Tag: The Book of Secrets

Suppose Your Passive Form to be an Empty Room – Osho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this technique can help you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #79

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Suppose Your Passive Form to be an Empty Room.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

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

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

 

Before Desire and Before Knowing – Osho

Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am? Consider. Dissolve in the beauty. 

Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am? 

A desire arises: with the desire, the feeling that I AM arises. A thought arises: with the thought, the feeling that I AM arises. Look for it in your own experience. Before desire and before knowing, there is no ego.

Sit silently. Look within. A thought arises: you get identified with the thought. A desire arises: you get identified with the desire. In the identification you become the ego. Then think: there is no desire and there is no knowledge and no thought – you cannot get identified with anything. The ego cannot arise.

Buddha used this technique and he said to his disciples not to do anything else but just one thing: when a thought arises, note it down. Buddha used to say that when a thought arises, note down that a thought is arising. Just inside, note it: now a thought is arising, now a thought has arisen, now a thought is disappearing. Just remember that now the thought is arising, now the thought has arisen, now the thought is disappearing, so that you don’t get identified with it.

It is very beautiful and very simple. A desire arises. You are walking on the road; a beautiful car passes by. You look at it – and you have not even looked and the desire to possess it arises. Do it. In the beginning just verbalize; just say slowly, “I have seen a car. It is beautiful. Now a desire has arisen to possess it.” Just verbalize.

In the beginning it is good; if you can say it loudly, it is very good. Say loudly, “I am just noting that a car has passed, the mind has said it is beautiful, and now desire has arisen, and I must possess this car.” Verbalize everything, speak loudly to yourself and immediately you will feel that you are different from it. Note it.

When you have become efficient in noting, there is no need to say it loudly. Just inside, note that a desire has arisen. A beautiful woman passes; the desire has come in. Just note it – as if you are not concerned, you are just noting the fact that is happening – and then suddenly you will be out of it.

Buddha says, “Note down whatsoever happens. Just go on noting, and when it disappears, again note that now that desire has disappeared, and you will feel a distance from the desire, from the thought.”

This technique says:

Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am?

And if there is no desire and if there is no thought, how can you say I AM? How can I say I AM?

Then everything is silent, not a ripple is there. And without any ripple, how can I create this illusion of I? If some ripple is there, I can get attached to it and through it I can feel I AM. When there is no ripple in the consciousness, there is no I.

So before desire, remember; when the desire comes in, remember; when the desire goes out, go on remembering. When a thought arises, remember. Look at it. Just note that a thought has arisen. Sooner or later it will go because everything is momentary, and there will be a gap. Between two thoughts there is a gap, between two desires there is a gap, and in the gap there is no I.

Note a thought in the mind and then you will feel that there is an interval. Howsoever small, there is an interval. Then another thought comes; then again there is an interval. In those intervals there is no I – and those intervals are your real being. Thoughts are moving in the sky. In those intervals you can look between two clouds, and the sky is revealed.

Consider. Dissolve in the beauty.

And if you can consider that a desire has arisen and a desire has gone, and you have remained in the gap and the desire has not disturbed you . . . It came, it went. It was there, and it is now not there, and you have remained unperturbed, you have remained as you were before it. There has been no change in you. It came and it passed like a shadow. It has not touched you; you remain unscarred.

Consider this movement of desire and movement of thought but no movement in you. Consider and dissolve in the beauty. And that interval is beautiful. Dissolve in that interval. Fall in the gap and be the gap. It is the deepest experience of beauty. And not only of beauty, but of good and of truth also. In the gap you are.

The whole emphasis has to go from the filled spaces to the unfilled spaces. You are reading a book. There are words, there are sentences, but between the words there are gaps, between the sentences there are gaps. In those gaps you are. The whiteness of the paper you are, and the black dots are just clouds of thought and desire moving on you. Change the emphasis, change the gestalt. Don’t look at the black dots. Look at the white.

In your inner being, look at the gaps. Be indifferent to the filled spaces, the occupied spaces. Be interested in the gaps, the intervals. Through those intervals you can dissolve into the ultimate beauty.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #55

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Before Desire and Before Knowing.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

The Book of Secrets

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

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

Put Mindstuff in Such Inexpressible Fineness – Osho

Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart.

Three things. First, if knowledge is important then the head is the center; if childlike innocence is important then the heart is the center. The child lives in the heart; we live in the head. The child feels; we think. Even when we say that we feel, we think that we feel. Thinking becomes primary for us, feeling becomes secondary. Thinking is the tool for science, feeling is the tool for religion.

You must start to be a feeling organism again. And both the dimensions are different. When you think, you remain separate; when you feel, you melt.

Think about a flower, a rose flower. When you think, you are separate; there is a gap, a distance, a space. For thinking, space is needed; for thoughts to move, distance is needed. Feel the flower and the gap disappears, the distance drops. Because for feeling, distance is the barrier. The closer you come, the more you feel. A moment comes when even closeness appears to be a sort of distance – and then melting happens. Then you cannot feel the boundaries of where you are and where the flower is, of where you end and where the flower begins. Then boundaries melt into each other: the flower enters you in a way; you enter the flower in a way. Feeling is losing the boundaries; thinking is creating the boundaries. That is why thinking always insists on definitions, because without definitions you cannot create boundaries.

Thinking says define first, and feeling says don’t define. If you define, feeling stops.

The child feels; we think. The child comes close to existence; he melts and allows the existence to melt into him. We are isolated, imprisoned in the head. We are like islands.

This sutra says to come back to the heart center. Start feeling things. It will be a great experiment if you start feeling things. Whatsoever you do, give a certain amount of your time and energy to feeling. You are sitting here, you can listen to me – but that will be part of thinking. You can also feel me here but that will not be a part of thinking. If you can feel my presence, then definitions are lost. Then really, if you come to a moment of feeling, you don’t know who is speaking and who is listening. This can happen right this very moment. Then the speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker. Then really, they are not two, rather, they are two poles of one phenomenon: on one pole is the speaker, on another pole is the listener. But these are just poles, isolated. They are not real. The real thing is just in-between these two – the life, the flow. Whenever you feel, something other than your ego becomes important. Object and subject lose their definitions. A flow, a wave, exists – on one pole the speaker, on another pole the listener, but the life is the wave.

Head gives you clarity, and because of this clarity much confusion has come into being because the head defines clearly, marks boundaries, makes maps. With reason, everything is clear-cut: no vagueness, no mystery is allowed. All that is vague is rejected, only the clear is real. Reason gives you a clarity, and because of clarity, a great misunderstanding arises. Clarity is not reality. Reality is always unclear, vague. Concepts are clear, reality is mysterious; concepts are rational, reality is irrational.

Words are clear, logic is clear, life is not clear. The heart gives you a melting vagueness. It reaches reality more intimately, but it is not clear. And because we have chosen clarity as the goal, we have been missing reality. You must have unclear eyes to enter reality again. You must be vague, you must be ready to enter into something which cannot be conceptualized, into something which is not logic, into something which is staggering and real, staggering and alive.

Clarity is dead. It remains fixed. Life is a flux, nothing is fixed, nothing remains the same the next moment. How can you be clear about it? If you insist too much on clarity you will lose contact with it. That is what has happened.

This sutra says that the basic thing is to come back to the heart center – but how to come to it?

Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart.

The word “mindstuff” is not a good translation of the original Sanskrit word chitt. But English has no other equivalent. So it is good in a way, it carries the meaning, not of “mind” but of “mindstuff.”

Mind means mentation, thinking, thought, and mindstuff means the background upon which these thoughts float – just as in the sky the clouds move. Clouds are the thoughts and the sky is the background upon which they move. That sky, consciousness, has been called mindstuff. Your mind can be without thoughts; then it is chitt, then it is pure mind. When it has thoughts, it is impure mind.

If your mind can be without thought, then it is very subtle, the subtlest thing possible in existence. You cannot conceive of a more subtle possibility. Consciousness is the most subtle thing. So when there are no thoughts in the mind, you have pure mind. The pure mind can move towards the heart, the impure mind cannot. By impurity I don’t mean any immoral thoughts in the mind, by impurity I mean all thoughts – thought as such is impure.

Even if you are thinking of God, it is an impurity, because the cloud is moving. The cloud is very white, but the cloud is there and the purity of the space is not there. A cloudless sky is not there. A cloud may be a black cloud, a sexual thought moving in the mind, or the cloud may be a white cloud, beautiful, a prayer moving in the mind, but in both cases the pure mind is not there. It is impure, clouded. And if the mind is clouded you cannot move in the heart.

This has to be understood because with thoughts you cling to the head. Thoughts are the roots, and unless those roots are cut you cannot fall back to the heart.

The child remains in the heart only up to the moment that thoughts crystalize, that thoughts start floating in his mind. Then they take root; then through education, culture, cultivation, they become rooted; then by and by the consciousness moves from the heart to the head. The consciousness can remain in the head only if there are thoughts. This is basic. If there are no thoughts, consciousness immediately drops back to its original innocence in the heart.

Hence so much emphasis on meditation, so much emphasis on non-thinking, on thoughtless awareness, on choiceless awareness, or on Buddha’s “right mindfulness,” which is just mindfulness without any thought, just being aware. What happens then? A very great phenomenon happens because when the roots are cut, immediately consciousness drops back to the heart, to the original place where it had been. You become a child again.

Jesus said, “Only those who are like children will enter into the kingdom of my God.” He refers to those persons whose consciousness has come back to the heart. They have become innocent, childlike.

But the first basic requirement is to put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness . . .

Thoughts can be expressed. There is not a single thought which is inexpressible, nor can there be. If it is inexpressible, you cannot think it; if you can think it, it is expressible. There is not a single thought which you can say is inexpressible. The moment you can think it, it has become expressible – you have already expressed it to yourself.

Consciousness, pure consciousness, is inexpressible. That is why mystics go on saying that they cannot express what they know. Logicians always raise the question that if you know, then why can’t you say it? And their argument has meaning and significance. If you really say that you know then why can’t you express it?

For a logician, knowledge must be expressible – that which can be known can be made known to others, there is no problem. If you have known it, then where is the problem? You can make it known to others. But the mystic’s knowledge is not of thoughts. He has not known it as a thought, he has known it as a feeling. So really, it is not good to say, “I know God.” It is better to say, “I feel.” It is not good to say, “I have known God.” It is better to say, “I have felt him.” That is a more accurate description of the phenomenon because the “knowledge” is through the heart, it is like feeling, it is not like knowledge. 

Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness . . . Mindstuff, consciousness, chitt, is inexpressible. If a single thought is moving, it is expressible. So, to put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness means to come to a point where you are conscious, but not conscious of any thought; where you are alert, but there is no thought moving in the mind. This is a delicate point and very difficult – you can miss it easily.

We know two states of mind. One is when thoughts are there. When thoughts are there, you cannot move to the heart. Then we know another state of mind – when thoughts are not there. When thoughts are not there, you fall asleep. Then too, you cannot move to the heart. Every night, for a few moments, for a few hours, you fall out of thinking. Thoughts cease, but you don’t reach to the heart because you are unconscious. So a very delicate balance is needed. Thoughts must cease as they cease in deep sleep, when there is no dream – and you must be as alert as you are while awake. These two points must meet. Mind must be as thoughtless as it is in deep sleep, but you must not be asleep, you must be perfectly alert, aware.

When awareness and this thoughtlessness meet, it is meditation. That is why Patanjali says that samadhi is like sushupti. The highest ecstasy, samadhi, is like the deepest sleep, with only one difference: in it you are not asleep. But the quality is the same – thoughtless, dreamless, undisturbed, without a single ripple, totally calm and quiet, but alert. When you are aware and there is no thought, you will feel a sudden transformation in your consciousness. The center changes. You are thrown back. You are thrown to the heart. And from the heart, when you look at the world, there is no world, there is only God. From the head, when you look toward existence, there is no God, there is only material existence.

Matter, material existence, the world, and God are not two things, two outlooks, two perspectives. They are the same phenomenon looked at from two centers of being.

Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart. Be totally in it, merged, immersed. Be simply consciousness, above, below, in the heart; the whole heart surrounded by simple consciousness; not thinking anything in particular, just being aware, with no word, with no verbalization, not thinking at all, just being.

Put mindstuff above, below, and in your heart, and everything will become possible to you. All the doors of perception will be cleansed and all the doors of mysteries will be opened. Suddenly, there will be no problem, and suddenly, there will be no misery – it is as if the darkness has disappeared completely. Once you know this you can move back to the head but you will not be the same. Now you can use the head as an instrument. You can work with it, but now you are not identified with it, and even while working with it and looking at the world through it, you will know that whatsoever you are seeing is because of the intellect. Now you are acquainted with a higher standpoint, a deeper view – and any moment you want to you can drop back.

Once you know the passage and how consciousness drops back; how your age, your past, your memory and your knowledge disappear and you become a newborn child again – once you know this secret, this passage, you can travel to that point as many times as you like, and you can be refreshed again and again. If you have to move to the head, you can use it; you can move in the ordinary world, working but not getting involved in it, because deep down you know that that which is known by the intellect is partial. It is not the whole truth. And a partial truth is more dangerous than a lie, because it appears to be true and you can be deceived by it.

Some more points. When you move to the heart, you look at existence as a total being. The heart is not departmental, the heart is not a fragment of you, the heart means you in your totality. Mind is a fragment, hand is a fragment, leg is a fragment, stomach is a fragment, the whole body taken in parts is fragmented. The heart is not a fragment. That is why my hand can be cut off and I will be alive. Even my brain can be removed and I will be alive, but if the heart is gone, I am gone.

Really, my whole body can be removed but if my heart is beating, I am alive. The heart means your wholeness, so when the heart fails, you are no longer there. All other things are just parts, disposable. If the heart is beating you will remain intact. The center of the heart is the very core of your existence. I can touch you with my hand. That touch will give me a certain knowledge about you, about your skin, whether it is smooth or not. The hand will give a certain knowledge to me, but that knowledge will be partial because the hand is not my wholeness. I can see you. My eyes will give a certain knowledge from a different standpoint but that will not be the whole. I can think about you – again the same thing. But I cannot feel you in part. If I feel you at all. I feel you in your wholeness. That is why, unless you know through love, you never know the wholeness of any person.

Only love can reveal the whole personality to you, the whole being, the essential, the total. Because love means knowing through the heart, feeling through the heart. So to me, feeling and knowing are not two fragments of your being. Feeling is your whole being and knowing is just a fragment of it.

To religion love is the highest knowledge. That is why religion is expressed more in poetic terms than in scientific ones. Scientific terms cannot be used, they belong to the realm of knowing. Poetry can be used. And those who have come to know reality through love, whatsoever they say becomes poetry. The Upanishads, the Vedas, the sayings of Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, they are all poetic statements.

It is not just a coincidence that all the old religious scriptures are written in poetry. It has a significance. It shows that there is some affinity between the world of a poet and the world of a mystic. The mystic is also using the language of the heart.

The poet is only a mystic in certain moments of flight, just as when you jump you can go away from the gravitation of the earth, but you again come back to it. A poet means a person who has been for some seconds on a flight into the world of the mystics. He has had some glimpses. A mystic is one who has gone beyond gravitation completely, who lives in the world of love, who lives through the heart. This has become his very abode. For the poetic person, it is just a glimpse: sometimes he falls down from the head to the heart. But this is just for the time being – again he goes back to the head. So if you see a beautiful poem, don’t try to see the poet who has written it because you will not meet the same person. You will be disappointed because you will meet a very ordinary man.

He had a glimpse. For certain moments reality was revealed to him and he came down to the heart. But he doesn’t know the passage. He is not the master of it. It has been a happening and he cannot move to it by his own will.

When Coleridge died, he left about forty thousand incomplete poems. He really completed only seven poems in his whole life. He became a great poet, one of the greatest in the world, but he was asked many times, “Why do you go on piling up incomplete poems, and when are you going to complete them?” He said, “I cannot do anything. Sometimes a few lines come to me and then they stop. So how can I complete them? I will wait. I will have to wait. If it happens again and the glimpse comes to me, and I again have the world revealed to me, the reality, then I will complete it. But on my own I can do nothing.” He must have been a very sincere poet. To find such sincere poets is difficult, because the tendency of the mind is to supply. If three lines have come then you will supply the fourth, and the fourth will kill all the three because it will come from a very lower state of mind – when you are back on the earth. When you jumped, and you were freed for some moments from gravitation, you had a different dimension of being.

A poet moves on the earth but sometimes he jumps. In those jumps he has glimpses. A mystic lives in the heart. He doesn’t move on the earth; the heart has become his abode. So he doesn’t really create poetry but whatsoever he does becomes poetic, whatsoever he says becomes poetry. Really, a mystic cannot use prose because his prose is also poetry – it is coming through the heart, it is coming through love. 

Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart. The heart is your total being, and when you are total you can know the total – remember this. Only the similar can know the similar. When you are fragmentary you cannot know the total. As within, so without. When you are total within, the total reality without is revealed to you; you have become capable of knowing it, you have earned the right to know it. When you are fragmented within, the reality is fragmented without. So whatsoever you are within will be the without for you.

Deep in the heart the whole world is different, the gestalt is different. I am looking at you. If I am looking at you through the head, through intellect, through one of my parts of knowing, then a few friends are here, individuals, egos – separate. But if I am looking at you through the heart, then individuals are not here. Then just an oceanic consciousness is here and individuals are just waves. If I look at you through the heart, then you and your neighbor are not two, then the reality is between you and your neighbor. You are just two poles, and the real is just in-between. Then here there is an ocean of consciousness in which you exist as waves. But waves are not separate, they are linked together. And you are melting every moment into the other, whether you know it or not.

The breath that was within you just a moment ago has left you – now it is moving into your neighbor. Just a moment before, it was your life and you would have died without it, and now it is moving into your neighbor. It is his life now. Your body is continuously radiating vibrations, you are a radiator, so your life energy is constantly moving into the neighbor and his life energy is moving into you.

If I look at you from my heart, if I look at you with loving eyes, if I look at you totally, then you are just radiating points, and life is moving continuously from you to others and from others to you . . . And not only just in this room, this whole universe is a constant flux of life energy. It goes on moving. There are no individual units, it is a cosmic whole. But through intellect the cosmic never appears, only fragments, atomic fragments, appear. And this is not a question which can be comprehended through intellect. If you try to comprehend through intellect, it will be impossible to comprehend it. It is a totally different outlook, from a different point of existence.

If you are total within, the totality without is revealed to you. Some have called that revelation God-realization: some have called it moksha, liberation; some have called it nirvana, cessation. Different words, altogether different words, but they signify the same core, the same essence.

One thing is basic to all these expressions – the individual disappears. You may call it God-realization, then you are no longer an individual; you can call it liberation, then you are no longer a self; you can call it cessation – as Buddha has called it – then just as a lamp, a flame, ceases to be, disappears, disperses, you cannot find it anywhere again, you cannot locate it, it has gone into nonbeing, so the individual disappears. But this point has to be pondered over. Why do all religions say that the individual, the self, the ego, disappears when you realize the truth? If all religions emphasize this, this means that the self must be illusory – otherwise how can it disappear? The self must not be there really, only then can it disappear. This may seem paradoxical, but this is so: only that which is not can disappear. That which is will persist in being, it cannot disappear.

Just because of the head a false entity has come into being – the individual. If you come down to the heart, the false entity disappears. It was a creation of the head. From the heart the cosmic is, the individual is not; the whole is, the parts are not. And remember, when you are not, you cannot create a hell; when you are not, you cannot be in misery; when you are not, there can be no anxiety, no suffering. All anxiety, all suffering, exists because of you – the shadow of the shadow. The self is unreal, the ego is unreal, and because of that unreal self, many unreal shadows are created. They follow you; you go on fighting with them, but you will never be victorious because the base goes on being hidden within you.

Swami Ramteerth has said somewhere that he was staying in a house, in a poor villager’s house. The small child of the villager was playing just in front of the hut, and the sun was rising and the child saw his shadow. He tried to catch it, but the more he moved, the more the shadow would move ahead. The child started crying. He was a failure. He tried in every way to catch it, but it was impossible. To catch a shadow is impossible – not because a shadow is such a difficult thing to catch, it is impossible because the child was moving to catch it. When he was moving, the shadow moved ahead. You cannot catch a shadow because a shadow has no substance, and only a substance can be caught. Ramteerth was sitting there. He was laughing and the child was crying, and the mother was at a loss about what to do. How to console the child? So, she said to Ramteerth, “Swamiji, can you help me?” Ramteerth went to the child, caught the child’s hand and put it on his head – the shadow was caught. Now that the child had put his hand on his head, the shadow was caught. The child started laughing. Now he could see that his hand had caught the shadow.

You cannot catch a shadow, but you can catch yourself. And the moment you catch yourself, the shadow is caught.

Suffering is just a shadow of the ego. We are all like that child, fighting with suffering, anxiety, anguish, and trying to disperse them. We can never be victorious. It is not a question of strength – the whole effort is absurd, impossible. You must catch the self, the ego, and once you catch it, suffering suddenly disappears. It was just a shadow.

There are persons who start fighting with the self. It has been taught, “Disperse the self, be egoless, and you will be in bliss,” so they start fighting the self, the ego. But if you fight you are still believing that the self exists. Your fight will give food to it, it will become an energy-giving thing to it, you will be feeding it. This technique says don’t think of the ego, just move from the head to the heart and the ego will disappear. The ego is a projection of the head. Don’t fight with it. You can go on fighting for lives together, but if you remain in the head you cannot win.

Just change the standpoint, just move from the head to a different standpoint, to a deeper standpoint of the being, and the whole thing changes because now you can look from a different perspective. From the heart there is no ego. Because of this we have become afraid of the heart. We never allow it to have its own way, we always interfere with it, we always bring mind into it. We try to control the heart through the mind because we have become afraid – if you move to the heart, you lose yourself. And this losing is just like death. Hence the incapacity to love, hence the fear of falling in love. Because you lose yourself, you are not in control. Something greater than you grips you and takes possession. Then you are not on sure ground and you don’t know where you are moving. So, the head says, “Don’t be a fool, move with reason. Don’t be mad.”

Whenever someone is in love everyone thinks that he is mad. He himself thinks that something has gone crazy, “I am not in my senses!” Why does it happen? Because now there is no control. Something is happening that he cannot control, he cannot manage and manipulate. Rather, something is manipulating him, a greater force has taken him over. He is possessed . . . But unless you are ready to be possessed there can be no God for you. Unless you are ready to be possessed there is no mystery for you, and no bliss, no benediction. One who is ready to be possessed by love, by prayer, by the cosmos, means one who is ready to die as an ego. Only that one can know what life really is, what life has to give. What is possible becomes immediately actual, but you must put yourself at the stake.

This technique is beautiful. It doesn’t say anything about your ego. It doesn’t say anything about it. It simply gives you a technique, and if you follow the technique, the ego will have disappeared.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #65

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Put Mindstuff in Such Inexpressible Fineness.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

The Book of Secrets

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

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

Meher Baba Attained Through Staring – Osho

Or stare without moving an eyelash. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #5

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

The Book of Secrets

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

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

Feel: My Thought, I-ness, Internal Organs, Me – Osho

Feel: My thought, I-ness, internal organs – me.

A very simple and a very beautiful technique. Feel: My thought, I-ness, internal organs – me.

The first thing is not to think but to feel. These are two different dimensions. And we have become so intellect-oriented that even when we say that we are feeling, really, we are not feeling, we are thinking. Feeling has completely stopped; it has become a dead organ in you. Even when you say, “I love,” it is not a feeling, it is again a thought.

And what is the difference between feeling and thought? If you feel, you will feel yourself centered near the heart. If I say, “I love you,” this very feeling of love will flow from my heart, the center will be near the heart. If it is just a thought, it will come from my head. When you love someone, try to feel whether it is coming from the head, or whether it is coming from the heart.

Whenever you deeply feel, you are headless. In that moment there is no head; there cannot be. The heart becomes your whole being – as if the head has disappeared. In feeling, the center of being is the heart. While you are thinking, the center of being is the head. But thinking proved very useful for survival, so we have stopped everything else. All other dimensions of our being have been stopped and closed. We are just heads, and the body is just a situation for the head to exist. We go on thinking; even about feelings we go on thinking. So try to feel. You will have to work on it, because that capacity, that quality, has remained retarded. You must do something to re-open that possibility.

You look at a flower and immediately you say it is beautiful. Ponder over the fact, linger over the fact. Don’t give a hurried judgment. Wait – and then see whether it is just from the head that you have said it is beautiful, or whether you have felt it. Is it just a routine thing, because you know a rose is beautiful, supposed to be beautiful? People say it is beautiful, and you have also said many times that it is beautiful.

The moment you see the rose, the mind supplies you; the mind says it is beautiful. Finished. Now there is no contact with the rose. There is no need; you have said. Now you can move to something else. Without any communion with the rose . . . the mind didn’t allow you even a glimpse of the rose. The mind came in between, and the heart couldn’t come in touch with the rose. Only the heart can say whether it is beautiful or not, because beauty is a feeling; it is not a concept.

You cannot say from the head that it is beautiful. How can you say? Beauty is not mathematics; it is not measurable. And beauty is not really just in the rose, because to someone else it may not be beautiful at all; and someone else may just pass without looking at it; and to someone else it may even be ugly. The beauty doesn’t exist simply in the rose; the beauty exists in a meeting of the heart with the rose. When the heart meets with the rose, beauty flowers. When the heart comes in deep contact with anything, it is a great phenomenon.

If you come in deep contact with any person, the person becomes beautiful. The deeper the contact, the more beauty is revealed. But beauty is a phenomenon that happens to the heart, not to the mind. It is not a calculation, and there is no criterion by which to judge it. It is a feeling.

So if I say, “This rose is not beautiful,” you cannot argue about it. There is no need to argue. You will say, “That is your feeling. And the rose is beautiful – this is my feeling.” There is no question of argument. Heads can argue. Hearts cannot argue. It is finished; it is a full stop. If I say, “This is my feeling,” then there is no question of argument.

With the head, argument can continue, and we can come to a conclusion. With the heart, the conclusion has already happened. With the heart, there is no procedure towards the conclusion; the conclusion is immediate, instantaneous. With the head, it is a process – you argue, you discuss, you analyze, and then you come to a conclusion about whether this is so or not. With the heart, it is an immediate phenomenon – the conclusion comes first. Look at it: with the head, conclusion comes in the end. With the heart, conclusion comes first, and then you can proceed to find the process – but that is the work of the head.

So when such techniques have to be practiced, the first difficulty will be that you don’t know what feeling is. Try to develop it. When you touch something, close your eyes; don’t think, feel. For example, if I take your hand in my hand and I say to you, “Close your eyes and feel what is happening,” immediately you will say, “Your hand is in my hand.” But this is not a feeling, this is thinking.

Then I again say to you, “Feel. Don’t think.” Then you say, “You are expressing your love.” That too is again thinking. If I insist again, “Just feel, don’t use your head. What are you feeling right now?” only then will you be able to feel and say, “The warmth.” Because love is a conclusion. “Your hand is in my hand” – this is a head-oriented thought.

The actual feeling is that a certain warmth is flowing from my hand to your hand, or from your hand to my hand. Our life energies are meeting, and the point of meeting has become hot, it has become warm. This is the feeling, the sensation, the real. But we go on with the head continuously. That has become a habit; we are trained for it. So you will have to re-open your heart.

Try to live with feelings. Sometimes in the day when you are not doing any particular business – because in business, in the beginning it will be difficult to live with feeling. There, head has proved very efficient, and you cannot depend on feeling. While you are at home playing with your children, the head is not needed, it is not a business – but there too you are with the head. Playing with your children or just sitting with your wife, or not doing anything, relaxing in a chair, feel. Feel the texture of the chair.

Your hand is touching the chair: how are you feeling it? The air is blowing, the breeze is coming in. It touches you. How do you feel? Smells are coming from the kitchen. How do you feel? Just feel. Don’t think about them. Don’t start brooding that this smell shows that something is being prepared in the kitchen – then you will start dreaming about it. No, just feel whatsoever is the fact. Remain with the fact; don’t move in thinking. You are surrounded from everywhere. Everywhere so much is converging on you. The whole existence is coming to meet you from everywhere, from all your senses it is entering you, but you are in the head, and your senses have become dead; they don’t feel.

A certain growth will be needed before you can do this, because this is an inner experiment. If you cannot feel the outer, it will be very difficult for you to feel the inner, because the inner is the subtle. If you cannot feel the gross, you cannot feel the subtle. If you cannot hear the sounds, then it will be difficult for you to hear the inner soundlessness – it will be very difficult. It is so subtle.

You are just sitting in the garden; the traffic is passing by and there are many noises and many sounds. You just close your eyes and try to find the most subtle sound there around you. A crow is cawing, just concentrate yourself on that crow’s noise. The whole traffic noise is going on. The sound is such, it is so subtle, that you cannot be aware of it unless you focus your awareness toward it. But if you focus your awareness, the whole traffic noise will go far away and the noise of the crow will become the center. And you will hear it, all the nuances of it – very subtle, but you will be able to hear it.

Grow in sensitivity. When you touch, when you hear, when you eat, when you take a bath, allow your senses to be open. And don’t think – feel.

You are standing under the shower: feel the coolness of the water falling on you. Don’t think about it. Don’t immediately say, “It is very cool. It is cold. It is good.” Don’t say anything. Don’t verbalize, because the moment you verbalize, you miss feeling. The moment words come in, the mind has started to function. Don’t verbalize. Feel the coolness and don’t say that it is cool. There is no need to say anything. But our minds are just mad; we go on saying something or other.

I remember, I was working in a university, and there was a lady professor who would always be saying something or other. It was impossible for her to be silent in any situation. One day I was standing on the verandah of the college and the sun was setting. It was tremendously beautiful.

And she was just standing by my side, so I told her, “Look!” She was saying something or other, so I said, “Look! Such a beautiful sunset.” So, very reluctantly she conceded. She said, “Yes, but don’t you think there should be a little more purple just on the left?” It was not a painting; it was a real sunset!

We go on saying things, not even aware of what we are saying. Stop verbalizing; only then can you deepen your feelings. If feelings are deepened, then this technique can work miracles for you. 

Feel: My thought.

Close your eyes and feel the thought. A continuous flow of thoughts is there, a continuum, a flux; a river of thoughts is flowing. Feel these thoughts, feel their presence. And the more you feel, the more will be revealed to you – layers upon layers. Not only thoughts that are just on the surface; behind them there are more thoughts, and behind them there are still more thoughts – layers upon layers.

And the technique says: Feel: My thought. And we go on saying, “These are my thoughts.” But feel – are they really yours? Can you say “my”? The more you feel, the less it will be possible for you to say that they are yours. They are all borrowed; they are all from the outside. They have come to you but they are not yours. No thought is yours – just dust gathered. Even if you cannot recognize the source from where this thought has come to you, no thought is yours. If you try hard, you can find from where this thought has come to you.

Only the inner silence is yours. No one has given it to you. You were born with it, and you will die with it. Thoughts have been given to you; you have been conditioned to them. If you are a Hindu, you have a different type, a different set of thoughts; if you are a Mohammedan, of course, a different set of thoughts; if you are a communist, again a different set of thoughts. They have been given to you, or you may have taken them voluntarily, but no thought is yours.

If you feel the presence of thoughts, the crowd, you can feel this also – that they are not yours. The crowd has come to you, it has gathered around you, but it doesn’t belong to you. And if this can be felt – that no thought is mine – only then you can throw the mind. If they are yours, you will defend them. And the very feeling that “this thought is mine” is the attachment. Then I give it roots in myself. Then I become the soil, and the thought can remain rooted in me. If anything that I can see is not mine is uprooted, then I am not attached to it. The feeling of “mine” creates attachment.

You can fight for your thoughts; you can even become a martyr for your thoughts. Or, you can become a killer, a murderer for your thoughts. And thoughts are not yours. Consciousness is yours, but thoughts are not yours. And why will this help? – because if you can see that thoughts are not yours, then nothing is yours because thought is the root of all. The house is mine and the property is mine and the family is mine – these are the outer things. Deep down the thoughts are mine. Only if thoughts are mine can all these things, the superstructure, be mine.

If thoughts are not mine then nothing matters, because this too is a thought – that you are my wife, or you are my husband. This too is a thought. And if basically thought itself is not mine, then how can the husband be mine? Or how can the wife be mine? [With] thoughts uprooted, the whole world is uprooted. Then you can live in the world and not live in it.

You can move to the Himalayas, you can leave the world, but if you think that your thoughts are yours, you have not moved a single inch. Sitting there in the Himalayas, you will be as much in the world as here because thoughts are the world. You carry your thoughts to the Himalayas. You leave the house – but the real house is inner, and the real house is built by the bricks of thought. It is not the outer house.

So this is strange, but this happens every day: I see a person who has left the world but still he remains a Hindu. He becomes a sannyasin and still he remains a Hindu or remains a Jain. What does it mean? He renounces the world, but he doesn’t renounce the thoughts. He is still a Jain; he is still a Hindu – the thought-world is carried still. And that thought-world is the real world.

If you can see that no thought is yours . . . And you will see, because you will be the seer and thoughts will become the objects. When you silently look at the thoughts, thoughts will be the objects and you will be the looker. You will be the seer, the witness, and thoughts will be flowing before you.

And if you look deeply and feel deeply, you will see that there are no roots. Thoughts are floating like clouds in the sky; they have no roots in you. They come and go. You are just a victim, and you unnecessarily become identified with them. About every cloud that passes by your house you say, “This is my cloud.” Thoughts are like clouds: in the sky of your consciousness, they go on passing and you go on clinging to each one. You say, “This is mine” – and this is only a vagrant cloud that is passing. And it will pass.

Go back in your childhood. You had certain thoughts, and you used to cling to them, and you used to say that they were your thoughts. Then the childhood disappeared, and with that childhood those clouds disappeared. Now you don’t even remember. Then you were young: then other clouds which are attracted when you are young came to you and then you started clinging to them.

Now you are old: those thoughts are no more there; you don’t even remember them. And they were so significant that you could have died for them, and now you don’t even remember. Now you can laugh at the whole nonsense that you once thought that you could die for them, you could become a martyr for them. Now you are not ready to even give a single penny for them. They don’t belong to you now. Now those clouds have gone but other clouds have come, and you are clinging to them.

Clouds go on changing but your clinging never changes. That’s the problem. And it is not that only when you are no longer a child they will change; every moment they are changing. A minute ago, you were filled with certain clouds; now you are filled with other clouds. When you came here, certain clouds were hovering on you; when you leave this room, other clouds will be hovering on you – and you go on clinging to every cloud. If in the end you find nothing in your hand, it is natural because nothing can come of clouds – and thoughts are just clouds.

This sutra says: Feel. Be established in feeling first. Then my thought. Look at that thought which you have always been calling my – my thought. Established in feeling, looking at thought, the my disappears. And my is the trick because out of many my’s, out of many me’s, the I evolves – this is mine, this is my. So many mine’s; out of them the I evolves.

This technique starts from the very root. Thought is the root of all. If you can cut the feeling of my at the very root, it will not appear again, it will not be seen anywhere again. But if you don’t cut it down there, you can go on cutting everywhere and it is useless; it will go on appearing again and again.

I can cut it. I can say, “My wife? No, we are strangers, and marriage is just a social formality.” I cut myself away. I say, “No one is my wife” – but this is very superficial. Then I say, “my religion,” Then I say, “my sect.” Then I say, “This is my religious book. This is the Bible. This is the Koran. This is my book.” Then the my continues in some other field, and you remain the same.

My thought and then I-ness. First look at the traffic of thought, the process of thought, the river-like flow of thought, and find out whether any thought belongs to you or whether they are just passing clouds. And when you have come to feel that no thought is yours, to attach my to any thought is an illusion, then the second thing; then you can move deeper. Then be aware of I-ness. Where is this I?

Raman used to give a technique to his disciples: they were just to enquire, “Who am I?” In Tibet, they use a similar technique, but still better than Raman’s. They don’t ask, “Who am I?” They ask, “Where am I?” – Because the who can create a problem. When you enquire, “Who am I?” you take it for granted that you are; the only question is to know who you are. You have presupposed that you are. That is not contested. It is taken for granted that you are. Now the only question is who you are. Only the identity is to be known, the face is to be recognized, but it is there – unrecognized it is there.

The Tibetan method is still deeper. They say to be silent and then search within for where you are. Go on in the inner space, move to every point and ask, “Where am I?” You will not find it anywhere. And the more you seek, the more it will not be there. And asking, “Who am I?” or “Where am I?” a moment comes when you come to a point where you are, but no I – a simple existence has happened to you. But it will happen only when thoughts are not yours. That is a deeper realm – I-ness.

We never feel it. We go on saying I. The word I is used continuously – the most used word is I – but you have no feeling. What do you mean by I? When you say I, what do you mean? What is connoted through this word? What is expressed? I can make a gesture. Then I can say, “I mean this.” I can show my body – “I mean this.” But then it can be asked, “Do you mean your hand? Do you mean your leg? Do you mean your stomach?” Then I will have to deny, I will have to say no. Then the whole body will be denied. Then what do you mean when you say I? Do you mean your head? Deep down, whenever you say I, it is a very vague feeling, and the vague feeling is of your thoughts.

Established in feeling, cut from thoughts, face I-ness, and as you face it, you find that it exists not. It was only a useful word, a linguistic symbol – necessary, but not real. Even a buddha has to use it, even after his enlightenment. It is just a linguistic device. But when a buddha says I, he never means I, because there is no one.

When you face this I-ness it will disappear. Fear can grip you at this moment, you can be scared. And it happens to many who move in such techniques deeply that they become so afraid that they run out of it. So remember this: when you feel and face your I-ness you will be in the same situation as you will be when you die – the same. Because I is disappearing, and you feel death is occurring to you. You will have a sinking sensation, you will feel you are sinking down and down. And if you get afraid, you will come out again and you will cling to thoughts because those thoughts will be helpful. Those clouds will be there: you can cling to them, and then the fear will leave you.

Remember, this fear is very good, a very hopeful sign. It shows that now you are going deep – and death is the deepest point. If you can go into death, you will become deathless, because one who goes into death cannot die. Then death is also just around, never in the center, just on the periphery. When I-ness disappears, you are just like death. The old is no more and the new has come into being.

This consciousness which will come out is absolutely new, uncontaminated, young, virgin. The old is no more – and the old has not even touched it. That I-ness disappears, and you are in your pristine virginity, in your absolute freshness. The deepest layer of being has been touched.

So think of it in this way: thoughts, then below them I-ness, and thirdly:

Feel: My thought, I-ness, internal organs – me.

When thoughts have disappeared or you are not clinging to them – if they are passing it is none of your business, you are aloof and detached and unidentified, and the I-ness has disappeared – then you can look at the internal organs. These internal organs . . . This is one of the deepest things. We know the outer organs. With hands I touch you, with eyes I see you – these are the outer organs.

The internal organs are those through which I feel my own being. The outer are for others. I know about you through the outer. How do I know about me? Even that I am – how do I know about it? Who gives me the sensation of my own being? There are internal organs. When thoughts have stopped and when I-ness is no more, only then, in that purity, in that clarity, can you see the internal organs.

Consciousness, intelligence – they are internal organs. Through them I am aware of my own being, of my own existence. That’s why if you close your eyes, you can forget your body completely, but your own feeling that you are, remains. And it is conceivable that when a person dies . . . It is a fact. When a person dies, for us he is dead, but it takes a little time for him to recognize the fact that he is dead because the internal feeling of being remains the same.

In Tibet, they have special exercises for dying and they say one must be ready to die. One of the exercises is this: whenever someone is dying, the master or the priest or someone who knows the bardo exercises will go on saying to him, “Remember, be alert, you are leaving the body.” Because even when you have left the body it will take time to recognize that you are dead because the internal feeling remains the same; there is no change.

The body is only to touch and feel others. Through it you have never touched yourself, through it you have never known yourself. You know yourself through some other organs which are internal. But this is the misery – that we are not aware of those internal organs and our image in our own eyes is created by others. Whatsoever others say about me is my knowledge about myself. If they say I am beautiful or if they say I am ugly, I believe in it. Whatsoever my senses say to me through others, reflected through others, is my belief of myself.

If you can recognize the internal organs, you are freed from society completely. That is what is meant when it is said in old scriptures that a sannyasin is not part of the society, because now he knows himself through his own internal organs. Now his knowledge about himself is not based upon others, it is not a reflected thing. Now he doesn’t need any mirror to know himself. He has found the inner mirror, and he knows through the inner mirror. And the inner reality can be known only when you have come to the inner organs.

Internal organs. You can then look through those internal organs. And then – the me. It is difficult to express it in words, that’s why me is used. Any word will be wrong – me is also wrong – but the I has disappeared. So remember, this me doesn’t have anything to do with I. When thoughts are uprooted, when I-ness has disappeared, when internal organs are known, the me appears. Then for the first time my real being is revealed – that real being is called me.

The outer world is no more, thoughts are no more, the feeling of ego is no more, and I have come to recognize my own internal organs of knowing, consciousness, intelligence – or whatsoever you call it – awareness, alertness. Then, in the light of this internal organ, me is revealed.

This me doesn’t belong to you. This me is your innermost center, unknown to you. This me is not an ego. This me is not against any you. This me is cosmic. This me has no boundaries. In this me everything is implied. This me is not the wave. This me is the ocean.

Feel: My thought, I-ness, internal organs. Then there is a gap, and suddenly the me is revealed. When this me is revealed, then one comes to know, “Aham Brahmasmi. I am the God.”

This knowing is not any claim of the ego; the ego is no more there. You can mutate yourself through this technique, but first get established in feeling.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #55

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Feel: My Thought, I-ness, Internal Organs, Me.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

The Book of Secrets

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

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

Come Back to Existence – Osho

Once a doctor, a very well known historian and an eminent scholar, was staying in a village. The postmaster, the old postmaster of the village, became curious about this old man, this doctor. He was curious to know what kind of doctor he is, so one day he asked, ‘What kind of doctor are you sir?’

The man said, ‘Doctor of Philosophy.’

The old man had never heard about it. He was puzzled and he said, ‘I have never heard of any case of this disease here.’

Don’t laugh about it, because that old postmaster was right in a way – philosophy is a kind of disease. Of course, doctors of philosophy are not doctors; rather, they are the perfect victims of a disease.

Philosophy is not a specific disease, so you cannot think of it in terms of cases. It is born with the human being. It is as old as humanity or the human mind. And every human being is a victim, more or less – because thinking leads nowhere; or, it leads you in circles, vicious circles. You move much, and if you are expert you can move fast, but you reach nowhere.

This has to be understood very deeply, because if you cannot understand and feel this, you cannot take a jump into meditation. Meditation means the very anti approach – anti to philosophy. Philosophy means thinking and meditation means a state of non-thinking. They are polar opposites. This is just human – to think about questions and to try to find out answers. But philosophy comes to no answers.

Science comes to certain answers; religion comes to certain answers, but philosophy comes to no answers. And all the answers that philosophy appears to come to are just facades: if you dig deep in them you will find more questions and nothing else. So every answer leads to more questions – and this goes on and on. Science comes to certain answers, because science depends not on thinking but on experimentation. Thinking is used as a help only, but the base is experimentation. That’s why science has given some answers. Philosophers, known and unknown, have been working and working for centuries, but not a single answer, not a single conclusion has been achieved. It cannot be achieved. The very nature of thinking is such that if you use thinking as a help towards experimentation, something can be achieved; that’s why science comes to certain answers.

But religion also comes to certain answers, because religion is also experimentation. Science experiments with the object, religion experiments with the subject, but both are experimentations and both depend on experiment. Between these two is philosophy – just pure thinking, abstract thinking, with no experiment. You can go on, you can go on, but you reach nowhere. Abstract thinking, speculative thinking, is thinking ad infinitum. You can enjoy, you can enjoy the journey, but there is no goal.

Religion and science are similar in a way – both believe in experiment. Religious experiment is of course deeper than scientific, because in science the experimenter himself is not involved. He is working with tools, working with things, working with objects; he remains aloof, he remains out of the experiment. Religion is a deeper science, because the experimenter himself becomes the experiment. There are no tools which are apart from him, no objects which are outside him. He is both – his tools, his objects, his method; he is everything. And he has to work upon himself.

It is arduous. Because you are involved, it is arduous. And because you are involved, the experiment will become experience. In science, the experiment will remain an experiment will remain an experiment. The scientist will not be touched by it, will not be transformed by it. The scientist will remain the same. But in religion, passing through the experiment, you will be a different man altogether. You cannot come out the same; you are bound to change. That’s why religious experiment becomes experience.

Remember this: you can go on thinking about God, about soul, about the other world, and you may make believe that you know something about God just by thinking ‘about’. That will be false. You cannot know anything about God – the word ‘about’ is absurd. You can know God, but you cannot know ‘about’ – that ‘about’ creates philosophy.

How can you know about God? Or, for example, how can you know about love? You can know love, you cannot about love, because ‘about’ means someone else knows and you believe in his knowledge. You collect and gather opinions. You say, ‘I know something about God.’ All knowledge which is ‘about’ is false, dangerous, because you can be deluded by it.

You can know God, you can know love, you can know yourself, but forget that ‘about’. That ‘about’ is philosophy. The Upanishads say something, the Vedas say something, the Bible says something, the Koran says something, but for you, all that will become ‘about’. Unless it becomes your experience it is futile, wasted.

This point must go deep within you, because you can go on thinking, and the mind is such that you can start thinking about meditation. You can make anything an object for meditation, for thinking. Even about meditation you can think, and you can go on thinking about it – nothing will happen.

I am talking about so many methods. There is a danger: you may start thinking about these methods, you may become knowledgeable. That won’t do, that is of no use. Not only is it of no use, it is dangerous – because meditation is experience, knowing ‘about’ is worthless.

Remember this word ‘experience’. Life’s problems, all the problems of life, are existential, they are not speculative. You cannot solve them by thinking; you can solve them only by living them. Through living the future opens. Through thinking the future never opens. On the contrary, even the present closes.

You may not have observed: whenever you think, what happen? Whenever you think, you are closed. All that is present drops. You move on a dream-path in your mind. One word creates another, one thought creates another, and you go on moving. The more you move in thinking, the further away you go from existence. Thinking is a way to go away. It is a dream-way; it is dreaming in concepts. Come back to the earth. Religion is very earthly in this sense; not worldly but very earthly, substantial. Come back to existence.

Life’s problems can be solved only when you become deeply rooted in existence. Flying in thoughts you move away from the roots, and the further away you are, the less is the possibility of solving anything. Rather, you will confuse everything, and everything will become more entangled. And the more entangled, the more you will think, and the further away you will move. Beware of thinking!

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #51

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Come Back to Existence.

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 online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

Perceive One Being as Knower and Known – Osho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perceive One Being as knower and known.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #61

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

The Book of Secrets

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

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

Between Two Breaths – Osho

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

That is the technique:

Radiant One, this experience may dawn between two breaths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #3

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

 

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

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

 

Wherever Your Mind Is Wandering – Osho

Wherever you mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this.

This mind is the door – this very mind. Wherever it is wandering, whatsoever it is thinking, contemplating, dreaming, this very mind, this very moment, is the door. This is a very revolutionary method because we never think that the ordinary mind is the door. We think that some super-mind – a Buddha, a Jesus – can enter, that they have some superhuman mind. This very mind that you have – this mind which goes on dreaming and imagining relevant or irrelevant thoughts, which is crowded with ugly desires, passions, anger, greed, all that is condemned, which is there beyond your control, pulling you here and there, pushing you from here and there, constantly a madhouse – this very mind, says this sutra, is the door. Wherever your mind is wandering – wherever remember; the object is not relevant – wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this.

Many things have to be understood. One, the ordinary mind is not so ordinary as we think. The ordinary mind is not unrelated to the universal mind: it is part of it. Its roots go down to the very center of existence; otherwise you cannot be. Even a sinner is grounded into the divine; otherwise he cannot be. Even if the devil is there, he cannot be without divine support.

Existence itself is possible only because of the groundedness into the being. Your mind is dreaming, imagining, wandering, tense, in anguish, in misery. Howsoever it moves and wheresoever it moves, it remains grounded in the totality. Otherwise is not possible. You cannot go away from existence; that is impossible. This very moment you are grounded in it.

So what is to be done? If this very moment we are grounded in it, then it will appear to the egoist mind that nothing is to be done. We are already the divine, so why so much fuss? You are grounded in the divine, but you are unaware of the fact. When mind is wandering, there are two things – the mind and the wandering, the objects in the mind and the mind itself, clouds wandering in the sky and the sky. There are two things – the clouds and the sky.

Sometimes it may happen, it happens, that there are so many clouds that the sky disappears, you cannot see it. But even if you cannot see it, it has not disappeared; it cannot disappear. There is no way to help the sky to disappear. It is there; hidden or unhidden, visible or invisible, it is there.

But clouds are also there. If you pay attention to the clouds, the sky has disappeared. If you pay attention to the sky, the clouds are just accidental, they come and they go. You need not be too much worried about them. They come and they go. They have been coming, they have been going. They have not been destroying the sky even an inch, they have not made the sky dirty; they have not even touched it. The sky remains virgin.

When your mind is wandering, there are two things: one is the clouds, the thoughts, the objects, images, and the other is the consciousness, the mind itself. If you pay too much attention to the clouds, to objects, thoughts, images, you have forgotten the sky. You have forgotten the host; you have become too much interested in the guest. Those thoughts, images, wandering, are just guests. If you focus yourself on the guests, you forget your own being. Change the focus from the guests to the host, from the clouds to the sky. Do it practically.

A sex desire arises: this is a cloud. Or greed arises to have a bigger house: this is a cloud. You can become so obsessed with it that you forget completely to whom it has arisen, to whom it has happened. Who is behind it? In what sky is this cloud moving? Remember that sky, and suddenly the cloud disappears. You need just a change of focus from the object to the subject, from the outer to the inner, from the cloud to the sky, from the guest to the host – just a change of focus.

Lin-Chi, one Zen master, was speaking. Someone from the crowd said, “Answer me only one question: Who am I?”

Lin-Chi stopped speaking. Everyone was alert. What answer was he going to give? But he didn’t answer. He came down from his chair, walked, came near to the man. The whole crowd became attentive, alert. They were not even breathing. What was he going to do? He should have answered from the chair; there was no need. The man became afraid, and Lin-Chi came near him with his piercing eyes. He took the man’s collar in his hand, gave him a shake and asked him, “Close your eyes! And remember who is asking this question, ‘Who am I?’” The man closed his eyes – afraid, of course. He went within to seek who had asked this question, and he would not come back.

The crowd waited and waited and waited. His face became silent calm, still. Then Lin-Chi had to shock him again. “Now come out and tell everybody, ‘Who am I?’”

The man started laughing and he said, “What a miraculous way of answering a thing. But if someone asks me this now, I am going to do the same. I cannot answer.”

It was just a change of focus. You ask the question “Who am I?” and your mind is focused on the question and the answer is hidden just behind the question in the questioner. Change the focus; return to yourself.

This sutra says, “Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this.” Move from the objects to the mind itself, and you are no more an ordinary mind. You are ordinary because of the objects. Suddenly you become a buddha yourself. You are already a buddha, you are just burdened with many clouds. And not only are you burdened: you are clinging to your clouds, you won’t allow them to move. You think that clouds are your property. You think that the more you have, the better: you are richer. And your whole sky, your inner space, is just hidden. In a way, it has disappeared amidst the clouds and clouds have become your life. The life of the clouds is sansara – the world.

This can happen in a single moment even, this change of focus – and it always happens suddenly. I don’t mean that you need not do anything and it will happen suddenly; you will have to do much. But it will never happen gradually. You will have to do and do and do, and one day, suddenly, a moment comes when you are at the right temperature to evaporate. Suddenly there is no water; it has evaporated. Suddenly you are not in the object. Your eyes are not focused to the clouds: suddenly they have turned inward to the inner space.

It never happens gradually that one part of your eyes has turned inward and one part is with the outward clouds – nor does it happen in percentages, that now you have become ten percent inner and ninety percent outer, now twenty percent inner and eighty percent outer – no! When it happens it happens a hundred percent, because you cannot divide your focusing. Either you see the objects or you see yourself – either the world or the Brahman. You can come back to the world, you can change your focus again; you are the master. Really, only now are you the master – when you can change your focus as you like.

I remember Marpa, one Tibetan mystic. When he realized, when he became a buddha, when he turned inward, when he came to encounter the inner space – the infinity, someone asked him,

“Marpa, how are you now?”

Marpa’s answer is exceptional, unexpected. No buddha has answered that way. Marpa said, “As miserable as before.”

The man was bewildered. He said, “As miserable as before?”

But Marpa laughed. He said, “Yes, but with a difference, and the difference is that now the misery is voluntary. Sometimes, just for a taste of the world, I move outwards, but now I am the master. Any moment I can go inwards, and it is good to move in the polarities. Then one remains alive. I can move!” Marpa said, “I can move now. Sometimes I move in the miseries, but now the miseries are not something which happen to me. I happen to them and I remain untouched.” Of course, when you move voluntarily, you remain untouched.

Once you know how to change your focus inwards, you can come back to the world. Every buddha has come back to the world. Again he focuses, but now the inner man has a different quality. He knows that this is his focusing. These clouds are allowed to move. These clouds are not masters; they cannot dominate you. You allow them, and it is beautiful. Sometimes, when the sky is filled with clouds, it is beautiful; the movement of the clouds is beautiful. If the sky remains itself, the clouds can be allowed to move. The problem arises only when the sky forgets itself and only clouds are there. Then everything becomes ugly because the freedom is lost.

This sutra is beautiful. Wherever you mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this. This sutra has been used deeply in Zen tradition. Zen says your ordinary mind is the Buddha-mind. Eating, you are a buddha; sleeping, you are a buddha; carrying water from the well, you are a buddha. You are! Carrying water from the well, eating your food, lying down on your bed, you are a buddha. Inconceivable! It looks puzzling, but it is the truth.

If when carrying water you simply carry the water, if you don’t make any problem out of it and you simply carry water, if your mind is unclouded and the sky vacant, if you are just carrying water, then you are a buddha. Eating, just eat without doing anything else. When we are eating we are doing thousands and thousands of things. The mind may not be here at all. Your body may be eating just like a robot; your mind may be somewhere else.

One university student was here some days before. His examination is coming near, so he came to ask me, “I am very much confused and the problem is this: I have fallen in love with a girl. While I am with the girl, I think of my examination, and while I read I think only of my girl. So what to do? While reading, studying, I am not there; I am with my girl in my imagination. And with my girl, I am never with her; I am thinking about my problems, about my examination which is drawing near. So everything has become a mess.”

This is how everyone has become a mess, not only that boy. While in the office you think of the house; while in the house you are in the office. And you cannot do such a magical thing. While in the house you can be only in the house, you cannot be in the office. And if you are in the office, you are not sane, you are insane. Then everything gets into everything else. Then nothing is clear. And this mind is a problem.

While drawing water from a well, carrying water from a well, if you are simply doing this simple act, you are a buddha. So many times, if you go to Zen masters and ask them, “What do YOU do? What is your sadhana? What is your meditation?” they will say, “While feeling sleepy, we sleep. While feeling hungry, we eat. And that is all, there is no other sadhana.” But this is very arduous. It looks simple: if while eating you can just eat, if while sitting you can just sit – not doing anything else, if you can remain with the moment and not move away from it, if you can be merged with the moment with no future, no past, if this moment now is the only existence, then you are a buddha. This very mind becomes a Buddha-mind.

When your mind wanders, don’t try to stop it. Rather, become aware of the sky. When mind wanders, don’t try to stop it, don’t try to bring it to some point, to some concentration – no! Allow it to wander, but don’t pay much attention to the wandering – because for or against, you remain concerned with the wandering.

Remember the sky, allow the wandering, and just say, “Okay, it is just traffic on the road. Many people are moving this way and that. The same traffic is going on in the mind. I am just the sky, not the cloud.” Feel it, remember it, and remain in it. Sooner or later you will feel that the clouds are slowing down and there are bigger gaps between the clouds. They are not so dark, not so dense.

The speed has slowed down, and intervals can be seen, and the sky can be looked at. Go on feeling yourself as the sky and not the clouds. Sooner or later, someday, in some right moment when your focus has really gone inwards, clouds will have disappeared and you are the sky, the ever-pure sky, the ever-virgin sky.

Once you know this virginity, you can come back to the clouds, to the world of the clouds. Then that world has its own beauty. You can move in it, but now you are a master. The world is not bad; the world as the master is the problem. With you as the master, you can move in it. Then the world has a beauty of its own. It is beautiful, it is lovely, but you need to know that beauty and that loveliness as a master within.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #39

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Wherever Your Mind is Wandering.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

The Book of Secrets

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

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

Thinking No Thing – Osho

Thinking no thing
will limited-self unlimit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This sutra says:

Thinking no thing
will limited-self unlimit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This sutra says:

Thinking no thing
will limited- self unlimit.

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

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #57

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

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

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