Tag: Tantra

The Root Problem – Osho

The root problem of all problems is mind itself. The first thing to be understood is what this mind is, of what stuff it is made; whether it is an entity or just a process; whether it is substantial, or just dreamlike. And unless you know the nature of the mind, you will not be able to solve any problems of your life.

You may try hard, but if you try to solve single, individual problems, you are bound to be a failure – that is absolutely certain – because in fact no individual problem exists: mind is the problem. If you solve this problem or that, it won’t help because the root remains untouched.

It is just like cutting branches of a tree, pruning the leaves, and not uprooting it. New leaves will come, new branches will sprout – even more than before; pruning helps a tree to become thicker.

Unless you know how to uproot it, your fight is baseless, it is foolish. You will destroy yourself, not the tree.

In fighting you will waste your energy, time, life, and the tree will go on becoming more and more strong, far thicker and dense. And you will be surprised what is happening: you are doing so much hard work, trying to solve this problem and that, and they go on growing, increasing. Even if one problem is solved, suddenly ten problems take its place.

Don’t try to solve individual, single problems – there are none: Mind itself is the problem. But mind is hidden underground; that’s why I call it the root, it is not apparent. Whenever you come across a problem the problem is above ground, you can see it – that’s why you are deceived by it.

Always remember, the visible is never the root; the root always remains invisible, the root is always hidden. Never fight with the visible; otherwise you will fight with shadows. You may waste yourself, but there cannot be any transformation in your life, the same problems will crop up again and again and again. You can observe your own life and you will see what I mean. I am not talking about any theory about the mind, just the “facticity” of it. This is the fact: mind has to be solved.

People come to me and they ask, “How to attain a peaceful mind?” I say to them, “There exists nothing like that: peaceful mind. Never heard of it.”

Mind is never peaceful – no-mind is peace. Mind itself can never be peaceful, silent. The very nature of the mind is to be tense, to be in confusion. Mind can never be clear; it cannot have clarity because mind is by nature confusion, cloudiness. Clarity is possible without mind, peace is possible without mind, silence is possible without mind – so never try to attain a silent mind. If you do, from the very beginning you are moving in an impossible dimension.

So the first thing is to understand the nature of the mind, only then can something be done.

If you watch, you will never come across any entity like mind. It is not a thing, it is just a process; it is not a thing, it is like a crowd. Individual thoughts exist, but they move so fast that you cannot see the gaps in between. The intervals cannot be seen because you are not very aware and alert, you need a deeper insight. When your eyes can look deep, you will suddenly see one thought, another thought, another thought – but no mind.

Thoughts together, millions of thoughts, give you the illusion as if mind exists. It is just like a crowd, millions of people standing in a crowd: is there anything like a crowd? Can you find the crowd other than the individuals standing there? But they are standing together, their togetherness gives you the feeling as if something like a crowd exists – only individuals exist.

This is the first insight into the mind. Watch, and you will find thoughts; you will never come across the mind. And if it becomes your own experience – not because I say it, not because Tilopa sings about it, no, that won’t be of much help – if it becomes your experience, if it becomes a fact of your own knowing, then suddenly many things start changing. Because you have understood such a deep thing about mind, then many things can follow.

Watch the mind and see where it is, what it is. You will feel thoughts floating and there will be intervals. And if you watch long, you will see that intervals are more than the thoughts, because each thought has to be separate from another thought; in fact, each word has to be separate from another word. The deeper you go, you will find more and more gaps, bigger and bigger gaps. A thought floats, then comes a gap where no thought exists; then another thought comes, another gap follows.

If you are unconscious, you cannot see the gaps; you jump from one thought to another, you never see the gap. If you become aware, you will see more and more gaps. If you become perfectly aware, then miles of gaps will be revealed to you. And in those gaps, satoris happen. In those gaps the truth knocks at your door. In those gaps the guest comes. In those gaps God is realized, or whatsoever way you like to express it. And when awareness is absolute, then there is only a vast gap of nothingness.

It is just like clouds: clouds move. They can be so thick that you cannot see the sky hidden behind. The vast blueness of the sky is lost, you are covered with clouds. Then you go on watching: one cloud moves and another has not come into the vision yet – and suddenly a peek into the blueness of the vast sky.

The same happens inside: you are the vast blueness of the sky, and thoughts are just like clouds hovering around you, filling you. But the gaps exist, the sky exists. To have a glimpse of the sky is satori, and to become the sky is samadhi. From satori to samadhi, the whole process is a deep insight into the mind, nothing else.

Mind doesn’t exist as an entity – the first thing. Only thoughts exist.

The second thing: the thoughts exist separate from you, they are not one with your nature, they come and go – you remain, you persist. You are like the sky: never comes, never goes, it is always there. Clouds come and go, they are momentary phenomena, they are not eternal. Even if you try to cling to a thought, you cannot retain it for long; it has to go, it has its own birth and death. Thoughts are not yours; they don’t belong to you. They come as visitors, guests, but they are not the host.

Watch deeply, then you will become the host and thoughts will be the guests. And as guests they are beautiful, but if you forget completely that you are the host and they become the hosts, then you are in a mess. This is what hell is. You are the master of the house, the house belongs to you, and guests have become the masters. Receive them, take care of them, but don’t get identified with them; otherwise, they will become the masters.

The mind becomes the problem because you have taken thoughts so deeply inside you that you have forgotten completely the distance; that they are visitors, they come and go. Always remember that which abides: that is your nature, your Tao. Always be attentive to that which never comes and never goes, just like the sky. Change the gestalt: don’t be focused on the visitors, remain rooted in the host; the visitors will come and go.

Of course, there are bad visitors and good visitors, but you need not be worried about them. A good host treats all the guests in the same way, without making any distinctions. A good host is just a good host: a bad thought comes and he treats the bad thought also in the same way as he treats a good thought. It is not his concern that the thought is good or bad.

Because once you make the distinction that this thought is good and that thought is bad, what are you doing? You are bringing the good thought nearer to yourself and pushing the bad thought further away. Sooner or later, with the good thought you will get identified; the good thought will become the host. And any thought,, when it becomes the host, creates misery – because this is not the truth. The thought is a pretender and you get identified with it. Identification is the disease.

Gurdjieff used to say that only one thing is needed: not to be identified with that which comes and goes. The morning comes, the noon comes, the evening comes, and they go; the night comes and again the morning. You abide: not as you, because that too is a thought – as pure consciousness; not your name, because that too is a thought; not your form, because that too is a thought; not your body, because one day you will realize that too is a thought. Just pure consciousness, with no name, no form; just the purity, just the formlessness and namelessness, just the very phenomenon of being aware – only that abides.

If you get identified, you become the mind. If you get identified, you become the body. If you get identified, you become the name and the form – what Hindus call nama, rupa, name and form – then the host is lost. Then you forget the eternal and the momentary becomes significant. The momentary is the world; the eternal is divine.

This is the second insight to be attained, that you are the host and thoughts are guests.

The third thing, if you go on watching, will be realized soon. The third thing is that thoughts are foreign, intruders, outsiders. No thought is yours. They always come from without, you are just a passage. A bird comes into the house from one door, and flies out from another: just like that a thought comes into you and goes out of you.

You go on thinking that thoughts are yours. Not only that, you fight for your thoughts, you say, “This is my thought, this is true.” You discuss, you debate, you argue about it, you try to prove that, “This is my thought.” No thought is yours, no thought is original – all thoughts are borrowed, and not secondhand, because millions of people have claimed those same thoughts before you. Thought is just as outside as a thing.

Somewhere, the great physicist, Eddington, has said that the deeper science goes into matter, the more it becomes a realization that things are thoughts. That may be so, I am not a physicist, but from the other end, I would like to tell you that Eddington may be true, that things look more and more like thoughts if you go deeper; if you go deeper into yourself, thoughts will look more and more like things. In fact, these are two aspects of the same phenomenon: a thing is a thought, a thought is a thing.

When I say a thought is a thing, what do I mean? I mean that you can throw your thought just like a thing. You can hit somebody’s head with a thought just like a thing. You can kill a person through a thought just as you can throw a dagger. You can give your thought as a gift, or as an infection. Thoughts are things, they are forces, but they don’t belong to you. They come to you; they abide for a while in you and then they leave you. The whole universe is filled with thoughts and things. Things are just the physical part of thoughts, and thoughts are the mental part of things.

Because of this fact, many miracles happen – because thoughts are things. If a person continuously thinks about you and your welfare, it will happen – because he is throwing a continuous force at you. That’s why blessings are useful, helpful. If you can be blessed by someone who has attained no-mind, the blessing is going to be true – because a man who never uses thought accumulates thought energy, so whatsoever he says is going to be true.

In all the Eastern traditions, before a person starts learning no-mind, there are techniques and much emphasis that he should stop being negative, because if you once attain to no-mind and your trend remains negative, you can become a dangerous force. Before the no-mind is attained, one should become absolutely positive. That is the whole difference between white and black magic.

Black magic is nothing but when a man has accumulated thought energy without throwing out his negativity beforehand. And white magic is nothing but when a man has attained too much thought energy, and has based his total being on a positive attitude. The same energy with negativity becomes black; the same energy with positivity becomes white. A thought is a great force, it is a thing.

This will be the third insight. It has to be understood and watched within yourself.

Sometimes it happens that you see your thought functioning as a thing, but just because of too much conditioning of materialism, you think this may be just a coincidence. You neglect the fact, you simply don’t give any attention to it; you remain indifferent, you forget about it. But many times, you know that sometimes you were thinking about the death of a certain person – and he is dead. You think it is just a coincidence. Sometime you were thinking about a friend and a desire arose in you that it would be good if he comes – and he is on the door, knocking. You think it is a coincidence. It is not coincidence. In fact, there is nothing like coincidence, everything has its causality. Your thoughts go on creating a world around you.

Your thoughts are things, so be careful about them. Handle them carefully! If you are not very conscious, you can create misery for yourself and for others – and you have done that. And remember, when you create misery for somebody, unconsciously, at the same time, you are creating misery for yourself – because a thought is a two-edged sword. It cuts you also simultaneously when it cuts somebody else.

Just two or three years ago, one Israeli, Uri Geller, who has been working on thought energy, displayed his experiment on BBC television in England. He can bend anything just by thinking: somebody else keeps a spoon in his hand ten feet away from Uri Geller, and he just thinks about it – and the spoon bends immediately. You cannot bend it by your hand, and he bends it by his thought. But a very rare phenomenon happened on the BBC television; even Uri Geller was not aware that this is possible.

Thousands of people in their homes were seeing the experiment. And when he did his experiment, bent things, in many people’s houses many things fell and became distorted – thousands of things all over England. It was as if the energy was being broadcast. And he was doing the experiment at a ten-foot distance, then from the television screen in people’s homes, around the area of ten feet, many things happened: things got bent, fell down, became distorted. It was weird!

Thoughts are things, and very, very forceful things. There is one woman in Soviet Russia, Mikhailovana. She can do many things to things from far away, she can pull anything toward herself – just by thought. Soviet Russia is not a believer in occult things – a communist country, atheistic – so they have been working on Mikhailovana, on what is happening, in a scientific way. But when she does it, she loses almost two pounds of weight; in a half-hour experiment she loses two pounds. What does it mean?

It means that through thoughts you are throwing energy – and you are continuously doing it. Your mind is a chatterbox. You are broadcasting things unnecessarily. You are destroying people around you; you are destroying yourself.

You are a dangerous thing – and continuously broadcasting. And many things are happening because of you. And it is a great network. The whole world goes on becoming every day more and more miserable because more and more people are on the earth and they are broadcasting more and more thoughts.

The further back you go, you find the earth the more and more peaceful – fewer and fewer broadcasters. In the days of Buddha, or in the days of Lao Tzu, the world was very, very peaceful, natural; it was a heaven. Why? The population was very, very small, one thing. People were not thinkers too much; they were more and more prone to feeling rather than thinking. And people were praying. In the morning, they would do the first thing and that would be a prayer. In the night they would do the last thing – the prayer. And throughout the whole day also, whenever they would find a moment, they would be praying inside.

What is a prayer? Prayer is sending blessings to all. Prayer is sending your compassion to all. Prayer is creating an antidote of negative thoughts – it is a positivity.

This will be the third insight about thoughts, that they are things, forces, and you have to handle them very carefully.

Ordinarily, not aware, you go on thinking anything. It is difficult to find a person who has not committed many murders in thought; difficult to find a person who has not been doing all sorts of sins and crimes inside the mind – and then these things happen. And remember, you may not murder, but your continuous thinking of murdering somebody may create the situation in which the person is murdered. Somebody may take your thought, because there are weaker persons all around and thoughts flow like water: downwards. If you think something continuously, someone who is a weakling may take your thought and go and kill a person.

That’s why those who have known the inner reality of man, they say that whatsoever happens on the earth, everybody is responsible, everybody. Whatsoever happens in Vietnam, not only are Nixons responsible, everybody who thinks is also responsible. Only one person cannot be held responsible, and that is the person who has no mind; otherwise, everybody is responsible for everything that goes on. If the earth is a hell, you are a creator, you participate.

Don’t go on throwing responsibility on others – you are also responsible; it is a collective phenomenon. The disease may bubble up anywhere, the explosion may happen millions, thousands of miles away from you – that doesn’t make any difference, because thought is a non-spatial phenomenon, it needs no space.

That’s why it travels fastest. Even light cannot travel so fast, because even for light space is needed. Thought travels fastest. In fact, it takes no time in traveling, space doesn’t exist for it. You may be here, thinking of something, and it happens in America. How can you be held responsible? No court can punish you, but in the ultimate court of existence you will be punished – you are already punished. That’s why you are so miserable.

People come to me and they say, “We never do anything wrong to anybody, and still we are so miserable.” You may not be doing, you may be thinking – and thinking is more subtle than doing. A person can protect himself from doing, but he cannot protect himself from thinking. For thinking everybody is vulnerable.

No-thinking is a must if you want to be completely freed from sin, freed from crime, freed from all that goes around you – and that is the meaning of a buddha.  A buddha is a person who lives without the mind; then he’s not responsible. That’s why in the East we say that he never accumulates karma; he never accumulates any entanglements for the future. He lives, he walks, he moves, he eats, he talks, he is doing many things, so he must accumulate karma, because karma means activity. But in the East, it is said even if a buddha kills, he will not accumulate karma. Why? And you, even if you don’t kill, you will accumulate karma. Why?

It is simple: whatsoever Buddha is doing, he is doing without any mind in it. He is spontaneous, it is not activity. He is not thinking about it, it happens. He is not the doer. He moves like an emptiness. He has no mind for it, he was not thinking to do it. But if the existence allows it to happen, he allows it to happen. He has no more the ego to resist; no more the ego to do.

That is the meaning of being empty and a no-self: just being a non-being, anatta, no-selfness. Then you accumulate nothing; then you are not responsible for anything that goes on around you; then you transcend.

Each single thought is creating something for you and for others. Be alert!

But when I say be alert, I don’t mean that think good thoughts, no, because whenever you think good thoughts, by the side you are also thinking of bad thoughts. How can good exist without bad? If you think of love, just by the side, behind it, is hidden hate. How can you think about love without thinking about hate? You may not think consciously, love may be in the conscious layer of the mind, but hate is hidden in the unconscious – they move together.

Whenever you think of compassion, you think of cruelty. Can you think of compassion without thinking of cruelty? Can you think of nonviolence without thinking of violence? In the very word “nonviolence,” violence enters; in the very concept it is there. Can you think of brahmacharya, celibacy, without thinking of sex? It is impossible, because what will celibacy mean if there is no thought of sex? And if brahmacharya is based on the thought of sex, what type of brahmacharya is this?

No, there is a totally different quality of being which comes by not thinking: not good, not bad, simply a state of no-thinking. You simply watch, you simply remain conscious, but you don’t think. And if some thought enters . . . it will enter, because thoughts are not yours; they are just floating in the air.

All around there is a noosphere, a thought-sphere, all around. Just as there is air, there is thought all around you, and it goes on entering on its own accord. It stops only when you become more and more aware. There is something in it: if you become more aware, a thought simply disappears, it melts, because awareness is a greater energy than thought.

Awareness is like fire to thought. It is just like you burn a lamp in the house and the darkness cannot enter; you put the light off – from everywhere darkness has entered; without taking a single minute, a single moment, it is there. When the light burns in the house, the darkness cannot enter. Thoughts are like darkness: they enter only if there is no light within. Awareness is fire: you become more aware, fewer and fewer thoughts enter.

If you become really integrated in your awareness, thoughts don’t enter you; you have become an impenetrable citadel, nothing can penetrate you. Not that you are closed, remember – you are absolutely open; but just the very energy of awareness becomes your citadel. And when no thoughts can enter you, they will come and they will bypass you. You will see them coming, and simply, by the time they reach near you they turn. Then you can move anywhere, then you can go to the very hell – nothing can affect you. This is what we mean by enlightenment.

-Osho

From Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, Discourse #2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

 

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

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Suppose Your Passive Form to be an Empty Room – Osho

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin – empty. 

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin . . . but inside, everything empty. This is one of the most beautiful techniques. Just sit in a meditative posture, relaxed, alone, your backbone straight and the whole body relaxed – as if the whole body is hanging on the backbone. Then close your eyes. For a few moments go on feeling relaxed, more relaxed, becoming calmer and calmer and calmer. Do this for a few moments, just to be in tune. And then suddenly start feeling your body is just walls of skin and there is nothing inside, there is no one inside, the house is vacant. Sometimes you will feel thoughts passing, clouds of thoughts moving, but don’t think that they belong to you. You are not. Just think that they are roaming in a vacant sky – they don’t belong to anyone, they don’t have any roots.

Really this is the case: thoughts are just like clouds moving in the sky. They don’t have any roots and they don’t belong to the sky; they simply roam in the sky. They come and they go and the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced. Feel that your body is just walls of skin and there is no one inside. Thoughts will still continue – because of old habit, old momentum, old cooperation, thoughts will go on coming. But just think that they are rootless clouds moving in space – they don’t belong to you, they don’t belong to anybody else. There is no one to whom they can belong – you are empty. It will be difficult, but because of the old habits, nothing else. Your mind would like to catch some thought, be identified with it, move with it, enjoy it, indulge in it. Resist! Just say there is no one to indulge, there is no one to fight, there is no one to do anything with this thought.

Within a few days, a few weeks, thoughts will slow down, they will become less and less. The clouds will start disappearing or, even if they come, there will be great gaps of cloudless sky when there will be no thought. One thought will pass. Then another will not come for a period. Then another will come and then there will again be an interval. In those intervals you will know for the first time, what emptiness is. And the very glimpse of it will fill you with such deep bliss you cannot imagine.

Really it is difficult to say anything about it, because whatsoever is said in language will refer to you, and you will not be there. If I say that you will be filled with happiness it will be nonsense. You will not be there, so how can I say you will be filled with happiness? Happiness will be there. Just within the four walls of your skin, happiness will be there, vibrating – but you will not be there. A deep silence will descend on you, because if you are not, no one can create a disturbance. You always go on thinking that somebody else is disturbing you; the traffic noise on the road, children playing around you, the wife working in the kitchen . . . somebody is disturbing you. Nobody is disturbing you; you are the cause of the disturbance. Because you are there, anything can disturb you. If you are not there, then disturbances will come and pass through the emptiness without touching it. You are there – very touchy, a wound; anything immediately hurts you.

I have heard about a scientific story. It happened after the third world war that all were dead; now there was no one on the earth, only trees and hills were there. One big tree thought to create a great noise, as it used to create in the past. It fell down from a big rock, it did everything that was possible, but there was no noise. Because for noise your ears are needed, for sound your ears are needed. If you’re not there, sound cannot be created. It is impossible. I am speaking here. I am making sound because you are here. If no one is here, I may go on speaking, but sound cannot be created. But I can create it myself because I myself can hear it. If no one is there to hear, sound cannot be created, because sound is a reaction of your ears.

If no one is there on the earth, the sun will rise but it cannot create light. It seems absurd. We cannot conceive of it because we always think that the sun will rise and there will be light. Your eyes are needed. Without your eyes, the sun cannot create light. It may go on rising but it will be futile because the rays will pass in emptiness. There will be no one who can react and who can say that this is light. Light is a phenomenon of your eyes. You react. Sound is a phenomenon of your ears. You react. What do you think . . . a rose is there in the garden, but if no one passes, will there be perfume? A rose alone cannot create perfume. Impossible. You and your nose are needed – someone to react and interpret that this is perfume, this is rose-perfume. However hard a rose tries, without a nose it will not be a rose at all.

The disturbance on the street is not there really, it is within your ego. Your ego reacts and says that this is a disturbance. It is your interpretation. Sometimes in a different mood you may enjoy it. Then it will not be a disturbance. You may enjoy it in a different mood. And then you will say, “This is beautiful. What music!” But in a sad moment even music will become a disturbance. But if you are not there, just space, emptiness, there can be neither disturbance nor music. Things will just pass through you, unnoticed. Because unstruck, there is no wound to react, there is no one to respond; not even an ego will be created. This is what Buddha calls nirvana.

And this technique can help you.

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin – empty. Sit in a passive state, inactive, not doing anything . . . Because whenever you do something, the doer comes in. Really there is no doer. Only because of the doing you imagine that there is one. Buddha is difficult only because of this. Only because of linguistic forms have problems arisen.

We say a man is walking. If you analyze this sentence, it means that there is someone who is walking. But Buddha says there is only a process of walking, there is no one who is walking. You are laughing. Because of language it appears that there is someone who is laughing. Buddha says there is laughter but no one inside who is laughing. When you laugh, remember this, and find out who laughs. You will never find anyone – there is simply laughter. There is no one behind it doing it. When you are sad, there is no one who is sad, there is simply sadness. Look at this, simply sadness. It is a process: simply laughter, simply happiness, simply unhappiness. There is no one behind it.

Only because of language do we go on thinking in terms of two. If there is movement, we say there must be someone who has moved – the mover. We cannot conceive of movement alone. But have you ever seen the mover? Have you ever seen the one who laughs? Buddha says there is life, the process of life, but no one inside who is alive. And then there is death, but no one dying. For Buddha you are not a duality – the language creates a duality. I am speaking, there is no one who is speaking. It is a process. It belongs to no one.

But for us this is difficult because our mind is deeply rooted in dualism. Whenever we think of some activity, we conceive of some actor inside, some doer. That’s why a passive, inactive form is good in meditation because then you can fall into emptiness more easily. Buddha says, “Don’t meditate. Be in meditation.” The difference is vast.

I will repeat. Buddha says, “Don’t meditate. Be in meditation.” Because if you meditate, the doer has come in – you will go on thinking that you are meditating. Then meditation has become an act. Buddha says, “Be in meditation.” That means be totally passive, don’t do anything, and don’t think that there is any doer. That’s why sometimes, when the doer is lost in the doing, you feel a sudden upsurge of happiness. It comes because you have become one. With a dancer a moment comes when [the] dance takes over the dancer disappears – then happens a sudden blessing, a sudden beatitude, a sudden ecstasy. He is filled with unknown bliss. What has happened? Only the doing remained and the doer was no more.

At the war-front, soldiers sometimes attain to very deep bliss. It is difficult to conceive of because they are so near death – at any moment they can die. In the beginning it makes them afraid; they tremble in fear. But you cannot continue trembling and fearing every day, continuously. One becomes accustomed, one accepts death – then the fear disappears. And when death is so near and with any wrong movement you may be dead immediately, the doer is forgotten, and only duty remains, only doing remains. And one has to be so deeply in the doing that one cannot go on remembering that “I am.” That “I am” will create trouble. You will miss. You will not be totally in the activity. And life is at stake so you cannot afford duality. Action becomes total. When action is total, you suddenly feel you are happy as you have never been before.

Warriors have known very deep springs of joy that ordinary life cannot give to you. That may be the reason why war is so appealing. And that may be the reason why kshatriyas, warriors, have attained to moksha more than brahmins; because brahmins are always thinking and thinking – much mental activity. Twenty-four Jain teerthankaras, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, were all kshatriyas, warriors. They have attained to the highest peak.

No businessman has ever been heard to attain to that peak. He lives in such security that he can afford to be dual. Whatsoever he is doing, it is never total. Profit cannot be a total activity. You can enjoy it, but it is never a life-and-death problem. You can play with it, but nothing is at stake. It is a game. A business is playing a game, the game of money. The game is not very dangerous so businessmen almost always remain mediocre. Even a gambler may attain to higher peaks of bliss than a businessman, because a gambler moves into danger. He stakes everything that he has got – in that moment of total stake [risk] the doer is lost.

That may be the reason why gambling is so appealing, war is so appealing. As far as I understand, behind whatsoever is appealing, there must be some ecstasy lurking somewhere, some hint of the unknown somewhere, some glimpse of the deep mystery of life hidden somewhere there. Otherwise, nothing can be appealing.

Passivity . . .  Any posture that you take in meditation should be passive. In India we have evolved the most passive asana, the most passive posture, that is siddhasana. And the beauty of it is that in this siddhasana posture, as Buddha sits, the body is in the deepest of passive states. Even while lying down, you are not so passive; even while sleeping, your posture is not so passive, it is active. Why is siddhasana so passive? For many reasons. In this posture the body is locked, closed. The body has an electric circle: when the circle is closed and locked, the electricity moves round and round inside the body, it does not leak out. Now it is a proved scientific phenomenon that in certain postures your body leaks energy. When the body is leaking energy, it has to create energy continuously. It is active. The body dynamo has to work continuously because you are leaking. When energy is leaking from the outside body, the inside body has to be active to replace it. So the most passive state will be when no energy is leaking.

Now in Western countries, particularly in England, they treat patients just by making a circle of their body electricity. In many hospitals these techniques are being used and they are very helpful. A person lies on the floor on a net of wires. The net of wires is just to make a circle of his body electricity. Just half an hour is enough, and he will feel so relaxed, so filled with energy, so strong, that he cannot believe that when he came, he was so weak.

In all the old cultures, people used to sleep in a particular direction in the night just so that energy didn’t leak out – because the earth has a magnetic force. To use that magnetic force, you have to lie in a particular direction – then the force in the earth will magnetize you the whole night. If you are lying opposite to it, the force is fighting with you and your energy will be destroyed. Many people in the morning feel very depressed, very weakened. This should not be so, because sleep is meant to rejuvenate you, to give you more energy. But there are many people who are more energetic when they go to bed but in the morning, they are just dead. There can be many reasons for it but this may be one: they are lying in the wrong direction. If they are lying against the earth magnet, they will feel dissipated.

So now scientists say that the body has an electric circuit which can be locked, and they have studied many yogis sitting in siddhasana. In that state the body is leaking the minimum energy; energy is preserved. When energy is preserved the inner batteries need not work, there is no need for any activity. So the body is passive. In this passivity, you can become more empty than if you are active.

In this siddhasana posture, your backbone is straight and the whole body is also straight. Now many studies have been done. When your body is straight, totally straight, you are least influenced by the gravitation of the earth. That’s why if you sit in a posture which is inconvenient, which you call inconvenient, the inconvenience is caused because your body is more affected by gravitation. If you are sitting straight then gravitation is least effective, because it can pull only your backbone, nothing else. That’s why it is difficult to sleep while standing. It is almost impossible to sleep while standing in a shirshasana, on your head.

For sleep you have to lie down. Why? Because then the earth has the maximum pull on you – and the maximum pull makes you unconscious. For sleep you have to lie down on the ground, so the earth’s gravitation touches the whole of your body and pulls every cell of it. Then you become unconscious. Animals are more unconscious than man because they cannot stand erect. Evolutionists say that man could evolve because he could stand erect, on two feet. The gravitation pull is less. Because of that he could become a little more aware.

In siddhasana, the gravitational pull is at its minimum. The body is inactive and passive, closed inside, it has become a world unto itself. Nothing is moving out, nothing is coming in. Eyes are closed, hands are locked, feet are locked – energy moves in a circle. And whenever energy moves in a circle, it creates an inner rhythm, an inner music. The more you hear that music, the more you feel relaxed.

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room – just like an empty room – with walls of skin – empty. Go on dropping into that emptiness. A moment will come sometime when you feel everything has disappeared; that there is no one, nobody, the house is vacant; the lord of the house has disappeared, evaporated. In that gap, in that interval, when you are not present inside, the Divine will be present. When you are not, God is. When you are not, bliss is. So try to disappear. Try to disappear from within.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #79

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Meher Baba Attained Through Staring – Osho

Or stare without moving an eyelash. 

This or stare without moving an eyelash was the method of Meher Baba. For years together he was staring just at the ceiling of his room. For years together he was just lying dead on the floor, staring at the ceiling without moving an eyelash, without moving his eyes. He would lie down for hours together, just staring, not doing anything.

Staring with the eyes is good, because you become fixed again in the third eye. And once you are fixed in the third eye, even if you want to move the eyelids you cannot; they become fixed.

Meher Baba attained through this staring, and you say, “How with these small exercises…?” But for three years he was staring at the ceiling not doing anything. Three years is a long time. Do it for three minutes and you will feel as if you have been lying there for three years. Three minutes will become very, very long. It will look as if time is not passing and as if the clock has stopped.

Meher Baba stared and stared and stared. By and by thoughts ceased, movement ceased, and he became just a consciousness, he became just a staring. Then he remained silent for his whole life. He became so silent inside by this staring that it became impossible for him to formulate words again.

Meher Baba was in America. There was one man who could read others’ thoughts, who could do mind readings, and he was really one of the rarest mind readers. He would close his eyes, sit before you, and within a few minutes he would become attuned with you and he would begin to write what you are thinking. Thousands and thousands of times he was examined, and he was always right, always correct. So someone brought him to Meher Baba. He sat there, and this was the only failure of his life – the only failure. But then again we cannot say it was a failure. He tried and tried, and he began to perspire, but he couldn’t catch a single word.

Pen in his hand, he remained there and said, “What type of man is this? I cannot read because there is nothing to read. This man is absolutely vacant. I even forget that someone is sitting there. After closing my eyes, I have to open them again and look to see whether that man is there or whether he has escaped. So it is difficult to concentrate, because the moment I close my eyes I feel I am being deceived – as if that man has escaped and there is no one before me. I have to open my eyes again, and I find that this man is there. And he is not thinking at all.” That staring, that constant staring had stopped his mind completely.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #5

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

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Three Floors of Buddha’s Temple – Osho

The magnificent temple that Buddha built consists of three floors; his teaching has three dimensions to it, or three layers. And you will have to be very patient to understand those three layers. I say so because they have been misunderstood down the centuries.

The first floor of Buddha’s teaching is known as Hinayana; the second floor is known as Mahayana, and the third floor is known as Vajrayana. Hinayana means ‘the small vehicle’, ‘the narrow way’. Mahayana means ‘the great vehicle’, ‘the wide way’. And Vajrayana means ‘the supreme vehicle’, ‘the ultimate way’, ‘the transcendental way’. Hinayana is the beginning and Vajrayana is the climax, the crescendo.

Hinayana starts from where you are. Hinayana tries to help you to change your mechanical habits; it is just like Hatha Yoga — very body-oriented, believes in great discipline; strict, almost repressive — at least it looks repressive. It is not repressive, but the whole work of Hinayana consists in changing your centuries old habits.

Just as a tightrope-walker starts leaning to the left if he feels that he is going to fall towards the right, to balance one has to move to the opposite. By moving to the opposite, a balance arises —but that balance is temporary, momentary. Again you will start falling into the new direction, then again you will need balance and you will have to move to the opposite.

Sex is the very basic problem. And all the habits that man has created are basically sex-oriented. That’s why no society allows sex total freedom. All the cultures that have existed — sophisticated, un-sophisticated, Eastern, Western, primitive, civilized — all cultures have tried in some way to control the sexual energy of man. It seems to be the greatest power over man. It seems that if man is allowed total freedom about sex, he will simply destroy himself.

Skinner reports about a few experiments he was doing with rats. He has invented a new theory, that electrodes can be put into the human or animal brain, attached to particular centres in the brain and you just push a button and that centre will be stimulated inside you.

There is a sex centre in the brain. In fact, you are more controlled by the sex centre in the brain than the actual sex centre of your body. That’s why fantasy works so much. That’s why pornography has so much appeal. The pornography cannot appeal to the sex centre itself; it stimulates the brain centre attached to the sex centre. Immediately the sex centre, the physiological sex centre, starts being active once the mind is active.

He fixed electrodes into rats’ brains and taught them how to push the button whenever they wanted sexual stimulation and an inner orgasm. He was surprised, he was not expecting that this was going to happen: those rats completely forgot everything, food, sleep, play — everything they forgot. They continuously pushed the button! One rat did it six thousand times and died; he died pushing the button. Six thousand times! He forgot everything… then nothing else matters.

Sooner or later, some Skinner or somebody else is going to give you also a small box to keep in your pocket, and whenever you feel sexual just push a button and your brain centre will become active and will give you beautiful orgasms and nobody will ever know what is happening inside you. But you will almost follow the rat — then what is the point of doing anything else? You will kill yourself.

Sex is such a great attraction that if there were not limitations on it…. First there is a limitation that body puts on it. A man cannot have too many orgasms in a day; if you are young, three, four; if you become older, then one; when you become a little older still, then even that becomes difficult — once a week, once a month. And, by and by, your body puts so many limitations on it.

Women are more free that way. The body has no limitation. That’s why, all over the world, women have been completely repressed. She has not been allowed freedom; she has not been allowed even freedom to have orgasms in the past  because she can have multiple orgasms. Within seconds she can have many orgasms — six, twelve. Then no man will be able to satisfy a woman; then no man will be able to satisfy any woman. Then only group sex will be able to satisfy. A woman will need at least twelve husbands — that will create tremendous complexities.

That’s why, down the centuries, for thousands of years, women were brought up in such a way that they have completely forgotten that they can have orgasm. Just within these fifty years women have again started learning what orgasm is. And with their learning, problems have arisen all over the world. Marriage is on the rocks. Marriage cannot exist with women having the capacity of multiple orgasm. And man only has capacity for one orgasm. There can be no compatibility between the two. Then monogamy cannot exist. It will become difficult.

This society and the pattern that it has evolved up to now is doomed. Man has released some energy that has always been kept under a certain rigid control. But the attraction has always been there, whether you repress, whether you control, discipline, that doesn’t make any difference. The attraction is there — twenty-four hours, deep down like a substratum, sexuality goes on like a river flowing. It is a continuum. You may eat, you may earn money, you may work, but you are doing everything for sex.

Somewhere, sex remains the goal… and this pattern has to be changed, otherwise your energy will go on being drained, your energy will go on being dissipated, your energy will go on moving into the earth. It will not rise towards heaven. It will not have an upward surge.

Hinayana works just exactly where you are. You are continuously obsessed with sex? — Hinayana tries to remove this obsession. It gives you a certain discipline, a very rigid discipline, how to drop out of it.

Hinayana says there are four steps to drop out of sex. The first is called purifying. The second is called enriching. The third is called crystallizing. The fourth is called destroying.

First you have to move your total energy against sex, so that sexual habits developed in many lives no longer interfere — that is called purifying. You change your consciousness, you shift. From sexual obsession you move to anti-sexuality.

The second step is called enriching. When you have moved to non-sexuality, then you have to enjoy non-sexuality; you have to celebrate your celibacy. Because if you don’t celebrate your celibacy, again sex will start pulling you backwards. Once you start celebrating your celibacy, then the pull of sex will be completely gone, and gone forever.

You are obsessed with sex because you don’t know any other sort of celebration. So the problem is not sex really; the problem is that you don’t know any other celebration. Nature allows you only one joy, and that is of sex. Nature allows you only one enjoyment, that is of sex. Nature allows you only one thrill, and that is of sex.

Hinayana says there is a greater thrill waiting for you — if you move towards celibacy. But the celibacy should not be violently forced. If you violently enforce it you will not be able to enjoy it. One has to be just aware of the sexual habits, and through awareness one has to shift by and by towards celibacy.

Celibacy should be brought very slowly. All that brings you again and again to sexuality has to be dropped slowly, in steps. And once you start enjoying the energy that becomes available, when you are not obsessed with sex, just that pure energy becomes a dance in you — that is called enriching. Now, your energy is not wasted. Your energy goes on showering on yourself.

Remember, there are two types of celibates. One: who has simply forced celibacy upon himself — he is a wrong type, he is doing violence to himself. The other: who has tried to understand sexuality, what it is, why it is; who has watched, observed, lived through it, and, by and by, has become aware of its futility; by and by, has become aware of a deep frustration that comes after each sexual act.

In the sexual act you have a certain thrill, a moment of forgetfulness, a moment of oblivion. You feel good, for a few seconds, only for a few seconds, you drop out of this routine world. Sex gives you a door to escape into some other world — which is non-tense; there is no worry; you are simply relaxed and melting. But have you observed? After each sexual act you feel frustrated.

Sex has promised too much, but it has not been supplied. It is difficult to find a man or a woman who does not feel a little frustrated after the sexual act, who does not feel a little guilty. I am not talking about the guilt that priests have imposed upon you. Even if nobody has imposed any guilt upon you, you will feel a little guilt — that is part, a shadow of the sexual act. You have lost energy, you feel depleted, and nothing has been gained. The gain is not very substantial. You have been befooled, you have been tricked, by a natural hypnosis — you have been tricked by the body, you have been deceived. Hence comes a frustration.

Hinayana says: Watch this frustration more deeply. Watch the sexual act and the way your energy moves into the sexual act; become aware of it and you will see there is nothing in it. And frustration. The more you become aware, the less will be the enjoyment and the more will be the frustration. Then the shift has started taking place: your consciousness is moving away, and naturally, and spontaneously. You are not forcing it.

The second step becomes available: enriching. Your own energy goes on feeding your being. You no more throw it into the other’s body; you no more throw it out. It becomes a deep accumulation inside you. You become a pool. And out of that feeling of energy you feel very cool. Sex is very hot. The enriching stage is very cool, calm, collected. There IS a celebration, but it is very silent. There IS a dance to it, but it is very graceful; there is elegance to it.

Then comes the third step: crystallizing. When this energy inside you has started an inner dance, by and by, slowly, enjoying it more and more, becoming more and more aware of it, a certain chemical crystallization happens in you. Exactly the same word was used by Gurdjieff in his work: crystallization. Your fragments fall together, you become one. A unity arises in you. In fact, for the first time you can say “I have an I.” Otherwise there were many I’s; now you have one I, a big I which controls everything. You have become your master.

And the fourth step is destroying. When you have one I, then it can be destroyed; when you have many I’s, they cannot be destroyed. When your energy has become one and is centred, it can be killed, it can be completely destroyed. When it is a crowd it is difficult to destroy it. You destroy one fragment; there are a thousand other fragments. When you rush after those other fragments, the first one grows again. It is just like the way trees grow branches: you cut one, three branches sprout out of it.

You can destroy sexuality totally only when it has become a crystallized phenomenon; When a person has accumulated too much energy and has become one, is no more fragmentary, no more split no more schizophrenic, then Buddhists have a special term for it they call it ‘Manjusri’s sword’.

It is said that when Manjusri reached to this third stage — he was a disciple of Buddha, a great disciple of Buddha — when he reached to this stage of crystallization, in one single moment he took his sword and destroyed it completely, utterly, in a single moment. It is not a gradual process then. That has become known down the centuries as ‘the sword of Manjusri’.

When a person reaches to the third state, he can just raise a sword and destroy it completely  in one single attack. Because now the enemy is there, now the enemy is no longer elusive, now there are no longer many enemies — just one enemy confronting you. And the sword is just the sword of perfect awareness, mindfulness, self-remembering. It is a very sharp sword.

When Buddha destroyed his own sexuality, it is said he roared like a lion — because for the first time the whole absurdity of it became clear. And so many lives wasted! so many lives of sheer stupidity — gone forever. He was so happy he roared like a lion.

These are the four steps, and today’s sutras are concerned with these four steps. Before we enter into the sutras, a few more things have to be understood.

The second vehicle is Mahayana. When your sexual energy is no longer obsessed with the other’s body, when you are completely free of the other’s body, when your energy has a freedom to it, then Mahayana becomes possible — the second floor of Buddha’s temple.

Mahayana makes it possible for you to be loving. Ordinarily we think sex makes people loving — sex can never make people loving. In fact, it is sexuality that prevents love from growing, because it is the same energy that has to become love. It is being destroyed in sex. To become love, the same energy has to move to the heart centre. Mahayana belongs to the heart centre.

Hinayana works at the sex centre — Muladhar. Mahayana works at the heart centre — it says love, prayer, have to be developed now. Energy is there, now you can love. Energy is there, now you can pray.

Mahayana is loving-effort. One has to love unconditionally — the trees and the rocks and the sun and the moon and the people —but now love has no sexuality in it. It is very cool, it is very tranquil.

If you come near a person whose energy is moving in his heart centre, you will suddenly feel you are moving under a deep cool shade, no hot energy. You will feel suddenly a breeze surrounding you. The person of love, the person who lives at the heart centre, is to a traveller like a shady tree, or cool running water, or a breeze fragrant with many blossoms.

Mahayana is not afraid of sex. Hinayana is afraid of sex. Hinayana is afraid of sex because you are too much obsessed with sex. You have to move to the opposite. Mahayana is not afraid of sex — it has attained to the balance; there is no fear of the opposites. Mahayana is when the tightrope-walker is balanced; he neither leans to the left nor to the right.

Then the third and the final stage, the third floor of Buddha’s temple, is Vajrayana. ‘Vajra’ means diamond — it is the most precious teaching; certainly very difficult to understand. Vajrayana is Buddhist Tantra.

Vajrayana is called ‘vajra’, the diamond, because the diamond cuts everything. The diamond vehicle, the way of the diamond, Vajrayana, cuts everything completely, through and through, all materiality, all desire, all attachment. Even the desire to be born in heaven, the desire to be in a peaceful state, the desire to become a Buddha, the desire to have Nirvana, enlightenment — even these beautiful desires are cut completely.

Vajrayana knows no difference between the world and Nirvana, knows no difference between ignorance and knowledge, knows no difference, no distinctions — all distinctions are dropped —knows no distinction between man and woman.

Now let me explain it to you.

On the stage of Hinayana, man is man, woman is woman. And man is attracted towards woman, and the woman is attracted towards man — they are out-going; their attraction is somewhere outside them. Of course, they will be slaves. When your attraction is somewhere outside you, you cannot be independent of it.

That’s why lovers never forgive each other, they cannot. They are annoyed. You love a person and you are irritated by the person at the same time. There is a reason for it. There is constant fight between lovers. The reason is: you cannot forgive the lover, because you know you are dependent on him or on her. How can you forgive your slavery? You know your woman makes you happy, but if she decides not to make you happy, then?… then suddenly you are unhappy. Your happiness is in her hands. Her happiness is in your hands. Whenever somebody else controls your happiness, you cannot forgive the other.

Jean-Paul Sartre says: “The other is hell” — and he is right. He has a great insight into it. The other is hell because you have to depend on the other. Sex can NOT make you free; somehow it takes you away from yourself; it takes you farther and farther away from yourself. The goal is the other.

Gurdjieff used to say sex is one-arrowed — the arrow is moving towards the other. Exactly the same metaphor has been used by Vajrayana: sex is one-arrowed — it goes towards the other. Love is double-arrowed — it goes to the other and to you also. In love there is balance.

One arrow going towards the other, then you have to work with Hinayana. Two-arrowed: one arrow going towards the other, one arrow coming towards you — you have attained to balance; that lopsidedness is no more there.

A man of love is never angry with the other, because he is not really dependent on the other. He can be happy alone too; his arrow is double-arrowed — he can be happy alone too. Of course, he still shares his happiness with the other, but he is no longer dependent on the other. Now it is no longer a relationship of dependence: it is a relationship of interdependence. It is a mutual friendship. They share energies, but nobody is anybody’s slave.

In Vajrayana the arrow completely disappears. There is no you and no other; I and thou, both are dropped. The mechanism has to be understood.

When you are looking for a woman or for a man, you don’t know one very important factor: that your woman is within you and your man too. Each man is both man and woman, and each woman is both woman and man. It has to be so! . . . because you are born out of two parents. One was man, one was woman; they have contributed to your being fifty percent each. You have something of your father and you have something of your mother. Half of you belongs to the male energy; half of you belongs to the female energy — you are both.

In Hinayana you have to work hard to bring your energy to the inner woman or the inner man; that is its whole work.

Just recently, in this century, Carl Gustav Jung became aware of this fact, of this fact of bisexuality, that no man is pure man and no woman is pure woman. In each man a woman exists, and in fact every man is searching for that woman somewhere outside. That’s why suddenly one day you come across a woman and you feel, “Yes, this is the right woman for me.” How do you feel it? What is the criterion? How do you judge? — It is not rational, you don’t reason it out. It happens so suddenly, like a flash. You were not thinking about it, you have not reasoned it out. Suddenly if somebody asks you, “Why have you fallen in love with this woman?” you will shrug your shoulders. You will say, “I don’t know but I have fallen in love. Something has happened.”

What has happened? Jung says you have an image of woman inside you; that image somehow fits with this woman. This woman seems to be similar to that image in some way or other. Of course, no woman can be absolutely similar to the inner woman, that’s why no lover can ever be absolutely satisfied. A little similar, maybe: the way she walks; maybe her sound, her voice; maybe the way she looks, maybe her blue eyes; maybe her nose, maybe the color of her hair.

You have an image inside you that has come from your mother, from your mother’s mother, from your mother’s mother’s mother — all the women that have preceded you, they have contributed to that image. It is not exactly like your mother, otherwise things would have been simple. Your mother is involved in it; your mother’s mother is also involved and so on and so forth. They all have contributed little bits.

And it is the same with your man: your father has contributed, your father’s father, and so on and so forth. From your father to Adam, and from your mother to Eve, the whole continuum has contributed to it. Nobody exactly knows, there is no way really to know, whom you are seeking. A man is searching for a woman, a woman is searching for a man — the search is very vague. There is no clear-cut image, but somewhere in your heart you carry it; in the dark corner of your soul you keep it, it is there.

So many times many women and many men will appear to fulfil something of it, but only something. So each lover will give you a little satisfaction and much dissatisfaction. A part that fits will satisfy, and all other parts which don’t fit will never satisfy.

Have you watched it? Whenever you fall in love with a man or a woman, you immediately start changing the man and the woman according to something that you also don’t know what…. Wives go on changing their husbands their whole lives: “Don’t do this! Be like this, behave like this!”

Just the other day, Mulla Nasrudin’s wife was saying to me, “Finally, Osho, I succeeded.”

I asked, “About what?”

She said, “I have stopped Mulla Nasrudin biting his nails.”

I said, “Biting his nails? Fifty years you have been married together — Mulla is seventy — now you have been able after fifty years?”

She said, “Yes!”

I asked, “But how did you succeed, tell me?”

She said, “Now I simply hide his teeth so he cannot bite.”

People go on trying to change. Nobody ever changes — I have never seen, I have never come across it. People even pretend that “Yes, we have changed,” but nobody can change. Everybody remains himself. The whole effort is futile, but the urge to change is there. Why is the urge to change there?

The urge to change is for a real necessity: the woman is trying to make her husband fit with some vague image inside her. Then she will be happy that he does not drink, that he does not smoke, that he does not go after other women… and a thousand and one things… that he always goes to the temple, that he listens to the saints. She has a certain image: she wants her husband to be a hero, a saint, a great man. The ordinary human being does not satisfy her.

And the husband is also trying in a thousand and one ways: brings beautiful clothes, diamonds, rubies and pearls, and goes on decorating his wife. He is trying to find a Cleopatra. Somewhere he has some image of a beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman. Now he tries — even from his very childhood.

I have heard:

The old man asked his precocious six-year-old how he liked the new little girl next door.

“W-e-l-l,” said the kid, “she’s no Elizabeth Taylor, but she’s nice.”

Now even small children think about Hema Malini and think about Elizabeth Taylor. And he says, “She’s no Elizabeth Taylor, but she’s nice.” And this conflict continues. The reason is that we are always looking for someone who is not outside.

Hinayana turns you from looking outside. It says: Close your eyes to the outside. Mahayana makes you more alert and aware, fills your inner chamber with more light, so that you can see the inner woman. And Vajrayana makes it possible for you so that you can have an inner orgasm with your man inside or your woman inside. That inner orgasm will satisfy you, nothing else.

These three steps are of tremendous meaning.

-Osho

From The Buddha Said, Discourse #15

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

The Buddha Said

Also published in The Discipline of Transcendence, V.3, Discourse #7

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Whenever In-Breath and Out-Breath Fuse – Osho

Whenever in-breath and out-breath fuse, at this instant touch the energy-less, energy-filled center.

We are divided into the center and the periphery. The body is the periphery; we know the body, we know the periphery. We know the circumference, but we do not know where the center is. When the out-breath fuses with the in-breath, when they become one, when you cannot say whether it is the out-breath or the in-breath . . . when it is difficult to demarcate and define whether the breath is going out or coming in, when the breath has penetrated in and starts moving out, there is a moment of fusion. It is neither going out nor moving in. The breath is static. When it is moving out it is dynamic; when it is coming in it is dynamic. When it is neither, when it is silent, non-moving, you are near to the center. The fusion point of the in and outgoing breath is your center.

Look at it in this way: when the breath goes in, where does it go? It goes to your center, it touches your center. When it goes out, from where does it go out? It moves from your center. Your center has to be touched. That is why Taoist mystics and Zen mystics say that the head is not the center; the navel is your center. The breath goes to the navel, then it moves out. It goes to the center.

As I said, it is a bridge between you and your body. You know the body, but you do not know where your center is. The breath is constantly going to the center and moving out, but we are not taking enough breath. Thus, ordinarily it does not really go to the center – now, at least, it is not going to the center. That is why everyone feels “off-center.” In the whole modern world, those who can think at all feel they are missing their center.

Look at a child sleeping, observe his breath. The breath goes in; the abdomen comes up. The chest remains unaffected. That is why children have no chests, only abdomens – very dynamic abdomens. The breath goes in and the abdomen comes up; the breath goes out and the abdomen goes down . . . the abdomen moves. Children are in their center, at their center. That is why they are so happy, so bliss-filled, so energy-filled, never tired – overflowing, and always in the present moment with no past, no future.

A child can be angry. When he is angry, he is totally angry; he becomes the anger. Then his anger is also a beautiful thing. When one is totally angry, anger has a beauty of its own, because totality always has beauty.

You cannot be angry and beautiful; you will become ugly, because partiality is always ugly. And not only with anger. When you love you are ugly because you are again partial, fragmentary; you are not total. Look at your face when you are loving someone, making love. Make love before a mirror and look at your face – it will be ugly, animal-like. In love also your face becomes ugly. Why? Love is also a conflict, you are withholding something. You are giving very miserly. Even in your love you are not total; you do not give completely, wholly.

A child even in anger and violence is total. His face becomes radiant and beautiful; he is here and now. His anger is not something concerned with the past or something concerned with the future, he is not calculating, he is just angry. The child is at his center. When you are at your center you are always total. Whatsoever you do will be a total act; good or bad, it will be total. When you are fragmentary, when you are off-center, your every act is bound to be a fragment of yourself. Your totality is not responding, just a part, and the part is going against the whole – that creates ugliness.

We all were children. Why is it that as we grow our breathing becomes shallow? It never goes to the abdomen; it never touches the navel. If it could go down more and more it would become less and less shallow, but it just touches the chest and goes out. It never goes to the center. You are afraid of the center, because if you go to the center you will become total. If you want to be fragmentary, this is the mechanism to be fragmentary.

You love – if you breathe from the center, you will flow in it totally. You are afraid. You are afraid to be so vulnerable, so open to someone, to anyone. You may call him your lover, you may call her your beloved, but you are afraid. The other is there. If you are totally vulnerable, open, you do not know what is going to happen. Then you are completely, in another sense. You are afraid to be so completely given to someone. You cannot breathe; you cannot take a deep breath. You cannot relax your breathing so that it goes to the center – because the moment breathing goes to the center your act becomes total.

Because you are afraid of being total, you breathe shallowly. You breathe just at the minimum, not at the maximum. That is why life seems so lifeless. If you are breathing at the minimum, life will become lifeless; you are living at the minimum, not at the maximum. You can live at the maximum – then life is an overflowing. But then there will be difficulty. You cannot be a husband; you cannot be a wife, if life is overflowing. Everything will become difficult.

If life is overflowing, love will be overflowing. Then you cannot stick to one. Then you will be flowing all over; all dimensions will be filled by you. And then the mind feels danger, so it is better not to be alive. The more you are dead, the more you are secure. The more you are dead, the more everything is in control. You can control; then you remain the master. You feel that you are the master because you can control. You can control your anger, you can control your love, you can control everything. But this controlling is possible only at the minimum level of your energy.

Everyone must have felt at some time or other that there are moments when he suddenly changes from the minimum level to the maximum. You go out to a hill station. Suddenly you are out of the city and the prison of it. You feel free. The sky is vast, and the forest is green, and the height touches the clouds. Suddenly you take a deep breath. You may not have observed it.

Now if you go to a hill station, observe. It is not really the hill station that makes the change. It is your breathing. You take a deep breath. You say, “Ah! Ah!” You touch the center, you become total for a moment, and everything is bliss. That bliss is not coming from the hill station, that bliss is coming from your center – you have touched it suddenly.

You were afraid in the city. Everywhere there were others present and you were controlling. You could not scream, you could not laugh. What a misfortune! You could not sing on the street and dance. You were afraid – a policeman was somewhere around the corner, or the priest, or the judge, or the politician, or the moralist. Someone was just around the corner, so you could not just dance in the street.

Bertrand Russell has said somewhere, “I love civilization, but we have achieved civilization at a very great cost.” You cannot dance in the streets, but you go to a hill station and suddenly you can dance. You are alone with the sky, and the sky is not an imprisonment. It is just opening, opening and opening – vast, infinite. Suddenly you take a breath deeply; it touches the center and the bliss. But it is not so for long. Within an hour or two, the hill station will disappear. You may be there, but the hill station will disappear.

Your worries will come back. You will begin to think to make a call to the city, to write a letter to your wife, or you will begin to think that since after three days you are going back you should make arrangements. You have just reached and you are making arrangements to leave. You are back.

That breath was not from you really; it suddenly happened. Because of the change of situation the gear changed. You were in a new situation, you could not breathe in the old way, so for a moment a new breath came in. It touched the center, and you felt the bliss.

Shiva says you are every moment touching the center, or if you are not touching you can touch it. Take deep, slow breaths. Touch the center; do not breathe from the chest – that is a trick. Civilization, education, morality, they have created shallow breathing. It will be good to go deep into the center, because otherwise you cannot take deep breaths.

Unless humanity becomes non-suppressive toward sex, man cannot breathe really. If the breath goes deep down to the abdomen, it gives energy to the sex center. It touches the sex center; it massages the sex center from within. The sex center becomes more active, more alive. Civilization is afraid of sex. We do not allow our children to touch their sex centers, their sex organs. We say, “Stop! Don’t touch!”

Look at a child when he first touches his sex center, and then say “Stop!” and then observe his breathing. When you say, “Stop! Don’t touch your sex center!” the breath will become shallow immediately – because it is not only his hand which is touching the sex center, deep down the breath is touching it. And if the breath goes on touching it, it is difficult to stop the hand. If the hand stops, then basically it is necessary, required, that the breath should not touch, should not go deep. It must remain shallow.

We are afraid of sex. The lower part of the body is not only lower physically, it has become lower as a value. It is condemned as “lower.” So do not go deep, just remain shallow. It is unfortunate that we can only breathe downwards. If some preachers were allowed, they would change the whole mechanism. They would only allow you to breathe upward into the head. Then you would absolutely not feel sex.

If we are to create a sexless humanity, then we will have to change the breathing system. The breath must go into the head, to the sahasrar – the seventh center in the head – then come back to the mouth. This should be the passage: from the mouth to the sahasrar. It must not go deep down because down is dangerous. The deeper you go, the nearer you reach to the deeper layers of biology. You reach to the center, and that center is just near the sex center – just near. It has to be, because sex is life.

Look at it in this way: breath is life from above downwards; sex is life from just the other corner – from down upwards. Sex energy is flowing and breath energy is flowing. The breath passage is in the upper body and the sex passage is in the lower body. When they meet they create life; when they meet they create biology, bio-energy. So if you are afraid of sex, create a distance between the two, do not allow them to meet. So really, civilized man is a castrated man; that is why we do not know about breath, and this sutra will be difficult to understand.

Shiva says, Whenever in-breath and out-breath fuse, at this instant touch the energy-less, energy-filled center. He uses very contradictory terms: “energy-less, energy-filled.” It is energy-less because your bodies, your minds, cannot give any energy to it. Your body energy is not there, your mind energy is not there, so it is energy-less as far as you know your identity. But it is energy-filled because it has the cosmic source of energy, not because of your body energy.

Your body energy is just fuel energy. It is nothing but petrol. You eat something, you drink something– it creates energy. It is just giving fuel to the body. Stop eating and drinking and your body will fall dead. Not just now, it will take three months at least, because you have reservoirs of petrol.

You have accumulated much energy; it can run for at least three months without going to any petrol station. It can run; it has a reservoir. For an emergency, any emergency, you may need it.

This is “fuel” energy. The center is not getting any fuel energy. That is why Shiva says it is energy-less. It is not dependent on your eating and drinking. It is connected with the cosmic source; it is cosmic energy. That is why he says energy-less, energy-filled center. The moment you can feel the center from where breath goes out or comes in, the very point where the breaths fuse – that center – if you become aware of it, then enlightenment.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #3

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Whenever In-Breath and Out-Breath Fuse.

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 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.

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.

He Remains in the Subjective Mood – Osho

The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlighted person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood, not lost in things.

There is a very beautiful method. You can start it as you are; no other prerequisite is needed. The method is simple: you are surrounded by persons, things, phenomena – every moment something is around you. Things are there, events are there, persons are there – but because you are not alert, you are not there. Everything is there but you are fast asleep. Things move around you, persons move around you, events move around you, but you are not there. Or you are asleep.

So whatsoever happens in your surroundings becomes a master, becomes a force over you; you are dragged by it. You are not only impressed, conditioned by it, you are dragged by it.

Anything can catch you, and you will follow it. Somebody passes – you look, the face is beautiful – and you are carried away. The dress is beautiful, the color, the material is beautiful – you are carried away. The car passes – you are carried away. Whatsoever happens around you, catches you. You are not powerful. Everything else is more powerful than you. Anything changes you. Your mood, your being, your mind, depend on other things. Objects influence you.

This sutra says that enlightened persons and unenlightened persons live in the same world. A buddha and you both live and move in the same world – the world remains the same. The difference is not in the world, the difference happens in the Buddha: he moves in a different way. He moves among the same objects, but he moves in a different way. He is his own master. His subjectivity remains aloof and untouched. That is the secret. Nothing can impress him; nothing from the outside can condition him; nothing can overpower him. He remains detached; he remains himself. If he wants to go somewhere, he will go, but he will remain the master. If he wants to pursue a shadow, he will pursue it, but it is his own decision.

This distinction must be understood. By “detachment” I don’t mean a person who has renounced the world – then there is no sense and no meaning in detachment. A detached person is a person who is living in the same world as you – the difference is not in the world. A person who renounces the world is changing the situation, not himself. And you will insist on changing the situation if you cannot change yourself. That is the indication of a weak personality. A strong person, alert and aware, will start to change himself . . . not the situation in which he is. Because really the situation cannot be changed – even if you can change the situation, there will be other situations. Every moment situations go on changing so every moment the problem will be there.

This is the difference between the religious and the non-religious attitude. The non-religious attitude is to change the situation, the surrounding. It doesn’t believe in you, it believes in situations: when the situation is okay, you will be okay. You are dependent on the situation: if the situation is not okay, you will not be okay. So you are not an independent entity. For communists, Marxists, socialists, and all those who believe in changing the situation, you are not important; really, you don’t exist. Only the situation exists and you are just a mirror which reflects the situation. The religious attitude says that as you are you may be a mirror, but this is not your destiny – you can become something more, someone who is not dependent.

There are three steps of growth. Firstly, the situation is the master, you are just dragged by it. You believe that “you are,” but you are not. Secondly, “you are,” and the situation cannot drag you, the situation cannot influence you because you have become a will, you are integrated and crystalized. Thirdly, you start influencing the situation: just by your being there, the situation changes.

The first state is that of the unenlightened; the second state is of the person who is constantly aware but as yet unenlightened – he has to be alert; he has to do something to be alert. The alertness has not become natural yet, so he has to fight. If he loses consciousness or alertness for a single moment, he will be in the influence of the thing. So, he has to stand on his toes continuously. He is the seeker, the sadhak, the one who is practicing something. The third state is that of the siddha, the enlightened one. He is not trying to be alert; he simply is alert – there is no effort to it. Alertness is just like breathing: it goes on, he does not have to maintain it. When alertness becomes a phenomenon like breathing, natural, sahaj, spontaneous, then this type of person, this type of centered being, automatically influences situations. Situations change around him – not that he wishes them to change, but he is powerful.

Power is the thing to be remembered. You are powerless so anything can overpower you. And power comes through alertness, awareness: the more alert, the more powerful; the less alert, the less powerful. Look . . . while you are asleep even a dream becomes powerful because you are fast asleep, you have lost all consciousness. Even a dream is powerful, and you are so weak that you cannot even doubt it. Even in an absurd dream you cannot be skeptical, you will have to believe it. And while it lasts, it looks real. You may see just absurd things in the dream, but while you are dreaming, you cannot doubt. You cannot say this is not real; you cannot say this is a dream; you cannot say this is impossible. You simply cannot say it because you are so fast asleep. When consciousness is not there even a dream affects you. While awake, you will laugh and you will say, “It was absurd, impossible, this cannot happen. This dream was just illusory.” But you have not noticed that while it was there you were influenced by it, you were totally taken over by it. Why was a dream so powerful? The dream was not powerful – you were powerless. Remember this: when you are powerless even a dream becomes powerful.

While you are awake, a dream cannot influence you, but reality, the so-called reality around, does. An awakened person, an enlightened person, has become so alert that your reality also cannot influence him. If a woman passes, a beautiful woman, you are suddenly carried away. Desire has arisen, the desire to possess. If you are alert, the woman will pass by, but the desire will not arise – you have not been influenced, you have not been taken over. When this happens for the first time, when things move around you and you are not influenced, you will feel a subtle joy of being. For the first time really, you feel that you are; nothing can drag you out of you. If you want to follow, that is another thing. That is your decision. But don’t deceive yourself. You can deceive. You can say, “Yes. The woman is not powerful, but I want to follow her, I want to possess her.” You can deceive. Many people go on deceiving. But you are deceiving nobody except yourself – then it is futile. Just take a close look: you will know the desire is there. The desire comes first, and then you start rationalizing it.

For an enlightened person, things are there, and he is there but there is no bridge between him and the thing. The bridge has broken. He moves alone. He lives alone. He follows himself. Nothing else can possess him. Because of this feeling we have called this attainment moksha – total freedom, mukti. He is totally free.

All over the world, man has searched for freedom; you cannot find a man who is not hankering after freedom in his own way. Through many paths man tries to find a state of being where he can be free, and he resents anything that gives him a feeling of bondage. He hates it. Anything that hinders, that makes him imprisoned, he fights. He struggles against it. Hence so many political fights, so many wars, revolutions; hence so many continuous family fights – wife and husband, father and son, all fighting each other. The fight is basic. The fight is for freedom. The husband feels confined, the wife has imprisoned him – now his freedom is cut. And the wife feels the same. They both resent each other, they both fight, they both try to destroy the bondage. The father fights the son because every stage of growth in the son means more freedom for him. And the father feels he is losing something: power, authority. In families, in nations, in civilizations, man is hankering after only one thing – freedom.

But nothing is achieved through political fights, revolutions, wars. Nothing is achieved. Because even if you get freedom, it is superficial – deep down you remain in bondage. So every freedom proves a disillusionment. Man longs so much for wealth, but as far as I understand it, it is not a longing for wealth, it is a longing for freedom. Wealth gives you a feeling of freedom. If you are poor, you are confined, your means are limited – you cannot do this, you cannot do that. You don’t have the money to do it. The more money you have, the more you feel you have freedom, you can do anything you like. But when you have all the money and you can do all that you wish, imagine, dream about, suddenly you feel this freedom is superficial, because inside your being knows well that you are powerless and that anything can attract you. You are impressed, influenced, possessed by things and persons.

This sutra says that you have to come to a state of consciousness where nothing impresses you, you can remain detached. How to do it? Throughout the whole day the opportunity is there to do it. That is why I say this method is good for you to do. Any moment you can become aware that something is possessing you. Then take a deep breath, inhale deeply, exhale deeply, and look at the thing again. While you are exhaling look at the thing again, but look just as a witness, as a spectator. If you can achieve the witnessing state of mind for even a single moment, suddenly you will feel you are alone, nothing can impress you; at least in that moment nothing can create desire in you. Take a deep breath and exhale it whenever you feel that something is impressing you, influencing you, dragging you away from you, becoming more important than yourself. And in that small gap created by the exhalation look at the thing – a beautiful face, a beautiful body, a beautiful building, or anything.

If you feel it is difficult, if just by exhaling you cannot create a gap, then do one thing more: exhale, and stop inhalation for a single moment so the exhalation has thrown all the air out. Stop, don’t inhale. Then look at the thing. When the air is out, or in, when you have stopped breathing, nothing can influence you. In that moment you are unbridged – the bridge is broken. Breathing is the bridge. Try it.

It will be only for a single moment that you will have the feeling of witnessing, but that will give you the taste, that will give you the feeling of what witnessing is. Then you can pursue it throughout the whole day, whenever something impresses you and a desire arises, exhale, stop in the interval, and look at the thing. The thing will be there, you will be there, but there will be no bridge. Breathing is the bridge. Suddenly you will feel you are powerful, you are potential. And the more powerful you feel, the more YOU will become. The more things drop, the more their power over you drops, the more crystalized you will feel. Individuality has begun. Now you have a center to refer to, and any moment you can move to the center and the world disappears. Any moment you can take shelter in your own center, and the world is powerless.

This sutra says: The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlighted person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood, not lost in things. He remains in the subjective mood, he remains within himself, he remains centered in consciousness. Remaining in the subjective mood has to be practiced. As many opportunities as you can get, try it. And every moment there is an opportunity, every single moment there is an opportunity. Something or other is impressing you, dragging you out, pulling you out, pushing you in.

I am reminded of an old story. A great king, Bharthruhari, renounced the world. He renounced the world because he had lived in it totally and he had come to realize that it was futile. It was not a doctrine to him; it was a lived reality. He had come to the conclusion through his own life. He was a man of strong desire, he had indulged in life as much as possible, then suddenly he realized it was useless, futile. So, he left the world, he renounced it, and he went to a forest.

One day he was meditating under a tree. The sun was rising. Suddenly, he became aware that just on the road, the small road which passed nearby the tree, lay a very big diamond. As the sun was rising, it was reflecting the rays. Even Bharthruhari had not seen such a big diamond before. Suddenly, in a moment of unawareness, a desire arose to possess it. The body remained unmoved, but the mind moved. The body was in the posture of meditation, siddhasana, but the meditation was no longer there. Only the dead body was there, the mind had moved – it had gone to the diamond.

Before the king could move, two men came from different directions on their horses and simultaneously they became aware of the diamond lying on the street. They pulled out their swords, each one claiming that he had seen the diamond first. There was no other way to decide so they had to fight. They fought and killed each other. Within moments two dead bodies were lying there next to the diamond. Bharthruhari laughed, closed his eyes, and went into meditation again.

What happened? He again realized the futility. And what happened to these two men? The diamond became more meaningful than their whole life. This is what possession means: they threw away their life just for a stone. When desire is there, you are no more – desire can lead you to suicide. Really, every desire is leading you to suicide. When you are in the power of a desire, you are not in your senses, you are just mad.

The desire to possess arose in Bharthruhari’s mind also; in a fragment of a moment the desire arose. And he might have moved to get it but before he could, the other two persons came and fought, and there were two dead bodies lying on the road with the stone there in its own place. Bharthruhari laughed, closed his eyes, and went into his meditation again. For a single moment his subjectivity was lost. A stone, a diamond, the object, became more powerful. But again, the subjectivity was regained. Without the diamond the whole world disappeared, and he closed his eyes.

For centuries meditators have been closing their eyes. Why? It is only symbolic that the world has disappeared, that there is nothing to look at, that nothing is worth anything, even to look at. You will have to remember continuously that whenever desire arises, you have moved out of your subjectivity. This is the world, this movement. Regain, move back, get centered again! You will be able to do it: the capacity is there with everyone. No one ever loses the inner potential; it is always there. You can move. If you can move out, you can move in. If I can go out of my house, why can I not come back within it? The same route is to be traveled; the same legs are to be used. If I can go out, I can come in. Every moment you are moving out, but whenever you move out, remember – and suddenly come back. Be centered.

If you feel it difficult in the beginning then take a deep breath, exhale, and stop. In that moment look at the thing which was attracting you. Really, nothing was attracting you, you were attracted. That diamond lying there on the road in the lonely forest was not attracting anybody, it was simply lying there being itself. The diamond was not aware that Bharthruhari had been attracted, that someone had moved from his meditation, from his subjectivity, had come back into the world. The diamond was not aware that two persons had fought for it and lost their lives.

So, nothing is attracting you – you get attracted. Be alert and the bridge will be broken and you will regain balance inside. Go on doing it more and more. The more you do, the better. And a moment will come when you will not need to do it because the inner power will give you such a strength that the attraction of things will be lost. It is your weakness which is attracted. Be more powerful and nothing will attract you. Only then for the first time are you master of your own being.

That will give you real freedom. No political freedom, no economic freedom, no social freedom, can be of much help. Not that they are not desirable, they are good, good in themselves, but they will not give you the things which the innermost core of your being is longing for – the freedom from things, from objects, the freedom to be oneself without any possibility of being possessed by anything or anybody.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #73

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt He Remains in the Subjective Mood.

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 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.

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

This Consciousness Exists as Each Being – Osho

This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists.

Scientists used to say in the past that only matter existed, nothing else. Great systems of philosophy arose based on the concept that only matter existed. But even those who believed that matter existed had to concede that there was something like consciousness. Then what was it? They said that consciousness was just an epi-phenomenon, just a by-product of matter. It was nothing but matter in disguise, something very subtle but still material. But this half century has seen a very great miracle happen.

Scientists tried and tried to find out what matter was, but the more they tried, they more they came to realize that there was nothing like matter. Matter was analyzed and it was found that it had disappeared. Nietzsche had said just a hundred years before, “God is dead.” With God dead there can be no consciousness because God means the totality of consciousness. But within a hundred years matter is dead – and it is dead not because religious people believe it so but because scientists have come to a definite conclusion that matter is just appearance. It appears to be as it is because we cannot see very deeply. If we can see deeply it disappears, and then energy is left.

This phenomenon of energy, this non-material energy force, has been known by mystics since long ago. In the Vedas, in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Upanishads – all over the world mystics have penetrated into existence and have always concluded that matter is just an appearance; deep down there is no matter, only energy. With this science now agrees. And the mystics have said one thing more which science has yet to agree with – but with which it will have to agree one day! The mystics have come to another conclusion also. They say that when you penetrate deep into energy, energy also disappears and only consciousness remains.

So these are the three layers. Matter is the first layer, the surface. If you penetrate the surface then the second layer becomes apparent: you can perceive the second layer which is energy. Then if you penetrate energy, the third layer becomes illumined – that third layer is consciousness. In the beginning, science said that mystics were just dreaming, because science saw only matter and nothing else. Then science tried to penetrate, and the mystics’ second layer was uncovered: matter is just apparent – deep down it is nothing but energy. And the mystics’ other claim is: penetrate more into energy and energy also disappears, then there remains only consciousness. That consciousness is God. That is the deepest-most core.

If you penetrate into your body, these three layers are there. Just on the surface is your body. The body looks material, but deep down there are currents of life, prana, vital energy. Without that vital energy your body would be just a corpse. It is alive, with something flowing in it. That flowing ‘something’ is energy. But deeper, still deeper, you are aware, you can witness. You can witness both your body and your vital energy. That witnessing is your consciousness.

Every existence has three layers. The deepest is the witnessing consciousness. In the middle is vital energy and just on the surface is matter, a material body.

This technique says, this consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists. What are you? Who are you? If you close your eyes and try to find out who you are, ultimately you are bound to come to a conclusion that you are consciousness. Everything else may belong to you, but you are not that. The body belongs to you, but you can be aware of the body – and that which is aware of the body becomes separate. The body becomes an object of knowledge and you become the subject. You can know your body. Not only can you know, you can manipulate your body, you can activate it or make it inactive. You are separate. You can do something with your body.

And not only are you not your body, you are not your mind either. You can become aware of your mind also. If thoughts move, you can see them, and you can do something with them: you can make them disappear completely, you can become thoughtless. Or, you can concentrate your consciousness on one thought and not allow it to move from there. You can focus yourself on it and make it remain there. Or, you can allow a river like flow of thoughts. You can do something with your thoughts. You can even dissolve them completely until there is no thought – but still you are. You will know that there are no thoughts, that a vacuum has come into being; but you will be there, witnessing that vacuum.

The only thing you cannot separate yourself from is your witnessing energy. That means you are that. You cannot separate yourself from it. You can separate yourself from everything else: you can know that you are not your body, not your mind, but you cannot know that you are not your witnessing because whatsoever you do you will be the witness. You cannot separate yourself from witnessing. That witnessing is consciousness. And unless you come to a point from where separation becomes impossible, you have not come to yourself.

So there are methods by which the seeker goes on eliminating. He goes on eliminating – first the body, then the mind, and then he comes to the point where nothing can be eliminated. In the Upanishads they say, neti, neti. This is a deep method: “This is not, that is not.” So the seeker goes on knowing, “This is not, this is not me, this is not I.” He goes on and on until ultimately he comes to a point where he cannot say. “This is not I.” Just a witnessing self remains. Pure consciousness remains. This pure consciousness exists as each being.

Whatsoever is in existence is just a phenomenon of this consciousness, just a wave, just a crystallization of this consciousness – and nothing else exists. But this has to be felt. Analysis can be helpful, intellectual understanding can be helpful, but it has to be felt that nothing else exists, only consciousness. Then behave as if only consciousness exists.

I have heard about Lin Chi, a Zen master. As he was sitting one day in his hut someone came to see him. The man who came was angry. He may have been fighting with his wife or with his boss or something – but he was angry. He pushed open the door in anger, he threw down his shoes in anger and then he came, very respectfully, and bowed down to Lin Chi. Lin Chi said, “First go and ask forgiveness from the door and from the shoes.” The man must have looked at Lin Chi very strangely. There were other people also sitting there and they started laughing. Lin Chi said, “Stop!” and then said to the man, “If you don’t do it then leave. I will have nothing to do with you.” The man said, “It will look crazy to ask forgiveness from the shoes and from the door.” Lin Chi said, “It was not crazy when you expressed anger. Will it now be crazy? Everything has a consciousness. So you go, and unless the door forgives you, I am not going to allow you in.”

The man felt awkward but he had to go. Later on he became a monk himself and became enlightened. When he became enlightened, he related the whole anecdote and he said, “When I stood before the door, asking forgiveness, I felt awkward, foolish. But then I thought that if Lin Chi says so, there must be something in it. I trusted Lin Chi, so I thought that even if it was foolish do it. In the beginning whatsoever I was saying to the door was just superficial, artificial; but by and by I started to get warm. And Lin Chi was waiting and he said that he would watch. If the door forgave me, only then could I come in; otherwise I had to stay there until I had persuaded the door and the shoes to forgive me. By and by I became warm. I forgot that many people were looking. I forgot about Lin Chi – and then the concern became sincere and real. I started to feel the door and the shoes were changing their mood. And the moment I realized that the door and the shoes had changed and that they are feeling happy, Lin Chi immediately said that I could come. I had been forgiven.”

This incident became a transforming phenomenon in his life because for the first time he became aware that everything is really a crystallization of consciousness. If you cannot see it, it is because you are blind. If you cannot hear it, it is because you are deaf. There is nothing the matter with the things around you. Everything is condensed consciousness. The problem is with you – you are not open and sensitive.

This technique says, this consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists. Live with this notion. Be sensitive to this and wherever you move, move with this mind and this heart – that everything is consciousness and nothing else exists. Sooner or later, the world will change its face. Sooner or later, objects disappear and persons start appearing everywhere.

Sooner or later, the whole world will be suddenly illumined and you will know that you were living in a world of dead things just because of your insensitivity. Otherwise everything is alive – not only alive, everything is conscious.

Everything deep down is nothing but consciousness. But if you leave it as a theory, if you believe in it as a theory, then nothing will happen. You will have to make it a way of life a style of life – behaving as if everything is conscious. In the beginning it will be an ‘as if’, and you will feel foolish, but if you can persist in your foolishness, and if you can dare to be foolish, soon the world will start revealing its mysteries.

Science is not the only methodology to use to enter the mysteries of existence. Really, it is the crudest methodology, the slowest. A mystic can enter existence in a single moment. Science will take millions of years to penetrate that much. The Upanishads say that the world is illusory, that matter is illusory, but only after five thousand years can science say that matter is illusory. The Upanishads say that deep down energy is conscious – science will take another five thousand years more. Mysticism is a jump; science is a very slow movement. The intellect cannot jump; it has to argue – argue every fact, prove, disprove, experiment. But the heart can jump immediately.

Remember, for the intellect a process is necessary, then comes the conclusion – process first, then the conclusion – logical. For the heart, conclusion comes first, then the process. It is just the reverse. That is why mystics cannot prove anything. They have the conclusion, but they don’t have the process.

You may not be aware, you may not have noticed, that mystics simply talk about conclusions. If you read the Upanishads you will find only conclusions. When for the first time they were translated into Western languages, Western philosophers couldn’t see the point – because there was no argument. How do you reach this conclusion? What is the proof? On what premises do you declare, “There is Brahma”? The Upanishads don’t say anything; they simply come to a conclusion. The heart reaches a conclusion immediately. And when the conclusion is reached, you can create the process. That is the meaning of theology.

Mystics reach the conclusion and theologians create the process. Jesus reached the conclusion and then the theologians – St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas – they created the process. That is secondary. The conclusion has been reached, now you have to find the proofs. The proof is in the life of the mystic. He cannot argue about it. He himself is the proof – if you can see it. If you cannot see, then there is no proof. Then religion is absurd.

Don’t make these techniques theories. They are not. They are jumps into experience, jumps into conclusion.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #77

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt This Consciousness Exists as Each Being.

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.

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.

Perceive One Being as Knower and Known – Osho

Each thing is perceived through knowing.
The Self shines in space through knowing.
Perceive One Being as knower and known.

Whenever you know something, it is known through knowing. The object comes to your mind through the faculty of knowledge. You look at a flower. You know this is a rose flower. The rose flower is there, and you are inside. Something from you comes to the rose flower; something from you is projected on the rose flower. Some energy moves from you, comes to the rose, takes its form, color and smell, and comes back and informs you that this is a rose flower.

All knowledge, whatsoever you know, is revealed through the faculty of knowing. Knowing is your faculty. Knowledge is gathered through this faculty. But knowing reveals two things: the known and the knower. Whenever you are knowing a rose flower, your knowledge is half if you forget the knower who is knowing it. So while knowing a rose flower there are three things: the rose flower – the known; and the knower – you; and the relationship between the two – knowledge.

So knowledge can be divided into three points: knower, known and knowing. Knowing is just like a bridge between two points – the subject and the object. Ordinarily your knowledge reveals only the known; the knower remains unrevealed. Ordinarily your knowledge is one-arrowed: it points to the rose, but it never points to you. Unless it starts pointing to you, that knowledge will allow you to know about the world, but it will not allow you to know about yourself.

All the techniques of meditation are to reveal the knower. George Gurdjieff used a particular technique just like this. He called it self-remembering. He said that whenever you are knowing something, always remember the knower. Don’t forget it in the object. Remember the subject. Just now you are listening to me. When you are listening to me, you can listen in two ways. One: your mind can be focused toward me – then you forget the listener. Then the speaker is known but the listener is forgotten.

Gurdjieff said that while listening, know the speaker and also know the listener. Your knowledge must be double-arrowed, pointing to two points – the knower and the known. It must not only flow in one direction towards the object. It must flow simultaneously towards two directions – the known and the knower. This he called self-remembering.

Looking at a flower, also remember the one who is looking. Difficult, because if you do try it, if you try to be aware of the knower, you will forget the rose. You have become so fixed to one direction that it will take time. If you become aware of the knower, then the known will be forgotten. If you become aware of the known, then the knower will be forgotten.

But a little effort, and by and by, you can be aware of both simultaneously. And when you become capable of being aware of both, this Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. This is one of the oldest techniques that Buddha used, and Gurdjieff again introduced it to the western world.

Buddha called this samyak smriti – right-mindfulness. He said that your mind is not in right-mindfulness if it knows only one point. It must know both. And then a miracle happens: if you are aware of both the known and the knower, suddenly you become the third – you are neither. Just by endeavoring to be aware of both the known and the knower, you become the third, you become a witness. A third possibility arises immediately – a witnessing self comes into being – because how can you know both? If you are the knower, then you remain fixed to one point. In self-remembering you shift from the fixed point of the knower. Then the knower is your mind and the known is the world, and you become a third point, a consciousness, a witnessing self.

This third point cannot be transcended, and that which cannot be transcended is the ultimate. That which can be transcended is not worthwhile, because then it is not your nature – you can transcend it.

I will try to explain it through an example. In the night you sleep, and you dream. In the morning you wake, and the dream is lost. While you are awake there is no dream; a different world comes into your view. You move in the streets, you work in a factory or in an office. Then you come back to your home, and again you fall asleep at night. Then this world that you knew while you were awake disappears. Then you don’t remember who you are. Then you don’t know whether you are black or white, poor or rich, wise or foolish. You don’t know anything. You don’t know if you are young or old. You don’t know if you are man or woman. All that was related with the waking consciousness disappears; you enter the world of dreams. You forget the waking world; it is no more. In the morning, again the dreaming world disappears. You come back.

Which is real? – Because while you are dreaming, the real world, the world that you knew when you were awake, is no more. You cannot compare. And while you are awake, the dreaming world is no more. You cannot compare. Which is real? Why do you call the dreaming world unreal? What is the criterion?

If you say, “Because it disappears when I am awake,” this cannot be the criterion, because your waking world disappears when you are dreaming. And really, if you argue this way, then the dreaming world may be more real, because while you are awake you can remember the dream, but while you are dreaming you cannot remember the waking consciousness and the world around it. So which is more real and more deep? The dreaming world completely washes away the world that you call real. Your real world cannot wash away the dreaming world so totally; it seems more solid, more real. And what is the criterion? How to say? How to compare?

Tantra says that both are unreal. Then what is real? Tantra says that the one who knows the dreaming world and the one who knows the waking world, he is real – because he is never transcended. He is never cancelled. Whether you dream or whether you are awake, he is there, uncanceled.

Tantra says that the one who knows the dream, and the one who knows that now the dream has stopped, the one who knows the waking world, and the one who knows that now the waking world has disappeared, is the real. Because there is no point when it is not; it is always there. That which cannot be cancelled by any experience is the real. That which cannot be transcended, beyond which you cannot go, is your Self. If you can go beyond it, then it was not your Self.

This method of Gurdjieff’s, which he calls self-remembering, or Buddha’s method, which he calls right-mindfulness, or this tantra sutra, lead to one thing. They lead within you to a point which is neither the known nor the knower but a witnessing self which knows both.

This witnessing self is the ultimate, you cannot go beyond it, because now whatsoever you do will be witnessing. Beyond witnessing you cannot move. So witnessing is the ultimate substratum, the basic ground of consciousness. This sutra will reveal it to you.

Each thing is perceived through knowing.
The Self shines in space through knowing.
Perceive One Being as knower and known.

If you can perceive in yourself one point which is both knower and known, then you have transcended object and subject both. Then you have transcended the matter and mind both; then you have transcended the outer and inner both. You have come to a point where the knower and the known are one. There is no division.

With the mind, division will remain. Only with the witnessing self, division disappears. With the witnessing self you cannot say who is the known and who is the knower – it is both. But this has to be based on experience; otherwise, it becomes a philosophical discussion. So try it, experiment.

You are sitting near a rose flower: look at it. The first thing to do is be totally attentive, give total attention to the rose, so that the whole world disappears and only the rose remains there – your consciousness is totally attentive to the being of the rose. If the attention is total then the world disappears, because the more the attention is concentrated on the rose, the more everything else falls away. The world disappears; only the rose remains. The rose becomes the world.

This is the first step – to concentrate on the rose. If you cannot concentrate on the rose, it will be difficult to move to the knower, because then your mind is always diverted. So concentration becomes the first step towards meditation. Only the rose remains; the whole world has disappeared. Now you can move inwards; now the rose becomes the point from where you can move. Now see the rose, and start becoming aware of yourself – the knower.

In the beginning you will miss. When you shift to the knower, the rose will drop out of consciousness. It will become faint, it will go away, it will become distant. Again, you will come to the rose, and you will forget the self. This hide-and-seek play will go on, but if you persist, sooner or later a moment will come when suddenly you will be in between. The knower, the mind, and the rose will be there, and you will be just in the middle, looking at both. That middle point, that balancing point, is the witness.

Once you know that, you have become both. Then the rose – the known, and the knower – the mind, are just two wings of you. Then the object and the subject are just two wings; you are the center of both. They are extensions of you. Then the world and the divine are both extensions of you. You have come to the very center of being. And this center is just a witness.

Perceive One Being as knower and known.

Start by concentrating on something. When the concentration has come to be total, then try to move inwards, become mindful of yourself, and then try to balance. It will take time – months, even years. It depends on how intense is your effort, because it is the most subtle balancing to come between the two. But it happens, and when it happens you have reached the center of existence. In that center you are rooted, grounded, silent, blissful, in ecstasy, and duality is no more. This is what Hindus have called samadhi. This is what Jesus called the kingdom of God.

Just understanding it verbally will not be of much help, but if you try, from the very beginning you will start to feel that something is happening. When you concentrate on the rose, the world will disappear. This is a miracle – when the whole world disappears. Then you come to understand that it is your attention which is basic, and wherever you move your attention, a world is created, and from wherever you remove your attention, the world drops. So you can create worlds through your attention.

Look at it in this way. You are sitting here. If you are in love with someone, then suddenly only one person remains in this hall; everything else disappears, it is not there. What happens? Why does only one person remain when you are in love? The whole world drops really; it is phantom-like, shadows. Only one person is real, because now your mind is concentrated on one person, your mind is totally absorbed in one person. Everything else becomes shadow-like, a shadow existence – it is not real for you.

Whenever you can concentrate, the very concentration changes the whole pattern of your existence, the whole pattern of your mind. Try it – on anything. You can try it on a Buddha statue or a flower or a tree or anything. Or just on the face of your beloved or your friend – just look at the face.

It will be easy, because if you love some face, it is very easy to concentrate. And really, those who tried to concentrate on Buddha, on Jesus, on Krishna, they were lovers; they loved Buddha. So it was very easy for Sariputta or for Modgalayan or for the other disciples to concentrate on Buddha’s face. The moment they looked at Buddha’s face, they were easily flowing towards it. The love was there; they were infatuated.

So try to find a face – any face you love will do – and just look in the eyes and concentrate on the face. Suddenly the whole world drops; a new dimension has opened. Your mind is concentrated on one thing – then that person or that thing becomes the whole world.

When I say this, I mean that if your attention is total towards anything, that thing becomes the whole world. You create the world through your attention. Your world you create through your own attention. And when you are totally absorbed, flowing like a river towards the object, then suddenly start becoming aware of the original source from where this attention is flowing. The river is flowing; now become aware of the origin.

In the beginning you will get lost again and again; you will shift. If you move to the origin, you will forget the river and the object, the sea towards which it is flowing. It will change: if you come to the object, you will forget the origin. It is natural, because the mind has become fixed to either the object or to the subject.

That’s why so many persons go into retreat. They just leave the world. Leaving the world basically means leaving the object, so that they can concentrate on themselves. It is easy. If you leave the world and close your eyes and close all your senses, you can be aware of yourself easily, but again that awareness is false because you have chosen one point of duality. This is another extreme of the same disease.

First you were aware of the object – the known, and you were not aware of the subject – the knower. Now you are fixed with the knower, and you have forgotten the known, but you remain divided in duality. And this is the old mind again in a new pattern. Nothing has changed.

That’s why my emphasis is not to leave the world of the objects. Don’t leave the world of the objects. Rather, try to become aware of both the subject and the object simultaneously, the outer and the inner simultaneously. If both are there, only then can you be balanced between them. If one is there, you will get obsessed with it.

Those who go to the Himalayas and close themselves, they are just like you standing in a reverse position. You are fixed with the objects; they are fixed with the subject. You are fixed with the outer, they are fixed with the inner. Neither you are free nor they, because you cannot be free with the one. With the one you become identified. You can be free only when you become aware of the two. Then you can become the third, and the third is the free point. With one you become identified. With two you can move, you can shift, you can balance, and you can come to a midpoint, an absolute midpoint.

Buddha used to say that his path is a middle path – majjhim nikaya. It has not been really understood why he insisted so much on calling it the middle path. This is the reason: because his whole process was of mindfulness – it is the middle path. Buddha says, “Don’t leave the world, and don’t cling to the other world. Rather, be in between. Don’t leave one extreme and move to the other; just be in the middle, because in the middle both are not. Just in the middle you are free. Just in the middle there is no duality. You have come to one, and the duality has become just the extension of you – just two wings.”

Buddha’s middle path is based on this technique. It is beautiful. For so many reasons it is beautiful. One: it is very scientific, because only between two can you balance. If there is only one point, imbalance is bound to be there. So Buddha says that those who are worldly are imbalanced, and those who have renounced are again imbalanced in the other extreme. A balanced man is one who is neither in this extreme nor that; he lives just in the middle. You cannot call him worldly; you cannot call him other-worldly. He is free to move; he is not attached to any. He has come to the midpoint, the golden mean.

Secondly: it is very easy to move to the other extreme – very easy. If you eat too much you can fast easily, but you cannot diet easily. If you talk too much you can go into silence very easily, but you cannot talk less. If you eat too much, it is very easy not to eat at all – this is another extreme. But to eat moderately, to come to a midpoint, is very difficult. To love a person is easy; to hate a person is easy. To be simply indifferent is very difficult. From one extreme you can move to the other.

To remain in the middle is very difficult. Why? Because in the middle you have to lose your mind. Your mind exists in extremes. Mind means the excess. Mind is always an extremist: either you are for or you are against. You cannot be simply neutral. Mind cannot exist in neutrality: it can be here or there – because mind needs the opposite. It needs to be opposed to something. If it is not opposed to anything it disappears. Then there is no functioning for it; it cannot function.

Try this. In any way become neutral, indifferent – suddenly mind has no function. If you are for, you can think; if you are against, you can think. If you are neither for nor against, what is left to think? Buddha says that indifference is the basis of the middle path, upeksha, indifference – be indifferent to the extremes. Just try one thing: be indifferent to the extremes. A balancing happens.

This balancing will give you a new dimension of feeling where you are both the knower and the known, the world and the other world, this and that, the body and the mind. You are both, and simultaneously neither – above both. A triangle has come into existence.

You may have seen that many occult, secret societies have used the triangle as their symbol. The triangle is one of the oldest occult symbols just because of this – because the triangle has three angles. Ordinarily you have only two angles, the third is missing. It is not there yet; it has not evolved. The third angle is beyond both. Both belong to it, they are part of it, and still, it is beyond and higher than both.

If you do this experiment, you will help to create a triangle within yourself. The third angle will arise by and by, and when it comes then you cannot be in misery. Once you can witness, you cannot be in misery. Misery means getting identified with something.

But one subtle point has to be remembered – then you will not even get identified with bliss. That’s why Buddha says, “I can say only this much – that there will be no misery. In samadhi, in ecstasy, there will be no misery. I cannot say that there will be bliss.” Buddha says, “I cannot say that. I can simply say there will be no misery.”

And he is right, because bliss means when there is no identification of any type – not even with bliss. This is very subtle. If you feel that you are blissful, sooner or later, you will be in misery again. If you feel you are blissful, you are preparing to be miserable again. You are still getting identified with a mood.

You feel happy: now you get identified with happiness. The moment you get identified with happiness, unhappiness has started. Now you will cling to it, now you will become afraid of the opposite, now you will expect it to remain with you constantly. You have created all that is needed for misery to be there and then misery will enter, and when you get identified with happiness, you will get identified with misery. Identification is the disease.

At the third point you are not identified with anything: whatsoever comes and passes, comes and passes; you remain a witness, just a spectator – neutral, indifferent, unidentified.

The morning comes and the sun rises and you witness it. You don’t say, “I am the morning.” Then when the noon comes, you don’t say, “I have become the noon.” You witness it. And when the sun sets and darkness comes and the night, you don’t say, “I am the darkness and the night.” You witness it. You say, “There was morning, then there was noon, then there was evening and now there is night. And again, there will be morning and the circle will go on and I am just an onlooker. I go on witnessing.”

If the same becomes possible with your moods – moods of the morning and moods of the noon and moods of the evening and the night, and they have their own circle, they go on moving – you become a witness. You say, “Now happiness has come – just like a morning. And now night will come – the misery. The moods will go on changing around me, and I will remain centered in myself. I will not get attached to any mood. I will not cling to any mood. I will not hope for anything and I will not feel frustrated. I will simply witness. Whatsoever happens, I will see it. When it comes, I will see; when it goes, I will see.”

Buddha uses this many times. He says again and again that when a thought arises, look at it. A thought of misery, a thought of happiness arises – look at it. It comes to a climax – look at it. Then it starts falling down – look at it. Then it disappears – look at it. Arising, existing, dying, and you remain just a witness; go on looking at it. This third point makes you a witness, sakshi, and to be a witness is the highest possibility of consciousness.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #61

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Perceive One Being as Knower and Known.

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 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.

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.

See Your Inner Being in Detail – Osho

Eyes closed, see your inner being in detail. Thus see your true nature. 

Eyes closed . . . Close your eyes. But this closing is not enough. Total closing means to close your eyes and stop their movements; otherwise the eyes will continue to see something which is of the outside. Even with closed eyes you will see things – images of things. Actual things are not there, but images, ideas, collected memories – they will start flowing. They are also from outside, so your eyes are still not totally closed. Totally closed eyes means nothing to see.

Understand the difference. You can close your eyes; that is easy, everyone closes them every moment. In the night you close your eyes, but that will not reveal the inner nature to you. Close your eyes so that nothing remains to be seen – no outside object, no inside image of any outside object, just a blank darkness as if you have suddenly gone blind. Not blind only to reality, but to the dream reality also.

One has to practice it. A long period will be needed; it cannot be done suddenly. You will need a long training. Close your eyes. Anytime you feel that it is easy and you have time, close your eyes and then inwardly stop all movements of the eyes. Do not allow any movement. Feel! Do not allow any movement. Stop all movements of the eyes. Feel as if they have become stones, and then remain in that “stoney” state of the eyes. Do not do anything; just remain there. Suddenly, someday, you will become aware that you are looking inside yourself.

You can go just outside this building, move around the building and have a look, but that is looking at the building from the outside. Then you can enter into the room, and you can stand in this room and have a look. That is looking at the building from the inside. When you are taking a round outside, you see the walls, but only one side; then you are seeing the outside of the walls. When you come in, the walls are the same, but now you will see the inside of the walls.

You have seen your body only from the outside. You have seen your body in a mirror, or you have seen your hands from the outside. You do not know what the inside of your body is. You have never entered into your own self; you have never been at the center of your body and being, to look around at what is there from the inside.

This technique is very helpful for having a look from the inside, and that transforms your total consciousness, your total existence – because if you can have a look from the inside, you immediately become different from the world. This false identity that “I am the body” is only because we have been looking at our bodies from the outside. If you can have a look from the inside, the looker becomes different. And then you can move your consciousness in your body, from your toe to your head; you can now have a round inside the body. And once you become capable of having a look from the inside and moving there, then it is not difficult to go outside at all.

Once you know how to move, once you know that you are separate from the body, you are freed from a great bondage. Now you have no gravitational pull; now you have no limitation. Now you are absolute freedom. You can go out of the body; you can go and come. And then your body becomes just an abode.

Close your eyes, see your inner being in detail and move from limb to limb inside. Just go to your toe. Forget the whole body: move to the toe. Stay there and have a look. Then move through the legs, come on upwards, go to every limb. Then many things happen. Many things happen!

Then your body becomes such a sensitive vehicle, you cannot even imagine it. Then if you touch someone, you can move into your hand totally and that touch will become transforming. That is what is meant by a master’s touch: he can move to any limb totally, and then he is concentrated there. If you can move to any part of your body totally, that part becomes alive – so much alive that you cannot imagine what happens to that part. Then you can move to the eyes totally. If you can move to your eyes totally and then look into someone’s eyes, you will penetrate him; you will go to his very depths.

Now psychoanalysts are trying to go to the depths through psychoanalysis. Then they take one year, two years, three years . . . This is a sheer wastage of time. And life is so short that if three years are taken to analyze a person’s mind, it is nonsense. And then too you cannot rely on whether the analysis is complete or not. You are groping in the dark. The Eastern approach has been through the eyes. No need of analyzing the person for such a long time. The work can be done by just entering through his eyes totally, touching his depths, knowing many things about him of which even he is not aware.

The master has many things to do. One of the basic things is this: to analyze you, to go deep into you, to move into your darker realms which are unknown to you. And if he says to you that something is hidden in you, you will not believe it. How can you believe it? You are not aware of it. You know only one part of the mind – a very small fragment which is just the upper part, just the first layer. Behind it there are hidden nine layers which are not known to you, but through your eyes a penetration is possible.

Close your eyes. See your inner being in detail. The first, outer part of the technique is to look at your body inwardly – from your inner center. Stand there and have a look. You will be separated from the body because the looker is never the looked at. The observer is different from the object.

If you can see your body totally from the inside, then you can never fall into the illusion that you are the body. Then you will remain different – totally different: inside it but not it, in the body but not the body. This is the first part. Then you can move; then you are free to move. Once freed from the body, freed from the identity, you are free to move. Now you can move into your mind – deep down. Those nine layers which are within and unconscious can now be entered into.

This is the inner cave of the mind. If you enter this cave of the mind, you will become separate from the mind also. Then you will see that the mind is also an object which you can look at, and that which is entering the mind is, again, separate and different. This entering into the mind is what is meant by: See your inner being in detail. Body and mind both should be entered and looked at from within. Then you are simply a witness, and this witness cannot be penetrated.

That is why it is your innermost core: that is you. That which can be penetrated, that which can be seen, is not you. When you have come to that which cannot be penetrated, that in which you cannot move, which cannot be observed, then only have you come to the real self. You cannot witness the witnessing source; remember – that is absurd.

If someone says that “I have witnessed my witness,” that is absurd. Why is it absurd? Because if you have witnessed your witnessing self, then the witnessing self is not the witnessing self. That who has witnessed it is the witness. That who you can see, you are not; that which you can observe, you are not; that which you can become aware of, you are not.

But a point comes beyond the mind where simply you are. Now you cannot divide your single existence into two: object and subject. Simple subjectivity is there, just witnessing. This is very, very difficult to comprehend through intellect because all the categories of the intellect are broken there.

Because of this logical difficulty, Charwak – the expounder of one of the most logical philosophical systems in the world – says that you cannot know the self; there is no self-knowledge. And because there is no self-knowledge, how can you say that there is a self? Whatsoever you know is not the self. The knower is the self, not the known, so you cannot say logically that “I have known my self.” That is absurd, illogical. How can you know your self? Then who will be the knower and who will be the known? Knowledge means a dichotomy, a division between object and subject, the knower and the known.

So Charwak says that all those who say they have known the self are talking nonsense. Self-knowledge is impossible because the self is irreducibly the knower. It cannot be converted into the known.

Then Charwak says that if you cannot know the self, how can you say that there is self? Those like Charwak, who do not believe in the presence of a self, are called Anatmavadin. They say no self is; they say there is no self – that which cannot be known is not. And they are right logically. If logic is all, they are right. But this is the mystery of life, that logic is only the beginning – not the end. A moment comes when logic ends, but you do not end. A moment comes when logic is finished, but you are still there. Life is illogical. That is why it is difficult to comprehend, to conceive of what is meant when it is said that only the witness remains.

For example, if there is a lamp in this room, you see many objects around you. When the lamp is turned off, there is darkness and nothing can be seen. When the lamp is put on, there is light and you can see everything in the room. But have you ever observed what is happening? If there are no objects, will you be able to see the lamp and its light? You will not be able to see its light, because to be seen the light must reflect something. It must strike an object. The rays must go to an object and then be reflected, then they will reach to your eyes. So first you see objects, then you infer that light is there. When you burn a lamp or a candle, you never see the light first. First you see the objects, and because of the objects, you come to know about the light.

Scientists say that if there are no objects then light cannot be seen. Look at the sky: it looks blue but it is not blue, it is filled with cosmic rays. It looks blue because there are no objects. Those rays cannot reflect and come to your eyes. If you go into space and there are no objects, then there will be darkness. Of course, rays will be passing just by your side, but there will be darkness. To know the light some objects have to be there.

Charwak says that if you enter within and come to the point where only the witness has remained and there is nothing to be witnessed, how can you know about it? Some object must be there to be witnessed; only then can you know the witnessing. Logically, scientifically, it is right. But existentially it is not right.

Those who really move inside come to a point where there is no object left but just the consciousness of being. You are, but nothing is there to be seen – only the seer. Only the seer! There is simple subjectivity without any object around it. The moment you come to this point, you have entered your ultimate goal of being. You can call it the alpha – the beginning, or you can call it the omega – the end. It is both, alpha and omega. This is called “self-knowledge.”

Linguistically the word is wrong because linguistically nothing can be said about it. Language becomes meaningless when you enter the world of the one. Language is meaningful only when you are in the world of two. In the world of duality language is meaningful because language is created in, is part of the dualistic world. It becomes meaningless when you enter the one, the non-dual. That is why those who know have remained silent – or even if they say something they hurriedly add that whatsoever they are saying is just symbolic, and whatsoever they are saying is not exactly true: it is false.

Lao Tzu said that that which can be said cannot be true, and that which is true cannot be said. He remained silent; for most of his life he would not write anything. He said, “If I say something it will be untrue, because nothing can be said about the realm where only the One remains.” 

Eyes closed, see your inner being in detail – body and mind both. Thus see your true nature. See your body and mind, your structure. And remember, body and mind are not two things. Rather, you are both: body-mind – psychosomatic. Mind is the finer part of the body and body is the grosser part of the mind.

So if you can become aware of the structure of body-mind, if you can become conscious of the structure, you are freed from the structure, you are freed from the vehicle, you have become different. And this knowing that you are separate from the structure is your true nature. That is what you really are. This body will die, but that true nature never dies. This mind will die and change, and die again and again, but that true nature never dies. That true nature is eternal. That is why that true nature is neither your name nor your form. It is beyond both.

So how to do this technique? Total closing of the eyes is needed. If you try it, close your eyes and then stop the movements. Let your eyes become just like stones. No movements allowed. Suddenly, any day while practicing this, suddenly it will happen that you will be able to look within. The eyes which were always looking outside will turn in and you will have a glimpse inside.

Then there is no difficulty. Once you have the glimpse inside, you know what to do and how to move. Only the first glimpse is difficult; after that you have the knack. Then it becomes just like a trick. Any moment you can close your eyes, make your eyes static, and you can enter the realm.

Buddha was dying. It was the last day of his life, and he asked his disciples if they wanted to ask any questions. They were weeping, crying, and they said, “You have told us so much. Now nothing is left to ask.” Buddha had a habit of asking thrice. He would never stop after asking once. He would ask again, and then he would ask still again whether you had any question to ask. Many times Buddha was asked, “Why do you ask a single thing three times?” He said, “Because man is so unaware, so unconscious, he may not have heard the first time and he may have missed the second time.”

Thrice he asked, and thrice his bhikkhus, monks, his disciples said; “Now we do not want to ask anything. You have said so much.” Then he closed his eyes and said, “If you do not have anything to ask, before death occurs to the body, I will move from it. Before death enters the body, I will move from it.”

He closed his eyes. His eyes became static and he started moving. It is said that there were four parts to his movement inwards. First he closed his eyes; secondly, his eyes became static, there were no movements. If you had then the instrument for recording R.E.M., the graph would not have come. The eyes became static – that was the second thing. Thirdly, he looked at his body; then fourthly, he looked at his mind.

This was the whole journey. Before death occurred he was back at his center, in his original source. That is why this death is not called death: we call it nirvana, and this is the difference. We call it nirvana – cessation – not death. Ordinarily, we die because death occurs to us. It never occurred to Buddha. Before death came, he had already returned to the source.

Death occurred only to the dead body – he was not there to be found. So in Buddhist tradition it is said that he never died. Death could not catch him. It followed as it follows him everyone, but he could not be trapped; he tricked Death out of it. He must have been laughing – standing beyond, and Death was there only with a dead body.

This technique is the same. Make four parts of it and move. And when you know one glimpse, the whole thing will become very easy and simple. Then any moment you can move in and come out, and go in and come out, just like coming out of your house and going in . . . coming out and going in.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #21

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt See Your Inner Being in Detail.

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.

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.