediately asked, “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own.”

Even this absurd opinion that you have expressed, I think even this one is not your own. “Of course not!” said Obaku.

Seeing the situation he must have felt it is better to say that this is not my opinion. Nansen then said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water for the moment... Nansen lived on top of a high mountain for thirty years. To bring water to that height, he had to go miles down to bring water up. To us it may look a little strange that he was asking a price for water. He says, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water, for the moment, let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to?”

Zen monks use straw sandals, the same shape as my sandals, but they are made of straw, very beautiful, very aesthetic and very cheap. Nansen is saying, Who has paid for your straw sandals? They look so new. You don’t deserve these straw sandals; they are specially meant for Zen masters. And as for giving you water, I will not ask anything for it, but it has been wasted on a man who does not even know what samadhi is, what is prajna, and still has the guts and the nerve to give an absolutely irrelevant answer; an answer, too, that is not his own. Such a borrowed state is all of scholars, pundits, rabbis.

Nansen exposed Obaku completely to the very innermost core of his being just by asking a small question. But the question is not small, and it is a question which nobody has explained the way I am telling you, that the experiences are not two. Just, the paths leading to the experiences are very different, contrary paths.

One follows the darkness, goes deeper and deeper into the darkness of the mind and the unconscious, reaches to the very end of the mind and jumps out of it. And another tries every possible way to make the unconscious also conscious. And when everything becomes conscious in him, he also takes a jump.

Perhaps Buddha’s method is more scientific. There is no question of right and wrong. Both lead to the same space, but Buddha’s method of prajna is more scientific in the way that you cannot miss because you are aware. Ramakrishna’s path is groping in the dark. He may reach to the dawn, he may not reach. And once he has gone into unconsciousness, all is darkness, he cannot see where he is going. It is just by chance that he finds the door out of the mind, just by chance.

Science does not believe in chance, it has to be a certainty. That’s why you will not find more Ramakrishnas in the world, because it is just a coincidence that groping in the dark you find the door and get out of the mind. It happened to Ramakrishna but you will not find another parallel in the whole history of mankind.

Thousands of mystics have reached to the same point. But they have all followed the path of prajna, because when you have a light with you, you need not grope. When you have a light with you, a consciousness, like a torch showing the path, your reaching to the goal has more certainty.

And once you have known the path, then it is very easy. Only the first time are you going into the unknown. But the unknown is not dark; you keep a torch in your hand. Ramakrishna is going into the unknown without a torch. Ramakrishna’s samadhi in a way is special. He is alone of that kind. He is a rare specimen who went into his depths without taking a single candle. It is more than probable that you will not find the door.

When Buddha was asked about it, he said, “There was a palace with one thousand doors; only one door was real, the remaining were fake; they appeared like doors, but when you went close to them, they were just painted doors, there was a flat wall with no opening.

“A blind man got lost in the palace. He went around groping and groping. He touched many painted doors, but they were not really doors and the time he reached the real door, the only one, a fly came to sit on his head. So he became engaged in waving it away and passed the door.”

Nine hundred and ninety-nine doors, and a chance comes; that chance is very fragile, it can be missed by anything: your head starts itching or you become so tired of groping and touching that you say, “Take a chance, leave this one, go ahead.”

So Buddha said, “My path is not of such groping. In my palace all the doors are real. And there is no need to grope because I give you eyes of meditation and a light that burns like a fire within you, which is your very life. With that light and silence of meditation you can find the door. There are a thousand doors, every door is capable of taking you out.”

I am absolutely certain that Buddha is right; but that does not mean that Ramakrishna is wrong. But Ramakrishna cannot be the rule, he can only be the exception. Buddha is providing for everybody, not for exceptions. A rule has to be for everybody. You cannot make a rule on a single exception. Of the followers of Ramakrishna not even a single one has attained samadhi. But Buddha’s followers even today, continuing as a chain, master to disciple in different countries, are attaining prajna.

Whether you call it samadhi or you call it prajna, it is the same; the meaning of both is ultimate wisdom.

Buddhists don’t believe Ramakrishna to be enlightened. One very old Buddhist monk… he was an Englishman, and when he was just a child, his father was appointed to some post in Kalimpong where the child came in contact with Buddhist masters. He became a Buddhist at the age of eighteen. His whole family resisted; they were Christians and said, “What are you doing listening to the Buddhist masters?”

He could see that Christianity is very childish. It has nothing much to give to you. What can you do even if Jesus did walk on water? Even if you learn to walk on water, what spirituality can you attain through it? Even if you can turn water into alcohol, which is a crime, it does not help anyone to be spiritual. What are the teachings of Christians which can be compared to Gautam the Buddha? None comes close to him. He certainly is the Everest of the Himalayas.

So a Buddhist won’t accept Ramakrishna as enlightened. But talking to Buddhist monks and particularly this English monk, I asked him, “Have you ever tried forgetting Buddha’s method and giving some time to using Ramakrishna’s method?”

He said, “No, I have never tried it.”

I said, “Then saying that Ramakrishna never achieved samadhi is going beyond the limits of your experience.”

I have tried both ways, going on the path of light and going on the path of absolute darkness. Nobody does that because once you have reached the path, then why should you bother about other paths?

You have reached the station in a rickshaw, now are you going to come back and try a taxi? People will think you are mad. You have reached, now there is no need to try whether a taxi also reaches the station or not.

But I am a little crazy. Seeing the argument going on for centuries, I decided that the only way to come to a conclusion is, follow both the paths: one time the path of light and another time the path of darkness. When I was following the path of darkness, almost all my friends, my professors thought that I had gone mad. “What is the need if you have reached to the light in the day, what is the need to continue traveling in the night after reaching?”

I said, “There is a need because there is no other way to conclude whether Ramakrishna was also in the same state of consciousness as Buddha.”

But neither has any Buddhist tried nor have any of Ramakrishna’s disciples tried. And I am nobody’s disciple, I am just an outsider; I don’t belong to any religion or any organization. But to come to a conclusion, seeing that for centuries people have been discussing it, I could not conceive any way that it could be decided by argument; the only way to decide it was to follow both the paths.

And now the meditation that I have been teaching to you is a combination of both the paths. It is neither a meditation dependent only on prajna, just being aware; nor is it a meditation just to forget all and drown yourself in deep rest and darkness. I am using both. I am telling you to forget the world, I am telling you forget the body, forget the mind, you are not these things, but keep your light alive as a witness. So you are going on both the paths together.

There is no problem. In fact it is more significant, because you will be achieving the space that Ramakrishna achieved and that Buddha achieved. And you will have a good laugh that for centuries scholars have been unnecessarily wasting their time. It is always good to experiment because this is not a philosophical question. It is a question of inner experimentation; it is as scientific as any science.

But in a very nice way Nansen said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water, because I have to carry the drinking water for miles, Let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to? Who has paid the money for your straw sandals? Return the money. You are just a teacher; don’t pretend to be a master. To this question, Obaku made no reply.

-Osho

From Nansen: The Point of Departure, Discourse #7

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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Religion Takes a Quantum Leap – Osho

With Gautam Buddha religion took a quantum leap. God became meaningless and only meditation was important. Now, twenty-five centuries after Buddha, again religion is taking the quantum leap in your presence becoming religiousness. Please talk about this phenomenon.

The credit of bringing a quantum leap in religion goes back twenty-five centuries before Gautam Buddha to Adinatha, who for the first time preached a religion without God. It was a tremendous revolution because nowhere in the whole world had it ever been conceived that religion could exist without God.

God has been an essential part—the center—of all the religions: Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism. But to make God the center of religion makes man just the periphery. To conceive of God as the creator of the world makes man only a puppet.

That’s why in Hebrew, which is the language of Judaism, man is called Adam. ‘Adam’ means mud. In Arabic man is called ‘admi’; it is from Adam, again it means mud. In English, which has become the language of Christianity by and large, the word human comes from ‘humus’ and humus means mud.

Naturally if God is the creator he has to create from something. He has to make man like a statue, so first he makes man with mud and then breathes life into him. But if this is so man loses all dignity, and if God is the creator of man and everything else, the whole idea is whimsical because what has he been doing for eternity before he created man and the universe?

According to Christianity he created man only four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ. So what was he doing all along through eternity? So it seems whimsical. There cannot be any cause, because to have a cause for which God had to create existence means there are powers higher than God, there are causes which can make him create. Or there is a possibility that suddenly desire arose in him. That too is not very philosophically sound, because for eternity he was desireless. And to be desireless is so blissful that it is impossible to conceive that out of an experience of eternal blissfulness a desire arises in him to create the world. Desire is desire, whether you want to make a house or become the prime minister or create the world. And God cannot be conceived as having desires. So the only thing that remains is that he is whimsical, eccentric. Then there is no need for cause and no need for desire — just a whim.

But if this whole existence is just out of a whim it loses all meaning, all significance. And tomorrow another whim may arise in him to destroy, to dissolve the whole universe. So we are simply puppets in the hands of a dictatorial god who has all the powers but who has not a sane mind, who is whimsical.

To conceive this five thousand years ago Adinatha must have been a very deep meditator, contemplative, and he must have come to the conclusion that with God there is no meaning in the world. If we want meaning in the world then God has to be disposed of. He must have been a man of tremendous courage.

People are still worshipping in the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples; yet that man Adinatha five thousand years before us came to a very clear-cut scientific conclusion that there is nothing higher than man and any evolution that is going to happen is within man and in his consciousness.

This was the first quantum leap—God was disposed of.

Adinatha is the first master of Jainism. The credit does not go to Buddha because Buddha comes twenty-five centuries later than Adinatha. But another credit goes to Buddha. Adinatha disposed of God but could not manage to put meditation in its place. On the contrary, he created asceticism, austerities, torturing the body, fasting, remaining naked, eating only once a day, not drinking in the night, not eating in the night, eating only certain foods. He had come to a beautiful philosophical conclusion but it seems the conclusion was only philosophical, it was not meditational.

When you depose God you cannot have any ritual, you cannot have worship, you cannot have prayer; something has to be substituted. He substituted austerities, because man became the center of his religion and man has to purify himself. Purity in his conception was that man has to detach himself from the world, has to detach himself from his own body. This distorted the whole thing. He had come to a very significant conclusion, but it remained only a philosophical concept.

Adinatha disposed of God but left a vacuum, and Buddha filled it with meditation. Adinatha made a godless religion, Buddha made a meditative religion.

Meditation is Buddha’s contribution. The question is not to torture the body; the question is to become more silent, to become more relaxed, to become more peaceful. It is an inward journey to reach to one’s own center of consciousness, and the center of one’s own consciousness is the center of the whole existence.

Twenty-five centuries have again passed. Just as Adinatha’s revolutionary concept of godless religion got lost in a desert of austerities and self-torture, Buddha’s idea of meditation—something inner, that nobody else can see ; only you know where you are, only you know whether you are progressing or not—got lost into another desert, and that was organized religion.

Religion says that single individuals cannot be trusted, whether they are meditating or not. They need communities, masters, monasteries where they can live together. Those who are on a higher level of consciousness can watch over others and help them. It became essential that religions should not be left in the hands of individuals, they should be organized and should be in the hands of those who have arrived at a high point of meditation.

In the beginning it was good; while Buddha was alive there were many people who reached self-realization, enlightenment. But as Buddha died and these people died, the very organization that was supposed to help people to meditate fell in the hands of a priesthood, and rather than helping you to meditate they started creating rituals around the image of Buddha. Buddha became another God. Adinatha disposed of God, Buddha never accepted that God exists, but this priesthood cannot exist without a God. So there may not be a God who is a creator, but Buddha has reached godhood.

For others the only thing is to worship Buddha, to have faith in Buddha, to follow the principles of Buddha, to live life according to his doctrine; and Buddha got lost in the organization, the imitation. But they all forgot the basic thing which was meditation. My whole effort is to create a religionless religion.

We have seen what happened to religions which have God as the center. We have seen what happened to Adinatha’s revolutionary concept, godless religion. We have seen what happened to Buddha — organized religion without God.

Now my effort is: just as they dissolved God, dissolve religion also. Leave only meditation so it cannot be forgotten in any way. There is nothing else to replace it. There is no God and there is no religion. By religion I mean an organized doctrine, creed, ritual, priesthood. And for the first time I want religion to be absolutely individual, because all organized religions, whether with God or without God, have misled humanity. And the sole cause has been organization, because organization has its own ways which go against meditativeness. Organization is really a political phenomenon, it is not religious. It is another way of power and will to power.

Now every Christian priest hopes someday to become a bishop at least, to become a cardinal, to become a pope. This is a new hierarchy, a new bureaucracy, and because it is spiritual nobody objects. You may be a bishop, you may be a pope, you may be anything. It is not objectionable because you are not going to obstruct anybody’s life. It is just an abstract idea.

My effort is to destroy the priesthood completely. It remained with God, it remained with godless religion, now the only way is that we should dispose of God and religion both so that there is no possibility of any priesthood. Then man is absolutely free, totally responsible for his own growth. My feeling is that the more a man is responsible for his own growth, the more difficult it is for him to postpone it for long. Because it means if you are miserable, you are responsible. If you are tense, you are responsible. If you are not relaxed, you are responsible. If you are in suffering, you are the cause of it. There is no God, there is no priesthood that you can go to and ask for some ritual. You are left alone with your misery, and nobody wants to be miserable.

The priests go on giving you opium, they go on giving you hope, “Don’t be worried, it is just a test of your faith, of your trust; and if you can pass through this misery and suffering silently and patiently, in the other world beyond death you will be immensely rewarded.” If there is no priesthood you have to understand that whatever you are, you are responsible for it, nobody else.

And the feeling that “I am responsible for my misery,” opens the door. Then you start looking for methods and means to get out of this miserable state, and that’s what meditation is. It is simply the opposite state of misery, suffering, anguish, anxiety. It is a state of a peaceful, blissful flowering of being, so silent and so timeless that you cannot conceive that anything better is possible. And there is nothing which is better than the state of a meditative mind.

So you can say these are the three quantum leaps: Adinatha drops God because he finds God is becoming too heavy on man; rather than helping him in his growth he has become a burden—but he forgets to replace him with something. Man will need something in his miserable moments, in his suffering. He used to pray to God. You have taken God away, you have taken his prayer away and now when he will be miserable, what will he do? In Jainism meditation has no place.

It is Buddha’s insight to see that God has been dropped; now the gap should be filled, otherwise the gap will destroy man. He puts in meditation—something really authentic which can change the whole being. But he was not aware—perhaps he could not be aware because there are things you cannot be aware of unless they happen—that there should be no organization, that there should be no priesthood, that as God is gone religion should also be gone. But he can be forgiven because he had not thought about it and there was no past to help him to see it, it came after him.

The real problem is the priest, and God is the invention of the priest. Unless you drop the priest, you can drop God, but the priest will always find new rituals, he will create new gods.

My effort is to leave you alone with meditation, with no mediator between you and existence. When you are not in meditation you are separated from existence and that is your suffering. It’s the same as when you take a fish out of the ocean and throw it on the bank — the misery and the suffering and the tortures he goes through, the hankering and the effort to reach back to the ocean because it is where he belongs, he is part of the ocean and he cannot remain apart. Any suffering is simply indicative that you are not in communion with existence, that the fish is not in the ocean.

Meditation is nothing but withdrawing all the barriers, thoughts, emotions, sentiments, which create a wall between you and existence. The moment they drop you suddenly find yourself in tune with the whole; not only in tune, you really find you are the whole.

When a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the ocean it does not find that it is part of the ocean, it finds it is the ocean. And to find it is the ultimate goal, the ultimate realization, there is nothing beyond it.

So Adinatha dropped God but did not drop organization. And because there was no God, the organization created rituals.

Buddha, seeing what had happened to Jainism, that it had become a ritualism, dropped God. He dropped all rituals and single-pointedly insisted on meditation, but he forgot that the priests who had made rituals in Jainism are going to do the same with meditation. And they did it, they made Buddha himself a God. They talk about meditation but basically Buddhists are worshipers of Buddha—they go to the temple and instead of Krishna or Christ there is Buddha’s statue. There was no statue of Buddha for five hundred years after Buddha. In Buddhist temples they had just the tree under which Buddha became enlightened, engraved on marble, just a symbol. Buddha was not there, only the tree.

You will be surprised that the statue of Buddha that we see today has no resemblance at all to Buddha’s personality, it resembles the personality of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great came to India three hundred years after Buddha. Till then there was no statue of Buddha. The priests were in search because there was no photograph, there was no painting, so how to make a statue of Buddha? And Alexander’s face looked really superhuman, he had a beautiful personality, the Greek face and physiology; they picked up the idea of Buddha’s face and body from Alexander. So all the statues that are being worshipped in Buddhist temples are statues of Alexander the Great, they have nothing to do with Buddha. But the priests had to create the statue—God was not there, ritual was difficult, around meditation ritual was difficult. They created a statue and they started saying — in the same way all religions have been doing — have faith in Buddha, have trust in Buddha, and you will be saved. Both the revolutions were lost. I would like that what I am doing is not lost. So I am trying in every possible way to drop all those things which in the past have been barriers for the revolution to continue and grow. I don’t want anybody to stand between the individual and existence. No prayer, no priest, you alone are enough to face the sunrise, you don’t need somebody to interpret for you what a beautiful sunrise it is.

It is said that every morning Lao Tzu used to go for a walk in the hills. One friend asked him, “Can I come with you one day? I would particularly like to come tomorrow, because I have a guest who is very much interested in you, and he will be immensely glad to have the opportunity to be with you for two hours in the mountains.”

Lao Tzu said, “I have no objection, just one simple thing has to be remembered. I don’t want anything to be said because I have my eyes, you have your eyes, he has his eyes, we can see. There is no need to say anything.”

The friend agreed, but on the way when the sun started rising the guest forgot. It was so beautiful by the side of the lake, the reflection of all the colors, the birds singing and the lotuses blossoming, opening, he could not resist, he forgot. He said, “What a beautiful sunrise.”

His host was shocked because he has broken the condition. Lao Tzu did not say anything, nothing was said there. Back home he called his friend and told him, “Don’t bring your guest again. He is too talkative. The sunrise was there, I was there, he was there, you were there — what is the need to say anything, any comment, any interpretation?”

And this is my attitude: you are here, every individual is here, the whole existence is available. All that you need is just to be silent and listen to existence. There is no need of any religion, there is no need of any God, there is no need of any priesthood, there is no need of any organization.

I trust in the individual categorically. Nobody up to now has trusted in the individual in such a way. So all things can be removed. Now all that has been left to you is a state of meditation which simply means a state of utter silence. The word meditation makes it look heavier. It is better to call it just a simple, innocent silence and existence opens all its beauties to you.

And as it goes on growing you go on growing, and there comes a moment when you have reached the very peak of your potentiality—you can call it Buddhahood, enlightenment, bhagwatta, godliness, whatever, it has no name, so any name will do.

-Osho

From The Last Testament, Vol. 5

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.

Witnessing is not a Thought – Osho

Osho, it feels that to be a witness is also a kind of thought. So what is the difference between the witness and a thought of the witness?

Satyendra Saraswati,

Witnessing is not a thought but you can start thinking about witnessing, you can make it a thought. The moment you make it a thought, it is no longer witnessing. Either it is witnessing or it is a thought, it cannot be both together.

When you are witnessing you are not thinking that you are witnessing. If you are thinking that you are witnessing, this is not witnessing at all, it is another kind of thought. If the witnessing is simple, there is no thought of witnessing at all. If the thoughts are just passing in front of your vision and you are witnessing them, and no idea arises in you that “I am witnessing,” then it is pure witnessing.

It is not a thought at all, it is a state of no-thought, no-mind. You are simply reflecting whatsoever is passing by.

The moment you say, “Aha! This is witnessing. So I am witnessing. This is what meditation is. This is awareness,” you have missed the point. You have fallen back into the mud of the mind. You are no longer a witness. You have become identified. Witnessing cannot be reduced to a thought.

But your problem is significant. It is encountered by almost every meditator. We have become so habituated to witnessing in a wrong way. We think that we witness. We judge, we evaluate, but we think that we witness. We think that we witness, and it is not witnessing. We are associated with a wrong kind of witnessing, and that idea lingers for a long time.

Secondly: we have become so conditioned to immediately reducing every experience into a thought. We never allow any experience to remain just a pure experience, even for a few moments.

You come across a beautiful rose flower in the garden. The moment you see it, almost instantly you say inside, “How beautiful!” You can’t let that beauty sink in. The thought of beauty becomes a barrier. The moment you say, “How beautiful!” you have already started comparing it with other roses that you have seen in the past. You have started comparing it with all that you have heard about roses. You are no longer seeing this rose. You are missing its suchness. You have gone into the past. You are searching in your memory to discover how many roses you have seen before: “And this is the best one.” But this rose is no longer there in your awareness. Your awareness has become very clouded. So much smoke has come from the past, so much dust has arisen that your mirror is no longer reflecting the beauty. You are not now-here.

Allow the rose and its fragrance and its beauty and its dance in the wind and the sun to penetrate you. Don’t bring your mind in. There is no need to say that this is beautiful. If it is, there is no need to say it; if it is not, then it is false to say it. Either it is or it is not. To create a thought about it in any way is to create ripples in your consciousness. It is like throwing a pebble into a silent lake. Just a moment ago it was reflecting the moon and the stars so beautifully, and your pebble has created ripples, and the moon and the stars have all become distorted.

That’s what happens whenever a thought arises in you: your consciousness is disturbed, starts wavering. Waves start arising in you. Now you are not capable of reflecting that which is.

You will have to learn this new art of seeing things without judging, of seeing things without verbalizing, of seeing things without evaluating. See the rose, see the bird on the wing, see the night full of stars, see the river passing by, see the traffic. Listen to the songs of the birds or a train passing by. Start learning a new art of just being reflective, not bringing any thought in, not saying anything at all.

It will take a little time – old habits die hard – but one day it happens. If you persist, if you are patient enough, if you go on and on working at cleaning your inner world, one day it happens. And the benediction of that day is immense. In fact, that day you are born anew. You start seeing the same world with new eyes because your eyes are so clear, your mirror reflects so deeply, so totally, without distortion, that trees – the same trees that you have seen before thousands of times – are far more green than they have ever been. And their greenness is no ordinary greenness: it is luminous, it is radiating light.

It is the same world, the same people…. A Buddha walks, a Jesus walks in the same world – the same trees, the same rocks, the same people, the same sky – but they live in paradise and you live in hell. The difference is created by the mind.

It will take a little while to drop this mind. It has dominated you for so long that it is difficult in the beginning to suddenly disassociate yourself from it. It clings. It can’t leave its power over you so easily. Hence it goes on coming in from the back door.

You are sitting silently and a beautiful stillness arises, and the mind comes in from the back door and says, “Look, how beautiful this moment is!” And it has taken you away! It came so silently, without making any noise, and you were caught by it in such a subtle way that you could not have been aware of it. You rejoiced, you thanked the mind… but it has destroyed your stillness.

When stillness is really true there is no mind to say anything about it. When witnessing is true you are simply a witness. You don’t think, “I am witnessing.” There is no “I,” there is no thinking, there is only the witness, because all thinking, and the “I” – they have all become contents, objects of your witnessing. And witnessing itself cannot be its own object. No mirror can reflect itself. Your eyes cannot see themselves. Your witness cannot witness itself, that’s impossible.

Your question is relevant. And you will have to be very, very careful, watchful. It is a razor’s edge. One has to be very cautious because if you fall, you fall into a deep abyss. The ordinary people cannot fall; they have nowhere to fall to – they are already at the bottom. But as you start moving higher, the possibility of falling down grows every day. When you reach the Everest of your consciousness, just a little slip, just a little wrong step, and you will go rolling down into a deep abyss.

The greater the meditation, the greater the danger of losing it – naturally; only a rich man can be robbed, not a poor man. That’s why a beggar can sleep under a tree in the afternoon and the noise of the traffic and the marketplace… nothing disturbs him. He can sleep anywhere, he can sleep deeply. He has nothing to lose – no fear.

Once, at night, a king came across a very strange man, a very luminous man, standing alert underneath a tree – so silent, so quiet and so alert. The king was curious: ‘Why is he standing there?” From his appearance he looked like a monk, one who has renounced the world. The king was a very cultured man and he thought, “It is not right to disturb him.” But every night it happened.

That was the routine of the king: to go around the capital at night in disguise to see how things were going – whether the guards were on duty or not; mixing and meeting with people, going into the hotels and the theaters to find out how things were going – whether things were all right or not.

Every night he would come across this man. He saw this man so many times that it became impossible to resist the temptation. One day he approached him and asked, “Excuse me, sir, I should not interfere – you look so silent – but why do you go on standing the whole night? What are you guarding? Is there any treasure underneath this tree?”

The mystic laughed. He said, “Not underneath this tree, but within me there is a treasure and I am watching it. And the treasure is growing every day, it is becoming bigger and bigger, hence I have to be more and more alert.”

The mystic said to the king, “You can sleep, you have nothing to lose. I cannot, I have much to lose; and if I can remain awake I have much to gain.”

The king was very much impressed. He asked him to come to his palace, he invited him. The monk agreed. The king was a little puzzled: a monk agreeing so soon without even refusing once is not thought to be right. A monk should say, “No, I cannot come to the palace. I have renounced the world. It is all futile. It is all dream, illusion, maya I cannot come back to the world. I am happy wherever I am.”

But this monk didn’t say anything. He was a Zen Master. The king started thinking in his mind, “Have I been deceived by this man? Was he simply standing there every night just to catch hold of me?”

But now it was too late; he had invited him. The mystic came to the palace, lived with the king. And, of course, he lived more joyously than the king because he had no worries, no cares about the empire, no problems and no anxieties. He enjoyed good food, and the king had given him the best room in the palace – he lived just like an emperor!

Six months passed. Now the king was boiling within himself to ask him, “What kind of renunciation is this? You are enjoying everything – servants and good food and good clothes and a beautiful palace.”

One day, walking in the garden, he asked the mystic, “Can I ask you a question? Forgive me if you feel offended. This is my question: What is the difference now between me and you?”

The mystic looked at the king and he said, “Why did you wait for six months? This question you could have asked me the very first night. The moment you invited me and I accepted your invitation, this question arose in your mind. Why did you wait for six months? You tortured yourself unnecessarily.

I was expecting it at any moment. There is no question of my feeling offended – it is a natural question. “There is a difference, but it is very subtle. And if you really want to know the difference, then come with me. I cannot tell you here. I will tell you in a certain space, at a certain place. Come along with me.”

They both went outside the city. The king said, “Now can you tell me?”

The mystic said, “Come along.”

When they were crossing the boundary of his empire – it was evening – the king said, “What are you doing? Where are you taking me? Now this is the end of my empire. We are entering somebody else’s kingdom and I would like to be answered. What is your answer? And I am feeling very tired.”

And the mystic said, “My answer is that I am going. Are you coming with me or not? I am not going back.”

The king said, “How can I come with you? I have my whole empire, my wife, my children. How can I come with you?”

The mystic said, “That’s the difference. But I am going!”

Again the king saw the light, the beauty of the man, and fell at his feet. He said, “Come back! I am just stupid. I have missed these six months. I have been thinking things which are really ugly. Forgive me and come back.”

The mystic said, “There is no problem for me. I can come back, but you will again think the same. It is better for me now to go ahead – that story is finished, that chapter is closed – so that you can remember the difference.”

The witness lives in the world just like a mirror, reflecting everything. He may be in a hut, he may be in a palace; it makes no difference. What difference does it make to a mirror whether the mirror is in a hut or in a palace? What difference does it make to the mirror whether the mirror is reflecting beautiful diamonds or just ordinary stones? It makes no difference to the mirror.

Witnessing is the art of transcending the world. Witnessing is the very essence of Zen, of religion itself. But don’t make it a thought – it is not a thought at all. Thoughts have to be witnessed. Even if the thought of witnessing arises, witness that thought. Remember that it is not witnessing, it is only a thought – it has to be witnessed. It is there in front of you. You are not it.

The witness is irreducible to any thought; it always goes on sliding back. You cannot catch hold of it through any thought. It can witness each and every thought, the thought of witnessing included; hence, it can never itself become a thought.

Next time when you are meditating, Satyendra Saraswati, remember it. Don’t start enjoying the thought that “This is a beautiful moment. My mind is silent, my being is still. This is witnessing!” The moment you say it, you have lost it.

-Osho

From Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen, Discourse #5

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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Light in the Seed – Osho

How can I become a light unto myself?

Shraddho Yannis, these were the last words of Gautam the Buddha, his parting message to his disciples:

“Be a light unto yourself.” But when he says, “Be a light unto yourself,” he does not mean become a light unto yourself. There is a great difference between being and becoming.

Becoming is a process, being is a discovery. The seed only appears to become the tree, that is an appearance. The seed already had the tree within itself; it was its very being. The seed does not become the flowers. The flowers were there un-manifest, now they are manifest. It is not a question of becoming; otherwise a pebble could become a flower. But that doesn’t happen. A rock cannot become a rose; that doesn’t happen because the rock has no potential for being a rose. The seed simply discovers itself through dying into the soil: dropping its outer shell, it becomes revealed in its inner reality.

Man is a light in the seed. You are already buddhas. It is not that you have to become buddhas, it is not a question of learning, of achieving, it is only a question of recognition – it is a question of going within yourself and seeing what is there. It is self-discovery.

Yannis, you are not to become a light unto yourself, it is already the case. But you don’t go in; your whole journey is outward. We are being brought up in such a way that we all become extroverts. Our eyes become focused on the outside; we are always seeking and searching for some goal “there,” far away. The farther the goal, the more challenging it appears to the ego.  The more difficult it is, the more attractive it appears. The ego exists through challenges; it wants to prove itself. It is not interested in the simple, it is not interested in the ordinary, it is not interested in the natural, it is interested in something which is neither natural, nor simple, nor ordinary. Its desire is for the extraordinary. And the reality is very ordinary, it is very simple.

The reality is not there but here, not then but now, not outside but in the innermost sanctum of your being. You have just to close your eyes and look in.

In the beginning it is difficult because the eyes only know how to look out. They have become so accustomed to looking out that when you close them, then too they continue to look out – they start dreaming, they start fantasizing. Those dreams are nothing but reflections of the outside.

So it is only in appearance that you seem to be with closed eyes, your eyes are still open to the outside world, you are not in. In fact, every meditator comes across this strange phenomenon: that whenever you close your eyes, your mind becomes more restless, your mind becomes more insane.

It starts chattering in a crazy way: relevant, irrelevant thoughts crisscross your being. It is never so when you are looking outside. And naturally you become tired, naturally you think it is better to remain occupied in something, in some work, rather than sit silently with closed eyes because nothing seems to happen except a long, long procession of thoughts, desires, memories. And they go on coming, unending.

But this is only in the beginning. Just a little patience, just a little awaiting . . . if you go on looking, watching these thoughts silently, with no judgment, with no antagonism, with no desire even to stop them – as if you have no concern with them – unconcerned – just as one watches the traffic on the road or one watches the clouds in the sky, or one watches a river flow by, you simply watch your thoughts. You are not those thoughts; you are the watcher, remembering that “I am the watcher, not the watched.” You cannot be the watched; you cannot be the object of your own subjectivity. You are your subjectivity, you are the witness, you are consciousness. Remembering it . . . It takes a little time, slowly, slowly the old habit dies. It dies hard but it dies, certainly. And the day the traffic stops, suddenly you are full of light. You have always been full of light; just those thoughts were not allowing you to see that which you are.

When all objects have disappeared, there is nothing else to see, you recognize yourself for the first time. You realize yourself for the first time. It is not becoming; it is a discovery of being. The outer shell of the thoughts of the mind is dropped, and you have discovered your flowers, you have discovered your fragrance. This fragrance is freedom.

Hence, Yannis, don’t ask, “How can I become a light unto myself?” You are already a light unto yourself, you are just not aware of it. You have forgotten about it – you have to discover it. And the how of discovery is simple, very simple: a simple process of watching your thoughts.

To help this process you can start watching other things too because the process of watching is the same. What you are watching is not significant. Watch anything and you are learning watchfulness.

Listen to the birds, it is the same. One day you will be able to listen to your own thoughts. The birds are a little farther away; your thoughts are a little closer. In the fall watch the dry leaves falling from the trees. Anything will do that helps you to be watchful. Walking, watch your own walking. Buddha used to say to his disciples: “Take each step watchfully.” He used to say: “Watch your breath.”

And that is one of the most significant practices for watching because the breath is there continuously available for twenty-four hours a day wherever you are. The birds may be singing one day, they may not be singing some other day, but breathing is always there. Sitting, walking, lying down, it is always there. Go on watching the breath coming in, the breath going out.

Not that watching the breath is the point; the point is learning how to watch. Go to the river and watch the river. Sit in the marketplace and watch people passing by. Watch anything; just remember that you are a watcher. Don’t become judgmental, don’t be a judge. Once you start judging you have forgotten that you are a watcher, you have become involved, you have taken sides, you have chosen: “I am in favor of this thought and I am against that thought.” Once you choose, you become identified. Watchfulness is the method of destroying all identification.

Hence Gurdjieff called his process the process of non-identification. It is the same, his word is different. Don’t identify yourself with anything, and slowly, slowly one learns the ultimate art of watchfulness.

That’s what meditation is all about. Through meditation one discovers one’s own light. That light you can call your soul, your self, your God – whatsoever word you choose – or you can remain just silent because it has no name. It is a nameless experience, tremendously beautiful, ecstatic, utterly silent, but it gives you the taste of eternity, of timelessness, of something beyond death.

-Osho

From Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen, Discourse #13, Q1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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Consciousness, Witnessing and Awareness – Osho

Question: What is the difference between awareness and witnessing?

There is much difference between awareness and witnessing. Witnessing is still an act; you are doing it, the ego is there. So the phenomenon of witnessing is divided between the subject and the object.

Witnessing is a relationship between subject and object. Awareness is absolutely devoid of any subjectivity or objectivity. There is no one who is witnessing in awareness; there is no one who is being witnessed. Awareness is a total act, integrated; the subject and the object are not related in it; they are dissolved. So awareness doesn’t mean that anyone is aware, nor does it mean that anything is being attended to.

Awareness is total – total subjectivity and total objectivity as a single phenomenon – while in witnessing a duality exists between subject and object. Awareness is non-doing; witnessing implies a doer. But through witnessing awareness is possible, because witnessing means that it is a conscious act; it is an act, but conscious. You can do something and be unconscious – our ordinary activity is unconscious activity – but if you become conscious in it, it becomes witnessing. So from ordinary unconscious activity to awareness there is a gap that can be filled by witnessing.

Witnessing is a technique, a method toward awareness. It is not awareness, but, as compared to ordinary activity, unconscious activity, it is a higher step. Something has changed: activity has become conscious; unconsciousness has been replaced by consciousness. But something more still has to be changed. That is, the activity has to be replaced by inactivity. That will be the second step.

It is difficult to jump from ordinary, unconscious action into awareness. It is possible but arduous, so a step in between is helpful. If one begins by witnessing conscious activity, then the jump becomes easier – the jump into awareness without any conscious object, without any conscious subject, without any conscious activity at all. This doesn’t mean that awareness isn’t consciousness; it is pure consciousness, but no one is conscious about it.

There is still a difference between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is a quality of your mind, but it is not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious, but when you transcend your mind, there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness. There is awareness.

Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there, but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness. We cannot say that the mind is aware; we can only meaningfully say that the mind is conscious. Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible.

Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious. So consciousness is part and parcel of the mind, and mind, as such, is the source of all duality, of all divisions, whether they are between subject and object, activity or inactivity, consciousness or unconsciousness. Every type of duality is mental. Awareness is non-dual, so awareness means the state of no mind.

Then what is the relationship between consciousness and witnessing? Witnessing is a state, and consciousness is a means toward witnessing. If you begin to be conscious, you achieve witnessing. If you begin to be conscious of your acts, conscious of your day-to-day happenings, conscious of everything that surrounds you, then you begin to witness.

Witnessing comes as a consequence of consciousness. You cannot practice witnessing; you can only practice consciousness. Witnessing comes as a consequence, as a shadow, as a result, as a by-product. The more you become conscious, the more you go into witnessing, the more you come to be a witness. So consciousness is a method to achieve witnessing. And the second step is that witnessing will become a method to achieve awareness.

So these are the three steps: consciousness, witnessing, awareness. But where we exist is the lowest rank: that is, in unconscious activity. Unconscious activity is the state of our minds.

Through consciousness you can achieve witnessing, and through witnessing you can achieve awareness, and through awareness you can achieve “no achievement.” Through awareness you can achieve all that is already achieved. After awareness there is nothing; awareness is the end.

Awareness is the end of spiritual progress; unawareness is the beginning. Unawareness means a state of material existence. So unawareness and unconsciousness are not both the same.

Unawareness means matter. Matter is not unconscious; it is unaware.

Animal existence is an unconscious existence; human existence is a mind phenomenon – ninety-nine percent unconscious and one percent conscious. This one percent consciousness means you are one percent conscious of your ninety-nine percent unconsciousness. But if you become conscious of your own consciousness, then the one percent will go on increasing, and the ninety-nine percent unconsciousness will go on decreasing.

If you become one hundred percent conscious, you become a witness, a sakshi. If you become a sakshi, you have come to the jumping point from where the jump into awareness becomes possible.

In awareness you lose the witness and only witnessing remains: you lose the doer, you lose the subjectivity, you lose the egocentric consciousness. Then consciousness remains, without the ego. The circumference remains without the center.

This circumference without the center is awareness. Consciousness without any center, without any source, without any motivation, without any source from which it comes – a “no source” consciousness – is awareness.

So you move from the unaware existence that is matter, prakriti, towards awareness. You may call it the divine, the godly, or whatever you choose to call it. Between matter and the divine, the difference is always of consciousness.

-Osho

From Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Discourse #14

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

For a related post see Yoga Means the Growth of Consciousness.

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

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Witnessing is Not a Mental Activity – Osho

Last night you said that the mind cannot do two things together—that is, thinking and witnessing. It seems then that witnessing is a mental faculty and an act of the mind. Is it so? Please explain. Is there anything like partial witnessing and total witnessing?

Witnessing is not a mental activity; thinking is a mental activity. Rather, it would be better to say that thinking is mind. When the mind is not, when the mind is absent, when the mind has disappeared, only then do you have witnessing. It is something behind the mind.

Zen Buddhism uses mind in two ways: the ordinary mind means thinking; then Mind with a capital “M” means the Mind behind thinking. Consciousness is behind the mind; consciousness comes through the mind. If mind is in a state of thinking, it becomes opaque, non-transparent, just like a clouded sky – you cannot see the sky. When the clouds are not, you can see the sky. When thinking is not there, then you can feel the witnessing. It is the pure sky behind.

So when I said that you cannot do two things, I meant either you can think, or you can witness. If you are thinking, then you lose witnessing. Then the mind becomes a cloud on your consciousness.

If you are witnessing, you cannot think simultaneously; then the mind is not there. Thinking is an acquired process; witnessing is your nature. So when I say that you cannot do both or mind cannot do both, I don’t mean that mind is the faculty to witness. Mind is the faculty to think, mind is for “minding.”

Really, many problems are created just by language. There is nothing like mind. There is only a process, not a thing. It is better to call it minding than mind. It is a process of continuous thought, one thought being followed by another. Only in the gaps, only in the intervals between two thoughts, can you have something of the witnessing nature. But thoughts are so speedy that you cannot even feel the gap. If you begin to witness your thoughts, then the thought process is slowed down and then you begin to feel gaps. One thought passes, another has not come yet, and there is an interval. In that interval you have witnessing. And thoughts cannot exist without gaps; otherwise they will begin to overlap each other. They cannot exist! Just like my fingers are there – with gaps in between.

If your thought process is slowed down – and any method of meditation is nothing but a slowing down of the thought process – if the thought process is slowed down, you begin to feel the gaps.

Through these gaps is witnessing. Thought is mind; a thoughtless consciousness is witnessing.

Thought is acquired from the outside; witnessing is inside. Consciousness is born with you: thought is acquired, cultivated. So you can have a Hindu thought, you can have a Mohammedan thought, you can have a Christian thought, but you cannot have a Christian soul, you cannot have a Hindu soul. Soul is just soul – consciousness is consciousness.

Minds have types. You have a particular mind. That particular mind is your upbringing, conditioning, education, culture. Mind means whatsoever has been put into you from the outside, and witnessing means whatsoever has not been put from the outside but is your inside – intrinsically, naturally. It is your nature. Mind is a by-product, a habit. Witnessing, consciousness, awareness, whatsoever you call it, is your nature. But you can acquire so many habits, and the nature can go just underneath.

You can forget it completely. So, really, religion is a fight for nature against habits. It is to uncover that which is natural – the original, the real you.

So remember the first thing: witnessing and thinking are different states. Thinking belongs to your mind; witnessing belongs to your nature. And you cannot do both simultaneously. Mind must cease for your consciousness to be; thought must cease for your real nature to be. So a thinker is one thing, and an Enlightened person is totally different.

A Buddha is not a thinker. Hegel or Kant are thinkers. They use their minds to reach particular conclusions. Buddha is not using his mind to reach any conclusions. Buddha is not using his mind at all. He is really a no-mind. He has stopped using mind. He is using himself, not the mind, to reach any conclusions. So with the mind you can reach conclusions, but all conclusions will be hypothetical, theoretical, because one thought can beget another thought. But thought cannot beget reality, thought cannot beget Truth.

Through witnessing you reach reality – not conclusions, not theories, but direct, immediate facts. For example, I am saying something to you. You can think about it – then you have missed the point.

You can think about it, what witnessing is, what mind is – you can think about it. This is one way; this is the mind’s way. But you can experiment with it and not think. And by “experiment” is meant that you have to know how to stop the mind and feel the witnessing. Then again you reach to something, but then it is not a conclusion; it is not something achieved through the thought process. Then it is something you realize.

Someone was asking Aurobindo, “Do you believe in God?” Aurobindo said, “No, I don’t believe in God at all.” The questioner was perplexed because he had come a long way just because he thought Aurobindo was capable of showing him the path towards God. And now Aurobindo says, “I don’t believe.”

He couldn’t believe his ears, so he asked again. He said, “I am perplexed. I have come a long way just to ask you how to achieve God. And if you don’t believe, then the problem, the question, doesn’t arise.”

Aurobindo said, “Who says that the question doesn’t arise? I don’t believe because I know that God is. But that is not my belief, that is not a conclusion reached by thought. It is not my belief. I know! That is my knowing.”

Mind can, at the most, believe. It can never know. It can believe either that there is God or there is no God, but both are beliefs. These both are beliefs.  Both have reached to these conclusions through “minding,” through thinking. They have thought, they have tried to probe logically, and then they have come to certain conclusions.

A Buddha is not a believer – he knows! And when I say he knows, knowing is possible only in one way. It is not through mind. It is through throwing mind completely. It is difficult to conceive because we have to conceive through the mind; that is the difficulty. I have to talk to you through the medium of the mind, and you have to listen to me through the medium of the mind. So when I say it is not to be achieved through mind, your mind takes it – but it is inconceivable for the mind. It can even create a theory about it. You may begin to believe that the Truth cannot be achieved through mind. If you begin to believe, you are in mind again. You can say, “I am not convinced. I don’t believe that there is anything beyond the mind.” Then again you are within the mind.

You can never go beyond the mind if you go on using it. You have to take a jump, and meditation means that jump. That’s why meditation is illogical, irrational. And it cannot be made logical; it cannot be reduced to reason. You have to experience it. If you experience, only then do you know.

So try this: don’t think about it, try – try to be a witness to your own thoughts. Sit down, relaxed, close your eyes, let your thoughts run just like on a screen pictures run. See them, look at them, make them your objects. One thought arises: look at it deeply. Don’t think about it, just look at it. If you begin to think about it then you are not a witness – you have fallen in the trap.

There is a horn outside; a thought arises – some car is passing; or a dog barks or something happens. Don’t think about it; just look at the thought. The thought has arisen, taken form. Now it is before you. Soon it will pass. Another thought will replace it. Go on looking at this thought process.

Even for a single moment, if you are capable of looking at this thought process without thinking about it, you will have gained something in witnessing and you will have known something in witnessing. This is a taste, a different taste than thinking – totally different. But one has to experiment with it.

Religion and science are poles apart, but in one thing they are similar and their emphasis is the same: science depends on experiments, and religion also. Only philosophy is non-experimental. Philosophy depends just on thinking. Religion and science both depend on experiment: science on objects, religion on your subjectivity. Science depends on experimenting with other things than you, and religion depends on experimenting directly with you.

It is difficult, because in science the experimenter is there, the experiment is there and the object to be experimented upon is there. There are three things: the object, the subject and the experiment. In religion you are all the three simultaneously. You are to experiment upon yourself. You are the subject and you are the object and you are the lab.

Don’t go on thinking. Begin, start somewhere, to experiment. Then you will have a direct feeling of what thinking is and what witnessing is. And then you will come to know that you cannot do both simultaneously, just as you cannot run and sit simultaneously. If you run, then you cannot sit, then you are not sitting. And if you are sitting, then you cannot run. But sitting is not a function of the legs.

Running is a function of the legs; sitting is not a function of legs. Rather, sitting is a non-function of the legs. When the legs are functioning, then you are not sitting. Sitting is a non-function of the legs; running is the function.

The same is with the mind: thinking is a function of the mind; witnessing a non-function of the mind. When the mind is not functioning, you have the witnessing, then you have the awareness. That’s why I said you cannot do both with your mind. You cannot both sit and run with your legs. But that doesn’t mean that sitting is a function of your legs. It is not a function at all; it is a nonfunctioning of your legs.

And you ask, “Is there anything like partial witnessing and total witnessing?” No – there is nothing like partial witnessing and total witnessing. Witnessing is total. It may be for a single moment and then it may go, but when it is there, it is total. Can you sit partially or totally? What can we understand by sitting partially? Witnessing is a total thing. Really, in life, nothing is partial – in life. Only with mind everything is partial. Understand this: with mind, nothing is total and never can be total. And when mind is not there, everything is total, nothing can be partial.

So mind is the faculty to bring partialness and fragmentariness in life. For example, watch a child in anger. The child is yet raw, uncultured. Look at his anger: the anger is total; it is not partial. Nothing is suppressed, it is a full flowering. That’s why children in anger are so beautiful.

Every totality has a beauty of its own.

When you are in anger, your anger is never total. The mind has come in – it is going to be partial. Something is bound to be suppressed, and that something suppressed will become a poison. Then your love also cannot be total. It is going to be partial. Neither can you hate nor can you love. Whatsoever you do will be partial because the mind is functioning.

A child can be angry this moment, and the second moment he can be in love. And when he is in anger it is a total thing, and when he is in love it is again a total thing. Every moment is total! The mind is still undeveloped. Again, a sage is just like a child. There are many, many differences, but the childhood comes again – he is total again. But he cannot be in anger. The child is without a mind as far as this life is concerned, but past lives and many minds accumulated in the unconscious, they go on working. So a child appears total, but he cannot be really total. This life’s mind is still growing, but he has many, many minds hidden in the subconscious, in the unconscious, in the deeper realms of the mind.

A sage is totally without mind – of this life or of past lives – so he can be only total in anything. He cannot be angry, he cannot be in hate, and the reason is again that no one can be totally in anger.

Anger is painful and you cannot be totally in anything which gives pain to you. He cannot be in hate because now he cannot be in anything in which he cannot be total. It is not a question of good and evil; it is not a moral question. Really, for a sage, it is not a question of being total. He cannot be otherwise.

Lao Tzu says, “I call that good in which you can be total and that bad in which you can never be total.” Partiality is sin. If you look at it in this way, then mind becomes sin – mind is the faculty of being partial. Witnessing is total, but in our lives nothing is total – nothing. We are partial in everything. That’s why there is no bliss, no ecstasy – because only when you are total in something do you have a blissful moment and never otherwise. Bliss means being total in something, and we are never total in anything. Only a part of us goes into something and a part of us remains outside. This creates a tension: one part somewhere and another part somewhere else. So whatsoever we do, even if we love, it is a tension, it is an anguish.

Psychologists say that if you study someone in love, then love appears just like any disease. Even love is not a blissful thing. It is anguish, a heavy burden. And that’s why one gets bored even with love, fed up – because the mind is not in bliss, it is in anguish. In whatsoever we are partial we are bound to be tense, in anguish. ”Partial” means we are divided, and mind is bound to be partial. Why? Because mind is not one thing. Mind means many things. Mind is a collection; it is not a unity.

Your nature is a unity. Your mind is a collection; it is not a unity at all. It has been collected by the way. So many persons have influenced your mind; so many influences have made it. Nothing goes by which is not impressing your mind. Everything that passes you impresses itself upon you: your friends impress you, your enemies also; your attractions impress you, your repulsions also; what you like impresses you and what you don’t like also impresses you. You go on collecting in multi-dimensional ways. So mind is just a junkyard. It is not unitary. It is a “multiverse,” it is not a universe, so it can never be total. How can it be total? It is a crowd with many, many contradictory, self-contradictory openings.

Old psychology believed in one mind, but new psychology says this is a false concept. Mind is a multiplicity, it is not one. You don’t have one mind. It is only a linguistic habit that we go on talking about one mind. We go on saying “my mind,” but this is wrong, factually wrong. It is better to say “my minds.”

Mahavir came upon this fact two thousand years ago. He is reported to have said: “Man is not uni-psychic, man is poly-psychic – many minds.” That’s why you cannot be total with the mind.

Either the majority of your mind is with you or the minority. Any mind decision is bound to be a parliamentary decision and nothing more. At the most you can hope for a majority decision.

And then a second thing comes in: it is not a fixed crowd – it is a changing crowd. It is not a fixed crowd! Every moment something is being added and something is being lost, so every moment you have new minds.

Buddha is passing through a city and someone comes to him and says, “I want to serve humanity. Show me the path!” Buddha closes his eyes and remains silent. The man feels bewildered. He asks again: “I am saying that I want to serve humanity. Why have you become silent? Is there something wrong in my asking this?”

Buddha opens his eyes and says, “You want to serve humanity, but where are you? First BE! You are not! You are a crowd. This moment you want to serve humanity, the second moment you may want to murder humanity. First be! You cannot do anything unless you are. So don’t think of doings – first contemplate about your being.”

This “being” can happen only through witnessing, never through thinking. Witnessing is total because your nature is one. You are born as one. Then you accumulate many minds. Then you begin to feel these many minds as you – then you are identified. This identification is to be broken.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol. 1, Discourse #16, Q1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Listen to the discourse excerpt Witnessing is Not a Mental Activity.

For a related post see Established in One’s Own Witnessing Nature.

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.

Path of Will or Path of Surrender? – Osho

Last night you spoke about witnessing as a method; other times I have heard you speak about becoming a thing totally, being totally involved in any given situation. Usually, I am at a loss as to which of these two to follow: Whether to stand back and witness in a detached way or become something totally – for example, when there is anger or love or sadness. Are these not two opposite paths? Are they both for different kinds of situations or for different types of people? When should one do which?

There are two basic paths – only two. One is of surrendering and another is of willing: the path of surrender and the path of will. They are diametrically opposite as far as going through them is concerned. But they reach to the same goal; they reach to the same realization. So we have to understand a little more in detail.

The path of will starts with your witnessing Self. It is not concerned with your ego directly – only indirectly. To start witnessing, to be aware of your acts, is directly concerned with awakening your inner Self. If the inner Self is awakened, the ego disappears as a consequence. You are not to do anything with the ego directly. They cannot both exist simultaneously. If your Self is awakened, the ego will disappear. The path of will tries to awaken the inner center directly. Many, many methods are used. How to awaken the Self? We will discuss that.

The path of surrender is directly concerned with the ego, not with the Self. When the ego disappears, the inner Self is awakened automatically. The path of surrender is concerned with the ego immediately, directly. You are not to do anything to awaken your inner Self. You are just to surrender your ego. The moment ego is surrendered; you are left with your inner Self awakened.

Of course, these both will work in opposite directions, because one will be concerned with ego and one will be concerned with Self. Their methods, their techniques, will be opposite – and no one can follow both. There is no need to and that is impossible also. Everyone has to choose.

If you choose the path of will, then you are left alone to work upon yourself. It is an arduous thing. One has to struggle – to fight – to fight with old habits which create sleep. Then the only fight is against sleep, and the only ambition is for a deep awakening inside. Those who follow will, they know only one sin, and that sin is spiritual sleepiness.

Many are the techniques. I have discussed some. For example, Gurdjieff used a Sufi exercise. Sufis call it “halt.” For example, you are sitting here, and if you are practicing the exercise of “halt” it means total halt. Whenever the teacher says “Stop!” or “Halt!” then you have to stop totally whatsoever you are doing. If your eyes are open, then stop them there and then. Now you cannot close them.

If your hand is raised, let it be there. Whatsoever your position and gesture, just be frozen in it. No movements! Halt totally! Try this, and suddenly you will have an inner awakening – a feeling. Suddenly you will become aware of your own frozenness.

The whole body is frozen, you have become a solid stone, you are like a statue. But if you go on deceiving yourself, then you have fallen into sleep. You can deceive yourself. You can say, “Who is seeing me? I can close my eyes. They are becoming painful.” You can deceive yourself – then you have fallen into sleep. No – deception is sleep. Don’t deceive yourself, because no one else is concerned. It is up to you. If you can be frozen for a single moment you will begin to see yourself as different, and your center will become aware of your frozen body.

There are other ways. For example, Mahavir and his tradition have used fasting as a method to awaken the Self. If you fast, the body begins to demand, the body begins to overpower you. Mahavir has said, “Just witness – don’t do anything. You feel hungry, so feel hungry. The body asks for food – be a witness to it, don’t do anything. Just be a witness to whatsoever is happening.” And it is a deep thing.

There are only two deep things in the body – sex and food. Nothing is more than these two, because food is needed for individual survival and sex is needed for race survival. Both are survival mechanisms. The individual cannot survive without food and the race cannot survive without sex. So sex is food for the race and food is sex for the individual. These are the deepest things because they are concerned with your survival – the most basic things. You will die without them.

So if you are fasting and just witnessing, then you have touched the deepest sleep. And if you can witness without being identified or bothered – the body is suffering, the body is hungry, the body is demanding and you are just witnessing – suddenly the body will be different. There will be a discontinuity between you and the body; there will be a gap.

Fasting has been used by Mahavir. Mohammedans have used vigilance in the night – no sleep!

Don’t sleep for a week and then you will know how sleepy the whole being becomes, how difficult it is to maintain this vigilance. But if one persists, suddenly a moment comes when the body and you are torn apart. Then you can see that the body needs sleep – it is not your need.

Many are the methods to work directly to create more awareness in yourself, to bring yourself above your so-called sleepy existence. No surrender is needed. Rather, one has to fight against surrender. No surrender is needed, because this is a path of struggle not of surrender. Because of this path, Mahavir was given the name “Mahavir.” “Mahavir” means “the great warrior.” This was not his name. His name was Vardhaman. He was called Mahavir because he was a great warrior as far as this inner struggle is concerned. He had no Guru, no Master, because it is a lonely path. Even to take somebody’s help is not good – it may become your sleep.

There is a story: Mahavir was fasting and remaining silent for years together. In a certain village some mischievous people were disturbing him, harassing him, and he was on a vow of silence.

He was beaten so many times because he would not speak and he remained naked – completely naked. So the villagers were at a loss to understand who he was. And he would not speak! And moreover he was naked! So from one village to another village he would be thrown out, made to leave the village.

The story says Indra, the King of gods, came to him and said to Mahavir, “I can defend you. It has become so painful. You are being beaten unnecessarily, so just allow me to defend you.”

Mahavir rejected the help. Later on, when he was asked why he rejected the help, he said, “This path of will is a lonely path. You cannot even have a helper with you because then the struggle loosens. Then the struggle becomes partial. Then you can depend on someone else, and wherever there is dependence sleep comes in. One has to be totally independent; only then can one be awake.”

This is one path, one basic attitude. All these methods of witnessing belong to this path. So when I say, “Be a witness.” it is meant for those who are travelers on the path of will.

Quite the opposite is the method of surrender. Surrender is concerned with your ego, not with your Self. In surrender you have to give up yourself. Of course, you cannot give the Self; that is impossible.

Whatsoever you can give is bound to be your ego. Only the ego can be given – because it is just incidental to you. It is not even a part of your being, just something added. It is a possession. Of course, the possessor has also become possessed by it. But it is a possession, it is a property – it is not you.

The path of surrender says, “Surrender your ego to the Teacher, to the Divine, to a Buddha.” When someone comes to Buddha and says, “Buddham Sharanam Gauchhami – I take shelter at your feet. I surrender myself at Buddha’s feet,” what is he doing? The Self cannot be surrendered, so leave it out. Whatsoever you can surrender is your ego. That is your possession; you can surrender it. If you can surrender your ego to someone, it makes no difference to whom – X, Y or Z. The person to be surrendered to is irrelevant in a way. The real thing is surrendering. So you can surrender to a God in the sky. Whether He is there or not is irrelevant. If a concept of the Divine in the sky can help you to surrender your ego, then it is a good device.

Really, yoga shastras say that God is a device to be surrendered to – just a device! So you need not bother whether God is or not. He is just a device, because it will be difficult for you to surrender in a vacuum. So let there be a God, and you surrender. Even a false device can help. For example, you see a rope on the street and you think that it is a snake. It moves like a snake. You are afraid, you are trembling, you are running. You begin to perspire, and your perspiration is real. And there is no snake – there is just a rope mistaken for a snake.

The yoga sutras say that God is a just a device to be surrendered to. Whether God is or is not is not meaningful; you need not bother about it. If He is, you will come to know through surrender. You need not be bothered about it before surrender. If He is, then you will know; if He is not, then you will know. So no discussion, no argument, no proof is needed. And it is very beautiful: they say He is a device, just a hypothetical thing to which you can surrender yourself, to help you surrender.

So a Teacher can become a god; a Teacher is a god. Unless you feel a Teacher as a god, you cannot surrender. Surrendering becomes possible if you feel that Mahavir is a god, Buddha is a god. Then you can surrender easily. Whether a Buddha is a god or not is irrelevant. Again, it is a device, it helps.

Buddha is known to have said that every truth is a device to help; every truth is just a utility. If it works, it is true. And there is no other basis for calling it true or untrue – if it works, it is true!

On the path of surrender, surrendering is the only technique. There are many techniques on the path of will, because you can make many efforts to awaken yourself. But when one is just to surrender, there are no methods. […]

These are completely, diametrically opposite standpoints. But just in the beginning and while on the path – they reach to the same thing. Either surrender your ego – then you have not to do anything. You have to do only one thing: surrender your ego. Then you have not to do anything. Then everything will begin to happen. If you cannot surrender then you will have to do much, because then you are on your own to fight, struggle.

Both paths are valid, and there is no question of which is better. It depends on the person who is following. It depends on your type. […]

The path of will is just like naturopathy – you have to depend upon yourself. No help! The path of surrender is more like allopathy – you can use medicines.

Think of it in this way: when someone is ill, he has two things – an inner, positive possibility of health and an accidental or incidental phenomenon of disease, illness. Naturopathy is not concerned with illness directly. Naturopathy is directly concerned with a positive growth of health. So grow in health! Naturopathy means growing in health positively. When you grow in health, the disease will disappear by itself. You need not be concerned with disease directly.

Allopathy is not concerned with positive health at all. It is concerned with the illness: destroy the illness and you will be healthy automatically.

The path of will is concerned with growing in positive awareness. If you grow, the ego will disappear – that is the disease. The path of surrender is concerned with the disease itself, not with positive growth in health. Destroy the disease – surrender the ego – and you will grow in health.

The path of surrender is allopathic and the path of will is naturopathic. […]

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #16, Q2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation 

For a related post see The Light of Awareness.

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.

Only Life Goes Beyond Death – Osho

Life is an opportunity. You can use it, you can misuse it, or you can simply waste it. It depends on you. Except you, nobody is going to be responsible. Responsibility is of the individual.

Once you realize this then you start becoming alert, aware. Then you start living in a totally different way. Then, in fact, for the first time you become alive.

Otherwise, people live in a sort of dream – half-asleep, half-awake… just somewhere in between consciousness and unconsciousness. That life is not really a life. You exist – but you don’t live.

Existence is given to you. Existence is a gift. Life has to be earned. When existence turns upon itself, it becomes life. Existence has been given by the whole; you have not done anything for it. It is simply there, a given fact. When existence becomes life… the moment you start existing in a conscious way, immediately existence becomes life.

Existence lived consciously is life.

Life is a great challenge, an adventure into the unknown, an adventure into oneself, and adventure into that which is. If you live an unconscious life, if you simply exist, you will always remain afraid of death. Death will always be just somewhere near the comer, hanging around you. Only life goes beyond death.

Existence comes, disappears. It is given to you, taken away. It is a wave in the ocean… arises, falls back, disappears.

But life is eternal. Once you have it, you have it forever. Life knows no death. Life is not afraid of death. Once you know what life is, death disappears. If you are still afraid of death, know well – you have not known life yet.

Death exists only in the ignorance – in the ignorance of what life is. One goes on living. One goes on moving from one moment to another, from one action to another, completely unaware what one is doing, why one is doing, why one is drifting from this point to that point. If you become a little meditative, many times in a day you will catch hold of yourself completely drifting unconscious.

The whole effort of religion is to make you aware of your existence.

Existence plus awareness is life eternal – what Jesus calls life in abundance, what Jesus calls the kingdom of god.

That kingdom of god is within you. You have already the seed within you. You just have to allow it to sprout. You have to allow it to come in the sunlit world of the sky, to become free, to move in freedom, to move higher and higher, to touch the very infinity. It is possible to soar high – but the basic thing is awareness.

Shortly before Carl Jung died, he said in an interview, ‘We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man.’

One fallacy continues and that fallacy is that because you are, you think you know who you are. You feel that you are, but you don’t know who you are. Just a confused feeling, a mixed feeling, a shadowy feeling that you are, is not enough. It should become crystal-clear. It should become an unwavering light within you. Only then one knows what man is.

In Sanskrit, for ‘man’ we have the word ‘purusha’. That word is tremendously beautiful. It is difficult to translate it because it has three meanings. It can be pronounced with three different emphases. The word is purusha. It can be pronounced as pur u sha. Then it means ‘the dawn in the city… he who is filled with light’.

It can be pronounced as puru sha. Then it means ‘filled with wisdom and eternal happiness… a citizen of heaven’.

It can be pronounced as pu rusha. Then it means ‘whose passions are purified and who has become deathless’.

There are many possibilities within you, layer upon layer. The first layer is of the body. If you get identified with the body, you are getting identified with the temporal, the momentary. Then there is bound to be fear of death.

The body is a flux, like a river – continuously changing, moving. It has nothing of the eternal in it. Each moment the body is changing. In fact, the body is dying every moment. It is not that after seventy years suddenly one day you die. The body dies every day. Death continues for seventy years; it is a process.

Death is not an event; it is a long process. By and by, by and by, the body comes to a point where it cannot hold itself. It disintegrates.

If you are identified with the body, of course the fear will be constantly there that death is approaching. You can live, but you can live only in fear. And what type of life is possible when one’s foundations are constantly shaking? and one is sitting on a volcano and death is possible any moment? And only one thing is certain – that death is coming – and everything else is uncertain. How can one live? How can one celebrate? How can one dance and sing and be? Impossible. The death won’t allow it. The death is too much and too close.

Then there is a second layer within you: that of the mind – which is even more temporal and more fleeting than the body. Mind is also continuously disintegrating. Mind is the inner part of the body and the body is the outer part of the mind. These are not two things. Mind and body is not a right expression. The right expression is mind-body. You are psychosomatic. Not that the body exists and the mind exists. The body is the gross mind, and the mind is the subtle body… aspects of the same coin – one outer, the second inner.

So there are people who are identified with the body. These are the materialists. They cannot live. Desperately they try, of course, but they cannot live. A materialist only pretends that he is living; he cannot live. His life cannot be very deep; it can only be superficial, shallow – because he is trying to live through the body which is continuously dying.He is living in a house which is on fire. He is trying to rest in a house which is on fire. How can you rest? How can you love?

The materialist can have only sex, cannot love. Because sex is temporal; love is something of the eternal. He can make hit-and-run contacts with people but he cannot relate. He is constantly running, because he is identified with the body. The body is never at rest; it is a continuous movement.

At the most he can have sex – a temporal, a momentary thing; nothing deeper, nothing of the soul, nothing of the innermost core. Beings remain far away; bodies meet and mingle and separate again. The materialist is the most idiotic person, because he is trying to live through death. That is the stupidity.

Then another type of person is the idealist – one who is identified with the mind, with ideas, ideologies, ideals. He lives in a very ephemeral world – not in any way better than the materialist. Of course, more ego-fulfilling, because he can condemn the materialist.

He talks about god, he talks about the soul, he talks about religion and great things. He talks about the other world – but that is all mere talk. He lives in the mind: continuously thinking, brooding, playing with ideas and words. He creates utopias of the mind, great beautiful dreams – but he is also wasting the opportunity. Because the opportunity is here and now, and he always thinks of somewhere else.

The word ‘utopia’ is beautiful. It means ‘that which never comes’. He thinks of something which never comes, which cannot come. He lives somewhere else. He exists here and lives somewhere else. He lives in a dichotomy, in a dualism. With great tension he exists. The politicians, the revolutionaries, the so-called theologians, the priests, they all live a life identified with the mind.

And real life is beyond both body and mind. You are in the body, you are in the mind, but you are neither. The body is your outer shell, the mind is your inner shell, but you are beyond both.

This insight is the beginning of real life. How to start this insight? That’s what meditation is all about.

Start witnessing. Walking on the street, become a witness. Watch the body walking… and you, from the innermost core, are just watching, witnessing, observing. Suddenly you will have a sense of freedom. Suddenly you will see that the body is walking, you are not walking.

Sometimes the body is healthy, sometimes the body is ill. Watch, just watch, and suddenly you will have a sense of a totally different quality of being. You are not the body. The body is ill, of course, but you are not ill. The body is healthy, but it has nothing to do with you. You are a witness, a watcher on the hills… far beyond. Of course, tethered to the body, but not identified with the body; rooted in the body, but always beyond and transcending.

The first meditation is to separate yourself from the body. And by and by, when you become more acute in your observation of the body, start observing the thoughts that continuously go on within your mind. But first watch the body, because it is gross, can be observed more easily, will not need much awareness. Once you become attuned, then start watching the mind.

Whatsoever can be watched becomes separate from you. Whatsoever you can witness, you are not it. You are the witnessing consciousness. The witnessed is the object; you are the subjectivity. The body, and the mind also, remain far away when you become a witness. Suddenly you are there – with no body and no mind… a pure consciousness, just simple sheer purity, an innocence, a mirror.

In this innocence, for the first time you know who you are. In this purity, for the first time existence becomes life. For the first time you are. Before it, you were simply asleep, dreaming; now you are. And when you are, then there is no death. Then you know that you will be witnessing your death also. One who has become capable of witnessing life has become capable of witnessing death. Because death is not the end of life; it is the very culmination of it. It is the very pinnacle of it. Life comes to its peak in death. Because you are afraid, you miss. Otherwise death is the greatest orgasm there is.

You have known the small orgasm of sex. In sex also, a small, a little death happens. Some life energy is released from your body – you feel orgasmic, unburdened, relaxed, just think of death. The whole energy that you have is released. Death is the greatest orgasm.

In sexual orgasm just a small, minute part of your energy is relaxed. Then too you feel so beautiful. Then too you feel so relaxed and you fall in deep sleep, all tensions dissolved. You become a harmony. Think of death as the whole life released. From every pore of your body, the whole life released back to the whole. It is the greatest orgasm there is. Yes, death is the greatest orgasm.

But people go on missing it because of fear. The same happens with sexual orgasm. Many people go on missing it. They cannot have any orgasm because of the fear. They cannot move totally in it.

Remember this; people who are afraid of death will be afraid of sex also.

You can watch this happening in this country. This country has remained afraid of sex, and this country is very much afraid of death also. You cannot find more cowards anywhere. You cannot find more cowardly people anywhere. What has happened? Those people who are afraid of  death will become afraid of sex also, because a small death happens in sex. Those people who become afraid of sex, cling too much to life. They become miserly. Misers miss sexual orgasms and then they miss the great orgasm, the fulfillment of the whole life.

Once you know what death is, you will receive it with great celebration. You will welcome it. It is the fulfillment of your whole life’s effort. It is the fruition of your whole life’s effort. The journey ends. One comes back home.

But in death you don’t die. Just the energy that was given to you through the body and through the mind is released, goes back to the world. You return back home.

If you don’t die rightly, you will be born again. Now let me explain it to you. If you don’t die rightly, if you don’t achieve the total orgasm that death is, you will be born again, because you missed and you have to be given another opportunity.

God is very patient with you. He goes on giving you more opportunities. He has compassion. If you have missed this life, he will give you another. If you have failed this time, for another session you will be sent back to the world. Unless you fulfill the goal, you will be sent back again and again. That is the meaning of the theory of rebirth.

The Christian god is a little miserly. He gives only one life. That creates much tension. Just one life? No time even to err, no time to go astray. That creates very deep inner tension. In the East we have created the concept of a more compassionate god who goes on giving. You have missed this one? Take another. And in a way it is very sensible. There is no god personified as such who gives life to you. It is in fact you.

Have you watched sometimes? In the night you go to sleep. Just watch. When you fall asleep, when you are falling asleep, just watch the last thought, the last desire, the last fragment in your mind. And then when in the morning you feel awake, don’t open the eyes; just again watch. The last fragment will be the first fragment again.

If you were thinking of money when you were falling asleep, exactly the same thought will be the first thought in the morning. You will be thinking of money again – because that thought remained in your mind, waited for you to come back to it. If you were thinking of sex, in the morning you will be thinking of sex. Whatsoever…. If you were thinking of god and you prayed and that was your last thing in the night, first thing in the morning you will find a prayer arising in you.

The last thought in the night is the first thought in the morning. The last thought of this life will be the first thought of another life. The last thought when you are dying this time will become the first seed of your next life.

But when a buddha dies, a man who has attained, he simply dies with no thought. He enjoys the orgasm. It is so fulfilling, it is so totally fulfilling that there is no need to come back. He disappears into the cosmos. There is no need to be embodied again.

In the East we have been watching the death experience of people. How you die reflects your whole life, how you lived. If I can see just your death, I can write your whole biography – because in that one moment your whole life becomes condensed. In that one moment, like a lightning, you show everything.

A miserly person will die with clenched fists – still holding and clinging, still trying not to die, still trying not to relax. A loving person will die with open fists – sharing… even sharing his death as he shared his life. You can see everything written on the face – whether this man has lived his life fully alert, aware. If he has, then on his face there will be a light shining; around his body there will be an aura. You come close to him and you will feel silent – not sad, but silent. It even happens that if a person has died blissfully in a total orgasm you will feel suddenly happy near him.

It happened in my childhood. A very saintly person in my village died. I had a certain attachment towards him. He was a priest in a small temple, a very poor man, and whenever I would pass – and I used to pass at least twice a day; when going to the school near the temple, I would pass – he would call me and he would always give me some fruit, some sweet.

When he died, I was the only child who went to see him. The whole town gathered. Suddenly I could not believe what happened – I started laughing. My father was there; he tried to stop me because he felt embarrassed. A death is not a time to laugh. He tried to shut me up. He told me again and again, ‘You keep quiet!’

But I have never felt that urge again. Since then I have never felt it; never before had I ever felt it – to laugh so loudly, as if something beautiful has happened. And I could not hold myself. I laughed loudly, everybody was angry, I was sent back, and my father told me, ‘Never again are you to be allowed in any serious situation! Because of you, even I was feeling very embarrassed. Why were you laughing? What was happening there? What is there in death to laugh about? Everybody was crying and weeping and you were laughing.’

And I told him, ‘Something happened. That old man released something and it was tremendously beautiful. He died an orgasmic death.’ Not exactly these words, but I told him that I felt he was very happy dying, very blissful dying, and I wanted to participate in his laughter. He was laughing, his energy was laughing.

I was thought mad. How can a man die laughing? Since then I have been watching many deaths, but I have not seen that type of death again.

When you die, you release your energy and with that energy your whole life’s experience.

Whatsoever you have been – sad, happy, loving, angry, passionate, compassionate – whatsoever you have been, that energy carries the vibrations of your whole life. Whenever a saint is dying, just being near him is a great gift; just to be showered with his energy is a great inspiration. You will be put in a totally different dimension. You will be drugged by his energy, you will feel drunk.

Death can be a total fulfillment, but that is possible only if life has been lived.

-Osho

From Nirvana: The Last Nightmare, Discourse #9

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No Ascendence, No Descendence – Osho

Meher Baba has talked about God descending in man (Avatar, Rasool, Christ) and man rising to be God (The Perfect Master, Sadguru, Qutub, Teerthankara). Would you please talk to us about the same.

God is. He neither ascends nor descends. Where can he ascend to and where can he descend to? God is all. There is nothing in to which God can ascend or descend. There is nobody else other than God. All that is, is divine. So the first thing: there is no ascendence, no descendence.

But when Meher Baba says it, there must be some meaning in it. The meaning is something quite different. Let me explain it to you.

God is, remember. God is a pure isness, pure existence, and there is nowhere for God to go or come. The whole is full of him. He fills his existence, one thing. Second thing: but Meher Baba must be true. Then there must be some other meaning to it—not God descending and ascending. What can be the meaning? The meaning is there are two ways of man approaching God.

What do I mean by “man” when God is the only reality? Man is the God who has forgotten that he is God; man is a God who has forgotten himself.

Man can remember his godliness in two ways. One way is that of surrender, devotion, love, prayer; another way is that of will, effort, meditation, yoga. If a man tries to work his way through will, then he will feel he is ascending towards God or he is reaching towards God through his will. Hence Jainas call the man who attains to godliness a Teerthankara.

Teerthankara means consciousness has reached the peak; man has arrived by ascending, as if there has been a ladder, the ladder of the will, the ladder of effort and yoga. So is the concept of the Buddhas; that too is the path of will. Avatar means God descending; that is another approach, when a man surrenders. He cannot ascend. He simply opens his heart and waits, prays and waits, and suddenly he starts feeling a stirring in his heart. Certainly he will see “God has descended in me.” Avatar means descendence, God coming down.

Mahavir went up. For Meera, God came down.

But God never comes down, never goes up. God is where he is. But your experience will be different. If you try hard to achieve God, you will go higher and higher and higher; naturally you will feel the God hidden inside you is arising, rising up, reaching to the zenith.

But if you surrender, nothing is arising in you. You are where you are, you simply wait in deep prayer, in deep love, in deep trust, and one day you find God is descending in you, coming from above. These are the experiences of two types of seekers. It has nothing to do with God. It has something to do with the seeker and his way: will or surrender, effort or prayer, yoga or Bhakti.

So the religions which believe in Bhakti, in devotion … Christianity says Christ comes from God. That is the meaning of saying that he is God’s son — he comes from above, he has been sent. And that is the meaning of Mohammed — he is a prophet, a messenger, Paigambar. Paigambar means a messenger who comes from above, brings the message. He does not belong to this world; he comes like a ray of light into the darkness. And so is the concept of the Hindus’ avatar—Krishna, Ram — they come, they come into the world.

The Buddhist, the Jaina concept is just the reverse. They say there is no God to come, and God is not a father and he cannot have a son. These are all very childish concepts for them. And if you look through their eyes they are; these concepts are childish, very anthropomorphic, man-centered. You create God in your own image, as if God also has a family. He has a family — the Trinity: God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost must be a woman; otherwise the family will not be exactly as it should be.

But why don’t Christians call the Holy Ghost a woman? Male chauvinism. They cannot make a woman also part of the Trinity; it is difficult for them, very difficult for them. So to what have they reduced their God? It seems to be a homosexual family: all men, not a single woman there. It looks ugly. But my feeling is that the Holy Ghost must be a woman. We create God in our own image.

Jainas and Buddhists say that there is no God and there is no God’s family and nobody comes from there. Then what has one to do? One has to arise. God is in you like a seed, as a tree arises from the earth and goes higher and higher. God is not like rain falling, but a tree arising. Man has the seed. Man is potentially God. So when you work hard, you start growing.

These are the two concepts. That’s why Meher Baba says, “… God descending in man (Avatar, Rasool, Christ) and man rising to be God (the Perfect Master, Sadguru, Qutub, Teerthankara).” But it has nothing to do with God.

-Osho

From The First Principle, Discourse #4

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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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You Witness Death – Osho

I have heard you say that if we lose consciousness—through fear—at the point of death we re-enter the circle of birth and death. Is witnessing all we can do at this crucial moment or is there any specific technique?

Maneesha, there is nothing except witnessing, and witnessing is not a technique.

Witnessing is your nature, your very nature. You are nothing but witnessing.

Witnessing is the purest consciousness.

And it is not only fear that makes you unconscious. Fear is only one element. When you are dying, it is not only fear that makes you unconscious; you already have too much unconsciousness – fear only takes away the thin layer of consciousness. One-tenth is conscious, nine-tenths is unconscious. Fear takes away the thin layer of consciousness and you are drowned in your own unconsciousness. It is so deep. It does not come from outside.

In meditation, when you are witnessing, you are by and by, without your knowing it, dispelling unconsciousness. You are becoming more and more conscious. The thin layer of consciousness becomes thicker and thicker and thicker, and a moment comes when your whole being is full of consciousness. This is witnessing.

So when death comes, you witness death. When life was there, you witnessed life. It is nothing new: death is only an object, just as life was an object. If you have learned how to witness, there is no question of being afraid. You will be a witness in your death too.

And if you are a witness in your death, you will never be born again into any other prison of the body. […]

Maneesha, there is no technique as such. Your being, your consciousness, has to transform all the dark corners inside you. The light has to reach into every nook and corner.

That’s what we call meditation.

Witnessing penetrates to every nook and corner – slowly slowly, all darkness, all unconsciousness disappears. And if you die consciously, witnessing death, you are freed from the imprisonment of the birth and death circle. Then you can melt into the cosmic whole, into absolute silence, into great ecstasy. That is the only authentic religiousness.

-Osho

Excerpt from Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment, Discourse #2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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