Osho Quotes on Chakras

 

 

 

Most people die from the lowest chakra, the sex center. There are seven chakras in the body from where life can go out of the body. The last is on top of the head, and unless you are enlightened life cannot go out from that chakra.

 

- Osho, "Beyond Psychology, #19"

 

 

 

As you move more and more into the present, inside you will come across seven lights -- what Hindu yoga calls seven Chakras, Buddhist yoga calls seven lights, seven lamps. As you become more and more detached from the body, detached from possessions, uninterested in desires, your energy starts moving upwards. The same energy that is contained at the lowest center, at the sex center.

 

- Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3, #3"

 

 

 

Indian music is perfectly good... and the sitar is a great instrument for meditation. So do it; music is always welcome. If it is indian, good. If it is indian and classical, even better, because the further back you go, the more pure becomes the music.

The first glimpse of music happened through meditation. The first music was heard in the hearts of the heart -- what the yogis call 'anahat', the sound of one hand clapping; the soundless sound, 'omkar'. That was first heard in deep samadhi.

People who had heard it tried in every way to communicate it to people who had no notion about it and who could not hope to attain samadhi and to hear that music. They tried on many instruments, in many many ways to bring something of that inner music. That something has penetrated into indian music.

So Indian music is more concerned with sahasrar, the seventh chakra. Western music is more concerned with the sexual centre, the muladhar. If western music overpowers you, you will feel sexually aroused. If indian music overpowers you, you will feel spiritually aroused.

 

- Osho, "Beloved of My Heart, #16"

 

 

 

Music is a very subtle meditation. The seven notes of music are concerned with the seven chakras of the body and each chakra has its own note. If you concentrate on that chakra, you will start hearing that note arising within your body. The second chakra has two notes, the third, three. One is important, the other two are just part of it but create a harmony. It goes on becoming a greater harmony, rising higher with each chakra. On the seventh chakra it is an orchestra. Each chakra has its own form, its own music, its own taste, its own smell. The deeper you move inside yourself, the more you find the whole world, because if it is not within you, you cannot see it without either. Something is needed to correspond.

 

- Osho, "Get Out of Your Own Way, #14"

 

 

 

All this so-called esoteric knowledge about chakras, energy fields, kundalini, astral bodies, is dangerous as knowledge. As experience it is a totally different thing. Don't acquire it as knowledge. If it is needed for your spiritual growth, it will come to you in its right time, and then it will be an experience. And if you have an acquired knowledge, borrowed knowledge, it is going to be a hindrance.

 

For example, Hindu yoga believes in seven chakras, Jaina scriptures mention nine chakras. And Buddhist scriptures say that there are dozens of chakras, that these are only the important ones which have been chosen by different schools. They don't give any fixed number. Acquired knowledge will be confusing: how many chakras? And what are you going to do with that knowledge, whether there are seven or nine or dozens? Your knowledge is not going to help; it can only hinder.

 

- Osho, "The Osho Upanishad, #39"

 

 

 

Energy fields, chakras and all esoteric things should be experienced. And keep your mind clean of all knowledge, so that you don't have any expectations; wherever the experience happens, you are ready to accept it.

 

- Osho, "The Osho Upanishad, #39"

 

 

 

It happens exactly like that. There are seven chakras but they don't exist in the same Places for all people. And there are experiences but they never happen in the same way to two persons -- they happen very, very differently. So there is no need to know the physiology of the kundalini, and there is no need to know the chakras, and there is no need to know what happens finally -- because if you know it you will start hypnotising yourself, and by and by you will start getting into the ritual. And you will create a kind of dream around you. And when there are many people doing the same thing, you tend to fall into the crowd-mind. You start swaying with the crowd.

 

- Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 2, #15"

 

 

 

Once awareness has made the third eye function, once awareness has moved in the third eye and the third eye starts functioning, becomes alive... That's why Hindus call it a CHAKRA. CHAKRA means a wheel. The wheel needs energy; once the energy comes in, the wheel starts moving. By 'movement' is meant that it starts functioning. Then a great revolution happens in your being: immediately the lower heart bows down to the higher heart.

 

- Osho, "The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, #3"

 

 

 

The muladhar chakra has to be relaxed -- relaxed from constipation, relaxed from diarrhoea. The muladhar chakra has to function at the optimum, one hundred percent, then energy starts moving.

 

- Osho, "The Tantra Vision, Vol 1, #8"

 

 

 

Energy is needed, and energy is always beautiful. If you don't know how to use it, it becomes ugly; then it goes on running astray. The energy has to go higher. Sex is the lowest center of your being -- but that is not all: you have seven centers of your being. As the energy moves upwards, if you know the key how to release it upwards, as it moves from one center to another, you feel so many transformations. When the energy comes to the heart chakra, to the center of the heart, you become so full of love you become love. When the energy comes to the third-eye center you become consciousness, awareness. When the energy comes to the last chakra, sahasrar, you bloom, you flower, your tree of life has come to a fulfillment: you become a Buddha. But the energy is the same. Don't condemn; don't suppress. Transform. Be more understanding, alert; only then will you be able to enter in totality.

 

- Osho, "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5, #6"

 

 

 

Each chakra has its own colours, so when you concentrate on a certain chakra you will have certain colours in your dreams and visions. As you move upwards they change. In fact in yoga psychology, a person's dreams, fantasies, visions, can indicate where his energy is exactly, at what centre.

 

- Osho, "Get Out of Your Own Way, #13"

 

 

 

Sometimes you are deluded by the body. And somehow, if you manage to go beyond the body, you are deluded by the mind, which is more of a deluder. The first three chakras belong to the body. The next three chakras belong to the mind. And the seventh chakra is beyond both. Ordinarily, the people who indulge remain in the first three lower chakras -- they hang there. Those first three chakras: MULADHAR, SWADHISTAN and MANIPURA are earth-bound. They are earthly chakras, they are attracted by gravitation, they are pulled downwards. The next three chakras: ANAHATA, VISUDDHA and AJNA are sky-bound. Gravitation does not affect them. They are under another law called levitation; they are pulled upwards. These three consist of the mind. The body is pulled downwards, mind is pulled upwards. But you are neither. You are the seventh, which is neither body nor mind. So the people who indulge live in the first three chakras. And the people who repress the first three chakras start living in the second three chakras. But they create a dream-world.

 

- Osho, "The Tantra Vision, Vol 2, #3"

 

 

 

The center around which one's life has revolved is the center from where he will depart. The place where he dwelt the whole life will be the place from where he will depart. Therefore, a yogi can leave from the agya chakra, and a lover from his heart chakra. The life energy of an enlightened man would leave from the sahasrar, the seventh chakra -- his skull will break open as he departs from there.

 

- Osho, "And Now, And Here, Vol 2, #15"

 

 

 

When the energy moves upward you become more and more silent. Silence is the by-product of energy moving upward and tension is the by-product of energy moving downward. You will be more and more in anxiety when energy moves down; you will be more and more silent, quiet, calm and cool as energy moves upward and inward. And these words downward and outward are synonymous, and inward and upward are synonymous. And when you have become silent, that energy is moving like a flood, it is passing through all the chakras, all the centers. And when it passes through all the chakras, it cleanses them, it purifies them, it makes them dynamic, alive, and the flood goes upward, upward to the last chakra.

 

Sex is the first chakra, the first center, the lowest -- and we exist at the lowest. That is why we know life only at its minimum. When the energy flows upward and reaches to the last chakra, to the SAHASRAR, energy is at its maximum, life is at its maximum. Then you feel as if the whole cosmos has become silent: not even a single sound is there. Everything becomes absolutely silent when the energy comes to the last chakra. You know the first chakra; it will be easy to understand through that. When the energy comes to the sex center, you become absolutely tense. The whole body is feverish, your every cell is in a fever. Your temperature goes high, your blood pressure goes high, your breathing becomes mad. Your whole body is in a temporary delirium -- at the lowest. Quite the opposite is the case at the last chakra. Your whole body becomes so cool, so silent, as if it has disappeared. You cannot feel it. You have become bodiless. And when you are silent the whole existence is silent because the existence is nothing but a mirror: it reflects you. In thousands and thousands of mirrors, it reflects you. When you are silent the whole existence has become silent.

 

- Osho, "The Supreme Doctrine, #5"

 

 

 

There are seven chakras, and the anahata is just in the middle; three below it, three above it. The three below are muladhar, swadhisthan and manipur. Those three belong to an extrovert personality. In the west, the majority lives through those three chakras. And now in the east also, the majority is moving towards the western attitude of life. These three chakras are very easily available. They have a certain given function; you need not work much on them.

 

Without them, life will become impossible. They are survival measures, so nature has not given you a choice between them. From the moment you are born, those three chakras start functioning. They go on functioning until you die. The whole life is covered by those three chakras, and the extrovert person never comes to know that there is anything higher than these. Sex, money, power, prestige, respectability, name, fame -- they all belong to those three chakras.

 

And the centre of all those chakras is sex. People seek money in order to seek sex. People seek fame and power and prestige in order to seek sex. Sex remains the centre of the lower three chakras. Sex remains the centre of the extrovert personality. His whole mind revolves around sex.

 

Above the anahata, the heart, there are three chakras: visudha, the fourth centre, then ajna, between the two eyes, the third eye centre, and sahasrar, the last centre, the centre of samadhi, of ultimate unfoldment.

 

Between these two is the heart. Between the introvert and the extrovert, the heart functions as a door, it is a bridge. Just as sex is the centre of the extrovert mind, prayer -- or call it meditation -- is the centre of the introvert mind. But to call it prayer is more relevant. Between these two -- when a person is just in the middle, on the fourth chakra, at the door -- love happens. Love is between sex and prayer.

 

When sex is a little purified, it becomes love. When love is also purified, it becomes prayer. So it is the same energy, the sexual energy, which goes into higher formations. In the east people have tried to live an introvert life; they have tried to live above the heart. But both are lopsided. The western extrovert mind and the eastern introvert mind are both lopsided. To become a total man, one needs the functioning of all seven. It is not a question of choice. It is a question of being capable of living in all the centres without any conflict. There is none -- we create the conflict.

 

- Osho, "Dance Your Way to God, #21"

 

 

 

The first three chakras belong to the body. The next three chakras belong to the mind. And the seventh chakra is beyond both. Ordinarily, the people who indulge remain in the first three lower chakras — they hang there. Those first three chakras: MULADHAR, SWADHISTAN and MANIPURA are earth-bound. They are earthly chakras, they are attracted by gravitation, they are pulled downwards.

 

The next three chakras: ANAHATA, VISUDDHA and AJNA are sky-bound. Gravitation does not affect them. They are under another law called levitation; they are pulled upwards. These three consist of the mind. The body is pulled downwards, mind is pulled upwards. But you are neither. You are the seventh, which is neither body nor mind.

 

- Osho, "The Tantra Vision, Vol 2, #3"

 

 

 

I have experimented with the chakras of hundreds of people, and I have been surprised to find that at the most one or two — and only rarely three — chakras have begun to be activated; generally, they remain dormant. You have never used them, but they are your past. If a man who has experienced them comes to me and I can see that all his seven chakras are in motion, then it can be said that this is his last birth.Then there will be no next birth, because if all seven chakras are in motion, then there is no possibility of a next life. This life will be nirvana, this life will be liberation. If anyone came to Mahavira, he made it his concern to discover how many chakras were active in him — how much work must be done with him, what his possibilities were, when and whether his labor would bear any fruit or not, and how many more births he would need.

 

- Osho, "Hidden Mysteries, #5"

 

 

 

One has to feel the chakras, not know about them. You have to feel; you have to send feelers inside yourself. Only when you feel your chakras, and your kundalini and its passage, is it helpful; otherwise, it is not helpful. In fact, knowledge has been very destructive as far as the inner world is concerned. The more knowledge gained, the less the possibility of feeling the real, the authentic, things.You begin to impose what you know upon yourself. If someone says, “Here is the chakra, here is the center,” then you begin to visualize your chakra at that spot; and it may not be there at all. Then you will create imaginary chakras. You can create; the mind has the capacity. You can create imaginary chakras, and then, because of your imagination, a flow will begin that will not be kundalini but will be simple imagination — a completely illusory, dreamlike phenomenon.

 

Once you can visualize centers and can create an imaginary kundalini, then you can create everything. Then imaginary experiences will follow, and you will develop a very false world inside you. The world that is without is illusory, but not so illusory as the one you can create inside.

 

All that is within is not necessarily real or true, because imagination is also within, dreams are also within. The mind has a faculty — a very powerful faculty — to dream, to create illusions, to project. That is why it is good to proceed in meditation completely unaware of kundalini, of chakras. If you stumble upon them, then it is good. You may come to feel something; only then, ask. You may begin to feel a chakra working, but let the feeling come first. You may feel energy rising up, but let the feeling come first. Do not imagine, do not think about it, do not make any intellectual effort to understand beforehand; no pre-notion is needed. Not only is it not needed, but it is positively harmful.

 

And another thing: kundalini and the chakras do not belong to your anatomy, to your physiology. Chakras and kundalini belong to your subtle body, to your sukshma sharira, not to this body, the gross body. Of course, there are corresponding spots. The chakras are part of your sukshma sharira, but your physiology and anatomy have spots that correspond to them. If you feel an inner chakra, only then can you feel the corresponding spot; otherwise you can dissect the whole body, but nothing like chakras will be found.

 

All the talk and all the so-called evidence and all the scientific claims that your gross body has something like kundalini and chakras is nonsense, absolute nonsense. There are corresponding spots, but those spots can only be felt when you feel the real chakras. With the dissection of your gross body nothing can be found; there is nothing. So the question is not of anatomy.

 

One thing more: it is not necessary to pass through chakras. It is not necessary; one can just bypass them. It is also not necessary that you will feel kundalini before enlightenment. The phenomenon is very different from what you may think. Kundalini is not felt because it is rising; kundalini is only felt if you do not have a very clear passage. If the passage is completely clear-cut, then the energy flows but you cannot feel it.

 

- Osho, "Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, #6"