Tag: witness

Be Attentively Inattentive – Osho

This is what tantra says: the royal way – behave like a king, not like a soldier. There is nobody on top of you to force you and order you; there should not be really a style of life. That is the royal way. You should live moment to moment, enjoying moment to moment – spontaneity should be the way. And why bother about tomorrow? – This moment is enough. Live it! Live it in totality. Respond, but don’t react. “No habits” should be the formula.

I am not saying live in a chaos, but don’t live through habits. Maybe, just living spontaneously, a way of life evolves in you – but that is not forced. If you enjoy the morning every day, and through enjoyment you get up early in the morning, not as a habit, and you get up every day… and you may get up for your whole life, but that is not a habit. You are not forcing yourself to get up – it happens.

It is beautiful; you enjoy it, you love it.

If it happens out of love, it is not a style, it is not a habit, not a conditioning, not a cultivated, dead thing. Less habits – you will be more alive. No habits – you will be perfectly alive. Habits surround you with a dead crust and you become enclosed in them, you become encapsulated. Like a seed a cell surrounds you, hard. Be flexible.

Yoga teaches you to cultivate the opposite of all that is bad. Fight with evil and attend to good. There is violence – kill the violence within you and become nonviolent, cultivate nonviolence. Always do the opposite and force the opposite to become your pattern. This is the soldier’s way – a small teaching. Tantra is the great teaching – the supreme. What does tantra say? Tantra says: don’t create any conflict within yourself. Accept both, and through the acceptance of both, a transcendence happens, not victory but transcendence. In yoga there are victories, in tantra there are none. In tantra . . . simply transcendence. Not that you become nonviolent against violence, you simply go beyond both, you simply become a third phenomenon – a witness.

I was sitting once in a butcher’s shop. He was a very good man and I used to go to visit him. It was evening and he was just going to close the shop when a man came and asked for a hen. And I knew because just a few minutes before he had told me that everything was sold today – only one hen was left. So he was very happy; he went in, brought the hen out, threw it on the scale and said, “That will be five rupees.”

The man said, “It is good, but I am going to give a party and many friends are coming and this hen seems to be too small. I would like to have a little bigger one.”

Now I knew that he had no hen left, this was the only one. The butcher brooded a little, took the hen back inside the room, stayed there a little, came back again, threw the hen on the scale – the same one – and said, “This will be seven rupees.”

The man said, “Tell you what, I will take both of them.”

Then the butcher was really in a fix.

And tantra puts the whole existence itself in a fix. Tantra says, “I will take both of them.”

There are not two. Hate is nothing but another aspect of love. Anger is nothing but another aspect of compassion, and violence is nothing but another face of nonviolence. Tantra says, “Tell you what, I will take both of them. I accept both.” And suddenly through this acceptance there is a transcendence, because there are not two. Violence and nonviolence are not two. Anger and compassion are not two. Love and hate are not two.

That’s why you know, you observe, but you are so unconscious that you don’t recognize the fact. Your love changes into hate within a second. How is it possible if they are two? Not even a second is needed: this moment you love, and next moment you hate the same person. In the morning you love the same person, by the afternoon you hate, in the evening you love again. This game of love and hate goes on. In fact, love and hate is not the right word: love-hate, anger-compassion – they are one phenomenon, they are not two. That’s why love can become hate, hate can become love, anger can become compassion, compassion can become anger.

Tantra says the division is brought by your mind and then you start fighting. You create the division first; you condemn one aspect and you appreciate another. You create the division first, then you create the conflict and then you are in trouble. And you will be in trouble. A yogi is constantly in trouble because whatsoever he will do the victory cannot be final, at the most temporary.

You can push down anger and act compassion, but you know well that you have pushed it down into the unconscious and it is there – and any moment, a little unawareness and it will bubble up, it will surface. So one has to constantly push it down. And this is such an ugly phenomenon if one has to constantly push down negative things – then the whole life is wasted. When will you enjoy the divine? You have no space, no time. You are fighting with the anger and greed and sex and jealousy and a thousand things. And those thousand enemies are there; you have to be constantly on watch, you can never relax. How can you be loose and natural? You will always be tense, strained, always ready to fight, always afraid.

Yogis become afraid even of sleep, because in sleep they cannot be on watch. In sleep all that they have forced down surfaces. They may have attained to celibacy while they are awake, but in dreams it becomes impossible – beautiful women keep on floating inside, and the yogi cannot do anything. Those beautiful women are not coming from some heaven as it is written in Hindu stories, that God sent them. Why should God be interested in you? A poor yogi, not doing anybody any harm, simply sitting in the Himalayas with closed eyes, fighting with his own problems – why should God be interested in him? And why should he send apsaras, beautiful women, to distract him from his path? Why? Nobody is there. There is no need for anybody to send anybody. The yogi is creating his own dreams.

Whatsoever you suppress surfaces in the dreams. Those dreams are the part the yogi has denied. And your waking hours are as much yours as your dreams are yours. So whether you love a woman in your waking hours, or you love a woman in dream, there is no difference – there cannot be, because it is not a question of a woman there or not, it is a question of you. Whether you love a picture, a dream picture, or you love a real woman, there is in fact no difference – there cannot be, because a real woman is also a picture inside. You never know the real woman; you only know the picture.

I am here. How do you know that I am really here? Maybe it is just a dream – you are dreaming m here. What will be the difference if you dream me here and you see me actually here? – and how will you make the difference? What is the criterion? … Because whether I am here or not makes no difference – you see me inside your mind. In both the cases – dream or real – your eyes take the rays in and your mind interprets that somebody is there. You have never seen any actual person, you cannot see.

That’s why Hindus say this is a maya, this is an illusory world. Tilopa says, “Transient, ghostlike, phantomlike, dreamlike is this world.” Why? – because in dream and actuality there is no difference.

In both the cases you are confined in your mind. You only see pictures, you have never seen any reality – you cannot see, because the reality can only be seen when you become real. You are a ghostlike phenomenon, a shadow – how can you see the real? The shadow can see only the shadow. You can see reality only when the mind is dropped. Through the mind everything becomes unreal. The mind projects, creates, colors, interprets – everything becomes false. Hence the emphasis, continuous emphasis on how to be no-minds.

Tantra says don’t fight. If you fight you may continue your fight for many lives and nothing will happen out of it, because in the first place you have missed – where you have seen two was only one. And if the first step has been missed, you cannot reach the goal. Your whole journey is going to be continuously a missing. The first step has to be taken absolutely rightly, otherwise you will never reach the goal.

And what is the absolutely right thing? Tantra says it is to see the one in two, to see the one in many.

Once you can see one in duality, already the transcendence has started. This is the royal path.

Now we will try to understand the sutra.

To transcend duality is the kingly view.

To transcend, not to win – to transcend. This word is very beautiful. What does it mean, to “transcend”?

It is just as if a small child is playing with his toys. You tell him to put them away and he becomes angry. Even when he goes to sleep he goes with his toys, and the mother has to remove them when he has fallen asleep. In the morning the first thing that he demands to know is where his toys are and who has taken them away. Even in the dream he dreams about the toys. Then suddenly one day he forgets about the toys. For a few days they remain in the corner of his room, and then they are removed or thrown away; never again does he ask for them. What has happened? He has transcended, he has become mature. It is not a fight and a victory; it is not that he was fighting against the desire to have toys. No, suddenly one day he sees this is childish and he is no more a child; suddenly one day he realizes that toys are toys, they are not real life and he is ready for the real life. His back is turned towards the toys. Never again in dreams will they come; never again will he think about them. And if he sees some other child playing with toys, he will laugh; he will laugh knowingly… a knowing laugh, a wise laugh. He will say, ”He’s a child, still childish, playing with toys.” He has transcended.

Transcendence is a very spontaneous phenomenon. It is not to be cultivated. You simply become more mature. You simply see the whole absurdity of a certain thing . . . and you transcend. One young man came to me and he was very much worried. He has a beautiful wife, but her nose is a little too long. So he was worried and he said, “What to do?” Even plastic surgery was done – the nose became a little more ugly; because there was nothing wrong, and when you try to improve something where nothing is wrong, it becomes more ugly, it makes more of a mess. Now he was more troubled and he asked me what to do.

I talked to him about the toys and I told him, “One day you will have to transcend. This is just childish – why are you obsessed so much with her nose? The nose is just a tiny part, and your wife is so beautiful and such a beautiful person – and why are you making her so sad because of her nose?” – because she has also become touchy about her nose, her nose has become as if it was the whole problem of life. And all problems are like this! Don’t think that your problem is something greater – all problems are like this. All problems are out of childishness, juvenile, they are born out of immaturity.

He was concerned so much with the nose that he would not even look at his wife’s face, because whenever he saw the nose he was troubled – but you cannot escape things so easily. If you are NOT looking at the face because of the nose, still you are reminded of the nose. Even if you are trying to evade the issue, the issue is there. You are obsessed. So I told him to meditate on the wife’s nose.

He said, “What? I cannot even look.”

I told him, “This is going to help – you simply meditate on the nose. People used in the ancient days, to meditate on the tip of their own nose, so what is wrong in meditating on the tip of your wife’s nose? Beautiful! You try.”

He said, “But what will happen out of it?”

“You just try,” I told him, “and after a few months you tell me what happens. Every day, let her sit before you and you meditate on her nose.” One day he came running to me and he said, “What nonsense I have been doing! Suddenly, I have transcended. The whole foolishness of it has become apparent – now it is no more a problem.”

He has not become victorious because, in fact, there is no enemy there so that you can win, there is no enemy to you – this is what tantra says. The whole life is in deep love with you. There is nobody who is to be destroyed, nobody who is to be won, nobody who is an enemy, a foe to you. The whole life loves you. From everywhere the love is flowing.

And within you also, there are no enemies – they have been created by priests. They have made a battleground; they have made you a battleground. They say, “Fight this – this is bad! Fight that – that is bad!” They have created so many enemies that you are surrounded by enemies and you have lost contact with the whole beauty of life.

I say to you: anger is not your enemy, greed is not your enemy; neither is compassion your friend, nor is nonviolence your friend – because friend or foe, you remain with the duality. Just look at the whole of your being and you will find they are one. When the foe becomes the friend and the friend becomes the foe, all duality is lost. Suddenly there is a transcendence, suddenly an awakening. And I tell you, it is sudden, because when you fight you have to fight inch by inch. This is not a fight at all. This is the way of the kings – the royal path.

Says Tilopa,

To transcend duality is the kingly view.

Transcend duality! Just watch and you will see there is no duality.

Bodhidharma, one of the rarest jewels ever born, went to China. The king came to see him, and the king said, “Sometimes I am very much disturbed. Sometimes there is much tension and anguish within me.”

Bodhidharma looked at him and said, “You come early tomorrow morning at four o’clock, and bring all your anguish, anxieties, disturbances with you. Remember, don’t come alone – bring all of them!”

The king looked at this Bodhidharma – he was a very weird-looking fellow; he could have scared anybody to death – and the king said, “What are you saying? What do you mean?”

Bodhidharma said, “If you don’t bring those things, then how can I set you right? Bring all of them and I will set everything right.”

The king thought, “It is better not to go. Four o’clock in the morning – it will be dark, and this man looks a little mad. With a big staff in his hand, he can even hit. And what does he mean that he will put everything right?”

He couldn’t sleep the whole night because Bodhidharma haunted him. By the morning he felt that it would be good to go, “because who knows? – maybe he can do something.”

So he came, grudgingly, hesitatingly, but he reached. And the first thing Bodhidharma asked – he was sitting there before the temple with his staff, was looking even more dangerous in the dark, and he said, “So you have come! Where are the other fellows that you were talking about?”

The king said, “You talk in puzzles, because they are not things that I can bring – they are inside.”

Bodhidharma said, “Okay. Inside, outside, things are things. You sit down, close your eyes and try to find them inside. Catch hold of them and immediately tell me and look at my staff. I am going to set them right!”

The king closed his eyes – there was nothing else to do – he closed his eyes, afraid a little, looked inside here and there, watched, and suddenly he became aware the more he looked in, that there was nothing – no anxiety, no anguish, no disturbance. He fell into a deep meditation. Hours passed, the sun started rising, and on his face there was tremendous silence.

Then Bodhidharma told him, “Now open your eyes. Enough is enough! Where are those fellows? Could you get hold of them?”

The king laughed, bowed down, touched the feet of Bodhidharma, and he said, “Really, you have set them right, because I could not find them – and now I know what is the matter. They are not there in the first place. They were there because I never entered within myself and looked for them. They were there because I was not present inside. Now I know – you have done the miracle.”

And this is what happened. This is transcendence: not solving a problem but seeing whether really there is a problem in the first place. First you create the problem and then you start asking for the solution. First you create the question and then you roam around the world asking for the answer. This has been my experience also, that if you watch the question, the question will disappear; there is no need for any answer. If you watch the question, the question disappears – and this is transcendence. It is not a solution because there was no question at all to solve. You don’t have a disease. Just watch inside and you will not find the disease; then what is the need of a solution?

Every man is as he should be. Every man is a born king. Nothing is lacking, you need not be improved upon. And people who try to improve you, they destroy you; they are the real mischief makers. And there are many who are just watching like cats for mice: you come near them and they pounce upon you and they start improving you immediately. There are many improvers – that’s why the world is in such a chaos – there are too many people trying to improve on you. Don’t allow anybody to improve upon you. You are already the last word. You are not only the alpha; you are the omega also. You are complete, perfect.

Even if you feel imperfection, tantra says that imperfection is perfect. You need not worry about it. It will look very strange to say that your imperfection is also perfect, nothing is lacking in it. In fact, you appear imperfect not because you are imperfect but because you are a growing perfection. This looks absurd, illogical, because we think perfection cannot grow, because we mean by perfection that which has come to its last growth – but that perfection will be dead. If it cannot grow then that perfection will be dead.

God goes on growing. God is not perfect in that way, that he has no growth. He is perfect because he lacks nothing, but he goes from one perfection to another, the growth continues. God is evolution; not from imperfection to perfection but from perfection to more perfection, to still more perfection.

When perfection is without any future, it is dead. When perfection has a future to it, still an opening, a growth, still a movement, then it looks like imperfection. And I would like to tell you: be imperfect and growing, because that is what life is. And don’t try to be perfect, otherwise you will stop growing. Then you will be like a Buddha statue, stone, but dead.

Because of this phenomenon – that perfection goes on growing – you feel it is imperfect. Let it be as it is. Allow it to be as it is. This is the royal way.

 To transcend duality is the kingly view. To conquer distractions is the royal practice.

Distractions are there, when you will lose your consciousness again and again. You meditate, you sit for meditation, a thought comes – and immediately you have forgotten yourself; you follow the thought, you have got involved in it. Tantra says only one thing has to be conquered, and that is distractions.

What will you do? Only one thing: when a thought comes, remain a witness. Look at it, observe it, allow it to pass your being, but don’t get attached to it in any way, for or against. It may be a bad thought, a thought to kill somebody – don’t push it, don’t say, “This is a bad thought.” The moment you say something about the thought, you have become attached, you are distracted. Now this thought will lead you to many things, from one thought to another. A good thought comes, a compassionate thought: don’t say, “Aha, so beautiful! I am a great saint. Such beautiful thoughts are coming to me that I would like to give salvation to the whole world. I would like to liberate everybody.” Don’t say that. Good or bad, you remain a witness.

Still, in the beginning, many times you will be distracted. Then what to do? If you are distracted, be distracted. Don’t be worried too much about it, otherwise that worry will become an obsession. Be distracted! For a few minutes you will be distracted, then suddenly you will remember, “I am distracted.” Then it is okay, come back. Don’t feel depressed. Don’t say, “It was bad that I was distracted” – again you are creating a dualism: bad and good. Distracted, okay – accept it, come back. Even with distraction you don’t create a conflict.

That’s what Krishnamurti goes on saying. He uses a very paradoxical concept for it. He says if you are inattentive, be attentively inattentive. That’s okay! Suddenly you find you have been inattentive, give attention to it and come back home. Krishnamurti has not been understood and the reason is that he follows the royal path. If he had been a yogi he would have been understood very easily. That’s why he goes on saying there is no method – on the royal path there is no method. He goes on saying that there is no technique – on the royal path there is none. He goes on saying no scripture will help you – on the royal path there is no scripture.

Distracted? – The moment you remember, the moment this attention comes to you that “I have been distracted,” come back. That’s all! Don’t create any conflict. Don’t say, “This was bad”; don’t feel depressed, frustrated that you have been again distracted. Nothing is wrong in distraction – enjoy it also.

If you can enjoy the distraction, less and less it will happen to you. And a day comes when there is no distraction – but this is not a victory. You have not pushed the distracting trends of your mind deep into the unconscious. No. You allowed it also. It too is good.

This is the mind of tantra, that everything is good and holy. Even if there is distraction, somehow it is needed. You may not be aware why it is needed; somehow it is needed. If you can feel good about everything that happens, then only are you following the royal path. If you start fighting with anything whatsoever, you have fallen from the royal path and you have become an ordinary soldier, a warrior.

To transcend duality is the kingly view. To conquer distractions is the royal practice.

-Osho

From Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, Discourse #7

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.

Loneliness is a Misunderstanding – Osho

I have often heard you speak of aloneness and loneliness as being opposed; of aloneness being a state in which one is so full – fulfilled; of loneliness being a state in which one is missing the other, feeling very empty. Reading Ryokan’s poetry, I feel some loneliness, yet that man is known as an enlightened Zen monk.

Standing alone beneath the solitary pine,

Quickly the time passes.

Overhead the endless sky.

Who can I call to join me on the path?

 

In the hankering for a true companion, in the need to share that richness, I wonder if in the heart of aloneness, there is a kind of loneliness. Please explain if aloneness and loneliness are interrelated.

Kavisho, loneliness is loneliness, and aloneness is aloneness — and the two never meet anywhere. They cannot by their very nature. Aloneness is so full, so abundantly full of yourself there is no space for anybody else. And loneliness is so empty, so dark, so miserable that it is nothing but a constant hunger for someone to fill it . . . if not to fill it, at least to help you to forget it.

You are quoting from Ryokan’s poetry. I don’t think Ryokan is yet enlightened. He was certainly a Zen monk, and a great poet, but he fell short of being a mystic. He reached very close, but even to reach very close is not to be enlightened.

I have also loved Ryokan’s poetry. But beware of poets, because they appear so close to the mystics. Sometimes their words are more juicy than the words of the mystics because the poet is the artist of words; the mystic is an expert of silence.

Ryokan was a Zen monk; hence something of the mystic echoes in his poetry. But that is because he lived in an atmosphere in communion with the mystics. But he himself was not a mystic.

These are his lines, and you can see immediately what I mean:

Standing alone beneath the solitary pine,

Quickly the time passes.

Overhead the endless sky.

Who can I call to join me on the path?

 

He is still in need of a companion, and he is still searching. He is still talking of “the path,” and the enlightened man knows there is no path. All paths are wrong, without exception, because every path leads you away from yourself. And to come to yourself you don’t need any path: you have to be just awake, and you are there.

It is almost like you are asleep in your room and dreaming that you are far away in London, in New York, in San Francisco. Do you think that if suddenly you are awakened you will find yourself in San Francisco? You were there but that was only a dream. Awake, suddenly you find you are in your miserable room, and you have not even gone out of the door. You may be angry with the person who has awakened you, but he has brought you back to the reality. And there was no need of booking a ticket because you had never gone out; you were only dreaming.

You are only dreaming what you are. If you wake up, suddenly you will find all that you used to think your personality, your body, your mind, your knowledge, your feelings, your love — they were all dreams. You are only a witness. But you cannot dream about the witness; that is an impossibility.

The witness remains a witness, never becomes a dream. Your aloneness is your witness, is your being. And it is so full, there is no need of any companion. And what is the need of a path? Where are you going? You have arrived.

Ryokan was a beautiful poet, and perhaps a very disciplined monk, but he was not a mystic and certainly not an enlightened man.

Kavisho, let this be an opportunity to remind you again: beware of poets. They are like false coins, although they look exactly like authentic coins. But the false is false, and there is no way to make it real. Ryokan has still to wake up and see there is no solitary pine tree standing alone, there is no need of a companion, and there is no path. One is, and has always been, at home.

To realize this at-homeness is aloneness.

Going around in your dreams you will always find yourself lonely. Loneliness is a misunderstanding. Aloneness is an awakening.

-Osho

From The Golden Future, Discourse #20, 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.

Watchfulness is a Simple Step – Osho

I am a first grade student in the subject of witnessing. Whenever I am listening to you talking about watching, witnessing, something in me feels so thrilled, excited, joyful, and a big “Ah!” comes up.

Recently I have heard you talk about watching the witness. Yet I’m already happy and grateful for the few moments a day when I remember my hands, my body, having a little distance from my thoughts and emotions.

Could you please start with ABC on this subject?

The phenomenon of witnessing has no ABC or XYZ.

It is a simple phenomenon; it is a single step.

It is one process.

You can watch the body; the watching is the same. You can watch the mind – the object has changed, but the watching is the same. You can watch the emotions – again objects have changed, but the process of watching is the same. You can watch the watcher – a tremendous quantum leap, but still the subject is the same; only the object has changed.

Now watchfulness itself is being used as an object. And you have stepped behind watchfulness; you can watch it. And you cannot go beyond this watchfulness. You have come to the very end of your inner core.

So you are going perfectly right. Enjoy it, rejoice in it. More and more silence and peace will be coming your way, more and more blissfulness and benediction. There is no end as far as rewards are concerned, because they are all along the way. From the beginning to the very end, each step brings a new space – but it is the same step.

The journey of one thousand miles is done by the simple step, one step. You cannot take two steps at one time. Step after step, just a single step can be stretched to ten thousand miles or to infinity.

Watchfulness is a simple step. There is no alphabet in it. There are no beginners in it; there are no amateurs in it and no experts in it. Everybody is in the middle, always in the middle.

You are moving perfectly right. Just go on.

-Osho

From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse #11, 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.

Your Intensity, Your Wholeness is Your Witness – Osho

Can one be absorbed in doing something – for instance, these dynamic mediation techniques – with absolute total intensity and at the same time remain a witness who is separate, apart?

The same is the problem in many forms. You think that a witness is something apart, separate. It is not. Your intensity, your wholeness, is your witness. So when you are witnessing and doing something you are not two – the doer is the witness.

For example, you are dancing here in kirtan. You are dancing: the dancer and the witness are not two, there is no separation. The separation is only in language. The dancer is the witness. And if the dancer is not the witness, then you cannot be total in the dance, because the witness will need some energy and you will have to divide yourself. A part will remain a witness and the remaining will move in the dance. It cannot be total; it will be divided. And this is not what is meant, because really this is the state of a schizophrenic patient – divided, split. It is pathological. If you become two you are ill. You must remain one. You must move totally into the dance, and your totality will become the witness. It is not going to be something set apart, your wholeness is aware. This happens.

So don’t try to divide yourself. While dancing become the dance. Just remain alert; don’t fall asleep, don’t be unconscious. You are not under a drug, you are alert, fully alert. But this alertness is not a part standing aloof; it is your totality, it is your whole being.

But this is again the same thing as whether two lovers are two or one. Only on the surface are they two, deep inside they are one. Only in language will you appear two, the dancer and the witness, but deep down you are the one. The whole dancer is alert. Then only peace, equilibrium, silence, will happen to you. If you are divided there will be tension, and that tension will not allow you to be totally here and now, to merge into existence.

So remember that, don’t try to divide. Become the dancer and still be aware. This happens. This I am saying through my experience. This I am saying through many others’ experience who have been working with me. This will happen to you also. This may have happened to many already. But remember this: don’t get split. Remain one and yet aware.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #11, Q3

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

For a related post see Q2, Love Becomes the Door.

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

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

 

 

 

This Witnessing Consciousness – Osho

When the self as consciousness, which is truth, knowledge, infinity, and bliss, devoid of all its attributes, shines like pure gold freed from all its forms such as a bangle and a crown, it is called twam or thou, The brahman is truth, infinity and knowledge. That which is destructible is truth. And that which does not perish even after the destruction of space, time, et cetera is called the avinashi, the imperishable.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

There is a dialogue, a deep dialogue between my existence and existence itself, a constant dialogue, a continuity every moment: the incoming breath, the outgoing breath. I am constantly linked with the universe, with existence.

If we take two points, between these two points the dialogue continues. One point is “I,” and the other point – the total – is “thou.”

A non-religious mind, a material mind, will say that the dialogue is not between “I” and “thou,” the dialogue is between “I” and “that,” because the world is just a thing; it is not a person. And really, if the world is just a thing and it is not a person, then there can be no dialogue, there can be no intimacy. But if the whole world is just a thing, then myself – I myself cannot be a person; this “I” is also a thing. This is what is meant by a materialist conception of the world.

Of course there are relations – stimulus-response relations – but no dialogue, no intimacy. You cannot address existence as “thou,” because there then is no poetry, and then there is no religion. Among things only science can exist; among persons religion grows.

The religious attitude towards existence is a personal attitude: the whole universe is taken as a person. The you can talk, then you can love, then you can be angry with the total; and your life becomes deeply rich, because life and richness develop only through deeper dialogues with the reality.

But still, even if a religious person thinks that the world is not just material, the world is personal, and existence has a personality – then too, “I” continues to be the center; “thou” is just the periphery, just the circumference. I remain at the center of the universe, and the whole universe just belongs to me as a periphery.

In this sutra, the rishi says that when the pure consciousness is known, when the witnessing consciousness is known, there is a mutation, a total change of emphasis. “Thou” becomes the center and “I” becomes the periphery. “Thou” becomes the center, and “I” just the periphery. This pure consciousness therefore is known as “thou – twama, tu. It is not known as “I” because now I exists only as a periphery. It is really non-existential because periphery, in fact, is non-existential. It is just a line, a demarcation line and nothing else. It belongs to the center; it is just a projection of the center, an extension of the center.

When pure consciousness is known, pure consciousness is known as “thou.” This has many implications. One, the moment we conceive pure consciousness as “thou,” the whole universe, the whole of existence becomes a very different thing than we know it now. If you address the tree as “thou,” the tree is not the same; it has become a person, and a new dimension opens – a new dimension. And when the tree has become thou, you also cannot remain the same, because with a new relationship, with a new dimension, you are also different.

But as we are, even a living person, even a human person, is not “thou” for us. We use the word, but not meaningfully. We behave with persons as if they are not persons. For example, you love someone and then you begin to possess him or possess her. A person can never be possessed; only a thing can be possessed. How can a person be possessed? And how can love be possessive? If love becomes possessive it means that you are transforming a person into a thing.

That’s why a beloved may be a person, but a wife becomes just a thing, just a thing to be used. Why this possession? Because we just go on saying “thou,” but we never mean it – we never mean it. If you are really saying “thou” to someone, it means you accept the other as a person and you cannot possess him. A person means a freedom; a person means: now you cannot be the master. So we turn even persons into things. But with this pure consciousness developing inside, things turn into persons, and the whole universe by and by takes a shape of “thou,” of a great “thou” – everything becomes a person.

We live among things, mm? Even if we are living among persons, we live among things. And the more you live among things, the more you will be a thing yourself – that’s bound to happen. So a person who tries to possess someone becomes himself a possession. The phenomenon is reciprocal – if I try to possess someone as my property, I am bound to become myself a thing, a property. So it is not that the husband possesses the wife; the wife also possesses the husband. They both are possessors and both are things.

The moment you begin to feel someone as a thing, you begin to expect. With a person there can be no expectation, because person means a freedom. You have loved me this evening, you have been loving towards me; if I expect that tomorrow also you must give me love, it means I am thinking of you as a thing. And if tomorrow you are not going to love me, then I will be angry, I will be frustrated, and I will take revenge. I will begin to feel that my possession is being lost. Why?

With a thing you can expect that it will behave the same tomorrow also – but not with a person. A person is a constant flux, the freedom to move. He may be something else tomorrow, who knows? He may be not love me at all. If I take you as a person, then I will never be frustrated with you, because the frustration comes when I take you as a thing.

But this pure consciousness begins to feel the whole universe as a “thou”; therefore this consciousness is never frustrated. Never! There is no reason to be frustrated at all. Whatsoever happens, happens. It is never against expectation, because there has been no expectation at all. If tomorrow the tree moves from my garden to somewhere else, even that will not frustrate me. I will just say, “Oh, so thou hast gone. So thou hast moved.”

The truth, the infinite truth, the eternal consciousness, the formless is known as “thou,” never as “I.” Then you begin to live in a world of freedom, of non-possession. And when you behave in a non-possessive way, the whole world begins to behave non-possessively towards you. The whole universe becomes non-possessive of you.

This is what is meant by freedom: if you give freedom to the whole universe, you become free. But this freedom happens only when “I” is not at the center, but “thou.” Really even “thou” is not exactly what the case is; even “thou” is a bit less than true, because “thou” cannot exist without a subtle feeling of “I.” I cannot address someone as “thou” without myself being there, even indirectly, even in a very absent ways – even unconsciously. But the “I” must be there to address someone as “thou.”

So this is just to express something in language which cannot be expressed. Really, when you are not in the center, not even the “thou” is the center. “I and thou” both dissolve into oneness. But that oneness is inexpressible, and still, the rishi tries to say something about it to the disciple, to the enquirer. So what to say? He says at least one thing is certain; it cannot be called “I,” it is called “thou.” And when the disciple is ready, the inexpressible can also be indicated. But in the beginning, it is more than enough. “I” is not in the center, that consciousness is impure. And “I” is in the center, so consciousness IS impure. That happens only when you know the formless. And if it is not happening and “I” is in the center, that means you are in the form, obsessed with the form, obsessed with the superficial. You have not gone deep; you have not gone to the innermost core of your being. You have just lived outside your house; you have not know it from the inside.

“I” in the center is symbolic, indicative that we have not known what we are. We have known only identities with the for. The body is form, the mind is form, thought is form – all that we know about ourselves is form. And these forms happen upon the ocean of the formless. With that formless coming into your awareness, the “I” becomes the periphery and “thou,” the center.

Now the definition of truth. What is truth? Everyone is seeking, and everyone is trying to find it out, but what is it? How to define it? The materialist mind defines truth as the fact; whatsoever is objectively true, objectively factual, is truth. And personal experience which cannot be objectified will not be considered as truth. So if Jesus says, “I see my father in heaven,” either he is a dreamer or just psychotic, neurotic, just mad – because no one else can see the father in heaven. So either he is just a poet, just an imaginary dreamer, or just mad, insane, abnormal . . . seeing things which are not.

This definition of truth as fact is dangerous in many ways. It is useful, it is utilitarian, it helps – particularly it helps the scientific research – but it is dangerous. Because even if there is no objective proof, even if all cannot see a particular thing, the thing can be. It is not necessarily that because all others are not seeing it, it is not there.

For example: there are colorblind people; out of ten one is colorblind. By being colorblind it is meant that he cannot see a particular color. For example, George Bernard Shaw was blind to yellow; he couldn’t make any distinction between yellow and green. But for sixty years continuously he was not aware of it, because how could he be aware? It was just an accident that he became aware.

On one of his birthdays, someone presented a suit of a green color, but he forgot to send a green tie with it. So Bernard Shaw went to purchase a green tie, but he purchased a yellow one, because there was no distinction for him between yellow and green. His secretary said, “What are you doing? This will look very funny. This is yellow and the suit is green.” For the first time after sixty years’ living in this colorful world, he became aware that he was colorblind. He could not see any distinction between yellow and green – both were the same.

If ten persons are colorblind just like Bernard Shaw, and you can see yellow and ten cannot see yellow, what will be the truth? You will be either neurotic or just a dreamer.

There are personal faculties which may not have developed as a communal thing – the community may be lacking. There are personal faculties . . . But this definition of truth as fact will deny them. So sometimes even very intelligent people, very logical rational people, go on being superstitious in denying things which are, but which cannot be shown objectively. The whole psychic phenomenon has suffered only because of this. There are people who have faculties, but only individuals. So either they are deceivers – either they are playing tricks, deceiving others – or they are just claiming things which are not real.

There is one man, Peter Herkos. He can see things from very, very far off. Three hundred miles distance makes no difference to him. From here he can see three hundred miles away, a village on fire. No one would believe him, no one; but by and by, people became aware that yes, he was seeing things, and things proved objectively true. There was a fire and someone died. He said from just here that someone had died in that village, and that very moment someone had died; but still scientists tried to disprove it. They thought somehow that he was maneuvering things – someone might have telephoned, some signal, something… something was there which they did not know about. But many, many experiments were carried out, and still no deception was found. And the thing became more amazing because Herkos himself was a skeptic; he himself did not believe that such things could happen. How could they happen? So he said, “If this would have been the case with someone else, I myself would say that he is deceiving. But how can I say it now? I am not deceiving at all – I go on seeing things.” But they are personal . . .

A buddha experiencing what he called nirvana – it is a personal experience. It is not a fact, but it is a truth. So it is not necessarily that truth should be a fact, and not vice versa also that a fact is bound to be a truth.

The rishi defines truth more deeply, more absolutely. He says truth means that which is always unchanging, which is always. If a fact changes, it is also not a truth. And if a dream remains continuously, eternally, it is true; it is truth. So by truth, the Upanishads mean: the absolutely eternal.

What is absolutely eternal in this world of movement and change? Only change seems to be eternal and nothing else. Everything changes except change. And change cannot be called the eternal truth, because the very definition is “the unchanging one,” and change means “changing one.” Where is the eternal? – we never see it, we never feel it, we never know it – nowhere; everywhere is form and movement and change, and everything is impermanence itself.

Buddha says, “Everything is impermanent, everything – even you yourself – just impermanent. Nothing is permanent here.” So is there any truth, or not? Only one thing seems to be deeply eternal: the see-er, and nothing else – the witnessing soul, nothing else. Buddha says, “Nothing is permanent.” But who has seen this? This “nothing is permanent” – who has seen this? Someone must have seen this impermanency. Someone must have felt this constant flux, change. And to feel the change, this constant change, to be aware of it, at least the awareness must be eternal. So that’s why truth and the inner consciousness become synonymous.

For a philosophically minded person the enquiry into truth becomes a logical enquiry – metaphysical, philosophical. He goes on finding what is truth, logically, rationally. He may create a philosophy but he is not going to find the truth. For a religious mind, the enquiry begins to be a search for the eternal. And when a religious man says, “I am seeking the truth,” he means “I am seeking that which is always, that which is eternal – the eternity itself.” Time ceases, space ceases, everything is dissolved, but that which is remains still.

This witnessing consciousness . . . You are ill, then you are healthy; you are rich, then you are poor; you are respected, and then you are condemned; you are in hell, and you are in heaven – everything is changing. Only one who goes on knowing, “Now I am in hell, now I am in heaven; now they are respecting me, now they are condemning me; now I am ill, now I am healthy; now I am this, now I am that” – only one, and all else goes on moving, moving, moving. But this movement is known, and the knower is immovable, because only an unmoving knower can know movements. Only an immovable knower can know movements. Only the eternal one can know change. If the inner one is also changing, then change cannot be felt. You know that once you were a child, now you are not. If the inner consciousness itself has changed, who will remember that you were a child? If you have completely changed, then there will be no continuity. Who will remember that once you were a child and now you are not? Something behind all change remains the same. That something remembers, “I was once a child, now I am young, now I am going to be old, now I am going to die.”

This continuity, this consciousness, for the rishi of the Upanishads, is the truth. This truth is eternal, infinite, and the nature of it is just knowing, pure knowing. It is not love, it is not bliss; it is pure knowing, because even love has to be known, even bliss has to be known. So ultimately, love and bliss and all else become objects of knowledge. This remains to be always the knower, always the transcending knower, the transcendental one.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #11

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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In the Gap Descends the Witness – Osho

You describe witnessing as a knack. Often, late at night, which I am in a very relaxed state, witnessing happens. At other times, though, it just seems to be mind watching mind watching mind. Please comment on this knack.

The moment I say that witnessing is a knack, it implies that there is no way to explain it, no way to teach someone about it, no way to train someone in it.

That’s the whole meaning of the word “knack.”

I can say things which are close enough, but they can never be exact descriptions of the knack. It is not an art, not a craft that can be explained in detail, step by step. But if it is happening to you, there is no problem. You should know what it is; you should know the taste of it.

The problem is arising because you must be trying to do it; not allowing the knack to happen, but trying to make an art of it, so that you can control it. Man wants to control everything; it is part of his basic ego.

The knack cannot be controlled. Either you know it or you don’t know it. You can play around it, and sometimes by chance you stumble upon it: suddenly you have come to know it. That is the moment when you have to be aware in what situation it is happening.

In the night, when you are relaxed, you find it happening. That gives you a clue that relaxation, not an effort to attain witnessing, allows the knack to happen. At other times when you are trying, making an effort, an endeavor to get it, then it is mind watching mind watching mind. It is always the mind.

Mind cannot get the knack.

Mind can learn any art, any technique, any craft: a knack is beyond it. It is not its language, it is not its world. A knack is something beyond mind.

So you have to be clearly aware: the thing is happening to you, the failure of the mind is happening to you. Whenever you are trying, you watch – then you find that it is mind watching another part of the mind. And then you find the one who has found this is also another part of the mind. And this can go on ad infinitum.

Mind is capable of dividing itself infinitely. But finally you will find only mind – you will not come to meditation, you will not come to witnessing.

So your failure is helpful. It says, “Don’t make the effort, don’t try.” Your success indicates that it happens when you are relaxed, when you are not trying. In relaxation, mind is no longer functioning.

The mind is going to be in sleep, it is ready to go into sleep; it is not going into an effort because effort will keep you awake. You cannot fall into sleep by effort.

Sleep and witnessing have something in common.

You cannot make the effort – one thing. Every effort is going to be a failure – another thing. Unless you learn that every effort fails, you cannot get the knack. But once in a while when your mind is getting ready to go to sleep – in between, when you are still awake, and the mind is relaxing to go into sleep – suddenly, witnessing happens. You have got the knack!

Now don’t ask me what it is. That may destroy even your night witnessing, because you may start trying it. Just let it happen as it is happening in the night. You can, at the most, create the same atmosphere whenever you want it to happen, and wait. You cannot force it.

One has to learn a great lesson – that there are things beyond you which you cannot force; you can only remain open, available, waiting, and they come. The moment you become tense to get hold of them, they slip away. It is just like in the open fist you have all the air possible. With the closed fist all the air disappears.

You may be thinking that with a closed fist you are catching hold of the air. No, it has slipped out. It does not belong to the closed fist, it belongs only to the open hand – and it is easily available. You just have to see when it happens, what the surroundings are.

The surroundings mean you are going into sleep, you are tired of the whole day’s work – you don’t want to work anymore. In the gap, before the mind slips into sleep and you lose consciousness – the mind is preparing, is getting ready to go into sleep, but you are still awake – in that minute gap, witnessing happens.

Now, you cannot try the knack. You can simply create the outer situation. In the day, anytime, let the mind go into relaxation. Don’t try – as if you are going to create witnessing: you are simply allowing mind to rest. And at a certain point, that same gap will appear, and in the gap descends the witness.

This is the mystery of a knack – its strangeness and its simplicity too.

– Osho

From Light on the Path, Discourse #32

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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Your Lost Innocence – Osho

While watching the changing world outside and the movement of thoughts and emotions within, I become aware of a presence that doesn’t change. It is impossible to define what this is in words, but I do know that it is always the same presence, that when it comes, it is everywhere and nowhere at once; that nothing I’m thinking or feeling can connect with it; that it is so still it doesn’t exist and so sublet that at times it is too alive to bear. I remember encountering this presence first as a child. Beloved Master, am I rediscovering my lost innocence?

Dhyan Arjuna, yes you are rediscovering your lost innocence. Religion is a rediscovery. It is something that we had known, that we had lived, but we have left far behind – so far behind that it seems almost as if it was not a reality but only a dream scene, just a faint memory, a faraway echo. But if you become meditative that echo starts coming closer, the dream starts changing into a reality and the forgotten language of innocence is suddenly remembered. Hence it is not a discovery, it is a rediscovery.

Every child is born feeling the whole universe, not knowing his separation from it. It is by slow education that we teach him to feel separate. We give him a name, we give him an identity, we give him qualities, we give him ambitions – we create a personality around him.

Slowly, slowly, the personality becomes thicker through upbringing, education, religious teaching; and as the personality becomes thicker, he starts forgetting who he used to be in his mother’s womb – because there he was not a doctor, an engineer, there he had no name, there he was not separate from existence. He was so together with the mother – and beyond the mother there was nothing.The womb was all, his whole universe, a very tiny experience of the ultimate reality.

What happens to the child in the mother’s womb happens again to the sage when the whole universe becomes just a womb, and he becomes part of the womb. The child in the mother’s womb never worries, “What will happen tomorrow?” He has no money, no bank account, no business, utterly unemployed, no qualifications. He does not know when night comes, when day comes, when seasons change; he simply lives in utter innocence, in deep trust that everything will be okay, as it has been before. If it is okay today it will be okay tomorrow. He does not think this way, it is just an intrinsic feeling – not words because he does not know words. He knows only feelings, moods, and is always in a jubilant mood, rejoicing – absolute freedom without any responsibility.

Why does every child coming out of the womb give so much pain to the mother? Why is every child born crying? If you try to look deeply into these small matters, they may reveal to you great secrets of life. The child resists getting out of the womb because it has been his home. He does not know any calendar. Nine months are almost an eternity – forever. Since he has known that he is, he has been in the womb, always and always.

Now suddenly his home is being taken away. He is being thrown out, expelled; he resists with all the power that he has. He clings to the womb, that is the problem. The mother wants him to be born sooner, because the longer he remains inside, the more pain she has to suffer. But the child clings, and he is always born crying – every child, without exception.

Only about one man, Lao Tzu, is it said that he was born laughing. It is possible; he was an exceptional man, crazy from the very beginning. Not knowing exactly what to do, that this is the time to cry, he laughed. And he remained that way his whole life, just doing wrong things at wrong times. And the story of his whole life’s strangeness begins with the laughter. Everybody was shocked because no child has ever done that.

But that is the only exception – which may be simply a myth, which may be just a retrospective idea. Seeing Lao Tzu’s whole life, the people who wrote about him must have thought that his beginning could not be the same as everybody else’s; it has to be a little crazy. His whole life . . . his beginning has to be consistent with his life. Perhaps it is only a myth. But even historically, if he had laughed it is an exception, not the rule.

Why is every child born crying? Because his home is being deserted, his world is destroyed – suddenly he finds himself in a strange world amongst strange people. And he continues to cry because every day his freedom becomes less and less, and his responsibility becomes more and more weighty. Finally, he finds there is no freedom left but only duties to be fulfilled, responsibilities to be carried out; he becomes a beast of burden. Seeing this with the clarity of innocent eyes, if he cries you cannot condemn him.

The psychologists say the search for truth, for God, for paradise, is really based on the experience of the child in the womb. He cannot forget it. Even if he forgets it in his conscious mind, it goes on resounding in his unconscious. He is searching again for those beautiful days of total relaxation with no responsibility, and all the freedom of the world available.

And there are people who have found it. My word for it is enlightenment. You can choose any word, but the basic meaning remains the same. One finds that the whole universe is just like a mother’s womb to you: you can trust, you can relax, you can enjoy, you can sing, you can dance. You have an immortal life and a universal consciousness.

Dhyan Arjuna, what is happening to you is exactly a rediscovery. It has to happen to every sannyasin. But they don’t allow it.

People are afraid to relax. People are afraid to trust. People are afraid of tears. People are afraid of anything out of the ordinary, out of the mundane. They resist, and in their resistance, they dig their own grave and they never come to juicy moments, to ecstatic experiences, which are their right; they just have to claim them.

A Jewish man living in Los Angeles goes to see a psychiatrist. He introduces himself as Napoleon “So what seems to be the problem?” asked the doctor.

“Well, Doc, actually everything is great. My army is strong, my palace magnificent and my country is prospering. My only problem is Josephine, my wife.”

“Ah,” says the doctor, “and what is her problem?”

Throwing his hands up in despair, the man says, “She is thinking she is Mrs. Goldberg.”

In his tensions, in his anxieties, in his problems, man loses himself in the crowd. He becomes someone else. He knows that he is not the role he is playing; he is somebody else. This creates a tremendous psychological split in him. He cannot play the role correctly because he knows it is not his authentic being, and he cannot find his authentic being. He has to play the role because the role gives him his livelihood, his wife, his children, his power, his respectability, everything. He cannot risk it all, so he goes on playing the role of Napoleon Bonaparte. Slowly, slowly he starts believing it himself. He has to believe it, otherwise it will be difficult to play the part.

The best actor is the one who forgets his individuality and becomes one with his acting; then his crying is authentic, his love is authentic, then whatever he says is not just the prompted role, it comes from his very heart – it looks almost real. […]

When you have to play a part, you have to be deeply involved in it. You have to become it. Everybody is playing some part, knowing perfectly well that this is not what he is supposed to be. This creates a rift, an anxiety, and that anxiety destroys all your possibilities of relaxing, of trusting, of loving, of having any communion with anybody – a friend, a beloved, a master. You become isolated. You become, with your own decisions, self-exiled, and then you suffer.

So much suffering in the world is not natural; it is a very unnatural state of affairs. One can accept once in a while somebody suffering, but blissfulness should be natural and universal. But you have to deserve it, and for deserving you don’t have to do some great acts – go to the moon or climb Everest.

You have to learn small secrets. But there are people who are not ready to learn small secrets – it is against their egos to learn anything. I have been getting rid of such people continuously, because they are unnecessarily wasting their time and occupying other people’s places.

Just the other day one man wrote, “I enjoy very much when you come in and I enjoy very much when you go back, but in the middle, sitting for one or two hours, I don’t enjoy at all.” Now what to do with such a case? If there are many such cases I can manage a special session for them: I will come and I will go and they are free. There is no need to sit in between. But these stupid people go on hanging around my neck unnecessarily.

Hymie sees an old friend standing on the other side of the road from the Thames Bridge. “David, what are you standing there for?”

“I am going to jump off that bridge. My wife has left me, my children won’t speak to me, and I am bankrupt.”

“So why stand there?”

“The traffic. I could get killed crossing the road.”

He wants to commit suicide by jumping from the bridge and he is afraid of the traffic. Such is the wavering mind of man – one moment one wants to commit suicide, the next moment one wants to live. There is no decisiveness. And without decisiveness, your life will remain wishy-washy. It cannot become a splendor.

-Osho

From The Rebel, Discourse #4, 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.

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Bring the Dawn, Dispel the Darkness – Osho

When I was a student at a Japanese Buddhist University I heard the word consciousness. Beloved Osho, what does it mean?

Kranti Satbodha, consciousness you already have, but only in a very small proportion. It is just like an iceberg – one tenth is above water and the rest is under water. Just a little bit is conscious in you.

I am saying something and you are listening to it; without consciousness it is not possible. These pillars of Chuang Tzu Auditorium are not listening – they don’t have consciousness. But we are aware only of a very small piece of consciousness.

Meditation is the whole science of bringing more and more consciousness out of darkness. The only way is to be as conscious as possible twenty-four hours a day. Sitting, sit consciously, not like a mechanical robot; walking, walk consciously, alert to each movement; listening, listen more and more consciously, so that each word comes to you in its crystal-clear purity, its definitiveness. While listening, be silent, so that your consciousness is not covered by thoughts.

Just this moment, if you are silent and conscious you can hear small insects singing their song in the trees. The darkness is not empty, the night has its own song; but if you are full of thoughts then you cannot listen to the insects. This is just an example.

If you become more and more silent, you may start listening to your own heartbeat, you may start listening to the flow of your own blood, because blood is continuously flowing all through your body. If you are conscious and silent, more and more clarity, creativity, intelligence, will be discovered.

There are millions of geniuses who die without knowing that they were a genius. There are millions of people who don’t know why they have come, why they lived and why they are going.

It happened . . . George Bernard Shaw was traveling from London to some other place in England. The ticket checker came and Bernard Shaw looked in all his pockets, opened his suitcase – he was perspiring – the ticket was missing.

The ticket checker said, “I know you; everybody knows you, there is no need to be worried. You must have put it somewhere, don’t be so tense”. Bernard Shaw said, “Who is being tense about the ticket?” The ticket checker said, “Then why are you perspiring and looking so nervous?”

He said, “The problem is that now the question arises of where I am going. It was written on the ticket. Now, are you going to tell me where I am going? Who is going to tell me?” The ticket checker said, “How can I tell you where you are going?”

So Bernard Shaw said, “Then you should go and leave me alone. I have to find the ticket. It is a question of life and death. Where am I going? I must be going somewhere, because I have come to the station, purchased the ticket, entered the compartment. So one thing is certain, I must be going somewhere.”

This is the situation most people never come to know – their consciousness is a hidden treasure. One does not know what it contains unless you awaken it, unless you bring it into light, unless you open all the doors and enter into your own being and find every nook and corner. Consciousness in its fullness will give you the idea of who you are, and will also give you the idea of what your destiny is, of where you are supposed to go, of what your capacities are. Are you hiding a poet in your heart, or a singer, or a dancer, or a mystic?

Consciousness is something like light. Right now you are in deep darkness inside. When you close your eyes there is darkness and nothing else.

One of the great philosophers of the West, C.E.M. Joad, was dying, and a friend, who was a disciple of George Gurdjieff, had come to see him. Joad asked the friend, “What do you go on doing with this strange fellow, George Gurdjieff? Why are you wasting your time? And not only you . . . I have heard that many people are wasting their time.”

The friend laughed. He said, “It is strange that those few people who are with Gurdjieff think that the whole world is wasting its time, and you are thinking that we are wasting our time.” Joad said, “I don’t have much longer to live; otherwise, I would have come and compared.”

The friend said, “Even if you have only a few seconds more to live, it can be done here, now.” Joad agreed. The man said, “You close your eyes and just look inside, and then open your eyes and tell me what you find.”

Joad closed his eyes, opened his eyes and said, “There is darkness and nothing else.” The friend laughed and he said, “It is not a time to laugh, because you are almost dying, but I have come at the right time. You said that you saw only darkness inside?” Joad said, “Of course.”

And the man said, “You are such a great philosopher; you have written such beautiful books. Can’t you see the point, that there are two things – you and the darkness? Otherwise, who saw the darkness? Darkness cannot see itself – that much is certain – and darkness cannot report that there is only darkness.” Joad gave it consideration and he said, “My God, perhaps the people who are with Gurdjieff are not wasting their time. This is true, I have seen the darkness.”

The friend said, “Our whole effort is to make this “I,” the witness, stronger and more crystallized, and to change the darkness into light. And both things happen simultaneously. As the witness becomes more and more centered, the darkness becomes less and less. When the witness comes to its full flowering, that is the lotus of consciousness – all darkness disappears.”

Satbodha, we are here in a mystery school, doing nothing else than bringing more and more crystallization to your witness, to your consciousness; so that your inner being, your interiority, becomes a light, so full and overflowing that you can share it with others.

To be in darkness is to be living at the minimum. And to be full of life is to live at the maximum.

– Osho

From The Razor’s Edge, Discourse #11

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.

Listen to the Song of Life – Osho

The fourth sutra:

Listen to the song of life.

Look for it and listen to it first in your own heart. At first you may say it is not there; when I search, I find only discord. Look deeper. If again you are disappointed, pause and look deeper again. There is a natural melody, an obscure fount in every human heart. It may be hidden over and utterly concealed and silenced – but it is there.

Listen to the song of life. Life is a melody; existence is musical – for so many reasons. Existence is harmony; it is not anarchy. It is not a chaos; it is a cosmos, a unity. So complex, so vast, but still united. And life pulsates – from the lowest atom to the highest star. Wave lengths differ, pulsations are of different frequencies, but the whole pulsates in a deep unity, in a harmony. Plotinus has called this ‘the music of the spheres’. The whole existence is a music. It is musical in another sense also. Yoga, tantra and all the schools that have been working esoterically for the inner journey of human consciousness say that life consists of sound; existence consists of sound.

Science differs, but not very much. Science says that the basic particle is electricity not sound. But science also says that sound is a mode of electricity, a sort of electrical expression – that sound consists of electrical particles.

Yoga says that the basic element, the basic unit of existence, is sound, and electricity is a mode of sound. That’s why we have the myth that, through music, fire can be created. If fire [if electricity] is nothing but a combination of sounds, then fire can be created.

This difference between the scientific attitude and the yoga attitude is worth understanding. Why does science say that sound is nothing but electricity and yoga say that electricity is nothing but sound? Because science approaches existence through matter, and yoga approaches it through life.

The deeper you penetrate within yourself, the more you will find a new world of sound and silence. When you reach to the innermost core of your being, you will find the soundless sound. That’s what Hindus have called nad: anahat nad – sound which is uncreated, which is your very life. It is not created by anything; it is not produced. It is just there. It is cosmic.

Aum is the symbol of that sound. If you go deeply within, when the ultimate core is reached, you hear the sound aum. It is not that you produce it. It is simply there, vibrating. It is the basic element of life.

This sutra says Listen to the song of life. But you cannot listen to it unless you have already heard it within your own heart. Whatsoever you can see must be seen first within your own heart otherwise you cannot see it. You cannot hear it. The basic experience must be the inner. Only then can the outer be experienced.

Whatsoever you know in the outer world is nothing but a reflection or a projection. If you are filled with love, the whole of life appears to be filled with love. If you are sitting with your beloved or with your lover, the whole existence is okay. Nothing is wrong, there is no misery. The whole existence is filled with a deep music, because you are filled with a deep music. There is no discord in you; your heart feels a deep harmony. You are so one with your beloved or your lover or your friend that this oneness spreads all over.

But if you are in deep agony – suffering, sad, depressed – the whole existence seems to be depressed. It is you, not the existence. The existence remains the same, but the climates of your mind change. In one climate the existence appears sad. In another climate the existence seems to be celebrating. It is not; existence is always the same. But you go on changing, and your mind goes on being projected. Existence works as a mirror. You are mirrored in it.

But if you think that whatsoever you have interpreted is the fact and not just a projection, you will fall into deeper and deeper illusions. But if you can understand that it is not a fact but a fiction of the mind – that it depends on you, not on existence itself – then you can change. You can go through a mutation, an inner revolution can happen, because now it is up to you.

The world can be a chaos if you are a chaos. The world can be a cosmos if you are a cosmos. The world can be dead if you are dead inwardly; the world can be alive, abundantly alive, if you are alive within. It depends on you. You are the world. Only you exist really, nothing else. Everything else is just a mirror.

I remember one anecdote.

An emperor, a very powerful emperor, created a palace, a palace of mirrors. All around, all over the palace, there were mirrors. The emperor was a very beautiful person and he was so infatuated with his own beauty that he was never attracted in any way to anyone else. He was a narcissist. He loved only himself and he thought that everyone else was ugly.

Finally, he debarred everyone else from entering his palace. He lived alone there, looking at his own face everywhere in the palace. There were mirrors everywhere, thousands and thousands of reflections of his own face.

But then by and by he got bored, fed up. He started disliking himself. He kept meeting himself the whole day, encountering himself. He became ill; he became sad and depressed. He became so dull that he was almost on the verge of death. He was simply fed up with himself.

Then suddenly he remembered: “This palace is my own creation. I need not be here. There is no one forcing me to be here.”

So he broke one mirrored wall – he threw a chair through it. And for the first time in many years, the sky looked within. It was a full-moon night and the full moon peeped within. A fresh world, a new world, alive. He came in contact with it.

He jumped out of his hellhole, out of the prison. Now he was not dead, not dull, not on the point of death. He started dancing, he started celebrating. He forgot his face completely. And it is said that he never looked in a mirror again.

This is what is happening to each one of us. It is not an anecdote about some unknown emperor. It is about you. You live in a mirrored house. When you look at your wife’s face it is not her real face that you see. It is a projection. It is your own face reflected in your wife’s face. When you look at a flower it is not the flower you are looking at. It is your own mental flower projected onto the real flower that you are looking at.

Everywhere, you move with your own mirrors, your own images. And then, of course, you are bored, you are fed up with the whole thing, and you say, “Life is misery.” You say, “There seems to be no meaning to it.” You say, “It would be better to commit suicide. There seems to be no purpose to life. I’m going nowhere, moving around and around in a circle. It leads nowhere. Every day is the same, the same repetition.” But it is not because of existence; it is because of you.

Throw out those mirrors, break those mirrors. Come out of your palace, come out of your imprisonment, and look at the world not through thoughts, not through moods. Look at the world with a naked eye, listen to it with a naked ear. Don’t allow any mental state to come between you and the world.

This is what I call meditation: looking at the world without the mind. Then everything is new, fresh. Everything is alive, eternally alive; everything is divine. But to come to this point you will have to make deep contact, a deep penetration, into your own heart; because there, life’s juice is awaiting you. You may call it ‘elixir’. It is awaiting you.

This sutra says:

Listen to the song of life.

Look for it and listen to it first in your own heart. At first you may say it is not there; when I search, I find only discord. Look deeper. If again you are disappointed, pause and look again. There is a natural melody, an obscure fount in every human heart. It may be hidden over and utterly concealed and silenced – but it is there.

When, for the first time, one tries to enter within, one encounters noise: crowds, thoughts, madness; everything but silence. But don’t be disheartened. Be indifferent to all this noise that you encounter within.

When I say, “Be indifferent,” I mean don’t do anything about it; just be indifferent. Don’t say, “This is bad.” Don’t say, “How can I stop it?” Don’t try to stop it; you cannot. Allow it to flow – just as if clouds are floating in the sky and you are watching them. Or as if traffic is going on in the street and you are watching. Just stand aside and watch the traffic moving on, or stand on the bank and look at the river flowing. Don’t do anything; just stand there. Indifferent, not interested, not in any way involved.

If you can do this – this is what witnessing is. If you can do this, by and by you will penetrate deeper and deeper. Don’t be disheartened, because ultimately, finally, a deep musical source, a deep harmony, a deep rhythmic existence is waiting within you. Penetrate this crowd and you will reach it.

At the very base of your nature, you will find faith, hope and love. He that chooses evil refuses to look within himself, shuts his ears to the melody of his heart, as he blinds his eyes to the light of his soul. He does this because he finds it easier to live in desires. But underneath all life is the strong current that cannot be checked; the great waters are there in reality. Find them . . .

At the very base of your nature, you will find faith, hope and love – these three things. If you can make contact with your inner music, these three things will flower spontaneously within you: faith, hope and love. But these words have very different meanings. They don’t mean the ordinary things we mean by them.

When we say faith what we mean is belief. Belief is not faith. Belief means a forced thing. Doubt is hidden there, but you have wrapped yourself in a belief and pushed the doubt within.

For example, you say, “I believe in God.” What do you mean? Is there really no doubt? Doubt is there. The belief cannot cancel the doubt; it can only hide it. Really, because of the doubt you believe. You are afraid of the doubt. If you don’t believe, if you are doubtful, you will feel inconvenienced. Belief gives you convenience, comfort, solace, consolation. You feel at ease. But the belief is just a mental, intellectual facade. Behind it, the doubt is always lurking.

You will find doubt hidden within every belief. If you say, “I believe strongly,” that means you have very strong doubts behind it. Those who say, “I believe absolutely,” have absolute doubts within them. What is the need of belief? The need is because doubt is there and you feel inconvenienced by it.

That’s why so many people are theists and so few are atheists. But in reality, the world is full of atheists and to find a theist is very difficult; it is impossible. The whole thing is just false. People say that they believe in God because it seems difficult not to believe, inconvenient. Socially, formally, it is not good.

Not that they believe. They doubt, they know they doubt, but they deceive themselves. Their life remains untouched by their beliefs; their religion remains a Sunday religion. Their life is not touched at all. On Sunday they go to church and pray as a social formality, as good manners. Then, out of church, they are the same again. For six days they remain irreligious; for one day they become religious. Is it possible? Six days you remain ugly and one day you become beautiful? Six days you remain bad and one day you become good? Six days you remain evil and suddenly one day you become saintly? Is it possible?

It is impossible. The seventh day must be the false day; the six days are real. The seventh day is just a trick to deceive oneself and others. Belief is false. It is helpful, utilitarian, but untrue. Faith is totally different. Belief means doubt is hidden there; faith means doubt has disappeared. This is the difference.

Faith means the doubt has disappeared. Belief means the doubt is there and you have created a belief against it You doubt whether God exists or not but you say, “I believe,” because your wife is ill and if you don’t believe, who knows? God may be there. Or your job is in danger of being lost. Who knows? God may help. And if you don’t believe, then he will not help. Utilitarian; it has some utility for you. But doubt is there.

Faith means doubt has disappeared. It is the absence of doubt. But it can disappear only when you have known something within; when belief has not been given to you, knowing has arisen in you. When you have come to know, to realize, then faith arises.

And hope. This hope is not that of desire. This hope doesn’t mean hope for the future. It is not in any way concerned with the future. This hope means simply a hopeful attitude about everything. About everything. An optimistic view, a hopeful attitude. Looking at the golden side of things. Whatsoever happens you remain hopeful; you are not depressed.

Depression comes only if you look at the wrong side of things. Everything has two sides: the wrong side and the right side. You can look at the wrong side and then you will be depressed, or you can look at the right side, the golden side, and you will be happy. So, it depends.

The person who is hopeless always looks at what is wrong. The first thing he tries to find is what is wrong. If I tell him, “This man is a beautiful flute player,” he will first look at him and say, “No, I cannot believe that he can play the flute because he is a thief.” What is the concern? A man can be a thief and a good flute player. But he will deny the possibility. He will say, “No, he cannot be. He is a thief, a well-known thief. How can he be a good flute player?”

This is the hopeless mind. With a mind which is filled with hope, if I say, “This man is a thief,” he will say, “But how can he be a thief? He is such a good flute player?”

How do you look at things? With hope or with hopelessness? Ordinarily, unless you have touched the inner music, you will look at the world with a hopeless attitude. Then everything is wrong and whatsoever is done is wrong. And from everywhere, you will derive misery. You will become an expert at being miserable. Anything will help you to be miserable, anything.

When you touch this inner silence, this inner music, you become hopeful; you become hope. Whatever is, you see. You always touch the innermost core of it, the heart of it. And then, there is no depression.

And love. Ordinarily, love is a relationship. But when you touch the innermost being, love becomes your state not a relationship. It is not between you and someone else. Now it is that you have become love, you have become loving. It is not a relationship. Even if you are alone, sitting under a tree, you will be loving. Lonely, alone, with no one there, you will be loving.

It is just like a lonely flower that grows on an unknown path. No one passes there, but the flower goes on spreading its perfume. It is its state. It is not that when some king passes the flower will give its perfume. It is not that if some beggar passes the flower will not give its perfume. If a beggar passes, the flower gives its perfume. If a king passes, the flower gives its perfume. If no one passes, then too the flower goes on spreading its perfume. The perfume is the flower’s very state of being. It is not a relationship.

Our love is a relationship. And when love is a relationship, it creates misery. When love is a state of being, it creates bliss.

A Buddha is also in love, but he is not trying to love you. Simply because of the way he is, love spreads. Love becomes a perfume and goes to the far corners of the earth.

These three qualities will evolve: faith, hope and love. And if these three are there, you don’t need anything else. These three will lead you to the ultimate peak of life and existence.

. . . know that it is certainly within yourself. Look for it there, and once having heard it you will more readily recognize it around you.

If you can feel your inner music, inner truth, inner faith, inner love, inner hope, you will start recognizing it around you. The whole universe will change for you because you have changed. And whatsoever you feel within, now will be felt all around.

The world remains the same; but when you change, everything changes. With you, your universe becomes different. If you are rooted in the divine, the whole existence is rooted in the divine. If you are rooted in evil, the whole universe is a hell. It depends on you. It is you, magnified.

-Osho

From The New Alchemy to Turn You On, Discourse #11

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.

Obeying the Warrior Within – Osho

These are the sutras achieved by ultimate wisdom. They are deep and sometimes very complex, even contradictory, but they are the ultimate flowering of wisdom.

When a Buddha becomes a Buddha or a Christ becomes a Christ, these sutras are revealed. If you can understand them, even understanding will transform you. If you can feel the reality hidden in them, you will be a different man altogether. So try to understand them very deeply.

The first sutra:

Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior.

He is thyself, yet thou art but finite and liable to error. He is eternal and is sure. He is eternal truth. When once he has entered thee and become thy warrior, he will never utterly desert thee, and at the day of the great peace he will become one with thee.

Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. We are in a constant fight with ourselves. The struggle continues night and day. The whole life is a battlefield, but you reach nowhere. You are neither defeated totally nor are you victorious. The struggle continues, and life energy is dissipated unnecessarily. You just waste yourself and your existence. What is the cause? Why are you never victorious? Why does the struggle never end?

You fight with sex, you fight with anger, you fight with greed. You fight with everything, but you still remain in the grip of those things you are fighting. The more you fight sex, the more you are in its grip and the more you feel you have to fight more. It is a vicious circle. You fight more and then sex becomes more attractive; sex becomes more magnetic. You take many decisions not to be angry, but every decision is a failure. And the total result is this: that in the end you feel you are guilty, inferior; in the end you feel that you are not capable of doing anything, you feel an inner defeat.

This has happened to the whole of humanity. Humanity is so sad now not because of anything else that has happened in this age but only because so many ages of religious fight, so many centuries of continuous religious struggle, have proven to the human mind that nothing can be achieved. The human mind feels a deep failure. This creates sadness and depression.

Hope has become hopeless. There seems to be no way out of it. You can struggle, but everything is futile, a wastage; no one achieves anything. This has happened not because the human mind is not capable of victory. This has happened because the base of the struggle is wrong, the whole effort of the struggle is wrong. Why? Because you are fighting with yourself. How can you win?

If I create a conflict between my two hands, left and right, I can go on fighting but there will be no victory and no defeat, because both hands belong to me. The urge for sex belongs to me and the urge to go beyond sex also belongs to me; they are both my hands. I can go on fighting, I can go on changing from one to the other – sometimes siding with the right hand, sometimes with the left – but nothing is going to happen because I am within both. How can there be defeat or victory? For defeat and victory at least two are needed and I am alone, fighting with myself. This whole fight is a shadow fight, nonsense.

Then what to do? This sutra gives you the key: Stand aside in the coming battle and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. Stand aside. Be a witness.

Remember this word ‘witness’. This is one of the key words in the search for spirituality. If you can understand this word and practice it, you don’t need anything else. Even this one key will open all the doors of paradise. This is a master key. Any lock can be opened by it. What does it mean to stand aside?

When sex arises in you, you get identified with it. Then, when you have moved through the sex act, depression sets in, because you hoped so much and nothing has happened. You longed too much, you expected too much, and nothing has happened. The whole thing has just been a fraud. You feel betrayed, deceived. Then repentance sets in and you start thinking in anti-sex terms. You start thinking how to be brahmacharya, how to be a celibate. You think in terms of how to be a monk; you go against sex. Then you get identified with that ‘anti’ attitude.

Witnessing means that when sex arises, stand aside and look at it. Don’t get identified. Don’t say, “I have become sex.” Say, “Sexual desire has arisen in me. Now I must observe it.” Don’t be for it and don’t be against it. Remain quiet and calm – just an observer.

That doesn’t mean to suppress it, because suppression will not allow you to know what it is. Don’t suppress it. Suppression means that you are identified with the ‘anti’ attitude. Remember this: if you suppress, you are identified with the ’anti’ attitude. Don’t suppress, don’t get identified. Allow it to happen. Don’t be afraid; just wait and watch.

Move in the sex act but with a watchful eye, knowing well what is happening and allowing it to happen. Not disturbing it, not suppressing it – allowing it to become manifest in its totality, but standing aside as if you are watching someone else.

The act will move to its peak. Go with it, but always standing by the side. Know whatsoever is happening in detail. Be alert; don’t lose awareness. Then, from the peak, you will start falling down and the ‘anti’ attitude will set in. Be alert again. Don’t get identified with the ’anti’ attitude. Look at what is happening: the wave has gone up to a peak; now the wave is falling down. Sex is the wave arising. brahmacharya, the ‘anti’ attitude toward sex, is the wave falling down.

Be aware, be alert. Don’t be for or against; don’t condemn; don’t make any judgement. Don’t be a judge; just be a witness. Don’t say, “This is good. That is bad.” Don’t say anything. Just be alert and watch what is happening. Be true to the facts; don’t give any interpretation. That’s what witnessing means.

If you can be a witness to sex, and to the anti-sex attitude, you will come to a great understanding. That understanding will tell you that sex and anti-sex are two poles of one wave. They are not really opposite to one another. They are just the rising and falling down of the same wave. They are one, so there is nothing to choose. If you choose one you have already chosen the other, because it is part of it, the hidden part of it. If you choose one you have already chosen the other because the other cannot be separated from it. They are one, so there is no choice. Then, choicelessness happens to you.

That choicelessness is the path of victory. Now you don’t choose; there is nothing to choose. And a miracle happens: when you don’t choose, both fall down. Sex and brahmacharya both disappear and for the first time you are not in their clutches, for the first time you are not in the hold of the opposites.

Witnessing is the beginning, and witnessing is the end. The first step and the last step are one. Witnessing is the means and witnessing is the goal. Then the fight goes on, but you are not the warrior. Now the fighting is on a different level. What is that level?

Now, sex and anti-sex are both present to you simultaneously. This simultaneous presence of the opposites is the fight. They fight with each other, and you remain a witness. Because they are opposites, anti-poles, they destroy each other completely and both disappear. They are of the same strength and the same energy. They cut each other, they negate each other.

This is the fight. But you are not the warrior; you are just a witness. You are just looking from without: a watcher on the hills. Down in the valley the fight will go on, but now you are just a watcher on the tower. You just look down and you know they are fighting; the opposites are fighting. But they negate each other, because they are of the same strength.

Remember this: only a very deeply sexual person can become a brahmacharya. Much sexual desire can be converted into brahmacharya. If you are just ordinarily sexual you cannot become a brahmacharya because to become a brahmacharya much energy is needed. And the opposite energies are always equivalent, so only very deeply sexual persons become brahmacharyas. Ordinary persons, with ordinary, natural sex, never move to that extreme. They cannot. The energy to move comes from sex. Opposite energies are equivalent.

You need not fight; you need not take part from this side or that side. That is the way of defeat. Just remain aside, get out of the circle – be a witness.

It is difficult, because the mind wants to choose; the mind always chooses. Mind is the chooser because, without choosing, there will be no mind; you will fall out of the mind. That’s why it is so difficult not to choose.

Even what I am saying . . . Many of you may choose to follow what I am saying, but you will choose to do so for a reason. People come to me and when I say, “Be a witness,” they immediately ask, “If I become a witness will sexuality disappear?” Then they cannot become a witness because they have already chosen. They ask, “Will sexuality disappear if I become a witness?” They are even ready to become a witness if sexuality will disappear!

But they have made a choice. They have decided that sexuality is bad and brahmacharya is good. They ask me, “If I become a witness will I become brahmacharya, will I become celibate?” They are missing the whole point. I am saying, “Don’t choose,” and they have already chosen. They want to use witnessing as an instrument for their choice. But you cannot use witnessing that way.

One man came to me. He was a seeker, a serious seeker. But stupid. There are many stupid seekers: serious. And when I say stupid I mean this: they can’t understand what they are doing.

The man was suffering from sex. Everyone is suffering because of sex. The suffering has gone so deep that you don’t only suffer because of your own sexuality; you suffer because of others’ sexuality also. This seems to be madness. You suffer because of your own sexuality and you suffer because of others’ sexuality also, because of what others are doing.

Enough misery can be created by your own sexuality. Why be concerned with others? But that misery doesn’t seem to be enough for you so you go on collecting what others are doing: who is doing wrong and who is being good. Who are you to decide? From where have you been given the right? Who are you to become a policeman?

The man who came to see me was a policeman. He was suffering because of what everyone else was doing. But I told him, “Don’t be worried about others. The real problem must be within you. You have not yet come to terms with your sexuality, that is the problem. Why suffer because of others? Why create other problems? Just to escape from your own problems? Just to be occupied? Who has appointed you to be a policeman? Why waste your life? You must be deeply sex-obsessed; that’s why you are concerned with others.”

So he said, “You have touched the right wound. I am now sixty-five, and I am still suffering. As I become older, I suffer more. It seems that sexuality is growing with my age. The energy is less, but the sexuality is more. As death is coming near, I feel to be more and more sexual. My whole mind, for twenty-four hours, is obsessed with sex.”

I told him, “You have been fighting sex continuously.” He is a great seeker. He has remained with so many saints, so many gurus. I told him, “They have destroyed you. You have reached nowhere. Whatsoever you have been doing is wrong. Now, don’t fight sex anymore.”

The man became afraid. He said, “I have been fighting sex. And this is the reason: even with fighting I am so sexual. Now you say, ‘Don’t fight it!’ Then I will become completely mad.”

So I told him, “You have tried fighting. Now try the other. You have reached nowhere. Now, don’t fight!”

“Then what,” he asked, “am I supposed to do?”

I told him, “Be a witness.”

He asked, “Will sexuality disappear then?”

I told him, “If you become a witness with a partisan view – for brahmacharya, against sex – you cannot become a witness. And if you cannot become a witness, sexuality cannot disappear. Become a witness. Sexuality will disappear, but remember, brahmacharya will also disappear with it.” There is no need of brahmacharya when sexuality disappears. It is part of the same game. When the disease has disappeared, what is the use of the medicine? You will throw the medicine with the disease. So I told him, “Brahmacharya will also disappear. But remember not to choose.”

He said, “I will try.”

After three months – I told him to come back after three months – he came and he said, “But sex has not yet disappeared.” This is what I call stupidity. “Sex has not yet disappeared, and I have been practicing witnessing for three months.”

The unconscious choice remains: sex must disappear. Then you cannot be a witness. Witnessing means no choice, choiceless awareness. This is one of the most fundamental keys for all the diseases of the human mind. If you can become a witness, the opposites fight against each other, kill each other, and both are dead, both disappear. But if you choose one thing over the other, you cannot be a witness.

The second sutra:

Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee.

. . . Look for him, else in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest pass him; and he will not know thee unless thou knowest him. If thy cry meets his listening ear, then will he fight in thee and fill the dull void within.

Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee. Don’t be the warrior; there is no need. The warrior is this phenomenon: presenting to your consciousness both of the opposites simultaneously.

Ordinarily, only one is present. When sex is present? you are not thinking of brahmacharya. When brahmacharya is present, you are not thinking of sex. One is present and the other is hidden. This is the misery.

Bring out the other simultaneously and this will become the warrior for you. Bring them out simultaneously. When you are filled with anger, bring in repentance immediately. You always repent – but later on. When you are angry, you are angry. When the anger has done its devastation, then repentance comes in and you start taking oaths that you are not going to be angry again. But the anger and the repentance never meet. Allow the opposites to meet. They will negate each other.

If you go on moving from one opposite to another, you will never be victorious. You have wasted many lives like this, and you can waste infinite lives. But this is the secret: bring the opposites out simultaneously; allow them to be present before you simultaneously. Don’t follow one. If you follow one, the other is waiting for you. When you are bored, when you get fed up with one, the other will catch hold of you.

If the opposites cannot meet, they cannot negate each other. You need not do anything. This is the miracle; this is the inner chemistry. Bring the opposites together and just watch them. They will fight; allow them to fight. You need not get involved in it; just remain by the side. They will disappear together. Once they are present together, they will not persist; both will disappear.

So a Mahavir is not a brahmachari. Sex and brahmacharya have both disappeared. He is just innocent; he’s just like a child. A Buddha has not become nonangry; anger and non-anger both have disappeared. He is innocent; both are not there. A Krishna is neither a sansari nor a sannyasi; he neither belongs to the world nor belongs to the other anti-world of renunciation. Both have disappeared; he is innocent. The perfection, the wholeness of consciousness, is in innocence.

And when I use the word ‘innocence’ I mean absence of the opposites. Absence of the opposites is the purity. If you have chosen one, you are not pure. The other is hidden in the unconscious; both are there.

Both will be there if one is there. The other cannot be separated; it can only be hidden. And if the one is not there, the other cannot be there. Both will disappear; the whole field of opposites disappears. Then you are innocent. That innocence is liberation, that innocence is divine, that innocence is nirvana.

The third sutra:

Take his orders for battle and obey them.

Obey him not as though he were a general but as though he were thyself, and his spoken words were the utterance of thy secret desires, for he is thyself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself.

Find out the witness and then obey him. First find the witness and then obey him, because to find the witness means to find one’s own innermost core.

We live on two layers, two levels. One is the periphery: the world of action. The other is the inner being, the world of no-action: the world of existence, not of doing.

All that we do is on the periphery and all that we are is at the center. We have to continuously move from the center to the periphery to do some thing. Whenever you are doing something, you are on the periphery. Whatsoever you are doing, you are on the periphery. When you are non-doing, not doing anything, then you are at the center.

Witnessing is a non-act. Meditation is a non-act.

We are doing meditation here. For thirty minutes you are on the periphery doing something: breathing, catharsis, the hoo mantra. You are doing something; you are on the periphery. When I suddenly say, “Stop!” I mean: now be in the non-act, in non-doing. When you suddenly stop you are thrown from the periphery to the being, to the innermost center, because when you are not doing anything, you are not needed on the periphery. You need to be on the periphery only while you are doing something. Now you are thrown back to your center. That center is your witness.

Once you know this center, once you recognize this center, once you have felt this center – follow the orders. You will be directed; you have found your master. Now follow whatsoever is said to you from the center and don’t listen to the periphery. The periphery is cultivated by others and your center is untouched, virgin; it is from the divine.

The periphery comes from the society. That’s why we say that a sannyasin goes beyond society. Not against society, beyond society. Now he follows his own innermost center; he’s not following anyone else. All orders from others are meaningless now.

You have found your own inner being, and now that being can direct you. That being is infinitely stronger and wiser than thyself. The ‘you’ on the periphery is a weakling; the ‘you’ at the center is infinitely potent. The ‘you’ on the periphery is just a worldly thing; the ’you’ at the center is God himself.

But first find out:

Jesus has said, “First seek ye the kingdom of God. Then all else will follow.” Don’t bother about other things. First find out the innermost core of the kingdom of God. Then you need not worry about anything; all else will follow.

Just follow the inner voice. But how? You don’t know what the inner voice is, you don’t know what the inner is. Society has confused you deeply. It goes on saying that its own voice is your inner voice. The society has placed many voices in you just to control you from within.

It is a social need. Society controls you in two ways. One, by outer arrangements: the policeman on the street, the court, the judge, the law, the government. This is the outer arrangement, but it is not enough. You can deceive the law, you can manipulate the court. And the policeman, of course, is just another human being. So that arrangement is not enough. You can do whatsoever you like and you can play tricks with the law; you can find loopholes because human-made laws can be violated by other humans very easily. All that is needed is more intelligence, more intelligence than the law makers. Then you can deceive it. So society cannot rely on the outer law because there are intelligent people, more intelligent that law-makers. They will find loopholes, and they will be illegal in a legal way, and you cannot do anything. And the more laws you create, the more loopholes.

Then society tries another way – and that is a more effective thing. It creates a conscience in you: the inner policeman, the inner court. It gives you a feeling “This is wrong” – and from the very childhood it goes on reinforcing it: “This is wrong. Don’t do this. Don’t be a thief. Don’t deceive your wife. Don’t love another’s wife,” it goes on saying.

This becomes an inner conditioning, so whenever you feel an attraction toward another’s wife, the inner voice . . . This is not the inner voice. This is society’s voice playing within you. The voice comes: “This is wrong, this is a sin!” and you start trembling. This is the social trick: the policeman outside and the policeman within.

I am not saying to and love someone’s wife – I am not saying that. I am simply saying that this is a social mechanism, a social device to make you a slave through yourself. And it is more successful, remember. It is more successful.

Today’s world has become less moral because this “inner voice” is not so strong; society has become incapable of reinforcing it. The outer law is greater, more complex, but the inner law has weakened for many reasons: when people, societies lived aloof and along it was easy to create the inner conscience. Now, the whole earth has become a village, with many societies, many inner voices conflicting. Now no one can rely on . . . Every child knows that whatsoever you say is “good” in India is “bad” in Pakistan.

What is good for a Hindu may not be good for a Jain. No matter what you say is true, the contradictory is also true somewhere; it is not absolute. Now we have become aware of the whole complexity of the human conscience, we know that your conscience is just a social product.

So many societies exist together that the hold has become weak. Human societies are less moralistic now because the inner policeman is dead, almost dead. You know that what it says means nothing: don’t bother about it. Just observe the outer law . . . and try to find a way around it. What I’m saying is that the voice of the inner policeman is not your voice. Find out the witness. Only then will you find out the inner voice.

The inner voice will direct you. Its directions will be absolutely different from what society says – absolutely different. But for the first time you will become religious, not simply moral. You will be moral in a much deeper sense.

Morality will not be a duty; it will not be something imposed upon you. It will not be a burden; it will be spontaneous. You will be good, naturally good. You will not become a thief – not because society says, “Don’t be a thief,” but because you cannot be. You will not kill because it is impossible. You love life so much now that violence becomes impossible. It is not a moral code; it is an inner direction.

You affirm life, you revere life. A deep reverence comes to you, and through that reverence everything follows. That is what Jesus says. “Find out the kingdom of God first, and then everything will follow.”

Find the inner voice, and then everything will follow.

-Osho

From The New Alchemy: to Turn You On, Discourse #10

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