Tag: satsang

Don’t Start with Love, Start with Meditation – Osho

Your silence goes so deep into my heart that it makes my love unconditional. Beloved Master, is this what “satsang” is?

Satyam Svarup, there are two ways to look at life. One is the way of the schizophrenic. That has been followed by the crowds around the world down the centuries. It divides things. It is very uneasy without dividing them. And because for thousands of years the teaching has penetrated into every mind it seems to be the only way.

It looks neat and clean divided, but existence does not follow it. It has its own undivided melting, merging into each other without making any demarcations. I am against the first because it has destroyed so much that the crime is incalculable. […]

The old way, the wrong way, the ugly and the insane way, divides love from silence, divides silence from ecstasy, divides ecstasy from self-realization and so on, so forth. But they are not divisions. It is a simple flow of energy moving into different spaces.

You are asking, “Your silence goes so deep into my heart that it makes my love unconditional.” To any logician, to any follower of the first path it will look absurd. What has silence to do with unconditional love? They seem to be worlds apart.

But, Satyam Svarup, you gathered courage to say something which goes against your training of logic. It was possible because it is not an intellectual question, it is your existential experience. And logic cannot overrule existential experiences.

Man is a miniature cosmos, everything intertwined. If your love deepens, your silence will deepen; your blissfulness will deepen, your innocence will deepen, your sensitivity, your aesthetic potentiality will come to flowering.

Just as your hands are not separate from your eyes, neither are your feet separate from your head; you are an organic unity – the same is the situation in the inner world. Your love, your meditation, your silence, your blissfulness – they are simply waves in the same ocean of consciousness. So don’t be disturbed by the mind, which is pretending to be the master. Listen to the heart and you will never be on a wrong track. And the more you listen to the heart, the more and more your life will go beyond intellect, beyond logic, beyond dialectics, beyond all kinds of discriminations.

It is beautiful that you have brought it into a question: “As your silence goes so deep into my heart, there it makes my love unconditional.”

Start from anywhere. You are a perfect circle, and so deeply interconnected, with everything in your life. You can start by being more meditative, which is the simplest because it does not involve other human beings. The others are a little complex; it is better to let them come on their own.

My own understanding is, don’t start with love, because your understanding of love is not the authentic love. It is simply biological infatuation, and if you start with that you have gone astray. Start with meditation because meditation is the only thing that biology has not given to you. It has a tremendous force of its own. That’s why the physiologist or the biologist will account for everything but will never mention the word ‘meditation’.

Meditation is the only bridge between you and the beyond. Start with meditation – and that’s what is happening to you, effortlessly. Sitting with me, listening to me, a silence enters into your heart and suddenly you feel springs of love unaddressed, radiating in all directions. It is not love to someone; it is simply being loving.

But if it comes from meditation, from silence, it will have purity, because it is not coming from biology.

It is not coming from your past, it is not coming from all your conditionings; it is coming from the spontaneous experience of silence. And suddenly you see a great aroma of love around you. You have known love, but it was always conditional. Anything conditional is not worth a penny, because the conditional will disappear. Once the condition is fulfilled there is no purpose in it. […]

Any love which has some conscious or unconscious conditions is bound to bring frustration, because those conditions cannot be fulfilled. The very nature of conditions is such. […]

When I say love has to be unconditional it means you are not expecting from the other anything. You are not expecting the other to be someone else. You are simply loving to the other, as he or she is. And your unconditional love will make you unattached to individuals; it will be just an aroma around you. You will be a loving person. You will love the trees, you will love the sunset, you will love a woman, you will love all that this universe provides you.

Right now, the conditional love is like an imprisonment. Two persons who don’t like each other are holding each other in imprisonment. It is a strange thing. If you don’t like the other, say good-bye.

But you cannot say good-bye because you are afraid he may enjoy himself somewhere else. It does not fit with your jealousy, he has to be happy with you. A husband does not like his wife to be laughing, to be happy with another man. Neither does the wife like such a situation.

So it is a very strange situation in which we have placed humanity. And unless a great awareness happens that this is our fundamental misery, you cannot be freed from this hell that you have made of the earth. Lovers – the so-called lovers, I mean – are more like detectives to each other than lovers. Jealously watching what the other is doing . . . every letter is opened; every pocket is searched.

One night, a woman heard . . . in sleep her husband was again and again saying, “Kamala, darling.”

The woman was listening to exactly what he was saying. In the morning, she asked, the first thing, “Who is this ‘Kamala darling’?”

The man said, “It is nothing, it is just the name of a female horse. I have been thinking to bet on that horse – you know the racing season is coming.”

And then, just when they were talking about this, the phone rang. The husband ran towards the phone; the wife said, “Stop, I will take it.” And then she handed over the phone to the husband: “That female horse ‘Kamala darling’ wants to talk to you.”

Even in sleep you are not free to say things. And people say there is freedom of speech! If there were a small window which God had managed to make into every head, the wife would have been looking through the window into your dreams. “What are you seeing? Who is this woman?” […]

This whole society is boiling with jealousy. Nobody says it, everybody hides it. But the more you hide it, the more it goes on like a cancerous growth, expanding in your interior being. Just look how many things you are jealous of: somebody has a beautiful house and somebody has a beautiful physique, and somebody has a beautiful strong body. Somebody is an intellectual giant and somebody has the most wealth that one could ever think of. So on, so forth, there are people all around who will make you jealous.

Instead of your life being in an oceanic love, it is suffering in a gutter of dirty jealousy. But unless you start looking inwards and finding the roots, you will not be able to transform it.

You are blessed, Svarup, that just without any effort my silence reaches to your heart. It will purify you; it will destroy all that is poisonous in you – jealousy, anger, greed, attachment, possessiveness.

It will make you just a beautiful flower of love.

What is happening has been called in the East satsang, being with a man who has attained the truth. Yes, this is satsang – where, without any effort on your part, just the grace of your master starts alchemical changes . . . so silently that you become aware only when the work is done.

And there are a few things . . . for example if you have known unconditional love, you cannot undo it. It is so vast and it is so beautiful that what you used to think was love looks like just an ugly nightmare compared to it. You would not like to go back to it; your whole being will resist going back to it.

My speaking to you is not especially to give you any philosophy or any dogma, or any creed or any theology or any religion. My talking to you is a device so that you can experience my presence, my silence. In an unaware moment perhaps, you can come closer to my heart without any fear.

This is a device for meditativeness.

I am not interested in any kinds of doctrines; they have tortured humanity long enough. I am interested in a loving humanity, in a humanity fragrant with silence, rejoicing this immense gift of life and existence. […]

-Osho

From Om Mani Padme Hum, Discourse #28

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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The Inside of the Inside – Osho

Samyama is to be employed in stages.

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

But the three are external compared to seedless samadhi.

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

This flow becomes peaceful with repeated impressions.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But who loves? Nobody knows what love is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first sutra:

Samyama is to be employed in stages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These three . . .

The three that we discussed the other day . . .

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

We have discussed those five stages.

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

But the three are external compared to seedless samadhi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the three are external compared to seedless samadhi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Change the gestalt.

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

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

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

This is nirodh parinam:

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

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

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

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

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

This is what the following sutra says:

This flow becomes peaceful with repeated impressions.

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

It is hard, arduous, but available.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

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

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

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

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.

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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.

I Mean Business – Osho

Yesterday you said that there is no goal, no path, no one to lead and no one to follow. Is this statement a lie again? Were you kidding us yesterday?

That’s what I am doing every day. That’s the only possible thing to do. All statements are lies. Truth remains unstated. Truth cannot be reduced to a statement, it cannot be reduced to a formula. It is vast! How can you reduce it to a statement? The moment you state anything about truth, the very expression becomes a barrier. Words cling around truth like chains.

Truth can be transferred only in silence. So those who really listen me, they don’t listen to what I say – they listen to what I am. They listen to the gaps, they listen to the intervals. Words are not important, but there are small gaps between words and the meeting between you and me happens in those gaps.

Those gaps are of meditation. Slowly, slowly words move on the periphery and my meeting, my communion with you becomes the center phenomenon. Words are there, just distant, on the periphery. Silence starts happening.

If you fall silent listening to me, then you have listened to me. If listening to me your mind stops and there are moments when there are no thoughts, all is still and quiet, then you have been listening to me.

Hearing me is one thing; listening to me is quite another. Those who come near to me for the first time, they hear. And those who stay with me for a longer time, slowly, slowly the transformation happens. Hearing starts changing into listening.

Listening is non-verbal. Then my presence is listened to – then something is bridged between me and you. Then my heart and your heart start beating together in one rhythm. Then it is a song, a dance of energies.

This is what in the East is called satsang – to be in the presence of the master. It is not a verbal communication at all. Then why do I go on speaking? Why can’t I sit silently here? That much silence you will not be able to absorb. You can absorb it only in homeopathic doses, only once in a while.

And my words help. They don’t state the truth, but they help, they indicate; they are fingers pointing to the moon. They are not the moon themselves, just fingers pointing to the moon, arrows. Don’t be obsessed by the fingers, don’t start clinging to the fingers, don’t start worshipping the fingers – because that is how you will miss the moon. Forget the fingers and look at the moon.

That moon is silence, utter silence, where not even a single word has ever been uttered.

You have that space inside you. I have become one with it; you are not one with it. But once in a while, moving with me, flowing with me, hearing my words, listening to my silences, once in a while it happens. And those moments are of grace. In those moments you have the first taste of God. Slowly, slowly, you will become more and more capable. That’s why I go on speaking.

And then new people are always coming. For them I have to speak. For the older ones, slowly, slowly they will not be bothered by my words. Hearing will disappear completely. They will listen to my words just as they listen to the sound of a waterfall. They will not search for any meaning in them. They will not search for any truth in them. They will not search even for any coherence in them. They will not be constantly looking into consistency, contradiction, logic, illogic – no, all these things by and by disappear. They will listen to my words as they listen to the songs of the birds, or the wind passing through the pine trees. You don’t ask what the meaning is. You simply listen… and in that listening you become that sound passing through the pine trees, you become that wind.

Whatsoever I say is a device so it is a lie. Truth has never been said, cannot be said. Truth is unutterable. But you can listen to it. It is unutterable, it can’t be said, but it can be listened to.

Let me repeat: it cannot be uttered, but it can be listened to. You can catch hold of it – in silence, in love, in communion. I am not able to say it, but you are able to listen to it. Hence this device of talking to you every morning, year in, year out. This is just a waterfall… listen to it, don’t remain just hearing.

And I am so contradictory by arrangement. I manage it, because if I am very consistent, you will never be able to listen to me, you will go on hearing me. I am so contradictory – sooner or later you are tired. You say, “What is the point? Because this man is going to say one thing this morning and tomorrow he is going to contradict it.” Seeing it happening again and again…. You will cling to my statement and then tomorrow I contradict it, I have to contradict it. Whenever I see that somebody is clinging somewhere to any of my statements, I have to contradict it immediately – to relieve him of the burden, to relieve him of his clinging, to relieve him of the words that he has accumulated inside himself.

So I will go on, zigzag, contradicting myself a thousand and one times. Slowly, slowly, the understanding dawns on you that there is no point in clinging to any words of this man, there is no need to bother about what he says. But by that time you have fallen in love with me. By that time you are in a totally different kind of relationship with me than you have ever been with anybody else. By that time, you have started enjoying my presence. By that time you have started imbibing me. By that time you have started feeling the nourishment. Now you don’t care what I say: now you care more that I am. Then listening has started.

And you will understand me only by listening. You will understand me only when you have forgotten all about understanding what I am saying. All statements are lies. Lao Tzu is true. He says: Tao cannot be said, and the moment you say it you have betrayed it. He is absolutely true.

Truth is so infinite and words are so finite. Only when you have something infinite in you… silence is infinite, unbounded – it can contain truth. Love is infinite, unbounded – it can contain truth. Trust is infinite, unbounded – it can contain truth.

Be natural, spontaneous here with me. Be in the moment, as if all time and space has disappeared, as if the whole world has stopped. The mind has stopped… and suddenly there is truth in all its radiance, grandeur, splendor.

It is here, right this moment. If you have ears, hear it. If you have eyes, see it. And if you cannot see it, and if you cannot hear it, then don’t go on clinging unnecessarily here. I am in a hurry – I don’t want any weeds here. I will find every possible means and ways to drop people who are just sitting there like rocks. Either throb with me, or get lost. Either be with me, or don’t be here. Because I mean business!

-Osho

From Take It Easy, V.1, Discourse #6

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Satsang Invocation

May our inner flame illuminate the way

from darkness to light,

from unconsciousness to consciousness,

from becoming to being.

And from the outer body to the inner body to no body,

from the many to the one and beyond.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

Listen to Amido reciting the invocation here.

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva.

What is Satsang? – Osho

Last night someone asked me what satsang was. I answered that satsang meant the company of one’s self, of the truth, and that the truth was not to be found outside. Neither guru, nor teachers, nor shastras can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself. But we are always in the company of someone or other, and never at all on our own.

Eckhart was once sitting all alone under a grove of trees in a lonely field. A friend who was passing by saw him sitting there. He went up to him and said, “I saw you sitting all alone and I thought I would keep you company and so I have come over to join you.” Do you know what Eckhart replied? He said, “I was with myself, but you have come and now I am all alone.”

Are you ever in your own company like this? This is satsang. This is prayer. This is meditation.

When I am all alone within myself and when there is no thought, no thought of anyone, I am in the company of my Self. When the outer world is absent, inside there is the company of one’s Self. In that companionless-ness and solitude, in your pure being the truth is realized because in your innermost being you yourself are that truth.

-Osho

From The Perfect Way, Session seven

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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.