Tag: vipassana

Death is a Great Revelation – Osho

Sat Prem came to me last night. Vipassana is on her deathbed. He was very worried, shaken, immensely shaken, and rightly so. The moment of death of someone you have loved deeply brings your own death into your mind. The moment of death is a great revelation. It makes you feel impotent, helpless. It makes you feel that you are not. The illusion of being disappears.

Sat Prem was crying. He is not a man to cry easily, he is not a man to feel helpless easily; tears will not come to him. But he was shaken. Anybody will be shaken – because suddenly you see that the ground underneath your feet has disappeared. You cannot do anything. Somebody is dying that you love. You would even like to give your life, but you cannot. Nothing can be done. One simply waits in deep impotence.

That moment can make you depressed, that moment can make you sad, or that moment can send you on a great journey for truth – a great journey in the search for the bull.

What is this life? If death comes and takes it, what is this life? What meaning does it carry if one is so impotent against death? And remember, not only is Vipassana on her deathbed – everybody is on his or her deathbed. After birth everybody is on his deathbed. There is no other way. All beds are deathbeds, because after birth only one thing is certain, and that is death.

You are also dying, not only Vipassana. Maybe you are a little farther away in the queue, but that is only a question of time. Somebody dies today, somebody tomorrow, somebody the day after tomorrow. What is the difference basically? Time cannot make much difference. Time can only create an illusion of life, but the life that ends in death is not, and cannot be, the real life. It must be a dream. I would like you to become aware of it; then your search for the bull starts.

The search for the bull is the search for the real life, the authentic life, which knows no death. Life is authentic only when it is eternal. Otherwise, what is the difference between a dream and what you call your life? In the night, deep asleep, a dream is as true as anything, as real – even more real than what you see with open eyes. By the morning it is gone; not even a trace is left. In the morning when you are awake you see it was a dream and not a reality. This dream of life continues for a few years; then suddenly one is awakened, and the whole life proves to be a dream.

Death is a great revelation. If there were no death there would have been no religion. It is because of death that religion exists. It is because of death that a Buddha was born. All buddhas are born because of the realization of death.

Buddha passed down a street and he came across a dead man. He asked his servant, the driver who was taking him in the chariot, “What has happened to this man? What has happened to this man?”

And the charioteer could not lie. He wanted to lie – that’s what we are doing to each other – he wanted to lie to this young prince: Why unnecessarily disturb him? He is so young now. Why should he be bothered about death?

The story is beautiful. It says that he was just going to lie and avoid it and give some explanation or other, but the gods in heaven were watching and they immediately came into his being; they possessed him: The truth must be spoken; otherwise this Gautam Siddhartha will miss. They forced the driver to speak the truth. And in spite of himself, the driver found himself saying, “This man is dead, and everybody is going to be like that – even you, sir!”

“Even me?” Buddha asked. ”Then take me back home. Then there is nowhere to go, then this whole life is false. I must not waste my time; then I must seek the eternal.”

That is the search for the bull.

Go, sit by the side of Vipassana – feel death. Don’t feel sorry for her. If you feel sorry for her, you miss the whole point. You miss a great opportunity, a great door. Don’t feel sorry for her; there is no need to feel sorry for her. She is perfectly beautiful. She is leaving this world with something gained inside.

The day she came to me, I became apprehensive and aware that her breathing was not right. Hence the name Vipassana. Vipassana means, awareness of breath. And I had told her to be as aware of her breath as possible. She was going to die – when was not important – and she was going to die by some deep breathing trouble. Her breathing was not rhythmic.

But she worked hard, and I am happy that she is dying with a certain integration, so she is not dying uselessly. Don’t feel sorry for her at all. You can, on the contrary, feel happy for her. She has worked hard. And whatsoever she has attained, she is going to carry into her other life. She has used this opportunity as well as possible – so whether she survives or dies is immaterial.

When you go and sit by her side, feel sorry for yourself. You are in the same boat, in the same plight. Death will knock on your door any day. Be ready. Before death comes, find the bull. Before death knocks, come back home. You should not be caught in the middle; otherwise this whole life disappears like a dream, and you are left in tremendous poverty, inner poverty.

The search for the bull is the search for the energy, the eternal energy, the very dynamic energy, of life. It knows no death. It passes through many deaths. Each death is a door for a new formation. Each death is a cleansing. Each death is an unburdening. Each death simply relieves you of the old.

Life, real life, never dies. Then who dies? You die. The ’I’ dies, the ego dies. Ego is part of death; life is not. So if you can be egoless, then there is no death for you. If you can drop the ego consciously, you have conquered death. And in the search for the bull, the only thing that has to be done is to drop the ego by and by. If you are really aware, you can drop it in a single step. If you are not so much aware, you will have to drop it gradually. That depends on you. But one thing is certain: the ego has to be dropped. With the disappearance of the ego, death disappears. With the dropping of the ego, death is also dropped.

So go and sit by the side of Vipassana. Soon she will disappear. Don’t feel sorry for her – feel sorry for yourself. Let death surround you. Have the taste of it. Feel helpless, impotent. Who is feeling helpless, and who is feeling impotent? The ego – because you see you cannot do anything. You would like to help her and you cannot. You would like her to survive, but nothing can be done.

Feel this impotence as deeply as possible.

And out of this helplessness, a certain awareness, a prayerfulness, a meditation, will arise. Use her death – it is an opportunity. Here with me, use everything as an opportunity.

She has used her life beautifully. I can say goodbye to her very happily so that she can come back soon. She will be coming on a higher plane. And this death is going to help her, because with this body more work is not possible now. Whatsoever work she could do she has done. A new, fresh body will be needed for further work.

And she is not fighting, she is not struggling. She is simply surrendering by and by – and that’s beautiful. She is in a let-go. If she fights, she may survive for a few days more. That’s why doctors are not going to be of much help, because she herself is accepting death. And when somebody accepts death then nothing can help, because deep down the person is ready to die. And that’s beautiful, that one is ready to die – because one is ready to die only when one has come to feel something which is beyond death, never before. When one has come to feel the taste of deathlessness, a little glimpse maybe, one knows that one is not going to die. One is going to die and yet one is not going to die. When one comes to know that, then one relaxes. Then where is the fight? What is the point? One relaxes.

She is relaxing. By and by she will disappear. Use that opportunity! Be by her side. Sit silently.

Meditate. Let her death become a pointer to you, so that you don’t go on wasting your life. The same is going to happen to you.

-Osho

From The Search, Chapter Nine   The Search

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

The Only Gift to Me: Your Enlightenment – Osho

If I look at my death, or your death, one thing I could never forgive myself for is to miss you. I used to think: if life has a purpose, you are the purpose – and if there is a destiny, you are my destiny. Now I see things a little differently. The most beautiful gift my life can give to you is not to worship you or help your work on this Earth. It is not even to love you. Out of your compassion, as I understand it, the most beautiful gift my life can give to you is my own enlightenment. Please, Osho, give me a technique to prepare my meditation.

Raso, the way your understanding has been growing is perfectly the right way and the right direction. The only thing you should think of is enlightenment. Yes, that is the only gift you can give to me: your enlightenment. Everything else is trivia. So your conclusion has my absolute, categorical approval.

Once you are committed, once you have decided wholeheartedly that enlightenment is the only purpose of being here in the world, of being alive, then a single pointed awareness – just like an arrow moving toward its target – begins in you.

You are asking for the right meditation. Meditation is a beautiful word; hiding behind it is a very dangerous reality. The dangerous reality is: if you want to be deeply in meditation, you will have to pass through almost a death – the death of the old, the death of all that you used to be, a discontinuity with the past – and a rebirth.

The place where your meditation is going to descend is the place occupied by your mind and your past. So the first and primary work is to clean your interior being of all thoughts. There is no question of choosing to keep the good thoughts in and to throw the bad thoughts out. For a meditator, all thoughts are simply junk; there is no question of good and bad. They all occupy the space inside you, and because of their occupation, your inner being cannot become absolutely silent. So good thoughts are as bad as bad thoughts; don’t make any discrimination between them. Throw the baby out with the bath water!

Meditation needs absolute quiet, a silence so deep that nothing stirs within you. Once you understand exactly what meditation means, it is not difficult to attain it. It is our birthright; we are absolutely capable of having it. But you cannot have both: the mind and meditation.

Mind is a disturbance.

Mind is nothing but a normal madness.

You have to go beyond the mind into a space where no thought has ever entered, where no imagination functions, where no dream arises, where you simply are – just a nobody.

It is more an understanding than a discipline. It is not that you have to do much; on the contrary, you don’t have to do anything except clearly understand what meditation is. That very understanding will stop the functioning of the mind. That understanding is almost like a master before whom the servants stop quarreling with each other, or even talking with each other; suddenly the master enters the house and there is silence. All the servants start being busy – at least looking like they are busy. Just a moment before, they were all quarreling and fighting and discussing, and nobody was doing anything.

Understanding what meditation is, is inviting the master in. Mind is a servant. The moment the master comes in with all its silence, with all its joy, suddenly the mind falls into absolute silence.

Once you have achieved a meditative space, enlightenment is only a question of time. You cannot force it. You have to be just a waiting, an intense waiting, with a great longing – almost like thirst, hunger, not a word . . . It is like the experience of people who have sometimes got lost in a desert. At first, thirst is a word in their mind: “I am feeling thirsty, and I am looking for water.” But as time goes on, and there is no sign of any oasis – and as far as the eyes can see, there is no possibility of finding water – the thirst goes on spreading all over the body.

From the mind, from just a word, “thirst,” it starts spreading to every cell and fiber of the body. Now it is no longer a word, it is an actual experience. Your every cell – and there are seven million cells in the body – is thirsty. Those cells don’t know words, they don’t know language, but they know that they need water; otherwise life is going to be finished.

In meditation, the longing becomes just a thirst for enlightenment and a patient awaiting because it is such a great phenomenon and you are so tiny. Your hands cannot reach it; it is not within your reach. It will come and overwhelm you but you cannot do anything to bring it down to you. You are too small; your energies are too small. But whenever you are really waiting with patience and longing and passion, it comes. In the right moment, it comes. It has always come.

You are asking what meditation will be helpful to you. Raso, all meditations . . . hundreds of techniques are available, but the essence of all those techniques is the same, just their forms differ. And the essence is contained in the meditation vipassana.

That is the meditation that has made more people in the world enlightened than any other because it is the very essence. All other meditations have the same essence but in different forms; something nonessential is also joined with them. But vipassana is pure essence. You cannot drop anything out of it and you cannot add anything to improve it.

Vipassana is such a simple thing that even a small child can do it. In fact, the smallest child can do it better than you because he is not yet filled with the garbage of the mind; he is still clean and innocent.

Raso, I would suggest vipassana as the technique for you. Vipassana can be done in three ways – you can choose which one suits you the best.

The first is: Awareness of your actions, your body, your mind, your heart. Walking, you should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand. You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing. You are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. Be alert to the movements of your body.

While eating, be alert to the movements that are needed for eating. Taking a shower, be alert to the coolness that is coming to you, the water falling on you and the tremendous joy of it . . . Just be alert. It should not go on happening in an unconscious state.

And the same about your mind: whatever thought passes on the screen of your mind, just be a watcher. Whatever emotion passes on the screen of your heart, just remain a witness – don’t get involved, don’t get identified, don’t evaluate what is good, what is bad – that is not part of your meditation. Your meditation has to be choiceless awareness.

You will be able one day even to see very subtle moods: how sadness settles in you just like the night is slowly, slowly settling around the world; how suddenly a small thing makes you joyous.

Just be a witness. Don’t think, “I am sad.” Just know, “There is sadness around me, there is joy around me. I am confronting a certain emotion or a certain mood.” But you are always far away: a watcher on the hills and everything else is going on in the valley. This is one of the ways vipassana can be done.

And for a woman, my feeling is that it is the easiest, because a woman is more alert of her body than a man. It is just her nature. She is more conscious of how she looks, she is more conscious of how she moves, she is more conscious of how she sits; she is always conscious of being graceful. And it is not only a conditioning; it is something natural and biological.

Mothers who have experienced having at least two or three children, start feeling after a certain time whether they are carrying a boy or girl in their womb. The boy starts playing football; he starts kicking here and there, he starts making himself felt – he announces that he is here. The girl remains silent and relaxed; she does not play football, she does not kick, she does not announce. She remains as quiet as possible, as relaxed as possible.

So it is not a question of conditioning because even in the womb you can see the difference between the boy and the girl. The boy is hectic; he cannot sit in one place. He is all over the place. He wants to do everything; he wants to know everything. The girl behaves in a totally different way.

That’s why I say, Raso, it will be easier for you to take vipassana in this first form.

The second form is breathing, becoming aware of breathing. As the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. So the second method is to be aware of the belly, its rising and falling. Just the very awareness of the belly rising and falling . . . And the belly is very close to the life sources because the child is joined with the mother’s life through the navel. Behind the navel is his life’s source. So when the belly rises up, it is really the life energy, the spring of life that is rising up and falling down with each breath. That too is not difficult, and perhaps may be even easier, because it is a single technique.

In the first, you have to be aware of the body, you have to be aware of the mind, you have to be aware of your emotions, moods. So it has three steps. The second sort has a single step: just the belly, moving up and down. And the result is the same. As you become more aware of the belly, the mind becomes silent, the heart becomes silent, the moods disappear.

And the third is to be aware of the breath at the entrance, when the breath goes in through your nostrils. Feel it at that extreme – the other polarity from the belly – feel it from the nose. The breath going in gives a certain coolness to your nostrils. Then the breath going out . . . breath going in, breath going out . . .

That too is possible. It is easier for men than for women. The woman is more aware of the belly. Most men don’t even breathe as deep as the belly. Their chest rises up and falls down because a wrong kind of athletics prevails over the world. Certainly, it gives a more beautiful form to the body if your chest is high and your belly is almost nonexistent.

Man has chosen to breathe only up to the chest, so the chest becomes bigger and bigger and the belly shrinks down. That appears to him to be more athletic. Around the world, except in Japan, all athletes and teachers of athletes emphasize breathing by filling your lungs, expanding your chest, and pulling the belly in. The ideal is the lion whose chest is big and whose belly is very small. So be like a lion; that has become the rule of athletic gymnasts and the people who have been working with the body.

Japan is the only exception, where they don’t care that the chest should be broad and the belly should be pulled in. It needs a certain discipline to pull the belly in; it is not natural. Japan has chosen the natural way; hence you will be surprised to see a Japanese statue of Buddha. That is the way you can immediately discriminate whether the statue is Indian or Japanese. The Indian statues of Gautam Buddha have a very athletic body: the belly is very small and the chest is very broad. But the Japanese Buddha is totally different; his chest is almost silent, because he breathes from the belly, but his belly is bigger. It doesn’t look very good because the idea prevalent in the world is the other way round, and it is so old. But breathing from the belly is more natural, more relaxed.

In the night it happens when you sleep: you don’t breathe from the chest, you breathe from the belly. That’s why the night is such a relaxed experience. After your sleep, in the morning, you feel so fresh, so young, because the whole night you were breathing naturally . . . you were in Japan!

These are the two points: if you are afraid that breathing from the belly and being attentive to its rising and falling will destroy your athletic form . . . men may be more interested in that athletic form. Then for them it is easier to watch near the nostrils where the breath enters. Watch, and when the breath goes out, watch.

These are the three forms. Any one will do. And if you want to do two forms together, you can do two forms together; then the effort will become more intense. If you want to do all three forms together, you can do all three forms together. Then the process will be quicker. But it all depends on you, whatever feels easy.

Remember: easy is right.

As meditation becomes settled, mind silent, the ego will disappear. You will be there, but there will be no feeling of “I.” Then the doors are open. Just wait with a loving longing, with a welcome in the heart for that great moment, the greatest moment in anybody’s life – enlightenment.

It comes . . . it certainly comes. It has never delayed for a single moment. Once you are in the right tuning, it suddenly explodes in you, transforms you. The old man is dead and the new man has arrived.

Big Chief Sitting Bull had been constipated for many moons. So he sent his favorite squaw to the medicine man for help. The medicine man gave the squaw three pills and told her to give them to the chief, and then report back to him the next morning.

The next morning the squaw came back with the message, “Big chief no shit.” So the medicine man told her to double the dose.

The next day, she came back with the message, “Big Chief no shit.” So again he told her to double the dose.

Again she came back with the same message. This went on for a week, and finally the medicine man told the squaw to give Sitting Bull the whole box.

The next morning, she came back with a very sad expression. “What is wrong, my child?” asked the medicine man. The little squaw looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, “Big Shit, no chief!”

One day it will happen to you, and that will be a great moment. That’s what I am calling the right moment.

-Osho

From The New Dawn, Discourse #16, Q2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Existence Takes Care – Osho

What does the phrase “existence takes care” mean?

Nirada, we are part of existence, we are not separate. Even if we want to be separate, we cannot be. Our life is part of being together with existence. And the more you are together with existence, the more alive you are. That’s why I insist continually to live totally, to live intensely, because the deeper your living is, the more you are in contact with existence. You are born of it; every moment you are renewed, rejuvenated, resurrected by each of your breaths, by each of your heartbeats — existence is taking care of you.

But we are not aware of our own being, we are not aware of our own breathing. Gautam the Buddha gave to the world a tremendously simple, but immensely valuable, meditation — vipassana. The word vipassana simply means watching your breath — the coming of the breath in, and the going of the breath out.

People used to ask Buddha,” What will happen by this?” He was not a theoretician. He would say to them, “Just do it and see. Experiment and report to me what happens. Don’t ask me.”

Just as you start watching your breathing, you start seeing a great phenomenon – that through your breath, you are continuously connected with existence, uninterruptedly — there is no holiday. Whether you are awake or asleep, existence goes on pouring life into you, and taking out all that is dead.

Carbon dioxide is dead, and if it accumulates in you, you will be dead. Oxygen is life, and you need continuously that the carbon dioxide be replaced by fresh oxygen. Who is taking care? Certainly you are not taking care! If you were taking care, you would have been dead long ago; you would not have been here to ask the question. You would have forgotten sometimes to breathe, or sometimes the heart would forget to beat, sometimes the blood would forget to circulate inside you — anything could go wrong. There are a thousand and one things in you which could go wrong. But they are all functioning in deep harmony. Is this harmony dependent on you?

So when I say, “existence takes care,” I am not talking philosophy. Philosophy is mostly nonsense. I am simply talking an actual fact. And if you become consciously aware of it, this creates a great trust in you. My saying to you, “existence takes care,” is to trigger a consciousness that can bring the beauty of trusting in existence.

I don’t ask you to believe in a hypothetical God, and I don’t ask you to have faith in a messiah, in a savior; these are all childish desires to have some father figure who takes care of you. But they are all hypothetical.

There has not been any savior in the world.

Existence is enough unto itself.

I want you to inquire into your relationship with existence, and out of that inquiry, arises trust — not belief, not faith. Trust has a beauty because it is your experience. Trust will help you to relax because the whole existence is taking care — there is no need to be worried and to be concerned. There is no need to have any anxiety, no need of any anguish, no need of what the existentialists call angst.

Trust helps you to relax, it helps you to let go, and the let-go prepares the ground for witnessing to come in. They are related phenomena.

Three gray-haired mothers, Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. Cornfield, and Mrs. Baum, were sitting in a Catskill hotel bragging about their children.

“My son is a doctor,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “and he’s an internist, a surgeon and a specialist.

He makes so much money, he owns an apartment building on Park Avenue in New York.”

“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Cornfield. “My son is a lawyer. He handles divorces, accidents, tax cases, insurance. He is so successful; he owns two apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue.”

“Ladies,” announced Mrs. Baum, “you should both be proud to have such successful sons. My boy, I have to tell you the truth, is a homosexual.”

“That’s a shame,” said Mrs. Cornfield. “And what does he do for a living?”

“Nothing,” said Mrs. Baum. “He has two friends: one is a doctor who owns an apartment building on Park Avenue, and the other is a lawyer who owns two apartment buildings.”

Existence takes care.

-Osho

From The Golden Future, Discourse #18

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Buddha’s Way was Vipassana – Osho

Seek light! And the only way to seek light is to learn how to meditate, how to be aware, how to be more watchful.

The Buddha’s way was Vipassana — vipassana means witnessing. And he found one of the greatest devices ever: the device of watching your breath, just watching your breath. Breathing is such a simple and natural phenomenon, and it is there twenty-four hours a day. You need not make any effort. If you repeat a mantra then you will have to make an effort, you will have to force yourself. If you say, “Ram, Ram, Ram,” you will have to continuously strain yourself. And you are bound to forget many times. Moreover, the word ‘Ram’ is again something of the mind, and anything of the mind can never lead you beyond the mind.

Buddha discovered a totally different angle: just watch your breath — the breath coming in, the breath going out. There are four points to be watched. Sitting silently just start seeing the breath, feeling the breath. The breath going in is the first point. Then for a moment when the breath is in it stops — a very small moment it is — for a split second it stops; that is the second point to watch. Then the breath turns and goes out; this is the third point to watch. Then again when the breath is completely out, for a split second it stops; that is the fourth point to watch. Then the breath starts coming in again . . . this is the circle of breath.

If you can watch all these four points you will be surprised, amazed at the miracle of such a simple process — because mind is not involved. Watching is not a quality of the mind; watching is the quality of the soul, of consciousness; watching is not a mental process at all. When you watch, the mind stops, ceases to be. Yes, in the beginning many times you will forget, and the mind will come in and start playing its old games. But whenever you remember that you had forgotten, there is no need to feel repentant, guilty — just go back to watching, again and again go back to watching your breath. Slowly, slowly, less and less mind interferes.

And when you can watch your breath for forty-eight minutes as a continuum, you will become enlightened. You will be surprised — just forty-eight minutes — because you will think that it is not very difficult . . . just forty-eight minutes! It is very difficult. Forty-eight seconds and you will have fallen victim to the mind many times. Try it with a watch in front of you; in the beginning you cannot be watchful for sixty seconds. In just sixty seconds, that is one minute, you will fall asleep many times, you will forget all about watching — the watch and the watching will both be forgotten. Some idea will take you far, far away; then suddenly you will realize . . . you will look at the watch and ten seconds have passed. For ten seconds you were not watching. But slowly, slowly — it is a knack; it is not a practice, it is a knack – slowly, slowly you imbibe it, because those few moments when you are watchful are of such exquisite beauty, of such tremendous joy, of such incredible ecstasy, that once you have tasted those few moments you would like to come back again and again — not for any other motive, just for the sheer joy of being there, present to the breath.

-Osho

From The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, V. 5, Discourse #1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Buddha’s Way was Vipassana.

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.

Gurdjieff’s Work is for a Particular Type – Osho

1 February 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says that he was at John Bennett’s school in England, where they did Gurdjieffian exercises: Actually I left there quite confused – I suppose there’s no way out of that. I never had much ability to do any of the exercises or things like that.]

It may not have suited you because Gurdjieff’s work is for a particular type, the will type – people who can work hard and very persistently, almost madly… because the whole thing depends on a very deep crystallisation of the ego. Once the ego is crystallised then further steps can be taken. But the whole Gurdjieffian system depends on you having a centre, a self.

Ordinarily you don’t have a centre. In fact Gurdjieff says you don’t have a soul – that is only a possibility; you may die without attaining it. What he calls the soul is nothing but a crystallised self, and crystallised so much so that it takes the position of being sovereign, enthroned, in the crowd of your many selves.

Ordinarily you have many egos, not one, and a conflict continuously going on. Sometimes one is in power, sometimes another is in power; a sort of democracy. A political head is not permanent; so much politics goes on within. So much politics and so much chaos goes on within that you never know where you are, who you are, what you are. Sometimes you have the feeling that you are this, but by the time you realise it that self is gone, is no more m power.

When you have a permanent self then Gurdjieff’s system really starts functioning. To attain that permanent self, one has to do tremendous work, in fact absurd work. Just out of too much work crystallisation happens; the work functions out of a chemical opportunity. For example in many sufi schools from where Gurdjieff got the point, you have to remain alert for the whole night – for months. The only process to be done is not to allow yourself to fall asleep; it is very difficult. After a few days it becomes almost impossible, but if you can go on and on and on suddenly you realise one day that you are tired no more, that you are no longer feeling sleepy. You are as fresh as if you have been sleeping all the time – a deeper layer of energy has been broken.

We have three layers of energy. One is day to day, routine; you need it for eating, digesting, working, moving. It is finished in twenty-four hours and the next day you create it again. And there is a second layer of energy which is deeper; it becomes available only in emergencies.

Suddenly the house is on fire. You were tired and were falling to sleep, but now you feel that much energy is available. You are running and doing things and for hours you are in hard work. Not for a single moment do you remember that you are tired or that you would like to fall asleep. This is an emergency level available only in dangerous times. Gurdjieff used to create many situations for this purpose – just to bring this emergency level into functioning.

And then there is a third layer that comes only when you are touching the point of death; not only emergency but a death situation. He himself did the last of his experiments, which was to go through a very dangerous car accident. It was managed, it was not an accident; he did it with everything planned. Even doctors could not believe how a man could survive after such a crash. It was impossible – but he survived. The whole body was broken, all the bones were broken, but he survived. The whole effort was to come to a point where death touches you; you were almost going to die – and then the third layer becomes available to you. If in that moment you can remain alert, then you have touched the very rock bottom of your being – call it God. So the first layer is only of the ego, the second layer is of the soul, and the third layer is that of God.

But the whole work of Gurdjieff is hard, work of the will, and I don’t see that you are the type. To you something more like Zen will be helpful. It moves from the very opposite pole: no effort, nothing to be done but relaxing and surrendering. It is not a question of work on your part. The only thing that you are expected to do is to accept non-doing and relax into it. That is totally different; not only different, but just the opposite polarity of the same thing.

And these are the two types – call them male and female, yin and yang, or whatsoever you like.

But you are the feminine type, and this is the problem and has to be understood: that all feminine types are attracted to a male type. So if you were attracted towards Bennet or Gurdjieff or that type of work, it’s natural. The male type is attracted to the feminine paths of surrender. That’s where confusion arises – the opposite is always attractive.

So try Zen – something in which you have just to sit, just to walk, just to be, as if nothing is to be done. Gurdjieff says you have not soul, it has to be created. Zen says you have everything – just relax and enjoy it; it is there.

Man is standing just in the middle of these two polarities. Move to any extreme and realisation is possible, because the jump is possible only from the extreme ends. You cannot jump from the middle of the road; you have to move to an extreme, and jump from there. So either move to the extreme of work, will – or move to the other extreme of surrender, no effort, passivity.

The whole of the East, particularly the Far East, has developed no-effort methods; and the Middle East, the Sufis particularly, have developed the path of will. So if you have been doing things just following the path of will, I will suggest to you that you move to the other extreme. Suddenly the key may fit….

Mm mm, we are doing here some Buddhist meditations – Vipassana. It will be very good if you can do one ten day course and see. It is just sitting….

Because if you can relax and be passive – and it will be very easy for you – all confusion will disappear. Confusion arises only when you are doing something which is not in tune with your type.

Once something is in tune with your type, all confusion disappears. Confusion is simply indicative, symptomatic, that you are doing something that doesn’t suit you. You may go on doing it and it does not suit you, you go on doing it and it does not suit you, and the mind will say that you are not doing hard enough and that is why there is confusion – and more and more confusion will come. Once something fits… it is just as when the shoe fits – suddenly you forget the shoe. Whenever a method fits, you simply forget about it and everything falls in line. Only the right key and the lock opens. Try to remember what I am saying. Your type is the feminine type. You are not an aggressive being; you are very non-violent. Not very out-going, not intrusive in any way; you would like to be within yourself. But this work, whatsoever you have been doing, can be helpful; at least it can show you that this is not your type.

You be here and try Vipassana.

-Osho

Taken from Above All Don’t Wobble, Chapter #17

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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