Sarvasar Upanishad – Sat Sangha Salon

This Witnessing Consciousness – Osho

When the self as consciousness, which is truth, knowledge, infinity, and bliss, devoid of all its attributes, shines like pure gold freed from all its forms such as a bangle and a crown, it is called twam or thou, The brahman is truth, infinity and knowledge. That which is destructible is truth. And that which does not perish even after the destruction of space, time, et cetera is called the avinashi, the imperishable.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

There is a dialogue, a deep dialogue between my existence and existence itself, a constant dialogue, a continuity every moment: the incoming breath, the outgoing breath. I am constantly linked with the universe, with existence.

If we take two points, between these two points the dialogue continues. One point is “I,” and the other point – the total – is “thou.”

A non-religious mind, a material mind, will say that the dialogue is not between “I” and “thou,” the dialogue is between “I” and “that,” because the world is just a thing; it is not a person. And really, if the world is just a thing and it is not a person, then there can be no dialogue, there can be no intimacy. But if the whole world is just a thing, then myself – I myself cannot be a person; this “I” is also a thing. This is what is meant by a materialist conception of the world.

Of course there are relations – stimulus-response relations – but no dialogue, no intimacy. You cannot address existence as “thou,” because there then is no poetry, and then there is no religion. Among things only science can exist; among persons religion grows.

The religious attitude towards existence is a personal attitude: the whole universe is taken as a person. The you can talk, then you can love, then you can be angry with the total; and your life becomes deeply rich, because life and richness develop only through deeper dialogues with the reality.

But still, even if a religious person thinks that the world is not just material, the world is personal, and existence has a personality – then too, “I” continues to be the center; “thou” is just the periphery, just the circumference. I remain at the center of the universe, and the whole universe just belongs to me as a periphery.

In this sutra, the rishi says that when the pure consciousness is known, when the witnessing consciousness is known, there is a mutation, a total change of emphasis. “Thou” becomes the center and “I” becomes the periphery. “Thou” becomes the center, and “I” just the periphery. This pure consciousness therefore is known as “thou – twama, tu. It is not known as “I” because now I exists only as a periphery. It is really non-existential because periphery, in fact, is non-existential. It is just a line, a demarcation line and nothing else. It belongs to the center; it is just a projection of the center, an extension of the center.

When pure consciousness is known, pure consciousness is known as “thou.” This has many implications. One, the moment we conceive pure consciousness as “thou,” the whole universe, the whole of existence becomes a very different thing than we know it now. If you address the tree as “thou,” the tree is not the same; it has become a person, and a new dimension opens – a new dimension. And when the tree has become thou, you also cannot remain the same, because with a new relationship, with a new dimension, you are also different.

But as we are, even a living person, even a human person, is not “thou” for us. We use the word, but not meaningfully. We behave with persons as if they are not persons. For example, you love someone and then you begin to possess him or possess her. A person can never be possessed; only a thing can be possessed. How can a person be possessed? And how can love be possessive? If love becomes possessive it means that you are transforming a person into a thing.

That’s why a beloved may be a person, but a wife becomes just a thing, just a thing to be used. Why this possession? Because we just go on saying “thou,” but we never mean it – we never mean it. If you are really saying “thou” to someone, it means you accept the other as a person and you cannot possess him. A person means a freedom; a person means: now you cannot be the master. So we turn even persons into things. But with this pure consciousness developing inside, things turn into persons, and the whole universe by and by takes a shape of “thou,” of a great “thou” – everything becomes a person.

We live among things, mm? Even if we are living among persons, we live among things. And the more you live among things, the more you will be a thing yourself – that’s bound to happen. So a person who tries to possess someone becomes himself a possession. The phenomenon is reciprocal – if I try to possess someone as my property, I am bound to become myself a thing, a property. So it is not that the husband possesses the wife; the wife also possesses the husband. They both are possessors and both are things.

The moment you begin to feel someone as a thing, you begin to expect. With a person there can be no expectation, because person means a freedom. You have loved me this evening, you have been loving towards me; if I expect that tomorrow also you must give me love, it means I am thinking of you as a thing. And if tomorrow you are not going to love me, then I will be angry, I will be frustrated, and I will take revenge. I will begin to feel that my possession is being lost. Why?

With a thing you can expect that it will behave the same tomorrow also – but not with a person. A person is a constant flux, the freedom to move. He may be something else tomorrow, who knows? He may be not love me at all. If I take you as a person, then I will never be frustrated with you, because the frustration comes when I take you as a thing.

But this pure consciousness begins to feel the whole universe as a “thou”; therefore this consciousness is never frustrated. Never! There is no reason to be frustrated at all. Whatsoever happens, happens. It is never against expectation, because there has been no expectation at all. If tomorrow the tree moves from my garden to somewhere else, even that will not frustrate me. I will just say, “Oh, so thou hast gone. So thou hast moved.”

The truth, the infinite truth, the eternal consciousness, the formless is known as “thou,” never as “I.” Then you begin to live in a world of freedom, of non-possession. And when you behave in a non-possessive way, the whole world begins to behave non-possessively towards you. The whole universe becomes non-possessive of you.

This is what is meant by freedom: if you give freedom to the whole universe, you become free. But this freedom happens only when “I” is not at the center, but “thou.” Really even “thou” is not exactly what the case is; even “thou” is a bit less than true, because “thou” cannot exist without a subtle feeling of “I.” I cannot address someone as “thou” without myself being there, even indirectly, even in a very absent ways – even unconsciously. But the “I” must be there to address someone as “thou.”

So this is just to express something in language which cannot be expressed. Really, when you are not in the center, not even the “thou” is the center. “I and thou” both dissolve into oneness. But that oneness is inexpressible, and still, the rishi tries to say something about it to the disciple, to the enquirer. So what to say? He says at least one thing is certain; it cannot be called “I,” it is called “thou.” And when the disciple is ready, the inexpressible can also be indicated. But in the beginning, it is more than enough. “I” is not in the center, that consciousness is impure. And “I” is in the center, so consciousness IS impure. That happens only when you know the formless. And if it is not happening and “I” is in the center, that means you are in the form, obsessed with the form, obsessed with the superficial. You have not gone deep; you have not gone to the innermost core of your being. You have just lived outside your house; you have not know it from the inside.

“I” in the center is symbolic, indicative that we have not known what we are. We have known only identities with the for. The body is form, the mind is form, thought is form – all that we know about ourselves is form. And these forms happen upon the ocean of the formless. With that formless coming into your awareness, the “I” becomes the periphery and “thou,” the center.

Now the definition of truth. What is truth? Everyone is seeking, and everyone is trying to find it out, but what is it? How to define it? The materialist mind defines truth as the fact; whatsoever is objectively true, objectively factual, is truth. And personal experience which cannot be objectified will not be considered as truth. So if Jesus says, “I see my father in heaven,” either he is a dreamer or just psychotic, neurotic, just mad – because no one else can see the father in heaven. So either he is just a poet, just an imaginary dreamer, or just mad, insane, abnormal . . . seeing things which are not.

This definition of truth as fact is dangerous in many ways. It is useful, it is utilitarian, it helps – particularly it helps the scientific research – but it is dangerous. Because even if there is no objective proof, even if all cannot see a particular thing, the thing can be. It is not necessarily that because all others are not seeing it, it is not there.

For example: there are colorblind people; out of ten one is colorblind. By being colorblind it is meant that he cannot see a particular color. For example, George Bernard Shaw was blind to yellow; he couldn’t make any distinction between yellow and green. But for sixty years continuously he was not aware of it, because how could he be aware? It was just an accident that he became aware.

On one of his birthdays, someone presented a suit of a green color, but he forgot to send a green tie with it. So Bernard Shaw went to purchase a green tie, but he purchased a yellow one, because there was no distinction for him between yellow and green. His secretary said, “What are you doing? This will look very funny. This is yellow and the suit is green.” For the first time after sixty years’ living in this colorful world, he became aware that he was colorblind. He could not see any distinction between yellow and green – both were the same.

If ten persons are colorblind just like Bernard Shaw, and you can see yellow and ten cannot see yellow, what will be the truth? You will be either neurotic or just a dreamer.

There are personal faculties which may not have developed as a communal thing – the community may be lacking. There are personal faculties . . . But this definition of truth as fact will deny them. So sometimes even very intelligent people, very logical rational people, go on being superstitious in denying things which are, but which cannot be shown objectively. The whole psychic phenomenon has suffered only because of this. There are people who have faculties, but only individuals. So either they are deceivers – either they are playing tricks, deceiving others – or they are just claiming things which are not real.

There is one man, Peter Herkos. He can see things from very, very far off. Three hundred miles distance makes no difference to him. From here he can see three hundred miles away, a village on fire. No one would believe him, no one; but by and by, people became aware that yes, he was seeing things, and things proved objectively true. There was a fire and someone died. He said from just here that someone had died in that village, and that very moment someone had died; but still scientists tried to disprove it. They thought somehow that he was maneuvering things – someone might have telephoned, some signal, something… something was there which they did not know about. But many, many experiments were carried out, and still no deception was found. And the thing became more amazing because Herkos himself was a skeptic; he himself did not believe that such things could happen. How could they happen? So he said, “If this would have been the case with someone else, I myself would say that he is deceiving. But how can I say it now? I am not deceiving at all – I go on seeing things.” But they are personal . . .

A buddha experiencing what he called nirvana – it is a personal experience. It is not a fact, but it is a truth. So it is not necessarily that truth should be a fact, and not vice versa also that a fact is bound to be a truth.

The rishi defines truth more deeply, more absolutely. He says truth means that which is always unchanging, which is always. If a fact changes, it is also not a truth. And if a dream remains continuously, eternally, it is true; it is truth. So by truth, the Upanishads mean: the absolutely eternal.

What is absolutely eternal in this world of movement and change? Only change seems to be eternal and nothing else. Everything changes except change. And change cannot be called the eternal truth, because the very definition is “the unchanging one,” and change means “changing one.” Where is the eternal? – we never see it, we never feel it, we never know it – nowhere; everywhere is form and movement and change, and everything is impermanence itself.

Buddha says, “Everything is impermanent, everything – even you yourself – just impermanent. Nothing is permanent here.” So is there any truth, or not? Only one thing seems to be deeply eternal: the see-er, and nothing else – the witnessing soul, nothing else. Buddha says, “Nothing is permanent.” But who has seen this? This “nothing is permanent” – who has seen this? Someone must have seen this impermanency. Someone must have felt this constant flux, change. And to feel the change, this constant change, to be aware of it, at least the awareness must be eternal. So that’s why truth and the inner consciousness become synonymous.

For a philosophically minded person the enquiry into truth becomes a logical enquiry – metaphysical, philosophical. He goes on finding what is truth, logically, rationally. He may create a philosophy but he is not going to find the truth. For a religious mind, the enquiry begins to be a search for the eternal. And when a religious man says, “I am seeking the truth,” he means “I am seeking that which is always, that which is eternal – the eternity itself.” Time ceases, space ceases, everything is dissolved, but that which is remains still.

This witnessing consciousness . . . You are ill, then you are healthy; you are rich, then you are poor; you are respected, and then you are condemned; you are in hell, and you are in heaven – everything is changing. Only one who goes on knowing, “Now I am in hell, now I am in heaven; now they are respecting me, now they are condemning me; now I am ill, now I am healthy; now I am this, now I am that” – only one, and all else goes on moving, moving, moving. But this movement is known, and the knower is immovable, because only an unmoving knower can know movements. Only an immovable knower can know movements. Only the eternal one can know change. If the inner one is also changing, then change cannot be felt. You know that once you were a child, now you are not. If the inner consciousness itself has changed, who will remember that you were a child? If you have completely changed, then there will be no continuity. Who will remember that once you were a child and now you are not? Something behind all change remains the same. That something remembers, “I was once a child, now I am young, now I am going to be old, now I am going to die.”

This continuity, this consciousness, for the rishi of the Upanishads, is the truth. This truth is eternal, infinite, and the nature of it is just knowing, pure knowing. It is not love, it is not bliss; it is pure knowing, because even love has to be known, even bliss has to be known. So ultimately, love and bliss and all else become objects of knowledge. This remains to be always the knower, always the transcending knower, the transcendental one.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #11

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.

Remain with the Doubt – Osho

I am never born as a body. I am not the ten senses. And I am neither intellect, nor mind nor everlasting ego. I am eternally pure self-nature without vital breath and mind. I am the witness without intellect. And I am the ever knowing self-nature. Ther is no doubt, whatsoever, about it.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

A very long journey from “I” to “thou,” from “thou” to “that,” and from “that” to the beyond. And now again the rishi begins to talk about “Who am I?” Obviously, the first “I” is not referred to, that has been just disposed of. This is a second “I.”

The first “I” constitutes the ego; constitutes whatsoever we have done, whatsoever we have achieved, whatsoever has been our accumulation. This second “I” is not our doing; this second “I” is our being. So we must distinguish between these two: the doing and the being.

The being is something which is there, has been there; it is a priori. It is not your creation, it is not your construction, you have not contributed anything to it, because you are it. So how can you do anything? And whatsoever you have done is just an accumulations around – never on the center; the center has always been there.

The child is born. The child is born with a being, with a center, but with no periphery, with no circumference. The child is born with a being, but with no doing at all. Now the doing will grow; now the child will cultivate the ego. Whatsoever the child is going to do will become part of his ego. If he succeeds, then a superiority is accumulated; if he fails, then an inferiority is accumulated. And whether you begin to feel to be inferior or superior, a certain ego is formed. Even when you feel inferior, you have an ego which feels to be inferior. If you succeed, you have an ego which feels to be superior.

The ego means whatsoever you have done – whether you succeed or fail, it is irrelevant, you create an ego. You begin to assert, “I am this, I am that.” And the more this feeling grows, the more the center is lost, and by and by forgotten. In the end we are nothing but our doings. The being is just lost; we have lost the track.

So first we discussed the “I,” the ego, the superficial, the one created by us – our own creation. Now the rishi is talking about the being – what we are, not what we have done; what we are, pure, simple beingness. Of course when we say “I” and use “I” for it, the meaning is totally different. We again refer to it as an “I,” because this is the innermost center of our existence. But now there is no feeling of “I-ness,” only a reference, only a word to be used and forgotten. This pure “I,” this pure being, can only be described in a negative way, through elimination. We have to say, “This is not, that is not,” and go on denying. And when nothing remains to deny anymore, it is revealed.

There are two ways to indicate a thing. One is direct, positive; another is indirect, negative. The more sublime a phenomenon, the more deep a thing is, you cannot indicate it positively, you cannot figure it out. You cannot say, “This is.” No, that’s not possible. How can you say what love is? How can you say what goodness is? How can you say what God is? If you say something positive, you will feel that much has remained unexpressed, and your word has given a limitation.

Saint Augustine has been asked by someone, “What is God?” Saint Augustine says, “When you do not ask me, I know very well, but when you ask me, everything is lost. So don’t disturb me; go and find out. Please go and find our for yourself. I am not going to answer, because the moment I begin to answer, I feel guilty. Any expression becomes just criminal, because whatsoever I say is nothing compared to that about which I am saying.” This has always been felt, very deeply felt, and so many have just remained silent, mm? – not to be guilty; it is better not to say.

But it needs expression. It may be better for the person who is going to say, but it is not better for the person who is going to understand it, to enquire about it. Silence will not do.

So the rishi uses the second method, the negative one. The Upansishads have been using the same method always. That has been their technique, to negate. They will say, “I am that which is never born. I am the unborn one. All that which is born, I am not. So whatsoever is born, I am not.” This is the eliminating process. Whatsoever is born, I am not. Breathing has been born in me. It is born because a child is born without breathing, then he breathes. So the being precedes breathing; being comes first, and then there is breathing. Then there is thinking, then there is ego – all this is born.

If we go still deeper, when the mother becomes pregnant, the first egg has no senses, but the being is there. Then by and by the egg grows and then senses come into being; they are born. After the being is, it is born.

So the rishi says: “I am not the senses, because I am always prior.” I always precede. And whatsoever has succeeded me, I am not.”

“I am not the senses” – that is, I am not the body – “neither am I the mind,” because mind is a later growth, and sometimes mind can be destroyed without destroying you. Sometimes it happens that accidentally the mind is destroyed, and you are.

In the second world war, one English soldier fell down into a ditch. He became unconscious, and he remained unconscious for one week. And when he came back from unconsciousness, he was not the same mind again. He couldn’t recognize anyone – not even himself; he couldn’t recognize his face in the mirror, because all his memory was lost; the whole mechanism was destroyed. But the being was still there. So the mind is a mechanism – something added to you, but not you. It is something instrumental to you, but not you.

The rishi says, “I am not the mind. Neither am I the feeling of being a self.” Neither am I the feeling of being a self, because how can you feel yourself as a self without the mind? The feeling of self is part of the mind, that, “I am.” Go deep into it. We use “I am.” This feeling of “I” is part of our mind. The rishi says, “No not this either. This feeling of being a self is again not my reality, my being.” So when the rishi says, “Not even the feeling of self,” then what remains? “I” drops completely, and only “am-ness” remains. The feeling of “I” belongs to the mind, but “am-ness” belongs to my being itself. A feeling of “am-ness” is what is meant by atma – just “am-ness.”

If you can drop your thinking, you will be, but in an oceanic feeling of “am-ness.” Even this formation of “I,” this formation of self-hood, is not there. That is a later growth.

The rishi is really trying to bring into consciousness, the purest possibility of existence, with nothing added to it – the purest, just a clean slate, nothing written on it. So he is washing everything that we have written on it, and just cleaning the whole thing. When nothing more remains to be washed, he says, “This is the being.” Because whatsoever is written is just doing – howsoever subtle, howsoever hidden, howsoever unconscious – whatsoever is written is a later growth.

So go back, retrace, regress to the original “am-ness.” That, he says, even when there is no breathing, where there is no “minding,” this being is there – without mind, without breathing, without senses. What remains? But what remains? Just a vacuum? Just a nothingness? No, all remains, but in its purity, in its potentiality, in its absolute seed.

Only one positive assertion is made, and that is, “This innermost center is aware, is conscious.” The very nature of it is consciousness. When everything has been eliminated – thoughts, senses, body, mind – when everything has been eliminated, only pure consciousness remains. This is the nature of it.

What is meant by pure consciousness?

By pure consciousness is meant that there is consciousness; not conscious about anything – just a mirror, mirroring nothing. Towards this purity is the whole search. And the rishi says, “There is no doubt about it,” because this is not a doctrine, this is not a philosophical system; this is experience, this is realization. The rishi says, “This I have known; this I have lived; this I have reached.

This is not just a mental projection; this is not just a thought-out system; this is what I have lived and known and experienced.”

This must be understood because this is one of the most emphatic characteristics of Eastern darshan – I will not call it philosophy. It has been called and translated as philosophy very wrongly – not only wrongly, but the very meaning is perverted. By darshan is meant that which you have seen, not thought. By philosophy is meant that which you have thought.

Philosophy means love of thinking. philo means love, sophy means thinking – love of thinking. Darshan is not love of thinking; it is love of seeing. So only one man, Hermann Hesse, has rightly translated it; he has coined a new word to translate darshan into English, and that word is philosia – philo for love, and sia for seeing – not sophy, but sia.

The Eastern mind has been constantly concerned, not with thinking, but with seeing. They say thinking is a pale substitute. You have seen the sunrise, that is one thing. Someone who is blind can only think about the sunrise. Can there be any parallel? Can there be any comparison? Whatsoever you have seen and whatsoever he may have thought – can there be any link between the two? A blind man thinking about the sunrise is really a very complex phenomenon, primarily, because a blind man has never known what sunrise is, what light is. What does rising mean to a blind man? What does light mean to a blind man? Simple words – only words, mere words with nothing in them – meaningless. He has heard “light,” “sun,” “sunrise”; he can think. What can he think? He can think in a chain of words. He can create a chain of words – simple – a chain of words, not of meanings, because meaning is something which is always felt. A word is meaningless unless you have felt the substance of it. A blind man cannot think about the sunrise because he cannot even think about light; really, he cannot even think about darkness.

A blind man has never known what darkness is, because for darkness to be felt, you need eyes. So even darkness has not been known. So if you eliminate, negate, and you say to the blind man, “Light is what darkness is not,” it still means nothing. You cannot even use the eliminative process; you cannot say, “Light is not darkness.” He will ask what darkness is. A blind man can think. Thinking is a dimension which need not be experienced. He can think, he can create concepts in his own way – in his own blind ways he can create concepts. He can create some parallelism; he can create some synonyms. He can begin to think in terms of his own experience about light, darkness and sunrise, and he can create a philosophy. Really, only blind men create philosophies, because those who can see will not bother to create philosophies. If you can see, there is no need.

This is the basic difference between Eastern thinking and Western. Western thinking has always remained with thinking; Eastern thinking has always stepped out of thinking, because they say even thinking is a barrier to seeing. If your eyes are filled with thoughts, you cannot see. The eyes must cease all thinking, all ideation, all minding – then the eyes are clear, then you can go deep into reality.

So the rishi says, “There is no doubt about it. Whatsoever I am saying, I have seen, and there is no doubt.” So it is not, “I don’t know, but I propose . . . perhaps . . . it may be so . . . ” It is not so. The rishi is not saying, “Perhaps it may be like this,” or “Perhaps it may be like that.” He is simply saying – he is describing. So it is not that he is proposing any ideology; it is simply this, that he is describing something he has gone into. So he says, “There is no doubt. I myself have know this: this pure consciousness.”

How to go? – because for us still there is doubt. It may not be for him – for the rishi it may not be – but for us there is still doubt. And it is good – if you also say, “Now there is no doubt,” then you are lost, because if there is no doubt for you, you will not go for the journey where the certainty is. You will create a pseudo certainty; all believers create pseudo certainties. They also say, “We believe it is so,” and they have not known.

Unless you know, do not believe.

Unless you know, do not say, “There is no doubt.”

Remain with the doubt.

Doubt is healthy; it pushes you.

But don’t get stuck in the doubt – go ahead, find the state where you can also say, “Now there is no doubt. I know it.” But not before that – not before that. Live with doubt, go with doubt; search, enquire. Don’t make your doubt suicidal – that’s enough – don’t make your doubt suicidal. Let it be a healthy push! Let it be an enquiry, an open enquiry.

So when this rishi says, “There is no doubt,” it is not meant that thereby you begin to believe. The rishi is simply giving a statement about his own stage. He is saying, “For me, there is no doubt. Whatsoever I am saying, I mean it, and I have known it.”

Really, the Upanishads have never given any arguments. Whatsoever they say, they say without any arguments, without any proofs. This is rare! They don’t say why this is so; they say, “This is so.” Why? It is significant. It is very significant, because whenever you try to prove something – you argue something, you gather witnesses for it – it means that you are creating a philosophy, a rationalization, a reasoning, a logical system; but you have not known.

If you have known, then a simple statement is enough. So the rishis give simple statements, and then methods – not proofs. Whatsoever they say, they say, “It is so; now this is the method, you can also know it.” They never give any proofs; quite the opposite.

There are Greek thinkers: Aristotle, or Plato, or even Socrates. They go on giving proofs. They go on giving proofs, arguments. They say, “This is so because . . . And in “because” they will never say, “because I have known it.” They will say, “because this proves it, that proves it; that’s why it is so.” It is a syllogism, a logical syllogism.

These rishis are just illogical. They say, “This is so.” And if you ask, “Give us proofs,” they say, “This is the method. Experiment with it and you will get the proof.” In a way this is more scientific – less logical, but more scientific – not concerned with arguments at all, but with experiment. Really, this is what scientists are doing. If you ask them, “Why is this so, why does fire burn?” they will say, “Put your hand in it. We don’t know why; we know how it burns.”

So the basic approach of any philosophical ideation is “why?” And the basic scientific approach is always concerned with “how,” never with “why.” The rishi will never ask why we are not minds; he will ask “how” – the method. This is religious science, not philosophical systematizing. Of course, the experiment has to be different, because the lab has to be different. For scientific experimenting a lab is needed outside you; for religious experimentation you are the lab.

How? How can this pure consciousness be achieved? The very description is the process also – this eliminatory method of saying a thing is also the process. When the rishi says, “I am not the body; I am not the senses; I am not the mind” – this is also the method. Go on, go on being more and more conscious of the fact that “I am not the body.” Remain with this fact: “I am not the body.”

Remember this fact – let it go deep in you:

I am not the body.

Begin to feel the gap between you and the body and soon the gap is known, because the gap exists there – you have only forgotten it. It is not to be created; it is there already – you have just forgotten it. You have just escaped from the gap. The gap is always there, but we never go in to see the gap.

Really, this is miraculous in a way, and very strange, that we know our bodies from the outside – even our own bodies we know from the outside. This is as if you live in a house but you have never known the inner walls of the house; you have known only the outer ones – your own house! You cannot describe your body – how it looks from within? You can describe how your body looks in the mirror. But the mirror cannot see the inside; it can only see the outer, the outer shell.

But there is an inside also, because no outside can exist without an inside – or can an outside exist without an inside? But we have never become aware from the inside of our own body.

So be aware:

Close your senses, remain in, and be aware.

And begin to feel your body from the inside. There will be a gap, because there is always a gap. You will come to know that gap, and then you will know what this rishi means when he says, “I am not the body, I am not the senses, I am not the mind.” Go on, deep. Begin to look into your minding itself, into your mind process itself, and then you will begin to be aware that there is still a gap, between you and your mind.

Go on eliminating, and a moment comes when you explode into simple am-ness – without any I, without any self, without any selfhood – into pure authentic, existential being.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #15

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.

Sakshi Means the Witness – Osho

That which is aware of the creation and dissolution of the knower, the known and the knowable, but is itself beyond creation and dissolution is called the sakshi or the witnessing self.

That which dwells in the minds of all beings, from brahma(the creator) down to an ant, and which lives everlastingly even after the destruction of their gross and subtle bodies is called the kutastha or the crest indweller.

From among the kutastha and its different forms, the self, for the sake of the realization of its nature, permeates the body like a thread threading a necklace, and it is called antaryami or the imminent.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

Now, two more diseases, two more complexes, two more illusions. We discussed three in the night: mind, lust for life, and desiring. Now the fourth is sattva – it means virtue. It means an inner accumulation of being good.

This feeling of being good is also a disease – for so many reasons. One is: you cannot feel you are good, unless you feel others are bad. Mm? that’s impossible. You cannot feel you are good unless you feel others are bad, and the feeling that others are bad is a disease; the feeling of good is just a relative term. So a person who wants to feel good is bound to condemn others as bad; and the more you condemn others as bad, the more you can feel you are good. So these so-called good men go on condemning everyone.

Bertrand Russell has criticized Jesus for this reason. He says, “Everything is divine, everything looks holy, except one thing: why Jesus condemns the sinners so much – that they should be thrown into hell, and they should be condemned? Jesus cannot feel good unless he condemns.” I don’t think that Jesus ever condemned – a person like Jesus cannot condemn. The condemnation has come through the tradition; it is really St. Paul who speaks through Jesus, and he is one of the most deeply involved personalities who feels himself to be good. But whosoever it may be – whether Jesus says so, or St. Paul puts is in Jesus’ mouth – the criticism is valid.

A good man can never be good if he is condemning others as bad, but you can never feel good unless you condemn. So a good man must be unaware of his goodness; only then it is not a disease. He must not be aware at all that he is good; only then is he not aware that others are bad. No religion other than Hinduism has condemned even goodness – even goodness becomes a sin, because it is ego-strengthening. It feeds your ego – of course with very pure food. But sometimes poisons can also be pure, so purity in itself is not something to be hailed. Poisons can also be pure, and when the ego becomes strengthened by purity, by virtue, by being good, it is pure poison – it is dangerous. That’s why you can never feel at ease with any so-called good man. Around him there is always restlessness; no one can feel at ease. and unless you can feel at ease, the man is not good, not good at all.

So around mahatmas you cannot feel at ease – never. There is a very strained atmosphere, because their feeling of goodness can exist only if they create a very tense atmosphere around them. Everyone is bad, and they are on the high pedestal. Only they are good; everyone is bad.

That’s why two mahatmas condemn the other. They have always condemned. So only confirmed sinners, only persons who feel themselves inferior, who are suffering from an inferiority complex, can be around them. Two mahatmas cannot meet, because that is the meeting of two diseases, two strong egos – purified, poisonous. These are the pious sinners.

This disease must cease. Not that goodness is bad, but to feel good is bad, because to feel good is comparative; it is always in relation to someone else. And anything that is related to someone else is not of any worth for the inner journey. And man is so cunning and so deceptive that he can go on being cunning, he can go on being deceptive. He may change methods, he may change devices, but the basic disease remains the same.

For example, one can even boast of one’s humility. This is the deceptiveness: one can boast even of one’s humility, one can say, “There is no one more humble than me!” Now, through humility, ego is strengthened – I am again asserting my superiority in humility! But the contradiction is never seen. You can even say, “I am just a sinner,” and feel good about it.

Tolstoy remembers that once he went to a church early in the morning. The streets were dark and there was no one in the church, only Tolstoy. Then the richest person of the city came. He didn’t know that Tolstoy was there; Tolstoy was praying. This rich man began to pray and confess. He began to say, ‘I am one of the most fallen, deeply fallen, from the right path. I am a sinner. Forgive me” – and he began to relate his sins.

Tolstoy was just bewildered, because this man was known as one of the most virtuous. He listened silently; then the darkness withered away, and the rich man felt someone’s presence. He looked around and he saw that Tolstoy was there. So he said, “Were you here when I was confessing?” Tolstoy said, “I was already here. When you came, I was here; I was praying.” So the man said, “Look, I must make you aware of the fact that I have confessed to God, not to you. So please forget whatsoever I have said! And don’t talk about it in the city, because this was a dialogue between me and my God.”

This is the deceptiveness of the mind. Really, he is confessing so as to feel good. He is not authentic – he is not feeling that he is a sinner. By confessing his sins he is now feeling a very holy man. This is a disease.

The fifth disease is punya – the feeling of holiness, the feeling of serving others, the feeling of doing good to others. And there is a difference: To be good is one thing, and to feel that one is doing good to others, is another. Punya means doing good to others. There are so many do-gooders. Really, the world would be less confused and in less conflict if there were less do-gooders, because their do-gooding just creates more mischievousness in the world. They are not concerned with good at all, really. They are concerned to be doers of good – so anyhow they must do good.

Kirkpatrick has written a book; a very strange statement is in it. He says, “If there will be no poverty, then what will we do service to others?” So poverty must remain, because when you cannot do Service . . . And without service, these scriptures say, you cannot go to heaven. So if poverty is completely destroyed on the earth, then there is no bridge from the earth to the heaven. Kirkpatrick is a good man, and whatsoever he is saying, he means it. It is not just a statement, he means it. He feels it, that if there is no poverty, then how can you serve others? And service is such a necessary thing, that even poverty is needed for service to remain, it must remain.

This is a disease. Then service itself becomes the end, not the served one – he is irrelevant. There are social workers, servants of the people; and psychologists say, “It is their need really – not the need of the people. They cannot remain without doing good to someone else; they cannot remain without serving others. This is an occupation for them.” What will happen to them if a society is really there which needs no service? This has happened so many times.

Revolutionaries are chronic revolutionaries. By “chronic” I mean, if they succeed and their revolution succeeds, they become anti-revolutionary. Stalin had to face these revolutionaries, and he killed all of them. The phenomenon was that those revolutionaries were just chronic revolutionaries. A Trotskyite is a chronic revolutionary; he cannot be without a revolution around him. The revolution must be there; otherwise, where will the revolutionary be?

So there are only two possibilities; whenever there is a revolution, a social revolution, there are two possibilities. If the revolution succeeds, then there are two possibilities: either the revolutionary has to turn traditionalist and orthodox and anti-revolution, or he has to continue his revolution. Stalin chose the first alternative; he became one of the most orthodox minds possible. Not even a czar was such as Stalin was – he became a czar.

Trotsky chose the other, or was forced to choose the other. He continued to be a revolutionary. And how then can you be a revolutionary? You have to go against your own revolution. Trotsky made endeavors for this revolution, and then he was against it. He was trying for a proletarian dictatorship, and then he was against it. And Stalin was doing the same. Stalin, in a way, is more consistent; but he himself turned anti-revolutionary. He was for the revolution he had started, but then he became anti-revolutionary, because no revolution could now be allowed. So Russia, after the great revolution, has been the country without revolutions. So the chronic revolutionaries had to escape and they continued there.

If really, there is a society where no one needs your help and your do-gooding, your service and your revolution and reformation, then all these do-gooders will be just mad, insane – they cannot do anything.

This fifth disease doesn’t mean don’t do good to others – it doesn’t mean that – but don’t be a do-gooder. Let it be just a spontaneous thing. Don’t make it a plan, don’t seek it, don’t go for it; let it be just your spontaneous behavior. Whenever there is a situation, do whatsoever you feel; but don’t plan it, don’t make it a scheme. Don’t sacrifice yourself, because persons who sacrifice themselves are very dangerous: when they sacrifice themselves they begin to sacrifice others. And they have a right because they can say, “We have sacrificed ourselves, so now we have the right to sacrifice others.” They become violent. Persons who have been violent to themselves in doing good to others, ultimately turn to being violent to others. But now they have the credit of being good, and their violence can continue in the garb of being good. And when someone is good and violent, it is the most criminal, the deepest criminal combination.

If the father is good, then he can be a criminal to his son. If the mother is good, then she can be a criminal. This happens daily. Women are more good than men; not that there is any inner necessity, but they are more fearful of being bad, more suppressed. That’s why wives become dictatorial, because the husband feels a bit inferior. He is bad in many ways: he smokes, he drinks, he looks all around at other beautiful faces.

Then the wife becomes dictatorial; she becomes a do-gooder. Now she can sacrifice her husband; now she can virtually kill. And because she is good, the husband is just helpless – he cannot argue. Smoking is bad – of course; and he is smoking, so he is bad. And really, to smoke is not so bad as to feel good on account of someone smoking. It is deeply criminal . . . it is deeply criminal; it is very violent. This is the disease.

Don’t feel good on account of others, and don’t try to be a do-gooder. Be good, simply naturally. That is completely different. If someone feels restless around you, know that you are not a good man, just a do-gooder.

I have read somewhere about a Tibetan mystic, Milarepa. It is written that Milarepa was a saint, because sinners could feel at ease with him – at ease, totally at ease. There was no condemnation in his eyes, in his words, in his behavior. Really, a saint means this: one with whom sinners can feel at ease, friendly; otherwise, the do-gooder is there. That is the ego, and the ego is always destructive of others. And you can destroy in such good ways that you may not even be aware what you are doing. A good mother can destroy the whole life of the child, just by being good – too good.

This, the rishi says, is the fifth disease. And if one is identified with these five diseases, there comes into existence a personality which is not your being. That personality is known a lingasharir – the subtle personality.

This word “personality” is very meaningful. It is a Greek word; it is derived form “persona.” Persona means a mask. Actors use masks in Greek drama; that mask of the actors is known as persona. You are not that, but you use a mask and become that. Mm? You are not a lion, but you use a mask of a lion and you behave like a lion.

Personality is not your being, it is a mask. This mask is very subtle, and this mask is created by being identified with these five diseases. If you become totally identified, and feel that you are this – this disease of the mind, this disease of desiring, this disease of being good, this disease of being virtuous – if you begin to feel that you are a combination of all these five, these five classifications, then you create a persona, a personality. That personality is known as lingasharir – the subtle body. And behind this subtle body, lingasharir – behind this identification, behind this barrier – is the knower.

So to dissolve the personality, to withdraw yourself from the personality, to renounce the personality, is the essential renunciation. That is what is sannyas: to renounce . . . not the world, because how can you renounce the world? – It has never belonged to you. Mm? What nonsense talking about renouncing the world. When? When you are master of it? – it has never belonged to you. Really, again the trick of the ego: one says, “I renounce the world,” and feels very good that one has renounced the world. A beggar renouncing the empire, renouncing the throne, the palace – renouncing everything . . . It has never belonged to him, so how can he renounce it?

So really, a sannyasin doesn’t mean a person who renounces the world. A sannyasin means a person who renounces the personality – that belongs to you! You are the creator of it, so you can renounce it. Nothing else! You cannot renounce anything that doesn’t belong to you. The personality belongs to you; you can renounce it, but you can renounce only when you begin to be aware that you are not the personality. This is known as kshetragya, the knower of the field. The field is personality, and the knower, the center which becomes aware of this personality. If you become aware of the center, of the knower, then there is not difficulty in renouncing the personality. It is just a clothing, just a clothing, and very dirty and very diseased.

Now, three situational dimensions of the being: We discussed personalities; we discussed bodies; we discussed complexes of diseases. Now the enquiry into the being itself. What is the being? Behind all, beyond all, transcending all – what is the being itself? Three definitions have been given. One is called sakshi; sakshi means the witness. Another is called kutastha; kutastha means the eternal, the indestructible, the immortal. And the third is named antaryami: the innermost, the inner one. It is good and helpful for the seeker to understand these three definitions. They define the one and the same, but they define indifferent contexts.

First is the witness. This is the essential character, the essence, the very essence of the being. Whatsoever is named is never the knower; whatsoever is objectified is never the subject. The moment we know something, we are different form the known, from the object, because the knower cannot be the known, the observer cannot be the observed. A distance is created by knowledge, by knowing. Knowing is the bridge between the known and the knower.

The being is not, and never is the known; it is always the knower – always and always the knower. Whatsoever you know, remember one thing certainly – that you are not that. This much is certain, that whatsoever you have known and experienced, you are not that. That’s why the Upanishads say, “Neti, neti – not this not that.” Whatsoever you say, the Upanishads say, “No, not this, not that – never!” This is the nature of the being; it always transcends objects. It is pure subjectivity, and this pure subjectivity can never be turned into any object. So in a way, you can never know yourself in the same way as you have known all else. So “self-knowledge” is in a way, a very contradictory word, because really the self cannot be made an object of knowledge. But still, self-knowledge exists. But that knowledge has to be defined and guarded, and defined in a specific way. Self-knowledge means: where all knowledge stops. Self-knowledge means: where there is no self.

Self-knowledge means: the knower is not, the known is not, the knowledge is not. But when I say that you are never the known, then one thing must be understood: if you are not the known, how can you be the knower – because the knower is just in reference to the known. The knower is just in reference to the known. If you are never the object, how can you be called a subject? – because subject means in relation to object; it means the other end of the object. That’s why the Upanishads say, “It is just a witness – not even a knower.”

It witnesses all the three: the known, knowledge, the knower. They come up, they dissolve, and the witnesser remains. It will be better not to call it even a “witnesser,” but a witnessing, because when we say “witnesser,” a subtle crystallization comes into the world, a subtle feeling of the ego and “I.” So it is better to say “witnessing.” Then there is simply a process of knowledge without any ego, without any “I” crystallizing it.

And then in the world, there are not things, but processes. This is the difference between a materialist and a spiritualist. This! – a materialist sees in the world, and a spiritualist sees in the world events – not things. The difference is not whether matter is or not; the difference is not whether mind is or not. The difference is basically this: a spiritualist sees in the world energy, processes – energy processes, events, alive events – not dead things.

Now physicists are ready to accept this as far as matter is concerned. They say now, “There is no matter. Matter is dead; matter is not there – only energy waves, only quanta, only processes.” Even a stone is just a process, it is not static; it is dynamic, it is moving. Not only is a river moving, the Himalayas also.

A Zen fakir, Bankei, has said, “I have not seen only rivers moving, I have seen bridges also moving. And once it happened that the river was not moving, and the bridge was moving.” He means by this that there are not things – static, dead – but movement, continuous processes, waves and waves and waves; and each wave is turning into the other. This is what is meant by a spiritual attitude.

So matter is energy, waves. Inside also there is no knower as fixed, as “I,” because the ego is a thing – dead. So it is better to call it not the witnesser, but witnessing – with no center really, just a process.

Buddha says, “There is rebirth, but you are not.” So how can rebirth be? Ordinary logic will say, “How can rebirth be? If you are not, if there is no ego to be reborn, then how is rebirth possible?” Buddha says, it is just a process – a process just like a flamelike process. In the evening you see the flame: the lamp is burning and there is a flame. In the morning you blow it out. You say, “I am blowing out the same flame.” Buddha says not, because the flame is constantly changing. It is a process, it is not a thing, so it cannot be the same. In the evening you saw one thing; this is something else – flame has been constantly changing and going into nothingness, and new flames are being replaced continuously.

It is continuity. The flame is not a thing, it is a continuity. Every moment the flame is changing, so whatsoever you are blowing out is not the same flame you saw in the night. It is the same continuity – a continuum.

Witnessing is there just like a flame.

It is a continuum.

This is the first situational definition. The rishi talks about it first, because it can be made a means; it can be used as a device; it can become a vehicle towards your being, your center.

The second is kutastha; it means: the eternal, the immortal, that which cannot be destroyed, indestructible. What can be destroyed really? What is destructible? – only the form and the name, namrup. Within these two words is the whole Eastern standpoint: namrup – name and form – can be destroyed, are destructible. Your name can be changed and your form – nothing else.

The ice is transforming itself into water, and the water is evaporating. What changes? – not the essence, but only the form and the name. Now it is ice; now it is water; now it is vapor. What is changing? The essence remains the same, but the name and form change.

This whole world is just name and form. Everything is changing: the child becoming the adult; the adult becoming the old man; life turning into death; birth turning into death; health turning into disease; disease turning into health – everything is changing. Even opposites are not really opposites, because they can change into one another. The north becomes the south, the south becomes the north. The east is also the west, and the west is also the east. It depends. It depends on where you are looking.

Someone asked Mulla Nasruddin, “Where is your house on the road? On the left or on the right?” He said, “It depends: sometimes it is on the left, and sometimes it is on the right. It depends from where you are coming.”

Life is a movement, but name and form change; the essence remains the same. But when I say the essence remains the same, I don’t mean it is a static thing. I mean it is a dynamic force, but still the same. Dynamic and the same must be remembered; otherwise, God becomes just a static phenomenon – dead, with no opening.

Kutastha doesn’t mean a dead thing, it means a dynamic force, essentially remaining the same, but changing its name and form all the time. Beyond name and form, the essential one is known as the kutastha. If you destroy everything – every form and every name – the remaining is the kutastha. If all my five bodies are destroyed, if all my five diseases are destroyed, then the remaining will be the kutastha – that is the essential being which cannot be destroyed. This always is.

This is the end definition; the first one was a means definition. If you proceed by being a witness, you will reach the kutastha, the eternal, but both are far away. Neither we are using witnessing, nor are we standing in the eternal. Then it is, therefore, the third definition: it is called antaryami, the innermost.

This definition belongs to us here and now, as we are. A link must exist between the kutastha, the eternal, and us; otherwise, there can be no traveling towards it, no journey towards it. Somehow, we must be linked in all these bodies, in all these diseases, in all these ignorances. Still the innermost being is here; it is just hidden. it is hidden just like the thread of the beads: the beads are apparent, but the thread is hidden. You cannot see directly, immediately; you have to make a gap between two beads, and then suddenly in the gap is the thread – the innermost running force, the innermost running energy.

So whenever one has to go deep into oneself, one has to make a gap between two diseases or between two bodies or between two thoughts. Wherever you can create a gap between two things inside you, suddenly you become aware of the thread.

For example, there are thoughts in the mind – continuously one thought is followed by another. Bring a gap between two thoughts. There IS a gap, because two thoughts cannot exist without a gap: an interval is a basic necessity. One thought is followed by another, but there is a subtle gap. Be aware of the gap.

We are aware only of the thoughts. From one thought we jump to another, and the gap is lost. Remain in the gap, stand in the interval, slow down your thought process and you will feel a gap. One thought has gone, another has yet to come – there is a gap, a sudden silence. In this silence you will become aware of the thread; that thread is known as antaryami. It is here and now, and we cannot proceed otherwise; we have to proceed from here and now.

So antaryami is the definition for us. Then sakshi, witnessing is the method; then kutastha, the eternal one is the end.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #10

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

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

That Moment becomes the Door to the Divine – Osho

Grouping of mind, vital breath, desire, essence and virtue with the associates is called panchvarga, or the five groups. A living being identified with the nature of the panchvarga cannot be free of them without knowledge or knowing.

The disease arising out of the subtle elements like the mind and the rest of it seems to be covering the self, and it is called the seed body, it is also known as the knot, or complex of the heart. And the consciousness dwelling inside is called the kshetragya, or the knower of the field.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

Now the rishi is discussing the complexities of the mind, complexities of the consciousness. Why are we just a complexity? Why is there no innocence and no simplicity? Why is everything just a knot, just a confusion, just insanity inside?

If we can open a mind, then we will see just anarchy there, chaos. We go on somehow managing ourselves, but inside there is nothing which can be said to be a cosmos. Inside there is chaos, simple chaos. This is a miracle that we can manage ourselves; it seems impossible. How are these complexes built? How are they formed? How do we help them form? And how many complexes are there?

There are five divisions of all the complexes. The first complex is the mind. Eastern mysticism has always looked at mind as the disease, as the basic disease. It is just the opposite from the Western attitude towards life. The Greek mind, which is the originator of all Western thinking, always looked towards the mind as the supreme-most thing. Mind is the peak according to the Greek attitude, Greek thinking.

For Aristotle, mind is the peak, mind is the most evolved energy. But to the Eastern mind, mind has been a disease. That’s why the East couldn’t develop science, because if mind is diseased then you cannot develop science really, because science has to be developed with the mind.

The Greek mind could give the impetus to the Western mental evolution, so they could create a very complex structure of science and scientific knowledge. The structure has arrived; the structure is there now, but the consciousness, the human being itself, is lost. It has been at a very big cost. Machines have evolved, but the creator itself is just feeling empty and meaningless. Technology has developed, and now we can create with this technology a very different world – but the very interest to create a different world is no more there.

Sartre or Camus or others – they all feel that there is no sense in existing at all, there is no meaning. Sartre says we are condemned to be alive; there is no need, there is no purpose, nothing is going to come out of all this effort, it is just futile. So Camus asserts that the only philosophical problem, the only metaphysical problem now is suicide. The only possibility for us in which we can be free and active, seems to be suicide; all else is just meaningless.

This has to happen, because with mind, ultimately there can be only madness and suicide. With mind, ultimately there can be only meaninglessness and an effort to forget it. So the whole of the West is now trying to forget – through chemicals, through alcohol, through so many methods, to forget themselves. Life is so meaningless that to be aware is to be in suffering. To know it – the misery all around, the suffering all around, and the meaninglessness of it – to be aware of it is too much; it creates anguish. So it is better to forget it somehow and drop into a world of dreaming.

Chemicals can help. You drop out of the world, and they say to you “turn on.” Where do you turn on? You turn on really to a dream world; there you can find meaning; there you can find purpose. There you can find again the romance and poetry, but not when you are awake, aware, conscious. And they say these chemicals are helping the expansion of consciousness. This is absurd. They are not helping the expansion of consciousness, they are helping only the expansion of the dreaming process. They are only helping you to dream more beautifully, more deeply, to dream more intensely. They are not helping consciousness; they are helping unconsciousness. They are helping deep processes of sushupti – of sleep and dreaming.

This had to happen, because with the mind you cannot go beyond this point. With mind there is no meaning; there cannot be. With mind there is logic, but no meaning; with mind there is reason, but no life. With mind you can create the dead and mechanical, but you completely lose track of existence, of life, of being, of consciousness.

Mind, this rishi says, is the first disease, the basic disease in a way. Why is mind a disease? – because mind is just a disturbance. Mind is just a disturbance in consciousness. It is not your nature; it is just a disturbance. The moment there is no disturbance, there is no mind. And this state of no-mindedness is the state of consciousness – the expansion of consciousness. You drop into yourself: not into dreaming, not into projections, into yourself. Consciously, with full alertness, you come to your center the moment mind is not there.

Meditation means how to be not a mind.

How to be not a mind!

Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness.

It doesn’t mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.

With mind one goes on being disturbed more and more, and then this whole process of disturbance is self-perpetuating. One disturbance creates ten more, and those ten create a hundred more. This is self-perpetuating, and then you are in a vicious circle. With this mind something can be done. That is, you can travel outwardly, you can go more into the world. But the more you go into the world the farther you are from yourself. And the farther you have gone, the more the track back is lost. Then you only remember that there is a home, but there is no way to get back. And we continue to remember there is a home; there is a homesickness always somewhere present. There is a home and one has to go back.

But there is no way, and we continually try to find the home with the mind itself, which has lead us astray. Then we go into scriptures, then we go into words, then we go into philosophies, metaphysical systems. And then we are lost even more in it, even more deeply, and the track is not found at all. The track can be found only if you begin to feel and understand that mind is the disease, so you cannot go back with the mind; the mind cannot be used as a vehicle, it cannot be used as a passage. It is not a door towards consciousness. It is a door towards the world, towards objects – not towards the subjectivity. That’s why it is said to be a disease, a complex.

The second is prana, life itself; rather than life, the lust for life. There is a deep fear – fear of death – and there is a deep lust to continue anyhow, to live anyhow. Life itself seems to be the end.

Life cannot be the end itself; if life itself is the end, then one will have to exist on the periphery.

Something must transcend life itself; something must be higher than life itself; otherwise, life can have no meaning. If you say that life itself is the end, then life is bound to be meaningless, because meaning comes from the beyond – always from the beyond. Something for which you exist gives the meaning – that’s why we create many so-called meanings all around us.

Money becomes the meaning because you live for it; power becomes the meaning, prestige becomes the meaning. You create meanings, but those are just bogus meanings – because really, if life is at peril, you will be ready to lose power, money, everything. So you just deceive yourself, but those deceptions can never become the reality. Life remains above them; they are not beyond, they cannot be. That’s why in the West, there are so many feelings of frustration and meaninglessness. That’s an obvious corollary of life being taken as the end.

Life originates in something and then again dissolves into something. Life comes up and then goes down and is dissolved. So the original source of life must be beyond life. It comes out of it and the goes back, just as a wave raises itself and then falls down into the ocean; the ocean remains beyond the wave. The wave comes and goes; it is there this moment, and the next it is gone. The ocean is behind, beyond.

Life is just a wave. Existence is beyond life.

So one who begins to be too involved and too attached, too infatuated with life, loses the existential source of life itself.

Life is just the periphery:

The center is existence.

We have called that existence God.

We have called that existence moksha.

We have called that existence nirvana.

This is something very delicate to be understood. Really, we have never said that God exists. We have said, rather, God is existence. Those who say God exists don’t know what they are saying.

Man exists; God cannot exist in the same way. Trees exist, the earth exists, the sun exists, but not God. A tree may go out of existence, man may not exist, the sun may not exist, but God cannot be conceived as not existing. God is existence; God is is-ness. So really, to say God is, is to repeat oneself.

God means is; God means is-ness.

That is-ness is beyond life.

Life is just a wave on the ocean of is-ness. So we are separate as waves, but not as the ocean. We are separate on our peripheries, but not at the center. At the center we are one. So many waves on the ocean, but in the ocean they are one.

But no wave will be able to conceive it, because it seems so absurd. How can a wave conceive that all the waves around are one with it? – because when another wave is just rising up, one is just dying and falling down. If waves are one, then they must fall simultaneously, they must rise simultaneously. That’s why we are the same. If we are all the same, then how is one rich and how is one poor? Then how is one young and how is one old? And how is one born and how is one dying? – we must be separate, obviously. Then how is one intelligent and one is not? And one is beautiful and one is not? – we must be different, we must be separate. But we are not. There are small waves and there are big waves; there are waves which go higher, there are waves which cannot go higher. But still they are the same – in the ocean they are the same.

f you are aware only of your wavelike life, then you cannot go inside; then this becomes a disease.

And if you are aware that you are a wave, then you must be afraid – you are bound to be afraid of death, of dying, because every wave has to die. You can see that every wave is dying – coming up and down – so you are afraid. This fear comes because you have not known the oceanic existence which is yours; you have known only the wave existence which means life, which means prana.

So, the rishi says the second bondage, the second complexity, the second division of diseases, is lust for life. What does it mean?

It means if one is to go deeply into existence, one has to be ready to die. This readiness to die is the basic quality of a religious mind. This is what constitutes the very essential core of being religious: this readiness to die. This doesn’t mean a suicidal tendency. This doesn’t mean any suicidal tendency, because really all those who commit suicide, commit suicide because of lust for life. This may look paradoxical – but never has a buddha committed suicide, never! Why?

A person who is not in the least lusting for life, desiring life, why is he not committing suicide? Buddha would say, “I am so indifferent to life, I cannot be so infatuated with death. How can I be so infatuated with death? To me, they both mean the same. If life is – okay. If death is – okay.” A buddha okays everything. He cannot choose.

Whenever someone commits suicide, really, he is imposing conditions on life. He is saying life must be like this; otherwise, I commit suicide. “I must get this woman, I must get this post, I must get this and that. If I am not getting, I can live only with my conditions. Then if there is no fulfillment of my conditions, I am ready to die.” Really this readiness to die is not readiness to die. He is asking too much. He is asking too much of life, and out of life; he is so filled with lust that he is even imposing conditions. This death is just a revenge, just a revenge towards life, because life could not fulfill his demands: “I will destroy life if life is not going to be what I desire it to be!” This is revenge, this is violence.

So when I say readiness for death, it means no lust for life, so that whatsoever comes, one is always in a welcoming attitude, in a receptivity. Whatsoever happens, one is ready – even death. Lust for life is the disease. This readiness, simple readiness to die, unties the lust for life.

The third complexity is that of desires. We don’t live in existence; we live in desires. Really, we don’t live in the world at all, we live in desires. Our life is not here and now, it is always somewhere else where the desire is arrowed. It may be anywhere, but it is never here. Never here, because desire needs time – desire cannot be here.

Can you desire anything in the present moment? The moment you desire, you desire for the future; you cannot desire here and now. Here and now there is no desire, there is no possibility of desiring.

Desire needs space – that space is time.

Desire needs some point somewhere else from here – only then can desire exist. It exists as a bridge: a bridge needs two banks, a bridge cannot exist only on this bank. How can the bridge exist? There must be the other; the other bank must be there. Only then does the bridge become possible.

Desire is creating a bridge from here to there.

And the moment you have gone there and lost this moment, you will live always in an inner tension, inner anguish. And really you will never be existential; you will always be in desires, in desires, in desires – always longing for the other shore. Even if you can get to the other shore, you will be again longing for the other shore. No shore can be the fulfillment – desire is self-frustrating. We are nothing but desires. Can you find anything in you which is not a desire? Even when you are praying, it is desire; even when you are meditating, it is a desire; even when you are thinking of the divine, it is a desire. We convert everything into desire. This is the disease, that we cannot conceive of anything without desire.

Buddha used to say, “There is no God.” And he was himself one of the most existential proofs of the divine. He was the perfect argument for the divine; his presence was divine. And he used to say there was no God. One day, Sariputta asked him, “Why do you continue to say there is no God? – because we all feel that when you are, God is. It seems contradictory, a person like you denying God. It seems contradictory because you are the proof, you are enough! We don’t require any argument, but why do you deny it?”

Buddha said, “I deny it because I don’t like God being made an object of desire. If I say God is, you will begin to desire: ‘Then I must get, then I must reach.’ And God is something which you cannot desire, and by desiring cannot get.”

People would ask him, “Is there existence beyond death?” And he would say, “No, there is no existence beyond death.” Why? – simply because if there is existence beyond death, you will begin to desire it.

They would ask, “Is there bliss? Is bliss possible?”

Buddha would say, “No. There is only the cessation of misery, no bliss.”

He was one of the rarest geniuses to see the phenomenon of desiring, the tricks of desiring, and the cunningness of desiring. He would say, “No, there is no bliss at all; only cessation of suffering.” Why? – because if bliss is positively asserted, one begins to desire it.

We convert everything into desiring. We have a mechanism for converting and transforming anything. Put anything into it, and it becomes a desire. We can even desire desirelessness. I have come across people who come and say, “How can I be desireless?” How to be desireless –

they are asking for the supreme-most desire – how to be desireless! But we go on converting. This is the disease; really, this is the disease.

Look at the disease, look at the fact, and don’t ask the “how.” Look at the fact: this is the fact. Live with the fact. Be aware of your mind’s mechanism, and how it transforms everything into desiring.

In that moment of awareness, desiring stops.

And when there is no desiring, you are just here – this very moment. That moment becomes the door to the infinite.

That moment becomes the door to the divine – to nirvana.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #9

That Moment Becomes the Door to the Divine is from the evening talk, The Very Awareness is Transformation 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.

The Very Awareness is Transformation – Osho

In the context of pleasure and pain, the desire for pleasurable things is called the sense of pleasure, and aversion to painful things is called the sense of pain. And because of what one does to gain pleasure and shun pain, one is called a doer.

Sound, touch, form, taste and smell – these five objects are causes of pleasure and pain. When the self, in pursuit of virtuous and sinful acts, identifies itself with the body, which it is not, then it is called the diseased being.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

Why this bondage with the body and bodies? What is the secret? How are we in it, and why do we continue to be in it? Why is it such a struggle to go beyond? If bliss is inwards, and outwardly we cannot achieve anything other than anguish, then why this absurdity of living outward and outward? Why not go inward? Who is preventing you?

You are the prisoner.

And you are the imprisoned.

No one else is involved in it – No one except you, yourself.

Then why not take the jump?

There must be something which hinders you, which prevents you, which becomes a barrier to you. What is that? This rishi says that the longing for pleasure, the fear of misery, and the fear of pain are the root causes – the longing for pleasure and the effort to avoid any pain, any suffering, any dukha. And the illusion is created because pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, are not two things, are not two opposites; they are two polarities of one phenomenon, two ends of one phenomenon.

They are joined and one. That’s why pleasure turns into misery; they are convertible. Anything that you feel as pleasurable this moment may become unpleasurable the next. So pleasure and pain are not qualities of a thing, because the thing remains the same. I love you and feel happy; you remain the same. And the next moment, I hate you and feel miserable. But happiness and misery are not qualities of you, you remain the same. They must belong to my mind, to my attitude; they must belong to me.

That’s why the same thing can be a source of deep happiness to one, and a deep source of misery to someone else. The same thing can be a source of happiness to you this moment, and the next moment a source of your very hell. Pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering are not qualities of things as we presume; they are not. They are your attitudes – they belong to you.

So try an experiment: You are feeling happy in some situation – then be in that situation and begin to feel unhappy. And soon, soon you will begin to feel unhappy – it depends on your choice. Your beloved is nearby; you are feeling happy – now begin to feel unhappy, and soon you will be able to create unhappiness. Begin to feel happy, and soon you will change the whole situation – it depends on you.

Once you know the secret, the whole clinging drops – with pleasure or with fear of pain, the whole clinging just drops. The moment you know you are the master – whether to feel happy or to feel miserable depends on you – you become free of all dependence on others. But one has to know, one has to experience.

Things are just neutral; they don’t give you anything. It is you who contributes the feeling – not the thing. Really, you determine the whole thing unconsciously; that is why there is clinging. Determine it consciously.

Try an experiment. You are feeling very pained, suffering, you are ill. Then accept the illness; don’t fight it, remain in it, be a companion to it – don’t try to escape. Accept it totally, be with it, and soon a moment comes when you explode into a new dimension. The illness may be there still, but now it belongs only to the body, not to you. It is just on the periphery somewhere, as if it belongs to someone else – you have transcended.

Once the consciousness begins to feel that there is no bondage from the outside, then the longing for pleasure drops, because it is your projection. Then the fear of suffering drops, because it is your projection. In a very subtle way you become the master, the converter. You can convert anything into anything, because it is only your choice, your decision, your mind. Whatsoever you put into things you can get back – it is really just an echo.

You fall in love with someone, and if I ask you why, you will say, “Because the face is beautiful, the person is beautiful.” But really the thing is quite the reverse. It is not that the person is beautiful and so you have fallen in love; rather, because you have fallen in love the person looks beautiful. Your falling in love is primary, and the second thing is just a projection, because the same person can become ugly the next day – he remains the same with the same face, but everything has changed. This happens so often but still we are unaware. You say, “I cannot live without you!” And soon a moment comes when you cannot live with him. Why? – because you have not taken things in the right order.

You fall in love – that means you begin to project; love is a hypnosis. Love is a very delicate state of mind in which you can project anything – anything! So the beloved is not really there outside, it is here inside. It is a projection, and the person is just a screen. And you have projected much, you have contributed much. The moment you withdraw your contribution, the person is just ordinary. There is no halo around, no aura; everything has just dropped. The person is just ordinary, even more ordinary than ordinary, because now, it is so without luster. Now dreams have dropped, and dreams were the thing the whole stuff was made of.

Remember this fact: It is your mind which begins to feel happy or miserable – it depends on you. And once you know the secret, you have become really the master. Now you know the alchemy; you are the alchemist now, you can change any base metal into the higher. Now, you have the secret to turn anything into gold – now you can convert. And once you begin to convert base metals into higher metals, nothing is higher and nothing base. Now you know it is just you and your projection – your mind is doing the whole trick.

But one has to do much to be aware of this fact; one has to go deep into the facticity, into the very phenomenon of desiring, of avoiding, of longing for this and trying to escape that – one has to go deep into it. And it is not a doctrine – whatsoever the rishi is saying is not a doctrine – it is not a conception really; it is the facticity. It is how the mechanism of the mind works; it is just a fact. It is not a philosophy; it is a science in the sense that it is how the mind works. You project first, then you begin to believe. Then any moment you can withdraw your projection and the idol is lost, the temple is destroyed, and there is nothing left. But again, you will do the same thing, and you will go on doing the same thing: projecting, then feeling miserable or happy, and never being aware that you are creating – that you are the creator.

Everyone is a magician – everyone is a magician, and everyone goes on doing tricks with himself. Then these tricks become habits, mechanical habits; you can repeat them ad infinitum. And we have repeated them ad infinitum – lives and lives and lives. We have been repeating them always.

Buddha and Mahavira both tried a very novel experiment with the human mind. Whenever someone would come to them, seeking, they would tell the seeker, “First, try to remember your past lives. First, go deep into past lives.” But the seeker would say, “There is no need. I am concerned with the future; I am concerned with how to know the truth, how to realize the divine, how to be liberated, how to get to nirvana. What is the need of going into past lives?”

And Buddha would say, Mahavira would say, “There is a deep need. Unless you know your past, you will never be able to see that you have been playing tricks with yourself, continually, repeatedly. In each life you have done the same. It is a repetition: the same love – the falling in love and then frustration; riches, and then the feeling of inner poverty; prestige and power, and yet the helplessness. And the same!”

But we forget. Every life we drop all memories and we forget, and we begin anew. Esoteric science says that this forgetfulness is intentional. It is intentional that you have forgotten your past lives, because you wanted to forget. Psychologists say that you forget all that you want to forget. Sometimes you say, “I know your name, but I wonder why I have forgotten it.” Really, you wanted to forget. You are playing tricks with yourself; you wanted to forget; you never wanted to remember the name – that’s why you have forgotten.

We go on forgetting things. For example: Everyone remembers childhood as the very heaven, but it has never been so. Ask any child – he is in a hell. He is trying to grown up rapidly, trying to be a young man soon, because he feels very helpless. Everyone is more powerful than him, and everyone is suppressing him; everyone is just trying to destroy him. Everyone is just ordering him to do this and that; everyone is trying to discipline him. He is not at all free, he is feeling he is in prison and trying to get away soon from all this – trying to be a grown-up. But when he is grown-up he says, “What bliss it was to be a child.”

And when he is old, he is remembering childhood, painting about it, making poetries about it, dreaming about it. What has happened? – the trick of the mind. He has forgotten all that was not good to remember; now, he remembers only the good things, and all else has been just dropped. Now he remembers the love; now he remembers the freedom from all responsibilities; now he remembers… it was never a fact!

Whatsoever he felt as total helplessness, now he feels as freedom from responsibility. Whatsoever he has really felt in the past as a very bothersome burden of the parents, now he feels as love. He has dropped all that was not good, not ego strengthening, not creating a beautiful image – he has dropped it all.

Bring that man into deep hypnosis and ask him, “How was your childhood?” And he will begin to say that it was just hell. Awake, out of hypnosis, he says, “It was a heaven; I am longing again and again to go back.” Put him into hypnosis, then ask, and he will say, “It was just hell. There was nothing in my childhood.”

Psychologists have come to know now that all the misery, all the diseases, all the schizophrenia, all the insanity that develops later in life, is just a by-product of your childhood. So how was it a heaven? They say all that happens later on is just a by-product of your childhood. In your childhood, seeds are put into you which will develop into insanities, into abnormal perversions.

But the poets have always been talking about the innocence of childhood, the beauty of it, the benediction, the blessedness.

Psychoanalysts know more, and better. Whenever someone is ill, they have to bring out this very seed that has been planted in childhood. Unless that seed is destroyed – that seed is traumatic – unless it is destroyed you can never be really well. So psychoanalysis goes on trying to make you free from your childhood and all its impressions, all that childhood has done with you. If you are free from it, only then you can grow positively; otherwise, positive growth is impossible.

Buddha and Mahavira will say, “First go deep” – and there are methods. There are methods which can bring you back all the memories of your past lives. And once you know and go back on this time track, once you know that you have done the same nonsense every time, and you have longed for the same things, and always received quite the opposite . . . This has been a wheel constantly turning and turning and turning, and always forgetting and forgetting, and doing the same thing again and again. If one becomes aware of it, the very awareness becomes transforming.

The very awareness is transformation.

It is an inner revolution.

But leave aside past lives; even this life is enough – if you can go back in this very life and can find out that whatsoever was happiness one day became misery the other, that whatsoever you longed for, when you achieved it, was totally frustrating…. One of the greatest miseries of human life is to get that which you long for. If you never get it you are still happy, happy in the hope, happy in the possibility. But when you get it, even hope is lost. Now there is no future – you have got it.

Every achievement is frustrating. They say, “Nothing succeeds like success.” But I say, “Nothing fails like success.”

Nothing fails like success.

The moment you succeed, you know nothing has been achieved. It was just a dream, and now you are disillusioned.

So go back in this life, even this life is enough; go back and feel. Really we always go to the future, never to the past; we always go for the tomorrow, never for the yesterday. Go back and feel, go back. You have lived with the same desires, with the same longing, with the same dreams. Now take account of your past – what have you achieved? What have you gained? Was any hope ever fulfilled, or has every hope just proved hopeless? – go back. Don’t always move into the future, because in the future you will be doing the same – repeating the past. Go back. Realize your whole past; feel what has been wrong with it and don’t continue that wrong again. Drop it. Drop it consciously because it has become a habit now, it has become a mechanical routine. Drop it consciously!

Don’t repeat the past in the future, and you will be a new man.

This is what I mean by sannyas, by renunciation – to be a new man. This is what I mean by “breaking with the past,” discontinuity with the past. Remember what you have done with yourself in the past, and then drop it! Don’t drop it in steps, because you can never drop anything in steps – drop it totally, suddenly. Only then there is a discontinuity; otherwise, if you drop it in steps, there is a continuity.

Drop it suddenly.

This is what is meant by sannyas: Dropping the past as useless for the future.

This is a reorientation of all your attitudes, a reorientation of your total consciousness. Once this reorientation is there, you begin a new journey, and that journey is inwards. Then you can pass all the five bodies and come to the one which is embodied, but is not a body itself.

Why does consciousness become so involved with the body – not only involved, but identified? Why do we begin to feel that we are the bodies? – not that we are in the bodies, but we are the bodies?

This is really a miracle, because the knower can never be the known; the observer, the source of consciousness, can never be identified with the object. This body we know as an object; this hand I know, I feel, as an object. I never feel . . . I Can never feel it as me. It is always something outside – an object. It hurts, I know; it doesn’t hurt, I know – but I remain the knower.

But why does it happen that the knower becomes the known? How? How does the subject become the object? It cannot become really – that is impossible; becoming is impossible. The subject can never become the object – but it appears, it appears that it has become the object. We have become the bodies, and we go on living as if we are bodies.

Vahinger, a western philosopher has written a very strange book. The book is called The Philosophy of “As-if.” Really, this is our whole lives. We behave as if we are bodies; we behave as if we are material. We behave always not as we are, but as if – the “as if” is always there. How does this happen? – this which is impossible – how does this impossibility happen? What is the key? What is the clue?

The clue is very simple. The logic in the trick is very simple. You begin to be identified with anything which is pleasurable, because if you feel identified with the pleasure, you can feel more pleasure. If you do not feel identified with pleasure, then you cannot feel the pleasure at all, really. So the lover begins to feel identified with the beloved, the friend with the friend, the father with his son, the mother with her son; they begin to feel identified. The mother feels as if she is living in the son, and that if the son succeeds, the mother succeeds. If the son achieves, the father achieves. Then the son becomes just an extended part of the father’s ego.

With whatsoever we feel as pleasure, we begin to be identified. The moment the son becomes rebellious or becomes a criminal, the father tries to destroy the identification. He says, “Now, no more. You don’t belong to me at all.” Why? Why does the son belong at all?

I have a friend – he is an old man, an old politician, with many ambitions unfulfilled, obviously. A politician can never feel fulfilled, mm? That is intrinsically impossible. He is now seventy-five. His son died; he was only forty, but he was a minister in a state.

The son was a minister; this old man could never be a minister; he had tried in every way. And now he says, “There were many chances but I just escaped; I never wanted to be in any post.” He had tried everything possible, but now he says that he is beyond. But his son was a minister . . . he had two sons – one was just ordinary; the second was extraordinary. The old man has never felt identified with the first son – never. His identity was with the second one, who was a minister. Then the second son died, and this old man began to feel that he could not live anymore.

He came to me and asked, “What to do? I think of committing suicide, I cannot live anymore. My son has died; my young son has died, and I am old and I am still . . . It is not good – the father should die first.”

I asked him, “Had your son been a criminal, bad, evil, unsuccessful, would you have felt the same?” He pondered over it and said, “No.” Then I told him, “It is not the death of the son which has become so significant to you, really – it is your death, your ambition’s death.”

I asked him, “If your other son dies, will you commit suicide?” He said, “I have never loved him at all. He is just ordinary.” He has loved his ambition, not the son. The other son is as much a son, but there has been no communication between the two, never. They have not even talked. He said, “No, if he had not been up to my conceptions I would not have felt like this.”

The ego begins to be identified with something which is pleasurable. And this is the logic of our minds, the logic of this whole illusion, that we feel that our body is the source of pleasure. Of course, there are pains and there are sufferings, but we always transfer pains and sufferings to others. Suffering is always created by someone else, mm?

Jean-Paul Sartre has said – and said a very beautiful thing, but of course absolutely nonsense. He has said, “The other is hell.” The other is hell, always the other is hell. Oneself? – it is heaven, the very heaven. The other is the hell – this is the division, the bifurcation.

We continue to be identified with the body because we feel this is the source of pleasure. Whenever someone else’s body becomes the source of pleasure, we begin to be identified with that also. But always, pain comes from someone else; suffering comes from someone else. With this trick, this deep involvement in identification becomes possible.

The truth, the fact, is quite different: the body is both or neither. Either it is both the source of pain and pleasure . . . Remember this; it is both, because it cannot be one or the other. Pleasure and pain are one. Your body is the source of both. If you can feel this and realize this, then they both negate each other; the pain and the pleasure both negate each other and the body becomes neutral. Or, feel that pleasure and pain both come from outside, both are devices. They both come from outside; don’t divide, take them as a whole. Then also there is no identification with the body; the body is neutral.

And if the body is neutral, this rishi says you become a soul; otherwise, you are a conditioned soul. And this conditioned soul is the bondage; this conditioning is the bondage. And the rishi says this is the only disease, the spiritual disease: to be conditioned so much, identified so much with the body that one begins to feel as if one is the body.

This “as if” must be broken.

But it begins to be difficult. One feels to break it, but it looks impossible, because we have investments in it. We can break it if someone can make us confident that “if you break this body consciousness, you will be very happy and blissful” – then we can break it. But again, the old fallacy goes on, the old longing goes on. So I am not saying that if you want happiness, then break this conditioning and identification with the body, because you cannot break it. Rather, be aware of the fact that happiness or misery both will always remain side by side; you cannot leave one and choose the other. That is not possible. They are just like negative and positive poles of electricity; they are two parts of one phenomenon.

So be aware of this, that they are two parts of one phenomenon. Then you can just drop them without any further longing.

You cannot drop anything if there is a desire to gain something else; then that desire is again desire for happiness, pleasure. Be aware of the fact that both are one; pleasure and pain are one. Your interpretation differs, but the thing is always the same. This awareness of the fact becomes the dropping, the turning. And the soul, for the first time, realizes that it has never been identified with any object at all; it is the subjectivity.

Kierkegaard has said, “To know the subjectivity as the subjectivity is the realization. To know the subjectivity as an object is the bondage.”

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #8

The Very Awareness is Transformation is from the morning talk, That Moment Becomes the Door to the Divine is from the evening 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.

The Fifth Body is Known as the Bliss Body – Osho

When the self – living inside the food body – and the vital body thinks through the instrumentality of the fourteen organs like mind, et cetera, about objects like sound, smell, touch et cetera it is called the manomaya kosha or the mental body.

When the self, united with these three bodies, knows through intelligence, it is called the vigyanmaya kosha or the knowing body.

When the self, in union with these four bodies – food body, vital body, mental body and the knowing body – dwells in its primeval and causative ignorance it is called the anandamaya kosha or the bliss body.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

In the morning we discussed two bodies: the physical, and the vital. The third is known as the mental body, as the mind-body. This third is constituted of thoughts. But the science of yoga believes that thoughts are not only thoughts, they are things, they are substantial; they are. They have an existence of their own – a very subtle existence, but there is existence. So whenever a thought goes into you, you are changing your mind-body; you are giving food to it.

And we are so unaware about this phenomenon, that the mind is being fed every moment, and we are giving it anything, without any choice – it is just a confusion.

Whatsoever we go on giving to the mind, we are only concerned that it must remain occupied; that’s all. Occupation in itself becomes an aim. One should not be unoccupied, so go on reading anything, go on listening to anything, go on seeing anything, go on . . . do something with the mind! So whatsoever is around, we are vulnerable to it. This is fatal, because then you create a very confused mind-body, very confused – with contradictions, with infinite contradictions. And that’s the reason there is so much anguish, so much tension, and so much misery inside. That’s the reason the mind is just mad.

Now psychologists say that really no one is normal, and there are only two types of abnormalities: one, normal abnormality – another, abnormal abnormality. So there are two types of insane people: one, who are insane in a socially accepted way – another, who are insane in their individual whims.

But everyone seems to be insane. And it is because we have never thought that our mind-body requires an inner harmony, an inner music. Thoughts should not be in contradiction; thoughts must be in a certain harmony, in a certain inner balance; otherwise, you become just a crowd – you are a crowd! C.J. Jung came to realize that no one has a mind: everyone is many minds; everyone is polypsychic. We go on talking about “my mind” – never talk about it again! You are just a crowd, not even a group, but a crowd; and not even a crowd, but a warring crowd – each thought fighting with someone else.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is just like a palace where there are so many slaves, but the master has gone out. And he has been out for such a long time that the slaves have now completely forgotten that there was a master. Now, whenever someone passes by the palace . . . and it is such a beautiful palace that everyone wants to enquire to whom it belongs. So any slave who happens to be on the door says, “It belongs to me. I am the master.” But another time, the same person passes by; someone else is on the door, and he asks, “To whom does this palace belong?” He says, “It belongs to me, I am the master.” So the whole city is confused, “Who is the master?” Everyone says, “I am the master” – every slave.

Gurdjieff used to say, “Such is the condition of man. Every thought that passes, even on your surface mind, becomes the master; and the master is either asleep or has gone for a long journey and has not come back. And it has been so long . . . ”

That’s why we have no will. We cannot have a will if we are just a crowd. You decide to do something, and the second moment you decide not to do it. And the third moment, neither you are decisive to do it, nor even not to do it – you are simply indecisive. You decide that you are going to be awake in the morning at four o’clock; and then at four o’clock you yourself say, “There is no need.” Another slave is on the surface of your mind, not you – the same one is not here who decided. In the morning when you are awake at eight o’clock, you begin to repent, “Why, when I had decided . . . why couldn’t

I get up? Why? This is the third. And these three will never meet; they have no dialogue – they are just atomic thoughts. And any atomic thought on the surface becomes the master. You cannot have the will; really, you cannot have any soul. You are not an individual.

You must know the meaning of the word “individual.” It means indivisible, that which cannot be divided. But we exist in division, so we cannot be said to be individuals. We are just a divided crowd.

Yoga is the science of individuation. It is how to create the individual, how to crystallize this crowd into one, how to create a center which can be the master always, and how to put every slave in its place.

Then you will need a purification of your mind; you will need a catharsis – a deep catharsis is needed then. You have to throw out all that is just contradictory; you have to create a harmony in your thoughts. And don’t allow any thought to come in, because to allow it to be in is easy, but then to displace it from there is very difficult.

So the first thing is don’t allow inside, thoughts which are not going to help create a harmony, and then go on searching for, and observing what contradictory thoughts you have. Be the chosen. Emphasize the thoughts which can create an inner peace and inner silence – then you have a purified mental body. And with this body-transparent you can look beyond, and you can go to another body.

Beyond the mind-body is the fourth, the fourth body. The fourth body is known as the consciousness body – vigyan maykos. It will be difficult, a bit difficult, to distinguish between the mental body and the conscious body, because we don’t know any consciousness except the mind. But if the mind is purified, then you become simply aware that something else is still behind the mind, and the mind becomes a door. But we can understand . . .

You have thoughts – that’s one thing – but you can be aware of your thoughts; and this awareness is not a thought at all. You have anger – this is a thought, a thought process. You can be aware of it: “Now in me is running a thought process, a combination of thoughts which is known as anger, or jealousy, or love.” You can be aware. You can stand out of it and be aware that this is anger.

You can be aware, “This is a thought.” This awareness that, “this is a thought,” this observation, this possibility to observe the thought process, creates the fourth body. So everyone doesn’t have the fourth body really developed, but only as a potentiality, only as a possibility.

When you become aware of your mind, only then you have the fourth body, and then there is a growth. Sometimes we have glimpses, sometimes we become aware. In moments of sudden danger, in accidents, in encountering a situation we have not faced before – we become aware, because for the first time, the mind in the shock of the accident or of a dangerous situation – in that shock the mind stops.

For example: If someone suddenly throws a dagger into you, the mind will stop, because there is nothing to do now or to think. Thought will stop. And when thought stops, you become aware. You become aware that thought has stopped, but still there is consciousness: “I am conscious.”

This is the fourth body, the consciousness body, our conscious body. We have it but in a very undeveloped form. To develop it is arduous, because it needs much effort to remain conscious of every thought that passes through your mind, of every thought that has become an accumulation in your mind – a part of your mind, all the conditionings of the mind – to become aware of them is arduous. It is difficult, but not impossible; and only when this becomes possible, you have the dignity of being called a human being; otherwise, not. Because an unconscious human being means nothing. Then you are just being thrown from here and there by impressions and influences from the outside. When you become conscious then you cannot be influenced! For the first time you become the chooser.

Buddha was passing a village and many people came to him with great abuse; they were condemning him, abusing him, throwing stones at him, and he was just standing there. Then someone asked, “Now what are you going to do?”

Buddha said, “Nothing, because now I have become the chooser. You cannot manipulate me; you can abuse me – that is up to you – but you cannot create the reaction. You cannot manipulate me. If you abuse me and I react – and the reaction can be predicted by you – then it is just a manipulation. I am nowhere in it. You push the button and the anger is there.”

Reaction means that you have no conscious body developed, so you go on reacting. Really, when you go on reacting, those reactions cannot be said to be actions, because actions come only with a conscious body, developed and mature. Then you act; otherwise, you go on reacting. Someone says this, so you say that; someone does this, so you react in that way, and everything is predictable.

We know when the husband comes back home in the evening, he knows what is going to happen. The whole scene is predictable: what the wife is going to ask . . . he knows the question already, and now he is preparing answers. And the wife knows already what answers he is going to give. The whole game is predictable, and daily it is repeated. What are we doing? The husband knows very well that whatsoever he says, whatsoever he may say, it is not going to be believed; and still, he will answer in the same way. And the wife knows that whatsoever and howsoever she may ask, he is going to give the deceptive answer, but still, she goes on asking.

Is there a dialogue? Impossible. There is just a deceptive game that both are playing. And this continues for their whole lives. People go on reacting in the same old routine way. Why? If I know that if I ask this question, that answer is to be given; and if I am conscious, there is no need to ask. The whole thing is just absurd; there is no need to ask. And I have asked many times, and many times I have been frustrated – and – and again the same thing. Really, we are not conscious.

The moment the husband enters the house, the question comes out – it is not the wife who is asking it – it is just mechanical. The question comes out, and the moment there is a question, the answer is manipulated.

Have you ever done anything as a conscious agent, as a conscious action? No. If you have done, then you must have become aware of a different thing than the mind. The awareness of mind, the consciousness of the thought process, this standing outside the mind – beyond, just as an onlooker, an observer – is the fourth body. The third body is constituted of thoughts; the fourth body is constituted of consciousness.

The fifth body is known as the bliss body. This is the last, the innermost body – but still the body. When the fourth body is purified, when the fourth body becomes just a transparency, the fifth is realized, because the fourth becomes so transparent then the fifth is felt directly. That’s why, when you are in deep meditation you don’t feel meditation, you feel bliss. When you are deep in meditation, when you are deep in awareness, you don’t feel awareness, you feel bliss.

When you begin to feel bliss, that means now you have begun to be aware.

Awareness creates the situation in which bliss is felt.

Awareness creates the transparency of the fourth body, and the fifth is seen. The fourth becomes so transparent, that not only you can see through it, you can pass through it without any resistance – it is just a door, it is just an opening. This fifth body is the bliss-body. This bliss is already there. It is not to be found somewhere else, it is not to be achieved; it is there only to be discovered. And you discover it by purifying the fourth body.

But this, too, is just a body and has to be transcended; bliss also has to be transcended. One has to go beyond, because if your cannot go beyond bliss, you are still off the center. Because bliss is still an experience, and the experiencer is still beyond.

So whatsoever you can feel will belong to some body, this or that. All experiences belong to these five bodies.

And when there is no experience, only the experiencer remains. When there is no known object, only the knower remains.

When there is nothing to be witnessed, but only the witness is, then you are centered in yourself – then you are; otherwise, you belong to this body or that.

This is not a body.

This is the original nature.

This is the existential source of all being.

Two or three things more. When you transcend the bliss-body, you transcend individuality also. When you transcend the bliss-body, you transcend life and death also, because life and death are phenomena which exist only in the bodies, and in relation to the bodies. Where there is no body, you cannot die and you cannot be reborn. So once one becomes aware of the no-body existence of the center, then there is no death and no life – then you are existence itself. Then there is no individuality, then you are not, simply the being is. All forms and all names are lost.

Meditation is the method to purify the fourth. Then what to do with the fifth . . . how to transcend it? How to transcend bliss itself? It is difficult to understand because we don’t know bliss at all, so how to transcend it is irrelevant. First one has to know, and the moment you know you will know the key to transcend it.

The key is known very easily because this is the last body. With every body it is difficult, because again you face another body. So you transcend one body, but again you are rooted in another. When you reach the bliss body, the next behind, then behind the bliss body – for the first time – there is no body now. Now you are near the very center of existence. And it has a gravitation of its own: that gravitation is known as grace.

You throw something, and gravitation pulls it down, mm? – the earth pulls it down. But beyond two hundred miles above the earth, around earth, gravitation cannot work. So the moment a spaceship passes the two-hundred-miles’ barrier, the earth cannot pull it down. This is the boundary of earth’s pull – two hundred miles.

The bliss body is just the boundary of the no-body existence. And when you are in the bliss body, you are in the pull. Now a new gravitation begins to work; that gravitation is known as grace. That’s why those who achieve the state beyond all bodies say, “This is not by our effort that we have reached it; it is by God and His grace.”

Really, with the fifth, nothing is to be done anyway. You have only to reach to the fifth – that reaching itself is the doing.

Reach the fifth, and you will be pulled.

The reaching itself is anyway transcendence.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #7

The Fifth Body is Known as the Bliss Body is from the evening talk, An Inquiry into the Bodies 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.

An Inquiry into the Bodies – Osho

A collection of sheaths composed of nourishing food, in the form of the physical body is called the annamaya kosh, or the food body.

The fourteen kinds of winds, like the vital energy, et cetera, circulating through the food body, are called the pranayama kosh or the vital body.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

Now, we have to go into an enquiry about the bodies. Man is not one body, man has many bodies – layers of bodies. The body we know is only the outermost; inside it there is another, and inside that, another. Rishis have divided these layers into five.

The first is known as the food body, the physical body. Ordinarily, we remain attached to this body. We are in a deep illusion and are identified with the physical one. This attachment to the physical body will not allow you to move inside. But why this attachment? – because we don’t know that there is another; we have never become aware that inside this body there is another. This body is so solid, so non-transparent, you cannot have any glimpse within. This solidity of the body means that we have been using foods which make it solid. This body can be made transparent also – just like a glass body in which you can have a glimpse inside.

The change of food is bound to change the qualities of your physical body. Food is not just energy; it is also a qualitative thing. Food is not just a fuel; it contributes more than fuel – it gives you either transparency, or non-transparency. The insight into this phenomenon can mutate, and you can have altogether a different type of body. And it is not so difficult to change this body, because the body is a flux, every moment changing itself; it is a process, it is not a static thing. The moment you came here, you had another body; now the body has changed. It is changing constantly, every moment; it is riverlike, moving and changing – it is not a static thing.

If you change direction, the body takes a jump; only the direction has to be changed. One should become aware, that whatsoever one is eating must be such that it doesn’t make one’s body heavy.

This heaviness is not concerned with weight: sometimes you feel that you are weightless, as if you can fly. So the food that can give you the feeling of weightlessness is the right food. The food that gives you the feeling of being burdened is not the right food. All non-vegetarian foods make you more rooted in the earth; you cannot fly. Vegetarian foods give you wings; you have an inner feeling that you can just levitate, you can just go out of gravitation.

Food is right if it is non-gravitational. If you can feel non-physical in it, it is good. Really, the body is felt only when it is heavy; when you have the feeling of heaviness inside, only then you feel the body. When the body is not heavy with wrong foods, you are bodiless. That’s why when the body is diseased, when the body is ill, you feel it; when it is healthy, you don’t feel it. You feel your head only when there is a headache; when there is no headache, there is no head.

So to define health positively, there is only one way: A person who is not feeling his body, is healthy. The more you feel your body, the more ill you are, because when the body is really healthy, there is no need to feel it. Only pain is felt. And if you even feel pleasure, it must be a sort of pain. Pleasure is never felt, because only a disturbance is felt. Silence is never felt really, only noise is felt. And if you begin to feel silence . . .

Real, authentic silence is not felt. Really, when you are not feeling any noise, it is silence. When you are not feeling your body, it means you are not feeling any disturbances; you are healthy. So the feeling of bodilessness is healthy. Any food that gives you a feeling of bodilessness is good, is right food. So be discriminative; be consciously discriminative. Don’t eat anything which makes you more embodied, which makes you more of a body. Go on eliminating all that gives you a bodiness, and then you will begin to transform your body towards a transparency.

This may look paradoxical, but this is true. When you are really healthy, you are desireless – illness and unhealthiness create desires. This is one of the basic distinctions between Eastern and Western thinking. They say, in the West, that to be filled with desire means you are healthy. But their understanding is very superficial, because desire is a disturbance. Something is still incomplete, that’s why the desire. Something is incomplete, so there is the urge to fulfill it. But when you are really healthy you are so fulfilled, you are so complete – the circle is so complete – that there is no desire.

Desire means you are incomplete. Somewhere, something is still lacking; somewhere, something is absent; somewhere, you are feeling a vacuum.

This is what illness means: a vacuum. Health means: so much fulfilled, so much filled there is no more space. When there is no inner space, there is no desire; so a really healthy person is desireless, and a really healthy person is bodiless. These both are associated: To be a body is to be in desire; to be in desire is to be heavy with the body.

Make the body as if it is not. The more absent, the better; the more present, the more you are falling downwards. You can just become a stone, and many are that – just stones. They only feel awake when the body demands something; otherwise, they are asleep. When the body demands, they feel awake; then the demand is fulfilled – they again fall deep into sleep.

One should create a body which has needs but not demands. Needs are natural; demands become crazy and obsessions. Demands mean you are addicted; the body is the master. All the austerities were not meant as suicidal methods, they were not masochist – they were really an inner transformation, they were really a change of power.

When a buddha is fasting, it is not to destroy the body; it is to destroy the demands. Understand it very clearly: when a buddha is fasting, he is not destroying his body, but he is changing the seat of power, who the master is. The body must not be the master; otherwise, you cannot go inwards. The master is outside. How can you go inwards? You are just a slave, and you have to be around the master. The power seat must be transformed; the body must become a slave. A slave has needs, but no demands; a slave has needs, but no commandments. The commanding must remain with the master, and the master must be inside, not outside. The deeper the master, the more is your freedom.

So when a buddha is on a fast, it is to change the seat of power. He is saying to his body, “Now I will fulfill your needs, but not your demands.” The body will struggle – no one can lose the power, the master, the sovereignty, so easily. And you have lived with the body as the master for millennia. The body was never challenged, so the mastery has become natural; it has become such an old habit that the body even cannot conceive it, “What nonsense are you talking? You are the master? You have always been the slave. Always! Have you gone crazy? The orders have already been issued by me! – you have always followed.”

Austerity means, tapascharya means, tapas means, that now you are not ready to continue this status quo, this state of affairs. The body will struggle: the fight is really not from the inside; the fight is from the outside. But the body is a very subtle and miraculous mechanism; it adjusts to anything if you have the will – the greater the will, the sooner the body is adjusted again. it begins to feel, “Now the mastery is lost.” And really, when the mastery is lost, the body becomes more healthy, because now it is natural.

The mastery of the body is really unnatural; it is not healthful – even to the body – because the body has no consciousness, and goes on demanding; the body has no discrimination and goes on demanding. It goes on doing things which are not even good for it. Consciousness becomes the slave; and the material desires, the mechanical ones, becomes the master.

This is the deepest accident, the deepest misery that has happened to humankind. But in a way, it had to, because we have developed from an animal existence. We have developed from animal existence. There is no need for a Darwin to prove this – we have know it always. Because an animal has no consciousness, the body has to be the master. There is no one other to claim the mastery – the body has to be the master. But when consciousness grows inside, the body goes on, mm? – Just as an old habit.

You have to change it. Now you are not in the animal world; now you are not animals. Austerity means that now we declare we have passed the state of animalhood. The suffering that one goes through in austerity is just a birth pain – nothing else. And that suffering is good and healthy, because out of that suffering is transformation.

But it should not be done as a masochist – that’s altogether a different matter, a very diseased thing.

You can make your body suffer and enjoy it. If you are enjoying it, then you are suicidal: then it is not austerity. Then it is not austerity; then you are really a very impotent, violent mind. You cannot do violence to others, so you are doing violence to yourself. So you can fast as a masochist, as a person who enjoys suffering. This is not austerity; this is very abnormal; this is really a mental case.

Out of one hundred, ninety-nine percent of the people who go on austerities are masochists, but they can deceive; they can deceive others and themselves also. To deceive others is irrelevant, but to deceive oneself is very dangerous. You can deceive yourself. The point to understand is that one must not enjoy suffering; one must take it as a necessary measure – that’s another thing. One must go through it as a cleansing; one must go through it as a purity, as a catharsis, as a change, as a mutation. One must accept it, but not enjoy it! That is the thing: If you are enjoying it, then this is not austerity at all; this is madness.

This is the point to be remembered: never enjoy suffering because that is abnormal. To suffer suffering is normal, but to accept it as a necessity, as an inevitability, is another thing. Accept it, go through it; don’t enjoy it. You have to do it, because as you have an animal heritage, one day you have to assert your humanity. Against the animal heritage you have to assert yourself. You have to make your body know exactly, now, that the body is not the master. And once the body has know it, the body is adjusted. And really the body is freed from a responsibility it cannot carry. It cannot be the master because it has no consciousness; it has no awareness. It is an automata, it is a mechanical device.

The body is an automatic device, so it goes on working. If you make it the master it goes on demanding without any consciousness, without any discrimination, without any intelligence. It has a mechanical intelligence just like a computer: it goes on demanding . . . it goes on demanding. It has a built-in process of how to demand, but without any consciousness: without any consciousness it tells you when you are hungry, it tells you what to eat, it tells you what to do. But this whole arrangement is just mechanical – it goes on repeating.

That’s why a person who lives with the body feels life as a boredom, because the body can only repeat; it can only repeat continuously. So we are just repeating every day the same thing. It is a circle, a closed circle: the same things, the same demands, the same desires, the same lusts – the body goes on repeating and repeating, and in the end one feels just bored, but still one cannot do anything. Even if you feel bored, again the second day, the body will demand the same thing; and you will have to supply, because you have never been in command.

This physical layer is the first, is the primary layer – the outermost. If you can be aware that you are unnecessarily the slave and need not be, then change your body habits consciously. By and by, change. Change the seat of power; be more in control. And give to the body all that is needed by it, but never fulfill any addictions. It will be painful in the beginning, but it is a bliss when you have reached beyond the body and have become the master. And when you are on the throne, it is one of the deepest blisses possible.

Matter and energy are not two things.

Matter is just energy; energy is just matter – two states of one thing.

The second body is the vital. The vital body is the energy body, the electricity body, or whatsoever name we like to use for it – the bio-energy body. One thing is certain, it is not material, it is energy.

But energy can be transformed into matter, and matter can be transformed into energy.

Energy means not static, moving.

Energy means vibrant, waves.

Energy means alive.

Instead of just a physical body, a tree has two bodies, the physical and the vital. Some energy current is running, and sometimes a tree is more alive and sometimes less alive. Now, even scientists are ready to agree that when someone is near a tree who loves the tree, the tree is more alive. And when someone is near the tree who doesn’t love it, the tree is sad and less alive.

When the gardener comes in, the whole garden is happy. And it is not just a poetry; now, it is a scientific fact. It has been a poetry always, but not it is not a poetry at all; it is a scientific fact. When a person who loves a tree is nearby, the tree is different; and now that difference can be detected by machines. It is more alive; it feels something more – love is flowing. it is vice versa also. If you can love trees when you are under them, you are more, because it is reciprocal. When you are near a flower, you are not just the same. If you have love, then you have an opening, and the flower and you become deeply related in a communion.

This vital body can be purified, and when it is purified it becomes transparent, and then you can look beyond. How is it purified? it is purified by pranayama. It is purified if you can have a deep breathing system. Less carbon dioxide inside your lungs, and more oxygen inside you – the more vitality you will create. The vital body can also be purified by pure vibrations. In a crowd you are creating many impurities for your vital body. That’s why, whenever one comes back from a crowd, one feels a bit less, less than oneself. Going out of the crowd, far away from man into the nature, one becomes more alive, because up to now there ae no sinner trees, no sinner oceans, no sinner sky.

But man has divisions, so in a crowd you are sucked! Your energy has been sucked. You fall down to a lower level. But there are some people – a few, very few – with whom you can feel that you have been refilled; you have been filled, you have been vitalized. To be in the company, in communion, and communication with someone with whom your vital body is charged, recharged, is what is meant by satsang – is what is meant to be near a master. There need not be any verbal communication; there need not be any communication at all outwardly. Just to be near and intimate… just to be open and near, and your vital body increases; it begins to be more – it begins to be richer and purified.

So seek company where your vital body becomes transparent. And sometimes it happens that even a dead master can help; even the place, the bodhi tree, can help. Buddhists have tried to save this tree continually for twenty-five centuries – that same tree. It is not just infatuation; it is not just superstition; it is not just a memorial, mm? There are subtle reasons, more significant reasons to save this tree; Buddha has been near it once, and the tree has absorbed something of the buddha. The tree has been in a very deep relation with the buddha; the tree has a subtle buddhahood itself.

Now, it vibrates with a different vibration. No other tree on this earth vibrates like that, cannot.

It is a rare tree; it had a rare opportunity: Buddha has walked around it for days and for nights. Buddha has been lying, sleeping, sitting . . . And Buddha could not help loving; and Buddha could not help being compassionate. And the tree was a constant companion; and the tree has imbibed the very spirit. And still today this tree is totally different! When you are around it, and if you are receptive, in a subtle way you are again in the intimacy of Buddha himself.

So shrines can help, temples can help, mosques can help, samadhis can help. It is better not to be in the company where you are sucked vitally, even the person is alive. It is better to be in the company of a dead one, if you can feel vitally recharged.

So remember this, remember this continuously: avoid all that which destroys your vital body. And much is destructive. In a cinema hall it is not only the film which destroys you; rather, deeply, the film is relevant, but the whole crowd destroys you more. And it is a particular crowd – it is not just a crowd, it is a particular crowd – with a particular type of mind, with particular stone bodies. They destroy you more. it is not the film really, the film cannot destroy you so much, but the crowd around you . . . And continually for three hours, they are in a very rapt attentive mood – it is very dangerous because you become vulnerable. For three hours continually, without blinking the eyes you are vulnerable! Anything can penetrate you, and all around, just bad vibrations – they go inside.

When you are out of a cinema hall, you have a very much lessened vital body, coming out from a temple, you have something plus. So be aware, not only of the physical body and its purification, be aware of the second, vital body also.

About the third body, we will discuss in the night.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #6

An Inquiry into the Bodies is from the morning talk, The Fifth Body is Known as the Bliss Body is from the evening 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.

Dreaming has to be Transcended – Osho

The state in which the soul, with the help of the energies of the sun and other gods, and through the instrumentality of these fourteen: mind, intellect, mind stuff, ego, and the ten sense organs – becomes sensitive to sound, touch and such other gross objects, is called the waking state.

When the living being, on account of the unfulfilled desires of the waking state, becomes sensitive to sound, touch and such other gross objects – even in the absence of the latter – it is called the dreaming state of the self or soul.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

The Eastern mind divides consciousness into four states: one is when we are awake, or the first; the second is dreaming; the third is deep sleep, dreamless; and the fourth is beyond all the three, the turiya, the fourth.

What is this which we call the awake state of consciousness? Knowledge, knowing is possible in two ways: mediate and immediate. Mediate knowledge means knowledge through some means, not direct – indirect. Senses are the means, the windows through which we know the extension beyond us. But the knowledge gained is indirect; it is not a face-to-face encounter; the mediator is in between. The senses are mediators, and when senses inform us of something, it is not a simple information, it is an interpretation also. The senses are not just passive receptors; they are positive interpreters also; they impose something, they add something to the information.

So whenever anything is reported by the senses to the consciousness, it is not a passive receptivity; the senses have added something to it, they have interpreted it, they have imposed something on it.

This imposition creates an illusory world around every consciousness, and everyone begins to live in a world of his own. This world, the Eastern esoteric mind says, is the maya, the illusion. It is not the real, the objective, that-which-is: it is something that you have created.

Everyone is within his own world, and there are as many worlds as there are minds. So whenever two persons are near, two worlds are in collision. And otherwise, is not possible, because you have not known the objective as it is.

The second dimension, the alternative dimension to know the world as it is, is not through senses, but through transcendence of the senses. And human consciousness can be in a direct encounter: the senses are just dropped; and still, knowing happens. That knowing is about the truth, because there has been no mediator. Now you have known directly. To know the truth through the senses is maya; to know the truth immediately, directly, face to face, is brahman. That which we know remains the same, but the knower changes. If he is using senses, then he creates an illusory perception; if he is not using the senses, then he is face to face with the reality.

Meditation is the path of how to drop the senses, how to drop the windows and just to be in reality without anyone in between. The rishi says that this contact with the world through the senses is the first state of consciousness, the awake state of mind, jagrut. When you are in contact with the world through the senses, this is jagrut – the awake state of the mind.

Dreaming is the second state, deeper than the state we call the awake. Dreaming is a substitute state, secondary, but deeper. Whatsoever has been left unfulfilled in the state when you were awake, has to be completed. Mind has a tendency to complete things. If you leave something incomplete, then you will create a dream to complete it. The mind tends to complete a thing. You must complete it; otherwise, there is something restless inside.

You have seen a beautiful figure, but you couldn’t look at it as you liked, as much you liked. Now a lingering incompletion will continue inside. You can suppress it when you are awake – you are occupied in many other things, and the suppression is possible – but when you go to sleep, the incomplete link unfolds a dream and completes the thing.

This state of dreaming, the rishi says, means without the instrumentality of your senses. The senses are closed – they are not aware of the world beyond you; now you are within your cells, within your body, but still you can create your own worlds. This creation of your own worlds in dreams becomes possible because your mind is a conditioning of everything you have known, you have felt; everything has been accumulated in it. It is an accumulation, not only of this life, but of all the lives one has lived; and not only of human lives, of animal lives also; and not only of animal lives, but of vegetable lives also.

So in a dream you can become a tree; in a dream you can become a lion. Sometime you have been a tree: that memory is still there – it can unfold. This unfolding of past memories, of past lives, means only that you have never lived totally – always partially. You have not loved totally, you have not been angry totally, you have not been anything totally. Everything is incomplete. So many things incomplete inside, create the situation in which dreaming happens. The moment one begins to live totally, everything is completed, dreaming ceases.

A christ, a buddha, will not dream, because he has not left anything incomplete. A Jesus says this moment is enough – live it totally. Do not think of the other moment that is to come; do not think of the other moment that has gone. That which has gone is no more, and that which has not come yet, has not come yet. Both are non-existential.

This moment, this very moment, this passive moment is the only existential time. Live in it! And leave all else aside. Be totally in it, then there will be no dreaming, then everything is complete. And by the night, when you are dropping into sleep, nothing is incomplete and needs to be completed. And when dreaming ceases, mind becomes more aware.

This is the second state: dreaming. When dreaming ceases you become more awake; and when there is no dreaming in the night, in the morning when you are awake, you have more innocent eyes, more fresh, more alive. In your eyes there is no dust, there is no smoke; the flame is clear without the smoke. Dreaming creates a smoke around your eyes.

And one who has been dreaming in the night, really goes on dreaming in the day also. Deep down there is always a continuous dream film. You are hearing me: just close your eyes and look inside and there is a dream unfolding.

You are too occupied outside, that’s why you cannot become attentive to your inside dreaming; but the dreaming continues.

Look at the sky; there are no stars now. Where have they gone? They cannot go anywhere; they are where they have been in the night, but only because of the sun, we cannot see them. Our eyes are so occupied with the sun, they cannot penetrate through to them. They are still there. If you can go down into a deep well, even in the day, you can look at the stars, because then there is a gap of darkness and again stars appear.

Just like this, you are continuously dreaming. But when you are occupied in the outside world, the dreaming continues inside without your being attentive to it. The moment you are not occupied, relaxed, you become again aware of the dreaming. This is a constant state – in fact, continuous. And this dreaming is more indicative about your mind than whatsoever we call being awake, because it is less inhibited, less suppressed, more naked and therefore more true.

So, if your dreaming can be known, if your dream can be known, much is known about you. You cannot deceive – in dreams, at least. They are still not a part of your will, they are not voluntary. You are not the controller; that’s why they are so wild, so animal-like. This second stage must be penetrated, must be transcended. Only then we can come to the third – still deeper, the deep sleep, the dreamless sleep.

The more you go deep inside, the nearer you are to existence. The deeper you go to the center, the nearer you are to the center of the universe. These three are concentric circles around the center: awake, dreaming and deep sleep. These are three concentric circles. If you transcend all these three, then suddenly you are face to face with your own center. Then you are centered in it. That centering is all.

That centering is to achieve the deathless.

That centering is to be deep inside the heart of the universe.

That centering is divine realization.

Dreaming has to cease, one must cease dreaming. Dreaming has to be transcended – dreaming is the barrier. A dreaming mind can never know the truth; a dreaming mind is bound to live in illusory worlds. Dreaming is the problem, and if dreaming stops . . . And it stops when ambition stops, it stops when desiring stops, it stops when one begins to live moment to moment, just here and now. If you can remember two words, “here” and “now,” dreaming stops. Be here and now, and there can be no dreaming, because dreaming is always from the past and for the future. It originates in the past; it spreads into the future.

Dreaming can never be in the present. To be in the present and to be in a dream is impossible; they never meet. So if one is awake, aware, attentive of the time that is just here and now, dreaming stops. And when dreaming withers away, you can become aware, really aware; you can really become awake. And when you are awake, this awareness can penetrate the third state of consciousness: dreamless sleep. Really, in no language other than Hindi, is there a word for it – sushupti. In no language is there a word for it – sushupti.

Sleep is not sushupti – that’s why we have to add dreamless sleep. It is not just sleep, it is nondreaming sleep – without any ripple of the dream, with no waves of the dream. The ocean is totally silent, not even a dream is there to disturb. Then you are in sushupti – the third state, dreamless sleep, the non-dreaming sleep. But you can never become aware of it unless dreaming ceases.

The waves must cease; only then can you become aware of the ocean; otherwise, you are always aware of the waves. Waves are on the surface, so when you see, you see the waves, not the ocean.

The waves must stop totally. Only then, for the first time, do you become aware of the ocean, the waveless ocean – the dreamless sleep. And if one can become aware of dreamless sleep, one transcends sleep. One transcends sleep only when one becomes aware of it. And then you are turiya, the fourth; then you have passed all the three.

This fourth is the being; this fourth is the search. For this fourth, effort is needed. And one may go on continuously dreaming and dreaming and dreaming – one can never achieve this fourth state through dreaming. That’s why there is so much insistence on non-desiring, non-ambition. The buddhas go on saying, “Do not desire,” because if you desire then dreaming cannot cease. The buddhas go on saying, “Do not be attached,” because if you are attached the dreaming cannot cease. Do not be ambitious, do not long for any becoming, do not think in terms of the future; otherwise, dreaming cannot cease. And unless dreaming ceases you will never be. You can never be! You will always be a becoming, just a becoming: “a” changing into “b,” “b” changing into “c,” “c” changing into “d” – and always the longing for the far off. And then you go on running, and you never reach; then you go on becoming this and that and you are never a being.

The being is here and now.

Drop dreaming and you are there where you have really been always, but you were never aware. All meditation techniques are just anti-dream efforts, just dream-negating devices.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #4

Dreaming has to be Transcended is from the morning talk, This Fourth is the Being is from the evening talk of the same day.

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Dreaming has to be Transcended.

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.

This Host is Your Being in its Purity – Osho

I am never born as a body.

I am not the ten senses.

And I am neither intellect, nor mind nor everlasting ego.

I am eternally pure self-nature without vital breath and mind.

I am the witness without intellect, and I am the ever-knowing self-nature.

There is no doubt, whatsoever, about it.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

The being is something which is there, has been there; it is a priori. It is not your creation, it is not your construction, you have not contributed anything to it, because you are it. So how can you do anything? And whatsoever you have done is just an accumulations around – never on the center; the center has always been there.

Saint Augustine has been asked by someone, “What is God?” Saint Augustine says, “When you do not ask me, I know very well, but when you ask me, everything is lost. So don’t disturb me; go and find out. Please go and find out for yourself. I am not going to answer, because the moment I begin to answer, I feel guilty. Any expression becomes just criminal, because whatsoever I say is nothing compared to that about which I am saying.” This has always been felt, very deeply felt, and so many have just remained silent, mm? – not to be guilty; it is better not to say.

Wittgenstein has written in his Tractatus, “It is better not to say than to say something about a thing which is inexpressible. So be silent, it is better, because at least you are right.” At least you are right! The moment you say something you are bound to be wrong, any assertion is bound to be wrong. So infinite a phenomenon as the deeper “I”…. It is better to be silent. But it needs expression. It may be better for the person who is going to say, but it is not better for the person who is going to understand it, to enquire about it. Silence will not do.

So the rishi uses the second method, the negative one. The Upanishads have been using the same method always. That has been their technique, to negate. They will say, “I am that which is never born. I am the unborn one. All that which is born, I am not. So whatsoever is born, I am not.” This is the eliminating process. Whatsoever is born, I am not. Breathing has been born in me. It is born because a child is born without breathing, then he breathes. So the being precedes breathing; being comes first, and then there is breathing. Then there is thinking, then there is ego – all this is born.

So the rishi says: “I am not the senses, because I am always prior.” I always precede. And whatsoever has succeeded me, I am not.”

In the Second World War, one English soldier fell down into a ditch. He became unconscious, and he remained unconscious for one week. And when he came back from unconsciousness, he was not the same mind again. He couldn’t recognize anyone – not even himself; he couldn’t recognize his face in the mirror, because all his memory was lost; the whole mechanism was destroyed. But the being was still there. So the mind is a mechanism – something added to you, but not you. It is something instrumental to you, but not you.

If you can drop your thinking, you will be, but in an oceanic feeling of “am-ness.” Even this formation of “I,” this formation of self-hood, is not there. That is a later growth.

What is meant by pure consciousness? By pure consciousness is meant that there is consciousness; not conscious about anything – just a mirror, mirroring nothing. Towards this purity is the whole search. And the rishi says, “There is no doubt about it,” because this is not a doctrine, this is not a philosophical system; this is experience, this is realization. The rishi says, “This I have known; this I have lived; this I have reached. This is not just a mental projection; this is not just a thought-out system; this is what I have lived and known and experienced.”

Philosophy means love of thinking. Philo means love, sophy means thinking – love of thinking.

Darshan is not love of thinking; it is love of seeing. So only one man, Hermann Hesse, has rightly

translated it; he has coined a new word to translate darshan into English, and that word is philosia – philo for love, and sia for seeing – not sophy, but sia.

We always think, we assume that the blind man is living in darkness. That is simply absurd, because darkness is a phenomenon of the eyes, not of blindness. You have to be not blind to know darkness: darkness is seen, and a blind man cannot see. So a blind man is not in darkness – remember this. A blind man has never known what darkness is, because for darkness to be felt, you need eyes. So even darkness has not been known. So if you eliminate, negate, and you say to the blind man, “Light is what darkness is not,” it still means nothing. You cannot even use the eliminative process; you cannot say, “Light is not darkness.” He will ask what darkness is.

A blind man can think. Thinking is a dimension which need not be experienced. He can think, he can create concepts in his own way – in his own blind ways he can create concepts. He can create some parallelism; he can create some synonyms. He can begin to think in terms of his own experience about light, darkness and sunrise, and he can create a philosophy. Really, only blind men create philosophies, because those who can see will not bother to create philosophies. If you can see, there is no need.

So the rishi says, “There is no doubt about it. Whatsoever I am saying, I have seen, and there is no doubt.” So it is not, “I don’t know, but I propose… perhaps… it may be so….” It is not so. The rishi is not saying, “Perhaps it may be like this,” or “Perhaps it may be like that.” He is simply saying – he is describing. So it is not that he is proposing any ideology; it is simply this, that he is describing something he has gone into. So he says, “There is no doubt. I myself have known this: this pure consciousness.”

How to go? – because for us still there is doubt. It may not be for him – for the rishi it may not be – but for us there is still doubt. And it is good – if you also say, “”Now there is no doubt,” then you are lost, because if there is no doubt for you, you will not go for the journey where the certainty is. You will create a pseudo certainty; all believers create pseudo certainties. They also say, “We believe it is so,” and they have not known.

Unless you know, do not believe.

Unless you know, do not say, “There is no doubt.”

Remain with the doubt.

Doubt is healthy; it pushes you.

But don’t get stuck in the doubt – go ahead, find the state where you can also say, “Now there is no doubt. I know it.” But not before that – not before that.

Live with doubt, go with doubt; search, enquire.

Don’t make your doubt suicidal – that’s enough – don’t make your doubt suicidal. Let it be a healthy push! Let it be an enquiry, an open enquiry.

So be with doubt. Don’t create any false belief. It is better to be sincerely in doubt, than to be insincerely into belief, because at least you are authentic. And authenticity is very meaningful. An authentic, sincere person can reach – will reach. But a non-authentic, insincere person may go on believing for lives and lives together. He is not even moving a single inch; he cannot move. So when this rishi says, “There is no doubt,” it is not meant that thereby you begin to believe. The rishi is simply giving a statement about his own stage. He is saying, “For me, there is no doubt. Whatsoever I am saying, I mean it, and I have known it.”

There are Greek thinkers: Aristotle, or Plato, or even Socrates. They go on giving proofs. They go on giving proofs, arguments. They say, “This is so because…. And in “because” they will never say, “because I have known it.” They will say, “because this proves it, that proves it; that’s why it is so.” It is a syllogism, a logical syllogism.

Remember this fact – let it go deep in you:

I am not the body.

But there is an inside also, because no outside can exist without an inside – or can an outside exist without an inside? But we have never become aware from the inside of our own body.

So be aware:

Close your senses, remain in, and be aware.

Go on eliminating, and a moment comes when you explode into simple am-ness – without any I, without any self, without any selfhood – into pure authentic, existential being.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Chapter 15

I am not the doer. I am not the consumer.

I am simply the witness of nature.

And just because of my nearness, the body, et cetera,

have the feeling of being conscious,

and they act accordingly.

Beyond a shadow of doubt,

I am still, eternal, everlasting bliss –

Ever-knowing pure self or soul.

And I pervade all beings as the witnessing soul.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

How does this bondage happen? How is it that we never feel that we are in the body, but feel that we are the body? The witnessing self is never felt. We always feel some identity; we always feel some identification. And the witnessing consciousness is the reality. So why does this happen? And how does this happen?

You are in pain – what is really happening inside? Analyze the whole phenomenon: the pain is there, and there is this consciousness that pain is there. These are the two points: the pain is there, and there is this consciousness that the pain is there. But there is no gap, and somehow “I am in pain” – this feeling happens – “I am in pain.” And not only this – sooner or later, “I am the pain” begins, happens, starts to be the feeling. “I am pain; I am in pain; I am aware of the pain” – these are three different, very different states.

The rishi says, “I am aware of the pain.” This much can be allowed, because then you transcend pain. The awareness transcends – you are different from it, and there is a deep separation. Really, there has never been any relation; the relation begins to appear only because of the nearness, because of the intimate nearness of your consciousness and all that happens around.

Consciousness is so near when you are in pain – it is just there by the side, very near. It has to be; otherwise, the pain cannot be cured. It has to be just near to feel it, to know it, to be aware about it. But because of this nearness, you become identified, and one. This is a safety measure again; this is a security measure, a natural security. When there is pain you must be near; when there is pain your consciousness must go in a rush towards the pain – to feel it, to do something about it.

You are on the street and suddenly you feel a snake there – then your whole consciousness just becomes a jump. No moment can be lost, not even in thinking what to do. There is no gap between being aware and the action. You must be very near; only then this can happen. When your body is suffering pain, disease, illness, you must be near; otherwise, life cannot survive. If you are far off and the pain is not felt, then you will die. The pain must be felt immediately – there should be no gap. The message must be received immediately, and your consciousness must go to the spot to do something. That’s why nearness is a necessity.

But because of this necessity, the other phenomenon happens: so near, you become one; so near, you begin to feel that “this is me – this pain, this pleasure.” Because of nearness there is identification: you become anger, you become love, you become pain, you become happiness.

The rishi says that there are two ways to disassociate yourself from these false identities. You are not what you have been thinking, feeling, imagining, projecting – what you are is simply the fact of being aware. Whatsoever happens, you remain just the awareness. You are awareness – that identity cannot be broken. That identity cannot be negated. All else can be negated and thrown. Awareness remains the ultimate substratum, the ultimate base. You cannot deny it, you cannot negate it, you cannot disassociate yourself from it.

So this is the process: That which cannot be thrown, that which cannot be made separate from you, is you; that which can be separated, you are not.

The pain is there; a moment later it may not be there – but you will be. Happiness has come, and it will go; it has been, and it will not be – but you will be. The body is young, then the body becomes old.

All else comes and goes – guests come and go – but the host remains the same. So the Zen mystics say:

Do not be lost in the crowd of the guests.

Remember your host-ness.

That host-ness is awareness.

That host-ness is the witnessing consciousness.

What is the basic element that remains always the same in you? Only be that, and disidentify yourself from all that comes and goes. But we become identified with the guest. Really the host is so occupied with the guest, he forgets.

Mulla Nasruddin has given a party for some friends and some strangers. The party is very boring, and half the night is just lost and it goes on. So one stranger, not knowing that Mulla is the host, says to him, “I have never seen such a party, such nonsense. It seems never-ending, and I am so bored that I would like to leave.”

Mulla says, “You have said what I was going to say to you. I myself have never seen such a boring and nonsense party before, but I was not so courageous as you are. I was also thinking to leave it and just run away.” So they both run.

Then, in the street Mulla remembers and says, “Something has gone wrong, because now I remember: I am the host! So please excuse me, I have to go back.”

This is happening to us all.

The host is lost –

The host is forgotten every moment.

The host is your witnessing self.

Pain comes and pleasure follows; there is happiness, and there is misery. And each moment, whatsoever comes you are identified with it, you become the guest.

Remember the host.

When the quest is there, remember the host.

And there are so many types of guests: pleasurable, painful; guests you would like, guests you would not like to be your guests; guests you would like to live with, guests you would like to avoid – but all guests.

Remember the host.

Constantly remember the host.

Be centered in the host.

Remain in your host-ness; then there is a separation. Then there is a gap, an interval – the bridge is broken. The moment this bridge is broken, the phenomenon of renunciation happens. Then you are in it, and not of it. Then you are there in the guest, and still a host. You need not escape from the guest, there is no need.

Then you can be in the crowd and alone. And if you cannot be alone in the crowd, you can never be alone anywhere, because the capacity to be alone in the crowd is needed to be alone when you are really alone; otherwise, if you cannot be alone in the crowd, the crowd will be there when you are alone. The mind will be crowded even MORE, because the mind has a tendency to feel absence more than presence.

If your beloved, if your lover is present, you can just forget very easily. But if he is not present, you cannot forget. The mind has the tendency to feel absence more, because through absence is desiring. And mind is just desiring, so mind feels absences more; otherwise, there can be no desiring. If you can forget absences, then desire becomes impossible. So we forget presences, and we go on feeling absences. Whatsoever is not, is desired; and whatsoever is, is just forgotten.

So when you are alone, the crowd will be there; it will follow you. If you escape from the crowd, the crowd will follow you. So do not escape, do not try – it is impossible. Remain where you are, but don’t be centered in the guest.

Be centered in yourself, remember the host.

This host is your being in its purity.

Do not fall in love with the guest.

Do not fall in hate with the guest.

Really, this word is very good: “falling” in love. Why falling in love? Why not rising in love? No one rises in love, everyone falls in love. Why? Why this falling? Really, the moment you are in love, or in hate, you fall from your host-ness. You just fall from your host-ness; you become the guest. That is the misery, that’s the confusion, that’s the darkness.

Wherever you are – doing, not-doing, lonely, in the crowd, active, inactive – wherever you are, go on remembering the host. Remember that whatsoever is happening is just a guest, and you are the host, and don’t be identified with anything. Anger comes – remember you are the host; anger is just a guest. It has come and it will go.

I am reminded of a Sufi story.

A great emperor asks his wise men to give him a mantra of such a type that it can be used in any dangerous, fatal situation – ANY. Advice is always particular, and he wants a mantra, an advice, the essence of all wisdom, so that it can be used in any situation whatsoever, whenever there is danger.

The wise men are very confused, very disturbed, and in a deep anguish. They cannot find such an essence of all wisdom. Then they go to a Sufi mystic and he gives a piece of paper and says, “This should not be opened unless there is really danger! And then the advice will be there.” So the king put the piece of paper under the diamond of his ring.

There are many moments when the danger approaches, but the Sufi has emphatically said, “Unless you feel this is really the last hope – that nothing can be more dangerous – only then open it!” Many dangers come and go, and the king always feels this is not the last; something more can still happen. Even death approaches, and the king is just on his deathbed, but still he cannot open it, because he remembers still more is possible.

But his wise men say, “Now please open it. We want to see what is there.” But the king says, “The promise must be fulfilled. Really, now it is irrelevant what is there; the mantra has worked upon me. Since having this mantra with me, I have not felt any danger at all. Whatsoever the danger was, I have felt still more was possible, and I have remained the host. I was never identified.”

Danger can never become the ultimate unless you are identified with it, and then anything can become the ultimate – just anything! Just anything ordinary can become the ultimate, and you are disturbed. And the king said, “Now I am not worried at all, whatsoever. The man is wise; the Sufi knows – I am not concerned about what he has written.”

Then, the king died without opening the ring. The moment he died, the first thing his wise men did was to open the ring. There was nothing; it was just a piece of paper… just a piece of paper – not a word, not a single word of advice.

But the advice worked; the mantra worked.

So be centered in your host, and remember nothing is happening to you. All that is happening is just the guests, visitors; they will come and go. And it is good that they come and go; it enriches you, you become more mature. But don’t follow them, don’t be involved with them. Don’t become one with them. Don’t fall in love and hate; don’t fall into identification.

Remain the host, and then the ultimate happening happens.

Then the ultimate explosion becomes possible.

Once the witnessing soul is known, you will never be the same again. The whole world disappears and you are transmuted into a new dimension of bliss. Identification is misery; non-identification is bliss.

To fall in love and hate with the guest is misery. To transcend them, and to be centered in oneself, is bliss.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #16

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.

This Fourth is the Being – Osho

The sleeping state is one in which all the fourteen organs are still and tranquil, and when – for lack of real knowledge – the self of soul is insensitive to sound, touch and such other objects.

And the one which is aware of the creation and dissolution of these three states – waking , dreaming and sleeping – but which is itself beyond creation and dissolution, is known as turiya – the fourth state of consciousness, the state of turiya.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

Consciousness in itself is nothing. One is always conscious about something; so the “about” is important. Consciousness is always objective: you are conscious of something. If there is nothing in front of you, consciousness will drop – you will not be conscious.

This state, the oriental religious perception says, is the sushupti; this is the third state. When there is no object to be known, the knower is lost. When then is no object in the outside world to be aware of, and when there is no object in the mind, dream object, when all objects have dropped – outside all are dream objects – then consciousness drops. Then you are not conscious; then you are unconscious. This unconsciousness is sushupti, the third stage.

But this is amazing: it means that we are not conscious really, we are only objectively conscious.

We have not known ourselves, we have known only objects and things. Our consciousness is other oriented; it is not self-centered. I can be conscious only when something else is present. When nothing is present I will go to sleep. I have not known any subjective consciousness which can exist without the object. That’s why in the third state, consciousness equals unconsciousness – it becomes unconscious. When there is no object as a challenge, one becomes unconscious.

So this consciousness, this so-called consciousness, is just a struggle, just a challenge, just a constant stimulus-response; it is not anything in itself. You are not the master of it; you are not really conscious: you are only being forced to be conscious constantly. Everything is forcing you to be conscious; otherwise, to go to sleep will be the spontaneous act – one will just drop into a coma. So can we call it consciousness? It is not. This state is not the state of self-consciousness, it is just a constant tension between you and the world, between you and the thoughts. If there are no objects and no thoughts, you drop… and be unconscious. This is the third state, sushupti. And unless one transcends it, one cannot be called conscious.

Gurdjieff used to say that man has no soul. He used to say that you have got no self, because self means self-consciousness; otherwise, how can you be said to have a self? If you are not conscious, how can you be a self? How can you be an individual? So Gurdjieff’s teaching doesn’t believe that every man has got a soul. He says, “Every man has got a potentiality he can develop, he may not develop.”

If you become self-conscious, then you develop the individual; then you become the individual. If you are not self-conscious then you are just one object among other objects, and there is nothing more. Gurdjieff’s teaching makes this central point the supreme point. He says, “Try to remember yourself without any object. Try to remember yourself without any object, without any relation to anything else. Remember yourself directly, simply.” It is very arduous; in a way it seems impossible. You cannot remember yourself without in any way relating to something else – Can you?

Can you remember yourself?

Can you feel yourself?

Whenever you feel, you feel in relation to: someone’s son, someone’s daughter, someone’s husband, being rich or poor, belonging to this country or that, being healthy or ill – but this is all in relation to something else. Can you remember yourself without any relation? – Unrelated? Without any context? Just you? It becomes inconceivable. Really, we have not known ourselves, we have known only in relation. And this is the miracle: you know yourself in relation to someone, who knows himself in relation to you. See the absurdity of it! Everyone knows themselves because of others – and the others know themselves because of him.

Everyone is ignorant, but by being related with other ignorant people, you become wise. You know yourself because you know your name, you know your house, your address, your city, your country – and not for a single moment have you known who you are. This sushupti, this third state of unconsciousness must be broken apart, must be penetrated beyond. One must become aware of oneself without being related to anything else – this is self- knowledge. This fourth is known as the turiya.

We must make a distinction between the being and the states. Any state, whether it is awake, or dreaming, or non-dreaming sleep, cannot be synonymous with the being, because the being is that upon which these states happen. The being is one who goes through all these three states. He cannot be identified with any; otherwise, he cannot move.

You cannot be awake if you are identified with dreaming: if you are dreaming, then you cannot be awake. If you are awake, then you cannot go into sleep. But you move – just as one moves into one’s house and out of one’s house, you come in and you go out; so you cannot be identified with the inside of your house or the outside of your house. You move: you can come in; you can go out; so you become the third. You move from dreaming to non-dreaming; you move from sleep to dream, from dream to wakefulness.

So this mover must be something else, more than all the three – this is the fourth; hence, it is called “the fourth.” And therefore no name is given to it . . . because from the fourth it can never move. From the fourth it can never move. When I say this, a question must come into your mind: “But this fourth goes into sleep, goes into dreaming and other states?”

This is something very subtle to be understood. No, this fourth never goes anywhere; those states come upon it and pass – this fourth remains in itself constantly. Dreaming comes over it just like clouds coming over the sun. The sun remains, then there are clouds, then the clouds have gone. This fourth is the non-moving center within you. Dreams come, then objects are seen, then thoughts are seen; then objects drop, and thoughts drop, and you are engulfed in a dark sleep; but the fourth remains its center – it has never moved. That’s why no name has been given to it; no name is needed – it remains the nameless. One has to penetrate to this fourth.

This is not a state really; when we talk we have to call it the fourth state, but it is not a state. All the three are states; this fourth is beyond these states. This fourth is the being – this fourth is the very nature of one’s self. Unless one goes to this fourth, unless one becomes aware of this non-moving center, unless one is centered in it, there is no freedom and there is no bliss. Really, there is nothing except dreaming, many many dreams, many types of dreams; but nothing else – just bubbles in the air.

This fourth . . . How to achieve this fourth? How to reach this fourth? How to penetrate this deep sleep? How to destroy this darkness within? What to do?

The one basic thing is to be aware first: in the first state when you are awake, be aware. Be aware whatsoever you are doing. Walking on the street, then be aware that you are walking. Let your awareness be double-arrowed: one arrow conscious of the act of walking, another arrow going deep inside and aware of the walker. Listening to me, be aware, double-arrowed: one arrow of your consciousness going outside listening attentively, another going inside constantly aware of the listener.

Mahavira has a very beautiful word. He used “listener”, shravak, with a very original meaning, and he has given a very new shape, a new nuance to it. He says if you can be simply a right-listener, nothing else is needed. This much will do: if you can be a right listener – samyak shravak. If you can listen attentively with double-arrowed attention, then this much is enough, you will be awakened. No other discipline is needed.

Buddha has used the word, “mindfulness” – samyak smriti, right mindfulness. He says whatsoever you are doing, do it mindfully; don’t do it in sleep, do it mindfully – whatsoever you are doing. Do it consciously, then consciousness begins to crystallize in the first state, wakefulness. When you have become conscious, when you are awake, the your consciousness can penetrate the second state, dreaming. It is not difficult then. Then you can become conscious of your dreams; and the moment you become conscious of your dreams, dreams disappear. The moment dreams disappear you become conscious of your dreamless sleep, and the arrow goes on. Now be aware that you are asleep, and by and by the arrow penetrates – and suddenly you are in the fourth.

Religion cannot be a belief.

Religion cannot be a tradition.

Religion cannot be an accepted dogma.

Religion is totally individual:

One has to discover it again and again.

One has to know it for oneself, for oneself.

Unless you know there is no knowledge.

All knowledge gathered from others is just false, it is pseudo, it is deceptive. One has to encounter the reality oneself. This is just like love – you know if you love. If you have not loved you may know everything about love, but love will not be known, because love is not really a knowledge, it is a realization, it is an experience… rather, not even experience, but experiencing. Experience means something which you have experienced and now it is dead. Experience means something which has finished, which is finished with a full stop. Experiencing means a process, a continuous process. You have to go on discovering, discovering – and there is no end to it.

Religion is like love: There is a beginning to it but no end.

You have to begin it but you never reach it – you go on reaching. You go on reaching, but it is never of the past. It is not that there comes a full stop and you can say, “I have reached.” No, never. That’s why we call the religious search, the ultimate search. By “ultimate” we mean that which begins, which never ends. Rather, on the contrary, a moment comes when you are lost but the end has not been achieved. But this, this seeker being lost is the explosion.

So unless you know, never believe. Unless you know, never feel at ease with words, doctrines, scriptures. Unless you know, remember continuously that you have to seek and find, that you have to go on a far, faraway journey. And that’s why religion really is the only adventure; all else is just childish. That which can be found is just childish; that which can be found is not really the adventure; that which is possible needs no courage. Only the impossible needs courage, only that which cannot be found. If you go on the search for it, you have gone on an adventure.

But the moment one is ready for the impossible, the impossible become possible. The moment one is ready to take the jump, the miracle happens. You are not in a way, in the jump – you are lost. And still, for the first time, you are – you have found yourself.

The states are lost, the identities are lost, the names and forms are lost. There only remains the original source of all This rishi says: These are the states; these three are the states. The fourth is the knower of all these states. These three states come out of the fourth, again are dissolved in the fourth, and the fourth never comes out of anything and is never dissolved in anything else.

The fourth is the eternal principle, the eternal life, the eternal aliveness.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #5

This Fourth is the Being is from the evening talk, Dreaming has to be Transcended 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.

Tag: Sarvasar Upanishad

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