Tag: Tao

A Door to the Divine – Osho

A parable.

Once there was a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant.

Secondly, he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place, he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it.

Further, the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians. And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and their skins.

George Gurdjieff loved this parable very much. His whole philosophy is contained in this small parable. And this parable represents man in the ordinary state of unconsciousness. It is one of the most beautiful illustrations of man as he is.

Man is a machine. Man is not born to be a machine, but man lives like a machine and dies like a machine. Man has the seed of a great flowering of consciousness, man has the possibility to become God, but that doesn’t happen. It does not happen because man has been hypnotized – by the society, by the state, by the organized church, by the vested interests. The society needs slaves and man can remain a slave only if he is not allowed to grow to his uttermost flowering. The society needs your flesh and your skins and naturally, nobody likes it. Hence, the whole process of socialization, of civilization, is nothing but a deep hypnosis.

Man is being hypnotized from the very moment he is born. He is being hypnotized to believe that the society exists in his favor, for his good. That is utterly wrong. He is being hypnotized to believe that he is immortal. He is not. He can be, but he is not. And if the hypnosis persists he will never be immortal.

You live only as a mortal being, because you live in the body. The body is going to die. That which is born is bound to die. Birth is the beginning of the body and death the end. Do you know anything in you which is more than the body? Have you experienced anything higher than the body, deeper than the body? Have you seen anything in you which was even before you were born? If you have seen that, then you are immortal. If you know your face, your original face, the face that you had before you were born, then you know you will be there after death too; otherwise not.

Man can be an immortal, but man lives surrounded by death because man lives identified with the body. The society does not allow you to know more than the body. The society is interested only in your body – your body can be put to use – your soul is dangerous. A man of soul is always dangerous because a man of soul is a free man. He cannot be reduced to slavery. A man who has an immortal soul in him has a deeper commitment to existence itself, to God himself. He does not care a bit about the man-made structures of society, civilization and culture; these are prison cells for him. He does not exist as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. He cannot be part of a crowd. He exists as an individual.

The body is part of a crowd, your soul is not. Your soul is deeply individual. Its flavor is that of freedom. But your soul cannot be put to any use in the market-place. The society needs only your body. And it is very dangerous for the society if you start striving for the soul, because then your interest changes. You turn from being an extrovert into an introvert; you start moving inwards. The society is outside, the society wants you to remain an extrovert, interested in money, power, prestige, and all that, so that your energy goes on moving outwards. If you start moving inwards, that means you have become a drop-out, you are no more part of the game that is being played on the outside. You don’t belong to it. You start diving deep within your own being. And there is the source of immortality.

The society prevents you from going inwards. And the best way is to give you a false idea that you are going inwards. The magician told the sheep that they were lions, suggested to them that they were immortals, hypnotized them into believing that they were not only men but great magicians.

When you go to a church you are not going inwards. When you go to the temple you are not going inwards. But the society has hypnotized you to believe that if you want to go inwards, go to the church. But the church is as much outside as anything else. The society has hypnotized you to believe that if you want to go inwards, go to the priest. And the priest is an agent of the state and the society. The priest has always been against the mystics, because if you go to a mystic you will start moving inwards.

A mystic lives in a totally different way. His energy moves in a different gestalt: his river moves inwards. So one who comes to a mystic, falls in tune with the mystic, will start moving inwards naturally, simply, spontaneously. That is the whole purpose of being with a Master, with a mystic.

This book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is one of the most esoteric treatises in the world. It will show you the way to become more than the body. It will show you the way to go beyond death. It will show you the way to bloom – how not to remain a seed but to become a Golden Flower. What in India we have called the one-thousand-petalled lotus, in China they call the Golden Flower. It is a symbol.

The flower represents perfection, totality. The flower represents the uttermost expression of the potential, the actualization of the potential. The flower represents the beauty, the grandeur, the splendor of being. And unless you have become a thousand-petalled lotus or a Golden Flower . . ..

Remember you have to go far. Remember that you have to get out of the traps that the society has put around you. Remember that you have not yet done the work for which you have come to the earth. Remember you are just a seed, not yet a soul.

This treatise, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is very ancient – possibly one of the most ancient treatises in the world certainly twenty-five centuries old, and the possibility is that it is older than that. But twenty-five centuries can be traced back very easily. And this treatise is also a great synthesis of all the great religions. That is rare, unique. The Bible belongs to the Christians, the Talmud belongs to the Jews, the Vedas belong to the Hindus, the Dhammapada to the Buddhists, the Tao Te Ching to the Taoists. But this small book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, belongs to no one in particular, or, it belongs to all.

It is deeply based in Taoist teachings. It is a flowering of the Taoist approach to life and existence. But it is not only that – Zarathustra has played a role. Zarathustra’s teachings have been incorporated in it. Buddhist teachings have also been incorporated in it. And a certain esoteric school of Christians, the Nestorians, they have also played their part. So Christianity and Judaism also have become part of it.

It is one of the most synthetical approaches. It combines all that is beautiful in all the traditions of the world. For centuries it was only transmitted orally, and the book remained esoteric. It was not available to the public because it has something very secret to teach; it was available only to the disciples. The Master would tell to the disciple only when the time was ripe, because it gives you such a potential secret that if you don’t understand rightly, if you do something wrong with it, there are found to be harmful effects from it. It has to be understood rightly, and it has to be worked at only in the presence of a Master. It is a powerful method it is as powerful as atomic energy.

Now, the secrets of atomic energy are kept hidden from the public. Once they start leaking out to the public there is going to be great danger. If people can manufacture atom bombs privately, there is bound to be great chaos. Great secrecy is maintained about atomic research. Exactly in the same way this book teaches you one of the most potential methods of inner explosion. For centuries the secrets were guarded – only given to the disciples in privacy, in intimacy. And the people who followed this particular esoteric school resisted all temptations to write the book. In fact, all the religions of the world have long resisted writing their spiritual teachings.

There is some beauty when something is transferred really. It is alive – one thing – the Master is behind it. it is not a dead word, the word has soul, wings. The experience of the Master supports it; the master is a witness to it. It is not just speculation, not only a philosophy, but something existential, experienced, lived. And the Master has travelled the path; he knows the dangers of the path, he knows the pitfalls, he knows the points at which people go astray, and he will take every care so that the disciple cannot go astray.

The closer you come to the truth, the more is the possibility of going astray, because when you come closer to the truth, you can become very egoistic: that ’Now I know,’ that ’Now I am.’ And if the ego exploits the situation, you will fall back to your old dark valley, you will lose the peak. When you come closer to the truth, a great desire arises to share it with people. But you have not attained it in its wholeness; and it is dangerous to share half-truths because half-truths are more dangerous than lies, because they are powerful. Lies are impotent. Sooner or later people will themselves find that it is a lie. But the half-truth can persist for centuries, can have effects for centuries.

Nobody can reach through the half-truth, and the person who travels half the way will belong neither to this world nor to the other. He will be in a limbo, and that is a very strange situation to be in: you lose the old and you don’t gain the new; you become a chaos. The old order is gone and the new has not happened. You become a cloud, you become confusion. Rather than becoming more clear, rather than becoming more alive, rather than becoming more light-full, your life becomes a conflict between two polarities. You are pulled apart, you start falling into pieces. Half of you belongs to the earth and half of you belongs to the sky. Now you are nowhere. Now you are nobody. This can create madness. So, for centuries The Secret of the Golden Flower was only conveyed orally.

Secondly, with an oral tradition the book remains always alive. That’s how it became a synthesis. Basically, it was born in the Taoist climate of China. But then Bodhidharma reached China – a new master with a new message from India, Buddha’s message. And the people who were following The Secret of the Golden Flower were very open people; they were not part of any established church. They could immediately see that Bodhidharma also had it – it was so apparent, so manifest. They allowed Bodhidharma’s teachings to be part of their teaching. And the same happened with Zoroastrian Masters, with Nestorian Christians. Again and again something came to China, and if it was worthwhile, it was incorporated.

An oral teaching remains alive, growing, like a river. New streams of water come and become part of it. Once a teaching is written, then it cannot incorporate anything anymore. Then it becomes rigid, it loses fluidity, it becomes dead; it is a corpse. Now The Secret of the Golden Flower is not growing. For centuries it has not grown. Since it has been written it has not grown.

Why have I chosen to speak on it? – so that it can still grow. It is such a beautiful message to the world, it should not die. I would like to revive it. And now I can talk to people who are disciples, who have come to me and who are ready to die in order to be reborn, who are ready to die for flowering. The seed has to die, only then can it grow. The seed has to disappear; only then can the tree happen.

I will be speaking to you on this small but immensely valuable book so that the book can become alive again. It can become alive between me and you. It can again start flowing. And it has something of immense importance. If you understand it and if you practice it, you will be enriched.

But the first thing to understand is: remember that you have been hypnotized, and you have to go through a dehypnotizing process. Remember that you have been conditioned and you have to be unconditioned. Remember that death is coming. Don’t think that it is not going to happen today; it can happen any moment.

In fact, all that happens always happens now. The seed dies now, the bud becomes the flower now, the bird starts calling now. All that ever happens, happens only in the space made available by now, this moment. Nothing ever happens in the past, and nothing ever happens in the future. All that happens always happens in the present – that is the only way for things to happen because the present is the only time there is.

Past is just your memory and future is just your imagination. But you have been hypnotized to live in the past, and you have been hypnotized to live in the future. Choose either past or future, but no society allows you to live in the present.

Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans – they condition you to live in the past. Their golden age was in the past. Communists, socialists, fascists – they condition you to live in the future, their golden age is in the future, the utopia is coming: when the revolution comes, then you will be able to really live, then there will be a golden age. Either you are taken to the past, which is false, or to the future, which is again false. No society tells you to live in the present, in the herenow.

To be a sannyasin, to be a real seeker means to live herenow. And there is no other life. But for that you will have to de-automatize yourself, you will have to become a man and not a machine. You will have to become a little more conscious. You are not conscious.

Once I was sitting by the side of a dying man – he was a professor in the same university where I was a professor. He was at the pinnacle of his successful career. And then came the heart attack – which always comes when you are at the pinnacle. Success is always followed by a heart attack. What else can you have after it? So he had a heart attack and he was dying. I went to see him. He was very sad – who wants to die? – and he was in great despair and anguish. I told him, “You need not worry. You’re not going to die.”

He said, “What are you saying? But the doctors… all the doctors say that there is no possibility of my survival. On what grounds are you saying that I am not going to die?”

I said, “You cannot die in the first place, because you never lived. You have not fulfilled the first requirement for dying. For these fifty-five years you have been sleep-walking, you have dreamt; you have not lived. I have watched you for years.”

He was shocked, he was angry – so angry that for a moment he forgot all about death. His eyes were aflame with anger and he said, “Is this the way to treat a dying man? Can’t you be a little courteous? Why are you so hard on me? I am dying and you are talking such great philosophy – ‘You never lived.’ Is this the time to say such things?”

I listened silently. I just became absolutely silent. Then the rage disappeared and he started crying, and great tears came to his eyes. He held my hand with great love, and then he said, “Maybe you are right. I never lived. Maybe you are not rude, you are just being true. And I know nobody else would have said this to me.” And then, great gratitude, and for a moment he became so conscious that one could have seen the light on the face – it was there, he was all aura. And he thanked me. That night he died. I remained with him to the last moment.

And he said, “If you had not been here, I would have missed my death too, as I have missed my life. But I am dying consciously. At least one thing I am happy about – I am not dying unconsciously. “And his death was beautiful. He died without any regret; he died in a relaxed way. He died almost with a welcoming heart; he died full of gratitude. He died prayerfully. His next life is bound to have a different quality. If death is so beautiful it brings a new life to you.

But one has to live each moment, whether it is of life, of love, of anger, of death. Whatsoever it is one has to live each moment as consciously as possible.

A peasant, carried away by his imagination, found himself in a vegetable garden stealing cucumbers.

“I’ll carry off this sack of cucumbers,” he thought, “and with the money I get for them I’ll buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, she will sit on them and hatch a brood of chicks, and I’ll feed the chicks till they grow, then I’ll sell them and buy a suckling pig. I’ll feed the suckling pig till it grows into a sow, I’ll breed her, and she’ll have a litter of pigs and I’ll sell them. With the money I get for the pigs I’ll buy a house with a garden; I’ll plant cucumbers in the garden, and I won’t let anyone steal them – I’ll keep guard over them. I’ll hire a strong watchman, and from time to time I’ll go out to the garden and shout, ‘Hey, you! Take care!’”

The peasant was so carried away by this thought that he shouted at the top of his voice. The watchman heard him and came running. He caught the peasant and gave him a good thrashing.

But this is how man lives: in dreams, in imagination, in projections. This is how you live. And this is not the way to live this beautiful, tremendously valuable life! This is sheer wastage! You have to become more attentive to the moment, to the present. You have to gather your consciousness. Consciousness is your treasure, and all the methods that have been invented, devised, down the centuries are nothing but ways to create more consciousness in you, to create more fire in you, to make your life a passionate affair, a flame. People are living dull lives, people are living absentmindedly, people are living inattentively. How can you live with so much inattention around you? Inattention is darkness, attention is light. And this treatise will teach you how to create more light in you, so that one day . . . the Golden Flower.

Two psychiatrists met on the street. “You are feeling fine,” said one. “How am I doing?”

People are asking each other. Nobody knows how they are doing, they are looking into each other’s eyes, gathering information about themselves from others. That’s why the opinion of others has become so important. If somebody says you are a fool, you become angry. Why? Or you become sad. Why? You are shattered. You were thinking you are a wise man, because others had told you that you are wise. It was the opinion of others that you depended on. Now somebody else says you are a fool. He can easily shatter your wisdom, very easily. He has thrown a stone and you had made a palace with playing cards. Now all is shattered. That’s why one becomes so angry, so enraged, so violent, and one becomes so worried, anxious. You are continuously looking for what others are thinking, because you know only that which others think about you, you don’t know anything about yourself. Now what kind of situation is this? If I cannot know about myself, who else can know about me? From the outside nobody can watch me, I am not available that way. From the outside only my body can be watched. From the inside I can know my consciousness.

Even when you stand before a mirror you see only your body, you cannot see your consciousness in the mirror. Even you cannot see it in the mirror – your own consciousness. You have to see it directly. It is never mirrored; it is never reflected in anything; it is invisible. You have to close your eyes and be it. And that is the only way of knowing it. But people live so unconsciously. They simply live by the opinion of others. What others say becomes their soul. Others can take it away any moment. People remain beggars.

Have you known anything about yourself directly? Have you ever encountered yourself directly without bringing the opinion of others into it? If you have not done it, you have not yet lived. Life starts only by encountering oneself, by seeing oneself directly, immediately. Life exists only when you are capable of seeing yourself as you are, not as others think about you. What can they think about you? What can they say about you? They can watch your behavior, they cannot watch you. If you want to watch yourself, only you can do that, nobody else. It cannot be done by servants. It cannot be delegated to somebody else. It cannot be done by the experts either. But we are so much interested in others’ opinions because we are absolutely absent – there is nobody awake inside. Deeply asleep, we are snoring inside.

The absent-minded professor went in for a haircut. He sat down in the barber’s chair, but didn’t remove his hat.

“I’m afraid you will have to take off your hat,” said the barber. “Oh, I’m sorry!” said the professor, “I didn’t know there were ladies present.”

Watch your own absent-mindedness. Watching it will create attentiveness in you. Watch what is happening within you: thoughts passing, memories arising, a cloud of anger, a dark night of sadness, or a beautiful morning of joy. Watch all that passes in you. Become more and more watchful. Slowly, slowly you will become an integrated watchfulness. And the method taught by The Secret of the Golden Flower is how to become integrated in your inner light. This is the story of this book before we enter into the sutras.

The book comes from an esoteric circle in China. The founder of this esoteric circle is said to have been the well-known Taoist adept, Lu Yen. Where did Lu Yen get this secret teaching? He himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi, for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his Tao Te Ching.

Lao Tzu never wrote a single word in his whole life. He declined again and again the invitation to write anything. He conveyed to his disciples what he had come to know, but he was not ready to write, because he said, “The Tao which can be said is not the true Tao.” The Tao which can be expressed is already falsified. It can be learned only in intimate contact with the Master. There is no other way of communicating it. It can only be learned in a deep communion where the disciple and the Master meet, where the disciple holds nothing back, where the disciple and the Master overlap, where their consciousnesses merge into each other. Only in such a meeting, communion, can Tao be conveyed. So he refused again and again.

He lived a long life. But when he was going to die he left China on a water buffalo. Why on a water buffalo? His whole teaching had been the teaching of the watercourse way.

He said: One should be like water – flowing, fluid, fresh, always moving towards the ocean. And one should be like water – soft, feminine, receptive, loving, non-violent. One should not be like a rock. The rock appears to be very strong but is not, and water appears to be very weak but is not. Never be deceived by appearances. Finally, the water wins over the rock and the rock is destroyed and becomes sand and is taken to the sea. The rock disappears finally – against the soft water.

The rock is masculine; it is the male mind, the aggressive mind. Water is feminine, soft, loving, not aggressive at all. But the non-aggressive wins. The water is always ready to surrender, but through surrender it conquers – that is the way of the woman. The woman always surrenders and conquers through it. And the man wants to conquer and the ultimate result is just a surrender and nothing else. Hence, he chose a water buffalo when he left the country. Where was he going? He was going to the Himalayas to die into that eternal beauty.

A real man knows how to live and how to die. A real man lives totally, dies totally. A real man lives in benediction and dies in benediction.

He was going into absolute aloneness in the Himalayas. But he was caught on the border. And the man who caught him on the border was Master Kuan Yiu-hsi. He was a guard at the last post of the Chinese border. Lao Tzu had to pass that post; there was no other way to get out of the country. And Kuan Yiu-hsi persuaded him: “You are going to die, you are leaving the country forever, and soon you will be leaving the body. Please write just a few words. And I won’t allow you to get out of the land if you don’t write them. This price you have to pay.” And Lao Tzu had to sit in Kuan Yiu-hsi’s hut for three days, and there he wrote the Tao Te Ching.

The tradition of The Secret of the Golden Flower is said to have originated with Lu Yen. Lu Yen himself attributes it to Master Kuan Yiu-hsi for whom, according to tradition, Lao Tzu wrote down his Tao Te Ching. Kuan means “the Han-ku pass”, hence he is called Master Kuan, that is “Master of the Han-ku pass.” And he must have been a great adept, otherwise it would have been impossible to persuade Lao Tzu to write. His whole life he had declined – he could not decline the invitation of this man. This man must have had something that it was impossible even for Lao Tzu to say no to.

This is how the tradition of The Golden Flower is connected with Lao Tzu. But it didn’t start with Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu himself says that whatsoever he is saying has been said before, again and again, down the centuries. He is not bringing a new truth in the world but only a new expression. It is always so. Truth is the same, only expressions differ.

What Lao Tzu said is the same as what Krishna had said before him. What Krishna said is the same as what Buddha said later on. What Buddha has said is the same as Mohammed, as Jesus, as Zarathustra have said although their expressions are so different that you will need great intelligence to see to the very core. The structure is different, the language is different, their ways of saying it are different; naturally, because they are different persons, different individuals, with their own uniqueness. But truth is neither new nor old; and wherever truth is, it is eternal.

The book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is one of the eternal sources where one can again become alive, one can again find the door to the divine.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #1, part 1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can read The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life, which is part two of this discourse.

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

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

The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life – Osho

The book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, is one of the eternal sources where one can again become alive, one can again find the door to the divine.

The sutras:

Master Lu-tsu said: That which exists through itself is called the way (Tao).

The word “Tao” essentially means “the Way.” Nothing can be said about the goal. The goal remains elusive, inexpressible, ineffable. But something can be said about the Way. Hence, Taoists have never used the word “God,” “truth,” nirvana, no; they simply use the word “Way.” Buddha says, “Buddhas can only show you the Way. If you follow the path, you will reach to the truth.” Truth will have to be your own experience. Nobody can define the truth, but the Way can be defined; the Way can be made clear. The Master cannot give you the truth, but the Master can give you the Way. And once the Way is there then all that is needed is to walk on it. That has to be done by the disciple.

I cannot walk for you, and I cannot eat for you. I cannot live for you, and I cannot die for you. These things have to be done by oneself. But I can show the Way, I have walked on the Way.

Tao simply means “the Way.”

That which exists through itself is called the way.

And the definition is beautiful.

Lu-tsu says, “That which exists by itself, that which needs nobody else’s support, that which has always existed whether you walk on it or not . . .” Whether anybody walks on it or not does not matter, it always exists. In fact, the whole existence follows it unknowingly. If you can follow it knowingly your life will become a great blessing. If you follow it unknowingly, then you will go on stumbling, then you cannot enjoy it as it should be enjoyed.

A man can be brought into the garden, and he may be unconscious; he may be drunk or he may be in a coma or under the impact of chloroform. He can be brought into the garden, he is unconscious, the songs of the birds will be heard but by his ears, but he will not know. And the fragrance of the flowers will come riding on the breeze to his nostrils, but he will not know. And the sun will shine on him and will shower light on him, but he will not know. And the breeze will caress him, but he will not know. And you can put him under the shade of a big tree and the coolness of it, but he will not know. That’s how man is.

We are in Tao because where else can we be? To live is to be on the Way. To live is to live in God. To breathe is to breathe in God. Where else can we be? But just as the fish lives in the ocean and is completely oblivious of the ocean, we are living in Tao and are completely oblivious of Tao. In fact, it is so obvious, that’s why we are so oblivious. The fish knows the ocean so well . . . the fish is born in it, the fish has never been out of it, the fish takes it for granted, hence the fish is not aware of it. We are on the Way, we are in God, we live in Tao, through Tao, but we are not aware of it. The Tao exists because without the Tao trees will not grow, and stars will not move, and the blood will not circulate, and the breath will not come in. Life will disappear.

Life is possible only if there is a fundamental law holding it. Life is possible only if there is something that supports it. Look at the immense order in existence. It is not a chaos; it is a cosmos. What makes it a cosmos? Why is there so much harmony? There must be a law that keeps the harmony going, flowing, keeps everything in accord. But we don’t know about it. We don’t know anything about our own being, and we are joined through our being with Tao.

Tao has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the primal spirit.

It is the ocean of life that surrounds us. It is within and with-out – the pure essence. It is existence, it is the primal spirit. No name can contain it. All names are its name, and no shape is particular to it because all shapes are Tao’s shape. Tao exists in millions of forms. In the tree it is green, in the flower it is red. In man it is man, in fish it is fish. It is the same law. You can replace the word “Tao” with “God,” and it will be the same. What Christians and Mohammedans call God, Taoists call Tao, Buddhists call it Dharma, Jews used to call it Logos, but they mean the same thing. No name can contain it, or it can be expressed by any name.

Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

You can see the form, you can see the body – the body is the form, the substance that surrounds the essence – but you cannot see the essence. The essence is invisible to the eyes, unapproachable by the senses. It has to be felt immediately, not through any media.

You see my body, I see your body – it is through a medium. My eyes are telling me you are here. Your eyes are telling you that I am here. But who knows? the eyes may be deceiving – they do deceive sometimes. In the night, in the dark, you see a rope as if it were a snake. And when you see it as a snake it affects you as a snake. You are afraid; you start running. Or you can see in the desert an oasis which is not there, which is only a projected phenomenon because you are so thirsty that you want it to be there, so you create it there. Eyes deceive many times, so who knows?

If truth is known through a medium, then it will always remain suspect, doubtful; it can’t have any certainty – absolute certainty it can’t have. And a truth which is not absolutely certain is not truth at all. The truth has to be absolutely certain; it cannot be approximately certain. Then there is only one way: it should be known without a medium. One should know it directly, immediately. One should know it without any senses. And that’s how it is known. You cannot see life, but you can feel it. It is a subjective experience, not an object.

Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

You have these two eyes. These two eyes for the Taoist are very significant. Only modern science has been able to see the truth of it. These two eyes are not only the visible eyes. These two eyes represent the male and the female in you. Now modern science says that the brain of man is divided into two hemispheres, and one hemisphere is male, the other is female. The right side of your mind is feminine, and the left side is masculine. So your one eye represents the male in you, and your other eye represents the female in you. And when your male and female meet inside you, that meeting is what is called “heaven” – that meeting, that inner communion of your male and female.

Jesus says, “When your two eyes become one there will be light.” He is talking like a Taoist alchemist. When your two eyes become one, there will be light. When your two eyes become one – when your male and female disappear into each other – that is the ultimate orgasmic experience. What you feel making love to a woman or to a man is only a glimpse of it, a very fleeting glimpse. It is so momentary that by the time you become aware of it, it is already gone. You become aware of it only in the past, it is so fleeting. But it is a glimpse, a glimpse of the meeting of the man and the woman.

This is an exterior meeting. It is a miracle that it happens even for a single moment, but there is a deep possibility. And that has been the work of Tantra, Tao, Yoga, and all the great secret teachings of the world: to help you become aware of your feminine and your masculine inside – what tantrikas call Shiva and Shakti, and what Taoists call “yin” and “yang.” The polarity, the positive and negative in you, the day and night in you – they have to meet there.

The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

But unless they become one you will not become aware of it.

It is contained in the two eyes.

But you cannot see it unless they become one, then it is released. Then there is a great explosion of light. Zarathustra calls it “explosion of fire.” Lao Tzu calls it “explosion of light.” It is the same.

You must have come across the statement of John the Baptist. He used to say to his disciples, “I baptize you with water. After me shall come one who will baptize you with fire.” That’s what he meant when he said, “After me there will come one who will baptize you with fire.”

The baptism of water is an outer baptism. To John the Baptist water represents the outward flow.

Remember this, that the outward and the downward are synonymous, and the upward and the inward are synonymous. Whatsoever goes downward also goes outward, and whatsoever goes upward also goes inward, and vice versa. Water always goes downward; hence it represents an outward flow. It goes away from itself. Its journey is an exterior journey. Fire goes upward, always upward. And upward is synonymous with the inward. Its journey is always interior.

John the Baptist is saying: I am baptizing you with water, I am giving you the outer body of the religion. After me will come Christ who will give you the inner baptism, the baptism of fire.

Jesus himself again and again says, “Repent. Repent ye.” And the word has fallen into a wrong interpretation with the Christians. They have made it “repentance for misdeeds.” It has nothing to do with misdeeds. The word “repent” actually means return, go in, go back. It means turning back . . . restore your-originality. The word “repent” means metanoia, turning back – a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. If you go on flowing outwards, you remain water. If you turn in you become fire.

And when the two eyes, when these two flames, when these two hemispheres of your consciousness join together, are absolutely bridged and you become one flame, that one flame is what Plotinus calls “the flight of the alone to the alone.”

The Great One is the term given to that which has nothing above it.

And if you can become that one, you have become the Great One. This is the Taoist way of saying something about God without using the word ’”God.” If you become one, you have become God.

The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain non-action.

These are potential words What is the secret of making these two eyes one? How to make the male and the female one in you? How to let your woman and man dissolve into each other so that you are no more a duality, so that you are no more a house divided against itself, so that there is no longer any conflict and tension, so that all is one? In that oneness is bliss because all tension disappears, all conflict disappears, all anxiety disappears. How to become that one?

The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain non-action.

Man represents action, woman represents non-action. You have to use action to attain non-action. You have to make effort to become effortless. You have to go and put in all your energies, you have to become so active that nothing is left behind. All energy becomes involved into that creativity, and then, suddenly, when all energy is involved, there happens a transformation. Just as at a hundred degrees water evaporates, action, when it becomes total, evaporates, and non-action is left behind.

First you have to learn how to dance, and you have to put all your energies into dancing. And one day that strange experience happens when suddenly the dancer disappears in the dance, and the dance happens without any effort. Then it is inaction. first you have to learn action to go into inaction. That’s what meditation is all about.

People come and ask me why I teach active meditations – because that is the only way to find inaction. Dance to the uttermost, dance in a frenzy, dance madly, and if your whole energy is involved in it, a moment comes when suddenly you see the dance is happening on its own – there is no effort in it. It is action without action.

The Golden Flower is the light. One uses the Golden Flower as a symbol. The phrase the “lead of the water region has but one taste” refers to it.

The Golden Flower is a symbol, the symbol of when your energies are no more dual and have become one. Great light is released, and the light is golden: it is as if a flower of golden light has opened in you. And it is not just a symbol – it is a symbol, but it is almost literally true. It happens exactly like that. Right now, you exist as a darkness, as a dark night. Then you exist as a sunrise. You cannot see the sun anywhere, but the light is there. There is no source to it – it is a sourceless light. But once you have known that golden light in you, you have become an immortal. Then there is no death because the light never dies.

The whole of life, the whole existence consists of nothing but light. All are forms of light. You can ask modern physics too, and modern physics is in perfect agreement with Tao that all is light; forms go on changing, but the light continues. Light is eternal.

Many scriptures of the world begin with the word “light.” “In the beginning . . . God said, “Let there be Light . . .” That is the beginning. If there was ever a beginning, it could not have been otherwise, it had to have been with light. But there has never been a beginning. This is just a parable. Light has existed always. The Koran says, “God is light.” One of the names of God given by the Sufis is noor. Noor means light.

And the taste is the same – whether it happens in me or it happens in you the taste is the same. The taste of Buddhahood is the same. Buddha has said, “The taste of Buddhahood is like the ocean. You can taste it from the north or from the south, or from this part or from that part, from the shore or from the middle, but the taste of the ocean is the same. So is the taste of Buddhahood.” The moment a person attains to this eternal light, his life has a single flavor. That flavor is contained by absolute awareness. His unconscious has disappeared. There is no longer any dark part in his being.

Now if a Freudian looks into such a man, he will find only consciousness, only consciousness; he will not find the unconscious. If a Freudian looks in you, only one part is conscious. Against this one part there are nine parts which are unconscious – only one-tenth of your mind is conscious. A Buddha is one hundred percent consciousness.

The work on the circulation of the light depends on the backward-flowing movement, so that the thoughts are gathered together. The heavenly heart lies between the sun and moon.

Again remember, the sun represents the male energy, the moon represents the feminine energy. And the heart lies between the two. The heart is neither male nor female. And that is the beauty of the heart: the heart is divine, neither male nor female. And it lies exactly between the two.

If you are leaning too much towards the male energy you are too active and you don’t know how to be passive. That’s what has happened in the West. The West is sun-oriented – too much activity. People are driving themselves mad with their activity. Too much speed – everything has to be done immediately, no patience – no waiting. They have forgotten how to be passive, how to be patient, how to wait for things. They have lost all capacity to be inactive. They don’t know how to go on a holiday. Even if they go on a holiday, they are more active than ever.

More people have heart attacks on Sunday in the West than on any other day because it is a holiday, and people are too occupied. The whole working week they think they will rest when the holiday comes, and when the holiday comes, they have a thousand and one things to do. Not that they have to do them, that they are needed – no, not at all – but they cannot live in rest. They cannot just lie down on the lawn and be with the earth. They cannot just sit silently under a tree and do no-thing. No, they will start doing a thousand and one things around the house. They will fix this and unfix that; they will open their car engines and start doing things to it. They will do something. But they will remain active.

Their whole life people think that when they are retired then they will enjoy. But they cannot enjoy, they cannot rest. People die very fast once they become retired. Psychologists say they die ten years earlier because they don’t know what else to do. Death seems the only way to get rid of a life which has become meaningless, which has always been meaningless, which has been just a rush. People are rushing not knowing where they are going. All that they know is they have to go fast and faster and faster without ever being worried Where exactly are you going? You may be running in a circle. That is exactly what is happening: people are running in a circle.

The West is sun-oriented. The East is moon-oriented. The East has become too passive, too fatalistic: “Nothing has to be done. Simply wait, God will do it.” This is another kind of foolishness and stupidity. The East is poor, lazy, lousy, and people are not worried by anything. The misery all around, the poverty, the beggars, the illness – nobody is worried. Everything is accepted. “What can you do? It is God’s will. We have to accept. We have just to wait. When things get too much, God will come. What else can we do?” This is the feminine mind.

The Secret of the Golden Flower says you have to be exactly in the middle, neither male nor female, no leaning to any extreme. Then there is balance. Then one is active and yet remains inactive deep inside. Then one is inactive and yet remains active on the outside. On the outside be sun-oriented, on the inside be moon-oriented. Let sun and moon meet in you, and you be just exactly in the middle. And in the middle is transcendence.

The work on the circulation of the light depends entirely on the backward flowing movement, so that the thoughts are gathered together.

Man is a center and also a circumference. If you move towards the circumference, then you will have many thoughts. The circumference consists of the many. The center is one. If you move towards the center, thoughts start disappearing. At the very core, all thoughts disappear; there is only awareness. That’s what this secret treatise says:

. . . so that the thoughts are gathered together.

The light has to move inwards.

When you look at a tree your eyes are throwing their light on the tree – the light is moving outwards.

When you close your eyes, the light starts turning inwards – metanoia, repent, return. And when the light falls on your own being, there is self-knowledge, self-knowing. And that self-knowing brings you freedom – freedom from all entanglements, freedom from all attachments, freedom from death, freedom from body. It creates the soul in you.

That’s what Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples: that you are not born with a soul, you have to create it by metanoia.

The book of the yellow castle says: “In the square inch field of the square foot house, life can be regulated.”

In this small temple of your body life can be regulated.

In the middle of the square inch dwells the splendor. In the purple hall of the city of jade dwells the god of utmost emptiness and life.

Just see the contradiction: emptiness and life. Life is male, emptiness is female. Life and emptiness – both are two aspects of the inner God. When you have not chosen either in preference to the other, when you have not chosen at all – you have been just a watcher – you become that God whose one aspect is life and whose other aspect is death, whose one aspect is perfection and whose other aspect is nothingness.

Therefore when the light circulates, the energies of the whole body appear before its throne . . .

And when the light moves inwards and circulates inside your being, because there is no outlet left . . . that’s what meditation is. That’s what Buddha is doing under the Bodhi Tree. You sit silently, you close all the doors, and the light circulates within. Then for the first time you become aware of the body and all that the body contains – all its mysteries. This small body contains all the mysteries of the universe. It is a miniature cosmos.

Therefore when the light circulates, the energies of the whole body appear before its throne, as, when a holy king has established the capital and has laid down the fundamental rules of order, all the states approach with tribute; or, as when the master is quiet and calm, men-servants and maids obey his orders of their own accord, and each does his work.

And when this light is there moving inside you, the body becomes a servant. The senses become obedient servants. You need not try to control them. They follow you on their own accord.

This is the beauty of Tao: it never enforces anything; it does not want to cultivate any character. It says: Simply become full of light and all else will follow.

Therefore you only have to make the light circulate; that is the deepest and most wonderful secret. The light is easy to move but difficult to fix. If it is made to circulate long enough, then it crystallizes itself. It is the condition of which it is said: “Silently thou fliest upward in the morning.”

A very significant thing is being said in this sutra: The light is easy to move; it is difficult to fix it. So don’t try to fix it.

That’s where Yoga tries to do something which cannot be done easily. Hence the difficulty, the arduousness of Yoga – Yoga tries to fix the light. It also tries to fix the light between the two eyes – just exactly between the two eyebrows at the third-eye center. Yoga tries to fix it. That is the difference between Tao and Yoga: Yoga wants to fix it. “Concentrate on the third eye” – in a nutshell, that is the whole philosophy of Yoga. “If you can concentrate your whole consciousness on the third eye you will be transformed, your two eyes will become one and you will be full of light.”

And just beyond the third eye – the third eye is the sixth center in the Yoga map of consciousness – beyond the sixth is the seventh. The seventh is called “the one-thousand-petalled lotus.” If the light is concentrated at the third eye, when it becomes too much, it will give a push to the seventh center. It will start rising like water in a reservoir. And the push to the seventh center will open the bud that has remained a bud for centuries, for millions of lives. Tao works from a different standpoint. Tao says: To fix the light is very difficult. Don’t become concerned with fixing it. The easy way is to circulate it. Mind always finds circulation easy. It is mind’s nature to move. Mind always finds it difficult to concentrate, so why not use mind’s capacity? Why not ride on it?

Tao is a spontaneous science. Don’t cultivate, don’t force, don’t create unnecessary troubles for yourself. Use the natural capacity of the mind: that it moves, that it likes movement, that it is a wanderer. Use it. Let light circulate – we will come to know how to circulate it later on – find paths and let it circulate.

Through its circulation Taoists came to discover the seven hundred points of acupuncture. Circulating it all over the body, they became aware that there are seven hundred points where light becomes very, very aflame. And they counted them exactly. Now science corroborates it: there are exactly seven hundred points. Now even machines have been invented which can just picture your seven hundred points and where the light is missing in your points, where the energy is not moving in the right meridians. How did the Taoists come to know about it? They had no machines, no technology. Their only technique was to go in and circulate the light.

We will come to know about the actual method – how to circulate it. This is just to make a background, so you understand what exactly their approach is.

They say if you circulate the light and go on circulating it, at a certain point it crystallizes on its own. You need not worry about fixing it. Circulating, circulating, circulating, one moment, suddenly, you find all has stopped, and the thing has happened that Yoga tries to make happen. In Tao it is a happening. In Yoga it is a hard, long journey of effort. Yoga is male-oriented.

Tao is not female-oriented. Tao is both – a synthesis. Circulation is masculine energy, and fixation is feminine energy. Reach to the non-active, reach to the passive through action. Through effort attain to effortlessness.

In carrying out this fundamental principle you need to seek for no other methods but must only concentrate your thoughts on it. By collecting the thoughts, one can fly and will be born in heaven.

The Golden Flower is the elixir of life.

It is the secret of all immortality. This is what the Western alchemists used to call “the philosopher’s stone,” what in India is called amrit, elixir, nectar. This is an alchemical treatise: it gives you the secrets for transforming your chemistry into alchemy, for transforming the baser metal into gold. Right now you are only a baser metal. But you contain the secrets. If those secrets are worked out, you are transformed into gold. The gold is immortal.

The Golden Flower is the elixir of life. Although it works very accurately, it is yet so fluid that it needs extreme intelligence and clarity, and most complete absorption and tranquility. People without this highest degree of intelligence and understanding do not find the way, people without this utmost capacity for absorption and tranquility cannot keep fast hold of it.

Two requirements . . .. First, one needs intelligence and clarity. Don’t be worried about it. Don’t start thinking that if you are not intelligent then what? Everybody is born intelligent. Intelligence is an intrinsic quality – just as everybody is born breathing, everybody is born intelligent. The idea that a few people are intelligent and a few are not is utterly wrong – and has been dehumanizing many, many people – is very insulting, degrading.

All are born intelligent, although their intelligences may differ in their expression. One is intelligent in music, another is intelligent in mathematics, but if you make mathematics the criterion then the musician looks unintelligent. If you put them both into one examination where mathematics is the criterion, the musician fails. Change the criterion, let music be the criterion, and put them both into the examination where music will decide, then the mathematician looks stupid.

Because we have chosen certain criteria, that’s why many people have been condemned as stupid – they are not. I have never come across a single person who is stupid – it does not happen – but his intelligence may be a different kind of intelligence. Poetry needs a different kind of intelligence than being in business. A poet cannot be a businessman, and the businessman will find it very difficult to be a poet. One kind of intelligence is needed in being a politician, another kind of intelligence is needed in being a painter. And there are millions of possibilities.

Remember: everyone is born intelligent, so that is not debarring anybody. You just have to find your intelligence – where it is. And once you have found your intelligence you will be clear. People are living with unclarity because they are living with wrong ideas about themselves. Somebody has told you – a schoolmaster, a headmaster, a university – that you are not intelligent. But their criterion is only a chosen criterion; their criterion is not applicable to all. The universities are not yet universal. They don’t allow every kind of intelligence; they don’t accept all manifestations of intelligence. Once you have accepted your intelligence and you start respecting it, you will become clear; there will be no problem.

The poet feels stupid because he cannot be a good businessman. Now this creates confusion. He becomes inferior in his own eyes, disrespectful, condemning. He tries to succeed in business, but he cannot. This creates great smoke around him. If he simply understands that he is a poet and he is not meant to be a businessman, and to succeed as a businessman will be a suicide to him, he has to succeed as a poet . . . That is his intelligence, and his intelligence has to flower in his own way. He has not to imitate anybody else. Maybe the society will not pay for it because poetry is not needed as much as bombs are needed. Love is not needed as much as hatred is needed.

That’s why in the films, on the radio, and on the television, murder is allowed; it is not called obscene. But love making is not allowed; it is called obscene. This society lives through hate not through love. If somebody is murdering, it is perfectly okay. If somebody puts a dagger into your heart and the blood rushes like a fountain, it is perfectly okay. But if somebody hugs you, kisses you, loves you, the society is afraid. This is strange that love is obscene and murder is not, that lovers are condemned and soldiers rewarded, that war is right and love is wrong.

If you accept your intelligence, if you accept yourself, you will become clear, absolutely clear; all clouds will disappear.

And the second thing: you need absorption and tranquility. Intelligence and clarity are part of the male mind. Absorption and tranquility are part of the feminine mind. Only a woman can absorb, that’s why she becomes pregnant – she has the womb.

These two things are needed together. If you are not intelligent, you will not be able to understand what is being said to you, you will not understand what the master is imparting to you. And if you are not feminine, you will not be able to absorb it, you will not be able to become pregnant with it. And both are needed. You have to be intelligent, utterly intelligent, to see the point. And you have to be utterly absorptive to keep it in you, so that it becomes part of you. This is just a background. Slowly, slowly we will go into the techniques of how to circulate the light. Listen attentively, intelligently. Absorb it. It can be one of the greatest experiences of your life.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #1, Part 2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can read A Door to the Divine, which is part one of this discourse.

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

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

Sowing Seed – Osho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nangaku is instructing Ma Tzu.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The flower of samadhi
Is beyond color and form.

How can there be any more
Mutability?”

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

Kanzan wrote:

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

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

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

Maneesha has asked:

-Osho

From Ma Tzu: The Empty Mirror, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

My Belly has Become My Best Friend – Osho

Eleven years ago when I first sat in front of you, I was so overwhelmed by your energy, by your love, by you, that I could do nothing but cry and bow down to your feet in silent expression; and yet I felt very much understood by you. At that time, you told me to keep my energy inside and bring it to my hara. Since then, this suggestion stays with me, and my belly has become my best friend, and the place below my navel a mirror of my feelings. In all this time, tears and laughter of joy and gratitude for being able to spend this life with you have kept back most of my words. My beloved master, I feel that behind this small suggestion of yours lies more than I can imagine. Would you please say something more about the hara and guide me further?

Deva Radhika, hara is the center from where a life leaves the body. It is the center of death. The word hara is Japanese; that’s why in Japan, suicide is called hara-kiri. The center is just two inches below the navel. It is very important, and almost everybody in the world has felt it. But only in Japan have they gone deeper into its implications. Even the people in India, who had worked tremendously hard on centers, had not considered the hara. The reason for their missing it was because they had never considered death to be of any significance. Your soul never dies, so why bother about a center that functions only as a door for energies to get out and to enter into another body? They worked from sex which is the life center. They have worked on seven centers, but the hara is not even mentioned in any Indian scriptures.

The people who worked hardest on the centers for thousands of years have not mentioned the hara, and this cannot be just a coincidence. The reason was that they never took death seriously. These seven centers are life centers, and each center is of a higher life. The seventh is the highest center of life, when you are almost a god.

The hara is very close to the sex center. If you don’t rise toward higher centers, toward the seventh center which is in your head, and if you remain for your whole life at the sex center, then just by the side of the sex center is the hara, and then when life will end, the hara will be the center from where your life will move out of the body.

Why have I told Radhika this? She was very energetic but not aware of any higher centers; her whole energy was at the sex center, and she was overflowing. Energy overflowing at the sex center is dangerous because it can start releasing from the hara.

And if it starts releasing from the hara, then to take it upward becomes more difficult. So I had told her to keep her energy in and not to be so expressive: Hold it in! I simply wanted the hara center, which was opening and which could have been very dangerous, to be completely closed.

She followed it, and she has become a totally different person. Now when I see her, I cannot believe the expressiveness that I had seen at first. Now she is more centered, and her energy is moving in the right direction of the higher centers. It is almost at the fourth center, which is the center of love and which is a very balancing center. There are three centers below it and three centers above it.

Once a person is at the center of love, there is very rarely a possibility for him to fall back down because he has tasted something of the heights. Now valleys will be very dark, ugly; he has seen sunlit peaks, not very high, but still high; now his whole desire will be . . .

And that is the trouble with all lovers: they want more love because they don’t understand that the real desire is not for more love but for something more than love.

Their language ends with love; they don’t know any way that is higher than love, and love does not satisfy. On the contrary, the more you love the more thirsty you become.

At the fourth center of love, one feels a tremendous satisfaction only when energy starts moving to the fifth center. The fifth center is in your throat, and the sixth center is your third eye. The seventh center, the sahastrara, is on the top of your head. All these centers have different expressions and different experiences.

When love moves to the fifth center, then whatever talents you have, any creative dimension, is possible for you. This is the center of creativity. It is not only for songs, not only for music; it is for all creativity.

Hindu mythology has a beautiful story. It is a myth, but the story is beautiful, and particularly for explaining to you the fifth center. Indian mythology says that there is a constant struggle between evil forces and good forces. They both discovered that if they made a certain search in the ocean they could find nectar, and that whoever drank it would become immortal. So they all tried to find it.

But as life balances everywhere, there too . . . Before they found the nectar, they found poison which was hiding the nectar underneath it. Nobody was ready to test it; even the very sight of it created sickness. One of them thought that the first hippie of the world perhaps might be willing – he was the god, Shiva. So they asked Shiva, “You test it.” He said, “Okay.”

He not only tested it, he drank it all, and it was pure poison. He kept it just in his neck, at the fifth center. The fifth center is the creative center. It became completely poisoned, and Shiva became the god of destruction. So Hindus have three gods: Brahma who creates the world, Vishnu who sustains the world, and Shiva who destroys the world. His destructiveness came from his creative center being poisoned. And the poison was so great that it cannot be a small destruction; he can only destroy the whole of existence.

When Vishnu is tired of maintaining it, Shiva destroys it. By that time, Brahma has forgotten – millions of years have passed since he created the world; he again starts creating it – just an old routine! Brahma is the creator god, but in the whole of India there is only one temple devoted to Brahma because who cares about him? He has done his work; it is futile to say anything to him. Vishnu has millions of temples because he is the sustainer god. Krishna and Rama are all incarnations of Vishnu.

But nobody can compete with Shiva. Shiva has more shrines to him than anybody else.

He is a hippie, so he does not need very great temples or anything – just anywhere, under any tree. Just put a round stone, oval shape, and he does not ask much – a few leaves, not even flowers. A few leaves you can drop there, a few drops of water on his head, just to keep him cool . . . so people have created devices; they just hang a small pot on top of his head with a small drip, drip, drip. It keeps him cool so he does not get annoyed with anybody and destroy the world.

Everybody is afraid of him, so naturally he has many more worshipers, many more temples, and many more shrines. In every small village you will find at least a dozen Shiva shrines because they cost nothing; any poor man can afford it. And he has to be concerned about it because Shiva can destroy. Keep him satisfied! And he does not ask much; just keep his head cool. Flowers are costly but any two leaves and his worship is finished.

Shiva became the destroyer of the world because his fifth center had accumulated the whole poison of existence in it. It is our creative center, that’s why lovers have a certain tendency to creativity. When you fall in love, you suddenly feel like creating something — it is very close. If you are guided rightly, your love can become your great creative act.

It can make you a poet, it can make you a painter, it can make you a dancer, it can make you reach to the stars in any dimension.

The sixth center which we call the third eye is between the two eyes. This gives you a clarity, a vision of all your past lives, and of all the future possibilities. Once your energy has reached your third eye, then you are so close to enlightenment that something of enlightenment starts showing. It radiates from the man of the third eye, and he starts feeling a pull toward the seventh center.

Because of these seven centers, India never bothered about hara. Hara is not in the line; it is just by the side of the sex center. The sex center is the life center, and hara is the death center. Too much excitement, too much un-centeredness, too much throwing your energy all over the place is dangerous because it takes your energy toward the hara. And once the route is created, it becomes more difficult to move it upward. Hara is equally parallel to the sex center so the energy can move very easily.

It was a great discovery by the Japanese: they found that there was no need to cut your head off, or shoot your brains out to kill – they are all unnecessarily painful; just a small knife forced exactly at the hara center, and without any pain, life disappears. Just the center should be open and life disappears, as if the flower opens and the fragrance disappears. The hara should be kept closed. That’s why, Radhika, I had told you to be more centered, to keep your feelings inside, and to bring it to your hara. “Since then, this suggestion stays with me, and my belly has become my best friend, and the place below my navel a mirror of my feelings.”

If you can keep your hara consciously controlling your energies, it does not allow them to go out. You start feeling a tremendous gravity, a stability, a centeredness, which is a basic necessity for the energy to move upward.

You are asking, “I feel that behind this small suggestion of yours lies more than I can imagine.” Certainly, there is much more . . .

A Pole is walking down the street and passes a hardware store advertising the sale of a chain saw that is capable of cutting seven hundred trees in seven hours. The Pole thinks that it is a great deal and decides to buy one.

The next day he comes back with the saw and complains to the salesman, “The thing did not come close to chopping down the seven hundred trees that the ad said it would.”

“Well,” said the salesman, “let us test it out back.” Finding a log, the salesman pulls the starter cord, and the saw makes a great roaring sound.

“What is that noise?” asked the Pole.

So he must have been cutting by hand. It was an electric saw!

Radhika, your hara center has so much energy, that if it is rightly directed, enlightenment is not a faraway place.

So these two are my suggestions: keep yourself as much centered as possible. Don’t get moved by small things – somebody is angry, somebody insults you, and you think about it for hours. Your whole night is disturbed because somebody said something . . . If the hara can hold more energy, then naturally that more energy starts rising upward. There is only a certain capacity in the hara, and every energy that moves upward moves through the hara; but the hara should just be closed.

So one thing is that the hara should be closed. The second thing is that you should always work for higher centers. For example, if you feel angry too much you should meditate more on anger, so that anger disappears, and its energy becomes compassion. If you are a man who hates everything, then you should concentrate on hate; meditate on hate, and the same energy becomes love.

Go on moving upward, think always of higher ladders, so that you can reach to the highest point of your being. And there should be no leakage from the hara center. India has been too concerned about sex for the same reason: sex can also take your energy outside. It takes . . . but at least sex is the center of life. Even if it takes energy out, it will bring energy somewhere else, life will go on flowing.

But hara is a death center. Energy should not be allowed to move through the hara. A person whose energy starts moving through the hara you can very easily detect. For example, there are people with whom you will feel suffocated, with whom you will feel as if they are sucking your energy. You will find that, after they are gone, you feel at ease and relaxed, although they were not doing anything wrong to you.

You will also find just the opposite kind of people whose meeting makes you joyful, healthier. If you were sad, your sadness disappears; if you were angry, your anger disappears. These are the people whose energy is moving on higher centers. Their energy affects your energy. We are affecting each other continuously. And the man who is conscious, chooses friends and company which raises his energy higher.

One point is very clear. There are people who suck you, avoid them! It is better to be clear about it, say goodbye to them. There is no need to suffer because they are dangerous; they can open your hara too. Their hara is open, that’s why they create such a sucking feeling in you.

Psychology has not taken note of it yet, but it is of great importance that psychologically sick people should not be put together. And that is what is being done all over the world.

Psychologically sick people are put into psychiatric institutes together. They are already psychologically sick, and you are putting them in company which will drag their energy even lower.

Even the doctors who work with psychologically sick people have given enough indication of it. More psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other profession, more psychoanalysts go mad than any other profession. And every psychoanalyst once in a while needs to be treated by some other psychoanalyst. What happens to these poor people? Surrounded by psychologically sick people, they are continuously sucked, and they don’t have any idea how to close their haras.

There are methods, techniques to close the hara, just as there are methods for meditation, to move the energy upward. The best and simplest method is: try to remain as centered in your life as possible. People cannot even sit silently; they will be changing their position. They cannot lie down silently, the whole night they will be turning and tossing. This is just unrest, a deep restlessness in their souls.

One should learn restfulness. And in these small things, the hara stays closed. Particularly psychologists should be trained. Also, psychologically sick people should not be put together.

In the East, particularly in Japan in Zen monasteries where they have become aware of the hara center, there are no psychologists as such. But in Zen monasteries there are small cottages, far away from the main campus where Zen people live, but in the same forest or in the same mountain area. And if somebody who is psychologically sick is brought to them, he is given a cabin there and he is told to relax, rest, enjoy, move around in the forest – but not to talk. Anyway there is nobody to talk to! Only once a day a man comes to give food; he is not allowed to talk to that man either, and even if he talks, the man will not answer. So his whole energy is completely controlled. He cannot even talk; he cannot meet anybody.

You will be surprised to know that what psychoanalysis cannot do in years is done in three weeks. In three weeks’ time the person is as healthy as normal people are. And nothing has been done – no technique, nothing. He has just been left alone so he cannot talk. He has been left alone so he can rest and be himself. He is not expected to fulfill somebody else’s expectations.

Radhika, you have done well. Just continue whatever you are doing, accumulating your energy in yourself. The accumulation of energy automatically makes it go higher. And as it reaches higher you will feel more peaceful, more loving, more joyful, more sharing, more compassionate, more creative.

The day is not far away when you will feel full of light, and the feeling of coming back home.

-Osho

From The Golden Future, Discourse #3, Q3

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

The Centre is the Master – Osho

One friend asks how a person should find the internal centre that is mentioned by Lao Tzu and develop its hunger.

Sit with your eyes closed and think, “Where is the centre of my body?” We live through our body, but it is an unfortunate fact that we do not give any thought to the centre of our body. We are completely ignorant of the pivot on which the body functions. Many people believe the head to be the centre of all body functions because it is in the brain that all activities seem to take place.

The fact is, however, that the brain forms much later. When the child is conceived, there is no brain and yet life functions. But that which is formed later, cannot be the centre. People who are emotional, like most women, artists, poets, feel the centre to be the heart because whatever these people have known and experienced — love, beauty and the like — are things that have had a direct impact on their heart. That is why, when people talk of love, their hand inadvertently goes to their heart. So those who are emotional take the heart to be the centre of the body.

But the heart does not beat until the child takes its first breath. The child hears the mother’s heart beat within. Therefore, the sound “tick-tick” causes not only children but also adults to fall asleep. The sound of water dripping, or the ticking of a watch, induces sleep. Doctors say that the ticking of a clock is a very good tranquilizer. The heart in the embryo does not function like a heart and yet the child is alive.

Therefore, the heart also is not the centre. Lao Tzu says, “The navel is the centre and not the heart or the brain.” The child is joined to the mother by its navel. The first glimpse of life comes through the navel. This is scientifically correct.

So, search within. Lao Tzu says, “Keep searching within and bring your consciousness to the level of the navel centre. That is the first step of sadhana.” When the authentic centre and the centre of your understanding become one, you will become a united, integrated whole. When the centre of your mind, the centre of your consciousness and your authentic centre concentrate and converge into a single focus, you will find that your life has changed. You are now a new person altogether.

Lao Tzu’s disciples have, for ages, been carrying out a simple experiment to prove that you cannot grow unless you locate your centre within. The experiment is this. Take two small tanks of equal dimensions. Fill them with water. Insert an iron rod in the middle of one tank, leaving the other as it is. Put two identical fish and put one in each tank. Given the same conditions and the same diet, you will be surprised to find that the fish in the tank with the iron-rod in the centre develops quickly, whereas the growth of the fish in the other tank, which is without the central rod, is slower. The fish in the former tank swims around and around the rod, while the fish in the second tank has no centre. It swims here and there listlessly in the absence of a centre and is also more prone to illness.

This experiment has been religiously carried out by the followers of Lao Tzu for hundreds of years and it has always been found that the fish in the tank with the centre rod has always been well-developed and healthy, whereas the fish in the other tank was stunted in growth and unhealthy.

The followers of Lao Tzu maintain that a person who succeeds in locating his centre finds his consciousness revolving around and around this centre. It is only then that his consciousness begins to develop. Those who do not find their centres remain stunted and lifeless, like the fish in the second tank, because they have no centre, no base around which they can revolve and develop. They cannot find their direction: where they should go, what they should do. By revolving round the same circumference, the consciousness develops.

Lao Tzu says: “Your consciousness becomes concentrated when it discovers the navel centre. Then it begins to revolve around it.” Lao Tzu says: “When you walk, keep your attention on the navel. When you sit, keep your mind on the navel; when you get up, be aware of the navel. Do what you will, but let your consciousness always move around the navel.” Become a fish and go round and round the navel, and you will soon discover a new, powerful consciousness arising within you. The results are wondrous!

There are many experiments you carry out. You are sitting on a chair. Now, Lao Tzu says your way of sitting on the chair is wrong, therefore, you get tired. He says, “Do not sit on the chair.” This does not mean you are not actually to sit on the chair; that you should sit on the ground. Lao Tzu says, “Sit on the chair but do not put your weight on the chair. Put all your weight on the navel.”

You can carry out the experiment right away. It is only a matter of emphasis. When we put all our weight on the chair the emphasis is in the chair. The chair becomes the all in all. You are merely like a coat hanging on a peg. If the peg breaks, you fall down, like a coat which has no centre of its own and which depends on the peg for its centre. Lao Tzu says you will tire yourself this way because you are not acting like an animate, conscious being and are depending entirely on an inanimate object.

Lao Tzu says: “Sit on the chair but be fixed at your own centre at the navel.” Hang everything on the peg of the navel. Hours will go by and you will find no sign of fatigue. If a man begins to live by hanging his consciousness on the peg of the navel-centre, all mental-fatigue vanishes. A unique freshness pervades his mind, a serene calmness flows within him and he gains a self-confidence which only those who have found their centre attain.

So the first step in this sadhana is to find your centre and to continue your efforts till the consciousness reaches not only the navel but two inches below the navel. Then one should begin to keep this centre always in mind. When one breathes in, this centre should rise up; when one breathes out, this centre should go down. Then, a constant japa begins: the rising of the centre with the incoming breath and the falling of the centre with the outgoing breath. If this becomes a conscious act, it yields great results. This is very difficult of course in the beginning, because remembrance is the most difficult thing to do. Constant remembrance is even more difficult. You might say, “That is not such a difficult thing at all. I can recollect the name of a person even after six years!” This is not remembrance. This is recollection smriti.

Understand the difference. Recollection means you know something; you pass it on to your memory for recording. The memory stores this information and reproduces it on demand. Remembrance smaran means, constant, non-stop remembering. Try it a little: Observe the rising and falling of your abdomen as the breath comes and goes for just five minutes. After two seconds you will find that you have forgotten. You have started to do something else. Then you will be perturbed. You could not concentrate for even two seconds? The respiration was going on as usual; the abdomen also rose and fell accordingly, but you were not there. Then again bring back your remembrance.

If you strive continuously, your remembrance will increase — second by second. When you find that you can observe the breath constantly without a simple break for three minutes — and this short interval of three minutes will seem like three year — then you will find that you have begun to experience the centre correctly. Then you will feel the body to be separate from the centre.

This centre is the centre of energy. One who is united to this centre, reaches infinite exaltation because he is constantly receiving infinite energy. So, keep a constant remembrance of the navel centre and let your consciousness revolve around it constantly. That is the temple. Keep circling around this temple. Whatever the state within you — whether there is anger or hatred, jealousy or misery or happiness — whatever the state, your first duty is to return to the navel. Then do whatever you wish.

Someone gives you news of the death of a loved one. Go back to the navel. Then let the news go within you. “Then,” Lao Tzu says, “No one’s death will cause a blow to the mind.” You may not have observed, or perhaps you have or maybe you realised later on, recollecting the incident — that whenever you have been given news of great joy or sorrow, the first effect has always been on the navel. You are walking on the road, or cycling, or going in a car, and suddenly an accident occurs. The first impact is on the navel. It begins to tremble. Then, the whole body begins to tremble.

Lao Tzu says, “Whenever anything happens, go back first to the navel centre.” Your first work is remembrance of the navel. Then, do what you like. Then happiness will not make you mad with joy, and sorrow will fail to make you unhappy. Then your centre will stand apart from the happenings that take place on the periphery. Then you remain the witness only. Yoga says, “Practice the sadhana of witnessing.” Lao Tzu says. “Remember the navel centre constantly and the witness state will result by itself.”

You will step outside of birth and death the day you become conscious of your navel centre, because this centre arises before birth and is the only thing that remains after death, when all else is lost. So he who knows and recognizes his navel centre, knows that there is no birth for him nor death. He becomes beyond birth and death.

Keep constant remembrance. Seek the centre and keep incessant remembrance smaran. The first thing is to find the centre, second is to keep on remembering it, and third is to remember the frequent loss of the remembrance. “This is going to be rather difficult however. People come to me and say, “I try to keep my attention on the nabhi, the navel, but I cannot. What should I do?”

To this I say: Keep attention on the fact that you have lost attention. Make it a part of your meditation. Be attentive to inattention also: don’t let it pass unnoticed by you. Whenever you slip, be conscious of the slip and you will go back to remembrance, the current of meditation will join the mainstream again.

Now, the last thing. When the remembrance is complete and the centre becomes clear to you — when you experience the centre — then surrender everything to the centre. Say to the centre, “You alone are the master. Release me!” This surrender is easy.

Surrender is very difficult until the centre is experienced. People say, “Surrender to God,” but we have no knowledge of God. How is surrender to an unknown entity possible? And even if God is known, you still remain the owner of your surrender. If you feel sometime that God is not to your taste, you will withdraw your surrender. We are the givers and we are the withdrawers — what can God do? But the surrender that can be withdrawn is no surrender; in fact, it was never surrender.

Lao Tzu’s method is different. Lao Tzu says: “The day the centre is known and felt, you begin to understand and experience that the centre is the master that does not need your assistance. The breath comes and goes; sleep comes, then awakening; birth happens, then death. The current of life flows on from the centre, without your help.” Then the question of surrendering does not arise because surrender just happens.

So the third and last stage of sadhana is to experience the surrender to the centre. Then there is no way for the ego to save itself. In the state of such surrender a person reach s the highest attainment.

-Osho

From The Way of Tao, V.2, Discourse #7

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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.

 

Empty Yourself of Everything – Lao Tzu

Empty yourself of everything.

Let the mind become still.

The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.

They grow and flourish and then return to the source.

Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.

The way of nature is unchanging.

Knowing constancy is insight.

Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.

Knowing constancy, the mind is open.

With an open mind, you will be openhearted.

Being openhearted, you will act royally.

Being royal, you will attain the divine.

Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.

Being at one with the Tao is eternal.

And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.

 

-Lao Tzu

From Tao Te Ching

Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English

A Slip of the Tongue

Woke up this morning and found my English slipping

Maybe it’s the result of all those years teaching it

Can’t find the distinction between god and happiness

Are love and meditation two words or one?

Not able to slip a sliver between the Tao and the Logos

Used to be a division between me and you, what happened?

Perhaps we’ll just rest here before the word

-purushottama

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