Samadhi Archives - Sat Sangha Salon

The Meaning of Samadhi – Osho

Samprajnata samadhi is the samadhi that is accompanied by reasoning, reflection, bliss and a sense of pure being.

In asamprajnata samadhi there is a cessation of all mental activity, and the mind only retains unmanifested impressions.

Videhas and prakriti-layas attain asamprajnata samadhi because they ceased to identify themselves with their bodies in their previous life. The take rebirth because seeds of desire remained.

Others who attain asamprajnata samadhi attain through faith, effort, recollection, concentration and discrimination.

Patanjali is the greatest scientist of the inner. His approach is that of a scientific mind: he is not a poet. And in that way, he is very rare, because those who enter into the inner world are almost always poets, those who enter into the outer world are always almost scientists.

Patanjali is a rare flower. He has a scientific mind, but his journey is inner. That’s why he became the first and the last word: he is the alpha and the omega. For five thousand years nobody could improve upon him. It seems he cannot be improved upon. He will remain the last word – because the very combination is impossible. To have a scientific attitude and to enter into the inner is almost an impossible possibility. He talks like a mathematician, a logician. He talks like Aristotle and he is a Heraclitus.

Try to understand his each word. It will be difficult: it will be difficult because his terms will be those of logic, reasoning, but his indication is towards love, towards ecstasy, towards God. His terminology is that of the man who works in a scientific lab, but his lab is of the inner being. So don’t be misguided by his terminology, and retain the feeling that he is a mathematician of the ultimate poetry. He is a paradox, but he never uses paradoxical language. He cannot. He retains to the very firm logical background. He analyzes, dissects, but his aim is synthesis. He analyzes only to synthesize.

So always remember the goal – don’t be misguided by the path – reaching to the ultimate through a scientific approach. That’s why Patanjali has impressed the western mind very much. Patanjali has always been an influence. Wherever his name has reached, he has been an influence because you can understand him easily; but to understand him is not enough. To understand him is as easy as to understand an Einstein. He talks to the intellect, but his aim, his target, is the heart. This you have to remember.

We will be moving on a dangerous terrain. If you forget that he is a poet also, you will be misguided. Then you become too much attached to his terminology, language, reasoning, and you forget his goal. He wants you to go beyond reasoning, but through reasoning. That is a possibility. You can exhaust reasoning so deeply that you transcend. You go through reasoning; you don’t avoid it. You use reason to go beyond it as a step. Now listen to his words. Each word has to be analyzed.

Samprajnata samadhi is the samadhi that is accompanied by reasoning, reflection, bliss and a sense of pure being.

He divides samadhi, the ultimate, in two steps. The ultimate cannot be divided. It is indivisible, and there are no steps, in fact. But just to help the mind, the seeker, he divides it first into two. The first step he calls samprajnata samadhi – A samadhi in which mind is retained in its purity.

This first step, mind has to be refined and purified. You simply cannot drop it, Patanjali says – it is impossible to drop it because impurities have a tendency to cling. You can drop only when the mind is absolutely pure – so refined, so subtle, that it has no tendency to cling.

He does not say “Drop the mind,” as Zen Masters say. He says that is impossible; you are talking nonsense. You are saying the truth, but that’s not possible because an impure mind has a weight. Like a stone, it hangs. And an impure mind has desires – millions of desires, unfulfilled, hankering to be fulfilled, asking to be fulfilled, millions of thoughts incomplete in it. How can you drop? – because the incomplete always tries to be completed.

Remember, says Patanjali, you can drop a thing only when it is complete. Have you watched? If you are a painter and you are painting, unless the painting becomes complete you cannot forget it. It continues, haunts you. You cannot sleep well; it is there. In the mind it has an undercurrent. It moves; it asks to be completed. Once it is completed, it is finished. You can forget about it. Mind has a tendency towards completion. Mind is a perfectionist, and so whatsoever is incomplete is a tension on the mind. Patanjali says you cannot drop thinking unless thinking is so perfect that now there is nothing to be done about it. You can simply drop it and forget.

This is completely the diametrically opposite way from Zen, from Heraclitus. First samadhi, which is samadhi only for name’s sake, is samprajnata – samadhi with a subtle purified mind. Second samadhi is asamprajnata – samadhi with no mind. But Patanjali says that when the mind disappears, then too there are no thoughts, then, too, subtle seeds of the past are retained by the unconscious.

The conscious mind is divided in two. First, samprajnata – mind with purified state, just like purified butter. It has a beauty of its own, but it is there. And howsoever beautiful, mind is ugly. Howsoever pure and silent, the very phenomenon of mind is impure. You cannot purify a poison. It remains poison. On the contrary, the more you purify it, the more poisonous it becomes. It may look very, very beautiful. It may have its own color, shades, but it is still impure.

First you purify; then you drop. But then too the journey is not complete because this is all in the conscious mind. What you will do with the unconscious? Just behind the layers of the conscious mind is a vast continent of unconscious. There are seeds of all your past lives in the unconscious.

Then Patanjali divides the unconscious into two. He says sabeej samadhi – when the unconscious is there and mind has been dropped consciously, it is a samadhi with seeds – sabeej. When those seeds are also burned, then you attain the perfect – the nirbeej samadhi: samadhi without seeds.

So conscious into two steps, then unconscious into two steps. And when nirbeej samadhi, the ultimate ecstasy, without any seeds within you to sprout and to flower and to take you on further journeys into existence . . . then you disappear.

In these sutras he says,

Samprajnata samadhi is the samadhi that is accompanied by reasoning, reflection, bliss and a sense of pure being.

But this is the first step; many are misguided – they think this is the last because it is so pure and you feel so blissful and so happy that you think that now nothing is there to be achieved more. If you ask Patanjali, he will say the satori of the Zen is just the first samadhi. It is not the final, the ultimate; ultimate is still far away.

The words that he uses cannot be exactly translated into English because Sanskrit is the most perfect language; no language comes even near to it. So I would have to explain to you. The word used is vitarka: in English it is translated as reasoning. It is a poor translation. vitarka has to be understood. Tarka means logic reasoning: then Patanjali says there are three types of logic. One he calls kutarka – reasoning oriented towards the negative: always thinking in terms of no, denying, doubting, nihilistic.

Whatsoever you say, the man who lives in kutarka – negative logic – always thinks how to deny it, how to say no to it. He looks to the negative. He is always complaining, grumbling. He always feels that something somewhere is wrong – always You cannot put him right because this is his orientation. If you tell him to see to the sun, he will not see the sun. He will see the sunspots; he will always find the darker side of things: that is kutarka. That is kutarka – wrong reasoning – but it looks like reasoning.

It leads finally to atheism. Then you deny God, because if you cannot see the good, you cannot see the lighter side of life, how can you see God? You simply deny. Then the whole existence becomes dark. Then everything is wrong, and you can create a hell around you. If everything is wrong, how can you be happy? And it is your creation, and you can always find something wrong because life consists of a duality.

In the rose bush there are beautiful flowers, but thorns also. A man of kutarka will count the thorns, and then he will come to an understanding that this rose must be illusory; it cannot exist. Amidst so many thorns, millions of thorns, how can a rose exist? It is impossible; the very possibility is denied. Somebody is deceiving. […]

This Patanjali calls kutarka – negative logic, negative reasoning.

Then there is tarka – simple reasoning. Simple reasoning leads nowhere. It is moving in a circle because it has no goal. You can go on reasoning and reasoning and reasoning, but you will not come to any conclusion because reasoning can come to a conclusion only when there is a goal from the very beginning. You are moving in a direction, then you reach somewhere. If you move in all directions – sometimes to the south, sometimes to the east, sometimes to the west – you waste energy.

Reasoning without a goal is called tarka; reasoning with a negative attitude is called kutarka; reasoning with a positive grounding is called vitarka. vitarka means special reasoning. So vitarka is the first element of samprajnata samadhi. A man who wants to attain to the inner peace has to be trained into vitarka – special reasoning. He always looks to the lighter side, the positive. He counts the flowers and forgets the thorns – not that there are not thorns, but he is not concerned with them. If you love the flowers and count the flowers, a moment comes when you cannot believe in the thorns, because how is it possible where so beautiful flowers exist, how can thorns exist? There must be something illusory.

The man of kutarka counts thorns; then flowers become illusory. The man of vitarka counts flowers; then thorns become illusory. That’s why Patanjali says: vitarka is the first element. Only then bliss is possible. Through vitarka one attains to heaven. One creates one’s own heaven all around.

Your standpoint counts. Whatsoever you found around you is your own creation – heaven or hell. And Patanjali says you can go beyond logic and reasoning only through the positive reasoning. Through the negative you can never go beyond, because the more you say no, the more you found things to be sad – no, denied. Then, by and by, you become a constant no inside – a dark night, only thorns and no flowers can flower in you – a desert . . .

When you say yes, you find more and more things to be said yes. When you say yes, you become a yea-sayer. Life is affirmed, and you absorb through your yes all that is good, beautiful, all that is true. “Yes” becomes the door in you for the divine to enter; “no” becomes a closed door. Door closed, you are a hell: doors open, all doors open, existence flows in you. You are fresh, young, alive; you become a flower.

Vitarka, vichar, ananda: Patanjali says if you are attuned with vitarka – a positive reasoning – then you can be a thinker, never before it. Then thinking arises. He has a very different meaning of thinking. You also think that you think. Patanjali will not agree. He says you have thoughts, but no thinking. That’s why I say it is difficult to translate him.

He says you have thoughts, vagrant thoughts like a crowd, but no thinking. Between your two thoughts there is no inner current. They are uprooted things; there is no inner planning. Your thinking is a chaos. It is not a cosmos; it has no inner discipline. It is just like you see a rosary. There are beads; they are held together by an invisible thread running through them. Thoughts are beads; thinking is the thread. You have beads – too many, in fact, more than you need – but no inner running thread through them. That inner thread is called by Patanjali thinking – vichar. You have thoughts, but no thinking. And if this goes on and on, you will become mad. A madman is a man who has millions of thoughts and no thinking, and samprajnata samadhi is the state in which there are no thoughts, but thinking is perfect. This distinction has to be understood.

Your thoughts, in the first place, are not yours. You have gathered them. Just in a dark room, sometimes a beam of light comes from the roof and you see millions of dust particles floating in the beam. When I look into you, I see the same phenomenon: millions of dust particles. You call them thoughts. They are moving in you and out of you. From one head they enter another, and they go on. They have their own life.

A thought is a thing; it has its own existence. When a person dies, all his mad thoughts are released immediately and they start finding shelter somewhere or other. Immediately those who are around they enter. They are like germs: they have their own life. Even when you are alive, you go on dispersing your thoughts all around you. When you talk, then, of course, you throw your thoughts into others. But when you are silent, then also you are throwing thoughts all around. They are not yours, the first thing.

A man of positive reasoning will discard all thoughts that are not his own. They are not authentic; he has not found them through his own experience. He has accumulated from others, borrowed. They are dirty. They have been in many hands and heads. A man of thinking will not borrow. He would like to have a fresh thought of his own. And if you are positive, and if you look at the beauty, at the truth, at the goodness, at the flowers, if you become capable of seeing even in the darkest night that the morning is coming nearer, you will become capable of thinking.

Then you can create your own thoughts. And a thought that is created by you is really potential: it has a power of its own. These thoughts that you have borrowed are almost dead because they have been traveling – traveling for millions of years. Their origin is lost: they have lost all contact with their origin. They are just like dust floating all around. You catch them. Sometimes you even become aware of it, but because your awareness is such that it cannot see through things . . .

Sometimes you are sitting. Suddenly you become sad for no reason at all. You cannot find the reason. You look around, there is no reason; nothing there, nothing has happened. You are just the same and suddenly a sadness takes. A thought is passing; you are just in the way. It is an accident. A thought was passing like a cloud – a sad thought released by someone. It is an accident. You are in the grip. Sometimes a thought persists. You don’t see why you go on thinking about it. It looks absurd; it seems to be of no use. But you cannot do anything. It goes on knocking at the gate. “Think me,” it says. A thought is waiting at the door knocking. It says, “Give space. I would like to come in.”

Each thought has its own life. It moves. And it has much power, and you are so impotent because you are so unaware, so you are moved by thoughts. Your whole life consists of such accidents. You meet people, and your whole life pattern changes. Something enters in you. Then you become possessed, and you forget where you were going. You change your direction; you follow this thought. And this is just an accident. You are like children.

Patanjali says this is not thinking. This is the state of absence of thinking; this is not thinking. You are a crowd. You have not a center within you which can think. When one moves in the discipline of vitarka – right reasoning, then one becomes by and by capable of thinking. Thinking is a capacity; thoughts are not. Thoughts can be learned from others; thinking, never. Thinking you have to learn yourself.

And this is the difference between the old Indian schools of learning and the modern universities: in the modern universities you are getting thoughts; in the ancient schools of learning, wisdom schools, they were teaching thinking, not thoughts.

Thinking is a quality of your inner being. What does thinking mean? It means to retain your consciousness, to remain alert and aware, to encounter a problem. A problem is there: you face it with your total awareness. And then arises an answer – a response. This is thinking. A question is posed; you have a ready-made answer. Before even you have thought about it, the answer comes in. Somebody says, “Is there God?” And he has not even said and you say, “Yes.” You nod your wooden head; you say, “Yes, there is.”

Is it your thought? Have you thought about the problem right now, or you carry a ready-made answer within your memory? Somebody gave it to you – your parents, your teachers, your society. Somebody has given it to you, and you carry it as a precious treasure, and this answer comes from that memory.

A man of thinking uses his consciousness each time there is a problem. Freshly, he uses his consciousness. He encounters the problem, and then arises a thought within him which is not part of memory. This is the difference. A man of thoughts is a man of memory; he has no thinking capacity. If you ask a question which is new, he will be at a loss. He cannot answer. If you ask a question which he knows the answer, he will immediately answer. This is the difference between a pundit and a man who knows; a man who can think.

Patanjali says vitarka – right reasoning, leads to reflection – vichar. Reflection – vichar, leads to bliss. This is the first glimpse, of course, and it is a glimpse. It will come and it will be lost. You cannot hold it for long. It was going to be just a glimpse, as if for a moment a lightning happened and you saw all darkness disappeared. But again, the darkness is there – as if clouds disappeared and you saw the moon for a second – again clouds are there.

Or, on a sunny morning, near the Himalayas, for a moment you can have the glimpse of the Gourishankar – the highest peak. But then there is mist, and then there are clouds, and the peak is lost. This is satori. That’s why never try to translate satori as samadhi. Satori is a glimpse. Much has to be done after it is attained. In fact, the real work starts after the first satori, first glimpse, because then you have tasted of the infinite. Now a real authentic search starts. Before it, it was just so-so, lukewarm, because you were not really confident, certain, what you are doing, where you are going, what is happening.

Before it, it was a faith, a trust. Before it a Master was needed to show you, to bring you back again and again. But after satori has happened, now it is no more a faith. It has become a knowing. Now the trust is not an effort. Now you trust because your own experience has shown you. After the first glimpse, the real search starts. Before it you are just going round and round. Right reasoning leads to right reflection, right reflection leads to a state of bliss, and this state of bliss leads to a sense of pure being.

A negative mind is always egoist. That is the impure state of being. You feel “I”, but you feel “I” for wrong reasons. Just watch. Ego feeds on no. Whenever you say no, ego arises. Whenever you say yes, ego cannot arise because ego needs fight, ego needs challenge, ego needs to put itself against someone, something. It cannot exist alone; it needs duality. An egoist is always in search of fight – with someone, with something, with some situation. He is always trying to find something to say no – to win over, to be victorious.

Ego is violent, and no is the subtlest violence. When you say no for ordinary things, even there, ego arises. […]

You go to the railway station and you ask for a ticket and the clerk simply doesn’t look at you. He goes on working even if there is no work. But he is saying, “No! Wait!” He feels he is someone, somebody. That’s why, in offices everywhere, you will hear no. Yes is rare – very rare. An ordinary clerk can say no to anybody, whomsoever you are. He feels powerful.

No gives you a sense of power – remember this. Unless it is absolutely necessary, never say no. Even if it is absolutely necessary, say it in such an affirmative way that the ego doesn’t arise. You can say. Even no can be said in such a way that it appears like yes. You can say yes in such a way that it looks like no. It depends on the tone; it depends on the attitude; it depends on the gesture.

Remember this: for seekers, it has to be remembered constantly that you have to live continuously in the aroma of yes. That is what a man of faith is: he says yes. Even when no was needed, he says yes. He doesn’t see that there is any antagonism in life. He affirms. He says yes to his body, he says yes to his mind, he says yes to everybody, he says yes to the total existence. The ultimate flowering happens when you can say a categorical yes, with no conditions. Suddenly the ego falls; it cannot stand. It needs the props of no. The negative attitude creates ego. The positive attitude – the ego drops, and then the being is pure.

Sanskrit has two words for “I” – ahankar and asmita. It is difficult to translate. Ahankar is the wrong sense of “I” which comes from saying no. Asmita is the right sense of “I” which comes from saying yes. Both are “I”. One is impure: no is the impurity. You negate, destroy. No is destructive, a very subtle destruction. Never use it. Drop it as much as you can. Whenever you are alert, don’t use it. Try to find a roundabout way. Even if you have to say it, say it in such a way that it has the appearance of yes. By and by you will become attuned, and you will feel such a purity coming to you through yes.

Then asmita: asmita is egoless ego. No feeling of “I” against anybody. Just feeling oneself without putting against anybody. Just feeling your total loneliness, and the total loneliness, the purest of states. “I am” – when we say “I” is ahankar; “am” is asmita, just the feeling of am-ness with no “I” to it, just feeling the existence, the being Yes is beautiful, no is ugly.

In asamprajnata samadhi there is a cessation of all mental activity, and the mind only retains unmanifested impressions.

Samprajnata samadhi is the first step. Right reasoning, right reflection, a state of bliss, a glimpse of bliss, and a feeling of am-ness – pure simple existence without any ego in it – this leads to asamprajnata samadhi. First is a purity; second is a disappearance because even the purest is impure because it is there. “I” is wrong; “am” is also wrong – better than “I”, but a higher possibility is there when “am” also disappears – not only ahankar, but asmita also. You are impure; then you become pure. But if you start feeling that “I am pure,” purity itself has become impurity. That too has to disappear.

Disappearance of the impurity is samprajnata. Disappearance of the purity also, is asamprajnata. There is a cessation of all mental activity. Thoughts disappear in the first state. In the second state, thinking also disappears. Thorns disappear in the first state. In the second state, flowers also disappear. When no disappears in the first state, yes remains. In the second state, yes also disappears because yes is also related to no. How can you retain yes without no? They are together; you cannot separate them. If no disappears, how can you say yes? Deep down yes is saying no to no. Negation of negation – but a subtle no exists. When you say yes, what you are doing? You are not saying no, but the no is inside. You are not bringing it out: it is unmanifested.

Your yes cannot mean anything if you have no “no” within you. What it will mean? It will be meaningless. Yes has meaning only because of no; no has meaning only because of yes. They are a duality. In samprajnata samadhi, no is dropped: all that is wrong is dropped. in asamprajnata samadhi, yes is dropped. All that is right, all that is good, that too is dropped. In samprajnata samadhi you drop the devil; in asamprajnata samadhi you drop the God also, because how the God can exist without the devil? They are two aspects of the same coin.

All activity ceases. Yes is also an activity, and activity is a tension. Something is going on, even beautiful but still something is going on. And after a period even the beautiful becomes ugly. After a period you are bored with flowers also. After a period, activity, even very subtle and pure, gives you a tension: it becomes an anxiety.

In asamprajnata samadhi there is a cessation of all mental activity, and the mind only retains unmanifested impressions.

But still, it is not the goal – because what will happen to all your impressions that you have gathered in the past? Many, many lives you have lived, acted, reacted. You have done many things, undone many things. What will happen to it? Conscious mind has become pure; conscious mind has dropped even the activity of purity. But the unconscious is vast and there you carry all the seeds, the blueprints. They are within you.

The tree has disappeared; you have cut down the tree completely. But the seeds that have fallen, they are in the ground Lying. They will sprout when their season comes. You will have another life; you will be born again. Of course, your quality will be different now, but you will be born again because those seeds are still not burned.

You have cut down that which was manifested. It is easy to cut down anything that is in manifestation; it is easy to cut all the trees. You can go into the garden and pull up all the whole lawn, the grass completely; you can kill everything. But within two weeks the grass will be coming up again because what you did is only with the manifested. The seeds which are Lying in the soil you have not touched them yet. That has to be done in the third state.

Asamprajnata samadhi is still sabeej – with seeds. And there are methods how to burn those seeds, how to create fire-fire that Heraclitus talked about, how to create that fire and burn the unconscious seeds. When they also disappear, then the soil is absolutely pure; nothing can arise out of it. Then there is no birth, no death. Then the whole wheel stops for you; you have dropped out of the wheel. And dropping out of the society won’t help unless you drop out of the wheel. Then you become a perfect dropout.

A Buddha is a perfect dropout; a Mahavira, a Patanjali, is a perfect drop-out. They have not dropped out of the establishment or the society. They have dropped out of the very wheel of life and death. But that happens only when all the seeds are burned. The final is nirbeej samadhi – seedless.

In asamprajnata samadhi there is a cessation of all mental activity, and the mind only retains unmanifested impressions.

Videhas and prakriti-layas attain asamprajnata samadhi because they ceased to identify themselves with their bodies in their previous life. The take rebirth because seeds of desire remained.

Even a Buddha is born. In his past life he attained to asamprajnata samadhi, but the seeds were there. He had to come once more. Even a Mahavira is born – once – the seeds bring him. But this is going to be the last life. After asamprajnata samadhi, only one life is possible. But then the quality of the life will be totally different because this man will not be identified with the body. And this man really has nothing to do because the activity of the mind has ceased. Then what he will do? For what this one life is needed? He has just to allow those seeds to be manifested, and he will remain a witness. This is the fire. […]

In this life when a videha – one who has understood that he is not the body, who has attained asamprajnata samadhi – comes in the world just to finish accounts… His whole life consists of finishing accounts; millions of lives, many relationships, many involvements, commitments – everything has to be closed. […]

A videha or a prakriti-laya: both words are beautiful. Videha means bodiless. When you attain to asamprajnata samadhi the body is there, but you become bodiless. You are no more the body. The body becomes the abode, you are not identified.

So these two terms are beautiful. Videha means one who knows that he is not the body – knows, remember – not believes. And prakriti-laya, because one who knows that he is not the body, he is no more the prakriti – the nature.

Body belongs to the material. Once you are not identified with the matter in you, you are not identified with the matter without, outside. A man who attains that he is no more the body, that he is no more the manifested – the prakriti – his nature is dissolved. There is no more world for him; he is not identified. He has become a witness to it. Such a man is also born once at least because he has to close many accounts, many promises to be fulfilled, many karmas to be dropped.

It happened that Buddha’s cousin, Devadatta, was against him. He tried to kill him in many ways. When Buddha was waiting under a tree meditating, he rolled down a big rock from the hill. The rock was coming; everybody ran away. Buddha remained there sitting under the tree. It was dangerous, and the rock came just touching him, brushing him. Ananda asked him, “Why didn’t you escape when we were all escaping? There was time enough.”

Buddha says, “For you there is time enough. My time is over. And Devadatta has to do it. Some time back in some life there was some karma. I must have given him some pain, some anguish, some anxiety. It has to be closed. If I escape, if I do anything, again a new line starts.”

A videha, a man who has attained to asamprajnata, does not react. He simply watches, witnesses. And this is the fire of witnessing which burns all the seeds in the unconscious. And a moment comes when the soil is absolutely pure. There is no seed waiting to sprout. Then there is no need to come back. First the nature dissolves, and then he dissolves himself into the universe.

Videhas and prakriti-layas attain asamprajnata samadhi because they ceased to identify themselves with their bodies in their previous life. The take rebirth because seeds of desire remained.

I am here to fulfill something; you are here to close my account. You are here not accidentally. There are millions of people in the world. Why you are here, and not somebody else? Something has to be closed.

Others who attain asamprajnata samadhi attain through faith, effort, recollection, concentration and discrimination.

So these are the two possibilities. If you have attained to asamprajnata samadhi in your past life, in this life you are born a Buddha – just a few seeds which have to be fulfilled, which have to be dropped, burned – almost. That’s why I say you are born almost a Buddha. There is no need for you to do anything; you have simply to watch whatsoever happens.

Hence, Krishnamurti’s continuous insistence that there is no need to do anything. It is right for him; it is not right for his listeners. For his listeners, there is much to be done, and they will be misguided by this statement. He is speaking about himself. He was born an asamprajnata Buddha. He was born a videha; he was born a prakriti-laya. […]

He is a passivity. Much can happen through him, but that can happen only if somebody comes and surrenders to him. Because he is a passivity, he cannot force you to do something. He is available, but he cannot be aggressive.

His invitation is for everybody and all. It is an open invitation, but he cannot send you an invitation in particular, because he cannot be active. He is an open door; if you like, you can pass. The last life is an absolute passivity, just witnessing. This is one way how asamprajnata Buddhas are born from their past life.

But you can become an asamprajnata Buddha in this life also. For them Patanjali says,

Shraddha virya smriti samadhi prajna: Others who attain asamprajnata samadhi attain through faith, effort, recollection, concentration and discrimination.

It is almost impossible to translate it, so I will explain rather than translate, just to give you the feel, because words will misguide you.

Shraddha is not exactly faith. It is more like trust. Trust is very, very different from faith. Faith is something you are born in; trust is something you grow in. Hinduism is a faith; to be a Christian is a faith; to be a Mohammedan is a faith. But lo be a disciple here with me is a trust. I cannot claim faith – remember. Jesus also could not claim faith because faith is something you are born in. Jews were faithful; they had faith. And, in fact, that is why they destroyed Jesus: because they thought that he was bringing them out of their faith, destroying their faith.

He was asking for trust. Trust is a personal intimacy; it is not a social phenomenon. You attain to it through your own response. Nobody can be born in trust; in faith, okay. Faith is dead trust; trust is alive faith. So try to understand the distinction.

Shraddha – trust – one has to grow in. And it is always personal. The first disciples of Jesus attained to trust. They were Jews, born Jews. They moved out of their faith. It is a rebellion. Faith is a superstition; trust is a rebellion. Trust first leads you away from your faith. It has to be so, because if you are living in a dead graveyard, then you have to be led out of it first. Only then you can be introduced to life again. Jesus was trying to bring people towards shraddha, trust. It will always look as if he is destroying their faith. […]

With birth how religion is associated? Birth cannot give you religion; it can give you a society, a creed, a sect; it can give you a superstition. The word “superstition” is very, very meaningful. It means “unnecessary faith”. The word “super” means unnecessary, superfluous – faith which has become unnecessary, faith which has become dead; sometimes it may have been alive. Religion has to be born again and again.

Remember, you are not born in a religion, religion has to be born in you. Then it is trust. Again and again. You cannot give your children your religion. They will have to seek and find their own. Everybody has to seek and find his own. It is adventure – the greatest adventure. You move into the unknown. shraddha, Patanjali says, is the first thing, if you want to attain asamprajnata samadhi. For samprajnata samadhi, reasoning, right reasoning. See the distinction? For samprajnata samadhi, right reasoning, right thinking are the base; for asamprajnata samadhi, right trust – not reasoning.

No reasoning – a love. And love is blind. It looks blind to the reasoning because it is a jump into the dark. The reason asks, “Where are you going? Remain in the known territory. And what is the use to move to a new phenomenon? Why not remain in the old fold? It is convenient, comfortable, and whatsoever you need; it can supply.” But everybody has to find his own temple. Only then it is alive. […]

Don’t take religion from somebody else. You cannot borrow it; it is a deception. You are getting it without paying for it, and everything has to be paid. And it is not cheap to attain to asamprajnata samadhi. You have to pay the full cost, and the full cost is your total being. […]

Shraddha, trust, is the first door, second is virya. That too is difficult. It is translated as effort. No, effort is simply a part of it. The word virya means many things, but deep down it means bio-energy. One of the meanings of virya is semen, the sexual potency. If you really want to translate it exactly, virya is bio-energy, your total energy phenomenon – you as energy. Of course, this energy can be brought only through effort; hence, one of the meanings is “effort”.

But that is poor – not so rich as the word virya. virya means that your total energy has to be brought into it. Only mind won’t do. You can say yes from the mind that will not be enough. Your totality, without holding anything back: that is the meaning of virya. And that is possible only when there is trust. Otherwise you will hold something, just to be secure, safe, because, “This man may be leading somewhere wrong, so we can step back any moment. In a moment we can say ‘Enough is enough; now no more.’”

You hold back a part of you just to be watchful, where this man is leading. People come to me and they say, “We are watching. Let us first watch what is happening.” They are very clever – clever fools – because these things cannot be watched from the outside. What is happening is an inner phenomenon. Even you cannot see to whom it is happening many times. Many times only I can see what is happening. You become aware only later on, what has happened. […]

Clever people never want to be committed, but is there any life without commitment? But clever people think commitment is a bondage. But is there any freedom without bondage? First you have to move in a relationship, only then you can go beyond it. First you have to move in a deep commitment, depth to depth, heart to heart, and only then you can transcend it. There is no other way. If you just move out and watch, you can never enter into the shrine – the shrine is commitment. And then there can be no relationship.

A Master and disciple is a love relationship, the highest love that is possible. Unless the relationship is there, you cannot grow. Says Patanjali, “The first is trust – shraddha – and second is energy – effort.” Your whole energy has to be brought in; part won’t do. It may even be destructive if you come only partially in and remain partially out, because that will become a rift within you. It will create a tension within you; it will become an anxiety rather than bliss.

Bliss is where you are in your totality; anxiety is where you are only in part, because then you are divided and there is a tension, and the two parts going separate ways. Then you are in a difficulty.

Others who attain asamprajnata samadhi attain through faith, effort, recollection, concentration and discrimination.

This word recollection is smriti: it is remembrance – what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. That is smriti.

You don’t remember yourself. You may remember millions of things, but you go on continuously forgetting yourself, that you are. Gurdjieff had a technique. He got it from Patanjali. And, in fact, all techniques come from Patanjali. He is the past Master of techniques. smriti, remembrance – self-remembering – whatsoever you do. You are walking: remember deep down that “I am walking, I am.” Don’t be lost in walking. Walking is there – the movement, the activity – and the inner center is there, just aware, watching, witnessing.

You need not repeat it in the mind, “I am walking.” If you repeat, that is not remembrance. You have to be non-verbally aware that “I am walking, I am eating, I am talking, I am listening.” Whatsoever you do, the “I” inside should not be forgotten; it should remain. It is not self-consciousness. It is consciousness of the self. Self-consciousness is ego; consciousness of the self is asmita – purity, just being aware that “I am.”

Ordinarily, your consciousness is arrowed towards the object. You look at me: your whole consciousness is moving towards me like an arrow. But you are arrowed towards me. Self-remembering means you must have a double-arrowed arrow, one side of it showing to me, another side showing to you. A double-arrowed arrow is smriti – self-remembrance.

Very difficult, because it is easy to remember the object and forget yourself. The opposite is also easy – to remember yourself and forget the object. Both are easy; that’s why those who are in the market, in the world, and those who are in the monastery, out of the world, are the same. Both are single-arrowed. In the market they are looking at the things, objects. In the monastery they are looking at themselves.

Smriti is neither in the market nor in the monastery. smriti is a phenomenon of self-remembering, when subject and object both are together in consciousness. That is the most difficult thing in the world. Even if you can attain for a single moment, a split moment, you will have the glimpse of satori immediately. Immediately you have moved out of the body, somewhere else.

Try it. But, remember, if you don’t have trust it will become a tension. These are the problems involved. It will become such a tension you can go mad, because it is a very tense state. That’s why it is difficult to remember both – the object and the subject, the outer and the inner. To remember both is very, very arduous. If there is trust, that trust will bring the tension down because trust is love. It will soothe you; it will be a soothing force around you. Otherwise the tension can become so much, you will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to be at peace any moment because it will be a constant problem. And you will be just in anxiety continuously.

That’s why we can do one: that’s easy. Go to the monastery, close your eyes, remember yourself, forget the world. But what you are doing? You have simply reversed the whole process, nothing else. No change. Or, forget these monasteries and these temples and these Masters, and be in the world, enjoy the world. That too is easy. The difficult thing is to be conscious of the both. And when you are conscious of the both and the energy is simultaneously aware, arrowed in the diametrically opposite dimensions, there is a transcendence. You simply become the third: you become the witness of both. And when the third enters, first you try to see the object and yourself. But if you try to see both, by and by, by and by, you feel something is happening within you – because you are becoming a third: you are between the two, the object and the subject. You are neither the object nor the subject now.

Attain through faith, effort, recollection, concentration and discrimination.

Shraddha, trust, virya, total commitment, total effort, total energy has to be brought in; all your potentiality has to be brought in. If you are really a seeker after truth, you cannot seek anything else. It is a complete involvement. You cannot make it a part-time job and that, “Sometimes in the morning I meditate and then I go.” No, meditation has to become your twenty-four-hours continuity for you. Whatsoever you do, meditation has to be there in the background continuously. Energy will be needed: your whole energy will be needed.

And now, few things. If your whole energy is needed, sex disappears automatically because you don’t have energy to waste. brahmacharya for Patanjali is not a discipline, it is a consequence. You put your total energy so you don’t have any energy . . . and it happens in ordinary life also. You can see a great painter: he forgets women completely. When he is painting there is no sex in his mind, because the whole energy is moving. You don’t have any extra energy.

A great poet, a great singer, a dancer who is moving totally in his commitment, automatically becomes celibate. He has no discipline for it. Sex is superfluous energy; sex is a safety valve. When you have too much in you and you cannot do anything with it, the nature has made a safety valve; you can throw it out. You can release it, otherwise you will go mad or burst – explode. And if you try to suppress it, then too you will go mad, because suppressing it won’t help. It needs a transformation, and that transformation comes from total commitment. A warrior, if he is really a warrior – an impeccable warrior, will be beyond sex. His whole energy is moving. […]

It is possible, if you are involved totally, sex disappears because sex is a safety valve. When you have energy unused, then sex becomes a haunting thing around you. When total energy is used, sex disappears. And that is the state of brahmacharya, of virya, of all your potential energy flowering.

Effort, recollection, concentration and discrimination:

Shraddha – trust; virya – your total bio-energy, your total commitment and effort; smriti – self-remembrance; and samadhi. Samadhi word means a state of mind where no problem exists. It comes from the word samadhan – a state of mind when you feel absolutely okay, no problem, no question, a non-questioning, non-problematic state of mind. It is not concentration. Concentration is just a quality that comes to the mind who is without problems. That is the difficulty to translate.

Concentration is part – it happens. Look at a child who is absorbed in his play; he has a concentration without any effort. He is not concentrating on his play. Concentration is a by-product. He is so absorbed in the play that the concentration happens. If you concentrate knowingly on something, then there is effort, then there is tension, then you will be tired.

Samadhi happens automatically, spontaneously, if you are absorbed. If you are listening to me, it is a samadhi. If you listen to me totally, there is no need for any other meditation. It becomes a concentration. It is not that you concentrate – if you listen lovingly, concentration follows.

In asamprajnata samadhi, when trust is complete, when effort is total, when remembrance is deep, samadhi happens. Whatsoever you do, you do with total concentration – without any effort to do the concentration. And if concentration needs effort, it is ugly. It will be like a disease on you; you will be destroyed by it. Concentration should be a consequence. You love a person, and just being with him, you are concentrated. Remember never to concentrate on anything. Rather, listen deeply, listen totally, and you will have a concentration coming by itself.

And discrimination – prajna. Prajna is not discrimination; discrimination is again a part of prajna. Prajna means in fact wisdom – a knowing awareness. Buddha has said that when the flame of meditation burns high, the light that surrounds that flame is prajna. Samadhi inside, and then all around you a light, an aura, follows you. In your every act you are wise; not that you are trying to be wise, it simply happens because you are so totally aware. Whatsoever you do it happens to be wise – not that you are continuously thinking to do the right thing.

A man who is continuously thinking to do the right thing, he will not be able to do anything – even the wrong he will not be able to do, because this will become such a tension on his mind. And what is right and what is wrong? How you can decide? A man of wisdom, a man of understanding, does not choose. He simply feels. He simply throws his awareness everywhere, and in that light he moves. Wherever he moves is right.

Right does not belong to things; it belongs to you – the one who is moving. It is not that Buddha did right things – no! Whatsoever he did was right. Discrimination is a poor word. A man of understanding has discrimination. He doesn’t think about it; just it is easy for him. If you want to get out of this room, you simply move out of the door. You don’t grope. You don’t first go to the wall and try to find the way. You simply go out. You don’t even think that this is the door. […]

When understanding flowers, when the flame is there, you simply see and everything is clear. When you have an inner clarity, everything is clear; you become perceptive. Whatsoever you do is simply right. Not that it is right so you do it; you do it with understanding, and it is right.

Shraddha, virya, smriti, samadhi, prajna. Others who attain asamprajnata samadhi attain through trust, infinite energy, effort, total self-remembrance, a non-questioning mind and a flame of understanding.

-Osho

From The Heart of Yoga; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.2, Discourse #1 (previously published as Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.2).

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.

Two Meditations – Osho

The following two meditations were given by Osho in his first meditation camp held in Rajasthan, India.

The first meditation is for the morning. During this meditation you must hold your spine erect, close your eyes and keep your neck straight. Your lips should be closed, and your tongue should touch the palate. Breathe slowly but deeply. Concentrate your attention on the navel. Be aware of the tremor felt at the navel because of the breathing. This is all you have to do. This calms the mind and stills thoughts. From this emptiness you ultimately go inside.

The second meditation is for the night. Spread your body on the floor and let the limbs relax completely. Close your eyes and for about two minutes suggest to yourself that the body is relaxing. Gradually the body will become relaxed. Then for two minutes suggest that your breathing is becoming tranquil. The breathing will become quiet. Finally, for another two minutes suggest that thoughts are coming to a halt. This willed autosuggestion leads to complete relaxation and emptiness. When the mind has become perfectly calm, be totally awake in your inner being and be a witness to the tranquility. This witnessing will lead you to your self.

You must practice these two meditations. But as a matter of fact, they are really artificial devices, and you are not to stick to them. With their help the mind’s restlessness dissolves. And just as we no longer need a ladder after climbing, one day we have to give up these devices as well. Meditation attains perfection the moment it becomes unnecessary. This very stage is samadhi.

-Osho

From The Perfect Way, Discourse #1

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.

Piling Up the Zeros of Being – Osho

Samadhi parinam, the inner transformation, is the gradual settling of distractions and the simultaneous rising of one-pointedness.

Ekagrata parinam, one-pointed transformation, is the condition of the mind in which the object of the mind that is subsiding is replaced in the next moment by an exactly similar object.

By what has been said in the last four sutras, the property, character and condition transformations in the elements and sense organs are also explained.

Whether they be latent, active, or unmanifest, all properties inhere in the substratum.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

The story is told of Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, that he was walking in a forest one day when he came upon a clearing and saw a lizard sitting upon a rock sunning itself. Tolstoy began speaking to the lizard, “Your heart is beating.” he said, “The sun is shining, you are happy.” And after a pause, he added, “But I am not.”

Why are lizards happy and man is not? Why is the whole creation in a celebration and man is not? Why except man is everything beautifully tuned unto itself and tuned with the whole? Why is man an exception? What has happened to man? What misfortune has fallen to him? This has to be understood as deeply as possible because from that very understanding starts the path, from that very understanding you become a seeker, from that very understanding you are no longer part of the human disease. You start transcending it.

A lizard exists in the present. A lizard has no idea of the past, no idea of the future. A lizard is just here-now sunning himself. This moment is enough unto [itself for] a lizard, but this moment is not enough unto [itself for] a man, and there arises the disease because whenever you will get, you will get only one moment. You will never get two moments together. And wherever you are, you will always be here; and whenever you become aware, you will become aware in the now. The past is no more, the future not yet — and we go on missing that which is for that future which is not yet, for that past which is no more.

To be a lizard on a rock sunning is to be a meditator. Drop the past, drop the future. What does it mean? It means drop thinking because all thoughts either belong to the past or to the future. There is no thought here-now. Thinking has no present tense about it — either it is dead or unborn. It is always unreal — either part of memory or part of imagination. It is never real. The real is never a thought: The real is an experience. The real is an existential experience.

You can dance in the real, you can sun yourself in the real, you can sing in the real, you can love in the real, but you cannot think it — because thinking is always about it, and in that “about” is hidden the whole misery. In that “about” you go on moving — about and about — and you never come to the point that was always and always available.

The whole point of all meditation is to be a lizard sunning yourself on a rock, to be here-now, to be part of the whole, not trying to jump ahead in the future, not trying to carry that which is no more. Unburdened of the past, unconcerned with the future, how can you be miserable? How can Leo Tolstoy be miserable unburdened by the past, unconcerned with the future? Where can misery exist? Where can it hide itself? Suddenly, you explode into a totally different dimension; you go beyond time and you become part of eternity.

But we go on and on like a stuck gramophone record, repeating ourselves endlessly.

I have heard:

Two girls were talking in the park and one of them looked so glum, so sad, that the other was feeling very sympathetic. She put her arms around the mink coat of the other gorgeous doll and said, “Angeline, what is troubling you?”

Angeline shrugged and said, “Oh, it is nothing I suppose, but a fortnight ago old Mr. Short dropped dead. You remember him? He was always so good to me. Anyway, he dropped dead and left me fifty thousand rupees. Then last week poor old Mr. Pilkinhouse had a seizure and died and left me sixty thousand rupees. And this week nothing.”

This is the trouble, always expecting, always asking for more, for more. And there can be no end for this demand for more. Whatsoever you get you can always imagine more and you can always become miserable.

Poor people are miserable, you can understand, but rich people are also miserable. Those who have are as much miserable as those who have not. Ill people are miserable, but healthy are also miserable. Misery seems to be somewhere else. Misery does not disappear by wealth, health, or anything of that sort. It continues like an undercurrent.

The misery exists in the demand for the more, and the human mind can always imagine for more. Can you imagine a situation in which you cannot imagine for more? Impossible. Even heaven can be improved upon. Nobody can imagine a situation in which imagination can stop and you cannot imagine more and a better situation. That means you will be miserable wherever you are. Even heaven won’t be enough, so don’t wait for heaven. If you go right now into heaven it won’t be enough. You will be as miserable as here, maybe even more because here, at least, you can hope — that the heaven is there and one day or other you will enter into it. If you enter into it, even that hope is gone.

As you are, you can only be in hell because the hell or the heaven are ways of looking at things. They are not physical spaces: They are attitudes how you look at things.

A lizard is in heaven and Leo Tolstoy is in hell. Even a man like Leo Tolstoy. He was world-famous, more fame you cannot imagine. His name is going to be in the history books. His books will be read forever and forever. He was a genius. But you cannot imagine more miserable a man. He was rich, one of the richest men in Russia. He belonged to the royal family; he was a prince, married to a very beautiful princess, but you cannot imagine more miserable a man, who was continuously thinking of suicide. He started thinking maybe it is because he is so rich, that’s why he is miserable, so he started living like a poor man, like a peasant, but still the misery continued.

What was troubling him? He was a man of great imagination — a novelist has to be. He was a man of tremendous imagination, so whatsoever was available was always less. More he could imagine, better he could imagine. That became his misery.

Remember this, that if you are expecting anything from life, you will not get anything. Don’t expect and it is there in all its glory. Don’t expect, don’t ask, and it showers upon you in all its miraculousness. All its magic is there. Just wait a little while without thoughts . . . but that seems to be impossible.

Not that there are not moments when you are without thoughts. Patanjali says there are. All those who have entered into the inner space of man, they know there are gaps. But you are missing them somehow because those gaps are in the present. You jump from one thought to another and in between was the gap. In between was the heaven — you jump from one hell to another.

In between is heaven, but in between, you are not. From one thought to another thought you jump, [there] you are. Each thought feeds your ego, helps you to be, defines you, gives you a boundary, a shape, a form, an identity. You don’t look in the gap between the two thoughts because to look into that gap is to look into your original face, which has no identity. To look into that gap is to look into eternity, where you are going to be lost.

You have become so afraid of looking into the gap that you have almost managed to forget them.

Between two thoughts there is a gap, but you don’t see it. You see one thought, then you see another thought, then another thought . . . Just watch a little. The thoughts are not overlapping. Each thought is separate. In between the two there must be a gap. There is a gap, and that interval is the door. From that door you will enter into existence again. From that door you have been expelled from the Garden of Eden. From that door you will enter into the Garden of Eden again, you will again become like a lizard sunning on a rock.

I have heard.

Once a family moved from the country to the city, and his mother gave little Bobby careful instructions about traffic. “Never cross the street until the cars have passed,” she said as he started off to visit a little friend. About an hour later he returned, his eyes brimming with tears. “What has happened?” his mother asked in alarm.

“I could not go,” said Bobby. “I waited and waited but a car never did come by.

He was told to wait until the cars have passed by, but a car never did come by. The road was empty, and he was looking for the cars.

This is the situation inside you. The road is always empty — available — but you are looking for cars, thoughts, and then you become very much worried. So many thoughts. They become multiplied, they echo and reecho in you, and you go on being attentive toward them. Your gestalt is wrong.

Change the gestalt. If you look into the thoughts, you create a mind in yourself. If you look into the gaps, you create meditation into yourself. The accumulation of the gaps is meditation; the accumulation of thoughts is the mind. These are two gestalts, two possibilities of your being — either you be through the mind, or you be through meditation.

Look for the gaps. They are already there, naturally available. Meditation is not something which has to be produced by effort. It is there as much as the mind. In fact, more than the mind because mind is only on the surface, the waves, and the meditation is the depth of the ocean.

Every moment God is seeking you as much as you are seeking him. You may not be seeking him consciously. You may be seeking him under different names. You may be seeking him as bliss. You may be seeking him as happiness, joy. You may be seeking him as forgetfulness, absorption. You may be seeking him as music, as love. You may be seeking him in different ways, under different names. Those names do not matter, you are seeking him — knowingly, unknowingly. And one thing you have to understand, he is also seeking you. Because unless the search is from both the sides, the meeting is not possible.

The whole is seeking the part as much as the part is seeking the whole. The flower is seeking the sun as much as the sun is seeking the flower. The lizard is not only sunning, the sun is also lizarding. It is a connected whole. It has to be so, otherwise things will fall apart. It is one piece, it is one harmony, it is one dance. All gestures, all movements, are connected together. They have to be; otherwise they will fall apart and the existence will no longer be existence — it will disappear.

Let me tell you through a parable. Consider the following parable. Man, let us say, is climbing a mountain — because in the valley he has lived and in the valley he has dreamed and in the valley he has thought and imagined, but there has been only frustration. In the valley he has remained empty, unfulfilled, so he thinks that at the top of the mountain is God. The valley he has lived. The top remains far away; shining in the sun it remains an attraction. The far away always calls you, invites you. To look at the close is very difficult; not to look at the far away is also very difficult. To be interested in that which is close is very difficult; to be not interested in that which is very far is also very difficult. The far away has a tremendous attraction, and the top of the mountain goes on calling you.

And, when you start feeling empty in the valley, of course, it is logical to think that the one you are seeking does not live in the valley. He must be living at the top. It is natural for the mind to move from one extreme to the other, from the valley to the peak.

At the top of the mountain man thinks is God, down in the valley are the cares and concerns of human life, all the troubles of love and war. In the valley you go on gathering anxiety, in the valley you go on gathering dust, in the valley, by and by, you become dull and dead. The valley looks like a graveyard. One wants to get out of it. One starts thinking of freedom, moksha, of how to get out of the imprisonment the valley has become — how to get out of attachment, love; how to get out of ambition, violence, war; how to get out of the society, the very society which gives you the opportunity to be worried, in fact forces you towards anxiety and anguish.

One starts thinking, but this is an escape. In fact, you are not going to the peak; you are going away from the valley. It is not that the peak has called you. In fact, it is the valley which is pushing you. You are still pushed by the valley, and pushed by the valley you can never be free. It is not that you are going on your own. You are being expelled. The valley is creating a situation in which you cannot live there anymore. Life becomes too much. A moment comes in everybody’s life when it becomes too much, the world is too much, and one starts escaping.

Man starts escaping toward the peak. And now comes the most important part of the parable: God, on the other hand, is coming down the mountain. Because, let us say, he is fed up with his purity and aloneness.

Man is fed up with the crowd, with the impurity; God is fed up with his aloneness and purity.

Have you ever watched? You can be happy alone very easily. To be happy with somebody else becomes very difficult. One person can be happy very easily, very cheaply, there is no cost to it. Two persons together, it becomes very difficult to be happy. It is easy to be unhappy now — without any cost, very cheaply. And if three persons are together, it is impossible to be happy — at no cost is happiness possible.

Man is fed up with the crowd, nowhere to move, nowhere where you can find a space of your own, always onlookers and onlookers — you are always on the stage, always performing — and the eyes of the crowd watching you. No privacy. By and by, one gets fed up, bored.

But God is also bored. He is alone, pure, but purity itself becomes boring when it remains and remains and remains.

God is coming down towards the valley; his desire is to plunge into the world. Man’s desire is to jump out of the world, and God’s desire is to plunge into the world. Man’s desire is to be God, and God’s desire is to be man.

There is a truth of withdrawal and there is a truth of return. Man is always withdrawing and God is always returning. Otherwise, the creation would have stopped long ago if God was not returning continuously. It must be a circle. The Ganges goes on falling into the ocean, and the ocean goes on rising into the clouds and goes on falling on the Himalayas — back to the Ganges, and the Ganges goes on flowing. The Ganges is always withdrawing, and the ocean is always returning. Man is always seeking God. God is always seeking man. This is the whole complete circle. If only man was going towards God and God was not coming, the world would have stopped long ago. It would have stopped anytime because one day all men will return and God will not be coming back. The world will disappear.

But the peak cannot exist without the valley; and God cannot exist without the world. And the day cannot exist without the night; and life is impossible to conceive of without death.

It is very difficult to understand this, that God is a constant returning, man a constant withdrawal — man a constant renunciation, sannyas, and God a constant coming back to the world, a celebration.

There is a truth of withdrawal and there is a truth of return. Separately they are both half and partial: together they become the truth, the whole truth.

Religion is a withdrawal, but then it is half. Religion should also be a return, then it is whole. Religion should teach you how to go into yourself and religion should also teach you how to come back again because somewhere in between the valley and the peak God and man meet. If you bypass God . . . And there is every possibility because if you are going up the hill and he is coming down the hill you won’t even look at him. There may even be a condemnation in your eyes. How can this be God who is going back to the valley? You may even look at him with the eyes of “holier than you.”

Remember this, whenever God will meet you, you will see him coming back to the world; and you are leaving the world. That’s why your so-called mahatmas, your so-called saints, never come to understand what God is. They go on talking about a dead concept of God, but they never know what God is because they will always miss. Somewhere on the path you will meet him, but your sense won’t even look at him. He will look like a sinner; he is going back to the world.

But if they reach to the top, they will find it empty. The world is too full; the top is too empty. They will not even find God there because he is always returning. He is always coming; he is always creating. He is never finished. The creation is an endless process. God is not an entity. He is a process, the process of returning.

If you can meet him on the way and you can recognize him, only then is there a possibility. Then you will drop the idea of going to the peak . . . you will start returning. All great ones who have understood, first have gone into withdrawal, and then they have returned to the world, back in the marketplace with all their meditation in a tremendous flowering. But they have come back to the world. They have understood the point. They have understood the point of wholeness, of holiness. They have understood the point that the outer and the inner are not two and the creation and the creator are not two and matter and mind are not two — that the sacred and the profane are not two. They are one. All duality has disappeared for them. This is what I call advait, nonduality — the real message of Vedanta, the real message of yoga.

It is very natural to get fed up with the world. It is very natural to seek freedom, nothing special in it. […]

It is very natural. The world is too troublesome. It creates so much anxiety: it creates so many imprisonments. To seek freedom, to inquire about it, is natural — nothing special in it. It becomes special when you have understood, when you come from the peak back to the valley with a new dance in your step, with a new song on your lips, with a totally new being — when you come absolutely pure into the world of impurity, unafraid because now you are incorruptible.

When you come back to the prison on your own accord, voluntarily, when you come to the prison as a free man and you accept the prison, back to your cell, now it is a prison no more because a freedom cannot be imprisoned. Only a slave can be imprisoned. A free man cannot be imprisoned — he can live in the prison, and free. And unless your freedom is that powerful, it is not worth.

Now the sutras.

Samadhi is a word very difficult to translate into English; there exists no parallel. But in Greek there is a word which is parallel; that word is ataraxia. The Greek word means quiet, calm, of deep inner contentment. That is the meaning of samadhi — so contented, so deeply contented, that nothing disturbs now, nothing distracts now. So deeply in tune with existence, in a sort of atonement — at-one-ment — that now there is no problem. There is no other who can disturb; the other has disappeared. The other disappears with your thoughts. The thoughts are the other. In the gaps is the samadhi, ataraxia. In the gaps is calm and quiet.

Not that when you have attained to it you will not be able to think, no. Not that your capacity to think will disappear. In fact, just on the contrary, when you live in the gap you become capable of thinking for the first time. Before it you were just victims, victims of a social atmosphere, victims of a thousand and one thoughts surrounding you — not a single thought of your own. They were thoughts; you were not capable of thinking. Those thoughts had settled on you as birds settle on a tree by the evening. They had entered in you. They were not original; they were all borrowed.

You had been living a life which is a borrowed life. That’s why you were sad. That’s why there was no life in you. That’s why you looked dead; there was no vibration. That’s why there was no joy, no delight. Everything was blocked by borrowed thoughts. Your whole stream was blocked. You could not flow because of borrowed thoughts. When you become a part of samadhi, ataraxia, a deep inner calm of the gaps, intervals, you become for the first time capable of seeing, of thinking — but now these thoughts will be your own. Now you will be able to create an original thought. You will be able to live an original life, fresh, fresh as the morning, fresh as the morning breeze. You will become creative.

In samadhi you become a creator because in samadhi you become part of God.

There is a saying of Pascal’s that most of man’s troubles come from his not being able to sit quietly in his chamber. Yes, that is true. If you can sit quietly in your inner chamber, almost all the troubles will disappear. You create them by running hither and thither. You create them by unnecessarily getting attached to your thoughts — which are not yours. You create them because you cannot sit at rest.

Samadhi parinam, the inner transformation, is the gradual settling of distractions and the simultaneous rising of one-pointedness.

First Patanjali talked about nirodh parinam, to look into the gap between two thoughts. If you go on looking, slowly thoughts settle, distractions settle — slowly, as if somebody has passed, bullock carts have passed from a mountain stream, and because of the passing wheels and the people much dust has risen up towards the surface. The whole stream which was just a few seconds before so crystal clear is now absolutely dirty, muddled. But then the bullock carts have gone and the people have gone and the stream goes on flowing. By and by as time passes, again the dust settles back to the bed, again the stream becomes crystal clear.

When you look into the gaps, the bullock carts, the crowd of your thoughts which has disturbed your being so completely by and by goes away, far away, and your inner stream of consciousness starts settling. This is what Patanjali calls samadhi parinam, the inner transformation “. . . is the gradual settling of distractions and the simultaneous rising of one-pointedness.” It has two parts to it. On the one hand, distractions settle, and on the other hand, one-pointedness arises.

When you are full of thoughts too much, you are not one man. You are not one consciousness; you are almost a crowd, a multitude. When there are thoughts and your gestalt is to look at thoughts, you are divided; you are divided in as many parts as there are thoughts in your mind. Each thought becomes a division of your being. You become polypsychic; you are not unipsychic. You are not one, you become many, because each thought carries a part of you and divides you — and those thoughts are running in all directions. You are almost mad. […]

You have been missing your target because you are not one-pointed. You have been missing all that you wanted because you are not one-pointed. The whole misery of man is that he is running in many directions simultaneously — absolutely undecided, indecisive, not knowing where he is going, not knowing what he is doing. […]

Where are you going? For what are you seeking?

You go on missing because your target goes on changing. It is a flux. There are a thousand and one targets around you, and you are a thousand and one, a crowd — a crowd shooting at a crowd of targets. The whole life proves to be empty.

Samadhi parinam, the inner transformation, is the gradual settling of distractions and the simultaneous rising of one-pointedness.

As thoughts disappear — thoughts are distractions — one-pointedness arises. You become one. The stream of consciousness flows in a direction, it becomes directed. It has a direction now. It can reach; it can become a fulfillment.

Ekagrata parinam, one-pointed transformation, is the condition of the mind in which the object of the mind that is subsiding is replaced in the next moment by an exactly similar object.

Ordinarily, one thought goes, another comes of a totally different character. Sadness goes, happiness comes. Happiness goes, frustration comes. Frustration goes, anger comes. Anger goes, sadness comes. The climate around you goes on changing and with the climate you. Every moment you have a different color to your being. Hence, no wonder that you don’t know who you are — because in the morning you were angry, by the lunchtime you were happy, in the afternoon you were sad, by the evening you were frustrated. You don’t know who you are. You change so much because each color that passes you becomes your identity for a few moments.

Ekagrata parinam is a state of your consciousness where this change stops. You become one-pointed. And not only that, if you want to retain one state of affairs, you become capable of retaining it. If you want to remain happy, happiness is replaced by happiness, again by happiness, again by happiness. If you want to remain happy, you remain happy. If you want to remain sad, it is up to you. But then you are the master. Otherwise, everything goes on changing.

I go on observing you. It seems almost unbelievable how you manage. One day a couple comes to me and they say, “We are in deep love. Bless us.” And the next day they are back and they say, “We have been fighting, and we have separated.” Which is true? The love, or the fight? Nothing seems to be true with you. Everything seems to be just a flux. Nothing seems to stay. Nothing seems to be a part of your being. Everything seems to be just a part of your thinking process — with one thought, one color; with another thought, another color.

It happened:

A nearsighted girl too vain to wear glasses was determined to get married. She finally found herself a husband and went off to honeymoon at Niagara Falls with him. When she returned, her mother gave a shriek, ran to the telephone and called an oculist.

“Doctor,” she gasped, “you have got to come over here right away. It is an emergency. My daughter has always refused to wear glasses, and now she is back from her honeymoon, and . . .”

“Madam,” interrupted the doctor, “please control yourself. Have your daughter come to my office. No matter how bad her eyes are, it can’t possibly be that much of an emergency.”

“Oh no?” said the mother. “Well, this fellow she has got with her is not the same one she left for Niagara Falls [with].”

But this is the situation of everybody. The man you love in the morning, you hate in the evening. The man you hate in the morning, you fall in love with by the evening. The man or the woman who looked beautiful just the other day, today has become ugly.

And it is an emergency case.

And this way you go on, like a driftwood, just at the mercy of the winds. The wind changes its course, and your course is changed. You don’t have any soul yet.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples. “First be because right now you are not. Let this be your only goal in life — to be.” Somebody will ask him, “How can we love?” He will say, “Don’t ask nonsense. First be because unless you are, how can you love?”

Unless you are, how can you be happy? Unless you are, how can you do something? The being is needed in the first place, then everything becomes possible.

Jesus says, “Seek first ye the kingdom of God, and then all shall be added unto you.” I would like to change it a little. “Seek first ye the being, the kingdom of being, and then all shall be added unto you.” And that is the meaning of Jesus. The kingdom of God is an old term for the kingdom of being. First be, then everything is possible, but right now when I look into you, you are not there. Many guests are there, but the host is missing.

Ekagrata parinam, one-pointedness in consciousness, is a basic necessity so that your being can arise. In a flux, the being will not be possible. At the most, you can go on becoming this and that and that, but you will never be a being.

By what has been said in the last four sutras, the property, character, and condition transformations in the elements and sense organs are also explained.

And Patanjali says this is the situation: the world is changing around you, the body is changing, the senses are changing, the mind is changing — everything is changing — and if you are also changing, then there is no possibility of finding the eternal, the unchanging one. These are changing, that is true. The world is changing continuously. It is a process: it has no being. It is a flux. Let it be so. There is only one thing permanent in the world and that is change. Everything else changes — except change. Only change remains as a permanent character.

The body is changing, continuously, every moment. Every single moment it is flowing and changing; otherwise how will you become old, how will you become a youth, how will a child become a youth? Can you say on what day the child becomes a youth? Can you say on what date the young man becomes old? Difficult. In fact, if you ask physiologists, they are not yet clear at exactly what moment one says that the man was alive and now he is dead. It is impossible to decide. The definition is still unclear because life is a process. In fact, when you have died, almost, and your friends have abandoned you, a few processes still continue in the body — nails go on growing, hairs go on growing. A part of you still seems to be alive and functioning.

When exactly a man dies, it is still undefined. In fact, life and death cannot be defined; it is a flux phenomenon. Body goes on changing, mind goes on changing — every moment the mind is changing.

If you are looking into this changing world — in these distractions of your being — and searching for truth, God, bliss, then you will be frustrated. Move within. Go into the gaps where neither the world exists nor the body nor the mind. There, for the first time, you come face to face with eternity, which has no beginning and no end, which has no change in it.

Whether they be latent, active, or unmanifest, all properties inhere in the substratum.

Patanjali says whether a flower has died or whether a flower is in bloom makes no difference. When a flower is in bloom he is dying, and when a flower has died, he is again trying to come back up. Creation goes on through a process of uncreation and creation, uncreation and creation. This is what Patanjali calls prakriti. Prakriti, again, is a word which cannot be translated. It is not creation only: it is the very process of creation and uncreation.

Everything becomes manifest, disappears, becomes unmanifest: but it remains in the substratum, the prakriti. Again it will come back. Summer comes and then goes: again the summer is back, coming. Winter is there, going: again it will come. It goes on moving. Flowers appear, disappear. Clouds come, disappear. The world goes on moving in a cycle.

Things have two states: manifest and unmanifest. You are beyond them. You are neither manifest nor unmanifest. You are the witness. Through nirodh parinam, through the gap between two thoughts, you will have the first glimpse of it. Then go on gathering those gaps, go on piling up those gaps. And always remember, whenever two gaps are there, they become one. Two gaps cannot be two. They are not like two things; they are two emptinesses. They cannot be two. You bring two zeros near they become one. They jump into each other because two zeros cannot be two zeros. Zero is always one. You bring a thousand and one zeros home — they will jump into each other and become one.

So go on piling up those gaps, zeros of being, and by and by what Patanjali first calls nirodh becomes samadhi. In samadhi distractions disappear, go distant and distant and distant . . . and then disappear; and one-pointedness arises in your being. That is the first glimpse of who you are beyond prakriti, beyond this game of creation and uncreation, beyond this game of waves and no waves, flowers and no flowers, of change, movement, momentariness. You become a witness.

That witness is your being.

And to attain that is the whole goal of yoga.

Yoga means: unio mystica. It means the union, the mystic union with oneself. And if you are one with yourself, suddenly you realize you have become one with the whole, with God, because when you move into your being, it is an emptiness again, a silence, a tremendous nonending silence . . . and God is also silence. Two silences cannot be two — they jump into each other and become one.

You withdraw in yourself, and God is returning. You meet on the way; you become one. This oneness is the meaning of the word “yoga.” Yoga means to become one.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Science of Living; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.7, Discourse #5 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

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

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

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

The Inside of the Inside – Osho

Samyama is to be employed in stages.

These three — dharana, dhyan, and samadhi — are internal compared to the five that preceded them.

But the three are external compared to seedless samadhi.

Nirodh parinam is the transformation of the mind in which the mind becomes permeated by the condition of nirodh, which intervenes momentarily between an impression that is disappearing and the impression that is taking its place.

This flow becomes peaceful with repeated impressions.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

I have been told that traditionally there are two schools of thought in Germany. The industrial, practical northern part of the country has this philosophy: The situation is serious but not hopeless. In the southern part of Germany, more romantic and perhaps less practical, the philosophy seems to be: The situation is hopeless but not serious. If you ask me, then the situation is neither — neither is it hopeless nor serious. And I am talking about the human situation.

The human situation looks serious because we have been taught and conditioned to be serious for centuries. The human situation looks hopeless because we have been doing something with ourselves which is wrong. We have not yet found that to be natural is the goal, and all the goals that we have been taught make us more and more unnatural.

To be natural, to be just in tune with the cosmic law, is what Patanjali means by samyama. To be natural and to be in tune with the cosmic law is samyama. Samyama is not anything forced upon you. Samyama is not anything that comes from the outside. Samyama is a flowering of your innermost nature. Samyama is to become that which you already are. Samyama is to come back to nature. How to come back to nature? And what is human nature? Unless you dig deep within your own being, you will never come to know what human nature is.

One has to move inward; and the whole process of yoga is a pilgrimage, an inward journey. Step by step, in eight steps, Patanjali is bringing you home. The first five steps — yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahar — they help you to go deep in you beyond the body. The body is your first periphery, the first concentric circle of your existence. The second step is to go beyond the mind. The three internal steps of dharana, dhyan, samadhi, lead you beyond the mind. Beyond the body and beyond the mind is your nature, is your center of being. That center of being Patanjali calls seedless samadhi — kaivalya. That he calls to come face to face to your own grounding, to your own being, to come to know who you are.

So the whole process can be divided in three parts: first, how to transcend the body; second, how to transcend the mind; and third, how to fall into your own being.

We have been taught, almost all over the world, in every culture, in every country, in every climate, to seek goals somewhere outside ourselves. The goal may be money, the goal may be power, the goal may be prestige, or the goal may be God, heaven, it makes no difference: all the goals are outside you. And the real goal is to come to the source from where you come. Then the circle is complete.

Drop all the outer goals and move inward. That’s the message of yoga. Outer goals are just forced. You have just been taught somewhere to go. They never become natural; they cannot become natural.

I have heard an anecdote about G.K. Chesterton:

He was on a train, reading earnestly, when the conductor asked for his ticket. Frantically, Chesterton fumbled for it.

“Never mind, sir,” the conductor said reassuringly. “I will come later on to punch it. I am certain you have it.”

“I know I have it,” Chesterton stammered, “but what I want to know is, where in the world am I going?”

Where are you going? What’s your destiny? You have been taught certain things to achieve. You have been made into an achiever. The mind has been manipulated, pushed and pulled. The mind has been controlled by the outside — by the parents, by the family, by the school, by the society, by the government. Everybody is trying to pull you outside your being, and they are trying to fix a goal for you; and you have fallen in the trap. And the goal is already there inside you.

There is nowhere to go. One has to realize oneself — who one is already. And once you realize that, wherever you go you will find your goal because you carry your goal with yourself. Then wherever you go, you will have a deep contentment, a peace surrounding you, a coolness, a collectedness, a calm as a milieu that you carry around you as an aura. That’s what Patanjali calls samyama — a cool, collected, calm atmosphere that moves with you.

Wherever you go you bring your own atmosphere with you, and everybody can feel it. Almost it can be touched by others also, whether they become aware or not. Suddenly, if a man of samyama comes close to you, suddenly, you become aware of a certain calm breeze blowing near you, a fragrance coming from the unknown. It touches you; it pacifies you. It is like a beautiful lullaby. You were in turmoil; if a man of samyama comes near you, suddenly your turmoil subsides. You were angry; if a man of samyama comes near you, your anger disappears because a man of samyama is a magnetic force. On his wave you start riding; on him, with him, you start moving higher than you can move alone.

So, in the East we developed a beautiful tradition of going to people who have attained to samyama and just sitting by their side. That’s what we call darshan, that’s what we call satsang: just going to a man of samyama and just being near him. To the Western mind sometimes it looks almost absurd because sometimes the man may not even speak; he may be in silence. And people go on coming, they touch his feet, they sit by his side, they close their eyes . . . There is no conversation, there is no verbal communication, and they sit for hours; and then, fulfilled in some unknown way, they touch the feet in deep gratitude, and they go back. And you can watch from their faces that something has been communicated; they have attained to something. And there has been no verbal communication — nothing visible has been given or taken. This is satsang, just being with a man of truth, with an authentic being, a man of samyama.

Just by being close to him, something starts happening in you, something starts responding in you.

But the concept of the man of samyama has also become very muddled because people started to do it from the outside. People started to still themselves from the outside, to practice a certain calmness, a certain silence, to force themselves into a particular pattern and discipline. They will look almost like a man of samyama. They will look almost, but they will not be: and when you go near them, their appearance may be of silence, but if you sit near them silently, you will not feel any silence. Deep down the turmoil is hidden. They are like volcanoes. On the surface everything is quiet: deep down the volcano is getting ready to explode, any moment.

Remember this: never try to force anything upon yourself. That is the way to get divided, that’s the way to become hopeless, and that’s the way to miss the point. Your innermost being has to flow through you. You are only to remove the hindrances on the path. Nothing new is to be added to you. In fact, something minus, and you will be perfect. Something plus — no. You are already perfect. Something more is there than the spring — some rocks on the path. Minus those rocks, and you are perfect, and the flow is attained. These eight steps, ashtang, of Patanjali are nothing but a methodological way of removing the rocks.

But why does man become so obsessed with an outer discipline? There must be a cause to it, a reason for it. The reason is there. The reason is because to force anything from the outside seems easier, cheap, at no cost. It is as if you are not beautiful, but you can purchase a beautiful mask from the market and you can put it on your face. Cheap, not costly, and you can deceive others a little bit. Not long because a mask is a dead thing and a dead thing can have an appearance of beauty, but it cannot be really beautiful. In fact, you have become more ugly than you were before. Whatsoever your original face was, was at least alive, radiating life, intelligence. Now you have a dead mask and you are hiding behind it.

People become interested in cultivating samyama from the outside. You are a man of anger: to attain to a state of no anger much effort will be needed, and long is the journey, and you will have to pay for it. But just to force yourself, repress anger, is easier. In fact, you can use your energy of anger in repressing anger immediately. There is no problem because anybody who is a man of anger can easily conquer anger. The only one thing is, he has to turn the anger upon himself. First, he was angry with others: now he has to be angry with himself and suppress the anger. But if you look into his eyes, anger will be there lurking like a shadow.

And remember, to be angry sometimes is not bad, but to suppress anger and to remain angry constantly is very dangerous. That is the difference between hatred and hate. When you flare up in anger there is hate, but it is momentary. It comes and it goes. Nothing much to be worried about. When you suppress anger, then hate disappears and hatred arises, which becomes a permanent style of your life. The repressed anger continuously affects you — your behavior, your relationship. Now it is not that you sometimes become angry, now you are angry all the time. Your anger is not addressed to anybody now: it has become unaddressed, just a quality of your being. Now it clings to you. You cannot exactly say with whom you are angry because in the past you have been accumulating anger. Now it has become a reservoir. You are simply angry.

This is bad; this is chronic. First the anger was just a flare-up, something happened. It was situational. It was like as small children become angry: they flare up like a flame and then they subside, and immediately the storm is gone and the silence is there and they are again loving and beautiful. But by and by the more you suppress anger, anger enters into your bones, into your blood. It circulates within you. It moves in your breathing. Then, whatsoever you do you do in anger. Even if you love a person, you love in an angry way. Aggression is there: destructiveness is there. You may not bring it up, but it is always there. And it becomes a great rock.

To force anything from the outside seems in the beginning very cheap, but in the end, it proves very fatal.

And people find it cheap because there are experts who go on telling them how to do it. A child is born and parents become the experts. They are not. They have not solved their own problems yet. If they really love the child, they will not force the same pattern on him.

But who loves? Nobody knows what love is.

They start forcing their pattern, the same old pattern in which they are caught. They are not even aware what they are doing. They themselves are caught in the same pattern and their whole life has been a life of misery, and now they are giving the same pattern to their children. Innocent children, not knowing what is right and what is wrong, will become victims.

And these experts who are not experts, because they don’t know anything — they have not solved any problem themselves — simply take it for granted that because, just because they have given birth to a child they have become, in a certain way, authoritative: and they start molding the soft child into a fixed pattern. And the child has to follow them; the child is helpless. By the time he becomes aware, he is already caught, trapped. Then there are schools, universities, and a thousand and one ways of conditioning all around, and all sorts of experts, and everybody pretending that he knows. Nobody seems to know.

Beware of the experts. Take your life in your own hands if you want to reach someday to your innermost core. Don’t listen to the experts; you have listened long enough. […]

The expert always thinks in terms of knowledge. Go to a wise man. He does not think in terms of knowledge. He looks at you through his knowing eyes. The world is ruled by experts too much, and the world has almost forgotten to go to the wise men. And the difference is the expert is as ordinary as you are. The only difference between you and the expert is that he has accumulated some dead information. He knows more than you know, but his information is not his own realization. He has just accumulated it from the outside, and he goes on giving advice to you.

Seek, search for a wise man. That is the search for the guru. In the East people travel for thousands of miles to seek and search for somebody who has really come to know and to be with him, to be with the man of samyama — one who has attained — who has not cultivated, who has grown, who has flowered in his inner being. The flower is not borrowed from the outside. It is an inner flowering.

Remember, Patanjali’s samyama is not the concept of ordinary cultivation. It is the concept of flowering, of helping and allowing that which is hidden in you to be manifested. You are already carrying the seed. The seed only needs the right soil. A little care, a loving care, and it will sprout, and it will come one day to flower. And the fragrance that was carried by the seed will be spread to the winds, and the winds will carry it to all the directions.

A man of samyama cannot hide himself. He tries. He cannot hide himself because the winds will continuously carry his fragrance. He can go to a cave in the mountains and sit there, and people will start coming to him there. Somehow, in some unknown way, those who are growing, those who are intelligent, they will find him. He need not seek them; they will seek him.

Can you watch something similar in your own being because then it will be easy to understand the sutras? You love somebody really; and, you show love to somebody. Have you watched the difference? Somebody comes, a guest. You really welcome. It is a flowering; from your very being you welcome him. It is not only a welcome to your home; it is a welcome to your heart. And then some other guest comes and you welcome him because you have to welcome. Have you watched the difference between the two?

When you really welcome, you are one flow — the welcome is total. When you don’t really welcome, and you are simply following etiquette, manners, you are not one flow; and if the guest is perceptive, he will immediately turn back. He will not enter your house. If he is really perceptive, he can immediately see the contradiction in you. Your extended hand for a handshake is not really extended. The energy in it is not moving towards the guest; the energy is being withheld. Only a dead hand has been spread out.

You are a contradiction whenever you are following anything outer, just following a discipline. It is not true; you are not in it.

Remember, whatsoever you do — if you are doing it at all — do it totally. If you don’t want to do it at all, then don’t do it — then don’t do it totally. The totalness has to be remembered because that totalness is the most significant thing. If you continuously go on doing things in which you are contradictory, inconsistent, in which a part of you moves and another part doesn’t move, you are destroying your inner flowering. By and by, you will become a plastic flower — with no fragrance, with no life. […]

Don’t live a life of mere manners, don’t live a life of mere etiquette. Live an authentic life.

I know the life of etiquette, manners, is comfortable, convenient, but it is poisonous. It kills you slowly, slowly. The life of authenticity is not so convenient and comfortable. It is risky, it is dangerous — but it is real, and the danger is worth it. And you will never repent for it. Once you start enjoying the real life, the real feeling, the real flow of your energy, and you are not divided and split, then you will understand that if everything is to be staked for it, it is worth it. For a single moment of real life, your whole unreal life can be staked, and it is worth it — because in that single moment you would have known what life is and its destiny. And your whole long life of a hundred years, you will simply live on the surface, always afraid of the depth, and you will miss the whole opportunity.

This is the hopelessness that we have created all around us: living and not living at all; doing things we never intended to do; being in relationships we never wanted to be in; following a profession which has never been a call to you — being false in a thousand and one ways. And how do you expect that out of this falsity — layer upon layer — you can know what life is? It is because of your falsity you are missing it. It is because of your falsity you cannot make contact with the living stream of life.

And sometimes when you become aware of it, a second problem arises. Whenever people become aware of the falsity of life, they immediately move to the opposite extreme. That is another trap of the mind, because if you move from one falsity to the exact opposite, you will move to another falsity again. Somewhere in between, somewhere between the two opposites, is the real. Samyama means balance. It means absolute balance not moving to the extremes, remaining just in the middle. When you are neither a rightist nor a leftist, when you are neither a socialist nor an individualist, when you are neither this nor that, suddenly in between, the flowering, the flowering of samyama. […]

You can move from one extreme to another, from one falsity to another falsity, from one fear to another fear. You can move from the marketplace to the monastery. Those are the polarities. The people who live in the marketplace are unbalanced, and the people who live in the monasteries are also unbalanced on the other extreme, but both are lopsided.

Samyama means balance. That’s what I mean by sannyas: to be balanced, to be in the marketplace and yet not be of it, to be in the bazaar but to not allow the bazaar to be in you. If your mind can remain free from the marketplace, you can be in the marketplace and there is no problem, you can move to the monastery and live alone. But if the bazaar follows inside you . . . which is bound to follow because the bazaar is not really outside — it is in the buzzing thoughts, in the inner traffic noise of the thoughts — it is going to follow you. How can you leave yourself here and escape somewhere else? You will go with yourself, and wherever you go, you will be the same.

So don’t try to escape from situations. Rather, try to become more and more aware. Change the inner climate and don’t be worried about the outer situations. Insist continuously on it because the cheaper is always alluring. It says, “Because you are worried in the market, escape to the monastery and all worries will disappear: because worries are because of the business, because of the market, because of the relationship.” No, worries are not because of the market, worries are not because of the family, worries are not because of the relationship: Worries are because of you. These are just excuses. If you go to the monastery, these worries will find some new objects to hang on to, but the worries will continue.

Just look at your mind, in what a mess it is. And this mess is not created by the situations. This mess is in you. Situations, at the most, work as excuses.

Sometime, do one experiment. You think people make you angry, then go for a twenty-one-day silence. Remain silent and you will suddenly become aware that many times in the day, for no reason at all — because now there is nobody to make you angry — you become angry. You think because you come across a beautiful woman or a man that’s why you become sexual? You are wrong. Go for a twenty-one-day silence. Remain alone and you will find many times, suddenly for no reason at all, sexuality arises. It is within you.

Two women were talking. I have simply overheard them; excuse my trespass.

Mistress Brown, very annoyed: “Look here, Mistress Green. Mistress Gray told me that you told her the secret I told you not to tell her.”

Mistress Green: “Oh! The mean creature. And I told her not to tell you that I told her.”

Mistress Brown: “Well. Look here, don’t tell her that I told you she told me.”

This is the traffic noise that goes on continuously in the mind. This has to be stilled not by any force but by understanding.

The first sutra:

Samyama is to be employed in stages.

Patanjali is not for sudden enlightenment, and sudden enlightenment is not for everybody. It is rare, it is exceptional. And Patanjali has a very scientific outlook. He does not bother with the exceptional. He discovers the rule, and the exceptional simply proves the rule, nothing else. And the exceptional can take care of itself. There is no need to think about it. The ordinary, the ordinary human being, grows only in stages, step by step, because for a sudden enlightenment, tremendous courage is needed, which is not available.

And for a sudden enlightenment, there is such a risk in it — one can go mad or one can become enlightened. Both the possibilities remain open because it is so sudden that the mechanism of your body and mind is not ready for it. It can shatter you completely.

Patanjali does not talk about it. In fact, he insists that the samyama should be attained in stages so that by and by you move, in small doses you grow, and before you take another step you have become ready and prepared for it. Enlightenment, for Patanjali, does not take you unawares. Because it is such a tremendous event, you may be so shocked — shocked to death or shocked to madness — he simply debars any talk about it. He does not pay any attention to it.

That is the difference between Patanjali and Zen. Zen is for the exceptional, Patanjali is for the rule. If Zen disappears from the world, nothing will be lost because the exceptional can always take care of itself. But if Patanjali disappears from the world, much will be lost because he is the rule. He is simply for the common, ordinary human being — for all. A Tilopa may take the jump, or a Bodhidharma may take a jump, and disappear. These are adventurers, people who enjoy risk, but that is not the way of everybody. You need a staircase to go up and to go down: You simply don’t jump out of the balconies. And there is no need to take that risk while one can move gracefully.

Zen is a little eccentric because the whole point is of the unique experience. The whole point is of the exceptional, the rare, in a way, the non-ordinary. Patanjali, in that way, moves on plain ground. For the common humanity he is a great help.

He says, “Samyama is to be employed in stages.” Don’t be in a hurry, move slowly, grow slowly, so everything becomes solid before you take another step. After each growth, let there be an interval. In that interval, whatsoever you have attained is absorbed, digested, becomes part of your being . . . then go ahead. There is no need to run because in running you can come to a point for which you are not ready, and if you are not ready, it is dangerous.

The greedy mind would like to attain everything now. People come to me and they say, “Why don’t you give us something which can make us suddenly enlightened?” But these are exactly the people who are not ready. If they were ready, they would have patience. If they were ready, they would say, “Whenever it comes. We are not in a hurry, we can wait.” They are not the real people: they are greedy people. In fact, they don’t know what they are asking. They are inviting the sky. You will burst; you won’t be able to contain it.

Patanjali says, “Samyama is to be employed in stages,” and these eight stages he has described.

These three . . .

The three that we discussed the other day . . .

— dharana, dhyan, and samadhi — are internal compared to the five that precede them.

We have discussed those five stages.

These three are internal compared to the five that have preceded them . . .

But the three are external compared to seedless samadhi.

If you compare them with yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahar, then they are internal, but if you compare with the experience, the ultimate experience of a Buddha or Patanjali, they are yet external. They are just in between. First you transcend the body, those are the external steps. Then you transcend the mind, these are internal steps. But when you reach to your being, even that which was internal, now will look external. Even that was not internal enough. Your mind is not internal enough. It is more internal than the body. It is external if you become a witness — then you can watch your own thoughts. When you can watch your own thoughts, your thoughts become external. They become objects: You are the watcher.

The seedless samadhi means when there is going to be no birth anymore, when there is going to be no coming back to the world anymore, when there is going to be no entry again in time. The seedless means the seed of desire is burned completely.

When you move, even toward yoga, when you start the journey inward, that too is still a desire — desire to achieve oneself, desire to achieve peace, bliss, desire to achieve truth. It is still desire. When you attain the first samadhi . . . after dharana, concentration; [after] dhyan, contemplation; when you come to samadhi where subject and object become one, even there, a slight shadow of desire is present — the desire to know the truth, the desire to become one, the desire to know God — or whatsoever you name it. Still that desire, very subtle, almost invisible, almost as if it is not — but still it is there. It has to be there because you have been using it all throughout the way. Now, that desire also has to be dropped.

Samadhi has also to be dropped. Meditation becomes complete when meditation has to be dropped . . . when meditation can be dropped. When you forget all about meditation and you drop it, when there is no need to meditate, when there is no need to go anywhere — neither outside nor inside — when all journeying stops, then desire disappears.

Desire is the seed. First it moves you outward; then, if you are intelligent enough to understand that you are moving in a wrong direction, it starts moving you inward; but the desire is still there. The same desire, feeling frustrated outside, starts searching inside. That desire has to be dropped.

After samadhi, even samadhi has to be dropped. Then the seedless samadhi arises. That is the ultimate. It arises not because you desired it, because if you desire then it will not be seedless. That has to be understood. It arises only because understanding the futility of desire itself — even the desire to go in — the very understanding of the futility of desire, desire disappears. You cannot desire the seedless samadhi. When desire disappears, suddenly, the seedless samadhi is there. It has nothing to do with your effort. This is the happening.

Up to now, up to samadhi, there is effort because effort needs desire, motivation. When desire disappears, effort also disappears. When desire disappears, there is no motivation to do anything — neither is there any motivation to do nor is there any motivation to be anything. Total emptiness, nothingness, what Buddha calls shunya arises — on its own accord. And that’s the beauty of it, untouched by your desire, uncorrupted by your motivation, it is purity itself, it is innocence itself. This is seedless samadhi.

Now there will no longer be any birth. Buddha used to tell his disciples, “When you come to samadhi become alert. Cling to samadhi so that you can be a help to people.” Because if you don’t cling to samadhi, and the seedless samadhi appears, you are gone, gone forever, gate, gate, para gate — Gone, gone, gone forever. Then you cannot help. You must have heard the word bodhisattva. I have given the word to many sannyasins. Bodhisattva means one who has come to samadhi and is denying seedless samadhi, is clinging to samadhi because while he clings to samadhi he can help people, he can still be there, at least one chain with the world is still there.

There is a story that Buddha comes to the ultimate heaven, doors open, and he is invited in, but he stands outside. The devas tell him, “Come in. We have been waiting so long for you.” But he says, “How can I come in right now? There are many who need me. I will stand at the door and help to show people the door. I will be the last to enter. When everybody has entered the door, when there is nobody else left outside, then I will enter. If I enter right now, with my entry the door will be lost again, and there are millions who are struggling. They are just coming closer and closer. I will stand outside. I am not going to enter because you will have to keep the door open while I stand here. You will have to wait for me, and while you are waiting, the door will be there, open, and I can show people this is the door.”

This is the state of bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means one who has already come to the door of being a buddha. In essence he is ready to disappear into the whole, but he resists for compassion. He clings to it. The last desire, to help people — that too is a desire — keeps him in existence. It is very difficult, it is almost impossible, when all the chains are broken from the world, just to depend on a very fragile relationship of compassion — almost impossible. But those are the few moments — when somebody comes to the state of bodhisattva and stays there — those are the few moments when the door is open for the whole of humanity, to look at the door, to realize the door, to recognize, and to enter it.

These three — dharana, dhyan, samadhi — are internal compared to the five that preceded them.

But the three are external compared to seedless samadhi.

This sutra is very, very significant for you because you can immediately use it. Patanjali calls it nirodh. Nirodh means a momentary suspension of the mind, a momentary state of no-mind. It is happening to you all, but it is very subtle and the moment is very small. Unless you are a little more aware, you will not be able to see it. First let me describe what it is.

Whenever a thought appears in the mind, the mind is covered with it, like a cloud appears in the sky. But no thought can be permanent. The very nature of thought is to be nonpermanent; one thought comes, it goes; another thought comes and replaces it. Between these two thoughts there is a very subtle interval. One thought goes, another has not come yet that is the moment of nirodh — a subtle interval when you are thoughtless. One cloud has passed, another has not come yet, and the sky is open. You can look at it.

Just sitting silently watch. Thoughts go on coming like traffic on the road. One car has passed, another is coming — but between the two there is a gap and the road is vacant. Soon the other will come and the road will again be full and will not be empty. If you can look between the gap that exists between two thoughts, you are for a moment in the same state as when somebody comes to realize samadhi — a momentary samadhi, just a glimpse. Immediately it will be filled by another thought which is already on the way.

Watch. Watch carefully. One thought going, another coming, and the gap between: In that gap you are exactly in the same state as one who has attained to samadhi. But your state is just a momentary phenomenon. Patanjali calls it nirodh. It is momentary, dynamic, it is changing all the time. It is a flux-like thing one wave going, another coming between the two . . . no wave. Just try to watch it.

This is one of the most significant meditations. There is no need to do anything else. You can just sit silently and you can go on watching. Just look in the gap. In the beginning it will be difficult. By and by you will become more alert and you will not miss the gaps. Don’t pay attention to the thoughts. Focus yourself for the gap, not for the thoughts. Focus yourself when the road is vacant and nobody is passing. Change your gestalt. Ordinarily we focus on thoughts and we don’t focus in between.

It happened once. A great yoga Master was teaching about nirodh to his disciples. He had a blackboard. On the blackboard, with white chalk, he made a very small point, just visible, and then he asked his disciples, “What do you see?” They all said, “A small white point.” The Master laughed. He said, “Nobody can see this blackboard? All are seeing only the small white point?”

Nobody has seen the blackboard. The blackboard was there, the white dot was there, but they all looked at the white dot.

Change the gestalt.

Have you looked in children’s books? There are pictures, pictures which are very, very meaningful to be understood. In a certain picture there is a young woman, you can see it, but in the same lines, in the same picture, there is hiding an old woman. If you go on looking, go on looking, suddenly the young woman disappears and you see the old woman’s face. Then you go on looking at the old woman’s face — suddenly it disappears and again the young woman’s face appears. You cannot see both together: That is impossible. You can see one face one time, another face another time. Once you have seen both the faces, you know very well that the other face is also there, but still you cannot see it together. And the mind is constantly changing, so one time you see the young face, another time you see the old face.

The gestalt changes from the old to the young, from the young to the old, from the old to the young, but you cannot focus on both. So, when you focus on thoughts, you cannot focus on the gaps. The gaps are always there. Focus on the gaps, and suddenly you will become aware that gaps are there and thoughts are disappearing — and in those gaps, the first glimpses of samadhi will be attained.

And that taste is needed in order to go on because whatsoever I say, whatsoever Patanjali says, can only become meaningful to you when you have already tasted something of it. If once you know the gap is blissful, a tremendous bliss descends — just for a moment, then it disappears — then you know if this gap can become permanent, if this gap can become my nature, then this bliss will be available as a continuum. Then you start working hard.

This is nirodh parinam:

Just ten years ago, an inventory was made of the Imperial Japanese Jewels. The royal treasure has been kept in a guarded building called the Soshuen. For nine hundred years the jewels had rested in that palace. When a string of amber beads was examined, one bead in the center of the string appeared to be different from the others. The accumulated dust of centuries was washed off the beads and the center stone was examined with deep curiosity. The examiners found a treasure within a treasure. The special bead was not made of common amber as were the other beads. It was a high-quality pearl of pink-green color. For hundreds of years, the unique pearl had been mistaken for a piece of amber but no longer.

No matter how long we have lived in a mistaken identity, self-examination can reveal our true and tranquil nature.

Once you have a glimpse of the reality that you are, then all false identities which have existed for centuries suddenly disappear. Now, no longer can you be deceived by those identities. This nirodh parinam gives you the first glimpse of your real nature. It gives you a glimpse, behind the layers of dust, of the real pearl. The layers of dust are nothing but layers of thought, impressions, imaginations, dreams, desires — all thoughts.

Once you can have one glimpse, you are already converted. This I call conversion. Not when a Hindu becomes a Christian, not when a Christian becomes a Hindu, that is not a conversion. That is moving from one prison to another prison, The conversion is when you move from thought to no-thought, when you move from mind to no-mind. The conversion is when you look in nirodh parinam, when you look between two thoughts and suddenly your reality is revealed — almost like lightning. Then again there is darkness, but you are not the same. You have seen something you cannot forget now. Now you will be searching again and again.

This is what the following sutra says:

This flow becomes peaceful with repeated impressions.

If again and again you fall in the gap, if again and again you taste the experience, if again and again you look through the nirodh — cessation of the mind — without thought you look into your own being, this flow becomes peaceful, this flow becomes natural, this flow becomes spontaneous. You attain, you begin to attain, your own treasure, first as glimpses, small gaps, then bigger gaps, then still bigger. Then one day it happens the last thought is gone and no other thought comes. You are in deep silence, eternal silence. That’s the goal.

It is hard, arduous, but available.

Tradition has it that when Jesus was crucified, just before he died, a soldier pierced his side with a spear, just to see whether he is dead or still alive. He was still alive. He opened his eyes. Looked at the soldier, and said, “Friend, there is a shorter road to my heart than that.” He has pierced his heart with a spear, and Jesus says, “Friend, there is a shorter road to my heart than that.”

For centuries, people have wondered what he really meant. A thousand and one explanations are possible because the sentence is very cryptic, but the way I look into it and the meaning that I think into it is that if you go into your own heart, that is the shortest, the most shortcut way to reach to Jesus’s heart. If you go into your own heart, if you go withinward, you will come closer to Jesus.

And whether Jesus is alive or not, you have to look withinward, you have to seek the source of your own life, and then you will know that Jesus can never be dead. He is eternal life. He may disappear from this body on the cross; he will appear somewhere else. He may not appear anywhere else, but then too he will remain for eternity in the heart of the whole.

When Jesus said, “Friend, there is a shorter road to my heart than that.” he meant “Go withinward. Look into your own nature, and you will find me there. The kingdom of God is within you.” And it is eternal. It is unending life; it is deathless life.

If you look into nirodh, you will look into deathless life, life that has no beginning and no end.

And once you have tasted of that ambrosia, that elixir, then nothing else can become the object of your desire — nothing else. Then that becomes the object of desire. That desire can lead you up to samadhi, and then that desire has also to be left, that desire has also to be dropped. It has done its work. It gave you a momentum, it brought you to your very door of being; now that has to be dropped also.

Once you drop it, you are there no more . . . only God is. This is seedless samadhi.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Science of Living; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.7, Discourse #3 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

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

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

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

The Light of Higher Consciousness – Osho

Dharana, concentration, is confining the mind to the object being mediated upon.

Dhyan, contemplation, is the uninterrupted flow of the mind to the object.

Samadhi is when the mind becomes one with the object.

The three taken together — dharana, dhyan, and samadhi – constitute samyama. By mastering it, the light of higher consciousness.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Once a Master of Zen invited questions from his students. A student asked. “What future rewards can be expected by those who strive diligently with their lessons?”

Answered the Master, “Ask a question close to home.”

A second student wanted to know, “How can I prevent my past follies from rising up to accuse me?”

The Master repeated, “Ask a question close to home.”

A third student raised his hand to state, “Sir, we do not understand what is meant by asking a question close to home.” “To see far, first see near. Be mindful of the present moment, for it contains answers about future and past. What thought just crossed your mind? Are you now sitting before me with a relaxed or with a tense physical body? Do I now have your full or partial attention? Come close to home by asking questions such as these. Close questions lead to distant answers.”

This is the yoga attitude towards life. Yoga is not meta-physical. It does not bother about the distant questions — faraway questions, about past lives, future lives, heaven and hell, God, and things of that sort. Yoga is concerned with questions close at home. The closer the question, the more is the possibility to solve it. If you can ask the question closest to you, there is every possibility that just by asking, it will be solved. And once you solve the closest question, you have taken the first step. Then the pilgrimage begins. Then by and by you start solving those which are distant — but the whole yoga inquiry is to bring you close at home.

So, if you ask Patanjali about God, he won’t answer. In fact, he will think you a little foolish. Yoga thinks all metaphysicians foolish; they are wasting their time about problems which cannot be solved because they are so far away. Better start from the point where you are. You can only start from where you are. Each real journey can begin only from where you are. Don’t ask intellectual, metaphysical questions of the beyond; ask the questions of the within.

This is the first thing to be understood about yoga, it is a science. It is very pragmatic, empirical. It fulfills all the criteria of science. In fact, what you call science is a little far away because science concentrates on objects. And yoga says, unless you understand the subject, which is your nature, closest to you, how can you understand the object? If you don’t know yourself, all else that you know is bound to be erroneous because the base is missing. You are on faulty ground. If you are not enlightened within, then whatsoever light you carry without is not going to help you. And if you carry the light within then there is no fear: let there be darkness outside; your light will be enough for you. It will enlighten your path.

Metaphysics does not help; it confuses. […]

Metaphysics, philosophy, all distant thinking simply confuse you. It leads you nowhere. It muddles your mind. It gives you more and more to think, and it doesn’t help you to become more aware. Thinking is not going to help: only meditation can help. And the difference is: while you think, you are more concerned with thoughts; while you meditate, you are more concerned with the capacity of awareness.

Philosophy is concerned with the mind; yoga is concerned with consciousness. Mind is that of which you can become aware: you can look at your thinking, you can see your thoughts passing, you can see your feelings moving, you can see your dreams floating like clouds. Riverlike, they go on and on; it is a continuum. The one that can see this is consciousness.

The whole effort of yoga is to attain to That which cannot be reduced to an object, which remains irreducible, to be just your subjectivity. You cannot see it because it is the seer. You cannot catch hold of it because all that you can catch hold of is not you. Just because you can catch hold of it, it has become separate from you. This consciousness, which is always elusive and always stands back and whatsoever effort you make all efforts fail . . . to come to this consciousness — how to come to this consciousness — is what yoga is all about.

To be a yogi is to become what you can become. Yoga is the science of stilling what has to be stilled and alerting what can be alerted. Yoga is a science to divide that which is not you and that which is you, to come to a clear-cut division so that you can see yourself in pristine clarity. Once you have a glimpse of your nature, who you are, the whole world changes. Then you can live in the world, and the world will not distract you. Then nothing can distract you; you are centered. Then you can move anywhere you like and you remain unmoving because you have reached and touched the eternal which never moves, which is unchanging.

Today we start the third step of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Vibhuti Pada. It is very significant because the last, the fourth, Kaivalya Pada, will be just attaining to the fruit. This third, Vibhuti Pada, is the ultimate as far as means are concerned, techniques are concerned, methods are concerned. The fourth will be just the outcome of the whole effort. Kaivalya means aloneness, absolute freedom of being alone, no dependence on anybody, on anything — so contented that you are more than enough. This is the goal of yoga. In the fourth part we will be talking only about the fruits, but if you miss the third, you will not be able to understand the fourth. The third is the base.

If the fourth chapter of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is destroyed nothing is destroyed because whosoever will be able to attain to the third will attain to the fourth automatically. The fourth can be dropped. It is in fact, in a way, unnecessary because it talks about the end, the goal. Anyone who follows the path will reach to the goal, there is no need to talk about it. Patanjali talks about it to help you, because your mind would like to know, “Where are you going? What is the goal?” Your mind would like to be convinced, and Patanjali does not believe in trust, in faith, in belief. He is a pure scientist. He simply gives a glimpse of the goal, but the whole basis, the whole fundamental basis is in the third.

Up to now we were getting ready for this Vibhuti Pada, the ultimate in means. Up to now in two chapters we have been discussing means which help, but those means were outer. Patanjali calls them bahirang — on the periphery. Now these three — dharana, dhyan, samadhi — concentration, meditation, samadhi — these three he calls antarang, internal. The first five prepare you, your body, your character — you on the periphery — so that you can move inwards. And Patanjali moves step by step: it is a gradual science. It is not a sudden enlightenment; it is a gradual path. Step by step he leads you.

The first sutra:

Dharana, concentration, is confining the mind to the object being mediated upon.

The object, the subject, and the beyond — these three have to be remembered. You look at me I am the object; the one who is looking at me is the subject. And if you become a little more perceptive, you can see yourself looking at me — that is the beyond. You can see yourself looking at me. Just try. I am the object; you are looking at me. You are the subject who is looking at me. You can stand by the side within yourself. You can see that you are looking at me. That is the beyond.

First, one has to concentrate on the object. Concentration means narrowing of the mind.

Ordinarily, mind is in a constant traffic — a thousand and one thoughts go on moving, like a crowd, a mob. With so many objects, you are confused, split. With so many objects you are moving in all directions simultaneously. With so many objects you are always, almost, in a state of insanity, as if you are being pulled from every direction and everything is incomplete. You go to the left, and something pulls you to the right; you go to the south, and something pulls you to the north. You are never going anywhere, just a muddled energy, a whirlpool, constant turmoil, anxiety.

This is the state of ordinary mind — so many objects that the subjectivity is almost covered by them. You cannot have a feel [of] who you are because you are so much concerned with so many things you don’t have a gap to look into yourself. You don’t have that stillness, that aloneness. You are always in the crowd. You cannot find a space, a corner, where you can slip into yourself. And the objects continuously asking for attention, every thought asking for attention, forcing exactly that the attention should be given to it. This is the ordinary state. This is almost insanity.

In fact, to divide mad people from non-mad people is not good. The distinction is only of degrees. It is not of quality: it is only of quantity. Maybe you are ninety-nine percent mad and he has gone beyond — a hundred and one percent. Just watch yourself. Many times, you also cross the boundary; in anger you become mad — you do things you cannot conceive of yourself doing. You do things for which you repent later on. You do things for which you say later on, “I did it in spite of me.” You say, “. . . as if somebody forced me to do it, as if I was possessed. Some evil spirit, some devil forced me to do it. I never wanted to do it.” Many times, you also cross the boundary, but you come back again and again to your normal state of madness.

Go and watch any madman. People are always afraid of watching a madman because, suddenly, watching a madman you realize your own madness also. Immediately it happens because you can see at the most the difference is of degrees. He has gone a little ahead of you, but you are also following, you are also standing in the same queue. […]

Just watch yourself and go and watch a madman, the madman goes on talking alone. You are also talking. You talk invisibly, not so loud, but if somebody watches you rightly, he can see the movement of your lips. Even if the lips are not moving, you are talking inside. A madman talks a little louder; you talk a little less loudly. The difference is of quantity. Who knows? Any day you can talk loudly. Just stand by the side of the road and watch people coming from the office or going to the office. Many of them, you will feel, are talking inside, making gestures.

Even people who are trying to help you — psychoanalysts, therapists — they are also in the same boat. In fact, more psychoanalysts become mad than do people of any other profession. No other profession can compete with psychoanalysts in going mad. It may be because living in close quarters with mad people, by and by, they also become unafraid of being mad; by and by the gap is bridged. […]

In the East, we never created the profession of psychoanalysts, for a certain reason. We created a totally different type of man, the yogi, not the therapist. The yogi is one who is qualitatively different from you. The psychoanalyst is one who is not qualitatively different from you. He is in the same boat; he is just like you. He is not different in any way. The only difference is that he knows about your madness and his madness more than you know. He is more informed about madness, about insanity, neurosis, psychosis. Intellectually, he knows much more about the normal state of human mind and humankind, but he is not different. And the yogi is totally a different man, qualitatively. He is out of the madness you are in: he has dropped that.

And the way in the West, you are looking for causes, for ways and means how to help humanity, seems to have from the very beginning gone wrong. You are still looking for causes outside — and the causes are within. The causes are not outside, not in relationship, not in the world; they are deep in your unconsciousness. They are not in your thinking: they are not in your dreams. The analysis of dreams and the analysis of thoughts is not going to help much. At the most it can make you normally abnormal, not more than that. The basic cause is that you are not aware of the traffic and the traffic noise of the mind, that you are not separate, distant, aloof — that you cannot stand as a witness, as a watcher on the hill. And once you look for a cause in a wrong direction, you can go on piling up case histories upon case histories, as it is happening in the West.

Psychoanalysis goes on piling up case histories upon case histories . . . and nothing seems to come out of it. You dig up the mountain and not even a mouse is found. You dig up the whole mountain — nothing comes out of it. But you become experts in digging, and your life becomes an investment in it, so you go on finding rationalizations for it. Always remember, once you miss to look in the right direction, you can go on infinitely — you will never come back home. […]

Coincidences are not causes: and the Western psychology is looking into coincidences. Somebody is sad: you start immediately looking into coincidences why he is sad. There must have been something wrong in his childhood. There must have been something wrong in the way he was brought up. There must have been something wrong in the relationship between the child and the mother or the father. There must have been wrongs, something wrong in the environment. You are looking for coincidences.

Causes are within, coincidences without. That is the basic emphasis of yoga, that you are looking wrongly now and you will not ever find real help. You are sad because you are not aware. You are unhappy because you are not aware. You are in misery because you don’t know who you are. All else is just coincidences.

Look deep down. You are in a misery because you have been missing yourself, you have not yet met yourself. And the first thing to be done is dharana. Too many objects are there in the mind; the mind is much too overcrowded. Drop those objects by and by; narrow down your mind; bring it to a point where only one object remains.

Have you ever concentrated on anything? Concentration means your whole mind is focused on one thing, on a rose flower. You have looked at a rose so many times, but you have never concentrated on a rose. If you concentrate on a rose, the rose becomes the whole world. Your mind becomes narrowed down, focused like a torchlight, and the rose becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. The rose was one in a million objects, then it was a very small thing. Now it is the all, the whole.

If you can concentrate on a rose, the rose will reveal qualities that you have never seen before. It will reveal colors that you have been missing always. It will reveal to you fragrances that were always there, but you were not sensitive enough to recognize. If you concentrate totally then your nose is only filled with the fragrance of the rose — all else is excluded, only the rose is included in your consciousness, is allowed in. Everything excluded, the whole world drops out, only the rose becomes your world.

There is a beautiful story in Buddhist literature. Once Buddha said to his disciple, Sariputra, “Concentrate on laughter.” He asked, “For what am I to look into it?” Buddha said, “You are not to look for anything specially. You simply concentrate on laughter, and whatsoever laughter reveals, you report.”

Sariputra reported. Never before and never after has anybody looked so deeply in laughter. Sariputra defined and categorized laughter in six categories “They are arranged in hierarchical fashion from the most sublime to the most sensuous and unrefined.” The laughter revealed its inner being to Sariputra.

First, he called sita: “a faint, almost imperceptible smile manifest in the subtleties of the facial expression and countenance alone.” If you are very, very alert, only then can you see the laughter he called sita. If you watch Buddha’s face you will find it there. It is very subtle, very refined. If you are very, very concentrated, only then will you see it, otherwise you will miss it because it is just in the expression. Not even the lips are moving. In fact, there is no visible thing, it is invisible laughter. That may be the reason Christians think Jesus never laughed: it may have been sita. It is said that Sariputra found sita on Buddha’s face. It was rare. It was very rare because it is one of the most refined things. When your soul reaches to the highest point, only then sita. Then it is not something that you do it is simply there for anybody who is sensitive enough, concentrated enough, to see it.

Second, Sariputra said, hasita: “a smile involving a slight movement of the lips and barely revealing the tips of the teeth.” Third he called vihasita: “a broad smile accompanied by a modicum of laughter.” Fourth he called upahasita: “accentuated laughter, louder in volume, associated with movements of the head, shoulders and arms.” Fifth he called apahasita: “loud laughter that brings tears.” And sixth he called atihasita: “the most boisterous, uproarious laughter, attended by movements of the whole body, doubling over in raucous guffawing, convulsions, hysterics.”

When you concentrate even on a small thing like laughter, it becomes a tremendous, a very big thing — the whole world.

Concentration reveals to you things which are not ordinarily revealed. Ordinarily, you live in a very indifferent mood. You simply go on living as if half asleep — looking, and not looking at all; seeing, and not seeing at all; hearing, and not hearing at all. Concentration brings energy to your eyes. If you look at a thing with a concentrated mind, everything excluded, suddenly that small thing reveals much that was always there waiting.

The whole of science is concentration. Watch a scientist working; he is in concentration.

There is an anecdote about Pasteur. He was working, looking through his microscope, so silent, so unmoving that a visitor had come and waited for a long time, and he was afraid to disturb him. Something sacred surrounded the scientist. When Pasteur came out of his concentration, he asked the visitor. “How long have you been waiting? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

He said, “I was going to tell you many times. In fact, I am in a hurry. I have to reach somewhere, and some message has to be delivered to you, but you were in such deep concentration — almost as if praying — that I could not disturb. It was sacred.”

Pasteur said. “You are right. It is my prayer. Whenever I feel disturbed and whenever I feel too many worries and whenever I feel too many thoughts, I simply take my microscope. I look through it — immediately, the whole world drops, I am concentrated.”

A scientist’s whole work is of concentration, remember this. Science can become the first step towards yoga because concentration is the first inner step of yoga. Each scientist, if he goes on growing and does not get stuck, will become a yogi. He is on the way because he is fulfilling the first condition, concentration.

Dharana, concentration, is confining the mind to the object being meditated upon.

Dhyan, contemplation, is the uninterrupted flow of the mind to the object.

First, concentration dropping the crowd of objects and choosing one object. Once you have chosen one object, and you can retain one object in your consciousness, concentration is achieved. Now the second step, uninterrupted flow of consciousness toward the object, as if light is falling from a torch, uninterrupted. Or, have you seen? You pour water from one pot to another pot, the flow will be interrupted; it will not be uninterrupted. You pour oil from one pot to another pot: the flow will be uninterrupted, continuous; the thread will not be broken.

Dhyan, contemplation, means your consciousness falling on the object in continuity, with no break — because each break means you are distracted, you have gone somewhere else. If you can attain the first, the second is not difficult. If you cannot attain the first, the second is impossible. Once you drop objects, you choose one object, then you drop all loopholes in your consciousness, all distractions in your consciousness, you simply pour yourself on one object.

When you look at one object the object reveals its qualities. A small object can reveal all the qualities of God.

There is a poem of Tennyson. He was going for a morning walk and he came across an old wall, and in the wall, there was grass growing, and a small flower had bloomed. He looked at that flower. The morning, he must have been feeling relaxed, happy, energy must have been flowing, the sun was rising . . . Suddenly the thought occurred to his mind — looking at this small flower he said, “If I can understand you root and all, I will understand the whole universe.” Because each small particle is a miniature universe.

Each small particle carries the whole universe as each drop carries the whole ocean. If you can understand one drop of ocean you have understood all oceans; now there is no need to understand each drop. One drop will do. Concentration reveals the qualities of the drop, and the drop becomes the ocean.

Meditation reveals the qualities of consciousness, and the individual consciousness becomes cosmic consciousness. First reveals the object: second reveals the subject. An uninterrupted flow of consciousness towards any object . . . In that uninterrupted flow, in that unfrozen flow, just in that flow . . . you are simply flowing like a river, with no interruption, with no distraction . . . suddenly you become for the first time aware about the subjectivity that you have been carrying all along — who you are.

In an uninterrupted flow of consciousness ego disappears. You become the self, egoless self, selfless self. You have also become an ocean.

The second, contemplation, is the way of the artist. The first, concentration, is the way of the scientist. The scientist is concerned with the outside world, not with himself. The artist is concerned with himself, not with the outside world. When a scientist brings something, he brings it from the objective world. When an artist brings something, he brings it out of himself. A poem, he digs deep in himself. A painting, he digs deep in himself. Don’t ask the artist about being objective. He is a subjectivist.

Have you seen Van Gogh’s trees? They almost reach to the heavens; they touch the stars. They overreach. Trees like that exist nowhere — except in Van Gogh’s paintings. Stars are small and trees are big. Somebody asked Van Gogh, “From where do you create these trees? We have never seen such trees.” He said, “Out of me. Because, to me, trees always seem desires of the earth to meet the sky.” “Desires of the earth to meet the sky” — then the tree is totally transformed, a metamorphosis has happened. Then the tree is not an object; it has become a subjectivity. As if the artist realizes the tree by becoming a tree himself.

There are many beautiful stories about Zen Masters because Zen Masters were great painters and great artists. That is one of the most beautiful things about Zen. No other religion has been so creative, and unless a religion is creative, it is not a total religion — something is missing.

One Zen Master used to tell his disciples, “If you want to paint a bamboo, become a bamboo.” There is no other way. How can you paint a bamboo if you have not felt it from within? . . . if you have not felt yourself as a bamboo standing against the sky, standing against the wind, standing against the rains, standing high with pride in the sun? If you have not heard the noise of the wind passing through the bamboo as the bamboo hears it, if you have not felt the rain falling on the bamboo as the bamboo feels it, how can you paint a bamboo? If you have not heard the sound of the cuckoo as the bamboo hears it, how can you paint a bamboo? Then you paint a bamboo as a photographer. You may be a camera, but you are not an artist.

The camera belongs to the world of science. The camera is scientific. It simply shows the objectivity of the bamboo. But when a Master looks at the bamboo, he is not looking from the outside. He drops himself by and by. His uninterrupted flow of consciousness falls on the bamboo, there happens a meeting, a marriage, a communion, where it is very difficult to say who is bamboo and who is consciousness — everything meets and merges and boundaries disappear.

The second, dhyan, contemplation, is the way of the artist. That’s why artists sometimes have glimpses as of the mystics. That’s why poetry sometimes says something which prose can never say, and paintings sometimes show something for which there is no other way to show. The artist is reaching even closer to the religious person, to the mystic.

If a poet just remains a poet, he is stuck. He has to flow, he has to move: from concentration to meditation and from meditation to samadhi. One has to go on moving.

Dhyan is uninterrupted flow of the mind to the object. Try it. And it will be good if you choose some object which you love. You can choose your beloved, you can choose your child, you can choose a flower — anything that you love — because in love it becomes easier to fall uninterruptedly on the object of love. Look in the eyes of your beloved. First forget the whole world; let your beloved be the world. Then look into the eyes and become a continuous flow, uninterrupted, falling into her — oil being poured from one pot into another. No distraction. Suddenly, you will be able to see who you are; you will be able to see your subjectivity for the first time.

But remember, this is not the end. Object and subject, both are two parts of one whole. Day and night, both are two parts of one whole. Life and death, both are two parts of one whole existence. Object is out, subject is in — you are neither out nor in. This is very difficult to understand because ordinarily it is said, “Go within.” That is just a temporary phase. One has to go even beyond that. Without and within — both are out. You are that who can go without and who can come within. You are that who can move between these two polarities. You are beyond the polarities. That third state is samadhi.

Samadhi is when the mind becomes one with the object.

When the subject disappears in the object, the object disappears in the subject, when there is nothing to look at and there is no looker-on, when simply the duality is not there, a tremendously potential silence prevails. You cannot say what exists because there is nobody to say. You cannot make any statement about samadhi because all statements will fall short. Because whatsoever you can say either will be scientific or will be poetic. Religion remains inexpressible, elusive.

So, there are two types of religious expression. Patanjali tries the scientific terminology. Because religion in itself has no terminology — the whole cannot be expressed. To express, it has to be divided. To express, either it has to be put as an object or as a subject. It has to be divided — to say anything about it is to divide it. Patanjali chooses the scientific terminology: Buddha also chooses the scientific terminology. Lao Tzu, Jesus, they choose the poetic terminology. But both are terminologies. It depends on the mind. Patanjali is a scientific mind, very rooted in logic, analysis. Jesus is a poetic mind; Lao Tzu is a perfect poet, he chooses the way of poetry. But remember always that both ways fall short. One has to go beyond.

Samadhi is when the mind becomes one with the object.

When the mind becomes one with the object, there is no one who is a knower and there is none who is known.

And unless you come to know this — this knowing which is beyond the known and the knower — you have missed your life. You may have been chasing butterflies, dreams, maybe attaining a little pleasure here and there, but you have missed the ultimate benediction.

A jar of honey having been upset in a housekeeper’s room, a number of flies were attracted by its sweetness. Placing their feet in it they ate greedily. Their feet, however, became so smeared with honey that they could not use their wings nor release themselves and were suffocated. Just as they were expiring, one of them exclaimed, “Ah, foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves.”

Remember, this is the possibility for you also. You may get smeared with the earth so much that you cannot use your wings. You may get loaded with your small pleasures so much that you forget all about the ultimate bliss, which was always yours just for the asking. In collecting pebbles and shells on the seashore, you may miss the utterly blissful treasure of your being. Remember this. This is happening. Only rarely somebody becomes aware enough not to be caught in this ordinary imprisonment of life.

I am not saying don’t enjoy. The sunshine is beautiful and the flowers also and butterflies also, but don’t get lost in them. Enjoy them, nothing is wrong in them, but always remember, the tremendously beautiful is waiting. Relax sometimes in the sunshine, but don’t make it a life-style. Sometimes relax and play with pebbles on the seashore. Nothing is wrong in it. As a holiday, as a picnic, it can be allowed, but don’t make it your very life then you will miss it. And remember, wherever you pay your attention, that becomes your reality of life. If you pay your attention to pebbles, they become diamonds — because wherever is your attention, there is your treasure. […]

Remember, wherever you pay your attention, that becomes your reality. And once it becomes a reality, it becomes powerful to attract you and your attention. Then you pay more attention to it: it becomes even more of a reality and, by and by, the unreal that is created by your mind becomes your only reality, and the real is completely forgotten.

The real has to be sought. And the only way to reach it is, first, drop too many objects, let there be one object: second, drop all distractions. Let your consciousness fall on that object in an uninterrupted flow. And the third happens by itself. If these two conditions are fulfilled, samadhi happens on its own accord. Suddenly one day the subject and object both have disappeared: the guest and the host both have disappeared: silence reigns, stillness reigns. In that stillness, you attain to the goal of life.

Patanjali says:

The three taken together — dharana, dhyan, and samadhi – constitute samyama.

Such a beautiful definition of samyama. Ordinarily, samyama is thought to be a discipline, a controlled state of character. It is not. Samyama is the balance which is attained when subject and object disappear. Samyama is the tranquility when the duality is no more within you and you are not divided and you have become one.

Sometimes it happens naturally also, because if it were not so, Patanjali would not have been able to discover it. Sometimes it happens naturally also — it has happened to you also. You cannot find a man to whom there have not been moments of reality. Accidentally, sometimes you fall in tune, not knowing the mechanism of how it happens, but sometimes you fall in tune, and suddenly it is there.

One man wrote me a letter and he said, “Today I attained five minutes of reality.” I like the expression “five minutes of reality.” “And how did it happen?” I inquired. He said that he had been ill for a few days. And this is unbelievable, but this is true, that to many people, in illness sometimes, the tranquility comes — because in illness your ordinary life is stopped. For a few days he was ill and he was not allowed to move out of the bed, so he was relaxing — nothing to do. Relaxed, after four, five days, suddenly one day it happened. He was just lying down, looking at the ceiling and it happened — those five minutes of reality. Everything stopped. Time stopped; space disappeared. There was nothing to look at, and there was nobody to look. Suddenly there was oneness, as if everything fell in line, became one piece.

To a few people it happens while they are making love. A total orgasm, and after the orgasm everything silences, everything falls into line . . . one relaxes. The frozenness is gone, one is no longer tense, the storm is gone, and the silence that comes after it . . . and suddenly there is reality.

Sometimes walking in the sun against the wind, enjoying. Sometimes swimming in the river, flowing with the river. Sometimes doing nothing, just relaxing on the sand, looking at the stars, it happens.

But those are just accidents. And because they are accidents, and because they don’t fit in your total style of life, you forget them. You don’t pay much attention to them. You just shrug your shoulders, and you forget all about them. Otherwise, in everybody’s life, sometimes, reality penetrates.

Yoga is a systematic way to reach to that which sometimes happens only accidentally. Yoga makes a science out of all those accidents and coincidences.

The three taken together constitute samyama. The three — concentration, meditation, and samadhi — are as if they are the three legs of a three-legged stool, the trinity.

By mastering it, the light of higher consciousness.

Those who attain to this trinity of concentration, meditation and samadhi, to them happens the light of higher consciousness.

“Climb high, climb far, your goal the sky, your aim the star.” But the journey starts where you are. Step by step, climb high, climb far, your goal the sky, your aim the star. Unless you become as vast as the sky, don’t rest; the journey is not yet complete. Unless you reach and become an eternal light, the star, don’t become complacent, don’t feel contented. Let the divine discontent burn like a fire, so that one day, out of all your efforts the star is born and you become an eternal light.

By mastering it, the light of higher consciousness. Once you master these three inner steps, the light becomes available to you. And when the inner light is available, you always live in that light: “At dusk the cock announces dawn. At midnight, the bright sun.” Then even in the midnight there is bright sun available; then even at dusk the cock announces dawn. When you have the inner light there is no darkness. Wherever you go your inner light moves with you — you move in it, you are it.

Remember that your mind always tries to make you satisfied wherever you are; the mind says there is nothing more to life. The mind goes on trying to convince you that you have arrived. The mind does not allow you to become divinely discontent. And it always can find rationalizations. Don’t listen to those rationalizations. They are not real reasons; they are tricks of the mind because the mind does not want to go, to move. Mind is basically lazy. Mind is a sort of entropy: the mind wants to settle, to make your home anywhere but make your home; just settle, don’t be a wanderer.

To be a sannyasin means to become a wanderer in consciousness. To be a sannyasin means to become a vagabond — in consciousness — go on searching and wandering. “Climb high, climb far, your goal the sky, your aim the star.” […]

Unless you become a god! Take rest sometimes by the way, but always remember: it is only a night’s rest; by the morning we go.

There are a few people who are satisfied with their worldly achievements. There are a few more who are not satisfied with their worldly achievements but who are satisfied by the promises of the priests. Those, the second category, you call religious. They are also not religious — because religion is not a promise. It has to be attained. Nobody else can promise you; you have to attain it. All promises are consolations, and all consolations are dangerous because they are like opium. They drug you. […]

Yoga is self-effort. Yoga has no priests. It has only Masters who have attained by their own effort — and in their light you have to learn how to attain yourself. Avoid the promises of the priests. They are the most dangerous people on earth, because they don’t allow you to become really discontent. They go on consoling you; and if you are consoled before you have attained, you are cheated, you are deceived. Yoga believes in effort, in tremendous effort. One has to become worthy. One has to earn God; you have to pay the cost. […]

The yoga is not just an idea, it is a practice, it is abhyas, it is a discipline, it is a science of inner transformation. And remember, nobody can start it for you. You have to start it for yourself. Yoga teaches you to trust yourself; yoga teaches you to become confident of yourself. Yoga teaches you that the journey is alone. A Master can indicate the way, but you have to follow it.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Science of Living; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.7, Discourse #1 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

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

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

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

The Thought of No-Thought – Osho

These samadhis that result from meditation on an object are samadhis with seed, and do not give freedom from the cycle of rebirth.

On attaining the utmost purity of the nirvichara stage of samadhi, there is a dawning of the spiritual light.

In nirvichara samadhi, the consciousness is filled with truth.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Contemplation is not meditation. There is a vast difference, and not only of quantity but of quality. They exist on different planes. Their dimensions are altogether different; not only different, but diametrically opposite.

This is the first thing to be understood. Contemplation is concerned with some object; it is a movement of consciousness towards the other. Contemplation is outgoing attention, moving towards the periphery, going away from the center. Meditation is moving towards the center, away from the periphery, away from the other. Contemplation is arrowed towards the other, meditation towards oneself. In contemplation, duality exists. There are two, the contemplator and the contemplated. In meditation there is only one.

The English word “meditation” is not very good, does not give the real sense of dhyana or samadhi, because in the very word meditation, it appears that you are meditating upon something. So try to understand: contemplation is meditating upon something; meditation is not meditating upon something, just being oneself, no movement away from the center, no movement at all . . . just being yourself so totally that there is not even a flickering; the inner flame remains unmoving. The other has disappeared; only you are. Not a single thought is there. The whole world has disappeared. The mind is no more there; only you are, in your absolute purity. Contemplation is like a mirror mirroring something; meditation is simply mirroring, not mirroring anything – just a pure capacity to mirror but not actually mirroring anything.

With contemplation you can attain up to nirvichara samadhi – samadhi with no thought – but in nirvichara one thought remains, and that is the thought of no-thought. That too is a thought, the last, the very last, but it remains. One is aware that there is no thought, one knows that there is no thought. But what is this knowing of no-thought? Vast change has happened, thoughts have disappeared, but now, no-thought itself has become an object. If you say that “I know emptiness,” then it is not enough emptiness; the thought of emptiness is there. The mind is still functioning, functioning in a very, very passive, negative way – but still functioning. You are aware that there is emptiness. Now what is this emptiness you are aware of? It is very subtle thought, the most subtle, the last beyond which the object completely disappears.

So whenever a disciple comes to a Zen Master very happy with his attainment and says that “I have attained emptiness,” the Master says, “Go and throw this emptiness away. Don’t bring it to me again. If you are really empty, then there is no thought of emptiness also.”

This is what happened in the famous story of Subhuti. He was sitting under a tree with no thought, not even the thought of no-thought. Suddenly, flowers showered. He was amazed – “What is happening?” He looked all around, flowers and flowers from the sky. Seeing that he was amazed, gods told him “Don’t be amazed. We have heard the greatest sermon on emptiness today. You have delivered it. Celebration we are making, and we are throwing these flowers on you as a symbol, appreciating and celebrating your sermon on emptiness.” Subhuti must have shrugged his shoulders and said, “But I have not spoken.” The gods said, “Yes, you have not spoken, neither have we heard – that is the greatest sermon on emptiness.”

If you speak, if you say “I am empty,” you have missed the point. Up to the thought of no-thought it is nirvichara samadhi, with no contemplation. But still the last part . . . the elephant has passed; the tail has remained – the last part – and sometimes the tail proves bigger than the elephant because it is so subtle. To throw away thoughts is easy. How to throw emptiness? – how to throw no-thought? It is very, very subtle; how to grasp it? That’s what happened when the Zen Master said to the disciple, “Go and throw this emptiness!” The disciple said, “But how to throw emptiness?” Then the Master said, “Then carry it away; go throw it, but don’t stand before me with emptiness in your head. Do something!”

It is very subtle. One can cling to it, but then the mind has deceived you at the last point. Ninety-nine point nine you had reached; just the last step, and hundred degrees would have been complete, and you would have evaporated.

Up to this point, Patanjali says it is samadhi without contemplation – nirvichara samadhi. If you attain to this samadhi you will become very, very happy, silent, serene. You will always be collected inside, together. You will have a crystallization; you will not be an ordinary man. You will look almost superhuman, but you will have to come back again and again. You will be born, you will die.

The wheel of reincarnation will not stop because the no-thought is just like a subtle seed; many lives will come out of it. The seed is very subtle, the tree is big, but the whole tree is hidden in the seed. The seed may be a mustard seed, so small, but it carries [the tree] within it. It is loaded, it has a blueprint; it can bring the whole tree again and again and again. And from one seed millions of seeds can come out. One small mustard seed can fill the whole earth with vegetation.

No-thought is the most subtle seed. And if you have it, Patanjali calls this “samadhi with seed,” sabeej samadhi. You will continue coming, the wheel will continue moving – birth and death, birth and death. It will be repeated. Still you have not burned the seed.

If you can burn this thought of no-thought, if you can burn this thought of no-self, if you can burn this thought of no-ego, only then nirbeej samadhi happens, samadhi with no seed. Then there is no birth, no death. You have transcended the whole wheel; you have gone beyond. Now you are pure consciousness. The duality has dropped; you have become one. This oneness, this dropping of duality is the dropping of life, death. The whole wheel suddenly stops – you are out of the nightmare.

Now we will enter into the sutras. They are very, very beautiful. Try to understand them. Deep is their significance. You will have to be very, very aware to understand the subtle nuances.

These samadhis that result from meditation on an object are samadhis with seed, and do not give freedom from the cycle of rebirth.

These samadhis that result from meditation on an object . . . You can meditate on any object, whether material or sacred. The object may be money, or the object may be moksha, the final attainment. The object may be a stone, or the object may be the Kohinoor diamond; it makes no difference. If the object is there, mind is there; with object, mind continues. Mind has a continuity through the object. Through the other, the mind is fed continuously. And when the other is there, you cannot know yourself; the whole mind is focused on the other. The other has to be removed, utterly removed, so there is nothing for you to think, there is nothing for you to give your attention to, there is nowhere you can move.

With the object, Patanjali says, there are many possibilities: you can be in relationship with the object as a reasoning being; you can think about the object logically – then Patanjali gives it the name of savitarka samadhi. It happens many times: when a scientist is observing an object, he becomes completely silent; no thoughts move in the sky, in his being, he is so much absorbed with the object. Or sometimes a child playing with his toy is so absorbed that the mind has completely, almost completely, stopped. A very deep serenity exists. The object takes all your attention; nothing is left behind. No anxiety is possible, no tension is possible, no anguish is possible, because you are totally absorbed in the object, you have moved in the object.

A scientist, a great philosopher . . . It happened to Socrates: he was standing one night; it was a full moon night and he was looking at the moon, and he became so absorbed . . . He must have been in what Patanjali calls savitarka samadhi, because he was one of the most logical men ever born, one of the most rational minds, the very peak of rationality. He was thinking about the moon, about the stars and the night and the sky, and he forgot himself completely. And the snow started falling, and by the morning he was found almost dead, half his body covered with snow, frozen, and still he was looking at the sky. He was alive but frozen. People came to search where he has gone, and then they found him standing; the whole night he was standing under the tree. And when they asked, “Why didn’t you come home back? – and the snow is falling and one can die,” he said, “I completely forgot about it. For me, it has not fallen. For me, time has not passed. I was so much absorbed with the beauty of the night, and the stars and the order of existence and the cosmos.”

Logic always is absorbed with the order, with the harmony that exists in the universe. Logic moves around an object – goes on moving around and around and around – and the whole energy is taken by the object. This is samadhi with reason, savitarka, but the object is there. The scientific, the rational, the philosophical mind attains to it.

Then Patanjali says that there is another samadhi, nirvitarka, the aesthetic mind – the poet, the painter, the musician attains to it. The poet goes directly into the object, not around and around, but still the object is there. He may not be thinking about it, but his attention is focused on it. It may not be the head functioning, it may be the heart, but still the object is there, the other is there. A poet can attain to very deep, blissful states, but the cycle of rebirth will not stop, neither for the scientist nor for the poet.

Then, Patanjali comes to savichara samadhi: logic has been dropped, just pure contemplation – not about it – just looking at it, watching it, witnessing it. Deeper realms open but the object remains there, and you remain obsessed with the object. You are not yet in your own self – the other is there. Then Patanjali comes to nirvichara.

In nirvichara, by and by, the object is made subtle. This is the most important point to be understood: in nirvichara, the object is made more and more subtle. From gross objects you move to subtle objects – from a rock to the flower, from the flower to the fragrance. You move towards subtle. By and by, a moment comes [when] the object becomes so subtle, almost as if it is not.

For example, if you contemplate on emptiness the object is almost not, if you meditate on nothingness. There are Buddhist schools which emphasize only one meditation, and that is on nothingness. One has to think, one has to meditate, one has to imbibe the idea that nothing exists. Continuously meditating on nothingness, a moment comes when the object becomes so subtle that it cannot withhold your attention; it is so subtle that there is nothing to contemplate, and one goes on and on and on. Suddenly, one day the consciousness bounces upon oneself. Not finding any standing ground there in the object, not finding any foothold, not finding anything to cling to, the consciousness bounces upon itself. It returns, comes back to its own center. Then it becomes the highest, the purest, nirvichara.

The highest, nirvichara, is when the consciousness bounces upon oneself. If you start thinking that “I have attained to no-thought, and I have attained to nothingness,” again you have created an object and the consciousness has moved away. This happens many times for a seeker. Not knowing the inner mysteries, many times you bounce upon yourself. Sometimes you touch your center, and again you have gone out. Suddenly, the idea arises, “Yes, I have attained.” Suddenly, you start feeling “Yes, here it is. Satori has happened, samadhi has been attained.” You feel so blissful it is natural for the idea to arise. But if the idea arises, again you have become a victim of something which is objective. Subjectivity is lost again; oneness has become two. Duality again is there.

One has to be aware not to allow the idea of no-thought. Don’t try – whenever something like this happens, remain into it. Don’t try to think about it, don’t make any notion about it; enjoy it. You can dance, there will be no trouble, but don’t allow verbalization, don’t allow language. Dancing won’t disturb because in dancing you remain one.

In Sufi tradition, dance is used to avoid mind. In the last stage, Sufi Masters say that “Whenever you come to a point where object has disappeared, immediately start dancing so that the energy moves into the body and not in the mind. Immediately do something; anything will help.”

Zen Masters when they attain start laughing a real belly laugh, roar-like, a lion’s roar. What are they doing? Energy is there and for the first time energy has become one. If you allow anything else in the mind, immediately the division is again there, and division is your old habit. It will persist for few days. Jump, run, dance, give a good belly laugh, do something so that the energy moves into the body and not into the head. Because energy is there and the old pattern is there, it can move again . . .

Many people come to me, and whenever it happens, the greatest problem arises – the greatest I say, because it is no ordinary problem. The mind immediately grabs hold of it and says, “Yes, you have attained.” The ego has entered, the mind has entered, everything is lost. A single idea and a vast division immediately is there. Dancing is good. You can dance – there will be no trouble about it. You can be ecstatic, you can celebrate. Hence, I emphasize celebration.

After each meditation celebrate, so celebration becomes part of you, and when the final happens, immediately you will be able to celebrate.

These samadhis that result from meditation on an object are samadhis with seed, and do not give freedom from the cycle of rebirth.

The whole problem is how to be freed from the other, the object. The object is the whole world. You will come again and again if the object is there, because with the object exists desire, with the object exists thought, with the object exists ego, with the object you exist. If the object falls, you will suddenly fall, because object and subject can exist together. They are parts of each other; one cannot exist. It is just like a coin: the head and tail exist together. You cannot save one and throw the other. You cannot save the head and throw the tail – they are together. Either you keep them both or you throw them both. If you throw one, the other is thrown. Subject and object are together; they are one, aspects of one thing. Object drops, the whole house of subjectivity immediately collapses; then you are no more the old. Then you are the beyond, and only the beyond is beyond life and death.

You will have to die; you will have to be reborn. While dying, just like a tree, you gather all your desires again in a seed. You don’t go into another birth; the seed flies and goes into another birth. All you have lived, desired – your frustrations, your failures, your successes, your loves, your hates – while you are dying, the whole energy gathers into a seed. That seed is of energy; that seed jumps from you, moves into a womb. Again, that seed recreates you, just like a seed in the tree. When the tree is going to die, it preserves itself into the seed. Through the seeds the tree persists; through the seed you persist. That’s why Patanjali calls it sabeej samadhi. If the object is there, you will have to be born again and again, you will have to pass through the same misery, the same hell that is life, unless you become seedless.

And what is seedlessness? If the object is not there, there is no seed. Then all your past karmas simply disappear, because in fact you have never done anything. Everything has been done by the mind – but you are identified, you think you are the mind. Everything has been done by the body – but you are identified, you think you are the body.

In a seedless samadhi, in nirvichara samadhi, when only consciousness exists in its utter purity, for the first time you understand the whole thing: that you have never been the doer. You have never desired a single thing. There is no need to desire because everything is in you. You are the ultimate. It was foolish on your part to desire, and because you desired you became a beggar.

Ordinarily you think otherwise – you think because you are a beggar, that’s why you desire. But in seedless samadhi dawns this understanding: that it is just the otherwise – because you desire, you are a beggar. You are completely upside down. If desire disappears, you simply, suddenly become the emperor. The beggar has never been there. It was because you were desiring, it was because you were thinking too much of the object, and you were so much obsessed with the object and the objects, that you had no time and no opportunity and no space to look within. You had completely forgotten who is within. Within is the divine, within is God himself.

That’s why Hindus go on saying, “Aham brahmasmi.” They say, “I am the ultimate.” But just by saying, it cannot be attained . . . One has to reach to the nirvichara samadhi. Only then Upanishads become true, only then Buddhas become true. You become a witness. You say, “Yes, they are right,” because now it has become your own experience.

On attaining the utmost purity of the nirvichara stage of samadhi, there is a dawning of the spiritual light.

Nirvichara vaisharadye adhyatma prasadh. This word prasad is very, very beautiful. It means grace. When one is in his own being settled, come home, suddenly a benediction . . . all that he always desired is suddenly fulfilled. All that you wanted to be, suddenly you are, and you have not done anything for it, you have not made any effort for it. In nirvichara samadhi, one comes to know that in one’s very nature, deepest nature, one is always fulfilled – a fulfillment dance!

On attaining the utmost purity . . .

And what is the utmost purity? – where not even the thought of no-thought exists. That is the utmost purity: where the mirror is simply the mirror, nothing is reflected in it – because even a reflection is an impurity. It does not do to the mirror anything in fact, but still the mirror is not pure. The reflection cannot do anything to the mirror. It will not leave any footprints, it will not leave any traces on the mirror, but while it is there the mirror is filled with something else. Something foreign is there: the mirror is not in its uttermost purity, in its uttermost loneliness; the mirror is not innocent – something is there.

When the mind has completely gone and even there is [no] no-mind, there is not a single thought of anything whatsoever, not even about your state of being in such a blissful moment – you are simply this utmost purity of nirvichara stage of samadhi – there is a dawning of the spiritual light: many things happen.

That is what happened to Subhuti: suddenly flowers showered for no known reason at all, and he has not done anything. He was not even aware of his emptiness. If he was, then flowers were not going to shower. He was simply oblivious of anything, he was so in himself – not even a ripple on the surface of the consciousness, not even a reflection in the mirror, not even a white cloud in the sky – nothing.

Flowers showered . . . that is what Patanjali says: Nirvichara vaisharadye adhyatma prasadh – suddenly grace descends. In fact, it has been always descending.

You are not aware: right now flowers are showering on you, but you are not empty so you cannot see them. Only through the eyes of emptiness they can be seen, because they are not flowers of this world, they are flowers from the other world.

All those who have attained, they agree on one point: that in that final attainment one feels that for no reason at all, everything is fulfilled. One feels so blessed, and one has not done anything for it. You have done something about meditation, you have done something about contemplation, you have done something about how not to cling with the object, you have done something on these lines, but you have not done anything for sudden blessings to shower on you. You have not done anything to fulfill your desires.

With the object, misery exists; with the desire, the miserable mind; with the demand, with the complaining mind, the hell. Suddenly when the object has gone, the hell has also disappeared and heaven is showering on you. It is a moment of grace. You cannot say that you have attained it.

You can simply say you have not done anything. That is the meaning of grace, prasadah: without doing anything on your part it is happening. In fact it has always been happening, but you are missing somehow. You are so much engrossed with the object, that’s why you cannot look within, what is happening there. Your eyes are not withinwards, your eyes are moving outwards. You are born already fulfilled. You need not do anything, you need not move a single step. This is the meaning of prasad.

There is a dawning of the spiritual light.

Always, you have been surrounded with darkness. With the awareness moving inwards, there is light, and in that light you come to know there has been no darkness. Just you were not in tune with yourself; that was the only darkness.

If you understand this, just sitting silently everything is possible. You don’t make a journey and you reach the goal. You don’t do anything and everything happens. Difficult to understand it, because the mind says, “How is it possible? And I have been doing so much. Even then bliss has not happened, so how it can happen without doing anything?” Everybody is seeking happiness and everybody is missing it, and the mind says, and of course logically, that if with so much seeking it doesn’t happen, how it can happen without seeking? And people who are talking about these things must have gone mad: “One has to seek hard, then only is it possible.” And the mind goes on saying, “Seek hard, make more effort, run fast, gain speed, because the goal is so far away.”

The goal is within you. There is no need for any speed and there is no need to go anywhere. There is no need to do anything whatsoever. The only thing needed is to sit silently in a non-doing state, without any object, just being yourself so completely, so utterly centered, that not even a ripple arises on the surface. And then there is prasad; then grace descends on you, blessings shower, your whole being is filled with an unknown benediction. Then this very world becomes a heaven. Then this very life becomes divine. Then there is nothing wrong. Then everything is as it should be. With your inner bliss you feel the bliss everywhere. With a new perception, a new clarity, there is no other world, there is no other life, there is no other time. This moment, this very existence is the only case.

But unless you feel yourself, you will go on missing all the blessings that existence gives just as gifts.

Prasad means it is a gift from the existence. You have not earned it, you cannot claim it. In fact, when the claimer goes, suddenly it is there.

On attaining the utmost purity of the nirvichara stage of samadhi, there is a dawning of the spiritual light.

. . . and your innermost being is of the nature of light. Consciousness is light, consciousness is the only light. You are existing very unconsciously: doing things, not knowing why; desiring things, not knowing why; asking things, not knowing why; drifting in an unconscious sleep. You are all sleepwalkers. Somnambulism is the only spiritual disease – walking and living in sleep.

Become more conscious. Start being conscious with objects. Look at things with more alertness. You pass by a tree; look at the tree with more alertness. Stop for a while, look at the tree; rub your eyes, look at the tree with more alertness. Collect your awareness, look at the tree, and watch the difference. Suddenly when you are alert, the tree is different: it is more green, it is more alive, it is more beautiful. The tree is the same, only you have changed. Look at a flower as if your whole existence depends on this look. Bring all your awareness to the flower and suddenly the flower is transfigured – it is more radiant; it is more luminous. It has something of the glory of the eternal, as if the eternal has come into the temporal in the shape of a flower.

Look at the face of your husband, your wife, your friend, your beloved, with alertness; meditate on it, and suddenly you see not only the body, but that which is beyond the body, which is coming out of the body. There is an aura around the body, of the spiritual. The face of the beloved is no more the face of your beloved; the face of the beloved has become the face of the divine. Look at your child. Watch him playing with full alertness, awareness, and suddenly the object is transfigured.

First start working with objects. That’s why Patanjali talks about other samadhis before he talks about nirvichara samadhi, the samadhi without seed. Start with objects and move towards more subtle objects.

For example, a bird sings in the tree: be alert, as if in that moment you exist and the song of the bird-the whole doesn’t exist, doesn’t matter. Focus your being towards the song of the bird and you will see the difference. The traffic noise no more exists, or exists at the very periphery of existence, far away, distant, and the small bird and its song fills your being completely – only you and the bird exist. And then when the song has stopped, listen to the absence of the song. Then the object becomes subtle, because . . .

Remember always: when a song stops it leaves a certain quality to the atmosphere – of the absence. It is no more the same. The atmosphere has changed completely because the song existed and then the song disappears . . . now the absence of the song. Watch it – the whole existence is filled by the absence of the song. And it is more beautiful than any song because it is the song of the silence. A song uses sound, and when the sound disappears the absence uses the silence. And after a bird has sung, the silence is deeper. If you can watch it, if you can be alert, you are now meditating on a very subtle object, a very subtle object. A person moves, a beautiful person moves – watch the person. And when he has left, now watch the absence; he has left something. His energy has changed the room; it is no more the same room.

When Buddha was dying, Ananda asked him . . . he was crying and weeping, and he said, “What will happen to us now? You were here and we couldn’t attain. Now you will be no more here; what we will do?” Buddha is reported to have said, “Now love my absence, be attentive to my absence.” For five hundred years no statues were made so that the absence can be felt. And instead of statues only the bodhi tree was depicted. Temples existed, but not with a Buddha statue; just a bodhi tree, a stone bodhi tree, an absent Buddha underneath, and people will go and sit and watch the tree, and try to watch the absence of the Buddha under the tree. And many attained to very deep silence and meditation. Then, by and by, the subtle object was lost and people started talking: “What is there to meditate? Only a tree is there, but where is Buddha?” Because to feel a Buddha in his absence needs very, very deep clarity and attentiveness. Then, feeling that now people cannot meditate on the subtle absence, statues were created.

This you can do with any of your senses because people have different capacities and sensibilities. For example, if you have a musical ear, then it is good to watch and to be attentive to a song of a bird. For few seconds it is there, and then it is gone. Then watch the absence. And you will be thrilled if you can watch the absence. Suddenly the object has become very subtle. It will require more attention and more awareness than the actual song of the bird.

If you have a good nose . . . very few people have it; almost [all] humanity has lost the nose completely. Animals are better; their smell is far [more] sensitive, capable, than man. Something has happened to man’s nose, something has gone wrong; very few people have a capable nose, but if you have – then be near a flower, let the smell fill you. Then, by and by, you move away from the flower, very slowly, but continue being attentive to the smell, the fragrance. As you move away, the fragrance will become more and more subtle, and you will need more awareness to feel it. Become the nose. Forget about the whole body; bring all your energy to the nose, as if only the nose exists. And by and by, if you lose track of the smell, go few steps further ahead; again catch hold of the smell, then back, move backwards. By and by, you will be able to smell a flower from a very, very great distance – nobody will be able to smell that flower from there. And then you go on moving. In a very simple way, you are making the object subtle. And then a moment will come when you will not be able to smell the smell: now smell the absence. Now smell the absence where the fragrance was just a moment before, and it is no more there. That is the other part of its being, the absent part, the dark part. If you can smell the absence of the smell, if you can feel it, that it makes a difference, it makes a difference; then the object has become very subtle. Now it is reaching nearly the nirvichara state, the no-thought state of samadhi. […]

You can do it with incense. Burn incense, meditate on it, feel it, smell it, be filled with it, and then move backwards, away from it. And go on, go on meditating on it; let it become more and more subtle. A moment comes when you can feel the absence of a certain thing. Then you have come to a very deep awareness.

On attaining the utmost purity of the nirvichara stage of samadhi, there is a dawning of the spiritual light.

But when the object completely disappears, the presence of the object disappears and the absence of the object disappears, thought disappears and no-thought disappears, mind disappears and the idea of no-mind disappears, only then you have attained to the utmost. Now this is the moment when suddenly grace descends on you. This is the moment when flowers shower. This is the moment when you are connected with the source of life and being. This is the moment when you are no more a beggar; you have become the emperor. This is the moment when you are crowned. Before it you were on a cross; this is the moment the cross disappears and you are crowned.

In nirvichara samadhi, the consciousness is filled with truth.

So truth is not a conclusion to be reached; truth is an experience to be attained. Truth is not something that you can think about; it is something that you can be. Truth is the experience of oneself being totally alone, without any object. Truth is you in your uttermost purity. Truth is not a philosophical conclusion. No syllogism can give you truth. No theory, no hypothesis can give you truth. Truth comes to you when mind disappears. Truth is already there hidden in the mind, and the mind won’t allow you to look at it because mind is outgoing and helps you to look at objects.

In nirvichara samadhi, the consciousness is filled with truth.

Ritambhara is a very beautiful word; it is just like Tao. The word truth cannot explain it completely. In the Vedas it is called rit. Rit means the very foundation of the cosmos. Rit means the very law of existence. Rit is not just truth; truth is too dry a word and carries much of the logical quality in it. We say, “This is true and that is untrue,” and we decide which theory is true and which theory is untrue. Truth carries much of the logic in it. It is a logical word. Rit means the law of the cosmic harmony, the law which moves the stars, the law through which seasons come and go, the sun rises and sets, and night follows day, and death follows birth. And mind creates the world and no-mind allows you to know that which is. Rit means the cosmic law, the very innermost core of existence.

Rather than calling it truth, it will be better to call it the very ground of being. Truth seems to be a distant thing, something that exists separate from you. Rit is your innermost being, and not only your innermost being, the innermost being of all, ritambhara. In nirvichara samadhi the consciousness is filled with ritambhara, the cosmic harmony. There is no discord, no conflict; everything has fallen in line. Even the wrong is absorbed, it is not discarded; even the bad is absorbed, it is not discarded; even the poison is absorbed, it is not discarded; nothing is discarded.

In truth, the untruth is discarded. In ritambhara, the whole is accepted, and the whole is such a harmonious phenomenon that even the poison plays its own part. Not only life but death also – everything is seen in a new light. Even the misery, the dukkha, takes a new quality to it. Even the ugly becomes beautiful because in the moment of the dawning of ritambhara, you understand for the first time why the opposites exist. And opposites are no more opposites; they have all become complementaries, they help each other.

Now you don’t have any complaint, no complaint against existence. Now you understand why things are as they are, why death exists. Now you know life cannot exist without death. And what life will be without death? – life will be simply unbearable without death; and life would be simply ugly without death . . . […].

Love will be unbearable if there is no opposite to it. If you cannot separate from your beloved, it will be unbearable; the whole thing will become so monotonous, it will create boredom. Life exists with the opposites – that’s why it is so interesting. Coming together and getting away, again coming together and getting away; rising and falling. Just think of a wave in the ocean which has risen and cannot fall, just think of a sun who has risen and cannot set. Movement from one polarity to another is the secret that life continues to be interesting. When one comes to know the ritambhara, the basic law of all, the very foundation of all, everything falls in line, and one understands. Then one has no complaint. One accepts: whatsoever is, is beautiful.

That’s why all those who have known they say life is perfect; you cannot improve upon it.

In nirvichara samadhi, the consciousness is filled with truth.

Call it Tao . . . Tao gives the meaning of ritambhara more correctly; but still if you can remain with the word ritambhara, it will be more beautiful. Let it remain there. Even the sound of it – ritambhara has some quality of harmony. Truth is too much dry, a logical concept. If you can make something out of truth plus love, it will be nearer to ritambhara. It is the hidden harmony of Heraclitus, but this happens only when the object has completely disappeared. You are alone with your consciousness and there is nobody else. The mirror without reflection . . .

-Osho

From The Mystery Beyond Mind, Discourse #7; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.3, (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

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

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

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

Mediation, Satori and Samadhi – Osho

Question 1: What is the difference in experience between satori – in Zen, a glimpse of enlightenment – and samadhi, cosmic consciousness?

Samadhi begins as a gap, but it never ends. A gap always begins and ends – it has boundaries: a beginning and an end – but samadhi begins as a gap and then is everlasting. There is no end to it. So if the happening comes as a gap and there is no end, it is samadhi, but if it is a complete gap – with a beginning and an end – then it is satori, and that is different. If it is just a glimpse, just a gap, and the gap is again lost, if something is bracketed and the bracket is complete – you peep into it and come back, you jump into it and come back – if something happens and it is again lost, it is satori. It is a glimpse, a glimpse of samadhi, but not samadhi.

Samadhi means the beginning of knowing, without any end.

In India we have no word that corresponds to satori, so sometimes, when the gap is great, one can misunderstand satori as samadhi. But it never is; it is just a glimpse. You have come to the cosmic and looked into it, and then everything is gone again. Of course, you will not be the same; now you will never be the same again. Something has penetrated into you; something has been added to you, you can never be the same again. But still, that which has changed you is not with you. It is just a remembrance, a memory. It is only a glimpse.

If you can remember it – if you can say, “I have known the moment” – it is only a glimpse, because the moment samadhi has happened, you will not be there to remember it. Then you can never say, “I have known it,” because with the knowing the knower is lost. Only with the glimpse the knower remains.

So the knower can keep this glimpse as a memory – he can cherish it, long for it, desire it, again endeavor to experience it – but he is still there. The one who has had a glimpse, the one who has looked is there. It has become a memory; and now this memory will haunt you, will follow you, and will demand the phenomenon again and again.

The moment samadhi has happened, you are not there to remember it. Samadhi never becomes a part of memory because the one who was is no more. As they say in Zen, “The old man is no more and the new one has come…” and these two have never met, so there is no possibility of there being any memory. The old has gone and the new has come, and there has been no meeting between the two, because the new can come only when the old has gone. Then it is not a memory; there is no haunting and no hankering after it, there is no longing for it. Then, as you are, you are at ease and there is nothing to desire.

It is not that you have killed the desire – no! It is desirelessness in the sense that the one who could desire is no more. It is not a state of no desire; it is desirelessness, because the one who could desire is no more. Then there is no longing, there is no future, because the future is created through our longings; it is a projection of our desires.

If there is no desire, there is no future. And if there is no future, there is no need of the past, because the past is always a background against which, or through which, the future is longed for.

If there is no future, if you know that this very moment you are going to die, there is no need to remember the past. Then there is no need to even remember your name, because the name has a meaning only if there is a future. It may be needed; but if there is no future, you just burn all your bridges of the past. There is no need of them; the past has become absolutely meaningless. It is only against the future or for the future that the past is meaningful.

The moment samadhi has happened, the future becomes non-existential. It is not; only the present moment is. It is the only time, there is not even any past. The past has dropped and the future also, and a single, momentary existence becomes the total existence. You are in it, but not as an entity that is different from it. You cannot be different because you only become different from the total existence due to your past or your future. The past and future crystallized around you is the only barrier between you and the present moment that is happening. So when samadhi happens there is no past and no future. Then it is not that you are in the present, but you are the present, you become the present.

Samadhi is not a glimpse, samadhi is a death. But satori is a glimpse, not a death. And satori is possible through so many ways. An aesthetic experience can be a possible source for satori; music can be a possible source for satori; love can be a possible source for satori. In any intense moment in which the past becomes meaningless, in any intense moment when you are existing in the present – a moment of either love or music or poetic feeling, or of any aesthetic phenomenon in which the past doesn’t interfere, in which there is no desire for the future – satori becomes possible. But this is just a glimpse. This glimpse is meaningful, because through satori you can feel for the first time what samadhi can mean. The first taste, or the first distinct perfume of samadhi, comes through satori.

So satori is helpful; but anything that is helpful can be a hindrance if you cling to it and you feel that it is everything. Satori has a bliss that can fool you; it has a bliss of its own. Because you have not known samadhi, this is the ultimate that comes to you, and you cling to it. But if you cling to it, you can change that which was helpful, that which was friendly, into something that becomes a barrier and an enemy. So one must be aware of the possible danger of satori. If you are aware of this, then the experience of satori will be helpful.

A single, momentary glimpse is something that can never be known by any other means. No one can explain it; no words, no communication, can even be a hint to it. Satori is meaningful, but just as a glimpse, as a breakthrough, as a single, momentary breakthrough into the existence, into the abyss. You have not even known the moment; you have not even become aware of it before it becomes closed to you. Just a click of the camera – a click, and everything is lost. Then a hankering will be created; you will risk everything for that moment. But do not long for it, do not desire it; let it sleep in the memory. Do not make a problem out of it; just forget it. If you can forget it and do not cling to it, these moments will come to you more and more, the glimpses will be coming to you more and more.

A demanding mind becomes closed, and the glimpse is shut off. It always comes when you are not aware of it, when you are not looking for it – when you are relaxed, when you are not even thinking about it, when you are not even meditating. Even when you are meditating the glimpse becomes impossible, but when you are not meditating, when you are just in a moment of let-go – not even doing anything, not even waiting for anything – in that relaxed moment, satori happens.

It will begin to happen more and more, but do not think about it; do not long for it. And never mistake it for samadhi.

Q. 2: What kind of preparations are necessary to experience satori?

Satori becomes possible for a great number of people, because sometimes it needs no preparations; sometimes it happens by chance. The situation is created, but unknowingly. There are so many people who have known it. They may not know it as satori, may not have interpreted it as satori, but they have known it. A great surging love can create it.

Even through chemical drugs, satori is possible. It is possible through mescaline, LSD, marijuana, because through a chemical change the mind can expand enough so that there is a glimpse. After all, all of us have chemical bodies – the mind and the body are chemical units – so through chemistry, too, the glimpse can be possible.

Sometimes a sudden danger can penetrate you so much that the glimpse becomes possible; sometimes a great shock can bring you so much into the moment that the glimpse becomes possible. And for those who have some aesthetic sensibility, who have a poetic heart, who have a feeling attitude toward reality, not an intellectual attitude, the glimpse can be possible.

For a rational, logical, intellectual personality, the glimpse is impossible. Sometimes it can happen to an intellectual person, but only through some intense, intellectual tension – when suddenly the tension is relaxed. It happened for Archimedes. He was in satori when he came out into the street naked from his bathtub, and began to cry, “Eureka, I’ve found it!” It was a sudden release of the constant tension he had concerning a problem. The problem was solved, so the tension that existed because of the problem was suddenly completely released. He ran out naked into the streets and cried, “Eureka, I’ve found it!”

For an intellectual person, if a great problem that has demanded his total mind and brought him to the peak of intellectual tension is suddenly solved, it can bring him to a moment of satori. But for aesthetic minds it is easier.

Q. 3: You mean even intellectual tension can be a way to achieve satori?

It may be, it may not be. If you become intellectually tense during this discussion and the tension is not brought to the extreme, it will be a hindrance. But if you become totally tense and then suddenly something is understood, that understanding will be a release and satori can happen.

Or, if this discussion is not at all tense, if we are just chitchatting – totally relaxed, totally nonserious – even this discussion can be an aesthetic experience. It is not only that flowers are aesthetic; even words can be. It is not only that trees are aesthetic; human beings can also be. It is not only when you are watching clouds floating by that satori becomes possible; even if you participate in a dialogue, it becomes possible. But either a relaxed participation is needed or a very tense participation. You can either be relaxed to begin with or relaxation can come to you because your tension has been brought to a peak and then released. When either happens, even a dialogue, a discussion, can become a source of satori. Anything can become a source of satori; it depends on you. It never depends on anything else. You are just passing through a street: a child is laughing, and satori can happen.

There is a haiku that tells a story something like this: a monk is crossing a street and a very ordinary flower is peeking out from a wall – a very ordinary flower, a day-to-day flower, which is everywhere. He looks at it. It is the first time he has ever really looked at it, because it is so ordinary, so obvious. It is always to be found somewhere, so he never bothered to really look at it before. He looks into it – and satori happens.

An ordinary flower is never looked at. It is so common that you forget it. So the monk has never really seen this flower before. For the first time in his life he has seen it, and the event became phenomenal. This first meeting with the flower, with this very ordinary flower, becomes unique. Now he feels sorry for it. It has always been there waiting for him, but he has never looked at it. He feels sorry for it, asks its pardon . . . and the thing happens.

The flower is there, and the monk is standing there dancing. Someone asks, “What are you doing?”

He says, “I have seen something uncommon in a very common flower. The flower was always waiting; I never looked at it before – but today a meeting has happened.” The flower is not common now. The monk has penetrated into it, and the flower has penetrated into the monk.

An ordinary thing, even a pebble, can be a source. For a child a pebble is a source, but for us it is not a source because it has become so familiar. Anything uncommon, anything rare, anything that has come into your sight for the first time, can be a source for satori, and if you are available – if you are there, if your presence is there – the phenomenon can happen.

Satori happens to almost everyone. It may not be interpreted as such; you may not have known it to be satori, but it happens. And this happening is the cause of all spiritual seeking; otherwise spiritual seeking would not be possible. How can you be in search of something of which you have not even had a glimpse? First something must have come to you, some ray must have come to you – a touch, a breeze – something must have come to you that has become the quest.

A spiritual quest is only possible if something has happened to you without your knowing. It may be in love, it may be in music, it may be in nature, it may be in friendship – it may be in any communion. Something has happened to you that has been a source of bliss and it is now just a remembering, a memory. It may not even be a conscious memory; it may be unconscious. It may be waiting like a seed somewhere deep within you. This seed will become the source of a quest, and you will go on searching for something that you do not know. What are you searching for? You do not know. But still, somewhere, even unknown to you, some experience, some blissful moment, has become part and parcel of your mind. It has become a seed, and now that seed is working its way through and you are in quest of something which you cannot name, which you cannot explain.

What are you seeking? If a spiritual person is sincere and honest he cannot say, “I am seeking God,” because he does not know whether God is or not. And the word god is absolutely meaningless unless you have known. So you cannot seek God or moksha, liberation – you cannot. A sincere seeker will have to fall back upon himself. The seeking is not for something outward, it is for something inward. Somewhere something is known which has been glimpsed at, which has become the seed, and which is compelling you, pushing you, toward something unknown.

Spiritual seeking is not a pulling from without; it is a push from within. It is always a push. And if it is a pull, the seeking is insincere, unauthentic; then it is nothing but a search for a new sort of gratification, a new turn to your desires. Spiritual seeking is always a push toward something deep inside you of which you have had a glimpse. You have not interpreted it; you have not known it consciously. It may be a childhood memory of satori that is deep down in the unconscious. It may be a blissful moment of satori in your mother’s womb, a blissful existence with no worry, with no tension, with a completely relaxed state of mind. It may be a deep, unconscious feeling, a feeling that you have not known consciously, that is pushing you.

Psychologists agree that the whole concept of spiritual seeking comes from the blissful experience in the mother’s womb. It is so blissful, so dark; there is not even a single ray of tension. With the first glimpse of light, tension begins to be felt, but the darkness is absolute relaxation. There is no worry, nothing to do. You do not even have to breathe; your mother breathes for you. You exist exactly as it is interpreted that one exists when moksha is achieved. Everything just is, and to be is blissful. Nothing has to be done to achieve this state; it just is.

So it may be that there is a deep, unconscious seed inside you that has experienced total relaxation. It may be some childhood experience of aesthetic blissfulness, a childhood satori. Every childhood is satori-full, but we have lost it. Paradise is lost, and Adam is thrown out of paradise. But the remembrance is there, the unknown remembrance that pushes you on.

Samadhi is different from this. You have not known samadhi, but through satori there is the promise that something greater is possible. Satori becomes a promise that leads you toward samadhi.

Q. 4: What should we do to achieve it?

You should not do anything. Only one thing: you must be aware; you must not resist; there must not be any resistance to it. But there is resistance; that is why there is suffering. There is an unconscious resistance. If something begins to happen to the brahma randhra, it just begins to make ego death come nearer. It seems so painful that there is inner resistance. This resistance can take two forms: either you will stop doing meditation or you will ask what can be done to transcend it, to go beyond it.

Nothing should be done. This asking, too, is a sort of resistance. Let it do what it is doing. Just be aware and accept it totally. Be with it; let it do whatever it is doing and be cooperative with it.

Q. 5: Should I just be a witness to it?

Don’t be just a witness, because to be just a witness to this process will create barriers. Do not be a witness. Be cooperative with it; be one with it. Just cooperate with it, totally surrender to it – surrender yourself to it – and say to it, “Do anything, do whatsoever is needed,” and you just be cooperative.

Do not resist it and do not be attentive to it, because even your attention will be a resistance. Just be with it and let it do whatever is needed. You cannot know what is needed and you cannot plan what is to be done. You can only surrender to it and let it do whatever is necessary. The brahma randhra has its own wisdom, every center has its own wisdom, and if we become attentive to it a disturbance will be created.

The moment you become aware of any of the inner workings of your body you create a disturbance because you create tension. The whole working of the body, the inner working, is unconscious. For example, once you have taken your food you must not be attentive to it; you must let your body do whatever it likes. If you become attentive to your stomach, then you will disturb it; the whole working will become disturbed and the whole stomach will be diseased.

Likewise, when the brahma randhra is working, do not be attentive to it, because your attention will work against it, you will work against it. You will be face to face with it, and this facing, this encountering, will be a disturbance; then the process will be unnecessarily prolonged. So starting from tomorrow, just be with it, move with it, suffer with it, and let it do whatever it wants to do. You must be totally surrendered, wholly given to it. This surrender is akarma, nonactivity. It is more akarma than being attentive, because your attention is karma, action; it is an activity.

So just be with whatever is happening. It is not that by being with it you will not be aware, but only that you will not be attentive. You will be aware and that is different. While being with it there will be awareness, a diffused awareness. You will be knowing all the time that something is happening, but now you will be with it, and there will be no contradiction between your awareness and the happening.

Q. 6: Will meditation lead to samadhi?

In the beginning effort will be needed. Unless you are beyond the mind, effort will be needed. Once you are beyond the mind there is no need of effort, and if it is still needed that means you are not beyond the mind. A bliss that needs effort is of the mind. A bliss that does not need any effort has become natural; it is of the being; then it is just like breathing. No effort is needed – not only no effort, but no alertness is needed. It continues. Now it is not something added to you; it is you. Then it becomes samadhi.

Dhyan, meditation is effort; samadhi is effortlessness. Meditation is effort; ecstasy is effortlessness. Then you do not need to do anything about it. That is why I say that unless you come to a point where meditation becomes useless, you have not achieved the goal. The path must become useless. If you have achieved the goal, if you have come to the goal, the path is useless.

-Osho

From Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Chapter 16, Q1-6

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.

Sowing Seed – Osho

Maneesha, a great master on his own authority, Nangaku, is working on a greater master, Ma Tzu, who is just a seed right now, but contains a great buddha.

You are also seeds. It is up to you if you remain closed. Then you will never know your ultimate nature as a buddha. A little courage, a little opening, a little dying of the cover of the seed and the buddha starts sprouting in you.

You cannot blame the climate. The rains are there. The clouds have even entered into the auditorium, they are just passing before my eyes. So close are the clouds . . . but the strange thing is that the closer the clouds are, the more the seed becomes afraid. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of . . . one never knows what is going to be outside. Hidden inside a cover, the seed feels safer, more secure.

On the path of Zen, you have to learn these important words: openness, joy in insecurity – a challenge from the unknown has always to be welcomed. That is the way of growing up. Most of the people in the world, who Wilhelm Reich has called “little men,” die as little men, although their destiny is not to be little men. Wilhelm Reich was perfectly right in respect of the masses, the crowd, to call his book Listen, Little Man. But he was absolutely wrong because he could not see that hidden in the little man is the greatest buddha.

He simply condemned the little man because all the little men were condemning him. He was a genius; not a buddha but an intellectual giant, and he has been condemned by the crowds. Finally he was forced within the walls of a madhouse. And he was saying immensely sensible things. He was bringing a new territory to be explored.

But all those fearful people, afraid of the unknown, afraid of losing the security and the safety of the bank balance, forced him into a madhouse. And he was not mad. In his madhouse days he wrote his best books. They are evidence that he was not mad. But the politicians and the crowd and the government all conspired to force him to live in a madhouse. They all laughed at his immensely valuable discoveries about human energy. Naturally he was angry.

So when he wrote the book Listen, Little Man, it was not out of compassion, it was out of reaction. They had done harm to him, and he at least was able to condemn them. His book is beautiful in describing the little man. But the essential part of the little man is the seed, his potentiality, which Reich completely forgets in his anger.

Otherwise, he was very close to becoming enlightened. But in his anger, his reaction, he was incapable of seeing the point that the people were bound to condemn him – his being a genius was enough reason for their condemnation. They were bound to crucify him and it had to be understood as the natural course of things. But he could not take it as the natural course of things. He could not understand that it is something that has to happen to every genius who opens the doors of insecurity.

And because of this great cloud of anger, he was completely blind, unable to see that the little man is a buddha, hidden deep down as a seed.

Nangaku is instructing Ma Tzu.

After his first instructions from his master, Nangaku, on the meaning of the dharma, Ma Tzu felt as if he were drinking the most exquisite nectar.

After bowing to the master, Ma Tzu asked him, “How must one be attuned to the formless samadhi?”

The first thing to understand is the meaning of dharma. Unfortunately, the Sanskrit word ‘dharma’ – or the Pali word which Buddha used, ‘dhamma’ – has been wrongly translated as ‘religion’ by the theologians, and by scholars it has been translated as ‘law’, the ultimate law. Both have missed the point.

Dharma is not religion. In fact if you go to the roots of the words, religion means that which binds you, and dharma means that which frees you. They are absolutely contrary to each other. Dharma simply means your intrinsic nature. It is not written in scriptures and nobody can tell you what your dharma is. You have to find it yourself. This is a great dignity, conferred on the individual by existence, that you don’t have to live on borrowed knowledge. The living source of life is just flowing close by. Why not drink it and be quenched?

Ma Tzu says, after understanding the meaning of the dharma, that He felt as if he were drinking the most exquisite nectar. The deeper you go in your meditations, the closer you will come to the eternal stream of your life sources. It is pure nectar, because it declares your immortality, it declares your eternity. It declares that death is a fiction; it has never happened and will never happen to anyone. One only changes the house; one gets into another form or maybe into the formless existence.

Ma Tzu’s statement that He felt as if he were drinking the most exquisite nectar shows his tremendous understanding. He is very new in meditation; he is so young. But age has nothing to do with your realization. It is not that when you get old, you will be able to become a buddha easily. On the contrary, the older you become the more difficult it becomes for you to drop your lifelong habits, concepts, ideologies.

Just two years ago Pope the Polack was in India and he was surprised to see that the very poor and the orphans who have been converted to Christianity were doing the same in their churches as they had been doing before: burning incense, bringing flowers for Jesus Christ. He could not believe what the priests were doing, because these people were doing exactly what they used to do in their temples. Instead of Krishna, now Christ is there, everything else is the same.

But the priests told him that they had to make a few considerations, a few compromises. These people cannot understand a religion without incense, without flowers. And the pope conceded that for Indian Christians it is okay.

As you become old, it becomes very difficult to change your ideology, your lifelong belief. It becomes hardened. The old man becomes hard, and in the same way everything around him becomes hard. The best situation in which to grow into your potential is childhood. Next to it is your youth. Most probably the childhood will be spoilt by the parents, by the priests.

The authentic religion has to depend on youth, because youth has a certain rebelliousness natural to it. A young man can rebel against the whole past without any guilt. He can clean his heart of all the old dead scriptures and statues, and the challenge of the unknown stirs his heart. He wants to accept the greatest challenge, and this is the greatest challenge in life – to allow your seed to open to the unknown skies, to the winds, the sun, the rain; one never knows what is going to happen.

There is nobody to guide the seed, there are no scriptures for the seed to read. The seed is taking a risk by coming out, and you should understand that the risk is not small. The risk is exactly a death. The seed has to die in the soil; only then the sprouts of the potentiality of the seed will start growing. Perhaps it will become a rose flower, or a lotus, or some other kind of flower. It does not matter. What matters is flowering, not the name of the flower. A wild flower is as beautiful as the most precious rose. They are brothers in one way, that they both have come to their flowering. They have both enjoyed the joy of growth, they both have seen with their own eyes what was hidden in their seed. They have both taken the same risk and the same challenge.

In fact, it is a death and a resurrection. The seed dies and resurrects into many flowers, into many fruits, into many seeds. It is said that a single seed can make the whole earth green. Just one plant is not its potential. On that one plant there will come thousands of seeds again, each seed again carrying thousands of seeds.

Just a single seed can fill the whole earth with absolute greenness. Such tremendous possibility in a small seed! And you are a living seed, conscious. The most precious thing in existence is within you: consciousness. The seed is groping in the dark, still finding the way. And you are conscious, you have a little light, but you don’t move from your position, you remain a little man. In fact you hate all those who have gone to the other shore because their very going condemns you, that you have failed to fulfill your own destiny.

After bowing to the master, Ma Tzu asked him, “How must one be attuned to the formless samadhi?”

The master must have said to him that unless you become attuned with existence in utter silence, you cannot know the dharma, the very principle of life and existence. Ma Tzu’s inquiry is that of an honest seeker. He loved what was said, he felt it as if it was exquisite nectar – but he would not believe it. There are still things to be settled. His question is not the question of a student, it is the question of a would-be master.

“How must one be attuned to the formless samadhi?”

He cuts out all unnecessary questions and comes exactly to the right thing, how one should be attuned to the formless samadhi.

Samadhi is a Sanskrit word, very beautiful in its meaning. It comes from a root which means, when there is no question and no answer, when your silence is so profound that you don’t even have the question; answers are left far away but you don’t have even the question. Such innocence which is just silent is called samadhi. And in this samadhi you can fall in tune with the heartbeat of the universe. Only in samadhi can you become one with the whole. There is no other way.

Every day what we are doing in the name of meditation is moving towards samadhi. Meditation is the beginning and samadhi is the end. Ma Tzu’s question is that of a potential buddha. He is not asking about non-essentials, just the very essential.

The master said, “When you cultivate the way of interior wisdom, it is like sowing seed. When I expound to you the essentials of dharma, it is like the showers from heaven. As you are receptive to the teaching, you are destined to see the Tao.”

Tao is Chinese for what we call samadhi; the Japanese call it satori, the Chinese call it Tao. Tao is perhaps the best of all these expressions, because it is not part of language. It simply indicates something inexpressible, something that you can know but cannot say, something that you can live but cannot explain. It is something that you can dance, you can sing, but you cannot utter a single word about it. You can be it; you can be the expression of Tao, but you cannot say what it is that you are expressing.

Ma Tzu again asked: “Since the Tao is beyond color and form, how can it be seen?”

You have to understand this dialogue very deeply, because it will give you the right direction for what has to be asked. There are thousands of things to ask, but the essentials are very few and unless you start by asking the essentials, you will not come close to the truth.

As Nangaku mentioned the Tao, Ma Tzu immediately asked: “Since the Tao is beyond color and form, how can it be seen? – you are saying that if you enter into samadhi, you will see the Tao.”

The master said: “The dharma-eye of your interior spirit is capable of perceiving the Tao. So it is with the formless samadhi.”

It was for this reason that the East had to develop the concept of the third eye. These two eyes can see only the form, the color, but they cannot see the formless and the colorless. For the formless and colorless they are blind. In samadhi you close these eyes and a new perceptivity, which can be metaphorically called ‘the third eye’, arises in you; a new sensitivity which can feel and see what is not possible for your outer senses.

The dharma-eye, which is the third eye of your interior spirit, is capable of perceiving the Tao. When I say to you in meditations, “Go deeper, look deeper,” I am trying in every way so that your third eye, which has remained dormant, opens up.

Ma Tzu still asked, “Is there still making and unmaking?”

Can we do something inside? Can we make a buddha inside? Is there still some creativity inside? It is a very profound question.

To this, the master replied, “If one sees the Tao from the standpoint of making and unmaking, or gathering and scattering, one does not really see the Tao. Listen to my gatha.”

He says that as far as your inner world is concerned your buddha is already there; you don’t have to make it. Everything is as it should be in your inner world.

I am reminded of the Russian scientist, Kirlian, who brought a new vision to the objective scientist; its implications are immense. He was a great photographer and he went on perfecting and refining his lenses. His whole idea was that if something is hidden in a seed as a potential, then perhaps the photograph of the potential can be caught with a better lens.

It was a very strange idea, but scientists and mystics and philosophers and poets are all a little bit crazy. Everybody tried to persuade him: “Don’t do such nonsense, how can you see the rose in the seed?”

He said, “If it is going to be, then it must be present in some way – perhaps our eyes are not capable of seeing it.” And finally, he succeeded. He managed to create lenses which could take a photograph of what was going to happen in the future. He would put the seed in front of his camera and a photograph would come of a rose flower.

And then he would wait for the seed to die into the soil – and it was one of the miracles of modern genius, that when the real rose came, it would be exactly the same as the photograph. He has caught the future in his net.

He became convinced that if it is true about the seed then it can be used in many things. For example, Kirlian photography has now become an absolute must in Russian hospitals. People come just to be checked, to see if there is any possibility of disease in the future.

His lenses have become even more refined now after his death; a whole school of Kirlian photographers has been working on it. They can see at least six months ahead. If you are going to be sick in six months’ time, the photograph will show it – that after six months you will have cancer.

There is no other way to find it out, but it can be treated although it has not become manifest. It is a tremendous blessing to medicine. We can cure people before they become sick.

What we see with our eyes is not all. Even in the outside world our eyes have limitations. Kirlian photography has gone beyond our eyes into the objective world. In the same way the third eye opens in the inner world and brings you your whole potentiality in its fullness. You don’t have to do anything, you have just to recognize it. A buddha is not made, a buddha is only remembered.

Nangaku said, “Listen to my gatha.” That is an ancient way; ‘gatha’ means poetry. “What I could manage to say in prose, I have said. Now listen to my poetry. Something that I have not been able to say in prose can be said in poetry.

“The ground of the no-mind
Contains many seeds
Which will all sprout when
Heavenly showers come.”

They have come and now it is up to you to take the challenge.

“The flower of samadhi
Is beyond color and form.

How can there be any more
Mutability?”

It is said that at this, Ma Tzu was truly enlightened, his mind having transcended the world of phenomena. He attended upon his master for a full ten years. During this period, he delved deeper and deeper into meditation.

Kanzan wrote:

In my house there is a cave,
And in the cave is nothing at all –
Pure and wonderfully empty,
Resplendent, with a light
Like the sun.
A meal of greens will do
For this old body,
A ragged coat will cover
This phantom form.

Let a thousand saints appear
Before me – I have the
Buddha of heavenly truth!

Once you have looked into your inner cave and found the light, the life, the very source of your being, then the so-called saints don’t mean anything. They are just moralists, following a certain system of morality, beliefs, but they don’t have the truth. If you have the truth then even a thousand saints cannot weigh more than your buddha. Your buddha is the ultimate and it is not borrowed. You have discovered it.

Maneesha has asked:

-Osho

From Ma Tzu: The Empty Mirror, Discourse #2

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.

Desiring the Unattainable – Osho

Desire only that which is within you.

It looks absurd, paradoxical, illogical: Desire only that which is within you. Desire is basically for that which is not within you. Desire means the desire for something that is not within you. If it is already within you, then what is the need to desire it?

We never desire ourselves as we are. We always desire something else. No one desires himself; there is no need. You are already that; you are not missing anything. You desire something that is missing.

This sutra says: Desire only that which is within you for many reasons. One, if you desire something that is not within you, you may get it, but it will never become yours. It cannot. Really, you can never become the master of it; you will just become a slave. The possessor is always possessed by his possessions. The greater the number of possessions, the greater the slavery that is created.

You are possessed by your possessions, and you were desiring to be the master. Frustration sets in because your whole hope is frustrated. You come to a point where the things you wanted are there, whatever you desired has happened, but you have become the slave. The kingdom now appears to be nothing but an imprisonment and whatever you possess, or think that you possess, is not really possessed, because it can be taken away at any moment. Even if no one takes it away, death is bound to take it.

In religious terminology, that which can be taken away by death is not yours. Death Is the criterion. There is only one criterion to judge whether you really possess something. Judge it against death and see whether you will still have it after. your death. If death takes it, you never possessed it. It was just an illusion.

Is there something that death cannot take from you? If there is nothing, then religion is pointless, meaningless. But there is something that death cannot take over and that something is hidden within you. You already possess it. It is your innermost nature. It has come with you; you are born with it. Or rather, it will be better to say that you are it, not that you possess it. If you possess it, it can be taken away.

You are it, it is your very being. It is your very ground; it is your existence. That is what is called atman. Atman means that which you are already. No one can take it away from you; not even death can destroy it. This sutra says: Desire only that which is within you. Desire atman, desire your innermost self, desire the center which you already possess but you have forgotten completely.

Why does man forget? It is a necessity. To survive, attention has to be paid to the outside world. To survive, to exist, to remain in life, you have to continuously pay attention to things: to food, to shelter. The body needs attention. It becomes ill, it is prone to suffering. The body is continuously struggling to survive because, for the body, there is death. The body is in a continuous struggle with death, so constant attention has to be paid to it.

The body is always in a state of emergency because at any moment death can occur. You have to be continually aware and continually conscious of this fight against death, so your whole attention moves outward. No energy is left to move within. This is a survival necessity. That’s why we go on forgetting that one center within us exists that is deathless, one center within us exists that is eternal, one center in us exists that is absolute bliss.

Pain attracts attention; suffering attracts attention. If you have a headache, your attention moves to the head; you become aware that you have a head. If there is no ache in the head, you forget your head. You become headless – as if you have no head.

The body is felt only when it is ill. If your body is absolutely healthy you will not feel it. You will become weightless. Really, you will become bodiless. This is the only criterion of authentic health: that the body is not felt at all. Whenever the body is felt it means that there is some illness, some disturbance. Your attention is called.

There are so many problems that come from the outside that your attention is constantly engaged and occupied there. That’s why you forget that something exists right in the very center of your being that is deathless, that is divine, that is blissful. This sutra says:

Desire only that which is within you.

For within you is the light of the world – the only light that can be shed upon the path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.

The eighth sutra:

Desire only that which is beyond you.

Desire only that which is beyond you. Always desire the impossible, because only through that desire do you grow. And what is impossible? Climbing Mt. Everest is not impossible; neither is going to the moon. Both have become possible. Someone has reached Everest. Even when no one had reached there, it was not impossible. Difficult, but not impossible. It was within human capacity to reach. The moon is within our capacity to reach and soon man will reach other planets as well. It is not impossible, only difficult. Someday it will become possible. Only one thing is impossible, one thing is beyond you, and that is your innermost self.

Why? I say that the moon is not so difficult to reach even though the moon is so far away, and I say that your innermost self is more impossible to reach even though it is just within you. Why is it so difficult to reach then? Because it is within you, that’s why. You only know how to reach what is without. Your hands can reach for what is without, your eyes can see what is without. Your senses open to the outside; you have no senses that can help you look within. Your mind moves without; it cannot move within. That’s why the mind has to be thrown. Only then can you enter meditation.

The mind is basically a movement toward the without. You can observe this very easily. Whenever you think, you are thinking of something that is outside of you. Whatsoever you think about is always outside you. Have you ever thought about anything that is within? There is no need to think about what is within because you can experience it. There is no need to think about it; thinking is a substitute. You can realize that which is within you. It is just by the corner. You move your head, you change your direction. From without you turn within, and you can experience it. What is the need to think about it?

But we go on thinking even about the within. We think about what atman is. We think, “What is the self?” We create philosophies and systems. We go on creating theories that the self means ‘this’, the definition is ‘this’, and no one tries to feel it. It is so near to you – what is the need of theories?

Theories are needed for what is far away, because you cannot reach it right now. You have to create a bridge. Theories are needed to reach the moon, but they are not needed to reach the center within you, because there is no gap. Nothing is to be bridged; you are already there. Just a change in your attitude is needed and you can realize it. There is no need of theorizing or philosophizing. But we go on creating philosophies. We have created thousands and thousands of philosophies. and philosophers go on wasting their lives thinking about that which was already within them. They could have jumped within at any moment!

But it is beyond. Beyond the senses, because the senses cannot open toward it; they open in the opposite direction. And beyond the mind, because the mind cannot lead you there; it always leads you somewhere else. The mind is an instrument for the world; it is a mechanism to move without, to move away from you. It is meant for that. That’s why there is so much emphasis that in samadhi there is no mind. Samadhi is a state of no-mind, the mind ceases.

In the techniques of meditation that we are doing, the whole effort is this: how to cease to be a mind, how to drop the mind, how to drop thinking, how to come to a moment where no thinking exists, where simply attention, simply awareness, exists. ‘No thinking’ means that there are no clouds in the sky; just the sky is there. ‘No thinking’ means that there are no clouds in the mind, just consciousness. In that consciousness, you are within.

When you are in the mind, you are without; when you are in no-mind, you are within. This transfer from mind to no-mind is the whole journey. If you can add ‘no’ to your mind, you have reached. That’s why it is called beyond.

Desire only that which is beyond you – beyond your senses, beyond your mind, beyond your ego. ‘You’ will not be there. Your innermost center is not you; you are just the periphery. The periphery cannot be at the center. When you move toward the center you leave the periphery. The periphery cannot exist at the center. It belongs to the center but it exists outside the center, just around it.

Whatsoever you know about yourself is just the periphery: your name, your identity, your image. You are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian; you are black, or you are white; you are this and that. Your nation, race, culture – all this is just on the periphery; all your conditionings are just on the periphery.

The world cannot enter your center. It can only cultivate the periphery; it can only touch you on your boundaries. Only your boundary can be Hindu, only your boundary can be Christian, only your boundary can be Jain. ‘You’ are not; you cannot be.

Only your boundary belongs to India or to Pakistan or to America. You cannot belong to any nation, to any race. You belong to existence itself. All divisions are false at the center, but meaningful on the periphery.

Whatsoever you know about yourself is your ego. ‘Ego’ is just a utilitarian word. Your whole periphery means ‘you’. But this ‘you’ will drop when you start moving inward. This ‘you’ will drop by and by; this ‘you’ will disappear; this ‘you’ will evaporate. Then a point will come when you are authentically yourself; your old self is no longer there.

That’s why it is said: Desire only that which is beyond you. It is beyond you because when you reach it you have lost yourself.

Desire only that which is unattainable.

Desire only that which is unattainable. What is unattainable? Look around – everything is attainable. You may not have attained it, but it is attainable. If you make enough of an effort, you can attain it. Potentially, it is attainable.

Alexander created a big empire. You may not have created one, but what Alexander can do you can do. It is not impossible; it is not unattainable. You may not have gathered as many riches as Rockefeller or someone else but what Rockefeller can do you can do It is human: it is within your capacity. You may be a failure. you may not be able to attain it, but it is attainable. Your failure is your own failure, but potentially you could have been a success so the thing cannot be said to be unattainable.

Then what is unattainable? That which cannot be attained? If that is the meaning, then what is the point of desiring it? If it cannot be attained, then the desire is futile. Why desire that which is unattainable? What’s meant by it?

The meaning is very deep, esoteric. The meaning is that your innermost self is unattainable because it is already attained. You cannot attain it because you are it. You cannot make it an achievement. It is not something that has to be attained. It is already there; you have never been away from it. You have never lost it; it is your very nature. It is you, your innermost being. You cannot achieve it; you can only discover it. You cannot attain it; you can only uncover it; you can only recognize it.

There is no possibility of inventing it; it is already there. It is not to be earned; it is already there. You just have to give your awareness to it. You have to focus your awareness on it and suddenly that which was never lost is found.

When Buddha attained enlightenment, someone asked him, “What have you attained?”

Buddha said, “Nothing, because whatsoever I have attained – now I know that it was always there. It was never lost. I have simply discovered it. I have known some treasure which was, already, always within me.”

Desire only that which is unattainable.

It is unattainable, because it forever recedes. You will enter the light, but you will never touch the flame.

In another sense also it is unattainable. You will never be able to say, “I have attained it,” because who will say that I have attained it? That ‘I’ which can claim is no more. That ego – the periphery – is no more. In attaining, in discovering, it has to be lost. The ego has to be thrown away, cast away. You can reach only when you have become egoless. You cannot reach with the ego, because the ego itself is the barrier.

So who is there who will claim? It is said in the Upanishads that if someone claims that he has attained, know well that he has not attained, because the very claim is egoistic. If someone says. “I have known God,” know well that he has not known God; because once God is known, who is there to claim? The knower is lost in the very phenomenon of knowing. Knowing happens only when the knower is not When the knower is absent, the knowing happens – so who will claim?

There was one Zen monk, Nan-in. Someone asked him, “Have you known the truth?”

He laughed but kept silent. The man said, “I cannot understand your mysterious laughter. Nor can I understand your mysterious silence. Use words. Tell me. And be dear about it. Tell me yes or no. Have you known the truth, the divine?”

Nan-in said, “You are making it difficult for me. If I say yes, the scriptures say, ‘One who says, “I have known,” has not known.’ So if I say yes, it means no. And if I say no, it will not be true. So what am I supposed to do? Don’t force me to use words. I will laugh again and keep silent. If you can understand, it is okay. If you do not understand, it is also okay. But I will not use words. Don’t force me to, because if I say yes, it means that I have not known, and if I say no, it will not be true.”

You will reach, but in your purity. In that purity, your ego will not be there. The ego is the impure, foreign element within you – just the dust gathered all around you. It is not you. Naked, you will reach. Your ego is just like your clothes. It will not be there.

Desire only that which is unattainable.

-Osho

From The New Alchemy: To Turn You On, Discourse #4

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.

Then Only You will be Able to Know – Osho

At the time of this samadhi, the moods of the mind take the form of the soul, and therefore they are not apparent.

But after the meditator had come back from his samadhi, those moods which had disappeared, are inferred by memory.

In this world, which is without a beginning, one accumulates millions of karmas conditioning from actions. They are all destroyed in this samadhi, and inner spontaneous qualities grow.

The great knowers of yoga describe this samadhi as dharmamegha, because it showers like a raincloud and inner spontaneity issues forth its thousand fruit.

Through this samadhi the whole crowd of desires become extinct. And when the holds of karma known as punya and papa, virtue and sin are uprooted, then the great saying – “tat twamasi,” That Art Thou – becomes illumined.

First as indirect knowledge and then as a fruit held in your palm, it becomes direct knowledge.

-Adhyatma Upanishad

In the morning we discussed four steps: right listening, right thinking, right meditation, and right samadhi.

This sutra goes beyond samadhi. This sutra says samadhi is the door into the unknown – not only the unknown, but the unknowable. it opens into the eternal, into the infinite.

The moment you enter samadhi you have to leave your mind behind. Your mind cannot enter samadhi; you can enter, but not your mind. Unless you can leave your mind behind, samadhi is not for you. Your luggage – thinking, memories, karmas, all your past lives, the whole luggage which is your mind – has to be left behind. When you have left your mind behind . . . and this is a basic condition: the mind cannot enter samadhi, only you can enter. Why? Because you are at the center; mind is just the periphery.

If you want to enter the center you have to leave the periphery. You cannot go with the periphery to the center. If you insist, “I will take my periphery, my circumference to the center,” then you will remain on the circumference. Howsoever you endeavor, if you cling to the circumference, you can never enter the center. Entering the center means leaving the periphery, leaving the circumference; mind is the circumference – this is a basic condition.

Samadhi means entering into yourself without the mind. But if you enter samadhi without the mind, you cannot feel samadhi – this is the essence of this sutra – you cannot feel, you cannot think. Really you cannot know what is happening, because the knower, the instrument of knowledge, is the mind.

It is as if you enter a garden. Your eyes are weak, and you cannot see without your specs. And this is the condition: you have to leave your specs at the gate. So you enter without specs. You enter the garden, but you cannot see because the very instrument of seeing is not with you.

Mind is the instrument to know, to feel, to recognize. Mind has been left behind. So a man who enters samadhi enters totally ignorant, just like a child. Jesus says, “Be like children; only then you can enter my kingdom of God. Be like small children.” At the door of samadhi everyone is like a child – with no mind – just being, pure and simple and innocent. But then you cannot see what is happening, you cannot feel what is happening. The happening is there and you are too much in it; there is no distance.

Mind creates the distance between the known and the knower. If there is no mind, the known and the knower merge, they become liquid, they enter into each other and the distance cannot be maintained. And without distance, knowledge is impossible.

So in samadhi you know nothing. In samadhi, knowing, the knower, the known . . . they all cease and they become one ocean, just one unity, liquid, flowing. That doesn’t mean that you are unconscious. You are conscious – fully conscious, for the first time – but the consciousness is so much, the consciousness is so unlimited, the consciousness is so infinite that it is impossible to make any differentiation between who is the knower and what is the known. You are immersed in it totally, as if a drop of water has become one with the ocean.

There is a beautiful story, and Ramakrishna used to repeat it many times. He used to say that there was a great gathering near the ocean once – some religious festival, and a great crowd gathered there. Two pundits, two great scholars also came, and they began to discuss whether the ocean is unfathomable or fathomable, whether the ocean can be measured or not. So they discussed around and around – discussions are always around and around, you go on beating around and around the bush. No discussion goes deep and direct, it cannot.

One simple man, just a villager, an innocent one, said, “I have been listening to your discussion, days have passed, and there seems to be no conclusion. And I think – I am an ignorant man – I suggest that unless you go deep into the ocean, how can you decide whether is is fathomable or not? You remain on the bank and you go on discussing; you go on arguing, quoting scriptures, and authorities. But I am asking a simple question: have you been to the ocean?”

Those two scholars said, “Don’t interfere, you don’t know scriptures.” But the poor man said, “I know the ocean. I need not know your scriptures. You are talking about the ocean; what is the need for scriptures to be brought in? I suggest you take a jump, go to the bottom, and then come back and tell us.”

So those two scholars jumped into the ocean, but they never came back.

Ramakrishna says, “They never came back because those two scholars were really men of salt, so as they went in, they began to melt. They were just salt; their bodies were made of salt.”

In a way it is not inconceivable. Our bodies are made of ocean water, they are salty. Your body is seventy-five percent water – seventy-five percent! – and the water is just the same as the water which is found in oceans. The proportion of salt in your bodies is the same as it is in the ocean water, because man is just a developed form of fish and nothing else. So the story is not very absurd.

Man comes from the ocean, and is salty. Those two scholars were men of salt; their bodies were made of salt. They came out of the ocean – everyone has come out of the ocean. Now science says that man has come out of the ocean, just a developed form of fish – nothing else. And who can say whether he is developed or not? If you ask the fish, they could not say that. They would say that some fish have gone astray – out of the ocean. They could not say those fish have developed – there would seem to be no reason. Only in man’s reasoning it seems that man has developed; in a fish’s reason it cannot seem so.

The two scholars never came back; the crowd waited and waited and waited. Ramakrishna used to say, “They cannot come back, because the deeper they went the more they melted, and when they reached the bottom, they were no more. So who can come back and who can say?”

When you leave the mind behind, you leave the bank; you take a jump into the ocean and you are part of the ocean – just the salt. When you enter into samadhi you take a jump into the ocean of consciousness – and you are consciousness. So when consciousness takes a jump into greater consciousness, infinite consciousness, it becomes one, the division is lost; you cannot experience anything. You experience the absolute, but you cannot say it is an experience. You cannot feel it as an experience.

This sutra says, when consciousness comes back to the mind again, and sees retrospectively from the specs of the mind what has happened, then it infers.

So all knowledge about God is inference. Those who have known . . . they too have to think it, to remember it, to live it again in memory, through the mind; then they can say what has happened: existence, consciousness, bliss – sachidananda. This is not the experience itself; it is mind looking at the experience – that’s why the division. There was no division in the experience itself; mind divides it into three.

And remember, mind divides everything into three. Three is the basic division of the mind – it divides anything into three.

Look at the world, all the divisions, and you will find the basic division is always of three – always three; not only in religion, but in science also. Now they say – since the atom was split – now they say the basic unity of the atom is constituted of three elements: electron, neutron, proton. You may call them Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh – trimurti, the three figures.

The basic division by the mind is three. Seen by the mind retrospectively, mind infers what has happened. Existence has happened, consciousness has happened, bliss has happened – but this is an inference.

This sutra says when you come back from that peak of ecstasy, back to the ground, you look again – now you remember. So all the scriptures, all that has been said about the ultimate truth is an inference of the mind, from memory. Remember it.

In samadhi, mind is not there; that’s why you become spontaneous. Mind is the instrument which always destroys spontaneity. Mind always brings the past into the present, and that destroys spontaneity. This part of the sutra has also to be understood before we enter into meditation.

A spontaneous act is never from the mind. A spontaneous act always happens in the present. If it happens through the mind, then the past has come in. I say something to you; you react – the reaction is from the mind. You think about it, you bring your past memories, your knowledge, your experiences, and then you react accordingly. Then this act is not spontaneous; this act is dead; it is not alive. Reaction is dead, never alive; response is alive and spontaneous. I say something to you and you respond – immediately, without bringing the past in, without bringing the mind in – you respond.

For example, if you ask something to a buddha, to an enlightened one, you will get confused. If you ask the same question today and the same tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, you are not going to get the same answer. It is impossible for a buddha. He is not reacting. He is not a parrot; he responds. You ask the question and immediately his consciousness responds – responds to it. It is not a reaction of the mind; it is an encounter, direct, immediate. Every moment you go on asking the same question, but the same answer will not be coming.

Repetition is through the mind. Spontaneous consciousness is always new and fresh.

This sutra says that samadhi brings you back to your center of spontaneity. That spontaneity is known in the upanishadic terminology as dharma. Dharma means your natural, spontaneous being, undistorted by the mind; your natural, spontaneous mirror, undistorted by anything, pure and innocent. Through samadhi you become spontaneous. Really, through samadhi you become religious. Before that, you can belong to a religion, but you are not religious. You can be a Christian, you can be a Hindu or a Mohammedan, but you are not religious.

You belong to a certain organization, a certain church, a certain sect. This belonging is mental. When you enter samadhi for the first time, you come into the world of dharma, of real religion. Now you become spontaneous, you become natural. Nothing is imposed from the mind, you act in totality, moment to moment. Your acts become atomic, always new and fresh and young. Whatsoever you do now is always fresh. This freshness of being is known as dharma. This is what a religious mind is. And unless you become a religious mind in this way, through samadhi, you cannot know what is meant by this mahavakya – tat twamasi – that art thou. When you become spontaneous then you know you are that.

With the ultimate, now you are one.

Now your finite being is not finite.

Now the divine is not far away.

Now you are divine, and the divine is you – the duality is lost. You become for the first time a knower that this sutra of tat twamasi – That Art Thou – is real, authentic. Now you can become a witness, now you can say, “This is so, because I have known it.” And unless you can say, “I have known it,” nothing is worthwhile.

Just a few days ago, a theologian came to me and he began to talk about God. I asked him again and again, “Please tell me, have you known? Have you seen?” But he began to quote The Bible; he began to quote scriptures. And he said, “This is written there, and that is written there.”

I told him, “It may be written; I accept that it is written there, but that’s not my question. I am asking whether you have known it?” But he would not answer the question. He would again repeat, “Jesus has said this in the New Testament.” He opened the book – he had a book of the New Testament in his pocket. He opened the book and he began to read.

I told him again and again, “Don’t read it! I have read it already, so I know what is written in it. Tell me directly, have you seen? Have you realized?” But there was no answer.

If someone asks you, “Have you seen the divine?” and you go on quoting the Upanishads, that’s stupid. Say yes or no – and you cannot deceive, because there is no question of deceiving anyone. Say to yourself whether you have seen it, known it, realized it. If you have not, then start on a long journey – from right listening to right thinking; from right thinking to right meditation; from right meditation to right samadhi. Then only you will be able to know. And unless you know, the whole knowledge of the world is futile – unless you know.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #45.

Then Only You will be Able to Know is from the evening talk, This Oneness is That Art Thou is from the morning talk of the same day.

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

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

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