Tag: Shiva

Between Two Breaths – Osho

Radiant One, this experience may dawn between two breaths. After breath comes in (down) and just before turning up (out)—The Beneficence.

That is the technique:

Radiant One, this experience may dawn between two breaths.

After breath comes in – that is, down – and just before turning out – that is, going up – The Beneficence. Be aware between these two points, and the happening. When your breath comes in, observe. For a single moment, or a thousandth part of a moment, there is no breathing – before it turns up, before it turns outward. One breath comes in; then there is a certain point and breathing stops. Then the breathing goes out. When the breath goes out, then again for a single moment, or a part of a moment, breathing stops. Then breathing comes in.

Before the breath is turning in or turning out, there is a moment when you are not breathing. In that moment the happening is possible, because when you are not breathing you are not in the world. Understand this: when you are not breathing you are dead; you ARE still, but dead. But the moment is of such a short duration that you never observe it.

For tantra, each outgoing breath is a death and each new breath is a rebirth. Breath coming in is rebirth; breath going out is death. The outgoing breath is synonymous with death; the incoming breath is synonymous with life. So with each breath you are dying and being reborn. The gap between the two is of a very short duration, but keen, sincere observation and attention will make you feel the gap. If you can feel the gap, Shiva says, The Beneficence. Then nothing else is needed. You are blessed, you have known; the thing has happened.

You are not to train the breath. Leave it just as it is. Why such a simple technique? It looks so simple. Such a simple technique to know the truth? To know the truth means to know that which is neither born nor dies, to know that eternal element which is always. You can know the breath going out, you can know the breath coming in, but you never know the gap between the two.

Try it. Suddenly you will get the point – and you can get it; it is already there. Nothing is to be added to you or to your structure, it is already there. Everything is already there except a certain awareness. So how to do this? First, become aware of the breath coming in. Watch it. Forget everything, just watch breath coming in – the very passage.

When the breath touches your nostrils, feel it there. Then let the breath move in. Move with the breath fully consciously. When you are going down, down, down with the breath, do not miss the breath. Do not go ahead and do not follow behind, just go with it. Remember this: do not go ahead, do not follow it like a shadow; be simultaneous with it.

Breath and consciousness should become one. The breath goes in – you go in. Only then will it be possible to get the point which is between two breaths. It will not be easy. Move in with the breath, then move out with the breath: in-out, in-out.

Buddha tried particularly to use this method, so this method has become a Buddhist method. In Buddhist terminology it is known as Anapanasati Yoga. And Buddha’s enlightenment was based on this technique – only this.

All the religions of the world, all the seers of the world, have reached through some technique or other, and all those techniques will be in these one hundred and twelve techniques. This first one is a Buddhist technique. It has become known in the world as a Buddhist technique because Buddha attained his enlightenment through this technique.

Buddha said, “Be aware of your breath as it is coming in, going out – coming in, going out.” He never mentions the gap because there is no need. Buddha thought and felt that if you become concerned with the gap, the gap between two breaths, that concern may disturb your awareness. So he simply said, “Be aware. When the breath is going in move with it, and when the breath is going out move with it. Do simply this: going in, going out, with the breath.” He never says anything about the latter part of the technique.

The reason is that Buddha was talking with very ordinary men, and even that might create a desire to attain the interval. That desire to attain the interval will become a barrier to awareness, because if you are desiring to get to the interval you will move ahead. Breath will be coming in, and you will move ahead because you are interested in the gap which is going to be in the future. Buddha never mentions it, so Buddha’s technique is just half.

But the other half follows automatically. If you go on practicing breath consciousness, breath awareness, suddenly, one day, without knowing, you will come to the interval. Because as your awareness will become keen and deep and intense, as your awareness will become bracketed – the whole world is bracketed out; only your breath coming in or going out is your world, the whole arena for your consciousness – suddenly you are bound to feel the gap in which there is no breath. When you are moving with breath minutely, when there is no breath, how can you remain unaware?

You will suddenly become aware that there is no breath, and the moment will come when you will feel that the breath is neither going out nor coming in. The breath has stopped completely. In that stopping, The Beneficence.

This one technique is enough for millions. The whole of Asia tried and lived with this technique for centuries. Tibet, China, Japan, Burma, Thailand, Ceylon – the whole of Asia except India has tried this technique. Only one technique and thousands and thousands have attained enlightenment through it. And this is only the first technique.

But unfortunately, because the technique became associated with Buddha’s name, Hindus have been trying to avoid it. Because it became more and more known as a Buddhist method, Hindus have completely forgotten it. And not only that, they have also tried to avoid it for another reason.

Because this technique is the first technique mentioned by Shiva, many Buddhists have claimed that this book, Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, is a Buddhist book, not a Hindu book.

It is neither Hindu nor Buddhist – a technique is just a technique. Buddha used it, but it was there already to be used. Buddha became a buddha, an enlightened one, because of the technique. The technique preceded Buddha; the technique was already there. Try it. It is one of the most simple techniques – simple compared to other techniques; I am not saying simple for you. Other techniques will be more difficult. That is why it is mentioned as the first technique.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #3

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Between Two Breaths.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

 

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.

 

Thinking No Thing – Osho

Thinking no thing
will limited-self unlimit.

That’s what I was saying. If there is no object to your attention, you are nowhere; or, you are everywhere, you are free. You have become freedom. This second sutra says: Thinking no thing – or, thinking nothing – will limited-self unlimit.

If you are not thinking, you are unlimited. Thinking gives you a limit, and there are many types of limits. You are a Hindu – it gives a limit. Hindu, to be a Hindu, is to be attached to a thought, to a system, to a pattern. You are a Christian – then again you are limited. A religious man cannot be a Hindu or a Christian. And if someone is a Hindu or a Christian, he is not religious – impossible – because these are thoughts. A religious man means not thinking thoughts; not limited by any thought, by any system, by any pattern – not limited by the mind, living in the unlimited.

When you have a certain thought, that thought becomes your barrier. It may be a beautiful thought – still it is a barrier. A beautiful prison is still a prison. It may be a golden thought, but it makes no difference, it imprisons you all the same. And whenever you have a thought and you are attached to it, you are always against someone, because barriers cannot exist if you are not against someone. A thought is always a prejudice; it is always for and against.

I have heard about a very religious Christian man who was a poor farmer. He belonged to the Society of Friends; he was a Quaker. Quakers are non-violent; they believe in love, in friendship. He was coming from the city to his village on his mule cart, and suddenly, apparently without any cause, the mule stopped, and he would not budge. He tried, he persuaded the mule in Christian ways, he persuaded the mule in a very friendly way, a non-violent way. He was a Quaker: he couldn’t beat the mule, he couldn’t use strong words, he couldn’t abuse, scold, but he was filled with anger. But how to beat the mule?

He wanted to beat him, so he said to the mule, “Behave rightly, because I am a Quaker – I cannot beat you, I cannot scold you, I cannot be violent – but remember, mule, that I can sell you to someone who is not a Christian!”

The Christian has his own world, and the non-Christian is opposite. The Christian cannot conceive that the non-Christian can reach the kingdom of God. A Hindu cannot conceive, a Jain cannot conceive, that others can enter into that realm of bliss – impossible. Thought creates a limitation, a barrier, a boundary, and all those who are not for are taken to be against. One who is not in agreement with me is against me.

How can you be everywhere? You can be with the Christian; you cannot be with the non-Christian. You can be with the Hindu, but you cannot be with the non-Hindu, with the Mohammedan. Thought is bound to be somewhere against – against someone or something. It cannot be total. Remember: thought cannot be total; only no-thought can be total.

Secondly: thought is always from the mind; it is always a by-product of the mind. It is your attitude, your speculation, your prejudice; it is your reaction, your formulation, your concept, your philosophy, but it is not existence itself. It is something about the existence; it is not existence itself.

A flower is there. You can say something about it; that is a thought. You can say it is beautiful, you can say it is ugly, you can say it is sacred, but whatsoever you say about the flower is not the flower. The flower exists without your thoughts, and whenever you are thinking about the flower, you are creating a barrier between you and the flower.

The flower doesn’t need your thoughts. It exists. Drop your thoughts, and then you can drop yourself into the flower. Whatsoever you say about a rose is meaningless, howsoever meaningful it appears, it is meaningless. What you say is not needed. It is not giving any existence to the flower. It is creating a film between you and the flower; it is creating a limitation. So whenever there is thought, you are debarred; the door is closed to existence.

This sutra says:

Thinking no thing
will limited-self unlimit.

If you don’t think, if you simply are, fully alert, aware, but without any clouds of thought, you are unlimited. The body is not the only body – a deeper body is the mind. Body consists of matter; mind also consists of matter – subtle, more refined. Body is the outer layer, mind is the inner layer. And it is easy to be detached from the body. It is more difficult to be detached from the mind, because with the mind you feel you are more yourself.

If someone says that your body looks ill, you don’t feel offended. You are not so attached; it is a little away from you. But if someone says your mind seems to be pathological, ill, you feel offended. He has insulted you. With the mind you are nearer. If someone says something about your body, you can tolerate it. If someone says something about your mind, it is impossible to tolerate it, because he has hit deeper.

The mind is the inner layer of the body. Mind and body are not two: the outer layer of your body is the body and the inner layer is the mind. Just as if you have a house: you can see the house from the outside, and you can see the house from the inside. From the outside the outer layer of the walls will be seen; from the inside the inner layer. The mind is your inner layer. It is nearer to you, but it is still a body.

In death your outer body drops, but you carry the inner, subtle layer with you. You are so attached to it that even death cannot separate you from your mind. Mind continues. That’s why your past births can be known, because you are still carrying all the minds that you ever had. They are there. If you were a dog once, the dog mind is still with you. If you were a tree once, the tree mind is still with you. If you once were a woman or a man, you carry those minds. All the minds are carried by you. You are so attached to them that you never lose the grip.

In death the outer dissolves but the inner is carried. It is a very subtle material thing. Really, just vibrations of energy, thought vibrations. You carry them, and according to your thought pattern that you carry, you enter a new body. According to the thought pattern, the desire pattern, the mind, you again create a new body for yourself. The blueprint is in the mind, and the outer layer is again accumulated.

The first sutra is to put aside the body. The second sutra is to put aside the mind, the inner body. Even death cannot separate you – only meditation can separate. That’s why meditation is a greater death; it is a deeper surgery – deeper than death itself. That’s why so much fear. People go on talking about meditation but they will never do it. They will talk, they can write about it, they can preach about it, but they will never do it. A deep fear exists about meditation, and the fear is of death.

Those who do meditation, they come one day or another to the point where they are scared, thrown back. They come to me, and they say, “Now we cannot enter more. It is impossible.” A point comes where one feels that one is dying. And that point is of a deeper death than any death, because now the innermost is being separated; the most inner identity is being shattered. One feels one is dying; one feels now one is moving into non-existence. A deep abyss opens, infinite emptiness opens. One is scared, runs back to cling to the body so that one is not thrown, because the earth beneath is moving, is being removed. A valley is opening, a nothingness.

So people, even if they try, they always try superficially; they play with meditation. They are unconsciously aware that if they move deep they will be no more. And that’s right, the fear is true – you will not be yourself again. Once you have known that abyss, that shunya, the void, you will not be the same again.

You come back, but you are resurrected, a new man. The old has disappeared. You cannot find even a trace of it, of where it has gone. The old was the identity with the mind. Now you cannot be identified with the mind. Now you can use the mind, you can use the body, but they have become instruments; you are above them. Whatsoever you do, you can do, but you are not one with them. This gives freedom. But this can happen only when Thinking no thing.

Hmm – this is very paradoxical – Thinking no thing. You can think about things. How can you think about no thing? What does this “no thing” mean? And how can you think about it? Whenever you think about something it becomes a thing, it becomes an object, it becomes a thought, and thoughts are things. How can you think no thing? You cannot, but in the very effort – the effort to think no thing – thinking will be lost, thinking will be dissolved.

You may have heard about Zen koans. Zen masters give an absurd puzzle to the seeker to think about – and it is something which cannot be thought. It is given knowingly just to stop thinking. For example, they say to the seeker: “Go and find out what your original face is: the face you had when you were not born. Don’t think about this face which you have got; think of the face you had before birth.”

How can you think about it? There was no face before birth; the face comes with the birth. The face is part of the body. You have no face; only the body has a face. Close your eyes and you have no face. You know about your face through the mirror. You have not seen it yourself, and you cannot see it, so how can one think about the original face? But one can try; the very effort will help.

The seeker will try and try – and it is impossible. He will come to the master again and again, asking, “Is this the original face?” And before he says it to the master, the master says, “It is wrong. Whatsoever you bring is going to be wrong.”

For months together the seeker comes again and again. He finds something, imagines something, and he sees the face – “The original face is like this?” And the master says, “No.” And every time this “No, no,” and by and by he becomes more and more puzzled. He cannot think. He tries and tries and tries and fails – that failure is the basic thing. One day he comes to a total failure. All thinking stops in that total failure, and he comes to realize that the original face cannot be thought. Thinking stops.

And whenever this last time happens to a seeker, when he comes to the master, the master says, “Now there is no need. I see the original face.” The eyes have become vacant. The seeker has come not to say something, but just to be near the master. He has not found any answer. There was none. He has come for the first time without the answer. There is no answer to it. He comes silently.

Every time he had come, he had some answer. The mind was there, the thought was there – he was limited by that thought. He had found or imagined some face – he was limited by that face. Now he has become original; now there is no limit. Now he has got no face, no idea, no thought. He has come without any mind. This is the state of no-mind.

In this state of no-mind, the limited-self unlimits. The limits are dissolved. Suddenly you are everywhere, suddenly you are everyone. Suddenly you are in the tree and in the stone and in the sky and in the friend and in the enemy – suddenly you are everywhere. The whole existence has become just a mirror – you are everywhere, mirrored. This state is the state of bliss. Now nothing can disturb you, because nothing exists except you. Now nothing can destroy you; nothing exists except you. Now there is no death, because even in death you are. Now nothing is opposed to you. Alone, you exist.

This aloneness Mahavir has called kaivalya, total aloneness. Why alone? – Because everything is involved, absorbed, has become you. You can express this state in two ways. You can say, “Only I am. Aham Brahmasmi – I am the God, the divine, the total. Everything has come unto me; all the rivers have dissolved into my ocean. Alone I exist. Nothing else exists.” Sufi mystics say this, and Mohammedans could never understand why Sufis say such things. A Sufi says, “There is no God. Alone I exist.” Or, “I am the God.” This is a positive way of saying that now no separation is there. Buddha uses a negative way. He says, “I am nor more. Nothing exists.”

Both are true, because when everything is included in me, there is no sense in calling [naming] myself. The I is always opposed to the you; I is always opposed to thou. In relation to you it is meaningful. When there is no you, I becomes meaningless. So Buddha says there is no I, nothing exists. Either everything has become you, or you have become a non-being and you dissolve into everything.

Both the expressions are true. Of course, no expression can be totally true, that’s why the opposite expression is always also true. Every expression is partial, part; that’s why the opposite expression is also true – that too is part of it. Remember this. Whatsoever you express may be true and the opposite also may be true – the very opposite. Really, it is bound to be true, because every expression is only a part.

And there are two types of expression: you can choose the positive or you can choose the negative. If you choose the positive, the negative seems to be untrue. It is not; it is complementary. It is not really opposed to it. So whether you say Brahma – the total – or you say nirvana – the nothingness – it is the same. Both connote the same experience, and the experience is this – thinking no thing, you come to know it.

Some basic things have to be understood about this technique. One: thinking, you are separated from existence. Thinking is not a relation, it is not a bridge, it is not a communication – it is a barrier. Non-thinking, you are related, bridged; you are in communion. When you are talking to someone, you are not related. The very talk becomes a barrier. The more you talk, the further away you move.  If you are with someone in silence, you are related. If the silence is really deep and there are no thoughts in your mind and both the minds are totally silent, you are one.

Two zeros cannot be two. Two zeros become one. If you add two zeros they don’t become two, they become a bigger zero – one. And, really, a zero cannot be bigger – more big or less big. A zero is simply a zero. You cannot add something to it, you cannot deduct something from it. A zero is whole. Whenever you are silent with someone, you are one. When you are silent with existence, you are one with it.

This technique says be silent with existence and then you will know what God is. There is only one dialogue with existence and that is in silence. If you talk with existence, you miss. Then you are enveloped in your own thoughts.

Try this as an experiment. Try it with anything as an experiment – even with a rock. Be silent with it – take it in your hand and be silent – and there will be a communion. You will move deep into the rock and the rock will move deep into you. Your secrets will be revealed to the rock and the rock will reveal its secrets to you. But you cannot use language with it. The rock doesn’t know any language. Because you use language, you cannot be related to it.

And man has lost silence completely. When you are not doing anything, then too you are not silent; the mind goes on doing something or other. Because of this constant inner talk, this continuous inner chattering, you are not related to anything. Not even to your beloved ones are you related, because this chattering goes on.

You may be sitting with your wife: you are chattering in your own mind; she is chattering in her own mind. Both are chattering. They are far away from each other, poles away. It is as if one is on one star, and the other on another star, and there is infinite space between them. Then they feel that the intimacy is not there, and then they blame each other – “You don’t love me.”

This is not the question really. Love is not possible. Love is a flower of silence. It flowers only in silence because it flowers in communion. If you cannot be without thoughts, you cannot be in love.

And then to be in prayer is impossible – but even if we do prayer we chatter. To us, prayer is just chattering with God.

We have become so conditioned to chattering that even if we go to the church or to the temple we continue chattering there also. We chatter with God; we talk with God. This is absolute nonsense. God, existence, cannot understand your language. Existence understands only one language – that is of silence. And silence is neither Sanskrit nor Arabic nor English nor Hindi. Silence is universal; it doesn’t belong to anyone.

There are at least four thousand languages on earth, and everyone is enclosed in his own language. If you don’t know his language you cannot be related to him. You cannot be related. If I don’t understand your language and you don’t understand my language, we cannot be related. We are strangers. We cannot penetrate each other, we cannot understand, we cannot love. This is happening only because we don’t know a basic universal language – that is silence.

Really only through silence is one related. And if you know the language of silence then you can be related to anything, because rocks are silent, trees are silent, the sky is silent – it is existential. It is not only human; it is existential. Everything knows what silence is; everything exists in silence.

If a rock is there in your hand, the rock is not chattering within itself, and you are chattering – that’s why you cannot be related to the rock. And the rock is open, vulnerable, inviting. The rock will welcome you, but you are chattering, and the rock cannot understand the chattering – that becomes the barrier. So even with human beings you cannot be in a deep relationship; there can be no intimacy. Language, words, destroy everything.

Meditation means silence: not thinking about anything. Not thinking at all, just being – open, ready, eager to meet, welcoming, receptive, loving, but not thinking at all. Then infinite love will happen to you, and you will never say that no one loves you. You will never say it, you will never feel it. Now, whatsoever you do, you will say this, and you will feel this. You may not even say it. You may pretend that someone loves you, but deep down you know.

Even lovers go on asking each other, “Do you love me?” In so many ways they go on enquiring continuously. Everyone is afraid, uncertain, insecure. In many ways they try to find out whether really the lover loves them. And they can never be certain, because the lover can say, “Yes, I love you,” but it will not give any guarantee. How can you be at ease? How can you know whether he is deceiving you or not? He can argue, he can convince you. He can convince you intellectually, but the heart will not be convinced. So lovers are always in agony. They cannot be convinced of the fact that the other loves. How can you be convinced?

Really there is no way to convince through language. And you are asking through language, and while the lover is there you are chattering in the mind, questioning, arguing. You will never be convinced, and you will always feel that you have not been loved, and this becomes the deepest misery. And this is happening not because someone is not loving you. This is happening because you are closed in a wall. You are closed within your thoughts; nothing can penetrate. The thoughts cannot be penetrated unless you drop them. If you drop them the whole existence penetrates you.

This sutra says:

Thinking no thing
will limited- self unlimit.

You will become unlimited. You will become whole. You will become universal. You will be everywhere. And then you are joy. Now you are nothing but misery. Those who are cunning, they go on deceiving themselves that they are not miserable, or they go on hoping that something will change, something will happen, and they will achieve at the end of life – but you are miserable. You can create faces, deceptions, false faces; you can go on smiling continuously, but deep down you know you are in misery. That is natural. Confined in thoughts you will be in misery. Unconfined, beyond thoughts – alert, conscious, aware, but unclouded by thoughts – you will be joy, you will be bliss.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #57

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Thinking No Thing.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

The Book of SecretsAn 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.

You are Everywhere – Osho

Toss attachment for body aside,
realizing I am everywhere.
One who is everywhere is joyous.

Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous. Many points have to be understood. First: Toss attachment for body aside. There is a deep attachment to the body – bound to be, it is natural. You have been living in the body for many, many lives, from the very beginning. Bodies have changed, but you were always with a body, you were always embodied.

There have been certain moments and times when you were not embodied, but then you were not conscious. When you die from one body, you die in unconsciousness and then you remain unconscious. Then you are born again in a new body, but then too you are unconscious. The gap between one death and another birth is unconscious, so you don’t know how you will feel when not embodied. You don’t know who you are when you are not in a body. You know only one phenomenon, and that is of embodiment; you have always known yourself in the body.

This has been so long, so continuous, that you have forgotten that you are different from it. This is a forgetfulness – natural, bound to happen in the circumstances – hence the attachment. You feel you are the body – this is the attachment. You feel that you are not anything other than the body, not anything more than the body. You may not agree with me at this point, because many times you think that you are not the body, you are the soul, the self. But this is not your knowing; this is simply what you have heard, what you have read, and what you have believed without knowing.

So the first thing to be done is that you have to realize the fact that really this is your knowing – that you are the body. Don’t deceive yourself, because deception will not help. If you think that you already know that you are not the body, then you cannot toss aside the attachment, because really for you there is no attachment, you already know. Then many difficulties arise which cannot be solved. A difficulty has to be solved at the beginning. Once you lose the beginning, you can never solve it; you have to come back again to the beginning. So remember well, and realize well that you don’t know yourself as anything other than the body. This is the first basic realization.

This realization is not there. Your mind is befogged by whatsoever you have heard; your mind is conditioned by the knowledge of others – it is borrowed, it is not real. Not that it is false – those who have said it, they have known it – but for you it is false unless it becomes your own experience. So whenever I say something is false, I mean it is not your experience. It may be true for someone else, but it is not true for you. And truth is individual in this sense – that truth is truth only when experienced; not experienced, it is untrue. There are no universal truths. Every truth has to be individual before it becomes true.

You know, you have heard; this is part of your knowledge, part of an inheritance – that you are not the body – but it is not real for you. First toss aside this unreal knowledge. Face the fact that you know yourself only as the body. That will create a great tension in you – it was just to hide that tension that you gathered this knowledge. You go on believing that you are not the body and you go on living as the body, so you are divided, and your whole being becomes non-authentic, pseudo.

Really this is a paranoid condition. You live as the body and you think and talk as the soul – then there is a struggle and a conflict and then you are constantly in an inner turmoil, a deep unease which cannot be bridged. So first encounter the fact you don’t know anything about the soul, the self – all that you know is about the body.

This will release a very uneasy condition in you. All that is hidden will come up to the surface. In realizing this fact that you are the body, you will literally start perspiring. In realizing this fact that you are the body, you will feel very uneasy, strange, but that feeling has to be gone through; only then can you know what attachment to the body means.

Teachers go on saying that you should not be attached to your body, but the basic thing – what the attachment to the body is – is unknown to you. Attachment to the body is a deep identification with the body, but first you have to realize what this identification is. So put aside all your knowledge that has given you an illusory sense that you are the soul. Realize that you know only one thing, and that is the body. How does this create and how does this release hidden turmoil and a hidden hell within you?

The moment you realize you are the body, for the first time you realize the attachment. For the first time you grip the fact in your consciousness that this body which is born, and this body which is going to die, is you. For the first time you realize the fact that these bones, this bones – this is you. For the first time you realize the fact that this sex, this anger – this is you. So all the false images fall. You become real.

The reality is painful, very painful – that’s why we go on hiding it. It is a deep trick. You go on thinking about yourself as the self, and everything that you don’t like, you throw on the body. So you say sex belongs to the body, love belongs to you. Then you say greed and anger, they belong to the body; compassion belongs to you. Compassion belongs to the self, and cruelty belongs to the body. Forgiveness belongs to the self, and anger belongs to the body. So whatsoever you feel is wrong, ugly, you throw to the body, and whatsoever you feel is beautiful, you go on being identified with. You create a division.

This division will not allow you to know what attachment is, and unless you know what attachment is and unless you suffer the misery of it and the hell of it, you cannot put it aside. How can you put it aside? You can put something aside only when it proves a disease, when it proves a heavy burden, when it proves a hell; only then can you put it aside.

Your attachment has not proved a hell yet. Whatsoever Buddha says and Mahavir says is irrelevant. They may go on saying that attachment is hell, but this is not your feeling. That’s why you again and again ask how to be detached, how to be not attached, how to go beyond attachment. You go on asking this “how” only because you don’t know what attachment is. If you know what attachment is, you will simply jump out of it. You will not ask “how.”

If your house is on fire, you will not ask anyone, you will not go seeking a master to ask how to come out of it. If the house is on fire, you will simply get out of it. You will not lose a single moment. You will not search for the teacher; you will not consult the scriptures. And you will not try to choose in what ways one has to come out, what means have to be adopted, and which door is the right door. These things are irrelevant when the house is on fire. When you know what attachment is, the house is on fire. You can put it aside.

To enter in this technique, first you have to throw the false knowledge of the self so that attachment with the body is revealed in its totality. It is going to be very difficult; it is going to be a deep anxiety and anguish to face it. It is not going to be easy, it is arduous, but once you face it, you can put it aside. And there is no need to ask how. It is absolutely a fire, a hell. You can jump out of it.

This sutra says:

Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere.

And the moment you toss aside the attachment, you will realize you are everywhere. Because of this attachment you feel you are limited by the body. It is not the body which is limiting you; it is your attachment to it. It is not the body which is making a barrier between you and the reality; it is your attachment to it. Once you know [what] the attachment is not there, there is no body to you. Rather, the whole existence becomes your body; your body becomes a part of the total existence. Then it is not separate.

Really, your body is nothing but existence coming to you, existence reaching to you. It is the nearest existence to you, that’s all – and then it goes on spreading. Your body is just the nearest corner of it, and then the whole existence is there – it goes on spreading. Once your attachment is not there, there is no body to you; or, the whole existence has become your body. You are everywhere.

In the body you are somewhere; without the body you are everywhere. In the body you are confined to a particular space; without the body you have no confinement. That’s why those who have known, they say the body is the imprisonment. Not that the body is the imprisonment; really, the attachment to it is the imprisonment. Once your eyes are not focused on the body, you are everywhere.

This looks absurd. To the mind, who is in the body, this looks absurd, a madness – how can one be everywhere? To a Buddha, whatsoever we say – that “I am here” – really looks like madness. How can you be somewhere? Consciousness is not a space concept. That’s why if you close your eyes and try to find out where in your body you are, you will be at a loss. You cannot find out where you are.

There have been many religions and many sects which have preached that you are in the navel. Some say that you are in the heart, some say that you are in the head, some say that you are in this center and that center, but Shiva says you are nowhere. That’s why if you close your eyes and try to find out where you are, you cannot say. You are, but there is no “where” to you. Simply you are.

In deep sleep you are not aware of the body. You are. In the morning you will say that the sleep was very deep, very blissful. You were aware of a deep bliss running throughout, but you were not aware of the body. In deep sleep where are you? When you die, where do you go? Continuously people ask, “When someone dies, where does he go?” But the question is absurd, foolish. It is related to our embodied consciousness – because we think that we are somewhere, so then when we die, where do we go? – nowhere.

When you die, you are not somewhere, that’s all. You are not confined to a space, that’s all. But if you have a desire to be confined, you will be confined again. Your desire leads you to new confinements. But when you are not in the body, you are nowhere, or, everywhere – this depends on which word appeals to you.

If you ask Buddha, he will say you are nowhere. That’s why he chooses the word “nirvana.” Nirvana means you are nowhere. Just like a flame which has gone out – how can you say where the flame is then? He will say it is nowhere. The flame has simply ceased to be. Buddha uses a negative term – nowhere. That’s what nirvana means. When you are not attached to the body you are in nirvana; you are nowhere.

Shiva chooses a positive term – he says everywhere – but both the terms mean the same. If you are everywhere, you cannot be somewhere. If you are everywhere, it is saying almost the same thing as saying that you are nowhere.

But in the body, we are attached, and we feel that we are confined. This confinement is a mental act; it is your own doing. And you can confine yourself to anything. You have a valuable diamond. Your being can be confined to it, and if the diamond is stolen, you may commit suicide or you may go mad. What has happened? There are so many persons without a diamond: no one is committing suicide, no one is feeling any difficulty without a diamond, but what has happened to you?

Once you were also without a diamond; there was no problem. Now you are again without a diamond, but there is a problem. How is this problem created? It is your own doing. Now you are attached, confined. The diamond has become your body. Now you cannot live without it; it is impossible to live without it.

Wherever you get attached, it becomes a new imprisonment. And whatsoever we are doing in life is this: we go on creating more and more imprisonments, bigger and bigger jails to live in. Then we go on decorating those jails so that they look like home, and then we forget completely that they are jails.

This sutra says that if you toss aside the attachment with the body, [the] realization happens that I am everywhere. You have an oceanic feeling; your consciousness exists without any location. Your consciousness exists without being tethered anywhere. You become just like a sky, enveloping all; everything is in you. Your consciousness has expanded to the infinite possibility. And then the sutra says:

One who is everywhere is joyous.

Confined to a place you will be in misery, because you are always bigger than where you are confined. This is the misery – as if you are forcing yourself into a small bowl; the ocean is being forced into a small pot. The misery is bound to be there. This is the misery, and whenever this misery has been felt, the search for enlightenment arises, the search for the Brahma. Brahma means the infinite one. The search for moksha means the search for freedom. In a limited body you cannot be free; somewhere you will be a slave. Nowhere or everywhere – you can be free.

Look at the human mind: whatsoever the direction, it is always for freedom, searching for freedom. It may be political, it may be economic, it may be psychological, it may be religious – whatsoever the direction, but the human mind is always groping for freedom. Freedom seems to be the deepest need. Wherever human mind finds any barrier, any slavery, any limitation, it fights against it. The whole human history is a fight for freedom.

Dimensions may be different. A Marx, a Lenin, they are fighting for economic freedom. A Gandhi, a Lincoln, they are fighting for political freedom. And there are thousands and thousands of slaveries, and the fight goes on. But one thing is certain – that somewhere, deep down, man is searching continuously for more and more freedom.

Shiva says, and all the religions say, that you can become politically free, but the struggle will not cease. Only one type of slavery will be no more, but there are other types of slaveries there, and when you are politically free then you will become aware of other slaveries. Economic slavery can cease, but then you will become aware of other slaveries – sexual, psychological. This struggle cannot cease unless you begin to feel and know that you are everywhere. The moment you feel you are everywhere, freedom is attained.

This freedom is not political, this freedom is not economical, not sociological. This freedom is existential. This freedom is total. That’s why we have called it moksha, total freedom. And then only can you be joyous. Joy or bliss is possible only when you are totally free.

Really, to be totally free means joy. The joy is not a consequence, it is the very happening. When you are totally free you are joyous, you are blissful. This bliss is not happening as an effect. Freedom is bliss, slavery is misery. The moment you feel limited you are miserable; wherever you feel limited you feel miserable. When you feel unlimited, misery disappears. So misery exists in barriers, and bliss exists in a no-barrier land, in a no-barrier existence.

Whenever you feel this freedom, joy happens to you. Even now, whenever you feel a certain freedom, even if it is not total, joy comes to you. You fall in love with somebody: a certain joy, a certain bliss happens to you. Why does it happen? Really, whenever you are in love with somebody, you have tossed aside your own attachment to the body. In a deep sense, now the other’s body has also become your body. You are not confined to your own body now; somebody else’s body has also become your body, it has also become your home, it has also become your abode. You feel a freedom. Now you can move into the other and the other can move into you. In a limited way a barrier has fallen. You are more than before.

When you love someone, you are more than you ever were; your being has increased, expanded. Your consciousness is not limited like it was before; it has reached a new realm. You feel a certain freedom in love. It is not total, and sooner or later you will feel again confined. You feel extended, but still finite. So those who really love, are sooner or later bound to fall into prayer.

Prayer means a greater love. Prayer means a love with the whole existence. You now know the secret. You know a key, a secret key – that you loved a person, and the moment you loved, the doors opened, and the barriers dissolved, and at least for one person more your being was expanded, increased. Now you know the secret key. If you can fall in love with the whole existence, you will not be the body.

In deep love you become bodiless. When you are in love with someone you don’t feel yourself as a body. When you are not loved, when you are not in love, you feel yourself more as a body, you become more aware of the body. The body becomes a burden; you have to carry it. When you are loved, the body has lost weight. When you are loved and you are in love, you don’t feel gravitation has any effect on you. You can dance, you can fly really. In a deeper way the body is no more – but this is in a limited way. The same can happen when you are in love with the total existence.

In love, joy comes to you. It is not pleasure. Remember, joy is not pleasure. Pleasure comes to you through the senses; joy comes to you through being non-sensuous. Pleasures comes to you through the body; joy comes to you when you are not the body. When for a moment the body has disappeared and you are simply consciousness, then joy comes to you. When you are the body, pleasure can happen to you. It is always through the body. Pain is possible, pleasure is possible through the body. Joy is possible only when you are not the body.

It happens ordinarily also, accidentally also. You are listening to music and suddenly gravitation is lost. You are so absorbed in it; you have forgotten your body. You are filled with music, and you have become one with music. There is not a listener to it: the listener and the listened have become one. Only music exists; you are no more. You have expanded. Now you are flowing with musical notes, now there is no limit to you. The notes are dissolving into silence, and you are also dissolving into silence with them. The body is forgotten.

Whenever the body is forgotten, it is tossed aside unknowingly, unconsciously, and joy happens to you. Through Tantra and Yoga, you can do it methodologically. Then it is not an accident; then you are the master of it. Then it is not happening to you; then you have the key in your hands, and you can open the door whenever you want. Or, you can open the door forever and throw away the key; no need to close the door again.

Joy happens in ordinary life also, but you don’t know how it happens. The happening is always when you are not the body – remember this. So whenever you again feel any moment of joy, become aware of whether you are the body in that moment or not. You will not be. Whenever joy is, the body is not. Not that the body disappears – the body remains, but you are not attached to it. You are not attached to it; you are not tethered to it. You have jumped out.

You may have jumped out because of music, you may have jumped out because of a beautiful sunrise, you may have jumped out because a child was laughing, you may have jumped out because you were in love. Whatsoever the cause, but you have jumped out for a moment – out of the body. The body is there but tossed aside; you are not attached to it. You have taken a flight.

Through this technique, you know that one who is everywhere cannot be miserable; he is joyous, he is joy. So the more you become confined, the more miserable. Expand, push your boundaries away, and whenever you can, leave the body aside. You look in the sky and clouds are floating: move with the clouds; leave the body here on the earth. And the moon is there: move with the moon. Whenever you can forget the body, don’t miss the opportunity – go on a journey. And then you will become accustomed to what it means to be out of the body.

And this is only a question of attention. Attachment is a question of attention. If you pay attention to the body, you are attached. If the attention has moved away, you are not attached.

Look, for example: you are playing on the sportsgrounds; you are playing hockey or volleyball or something else. When you are deep in play, your attention is not on the body. Someone has hit your feet, and the blood is flowing – you are not aware. The pain is there, but you are not there. The blood is flowing but you are out of the body. Your consciousness, your attention, may be flying with the ball, may be running with the ball. Your attention is somewhere else. The game finishes: suddenly you come back to the body, and the blood is there and the pain. And you wonder how it happened – when it happened and how it happened and how you were not aware of it.

To be in the body, your attention is needed to be there. So remember it – wherever your attention is, you are there. If your attention is in the clouds, you are there. If your attention is in the flower, you are there. If your attention is in money, you are there. Your attention is your being. And if your attention is nowhere, you are everywhere.

So the whole process of meditation is to be in such a state of consciousness where your attention is nowhere, there is no object to it. When there is no object to it, there is no body to you. Your attention creates the body. Your attention is your body. And when attention is nowhere, you are everywhere – joy happens to you. It is not good to say that it happens to you – you are it. It cannot leave you now; it is your very being. Freedom is joy, that’s why so much hankering after freedom.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #57

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt You are Everywhere.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Mediation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

The Book of Secrets

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

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Contemplate Something Beyond Perception – Osho

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – You.

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception – that which cannot be seen, which cannot be perceived. But can you imagine something which cannot be seen?

Imagination is always of that which can be seen. How can you imagine something, how can you suppose something, which cannot be perceived?

That which you can perceive you can imagine. You cannot even dream something which is not capable of being seen and perceived. That’s why even your dreams are shadows of reality. Even your imagination is not pure imagination, because whatsoever you can imagine you have known somehow. You can create new combinations, but all the elements of the combination are known and perceived.

You can imagine a golden mountain flying in the sky like a cloud. You have not perceived such a thing ever, but you have perceived a cloud, you have perceived a mountain, you have perceived gold. These three elements can be combined. Imagination is not original; it is always a combination of something you have perceived.

This technique says:

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception

It is impossible, but that’s why it is worth doing, because in the very effort something will happen to you. Not that you will become capable of perceiving – if you try to perceive something which cannot be perceived, all perception will be lost. In the very effort, if you try to see something which you have never seen, all that you have ever seen will disappear.

If you persist in the effort, many images will come to you – you have to discard them, because you know that you have seen this; this can be perceived. You may not have seen it actually as it is, but even if you can imagine it, it can be perceived. Discard it. Go on discarding. This technique says to persist for that which cannot be perceived.

What will happen? If you go on discarding, it is going to be an arduous effort, because many images will bubble up. Your mind will supply many images, many dreams; many conceptions will come, many symbols. Your mind will create new combinations, but go on discarding unless something happens which cannot be perceived. What is that?

If you go on discarding, nothing will happen to you as an object; only the screen of the mind will be there with no image, with no symbol, with no dream on it, no picture on it. In that moment a metamorphosis happens. When the screen is simply there without any image, you become aware of yourself. You become aware of the perceiver. When there is nothing to be perceived, the whole attention changes. The whole consciousness reflects back. When you have nothing to see, for the first time you become aware of your own self. You start seeing yourself.

This sutra says:

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – You.

Then you happen to yourself. For the first time you will become aware of the one who has been perceiving, who has been grasping, who has been knowing. But this subject is always hidden in objects. You know certain things but you never know the knower. The knower is lost in knowledge.

I see you, then I see someone else, and this procession goes on. From birth to death, I will see this and that and that, and I will go on seeing and seeing. And the seer, the one who was seeing this procession, is forgotten; it is lost in the crowd. The crowd is of objects, and the subject is lost.

This sutra says if you try to Contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping – which you cannot grasp by the mind – beyond not being . . . Immediately the mind will say that if there is something which cannot be seen and cannot be grasped, it is not. The mind will immediately react that if something is not seeable, not perceivable, not graspable, then it is not. The mind will say that it doesn’t exist. Don’t become a victim of the mind.

This sutra says: . . . Beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being. The mind will say that this is nothing, this cannot exist, this is a not-being. The sutra says, don’t believe in it. There is something which is being beyond not-being, which exists and which cannot be perceived, and which is not graspable: that is you.

You cannot perceive yourself, or can you? Can you imagine any situation in which you can encounter yourself, in which you can know yourself? You can go on using the word “self-knowledge,” which is absolutely absurd, because you cannot know the self. The self is always the knower. It cannot be reduced to the known; it cannot be reduced to an object.

For example, if you think that you can know the self, then the self that you know will not be your self, but the one who is knowing the self will be the self. You will always remain the knower; you cannot become the known. You cannot put yourself in front of you; you will always recede back.

Whatsoever you know cannot be yourself – this means that you cannot know it. You cannot know it the way you know other things.

I cannot see myself the way I see you. Who will see? Because every relationship of knowledge, seeing, perception, means that there are at least two things: the known and the knower. Self-knowledge is not possible in this sense, because there is only one. There the knower and the known are one; the observer and the observed are one. You cannot convert yourself into an object. So the word “self-knowledge” is just wrong, but it connotes something, it says something which is true. You can know yourself in a very different sense, in an altogether different sense than from how you know other things. When there is nothing to be known, when all objects have disappeared, when all that can be perceived and grasped is no more, when you have discarded all, suddenly you become aware of yourself. And this awareness is not dual: there is no object and no subject. There is simply subjectivity.

This awareness is a different type of knowing. This awareness gives you a different dimension of existence. You are not divided in two. You are aware of yourself. You are not perceiving, you cannot grasp it, and yet it is existential – the most existential.

Try to think in this way. We have energy: that energy goes on moving to objects. Energy cannot be static. Remember it as one of the ultimate laws: energy cannot be static, it is dynamic. It cannot be otherwise. Dynamism is its very nature – energy moves. When I see you, my energy moves towards you. When I perceive you, a circle is made. My energy moves to you, then it comes back to me – a circle is made.

If my energy moves to you and doesn’t come back, I will not know you. A circle is needed: the energy must go and then come back to me. With its coming back it brings you to me. I know you.

Knowledge means that energy has made a circle. It has moved from the subject to the object, and then it has moved again and come back to the original source. If I go on living in this way – making circles with others – I will never know myself, because my energy is filled with energies of others. It brings those images; it delivers those images to me. This is how you gather knowledge.

This technique says to allow the object to disappear from there. Allow your energy to move in a vacuum, in emptiness. It goes from you, but there is no object to be grasped by it, no object to be perceived by it. It moves and comes back to you through emptiness; there is no object. It brings no knowledge to you. It comes vacant, empty, pure. It brings nothing. It brings only itself. It comes virgin – nothing has entered into it; it remains pure.

This is the whole process of meditation. You are sitting silently; your energy is moving. There is no object with which it can be contaminated, with which it can become entangled, with which it can become impressed, with which it can become one. Then you bring it back to yourself. There is no object, no thought, no image. Energy moves, the movement is pure, and then it comes back to you – virgin. As it left you it comes; it carries nothing. An empty vehicle, it comes to you, it hits you. There is no knowledge carried by it; it is coming only by itself. In that penetration of pure energy, you become aware of yourself.

If your energy is bringing something else, then you will become aware of that something. You look at a flower. The energy is bringing the flower to you – the image of the flower, the smell of the flower, the color of the flower. The energy is bringing the flower to you. It is introducing you to the flower. Then you become acquainted with the flower. The energy is covered by the flower. You never become acquainted with the energy, the pure energy which is you. You are moving to the other and coming back to the source.

If there is nothing to impress it, if it comes unconditioned, if it comes as it had gone, if it brings itself, nothing else, you become aware of yourself. This is a pure circle of energy – energy moving not to something else, but within you, creating a circle within you. Then there is no one else, only you moving within yourself. This movement becomes self-knowledge, self-illumination.

Basically, all meditation techniques, all of them, are different variations of this.

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – You.

If this can happen, then for the first time you will become aware of yourself, of your being, of your existence – the subjectivity.

Knowledge is of two kinds: knowledge of objects and knowledge of the subjectivity. Knowledge of the known, the knowable, and knowledge of the knower. And a man can know millions and millions of things, he can become acquainted with the whole world, but if he is not aware of the knower, he is ignorant. He may be knowledgeable, but he is not wise. He may have collected much information, much knowledge, but the basic thing which makes one a knower is lacking – he is not aware of himself.

In the Upanishads there is a story. Svetaketu, a young boy, came back from his master to his home. He had passed all his examinations, and he had passed well. All that the master could give him, he had collected. He had become very egoistic.

When he reached his father’s house, the first thing the father asked Svetaketu was this: “You seem to be too filled with knowledge, and your knowledge is making you very egoistic – the way you walk, the way you have entered the house. I have only one question to ask you. Have you known that who knows all? Have you known that by knowing which everything is known? Have you known yourself?”

Svetaketu said, “But there was no course for it in the school, and the master never discussed it. I have known everything that can be known. You ask me anything and I will answer you. But what type of question are you raising? It was never discussed.”

The father said, “Then you go back, and unless you know that by knowing which everything is known, and without knowing which nothing is known, don’t come back. First know yourself.”

Svetaketu went back. He asked the master, “My father says I cannot be allowed to go back home, I cannot be welcomed there, because he says that in our family, we have been Brahmins not only by birth. We have been knowers, knowers of Brahma, Brahmins, not only by birth but by real authentic knowledge. So he said, ‘Unless you become a real Brahmin, not by birth, but by knowing the Brahma, by knowing the ultimate, don’t enter the house. You are not worthy of us.’ So now teach me that.”

The teacher said, “All that can be taught I have taught you. And that is something which cannot be taught. So you do one thing: you simply be available for it. It cannot be directly taught. You simply be receptive; some day it will happen. You take all the cows of the ashram . . .” The ashram had many cows; they say four hundred. “You take all the cows to the forest. Remain with the cows: stop thinking, stop verbalizing, just become a cow. Remain with the cows, love them, and be silent as cows are silent. When the cows become one thousand, come back.”

So Svetaketu went with four hundred cows to the forest. There was no use in thinking, there was no one to talk to. By and by his mind became just like a cow. He sat silently under the trees, and for many years he had to wait, because only when the cows became one thousand could he come back. By and by language disappeared from his mind. By and by society disappeared from his mind. By and by he became not a human being at all. His eyes became just like cows.

And the story is very beautiful. The story says he forgot how to count – because if language disappears and verbalizations disappears . . . He forgot how to count, he forgot when he had to return. The story is beautiful. The cows said, “Svetaketu, now we are one thousand. Now let us go back to the master’s house. He must be waiting.”

Svetaketu came back, and the master said to the other disciples, “Count the cows.”

The cows were counted and the disciples said, “Yes, there are one thousand cows.”

And the master is reported to have said, “Not one thousand, one thousand and one – that’s Svetaketu.”

He was standing amidst the cows, silent, just being there, with no thought, with no mind. Just like a cow – pure, simple, innocent. And the master said, “You need not enter. Now go back to your father’s house. You have known; it has happened to you. Why have you come again to me? It has happened to you.”

It happens: when there is no object in the mind to know, the knower happens to you. When the mind is not filled by thoughts, when there is not a single ripple, when there is not a single wave, you are there alone. There is nothing other than you. Obviously, you become aware of your self; for the first time you become filled by yourself. A self-illumination happens.

This sutra is one of the foundational ones. Try it. It is arduous, because the habit of thinking, the habit of clinging to objects, to that which can be perceived and that which can be grasped, is so deep-rooted, so ingrained, that it will take time and a very persistent effort not to be involved in objects, not to be involved in thoughts, but to just become a witness and discard them and say, “No, not this, not this.”

The whole technique of the Upanishads is condensed in two words: NETI, NETI – not this, not this.

Whatsoever comes to the mind, say, “Not this.” Go on saying and discarding and throwing all the furniture out. The room has to be empty, totally empty. When emptiness is there, then that happens.

If something else is there you go on being impressed by it, and you cannot know yourself. Your innocence is lost in objects. A thought-ridden mind is moving outwards. You cannot be related to yourself.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #59

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Contemplate Something Beyond Perception.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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.

Conscious Doing – Osho

As I look in your eyes I never see you there – as if you are absent. You exist absently, and this is the core of all suffering. You can be alive without being at all present, and if you are not present your existence will become a boredom. And this is what has happened. So when I look in your eyes I don’t find you there. You have yet to come, you have yet to be. The situation is there, and the possibility is there – you can be there any moment – but yet you are not.

To become aware of this absence is to begin the journey towards meditation, towards transcendent.

If you are aware that somehow you are missing… you exist but you don’t know why, you don’t know how, you don’t know even who exists within you. This unawareness creates all suffering, because, unknowingly, whatsoever you do will bring suffering. It is not what you do that is basic; it is whether you do it with your presence or with your absence that is significant.

Whatsoever you do, if you can do it with your total presence, your life will become ecstatic; it will be bliss. If you do something without your presence there, absently, your life will be a suffering – bound to be. Hell means your absence.

So there are two types of seekers: one type of seeker is always in search of what to do. That seeker is on a wrong path, because the question is not of doing at all. The question is of being – what to be, how to be. So never think in terms of action and doing, because whatsoever you do, if you are absent it will be meaningless.

Whether you move in the world or you live in a monastery; whether you function in the crowd or you move to an isolated spot in the Himalayas will make no difference. You will be absent here and you will be absent there, and whatsoever you do – in the crowd or in the isolation – will bring suffering.

If you are not there, then whatsoever you do is wrong.

The second type, and the right type of seeker, is not in search of what to do, he is in search of how to be. The first thing is how to be.

One man came to Gautam Buddha. He was filled with much compassion, with much sympathy, and he asked Gautam Buddha, ‘What can I do to help the world?’

Buddha is reported to have laughed and said to the man, ‘You cannot do anything because you are not. How can you do anything when you are not? So don’t think of the world. Don’t think of how to serve the world, how to help others.’ Buddha said, ‘First be – and if you are, then whatsoever you do becomes a service, it becomes a prayer, it becomes compassion. Your presence is the turning point. Your being is the revolution.’

So these are the two paths: the path of action and the path of meditation. They are diametrically opposite. The path of action is basically concerned with you as a doer. It will try to change your actions; it will try to change your character, your morals, your relationships, but never you. The path of meditation is diametrically opposite. It is not concerned with your actions; it is directly and immediately concerned with you. What you do is irrelevant. What you are is relevant. And that is basic and primary, because all action springs from you.

Remember, your actions can be changed and modified, can even be replaced by diametrically opposite actions, but they are not going to change you. Any outward change will not bring the inner revolution, because the outward is superficial and the innermost core remains untouched; by what you do it remains untouched. But the vice versa brings the revolution: if the innermost core is different, the surface automatically changes. So think a basic question; only then can we enter these techniques of meditation.

Don’t be concerned with what you are doing. That may be a trick, that maya be a device to escape from the real problem. For example, you are violent. You can make every effort to be non-violent, thinking that by being non-violent you will become religious; by becoming non-violent you will come closer to the divine. You are cruel, and you may make every effort to be compassionate.

You can do it, and nothing will change and you will remain the same. Your cruelty will become a part of your compassion – and that is more dangerous. Your violence will become a part of your non-violence – that is more subtle. You will be violently non-violent. Your non-violence will have all the madness of violence, and through your compassion you will be cruel.

You can even kill through your compassion; people have killed. There are so many religious wars – they are fought in the mood of compassion. You can kill very compassionately, very non-violently; lovingly you can kill and murder, because you are killing for the sake of the person you are killing. You are killing him for himself, for his own sake, to help him.

You can change your actions, and this effort to change the actions may be just a device to escape the basic change. The basic change is this – first you must be. You must become more alert, more conscious of your being; only then a presence comes to you.

You never feel yourself, and even sometimes when you feel, you feel through others – through excitement, through stimulation, through reaction. Someone else is needed, and via someone else you can feel yourself. This is absurd. Alone, without excitement, with no one there to become a mirror, you fall in sleep, you get bored. You never feel yourself. There is no presence. You live absently.

This absent existence is the non-religious mind. To become filled with your own presence, with the light of your own being, is to become religious. So remember this as a basic point: that my concern is not with your actions. What you do is irrelevant. What you are – absent, present, aware, unaware – that’s my concern. And these techniques we will enter are techniques to make you more present, to bring you here and now.

Either someone else is needed for you to feel yourself, or the past is needed – through the past, through past memories, you can feel your identity. Or the future is needed – you can project in your dreams. You can project your ideals, future lives, moksha. Either you need past memories to feel that you are, or you need a future projection, or someone else, but you alone are never enough. This is the disease, and unless you alone become enough, nothing will be enough for you. And once you alone have become enough unto yourself, you have become victorious, the struggle is over. Now there will be no suffering any more. A point of no return has come.

Beyond this point there is beatitude, eternal bliss. Before this point you are bound to suffer, but the whole suffering, strangely, is your own doing. It is a miracle that you create your own suffering. No one else is creating it. If someone else is creating it then it is difficult to go beyond it. If the world is creating it then what can you do? But because you can do, it means no one else is creating your suffering – it is your own nightmare. And these are the basic elements of it.

The first thing: you go on thinking that you are, you believe that you are. This is simply a belief. You have never encountered yourself, you have never come face to face with yourself; you have never met yourself, there has been no meeting. You simply believe that you are. Throw this belief totally.

Know well that you are yet to be, that you are not, because with this false belief you will never be able to transform. On this false belief your whole life will become false.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, ‘Don’t ask me what to do. You cannot do anything, because to do something first you will be needed. And you are not there, so who will do it? You can think about doing, but you cannot do anything.’

These techniques are to help you, to bring you back; to help you to create a situation in which you can meet yourself. Much will have to be destroyed – all that is wrong, all that is false. Before the real arises the false will have to leave; it must cease. And these are the false notions – that you are.

These are the false notions – that you are a soul, atma, you are Brahma. Not that you are not, but these notions are false.

Gurdjieff had to insist that there is no soul in you. Against all the traditions he insisted, ‘Man has no soul. Soul is simply a possibility – it can be, it may not be. It has to be achieved. You are simply a seed.’

And this emphasis is good. The possibility is there, the potentiality is there, but it is not yet actual.

And we go on reading the Gita and the Upanishads and the Bible, and we go on feeling that we are the soul – the seed thinking that it is the tree. The tree is hidden there, but it is yet to be uncovered.

And it is good to remember that you may remain a seed, and you may die a seed – because the tree cannot come, the tree cannot sprout by itself. You have to do something consciously about it, because only through consciousness it grows.

There are two types of growth. One is unconscious, natural growth: if the situation is there, the thing will grow. But the soul, the atma, the innermost being, the divine within you, is a different type of growth altogether. It is only through consciousness that it grows. It is not natural, it is supernatural.

Left to nature itself it will not grow; just left to evolution it will never evolve. You have to do something consciously; you have to make a conscious effort about it, because only through consciousness it grows. Once the consciousness is focused there, the growth happens. These techniques are to make you more conscious.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #49

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

Osho’s discourses on the meditation techniques of Vigyan Bhairava Tantra

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

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Wherever Your Attention Alights – Osho

Wherever your attention alights,
At this very point, Experience.

In this technique, firstly you have to develop attention. You have to develop a sort of attentive attitude, only then will this technique become possible, so then wherever your attention alights you can experience—you can experience yourself. Just by looking at a flower you can experience yourself. Then looking at a flower is not looking at the flower only, but at the looker also—but only if you know the secret of attention.

You also look at a flower, and you may think you are looking at the flower, but you have started thinking about the flower, and the flower is missed. You are no more there, you have gone somewhere else, you have moved away. By attention is meant that when you are looking at a flower, you are looking at a flower and not doing anything else—as if the mind has stopped, as if now there is no thinking and only a simple experience of the flower [is] there . . . Attention means a silent alertness with no thoughts interfering. Develop it.

You can develop it only by doing it; there is no other way. Do it more and you will develop it. Doing anything, being anywhere, try to develop it. You are traveling in a car, or in a train. What are you doing there? Try to develop attention; don’t waste time. For half an hour you will be in a train: develop attention. Just be there. Don’t think. Look at someone, look at the train or look outside, but be the look, don’t think anything. Stop thinking. Be there and look. Your look will become direct, penetrating, and from everywhere your look will be reflected back and you will become aware of the looker.

You are not aware of yourself because there is a wall. When you look at a flower, first, your thoughts change your look; they give their own color. Then that look goes to the flower. It comes back, but then again your thoughts give it a different color. And when it comes back it never finds you there. You have moved somewhere else, you are not there. Every look comes back; everything is reflected, responsed, but you are not there to receive it. So be there to receive it. The whole day you can try it on many things, and by and by you will develop attentiveness.

With that attentiveness do this:

Wherever your attention alights,
At this very point, Experience.

Then look anywhere, but simply look. The attention has alighted—and you will experience yourself. But the first requirement is to have the capacity to be attentive. And you can practice it. There is no need for it to take some extra time. Whatsoever you are doing—eating, taking a bath, standing under a shower—just be attentive. But what is the problem? The problem is that we do everything with the mind, and we are planning continuously for the future. You may be travelling in a train, but your mind may be arranging other journeys, programming, planning. Stop this. One Zen monk, Bokuju, has said, “This is the only meditation I know. While I eat, I eat. While I walk, I walk. And while I feel sleepy, I sleep. Whatsoever happens, happens. I never interfere.” That’s all there is – don’t interfere. And whatsoever happens, allow it to happen; you be simply there. That will give you attentiveness. And when you have attention, this technique is just in your hand . . .

Wherever your attention alights,
At this very point, Experience.

Just remember yourself. There is a deep reason because of which this technique can be helpful. You can throw a ball and hit the wall—the ball will come back. When you look at a flower or at a face, a certain energy is being thrown—your look is energy. And you are not aware that when you look, you are investing some energy, you are throwing some energy. A certain quantity of your energy, of your life energy, is being thrown. That’s why you feel exhausted after looking in the street the whole day: people passing, advertisements, the crowd, the shops. Looking at everything, you feel exhausted and then you want to close your eyes to relax. What has happened? Why are you feeling so exhausted? You have been throwing energy.

Buddha and Mahavir both insisted that their monks should not look too much; they must concentrate on the ground. Buddha says that you can only look up to four feet ahead. Don’t look anywhere. Just look on the path where you are moving. To look four feet ahead is enough, because when you have moved four feet, again you will be looking four feet ahead. Don’t look more than that, because you are not to waste energy unnecessarily. When you look, you are throwing a certain amount of energy. Wait, be silent, allow that energy to come back. And you will be surprised. If you can allow the energy to come back, you will never feel exhausted. Do it. Tomorrow morning, try it. Be silent, look at a thing. Be silent, don’t think about it, and wait patiently for a single moment—the energy will come back; in fact, you may be revitalized.

People continuously ask me . . . I go on reading continuously so they ask me, “Why are your eyes still okay? You should have needed specs long ago.” You can read, but if you are reading silently with no thought, the energy comes back. It is never wasted. You never feel tired. My whole life I have been reading twelve hours a day, sometimes even eighteen hours a day, but I have never felt any tiredness. In my eyes I have never felt anything, never any tiredness. Without thought the energy comes back; there is no barrier. And if you are there you reabsorb it, and this reabsorption is rejuvenating. Rather than your eyes being tired they feel more relaxed, more vital, filled with more energy.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #51

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Wherever Your Attention Alights.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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

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Be Aware You Are – Osho

“Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living.”

We are living, but we are not aware that we are or that we are living. There is no self-remembering. You are eating or you are taking a bath or you are taking a walk: you are not aware that you are while walking. Everything is, only you are not. The trees, the houses, the traffic, everything is. You are aware of everything around you, but you are not aware of your own being – that you are. You may be aware of the whole world, but if you are not aware of yourself that awareness is false. Why? Because your mind can reflect everything, but your mind cannot reflect you. If you are aware of yourself, then you have transcended the mind.

Your self-remembering cannot be reflected in your mind because you are behind the mind. It can reflect only things which are in front of it. You can just see others, but you cannot see yourself. Your eyes can see everyone, but your eyes cannot see themselves. If you want to see yourself, you will need a mirror. Only in the mirror can you see yourself, but then you will have to stand in front of the mirror. If your mind is a mirror, it can reflect the whole world. It cannot reflect you because you cannot stand before it. You are always behind, hidden behind the mirror.

This technique says while doing anything – singing, seeing, tasting – be aware that you are and discover the ever-living, and discover within yourself the current, the energy, the life, the ever-living. But we are not aware of ourselves.

Gurdjieff used self-remembering as a basic technique in the West. The self-remembering is derived from this sutra. The whole Gurdjieffian system is based on this one sutra. Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. It is very difficult. It looks very easy, but you will go on forgetting. Even for three or four seconds you cannot remember yourself. You will have a feeling that you are remembering, and suddenly you will have moved to some other thought. Even with this thought that “Okay, I am remembering myself,” you will have missed, because this thought is not self-remembering. In self-remembering there will be no thought; you will be completely empty. And self-remembering is not a mental process. It is not that you say, “Yes, I am.” Saying “Yes, I am,” you have missed. This is a mind thing; this is a mental process: “I am.”

Feel “I am,” not the words “I am.” Don’t verbalize, just feel that you are. Don’t think, feel! Try it. It is difficult, but if you go on insisting, it happens. While walking, remember you are, and have the feeling of your being, not of any thought, not of any idea. Just feel. I touch your hand, or I put my hand on your head: don’t verbalize. Just feel the touch, and in that feeling feel not only the touch, but feel also the touched one. Then your consciousness becomes double-arrowed.

You are walking under trees: the trees are there, the breeze is there, the sun is rising. This is the world all around you; you are aware of it. Stand for a moment and suddenly remember that you are, but don’t verbalize. Just feel that you are. This nonverbal feeling, even if for only a single moment, will give you a glimpse – a glimpse which no LSD can give you, a glimpse which is of the real. For a single moment you are thrown back to the center of your being. You are behind the mirror; you have transcended the world of reflections; you are existential. And you can do it at any time. It doesn’t need any special place or any special time. And you cannot say, “I have no time.” When eating you can do it, when taking a bath you can do it, when moving or sitting you can do it – anytime. No matter what you are doing, you can suddenly remember yourself, and then try to continue that glimpse of your being.

It will be difficult. One moment you will feel it is there, the next moment you will have moved away. Some thought will have entered, some reflection will have come to you, and you will have become involved in the reflection. But don’t be sad and don’t be disappointed. This is so because for lives together we have been concerned with the reflections. This has become a robot-like mechanism. Instantly, automatically, we are thrown to the reflection. But if even for a single moment you have the glimpse, it is enough for the beginning. And why is it enough? Because you will never get two moments together. Only one moment is with you always. And if you can have the glimpse for a single moment, you can remain in it. Only effort is needed – a continuous effort is needed.

A single moment is given to you. You cannot have two moments together, so don’t worry about two moments. You will always get only one moment. And if you can be aware in one moment, you can be aware for your whole life. Now only effort is needed, and this can be done the whole day. Whenever you remember, remember yourself.

“Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living.”

When the sutra says, “Be aware you are,” what will you do? Will you remember that “My name is Ram” or “Jesus” or something else? Will you remember that you belong to such and such a family, to such and such a religion and tradition? To such and such a country and caste and creed? Will you remember that you are a communist or a Hindu or a Christian? What will you remember?

The sutra says be aware you are; it simply says, “You are.” No name is needed, no country is needed. Let there be simple existence: you are! So don’t say to yourself who you are. Don’t answer that, “I am this and that.” Let there be simple existence, that you are.

But it becomes difficult because we never remember simple existence. We always remember something which is just a label, not existence itself. Whenever you think about yourself, you think about your name, religion, country, many things, but never the simple existence that you are.

You can practice this: relaxing in a chair or just sitting under a tree, forget everything and feel this “you-areness.” No Christian, no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Indian, no Englishman, no German – simply, you are. Have the feeling of it, and then it will be easy for you to remember what this sutra says: “Be aware you are and discover the ever-living.” And the moment you are aware that you are, you are thrown into the current of the ever-living. The false is going to die; only the real will remain.

That is why we are so much afraid of death: because the unreal is going to die. The unreal cannot be forever, and we are attached to the unreal, identified with the unreal. You as a Hindu will have to die; you as Ram or Krishna will have to die; you as a communist, as an atheist, as a theist, will have to die; you as a name and form will have to die. And if you are attached to name and form, obviously the fear of death will come to you, but the real, the existential, the basic in you, is deathless. Once the forms and names are forgotten, once you have a look within to the nameless and the formless, you have moved into the eternal.

“Be aware you are and discover the ever-living.” This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in modern times Gurdjieff used it. Among all the techniques, this is one of the most potential. Try it. It will take time; months will pass.

When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. So continuously, for three months, Ouspensky lived in a secluded house just doing only one thing – self-remembering. Thirty persons started that experiment, and by the end of the first week twenty-seven had escaped: only three remained. The whole day they were trying to remember – not doing anything else, just remembering that “I am.” Twenty-seven felt they were going crazy. They felt that now madness was just near, so they escaped. They never turned back; they never met Gurdjieff again.

Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it is just the reverse, the opposite. If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness.

But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being – of “I am.” After the second month, even the “I” dropped, and they started having the glimpses of “am-ness” – of just being, not even of “I”, because “I” is also a label. The pure being is not “I” and “thou”; it just is.

And by the third month even the feeling of “am-ness” dissolved because that feeling of am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, “Who am I?” Or you can go on asking continuously, “Who am I?” just continuously inquiring, “Who am I? Who am I?” and all the answers that will be provided by the mind will be found false, irrelevant. You go on asking, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the question, “Who am I?” disappears, you know who you are.

Gurdjieff tried from one corner: just try to remember you are. Raman Maharshi tried from another corner. He made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, “Who am I?” And don’t believe in any answers that the mind can supply. The mind will say, “What nonsense are you asking? You are this, you are that, you are a man, you are a woman, you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor.” The mind will supply answers but go on asking. Don’t accept any answer because all the answers given by the mind are false. They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of “Who am I?” penetrate deeper and deeper. A moment will come when no answer will come.

That is the right moment. Now you are nearing the answer. When no answer comes, you are near the answer because mind is becoming silent – or you have gone far away from the mind. When there will be no answer and a vacuum will be created all around you, your questioning will look absurd. Whom are you questioning? There is no one to answer you. Suddenly, even your questioning will stop. With the questioning, the last part of the mind has dissolved because this question was also of the mind. Those answers were of the mind and this question was also of the mind. Both have dissolved, so now you are.

Try this. There is every possibility, if you persist, that this technique can give you a glimpse of the real – and the real is ever-living.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #35

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Be Aware You Are.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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 Am Existing – Osho

I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O beloved, even in such, know illimitably.

I am existing. You never enter deeply into this feeling. I am existing. You are existing, but you never dig deep into this phenomenon. Shiva says: I am existing. This is mine. This is this.

O beloved, even in such know illimitably.

I will tell you one Zen anecdote. Three friends were walking along a road. Evening was just falling and the sun was setting when they become aware of a monk standing on a nearby hill. They started talking about the monk, wondering what he was doing there. One of them said, “He must be waiting for his friends. He must have gone for a walk from his hermitage and his friends are left behind, so he is waiting for them to come.”

The other denied that and said, “This is not right, because if a person waits for someone, sometimes he will look backwards. But he is not looking backwards at all. So my assumption is this – that he is not waiting for anyone. Rather, he must have lost his cow. Evening is coming near, and the sun is setting, and soon it will be dark, so he is looking for his cow. He is standing there on the hilltop, and looking for where the cow is in the forest.”

The third one said, “This cannot be right, because he is standing so silently, not moving at all, and it seems that he is not looking at all; his eyes are closed. He must be in prayer. He is not looking for any lost cow or waiting for some friends who have been left behind.”

They couldn’t decide. They argued and argued and then they said, “We must go to the top of the hill and ask the man himself what he is doing.”

So they reached the monk. The first one said, “Are you waiting for your friends who are left behind to come?”

The monk opened his eyes and said, “I am not waiting for anyone. And I have neither friends nor enemies to wait for.” He closed his eyes again.

The other one said, “Then I must be right. Are you looking for your cow which is lost in the forest?”

He said, “No, I am not looking for anyone – for any cow or anyone. I am not interested in anything except myself.”

So the third one said, “Then certainly, definitely, you are doing some prayer or some meditation.”

The monk opened his eyes and said, “I am not doing anything at all. I am just being here. I am just being here, not doing anything at all. I am just being here.”

This is what Buddhists say meditation is. If you do something, it is not meditation – you have moved far away. If you pray, it is not meditation – you have started chattering. If you use some word, it is not prayer, it is not meditation – the mind has entered in. That man said the right thing. He said, “I am just being here, not doing anything.”

This sutra says this: I am existing. Go deep into this feeling. Just sitting, go deep into this feeling – “I am existing, I am.” Feel it, don’t think it, because you can say it in the mind – “I am” – and it is futile. Your head is your undoing. Don’t go on repeating in the head: “I am, I am existing.” It is futile, it is useless. You miss the point.

Feel it deep down in your bones. Feel it all over your body. Feel it as a total unit, not in the head. Just feel it – “I am.” Don’t use the words ‘I am’. Because I am relating to you, I am using the words. ‘I am’. And Shiva was relating to Parvati, so he had to use the words ‘I am existing’. Don’t. Don’t go on repeating. This is not a mantra. You are not to repeat “I am existing, I am existing.” If you repeat this you will fall asleep, you will become self-hypnotized.

If you go on repeating a certain thing, you become auto-hypnotized. First you get bored, then you feel sleepy, and then your awareness is lost. You will come back from it very much refreshed, just like after a deep sleep. It is good for health, but it is not meditation. If you are suffering from insomnia you can use chanting, a mantra. It is as good as any tranquillizer, or even better. You can go on repeating a certain word: repeating constantly in a monotonous tone you will fall asleep.

Anything that creates monotony will give you deep sleep. So psychoanalysts and psychologists go on telling people who suffer from insomnia to just listen to the tick-tock of the clock. Go on listening to it and you will fall asleep, because the tick-tock becomes a lullaby.

The child in the mother’s womb sleeps continuously for nine months, and the heart of the mother goes on… tick-tock. That becomes a conditioning, a deep conditioning – the continuous repetition of the heart. That’s why whenever someone takes you near his heart, you feel good. Tick-tock – you feel sleepy, relaxed. Anything that gives monotony gives relaxation; you can fall asleep.

In a village you can sleep more deeply than in a city, because a village is monotonous. The city is not monotonous. Every moment something new is happening; the traffic noises go on changing. In a village everything is monotonous, the same. Really, in a village there is no news, nothing happens; everything moves in a circle. So villagers sleep deeply, because life around them is monotonous. In a city, sleep is difficult, because life around you is very sensational; everything changes.

You can use any mantra: Ram, Ram, aum, aum – anything. You can use Jesus Christ; you can use Ave Maria. You can use any word and monotonously chant it; it will give you deep sleep. You can even do this: Ramana Maharshi used to give the technique “Who am I?” And people started using it as mantra. They would sit with closed eyes and they would go on repeating. “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” It had become a mantra. That was not the purpose.

So don’t make it a mantra, and sitting, don’t say, “I am existing.” There is no need. Everyone knows, and you know already that you are existing; there is no need, it is futile. Feel it – “I am existing.” Feeling is a different thing, totally different. Thinking is a trick to escape from feeling. It is not only different, it is a deception.

What do I mean when I say to feel “I am existing”? I am sitting in this chair. If I start feeling “I am existing,” I will become aware of many things: the pressure on the chair, the touch of the velvet, the air passing through the room, the noise touching my body, the blood circulating silently, the heart, the breathing that goes on continuously, and a subtle vibrating feeling of the body. Because the body is a dynamism; it is not a static thing. You are vibrating. Continuously there is a subtle trembling and while you are alive it will continue. The trembling is there.

You will become aware of all these multidimensional things. And the more you become aware of the many things that are happening…. If right now you become aware of whatsoever is happening within you and without, this is what is meant by “I am existing.” If you become aware in this way, thinking will stop, because when you feel you are existing it is such a total phenomenon that thinking cannot continue.

In the beginning you will feel thoughts floating. By and by, the more you get rooted in existence, the more and more you settle down in the feeling of being, the thoughts will be far away, you will feel a distance – as if those thoughts are not now happening to you, but they are happening to someone else, very, very far away. There is a distance. And then, when you are really rooted, grounded in the being, mind will disappear. You will be there with not a single word, not a single mental image.

Why does this happen? – because mind is a particular activity for relating with others. If I am to relate with you I will have to use my mind, language, words. It is a social phenomenon; it is a group activity. So even if you are talking while alone, you are not alone – you are talking to someone. Even when you are alone, when you are talking you are talking to someone; you are not alone. How can you talk alone? Someone is present in the mind and you are talking to him.

I was reading the autobiography of a professor of philosophy. He relates that one day he was going to take his daughter, who was five years old, to school, and after leaving her at the school he was going to go to the university to deliver his lecture. So he was preparing his lecture on the way, and he forgot all about his daughter who was sitting just by his side in the car, and he started lecturing loudly. The girl listened for a few moments and then she asked, ‘Daddy, are you talking with me or without me?’

Even when you are talking it is never without, it is always with – with someone. He may not be present, but to you he is present; for your mind he is there. All thinking is a dialogue. Thinking as such is a dialogue, it is a social activity. That’s why if a child is brought up without any society, he will not know any language. He will not be able to verbalize. It is society which gives you language; without society there is no language. Language is a social phenomenon.

When you get grounded within yourself, there is no society, there is no one. You alone exist. Mind disappears. You are not relating to anyone, not even in imagination, so mind disappears. You are there without the mind, and this is what meditation is – being without the mind. Being perfectly alert and conscious, not unconscious, feeling existence in its totality, in its multidimensionality, but the mind has suddenly disappeared.

And with the mind many things disappear. With the mind, your name, with the mind, your form; with the mind, that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Parsee; with the mind, that you are good or bad; with the mind, that you are a saint or a sinner; with the mind, that you are ugly or beautiful – everything disappears. All that is labelled on you suddenly is not there. You are in your pristine purity. In your total innocence you are there; in your virginity – grounded, not floating, rooted in that which is.

With the mind you can move into the past. With the mind you can move into the future. Without mind you cannot move into the past or into the future. Without mind you are here and now – just this moment is all eternity. Nothing exists except this moment. Bliss happens. You need not go in any search. Rooted in the moment, rooted in the being, you are blissful. And this bliss is not something which is happening really to you – you are it.

I am existing. Try it. And you can do it anywhere. Just riding in a bus, or travelling in a train, or just sitting, or lying down on your bed, try to feel existence as it is; don’t think about it. Suddenly you will become aware that you have not known many things which are continuously happening to you. You have not felt your body. You have your hands, but you have not ever felt it – what it says, and what it continuously goes on informing you; how it feels.

Sometimes it is heavy and sad, sometimes it is happy and light. Sometimes everything flows in it, sometimes everything is dead. Sometimes you feel it alive, dancing, sometimes as if there is no life in it – frozen, dead; hanging on you, but not alive.

When you start feeling your being, you will come to know the moods of your hands, of your eyes, of your nose, of your body. It is a big phenomenon; there are subtle nuances. The body goes on telling you and you are not there to hear it. And existence all around you goes on penetrating you in subtle ways, in many ways, in different ways, but you are not aware. You are not there to receive it, to welcome it.

When you start feeling existence, the whole world becomes alive to you in a totally new way; you have not known it. Then you pass through the same street and the street is not the same, because now you are grounded in existence. You meet the same friends but they are not the same, because you are different. You come back to your house and the wife you have lived with for years is not the same.

Now you are aware of your own being, you become aware of the other’s being. When the wife becomes angry, you can enjoy even her anger, because now you can feel what is happening. And if you can feel it, anger my not look like anger; it may become love. If you can feel it deep down, then anger shows that she still loves you. Otherwise she would not be angry; she would not bother. She still waits for you the whole day. She is angry because she loves you. She is not indifferent.

Remember, anger or hate or not the real opposites of love – indifference is the real opposite. When someone is indifferent to you, love is lost. If someone is not even ready to be angry with you, then everything is lost. But ordinarily if your wife is angry you react more violently, you become aggressive. You cannot understand the symbolic meaning of it. You are not grounded in yourself. You have not really known your own anger; that’s why you cannot understand others’ anger.

If you know your own anger, if you can feel it in its total mood, then you know others’ anger also. You are angry only when you love someone, otherwise there is no need. Through anger the wife is saying that she still loves you, she is not indifferent to you. She has been waiting, waiting, and now the whole waiting has become anger.

She may not say it directly, because the language of feeling is not direct. And that has become a big problem today – because you cannot understand the language of feeling, because you don’t know your own feelings. You are not grounded in your own being. You can understand only words, you cannot understand feelings. Feelings have their own way of expression, and they are more basic, more real.

Once you get acquainted with your own existence, you will become aware of others’ existence also. And everyone is so mysterious, and everyone is such a deep abyss to be known – an infinite possibility of being penetrated and known. And everyone is waiting that someone should penetrate, go deep, and feel his or her heart. But because you have not known your own heart, you cannot know anyone else’s. The nearest heart remains unknown, so how can you know others; hearts?

You move as a zombie, and you move in a crowd of zombies; everyone is fast asleep. You have only this much alertness: that you pass through fast-asleep people and without any accident you come to your home, that’s all. This much alertness you have got. This is the minimum which is possible to man, that’s why you are so bored, so dull. Life is just a long heaviness, and deep down everyone is waiting for death, in order to be delivered from life. Death seems to be the only hope.

Why is this happening? Life can be infinite bliss. Why is this so boring? You are not grounded in it. You are uprooted; uprooted, and living at the minimum. And life really happens when you live at the maximum.

This sutra will give you a maximum of existence. Thought can give you only a minimum; feeling can give you the maximum. Through mind there is no way to existence; through heart is the only way.

I am existing. Feel it through the heart. And feel this existence is mine. This is mine.

This is this. This is very beautiful I am existing. Feel it, be grounded in it; then know  this is mine – this existence, this overflowing being is mine.

You go on saying that this house is mine, this furniture is mine. You go on talking about your possessions, and you never know what you really possess. You possess total being. You possess the deepest possibility, the center-most core of existence in you. Shiva says: I am existing. Feel this. This is mine.

This too is not to be made a thought; remember that continuously. Feel it – this is mine, this existence – and then you will feel gratitude. How can you thank God? Your thankfulness is superficial, formal. And look what a misery… even with God we are formal. How can you be grateful? You have not known anything to be grateful for.

If you can feel yourself rooted in existence, merged in it, overflowing with it, and allow even dancing with it, then you will feel, “This is mine. This existence belongs to me. This whole mysterious universe belongs to me. This whole existence has been existing for me. It has created me. I am a flower of it.”

This consciousness that has happened to you is the greatest flower that has happened to the universe. And for millions and millions of years this earth was preparing for you to exist.

This is mine. This is this. To feel, “This is what life is, this is this – this suchness. I was unnecessarily worried. I was unnecessarily a beggar, unnecessarily thinking in terms of begging. I am the master.”

When you are rooted, you are one with the whole, and the existence exists for you. You are not a beggar; you become an emperor suddenly. This is this.

Oh beloved, even in such know illimitably.

And while feeling this, don’t create a limit to it. Feel it illimitably. Don’t create a boundary to it; there is none. It ends nowhere. The world begins nowhere; the world ends nowhere. Existence has no beginning and no end. You also don’t have any beginning; you also don’t have any end.

Beginning and end are because of the mind – mind has a beginning and mind has an end. Go backwards, travel backwards into your life: there comes a moment where everything stops – there is a beginning. You can remember back to when you were three years of age, or, at the most, two years of age – that is rare – but then memory stops. You can travel backwards to when you were two years of age. What does it mean? And you cannot remember anything previous to that, previous to that age of two years. Suddenly there is a blank, you don’t know anything.

Do you remember anything about your birth? Do you know anything about the nine months in your mother’s womb? You were, but the mind was not there. Mind started around the age of two; that’s why you can remember back to that age. Then there is no mind, memory stops. Mind has a beginning, mind has an end, but you are beginningless.

If in deep meditation, in such meditation you can come to feel existence, then there is no mind – a beginningless, endless flow of energy, of cosmic force; an infinite ocean around you, and you are just a wave in it. The wave has a beginning and an end – the ocean has none. And once you know that you are not the wave but the ocean, all misery has disappeared.

What is deep down in your misery? – deep down there is death. You are afraid of some end which is going to be there. It is absolutely certain; nothing is so certain as death – the fear, the trembling. Whatsoever you do, you are helpless. Nothing can be done – death is going to be there. And that goes on and on inside in the conscious and unconscious mind. Sometimes it erupts in the conscious – you become afraid of death. You push it down, and then it continues in the unconscious. Every moment you are afraid of death, of the end.

Mind is going to die, you are not going to die – but you don’t know yourself. You know something which is just a created thing: it has a beginning, it is going to have an end. That which begins must end. If you can find within your being something which never begins, which simply is, which cannot end, then the fear of death disappears. And when the fear of death disappears, love flows through you, not before it.

How can you love when there is going to be death? You can cling to someone, but you cannot love. You can use someone, but you cannot love. You can exploit someone, but you cannot love.

Love is not possible if fear is there. Fear is the poison. Love cannot flower with fear deep inside.

Everyone is going to die. Everyone is standing in a queue waiting for his time. How can you love? Everything seems nonsense. Love appears nonsense if death is there, because death will destroy everything. Even love is not eternal. Whatsoever you do for your beloved, for your lover, you cannot do anything because you cannot avoid death – it is just waiting behind everything.

You can forget it, you can create a facade, and you can go on believing that it is not going to be there, but your belief is just superficial – deep down you know it is going to be there. And if death is there, then life is meaningless. You can create artificial meanings, but they won’t help much. Temporarily, for some moments, they can help, and again the reality erupts and the meaning is lost. You can just deceive yourself continuously, that’s all – unless you come to know something which is beginningless and endless, which is beyond death.

Once you come to know it, then love is possible, because then there is no death. Love is possible. Buddha loves you, Jesus loves you, but that love is absolutely unknown to you. That love has come because fear has disappeared, and your love is just a mechanism to avoid fear. So whenever you love, you feel fearless. Someone gives you strength.

And this is a mutual phenomenon: you give strength to someone and someone gives strength to you. Both are weak, and both are seeking someone, and then two weak persons meet and they help each other to be strong – this is just wonderful! How does it happen? It is just a make-believe. You feel that someone is there behind you, with you, but you know no one can be with you in death. And if someone cannot be with you in death, how can he or she be with you in life? Then it is just postponing, just avoiding death. And because you are afraid, you need someone to make you fearless.

It is said, somewhere Emerson has written, that even the greatest warrior is a coward before his wife. Even a Napoleon is a coward, because the wife knows that he needs her strength, he needs her in order to be himself. He depends on her. When he comes back from the war, from the fighting, he is trembling, afraid. He rests in her, he relaxes in her. She consoles him; he becomes just like a child. Every husband is a child before the wife. And the wife? – she depends on the husband. She lives through him. She cannot live without him; he is her life.

This is a mutual deception. Both are afraid – death is there. They both try to love each other and forget death. Lovers become, or appear to be, fearless. Lovers even sometimes can face death very fearlessly, but that is just appearance.

Our love is part of fear – just to escape from it. Real love happens when there is no fear – when death has disappeared, when you know you never begin and you are never going to end. Don’t think it. You can think it, because of the fear. You can think, “Yes, I know I am not going to end, there is no death, the soul is immortal.” You can think because of fear – that will not help.

If you move deep in meditation it will happen. Fear will disappear, because you know yourself endlessly. You go on spreading endlessly – back into the past, forward into the future, and this very moment, this present moment, in the depth of it you are there. You simply are – you never begin, you are never going to end.

Feel this illimitably – infinitely.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #59

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt I Am Existing.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

The Book of SecretsAn 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.

 

Shiva’s 112 Meditation Techniques

Following are the 112 meditation techniques, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, that Shiva gave to his partner Devi (Shakti).

These techniques are the basis for Osho’s The Book of Secrets.

I have numbered them in the order that Osho gave them. The entire discourse series contains 80 discourses. The even number discourses were answers to questions. The techniques were given in odd numbered discourses after the first which was an introduction. Usually more than one technique was described in each of the discourses.

On the following list, the numbers in brackets at the end of the technique, for example (#3-1), signify the discourse number and which technique in that discourse. Some of them have links to posts of the discourses in which Osho describes the techniques.

  1. Radiant one, this experience may dawn between two breaths. After breath comes in (down) and just before turning up (out)—the beneficence. (#3-1)
  2. As breath turns down from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down—through both these turns, realize. (#3-2)
  3. Or, whenever in-breath and out-breath fuse, at this instant touch the energy-less, energy-filled center. (#3-3)
  4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stopped – in such universal pause, one’s small self vanishes. This is difficult only for the impure. (#3-4)
  5. Attention between eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Let form fill with breath essence to the top of the head and there shower as light. (#5-1)
  6. When in worldly activity, keep attention between two breaths, and so practicing, in a few days be born anew. (#5-2)
  7. With intangible breath in center of forehead, as this reaches heart at the moment of sleep, have direction over dreams and over death itself. (#5-3)
  8. With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower. (#5-4)
  9. Lie down as dead. Enraged in wrath, stay so. Or stare without moving an eyelash. Or suck something and become the sucking. (#5-5)
  10. While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caress as everlasting life. (#7-1)
  11. Stop the doors of the senses when feeling the creeping of an ant. Then. (#7-2)
  12. When on a bed or a seat, let yourself become weightless, beyond mind. (#7-3)
  13. Or, imagine the five-colored circles of the peacock tail to be your five senses in illimitable space. Now let their beauty melt within. Similarly, at any point in space or on a wall—until the point dissolves. Then your wish for another comes true. (#9-1)
  14. Place your whole attention in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your spinal column. In such be transformed. (#9-2)
  15. Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes all-inclusive. (#11-1)
  16. Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the lotus. (#11-2)
  17. Unminding mind, keep in the middle—until. (#11-3)
  18. Look lovingly at some object. Do not go to another object. Here in the middle of the object—the blessing. (#13-1)
  19. Without support for feet or hands, sit only on the buttocks. Suddenly, the centering. (#13-2)
  20. In a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. Or in a still vehicle, by letting yourself swing in slowing invisible circles. (#13-3)
  21. Pierce some part of your nectar-filled form with a pin, and gently enter the piercing and attain to the inner purity. (#13-1)
  22. Let attention be at a place where you are seeing some past happening, and even your form, having lost its present characteristics, is transformed. (#15-1)
  23. Feel an object before you. Feel the absence of all other objects but this one. Then, leaving aside the object-feeling and the absence-feeling, realize. (#15-2)
  24. When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered. (#15-3)
  25. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. (#17-1)
  26. When some desire comes, consider it. Then suddenly, quit it. (#17-2)
  27. Roam about until exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole. (#17-3)
  28. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of deprivation, transcend. (#19-1)
  29. Devotion frees. (#19-2)
  30. Eyes closed, see your inner being in detail. Thus see your true nature. (#21-1)
  31. Look upon a bowl without seeing the sides or the material. In a few moments become aware. (#21-2)
  32. See as if for the first time a beauteous person or an ordinary object. (#21-3)
  33. Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity. (#23-1)
  34. Listen while the ultimate mystical teaching is imparted. Eyes still, without blinking, at once become absolutely free. (#23-2)
  35. At the edge of a deep well look steadily into its depths until – the wondrousness. (#23-3)
  36. Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw your thought from it. Then. (#23-4)
  37. Devi, imagine the Sanskrit letters in these honey-filled foci of awareness, first as letters, then more subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free. (#25-1)
  38. Bathe in the center of sound, as in the continuous sound of a waterfall. Or by putting the fingers in the ears, hear the sound of sounds. (#25-2)
  39. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you. (#27-1)
  40. In the beginning and gradual refinement of the sound of any letter, awake. (#27-2)
  41. While listening to stringed instruments, hear their composite central sound; thus omnipresence. (#27-3)
  42. Intone a sound audibly, then less and less audibly as feeling deepens into this silent harmony. (#29-1)
  43. With mouth slightly open, keep mind in the middle of the tongue. Or, as breath comes silently in, feel the sound HH. (#29-2)
  44. Center on the sound a-u-m without any a or m. (#29-3)
  45. Silently intone a word ending in AH. Then in the HH, effortlessly, the spontaneity. (#31-1)
  46. Stopping ears by pressing and the rectum by contracting, enter the sound. (#31-2)
  47. Enter the sound of your name and, through this sound, all sounds. (#31-3)
  48. At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end. (#33-1)
  49. When in such embrace your senses are shaken as leaves, enter this shaking. (#33-2)
  50. Even remembering union, without the embrace, transformation. (#33-3)
  51. On joyously seeing a long absent friend, permeate this joy. (#33-4)
  52. When eating or drinking, become the taste of food or drink, and be filled. (#33-5)
  53. O lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living. (#35-1)
  54. Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this. (#35-2)
  55. At the point of sleep, when the sleep has not yet come and the external wakefulness vanishes, at this point being is revealed. (#35-3)
  56. Illusions deceive, colors circumscribe, even divisibles are indivisible. (#35-4)
  57. In moods of extreme desire, be undisturbed. (#37-1)
  58. This so-called universe appears as a juggling, a picture show. To be happy, look upon it so. (#37-2)
  59. O beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these. (#37-3)
  60. Objects and desires exist in me as in others. So accepting, let them be transformed. (#37-4)
  61. As waves come with water and flames with fire, so the universal waves with us. (#39-1)
  62. Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this. (#39-2)
  63. When vividly aware through some particular sense, keep in the awareness. (#39-3)
  64. At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware. (#41-1)
  65. The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us. In reality, know nothing as pure or impure. (#42-1)
  66. Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor. (#43-1)
  67. Here is the sphere of change, change, change. Through change consume change. (#43-2)
  68. As a hen mothers her chicks, mother particular knowings, particular doings, in reality. (#45-1)
  69. Since, in truth, bondage and freedom are relative, these words are only for those terrified with the universe. This universe is a reflection of minds. As you see many suns in water from one sun, so see bondage and liberation. (#45-2)
  70. Consider your essence as light rays from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises livingness in you. (#47-1)
  71. Or in the spaces between, feel this as lightning. (#47-2)
  72. Feel the cosmos as a translucent ever-living presence. (#47-3)
  73. In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity. (#49-1)
  74. Shakti, see all space as if already absorbed in your own head in the brilliance. (#49-2)
  75. Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light. (#49-3)
  76. In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms. (#51-1)
  77. When a moonless rainy night is not present, close eyes and find blackness before you. Opening eyes see blackness. So faults disappear forever. (#51-2)
  78. Wherever your attention alights, at this very point, experience. (#51-3)
  79. Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes but not you. (#53-1)
  80. Meditate on the make-believe world as burning to ashes, and become being above human. (#53-2)
  81. As, subjectively, letters flow into words and words into sentences, and as, objectively, circles flow into worlds and worlds into principles, find at last these converging in our being. (#53-3)
  82. Feel: my thought, I-ness, internal organs – me. (#55-1)
  83. Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am? Consider. Dissolve in the beauty. (#55-2)
  84. Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous. (#57-1)
  85. Thinking no thing will limited-self unlimit. (#57-2)
  86. Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – you. (#59-1)
  87. I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O beloved, even in such know illimitably. (#59-2)
  88. Each thing is perceived through knowing. The self shines in space through knowing. Perceive one being as knower and known. (#61-1)
  89. Beloved, at this moment let mind, knowing, breath, form, be included. (#61-2)
  90. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart and there permeates the cosmos. (#63-1)
  91. Kind Devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form. (#63-2)
  92. Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart. (#65-1)
  93. Consider any area of your present form as limitlessly spacious. (#65-2)
  94. Feel your substance, bones, flesh, blood, saturated with the cosmic essence. (#67-1)
  95. Feel the fine qualities of creativity permeating your breasts and assuming delicate configurations. (#67-2)
  96. Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. Thence comes the end of mind pressures. (#69-1)
  97. Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss. (#69-2)
  98. In any easy position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace. (#71-1)
  99. Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near. (#71-2)
  100. The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlightened person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood, not lost in things. (#73-1)
  101. Believe omniscient, omnipotent, pervading. (#73-2)
  102. Imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe spiritualizes. (#75-1)
  103. With your entire consciousness in the very start of desire, of knowing, know. (#75-2)
  104. O Shakti, each particular perception is limited, disappearing in omnipotence. (#75-3)
  105. In truth forms are inseparate. Inseparate are omnipresent being and your own form. Realize each as made of this consciousness. (#75-4)
  106. Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. So, leaving aside concern for self, become each being. (#77-1)
  107. This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists. (#77-2)
  108. This consciousness is the spirit of guidance of each one. Be this one. (#77-3)
  109. Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin—empty. (#79-1)
  110. Gracious one, play. The universe is an empty shell wherein your mind frolics infinitely. (#79-2)
  111. Sweet hearted one, meditate on knowing and not-knowing, existing and not-existing. Then leave both aside that you may be. (#79-3)
  112. Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. (#79-4)

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation: A Course in Witnessing

Osho’s discourses on the meditation techniques of Vigyan Bhairava Tantra

Here you can find one hour meditations based on Osho’s The Book of Secrets. They consist of alternating periods of Osho’s words and silence.

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.

Breath is the Bridge – Osho

Truth is always here. It is already the case. It is not something to be achieved in the future. You are the truth just here and now, so it is not something which is to be created or something which is to be devised or something which is to be sought. Understand this very clearly; then these techniques will be easy to understand and also to do.

Mind is a mechanism of desiring. Mind is always in desire, always seeking something, asking for something. Always the object is in the future; mind is not concerned with the present at all. In this very moment the mind cannot move – there is no space. The mind needs the future in order to move. It can move either in the past or in the future. It cannot move in the present; there is no space. The truth is in the present, and mind is always in the future or in the past, so there is no meeting between mind and truth.

When the mind is seeking worldly objects it is not so difficult, the problem is not absurd; it can be solved. But when the mind starts seeking the truth the very effort becomes nonsense, because the truth is here and now and the mind is always then and there. There is no meeting. So understand the first thing: you cannot seek truth. You can find it, but you cannot seek it. The very seeking is the hindrance.

The moment you start seeking you have moved away from the present, away from yourself, because you are always in the present. The seeker is always in the present and the seeking is in the future, you are not going to meet whatsoever you are seeking. Lao Tzu says, “Seek not; otherwise you will miss. Seek not and find. Don’t seek and find.”

All these techniques of Shiva’s are simply turning the mind from the future or the past to the present.  That which you are seeking is already there, it is the case already. The mind has to be turned from seeking to non-seeking. It is difficult. If you think about it intellectually it is very difficult. How to turn the mind from seeking to non-seeking? – Because then the mind makes non-seeking itself the object! Then the mind says, “Don’t seek.” Then the mind says, “I should not seek.” Then the mind says, “Now non-seeking is my object. Now I desire the state of desirelessness.” The seeking has entered again, the desire has come again through the back door. That is why there are people who are seeking worldly objects, and there are people who think they are seeking non-worldly objects.

All objects are worldly because “seeking” is the world.

So you cannot seek anything non-worldly. The moment you seek, it becomes the world. If you are seeking God, your God is part of the world. If you are seeking moksha – liberation – nirvana, your liberation is part of the world, your liberation is not something that transcends the world, because seeking is the world, desiring is the world. So you cannot desire nirvana, you cannot desire non-desire. If you try to understand intellectually, it will become a puzzle.

Shiva says nothing about it; he immediately proceeds to give techniques. They are non-intellectual.  He doesn’t say to Devi, “The truth is here. Don’t seek it and you will find it.” He immediately gives techniques. Those techniques are non-intellectual. Do them, and the mind turns. The turning is just a consequence, just a by-product – not an object. The turning is just a by-product.

If you do a technique, your mind will turn from its journey into the future or the past. Suddenly you will find yourself in the present. That is why Buddha has given techniques, Lao Tzu has given techniques, Krishna has given techniques. But they always introduce their techniques with intellectual concepts. Only Shiva is different. He immediately gives techniques, and no intellectual understanding, no intellectual introduction, because he knows that the mind is tricky, the most cunning thing possible. It can turn anything into a problem. Non-seeking will become the problem.

There are people who come to me who ask how not to desire. They are desiring non-desire. Somebody has told them, or they have read somewhere, or they have heard spiritual gossip, that if you do not desire you will reach bliss, if you do not desire you will be free, if you do not desire there will be no suffering. Now their minds hanker to attain that state where there is no suffering, so they ask how not to desire. Their minds are playing tricks. They are still desiring, it is only that now the object has changed. They were desiring money, they were desiring fame, they were desiring prestige, they were desiring power. Now they are desiring non-desire. Only the object has changed, and they remain the same and their desiring remains the same. But now the desire has become more deceptive.

Because of this, Shiva proceeds immediately with no introduction whatsoever. He immediately starts talking about techniques. Those techniques, if followed, suddenly turn your mind: it comes to the present. And when the mind comes to the present it stops, it is no more. You cannot be a mind in the present, that is impossible. Just now, if you are here and now, how can you be a mind?

Thoughts cease because they cannot move. The present has no space in which to move; you cannot think. If you are in this very moment, how can you move? Mind stops, you attain to no-mind.

So the real thing is how to be here and now. You can try, but effort may prove futile – because if you make it a point to be in the present, then this point has moved into the future. When you ask how to be in the present, again you are asking about the future. This moment is passing in the inquiry, “How to be present? How to be here and now?” This present moment is passing in the inquiry, and your mind will begin to weave and create dreams in the future: some day you will be in a state of mind where there is no movement, no motive, no seeking, and then there will be bliss – so how to be in the present?

Shiva doesn’t say anything about it, he simply gives a technique. You do it, and suddenly you find you are here and now. And your being here and now is the truth, and your being here and now is the freedom, and your being here and now is the nirvana.

The first nine techniques are concerned with breathing. So let us understand something about breathing, and then we will proceed to the techniques. We are breathing continuously from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Everything changes between these two points. Everything changes, nothing remains the same, only breathing is a constant thing between birth and death.

The child will become a youth; the youth will become old. He will be diseased, his body will become ugly, ill, everything will change. He will be happy, unhappy, in suffering; everything will go on changing. But whatsoever happens between these two points, one must breathe. Whether happy or unhappy, young or old, successful or unsuccessful – whatsoever you are, it is irrelevant – one thing is certain: between these two points of birth and death you must breathe. Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why YOU are not required to breathe, because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, and then nothing could be done.

So, really, You are not breathing, because you are not needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. YOU are not required; breathing is something which goes on in spite of you.

It is one of the constant factors in your personality – that is the first thing. It is something which is very essential and basic to life – that is the second thing. You cannot be alive without breath.

So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it prana. We have given one word for both – prana means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath.

Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you.

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe – every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath, therefore, becomes very significant – the most significant thing. So the first nine techniques are concerned with breath. If you can do something with the breath, you will suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it.

Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe. We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the “no-body,” from the “no-body” to the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, transplanted into a different dimension.

But remember, what Shiva is going to say is not yoga, it is tantra. Yoga also works on breath, but the work of yoga and tantra is basically different. Yoga tries to systematize breathing. If you systematize your breathing your health will improve. If you systematize your breathing, if you know the secrets of breathing, your life will become longer; you will be more healthy and you will live longer. You will be more strong, more filled with energy, more vital, alive, young, fresh.

But tantra is not concerned with that. Tantra is concerned not with any systematization of breath, but with using breath just as a technique to turn inward. One has not to practice a particular style of breathing, a particular system of breathing or a particular rhythm of breathing – no! One has to take breathing as it is. One has just to become aware of certain points in the breathing.

There are certain points, but we are not aware of them. We have been breathing and we will go on breathing – we are born breathing and we will die breathing – but we are not aware of certain points.

And this is strange. Man is searching, probing deep into space. Man is going to the moon; man is trying to reach farther, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the nearest part of his life. There are certain points in breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors – the nearest doors to you from where you can enter into a different world, into a different being, into a different consciousness. But they are very subtle.

To observe a moon is not very difficult. Even to reach the moon is not very difficult; it is a gross journey. You need mechanization, you need technology, you need accumulated information, and then you can reach it. Breathing is the nearest thing to you, and the nearer a thing is, the more difficult it is to perceive it. The nearer it is, the more difficult; the more obvious it is, the more difficult.

It is so near to you that again there is no space between you and your breathing. Or, there is such a small space that you will need a very minute observation, only then will you become aware of certain points. These points are the basis of these techniques.

-Osho

From Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, Chapter Three

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