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Just remember one word :Witnessing
"The buddha simply means pure witnessing. The buddha is only a symbol of your eternal existence.
Just remember one word - witnessing. This simple word is the whole of religion, is the whole of spirituality, is the whole of all that is known as truth, as beauty, as good, as godliness.
Just witness - you are not the body. Witness you are not the mind, witness that you are only a witness, just a pure consciousness.
This is your buddha. This is your very nature. This is your intrinsic potential.
A great ecstasy will arise. You will feel almost drunk, but remain a witness. To make the witnessing more clear, and deeper... Relax, let go. Just remember one thing - forget everything else - you are only a witness and nothing else. The moment you are only a witness you are a buddha, and your consciousness starts melting and merging into the cosmos." - Osho, “Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind, #3”
What then is meditation? Just sitting silently doing nothing, Witnessing whatsoever is happening all around; just watching it with no prejudice, no conclusion, no idea what is wrong and what is right. - Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 8, #2"
I have chosen witnessing
Question : What is your way of meditation?
My way of meditation is very simple. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation. Out of all of those I have chosen the most simple — the most easily done. I call it witnessing. The moment you witness something you become separate from it, you are the witness, the thing becomes an object — the witnessed.
If you are walking on the road, and you are also witnessing that you are walking — not going along just like a robot, mechanical, everyday habit, the road is known, the legs know it, you can even walk with closed eyes. But walking with absolute alertness every step, every fall of a leaf, every ray of the sun, every bird flying in front of you, fully alert… slowly, slowly, you become aware that you are not the body that is walking, you are something inside which is witnessing.
Once you have witnessed your body, you have got the knack of the method. Then you start witnessing your thoughts — sitting silently, just watching the rush of thoughts, not interfering, not saying, “This is good. This is bad.” Not justifying, not appreciating, no judgment… non-judgmental witnessing, just like the mirror. Anybody passes by, the mirror reflects it; that’s all, it makes no comment.
Strangely enough, when you stop making comments on the thoughts, they begin to stop; your comments keep them alive. Once you are simply a mirrorlike witness, thoughts disappear, and you become aware of a deeper layer, of emotions, moods, which are very subtle. You are not even aware many times that you are sad. You are often not aware of what your emotional state is — it is very deep, there is a thick layer of thoughts.
When thoughts have stopped, then you become aware of a very subtle breeze — and there is a great joy to see it pass. The method remains the same — you remain a witness without judgment. First body, second mind, third heart. And the fourth happens on its own. I call my way the fourth way because after the third you cannot do anything.
Once your emotions and moods disappear, suddenly there is a quantum leap — the witness has nothing to witness anymore. It comes home. It witnesses itself. It becomes both the seer and the seen, the object and the subject, and for the first time you have unity. This experience of absolute organic unity of your consciousness has been called by different names — moksha, nirvana, liberation, enlightenment, illumination.
Whatever word you choose makes no difference. But this is the ultimate peak, this is the ultimate goal of human life. So my method is very simple. You need not even sit to do it. You can do it anywhere — walking on the street, sitting in the bus, sitting in the plane, eating, even sleeping. When you are going to sleep you don’t fall asleep suddenly, it takes a few minutes; just watch how the sleep comes in.
Slowly, slowly, you will see sleep coming in, and as your witnessing becomes deeper there comes a moment when you can see that the whole night you are asleep yet still alert. I have tried almost all one hundred and twelve methods. That list is exhaustive, there is no possibility of adding a single method more. You can make a method of combinations, but those one hundred and twelve are exhaustive.
Out of them all I have chosen witnessing, because most of them are based on this in different ways. For example, if while making love you also witness, it becomes tantra. Tantra has taken one method, used it for love, and changed the whole sexual energy into a spiritual phenomenon. That’s what I have been talking about, and I have been misunderstood by almost everybody. They think I am teaching free sex. I am teaching meditative sex, and they think I am teaching free sex.
I was simply teaching that if you can make sex an object of meditation you can become free of it — because with meditation the energy starts moving higher and higher. My sannyasins who have been with me are puzzled that they have lost all interest in sex. And the people who have been condemning me — that is their own imagination, their own creation, the whole idea of free sex.
But it is sensational, particularly in a country which is very repressive about sex. To me, sex is as natural as everything else. If we can make sleeping a meditation, if we can make eating a meditation, why leave sex out? And sex is so powerful that it should not be left out; otherwise, that will that it should not be left out; otherwise, that will create disturbance. It should be absorbed into your total meditative process. It should become an organic unity.
Perhaps the Tantrikas understood this 1000 years ago. They did; they had something substantial. The Tantrikas were not part of a religion but of a very rebellious group of religious people, who created Khajuraho and thousands of other temples around. All other religions are talking almost rubbish about God, about heaven and hell.
Tantrikas were the first scientific religious people who took possession of their energy — which was already available. They managed to transform it in the same way that later somebody transformed the electricity from the clouds to become a light in your house. Nobody would have conceived before that the electricity flashing in the clouds could run your fans and your air-conditioners and your railways.
Tantrikas had the first insight that man’s sexual energy can be transformed easily. The only barrier is repression. If you repress it, then you cannot transform it. Don’t repress sexual energy, don’t condemn it, but create a friendship with it, that’s what I have been saying. Don’t think of it as a sin; it is not — you are born of it. The whole life is sex. If you call sex sin, then the whole life becomes sin, then the whole existence becomes sin — and this is not a religious approach to the world. We should make the whole world pine — not sin. But nobody reports what I have been saying; they just go on misinforming people. This is a misfortune — that journalism still is not literature.
- Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 10, #4"
That is You
But remember, every technique can only give you an experience; I want to give you the experiencer, not the experience. Experience comes and goes; don't rely on it. Unless you have found the experiencer... Who is feeling joy? Who is feeling pain? Who is feeling well-being? Who is feeling sad?
Who is this consciousness?
Every effort should be to reach to this innermost center of the cyclone. Your whole life is a cyclone of change, of changing scenes, changing colors, but just in the middle of the cyclone there is a silent center. That is you. My effort is to help you to find yourself.
- Osho, “Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, #17, Q2”
Watch it
"Essentially you are pine, so anything that happens to you is only a passing moment. Don't be distracted by it.
If it is pleasure, watch it. If it is pain, watch it.
Pleasure passes, Pain passes.
These are just like clouds moving in the infinite sky of your being. The sky is not affected by the clouds. They may be dark clouds, they may be white clouds, it doesn't matter – the sky remains unscathed.
To remember that 'I am god' means to remember 'I am the sky.' and all the experiences that happen in life are like small clouds: they come and go. they are not worth paying much attention to. take no notice. let that be your meditation.
Remember always You are the sky, the infinite sky. No clouds can distort you."
- Osho, “Eighty Four Thousand Poems, #18”
You are the Watcher
Meditation means becoming detached from the mind, becoming a witness of the mind, looking at the mind as separate from you. that's what actually it is.
You can see thoughts passing by, you can see desires passing by. You can see the whole traffic that goes on in the mind, the memories, the fantasies, the past, the future, all kinds of things are passing
You can just stand by the side of the road and you can see the whole traffic--you are not it
You are the watcher, you are the witness and the witness is beyond. The seer is never the seen. the observer is never the observed.
This very experience is transcendence and once you know that you are not the mind, The fear of death simply disappears as if it has never been there in the first place. Suddenly you are in the world of the deathless, the eternal.
There is no anxiety any more. one is at ease with existence in a deep let-go, a tremendous relaxation. that relaxation is the ultimate goal of sannyas.
To know it is to know all, to miss it is to miss all
-Osho, “The Sound of One Hand Clapping, #23”
Meditation is the death of the mind
“REMEMBER, meditation is not something that is done by the mind, it is the absence of the mind. When the mind stops, meditation happens. It is not something out of the mind, it is something beyond the mind.”
- Osho, "A Bird on the Wing, #11"
"Meditation means how to be not a mind. How to be not a mind! Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness.
- Osho, "That Art Thou, #9"
"Meditation will not give you enlightenment. remember. No technique will ever give yo enlightenment; enlightenment is not technical. Meditation can only prepare the ground. Meditation can only do something negatively ; the positive--enlightenment--will come on its own. Once you are ready, it always comes. Please don't try to do anythin. Just be."
- Osho, "Come Follow To You, Vol 1, #10"
"There is no need to say, "I am sad." The fact is that you are a witness that a cloud of sadness is passing over you. There is anger - you can simply be a witness. There is no need to say, "I am angry." You are never angry - there is no way for you to be angry - you are always a witness. The anger comes and goes; you are just a mirror. Things come, get reflected, move - and the mirror remains empty and clean, unscratched by the reflections. Witnessing is finding your inside mirror."
- Osho, “Light on the Path,#1”
"It is just like this. I am standing before a mirror: I am real, the mirror is real, but the reflection in the mirror is not real. I am real, the mirror is also real, but the reflection in the mirror is a reflection, it is not a reality. Brain cells are real, consciousness is real, but when consciousness gets involved, attached, identified with the brain cells, the ego is formed. That ego is unreal."
- Osho, "The Book of Secrets, Discourse #56, Q3"
"Meditation can bring you to your nature. It can help you to drop all the perversions. It can make you intelligent, it can make you loving, it can make you spontaneous, it can make you responsible. It can make you a benediction to yourself and to existence. Except meditation there is no other method which can help. This is the key, the master key."
- Osho, "Guida Spirituale, #12"
"When people come to me and they ask, "How to meditate?" I tell them, "There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation -- how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower."
When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the center, it settles down towards the center. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Nondoing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read The Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.
Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering into a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed -- courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that -- the courage to be meditative."
-Osho, "Just Like That, #6"
"Meditation is only a technique to reach to the ecstatic state, to the state of pine intoxication. It is a simple technique, but the mind makes it very complex. Mind has to make it very complex and difficult, because both cannot exist together.
Meditation is the death of the mind.
Any effort made by the mind cannot take you beyond the mind. This is a very fundamental rule to remember. The so-called transcendental meditation is just an example. There are many of the same kind prevalent all over the East, but they don't bring enlightenment. They don't bring awakened consciousness and that is the only criterion to decide whether they are right or not. A tree is known by its fruits, and a technique is known by what it achieves.
Transcendental meditation is representative of all the meditations which mind has suggested to you; it is a cunning way to take you astray. Mind remains safe, not only safe, but becomes stronger. All these techniques are of concentration. You concentrate on some word, holy word -- the name of God, or any mantra -- and you repeat it as fast as you can, just inside your mind. The faster you can do it the better; the speed helps two things. The mantra or the name of God -- even your own name will do; it has nothing to do with God -- any meaningless word will do because the technique depends on something else. It depends on fast repetition, so fast that there are no gaps left in between. Because there are no gaps, thoughts cannot arise; thoughts need a little space.
This is one thing: that you go on repeating a word faster and faster, and as you go on doing it for years, you really become an expert. So one thing it does is that it does not give a chance for any idea to enter into your mind. The second, more fundamental thing it does is that it creates tremendous boredom. Obviously, anything continuously repeated is going to create boredom, and boredom is the basis of auto-hypnosis.
When you become bored, you start falling into a sleep, which is not exactly sleep because it is deliberately created; hence it has a different name -- hypnosis. Hypnosis means sleep, with a difference, that it is deliberate.
Sleep comes naturally -- on its own, spontaneously. Hypnosis is deliberate sleep -- you create a situation in which it is bound to happen. This deliberate sleep is immensely healthy, and even ten or fifteen minutes in a hypnotic state gives you a good relaxation which hours of ordinary sleep cannot give. And when you come out of it, you will feel very fresh.
I absolutely agree that if you are doing it only for this purpose -- relaxation, a freshness comes, but it never takes you beyond the mind. How can it take you beyond the mind, because mind itself is repeating? By repetition, it does not need to think; repetition itself becomes a substitute for thoughts. And by repetition it falls into a deep sleep -- dreamless sleep, which gives you immense freshness, rejuvenation.
Naturally, you can be deceived that this is meditation -- you can go on doing it your whole life. It is healthy, it is good, it is nourishing, but it is not meditation.
Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain, you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain, you are not the flower, you are the watcher.
As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes a flame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing -- without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.
The watcher is never part of the mind and as the watcher becomes more and more rooted and strong, the distance between the watcher and the mind goes on becoming longer and longer. Soon the mind is so far away that you can hardly feel that it exists... just an echo in faraway valleys. And ultimately, even those echoes disappear. This disappearance of the mind is without your effort, without your using any force against the mind -- just letting it die its own death.
Once mind is absolutely silent, absolutely gone, you cannot find it anywhere. You become for the first time aware of yourself because the same energy that was involved in the mind, finding no mind, turns upon itself. Remember: energy is a constant movement."
-Osho, "The Invitation, #21"
They are just imagination
"Love is illusion, so is meditation. The only thing that is good about meditation is that it can take you out of love. But don't cling to it -- it is just a device to bring you out of your love. It brings you out of the illusion of love. But then immediately drop it too, otherwise you will start creating new illusions of meditation, kundalini arising, light happening in the chakras... and a thousand and one things -- 'spiritual experiences' they are called. They are not spiritual or anything, they are just imagination.”
- Osho, "Take It Easy, Vol 2“
Existence has no morality
"Existence has no morality as such -- it is amoral. For existence there is nothing wrong and nothing right. Only one thing is right -- your being alert and conscious. Then you are blissful."
- Osho, "The Invitation, #14"
"Never bother about morality. The only concern for a sincere seeker is awareness, more consciousness. And your consciousness will take care of all your acts. Without any effort, your acts will become moral - just like flowers without any act, without any effort they will blossom around you. Morality is nothing but a conscious man's life style."
Only awareness that leads you to the ultimate goal
Question : Osho, In the past you advocated various paths of self-realization like awareness, yoga, tantra, devotion and the rest of them. but ever since you resumed speaking, after three years of silence, you have been putting all the emphasis on awareness alone. Could you please say a few words on this matter?
All the methods that lead man to realization are, essentially, awareness. Their non-essential components may be different.
I have spoken on yoga, on tantra, on Hassidism, on Tao, on Zen, on all possible methods that humanity has tried. I wanted you to be aware of all the ways through which man has been searching to reach the truth that liberates - but each method is essentially awareness.
That's why now I am emphasizing only awareness.
So whatever you are doing, whatever method you are practicing, it makes no difference. Those are different names given by different people in different ages, but they were all practicing awareness.
In essence, it is only awareness that leads you to the ultimate goal.
There are not many paths. There are many names for one path, and that one path is awareness.
- Osho, “The Osho Upanishad, #13”
Just look, watch
"Spiritual or otherwise, wise or otherwise -- whenever you have some experience, remember, you are not it. It is a content in consciousness -- and all contents have to be dropped. Only then does the mind disappear. The mind is nothing but all the contents together; the accumulation of contents is the mind.
Just look, watch. What is your mind? What is meant by the word mind? What exactly does it consist of? All your experiences, knowledge, the past, accumulated -- that is your mind. You may have a materialist's mind, you may have a spiritualist's mind, it doesn't matter a bit; the mind is the mind. The spiritual mind is as much a mind as the materialist mind. And we have to go beyond the mind.
Don't trust in the content -- watch it, and let it pass. And yes, sometimes the content is so tremendously enchanting, so hypnotizing, that one would like to cling to it. When spiritual, so-called spiritual, experiences start happening, it is really very tempting -- more tempting than anything in the world. When you see great light inside, it is so tempting to cling to it, to claim, "I have arrived" -- or at least to believe deep inside yourself, "I have arrived. While everybody else is groping in darkness, light has happened to me."
This is just a new kind of darkness, because you are again being caught, trapped, by the content. These two things have to be remembered: the content and the consciousness. The consciousness never becomes content, and the content never becomes consciousness. The consciousness is a pure mirror, it only reflects.
Now, what does it matter to the mirror whether a beautiful woman is standing before it, or an ugly woman? Do you think it matters? Do you think the mirror starts thinking of clinging to the reflection of a beautiful woman -- Sophia Loren? "Don't let her go, cling." Or do you think the mirror feels very repulsed if some ugly woman is there? It doesn't matter. What does it have to do with the mirror?
The mirror remains unaffected; it simply goes on reflecting whatsoever is the case. If it is darkness it reflects darkness, if it is morning it reflects morning. If somebody is dead it reflects death. If a child starts giggling, laughing, jumping, it reflects that. A roseflower is reflected with the same quality as it reflects a thorn; no distinction is made.
This state is really spiritual.
- Osho, “The Book of Wisdom, #7”
"Consciousness plus thinking is waking, Consciousness minus thinking is samadhi. Unconsciousness plus thinking is dreaming, Unconsciousness minus thinking is sleep."
In the search for the first principle, silence is the door – the only door. And except it there is no way to approach the first principle. The first principle can be known only when you move to the primordial state of your being. Thinking is secondary. Existence precedes thinking, existence comes first. First you are, and then you start thinking. Thinking is secondary. Thinking is a shadow activity; it follows you. It cannot exist without you, but you can exist without it. Through thinking you can know secondary things, not the primary things. The most fundamental is not available to thinking; the most fundamental is available to silence.
Silence means a state of consciousness where no thought interferes.
The first principle is not far away, it is not distant. Never think for a single moment that you are missing it because it is very far away. No, not at all. It is the closest thing to you. It is the obvious thing. It surrounds you. It surrounds you just like the ocean surrounds a fish. You are in it. You are born in it and born out of it. You live in it, you breathe in it, and one day you disappear in it. It is not far away, not that you have to travel to it. It is there. It is already there around you, within and without. It is your very existence, that first principle.
Zen people call it the first principle; other religions call it God. There is no difference. The Zen approach is far better because with the word “God,” trouble starts. The first principle becomes personified; then you can create an image. You cannot make an image of the first principle, but that’s what all the religions do. They say, “God is the first cause, the uncaused cause, the most fundamental, the substantial, the substratum.” Zen people call it the first principle. It is beautiful to call it the first principle because nothing preceded it. Everything has followed it.
So if you want to have a communion with the first principle, you will have to seek and search for a reality within yourself which is original, which has not been preceded by anything else.
Silence is primordial. Sound exists in silence. Sound comes and goes, silence remains. Sound is like light, and silence is like darkness. Darkness remains; light comes and goes. Light needs some cause to be. Darkness needs no cause. No fuel is needed for darkness; it simply exists without any fuel. It exists as primordial existence. Darkness is eternal; light is momentary. In the morning the sun rises and there is light. By the evening the sun is gone, the light is gone. Don’t think that the darkness comes. Darkness never comes; it is always there. Light comes and goes. You burn a lamp and there is light. You blow out the lamp and light is gone. Not that darkness comes; darkness is there. Light is accidental; darkness is existential.
Silence is there. You can create sound; you cannot create silence. The moment sound is no more created there is silence. Thinking is sound; meditation is silence. So all the religions of the world have been searching for and seeking in one way or another that silence which has not been preceded by anything else, which is the first.
Now a few things before we analyze this state of silence.
First thing. Man is missing this first principle not because he is not a skilled thinker but because he is, not because he is not a trained logician but because he is. Thinking creates a screen around you, a screen of smoke, and because of that smoke the obvious is lost. To see the obvious, you need clarity, not thinking, not logic. You simply need clarity, you need transparency. Your eyes should be completely empty, naked – naked of all clothes, naked of all concepts, empty, empty of all thoughts. When the eyes are just empty, you can see the first principle, and not only can you see it as an object outside you, you see it as your own interiority, as your own subjectivity.
In fact, it is thinking that creates the distinction between the subject and the object. It is thinking that creates pision. It is thinking that creates a split. It is thinking that makes things separate. Once thinking is dropped, existence is one, it is one unity, it is one orgasmic experience where duality is totally lost. All boundaries lose themselves into each other, merge into each other. Everything is joined to everything else. The smallest leaf of grass is joined to the greatest star. And then there is nothing high, nothing low, nothing good, nothing bad, because all is joined together. The greatest saint is joined to the greatest sinner; they are not separate.
Nothing is separate. With the disappearance of thinking, schizophrenia disappears, this existential schizophrenia of piding everything: this is man, this is woman, this is good, this is bad, this is beautiful, this is ugly, this is mine, this is thine. All distinctions create neuroses. Man is mad because he thinks too much, and he goes on missing the obvious.
God is very obvious. [....]
Doubt is the only outcome of thinking. Non-thinking gives you trust, non-thinking gives you faith, non-thinking brings you closer to reality, face to face with reality. So the first thing to be understood: thinking is not a way to the first principle. Not through philosophizing will you arrive at the first principle, because philosophy is secondary. You can know secondary things through the secondary. To know the primary, you will have to achieve the primary within yourself. You can know only that which you are.
If you live in thinking, you will be able to know only secondary things. You will be able to know the shadow world, what Hindus call the world of maya. Through the mind you can know only the world of maya, the shadow world, the world of illusions. You will be surprised. In Sanskrit we have two terms. One is vidya; vidya means “knowledge”. Another is avidya; avidya means “nonknowledge”. And you will be surprised, in Sanskrit “science” is called avidya – “nonknowledge”. Science is called avidya. Why? Science knows more than anything else, but in Sanskrit they call science avidya. Why? Because science knows only the shadow world – knows the secondary, the nonessential; knows the object, misses the subject; knows the body, misses the soul; knows the world, misses God; knows the secondary.
To know the primary, you will have to become primary. You will have to fall into that wavelength where the primary pulsates, that silence. That is the state of no-mind. No-mind preceded your mind.
A child is born. He comes without any mind whatsoever; he simply exists. His existence is pure, unhampered by any thought, unhindered by any cloud. Look into the eyes of a child. They are so innocent, they are so transparent, so crystal clear. From where comes this clarity? This clarity comes from no-thought. The child still has not learned how to think, how to accumulate thoughts. He looks, but he cannot classify. If he looks at the trees, he cannot say they are trees, he cannot say they are green, he cannot say they are beautiful. He sees the trees, but no classification, no category. He has no language yet to be clouded with. He simply sees. Color is there, but he cannot say is color; green is there, but he cannot say it is green. Everything is purely clear, but he cannot label it. Hence the innocence of the eyes.
A man of understanding again attains the same eyes. He again becomes a child, as far as the clarity is concerned. Jesus is right when he says, “Become like small children; only then will you be able to enter into my kingdom of God.” He is not saying become foolish like children; he is not saying become childish; he is not saying learn tantrum again; he is not saying that a child is the last stage. No, he is saying simply one thing. He is not saying become a child; he is saying become like a child. How can you become a child again? But you can become like a child. If you can drop thinking, if this cloak of thinking is dropped and you become nude, again you will have the same clarity.
It happens sometimes through drugs. Not a very good way to attain it – very dangerous, very costly, and illusory – but it happens. Hence the appeal of the drugs down the ages. Drugs are not new in the world; even in the Vedas they talk about soma. Soma seems to be one of the most powerful drugs ever discovered by man. It must be something like LSD. Aldous Huxley has said that in the future, when the ultimate drug will be known, we will call it soma. From the Vedas, the ancient most book in the world, to Timothy Leary, man has always been attracted by drugs – alcohol, marijuana, opium. Why this attraction? And all the moralists have been against it, and all the puritans have been against it, and all the governments have tried to curb and control, but it seems beyond any government to control it. What has been the cause of it? It gives something … it gives a glimpse into the innocent mind of the child again.
Through chemical impact, the mind becomes loosened for a few moments or a few hours. Under the impact of the drug your thinking slips. You start looking into reality without thinking; again the world is colorful, as it is for the child; again in a small pebble you can see the greatest diamond; ordinary grass looks so extraordinary; an ordinary flower looks so tremendously beautiful; an ordinary human face looks so pine. Not that anything has changed. The whole world is the same. Something has changed in you – and that too only temporarily. Through the forceful drug your mind has slipped down. You don’t have the mask; you can see into things with clarity. That is the appeal of the drugs down the ages.
And unless meditation becomes available to millions of people, drugs cannot be prevented.
Drugs are dangerous because they can destroy your body’s equilibrium, they can destroy your nature, they can destroy your inner chemistry. You have a very delicate chemistry. Those strong drugs can destroy your rhythm. And more and more drugs will be needed and you will become addicted – and less and less will be the experience. By and by, the mind will learn how to cope with the drugs, and then, even under the drug, you will not attain to the state of innocence. Then you will need even stronger drugs.
So this is not a way.
The mind can be put aside very easily. There is no need to depend on anything chemical, on anything artificial. There is a natural possibility to get out of the mind, because we were born without minds. Deep down we are still no-minds. The mind is only on the periphery. That’s why I say it is just a cloak, a dress that you are wearing. You can slip out of it.
And one moment of slipping out of it will reveal to you a totally different world: the world of the first principle.
So the real fight in the future is going to be between meditation and drugs. In fact, that has always been the case: the real fight is between drugs and meditation, either drugs or meditation.
So it is not coincidental that when you start meditating by and by the pull of the drug becomes less and less. If it is not becoming less and less, then know well you are not meditating yet, because when you know the higher, the lower is dropped automatically.
But one thing has to be understood. Drugs do something; they UNDO something in you. They help you to get out of the mind. They give you courage to look into reality without thinking. For a moment the curtain slips, and suddenly you are aware that the world has a splendor. It had never had it before. You had passed through the same street and you had looked through the same trees and at the same stars and the same people, and today now everything suddenly is so luminous and everybody is so beautiful and everybody is afire with life, with love. A saint – one who has attained – lives in that state continuously, without any effort.
You were born as a no-mind. Let this sink into your heart as deeply as possible because through that a door opens. If you were born as a no-mind, then the mind is just a social product. It is nothing natural; it is cultivated. It has been put together on top of you. Deep down you are still free; you can get out of it. One can never get out of nature, but one can get out of the artificial any moment one decides to.
Existence precedes thinking. So existence is not a state of mind; it is a state beyond. To be is the way to know the fundamental, not to think. Science means thinking, philosophy means thinking, theology means thinking. Religion does not mean thinking. The religious approach is a nonthinking approach. It is more intimate, it brings you closer to reality. It drops all that hinders, it unblocks you; you start flowing into life. You don’t think that you are separate, looking. You don’t think that you are a watcher, aloof, distant. You meet, mingle, and merge into reality.
And there is a different kind of knowing. It cannot be called “knowledge”. It is more like love, less like knowledge. It is so intimate that the word “knowledge” is not sufficient to express it. The word “love” is more adequate, more expressive.
In the history of human consciousness, the first thing that evolved was magic. Magic was a combination of science and religion. Magic had something of the mind and something of the no-mind. Then out of magic grew philosophy. Then out of philosophy grew science. Magic was both no-mind and mind; philosophy was only mind; and then mind plus experimentation became science. Religion is a state of no-mind.
Religion and science are the two approaches to reality. Science approaches through the secondary; religion goes direct. Science is an indirect approach; religion is an immediate approach. Science goes round and round; religion simply penetrates to the heart of reality.
A few more things. Thinking can only think about the known – it can chew the already chewed. Thinking can never be original. How can you think about the unknown? Whatsoever you can manage to think will belong to the known. You can think only because you know. At the most, thinking can create new combinations. You can think about a horse who flies in the sky, who is made of gold; but nothing is new. You know birds who fly in the sky, you know gold, you know horses; you combine the three together. At the most, thinking can imagine new things, but it cannot know the unknown. The unknown remains beyond it. So thinking goes in a circle, goes on knowing the known again and again and again. It goes on chewing the chewed one. Thinking is never original.
And the first principle means to come upon reality originally, radically, to come upon reality without any mediator, to come upon reality as if you are the first person to exist and you come upon reality. That is liberating. That very newness of it liberates.
And when you come to know reality directly, it is never reduced to the known; the mystery remains. In fact, it becomes a deeper mystery than ever. The more you know, the more you feel that you don’t know. The more you know, the less you feel you know. The more you know, the more vast is the mystery of it. Religion is mysticism, religion is magic, because religion is a no-mind approach.
Thinking can think only about the known; it is repetitive. Philosophy is repetitive. You can go into the books of philosophy, into the history of philosophy, and you will see the same thing being repeated again and again – new phraseology, new words; new terms, new definitions, but nothing fundamentally different. From Thales to Bertrand Russell you can go on, but you will find the same thing being repeated again and again. The wheel moving: the same spokes come to the top again and again.
Science can experiment only with the objective; experimentation is possible only with the objective. You cannot experiment with the experimenter himself; there is no way. The subjective reality remains outside science. Einstein may know much about matter, but he does not know anything about himself. Newton may know much about gravitation, but he does not know who he is. One goes on accumulating knowledge about the objective world, and one remains in deep darkness within one’s own self. One’s own light is not yet there, and one goes on groping, experimenting.
Science can experiment only with the objective, philosophy can think only about the known, and the reality is beyond both. The reality is unknown – not only unknown, but unknowable – and the reality contains the subjective element. So the very methodology of philosophy and science prohibits coming to the fundamental, to the first principle. To come to the fundamental, you will have to find another door, a door other than science and philosophy. That door is religion.
And religion can be reduced to one word, and that word is “meditation,” or call it silence – to be in such a silence that you are almost not, there is no noise within you, the stillness is absolute. Only in that stillness something stirs, only in that stillness do you start hearing the still, small voice of the first principle – call it God or call it soul. Only then life calls forth life. Only then the source calls forth the source. Only then are you close to reality, hand in hand with the fundamental. And that is the search, that is what we are seeking; and without knowing it, without realizing it, there is going to be no fulfillment.
The last thing; then we enter into this small parable. When thinking disappears you are left with the first principle. It has always been there; you were not there just because of thinking. Now you are also there: two presences meet. Ordinarily you are absent, you are somewhere else. In your thoughts you are lost. When there is no thought you are here-now; then there is no way to go from here-now. Thought functions as a bridge to go away from yourself. The moment a thought has come in, you are already far away from yourself. When there is no thought, where can you go, how can you go? When there is no thought you have to be in the present. Thought can take you to the past, thought can take you to the future; no-thought brings you to the present. And only the present is. This moment is all there is.
When you are here-now, absolutely here-now, how can you miss the real, how can you miss God? When thinking disappears you are left with the first principle.
But when I say “when thinking disappears,” I am not saying “when you fall asleep,” because in deep sleep thinking does disappear. In the East we have pided human consciousness into four phases. The first phase we call “waking”, jagrat. Waking means “consciousness plus thinking”; you are conscious, but your mind is crowded with thoughts. The second state we have called “dreaming”, swapna. The second state means “unconsciousness plus thinking”; you fall asleep, but the thinking continues so there is dreaming. Dreaming is a way of thinking in sleep, and thinking is a way of dreaming while awake. Thinking and dreaming are not two separate things. Dreaming is only thinking in a very primitive language – the language of images. Then the third state we call sushupti: sleep, deep sleep, dreamless deep sleep. The third state is “unconsciousness minus thinking”; you are unconscious – you don’t know where you are, who you are, all consciousness has disappeared, you are at rest – and with the consciousness has disappeared thinking too, dreaming too.
These three are ordinary states: waking, dreaming, sleeping. We all know these three. The fourth is the state of meditation. The fourth is called samadhi, turya. It means” consciousness minus thinking”.
So four stages: consciousness plus thinking is waking, consciousness minus thinking is samadhi, unconsciousness plus thinking is dreaming, unconsciousness minus thinking is sleep.
So samadhi has something similar to waking and something similar to sleep; hence Patanjali has defined samadhi as “waking sleep” – sleep and yet not sleep. Sleep in the sense that there are no thoughts now, no dreams. And not sleep in the sense that you are perfectly aware, that the light of your awareness is there, that you are conscious, that you know that there is no knowledge now, that you are aware that all thinking has disappeared, that you are aware that now there is no dream lurking in your field of consciousness, that you are absolutely zero, shunyam.
This is the state that the East has been trying to achieve. The West has been too involved with science; hence it has missed religion. The East’s involvement is with samadhi: hence it has missed science.
These four states can be thought of in some other ways also. Consciousness plus thinking means waking. Science is a waking activity, so is philosophy, so is theology. Second, dreaming: unconsciousness plus thinking. That is what art is, poetry, painting, music. It is a dream activity, so it is not just accidental that we call the poets dreamers, that we call the artists dreamers, that we don’t trust them much – they are not reliable, they cannot be the guides to reality. We enjoy them, it is fun, but we cannot accept them as guides to reality – they are not. They live in fantasy. They dream while awake. Their eyes are full of dreams. So waking is science, philosophy, theology, logic; and art, all kinds of art, is dream activity.
Unconsciousness minus thinking means sleep. Of course all activity ceases in sleep, so nothing is born out of sleep – no science, no art.
Consciousness minus thinking is samadhi. Samadhi gives birth to religion. When Jesus attained to samadhi Christianity was born. When Nanak attained to samadhi Sikhism was born. When Buddha attained to samadhi Buddhism was born. Religion is born out of samadhi, the fourth state. What is samadhi? If you can stop your thinking and yet remain alert and don’t fall asleep. Difficult, arduous, one of the most difficult things, almost impossible. It is easy to be awake and thinking, it is easy not to think and fall asleep, but to remain awake and not think is the most difficult thing, because it is not part of evolution. It is a revolution. It is not given by nature automatically. You have to attain it.
That is the task man has to solve. That is the challenge given to man, and very few have accepted that challenge. And those who have accepted it, only they are man; others are man only for the name’s sake. We exist as potential man, not as actual man. It is our potentiality. We can become a Buddha or a Christ, but it has not happened yet. We are just seeds. That’s our misery because a seed can never be satisfied unless it becomes a tree and blooms. A seed will remain miserable because there is a feeling deep down that “I am not yet that which I am meant to be; my destiny is not fulfilled.”
Have you not observed this in you? If you had not observed it, you would not be here. You are here only because you feel something is missing. You are here only because you continuously feel that something has to happen and it is not happening, that something is just there by the corner and yet you cannot grasp it, seems to be not very far away, yet seems to be beyond reach. The tree is not very far away from the seed. If the seed finds the right soil, falls into the soil, relaxes, surrenders to the soil, dissolves into the soil, dies into the soil, then the tree is not very far away. In the right season the seed will sprout, a tender plant will be born, and the seed will be able to see the light.
Only when the seed has become a plant will it be able to feel the wind and the ecstasy that the wind is and be able to feel the sunrays and the ecstasy that the sun brings and be able to live and be able to accept the challenges and start growing. Come storm, come wind, come rains, and the small, tender plant will become stronger and stronger. Every challenge will give it strength and integration; and one day there will be a great tree whispering to the skies, it will bloom, and the fragrance will be released to the winds in all directions. Then there will be jubilation.
When Jesus says again and again to his children, to his disciples, “Rejoice!” what he is saying is true because he has become a tree and he has bloomed. But his disciples must have looked here and there, they must have thought, “What does he mean? Why does he go on saying again and again, ‘Rejoice’?” They are seeds; how can they rejoice?
When I say to you, “Celebrate!” you start thinking, “For what? Why? What have we got to celebrate?” You cannot celebrate because celebration is possible only when you bloom. I know it! But I go on saying, “Celebrate!” And Jesus knows it and he goes on saying, “Rejoice!” In fact, he wants to create such a thirst in you to know what this rejoicing is that out of that thirst you start seeking and searching for the right soil.
To find a right Master is to find a right soil because only through the Master will you be able to dissolve, only through the Master will you be able to surrender. A seed needs to surrender. A seed has to die; only then is there a new life born out of it. Death makes it possible. Death is tremendously beautiful: it makes it possible that a man can be new, a man can be reborn.
Samadhi is celebration, samadhi is rejoicing. Samadhi is your gratitude towards God, your thanksgiving.
How can you thank God right now? You have nothing to thank him for. You can complain, you cannot thank him; so your prayers are more of complaints, less of thanks. You cannot say, “Thank you.” How can you? For what? In fact, you are very angry with God. Why has he given birth to you? Why has he created so much misery? Why has he put you in such anguish and turmoil? Why in the first place? What wrong have you done? If suddenly you come across God you will jump upon him. That’s why he goes on hiding. You will kill him. You will say, “What have you been doing? For what are we suffering? What wrong have we done? Why did you make us in the first place? Not to be would have been better – no anxiety, no anguish. Not to be would have been more peaceful. Why did you create us?”
The whole existence seems to be mischievous. It seems as if somebody, a sadistic God, is sitting there, torturing people, creating a thousand and one ways to torture them.
Right now, you cannot thank him because right now you are not. When you are, you will be able to thank him. And the way to be goes through death, through surrender. And the way goes through silence. But it is not easy to be silent; it is the most arduous thing to be silent.
- Osho, “The First Principle, Discourse #3”
The relationship betweenthe consciousness and the thought process is unreal.
Question : If the ego is unreal, then does it not mean that the unconscious mind, the accumulation of memories in the brain cells, and the process of transformation that is the subject matter of spirituality, is also unreal, a dream process?
No. Ego is unreal; brain cells are not unreal. Ego is unreal; memories are not unreal. Ego is unreal; thought process is not unreal. Thought process is a reality. Memories are real, brain cells are real, your body is real. Your body is real, your soul is real. These are two realities. But when your soul gets identified with the body, the ego is formed – that is unreality.
It is just like this. I am standing before a mirror: I am real, the mirror is real, but the reflection in the mirror is not real. I am real, the mirror is also real, but the reflection in the mirror is a reflection, it is not a reality. Brain cells are real, consciousness is real, but when consciousness gets involved, attached, identified with the brain cells, the ego is formed. That ego is unreal.
So when you have awakened, when you have become enlightened, your memory is not going to disappear. The memory will be there. Really, it will be more crystal-clear. Then it will function more accurately because there will be no disturbance from the false ego. Your thought process will not disappear. Rather, for the first time you will be capable of thinking. Before that you were simply borrowing things. Then you will really be able to think. But then you, not the thought process, will be the master.
Before, the thought process was the master. You couldn’t do anything about it. It continued on its own; you were just a victim. You wanted to sleep and the mind continued thinking. You wanted to stop it, but it would not stop. Really, the more you tried to stop it, the more stubborn it became. It was your master. When you become enlightened it will be there, but then it will be instrumental. Whenever you need it, you will be able to use it. Whenever you don’t need it, it will not crowd your consciousness. Then it can be called and then it can also be stopped.
Mind cells will be there, the body will be there, memory will be there, thought process will be there. Only one thing will not be there – the feeling of I will not be there. This is difficult to understand.
Buddha walks, Buddha eats, Buddha sleeps, Buddha remembers. He has memory, his brain cells function beautifully. But Buddha has said, ‘I walk, but no one walks in me. I talk, but no one talks in me. I eat, but no one eats in me.’ The inner consciousness is no more the ego. So when Buddha feels hungry, he cannot feel like you. You feel, ‘I am hungry.’ When Buddha feels hungry, he feels, ‘The body is hungry. I am just the knower.’ And that knower is without any feeling of I.
The ego is the false entity, the only false entity – everything else is real. Two realities can meet, and in their meeting, a third epi-phenomenon can be created. When two realities meet, something false can happen. But the false can happen only if there is consciousness. If there is no consciousness, the false cannot happen. Oxygen and hydrogen meet: a false water cannot happen. The false can happen only when you are conscious, because only consciousness can err. Matter cannot err, matter cannot be false. Matter is always true. Matter cannot deceive and cannot be deceive – only consciousness can. With consciousness is the possibility to err.
But remember another thing: matter is always real, never false, but also never true. The matter cannot know what truth is. If you cannot err, you cannot know what truth is. Both the possibilities open simultaneously. Human consciousness can err and can know that it has erred and can move away from it. That is the beauty of it. The danger is there, but danger is bound to be there. With every growth new dangers come in. For matter, there is no danger.
Look at it in this way. Whenever a new thing grows in existence, a new thing evolves, now dangers come with it into existence. For a stone there is no danger. There are small bacteria. In those bacteria sex doesn’t exist in the way it exists in man or in animals. They simply pide their bodies. When one bacterium grows bigger and bigger, when it grows to a certain extent, its body automatically pides into two. The parent body pides into two. Now there are two bacteria. Those bacteria can live eternally – because there is no birth, so there is no death.
And the reverse process also happens. If food is not available, two bacteria will come nearer and nearer and they will become one, their bodies will become one. No birth, no death. With sex entered birth; with birth entered death; with birth entered inpiduality; with inpiduality entered ego.
Every growth has its own potential dangers, but they are beautiful. If you can understand, there is no need to fall into them, and you can transcend them. And when you transcend, you mature and you achieve a greater synthesis. If you fall a victim, the greater synthesis is not achieved.
Spirituality is the peak, the last, the ultimate synthesis of all growth. The false is transcended and the real absorbed. And only the real remains; all the false drops away. But don’t think that the body is unreal – it is real. Brain cells are real, the thought process is real. Only the relationship between the consciousness and the thought process is unreal. That is a tie. You can untie it. And the moment you untie it, you have opened the door.
- Osho, "The Book of Secrets, Discourse #56, Q3"
The nature of consciousness is to be just a mirror.
The nature of consciousness is to be just a mirror. The mirror has no choice of its own.
Whatsoever comes in front of it is reflected – good or bad, beautiful or ugly – whatsoever. The mirror does not prefer, it does not judge, it has no condemnation. The nature of consciousness, at the source, is just mirror-like.
A child is born; he reflects whatsoever comes before him. He does not say anything, he does not interpret. The moment interpretation enters; the mirror has lost its mirror-likeness. Now it is no more pure. Now it is filled with opinions, disturbed, many fragments, pided, split. It has become schizophrenic.
When the consciousness is pided, not mirror-like, it becomes the mind. Mind is a broken mirror.
In the root, mind is consciousness. If you stop making discriminations, if you stop making dual pision – choosing this against that, liking this, disliking that – if you drop out of these pisions the mind again becomes a mirror, a pure consciousness.
So the whole effort for a seeker is how to drop opinions, philosophies, preferences, judgments, choices. And this should not become a choice in itself – that’s the problem.
So try to understand the basic problem, otherwise you can make this a choice “I will not choose, I will remain choiceless. Now choice is not for me, now I am for choiceless awareness.” This has again become the same thing – you have chosen. Now you are against choice and for choicelessness.
You have missed. Nobody can be for choicelessness, because the being for IS choice.
So what is to be done? Simple understanding is needed, nothing is to be done. The ultimate is achieved not through effort but through understanding.
No effort will lead you towards that, because effort will always be from the dual mind. Then you dislike the world and you like God; then bondage is not your preference, freedom is your preference; then you seek the moksha, the ultimate liberation. But again the mind has entered, and the mind goes on entering. And you cannot do anything – you have to simply be alert to the whole situation.
If you are alert, in a sudden illumination the mind falls. Suddenly you are one with the mirror-like consciousness; you have fallen to your base, to your root. And when you have fallen deep within to the root, the whole existence falls to the root.
Existence appears to you as you are. This is one of the fundamental laws. Whatsoever you see depends from where you see. If you are a mind, pided, then the whole life is pided. Existence re-echos your being. If you have a mind, split, then the whole world will be seen as split, then day is against night. They are not, because the day turns into night, the night turns into day – they make a complete circle. They are not against, they are complementaries. Without the night there cannot be any day, and without the day there cannot exist any night. So they cannot be opposites; they are deep down one.
Life and death appear as opposites because YOU are pided. Otherwise life becomes death, death becomes life. You are born, and that very day you have started to die. And the moment you die a new life has come into being. It is a circle – the yin and yang circle of the Chinese.
That circle has to be remembered again and again. It is one of the most basic symbols ever discovered. No other symbol can be compared to it – the cross, the swastika, the aum – no, no comparison with the Chinese yin and yang, because yin and yang comprehends the whole oppositeness of existence: the dark night and the bright day, life and death, love and hate.
All opposites are together in existence. Inside you are pided, outside they are pided. When you fall to your source and you become one, the whole existence suddenly falls into line and becomes one. When you are one, the Brahma appears, the ultimate appears, because to the one only one can appear; to the two, the two; to the many, the many. And you are many, you are a crowd – not even two. You have many, many selves within you.
Gurdjieff used to say that you are a house where nobody knows who the host is. Many people are there, everybody is a guest – but because nobody knows who the host is, everybody thinks he is the host. So whosoever becomes powerful in any moment plays the role of the host.
When anger becomes powerful, anger becomes the host. When love becomes powerful, love becomes the host. When jealousy becomes powerful, jealousy becomes the host. But it is a constant fight, because many are the guests and everybody would like to be the host, the owner of the house. And nobody knows who the owner is. Either the owner has gone for a long journey and has not come back, or the owner is fast asleep.
Your self is fast asleep. Hence the insistence of all Jesuses, Krishnas, Buddhas: “Awake!” Jesus goes on using the word ‘awake’ many, many times: “Awake, watch, be alert.” Buddha goes on saying, “Become more conscious.”
The meaning is one: that if you become aware the host will appear. And the moment – and this is the beauty of it – the host appears, the guests disappear. The moment the master comes into being, the servants simply fall into line and they become servants. They don’t claim that they are the masters. So the real problem is not to fight with anger, jealousy, hate. The real problem is to bring the master, make him aware. Once he is aware everything is set right. But this awareness is possible only if you fall to the source.
Mind is bound to remain pided, it cannot become one – the very nature of the mind is such. Try to understand the nature of the mind, then these sutras of Sosan will become clear, transparent. The nature of the mind is to look at a thing in such a way that the opposite has to be brought in. Without the opposite the mind cannot understand. If I say, “What is light?” how will the mind understand? Immediately darkness has to be brought in.
If you go to the dictionary – the dictionary is a vicious circle – if you look for what light is the dictionary says: that which is not darkness. To destroy light, darkness has to be brought in. What nonsense! And when you go to the definition of darkness, you will be surprised – then the light has to be brought in. What is darkness? – then they say: that which is not light.
You have not defined either, because both remain indefinable. And from one indefinable how can you define the other which is undefined? The whole game of the dictionary is that you never look at the whole thing.
If you ask linguists, “What is mind?” they say, “Not matter.” And, “What is matter?” they say, “Not mind.” Neither is defined. How can one undefined term define something? If I ask you where you live you say, “I am a neighbor of A.” And if I ask you where this A lives, you say, “He is my neighbor.” How am I to find the place where you live? Because neither A is defined nor you; A lives near B and B lives near A. But this is how things go on.
Mind cannot understand anything unless the opposite is brought in, because through contrast mind becomes capable of seeing. Life cannot be understood if there is no death, and happiness is impossible to feel if there is no unhappiness. How will you feel healthy if you have never known illness? You may be healthy but you cannot feel it. To be healthy is possible without illness but the mind cannot check it, the mind cannot know it. You have to fall ill.
For the mind, to be a saint one needs to be a sinner first, and to be healthy you have to be ill, and to be in love you have to hate. If you love and there is no hate you will not be able to know, your mind will not in any way detect it. And nobody else will be able to know it.
That is the problem with a Buddha or a Jesus. Buddha is full of love, but we cannot detect his love – he has no contrasting background, no hate. We have never seen hate in his eyes, and we have never seen anger in his eyes. How can we know that he loves? His love becomes incomprehensible.
For the mind, anything is comprehensible if the opposite is brought in. But the moment you bring the opposite you falsify existence, because in existence there is nothing like ‘opposite.’
Mind moves through the opposite and existence is unitary. Existence is advaita, existence is nondual – there is no problem. Where is the boundary of the day, when the day stops, ceases to be, and the night starts? Is there a gap between the two? Only if there is a gap then the boundary is possible. But there is no boundary! The day simply melts into the night, it merges into the night, and the night again merges into the day. Life is one, existence is one – mind is dual. So if you go on choosing you will never come to the source. Then you will cling to life and you will be afraid of death. Then you will cling to love and you will be afraid of hate. Then you will cling to the good and you will be afraid of the bad. Then you will cling to God and you will be afraid of the Devil.
Life is one. God, Devil – one. There is no pision where God ends and where Devil begins; there cannot be. In life, Ram and Ravan are one, but for the mind they are the enemies, they are fighting.
For the mind everything is a conflict, it is a war.
And if you choose then you remain part of the game. And how not to choose is the whole art of religion, how to drop into a choicelessness.
But remember, don’t choose choicelessness! Otherwise, listening to me or to Sosan or Krishnamurti you will become enchanted by the word ‘choicelessness.’ Your mind will say, “This is very good. Then ecstasy is possible and much bliss will happen to you if you become choicelessness. Then the door of the mysteries of life will be opened.” The mind feels greedy. The mind says, “Okay, so I will choose choicelessness.” The door is closed, only the label is changed, but you have become a victim of the old trick.
- Osho, "Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing, Discourse #4"
Why do we begin to feel that we are the bodies?
Why does consciousness become so involved with the body - not only involved, but identified? Why do we begin to feel that we are the bodies? - not that we are IN the bodies, but we ARE the bodies?
This is really a miracle, because the knower can never be the known; the observer, the source of consciousness, can never be identified with the object. This body we know as an object; this hand I know, I feel, as an object. I never feel... I Can never feel it as me. It is always something outside - an object. It hurts, I know; it doesn't hurt, I know - but I remain the knower.
But why does it happen that the knower becomes the known? How? How does the subject become the object? It cannot become really - that is impossible; becoming is impossible. The subject can never become the object - but it appears, it appears that it has become the object. We have become the bodies, and we go on living as if we are bodies.
One philosopher has written a very strange book. The book is called THE PHILOSOPHY OF AS-IF.
Really, this is our whole lives. We behave as if we are bodies; we behave as if we are material. We behave always not as we are, but AS IF - the "as if" is always there. How does this happen? - this which is impossible - how does this impossibility happen? What is the key? What is the clue?
The clue is very simple. The logic in the trick is very simple. You begin to be identified with anything which is pleasurable, because if you feel identified with the pleasure, you can feel more pleasure.
If you do not feel identified with pleasure, then you cannot feel the pleasure at all, really. So the lover begins to feel identified with the beloved, the friend with the friend, the father with his son, the mother with her son; they begin to feel identified. The mother feels as if she is living in the son, and that if the son succeeds, the mother succeeds. If the son achieves, the father achieves. Then the son becomes just an extended part of the father's ego.
With whatsoever we feel as pleasure, we begin to be identified. The moment the son becomes rebellious or becomes a criminal, the father tries to destroy the identification. He says, "Now, no more. You don't belong to me at all." Why? Why does the son belong at all?
[....]
We continue to be identified with the body because we feel this is the source of pleasure. Whenever someone else's body becomes the source of pleasure, we begin to be identified with that also. But always, pain comes from someone else; suffering comes from someone else. With this trick, this deep involvement in identification becomes possible.
The truth, the fact, is quite different: the body is both OR neither. Either it is both the source of pain and pleasure.... Remember this; it is both, because it cannot be one or the other. Pleasure and pain are ONE. Your body is the source of BOTH. If you can feel this and realize this, then they both negate each other; the pain and the pleasure both negate each other and the body becomes neutral. Or, feel that pleasure and pain both come from outside, both are devices. They both come from outside; don't pide, take them as a whole. Then also there is no identification with the body; the body is neutral.
And if the body is neutral, this rishi says you become a soul; otherwise, you are a conditioned soul.
And this conditioned soul is the bondage; this conditioning is the bondage. And the rishi says this is the only disease, the spiritual disease: to be conditioned so much, identified so much with the body that one begins to feel as if one is the body. This "as if" must be broken.
But it begins to be difficult. One feels to break it, but it looks impossible, because we have investments in it. We can break it if someone can make us confident that "if you break this body- consciousness, you will be very happy and blissful" - then we can break it. But again the old fallacy goes on, the old longing goes on. So I am not saying that if you want happiness, then break this conditioning and identification with the body, because you cannot break it. Rather, be aware of the fact that happiness or misery both will always remain side by side; you cannot leave one and choose the other. That is not possible. They are just like negative and positive poles of electricity; they are two parts of one phenomenon.
So be aware of this, that they are two parts of one phenomenon. Then you can just drop them without any further longing.
You cannot drop anything if there is a desire to gain something else; then that desire is again desire for happiness, pleasure. Be aware of the fact that both are one; pleasure and pain are one. Your interpretation differs, but the thing is always the same. This awareness of the fact becomes the dropping, the turning. And the soul, for the first time, realizes that it has never been identified with any object at all; it is the subjectivity.
Kierkegaard has said, "To know the subjectivity as the subjectivity is the realization. To know the subjectivity as an object is the bondage."
Why this bondage with the body and bodies? What is the secret? How are we in it, and why do we continue to be in it? Why is it such a struggle to go beyond? If bliss is inwards, and outwardly we cannot achieve anything other than anguish, then why this absurdity of living outward and outward?
Why not go inward? Who is preventing you? You are the prisoner. And you are the imprisoned. No one else is involved in it - No one except you, yourself. Then why not take the jump?
There must be something which hinders you, which prevents you, which becomes a barrier to you.
What is that? This rishi says that the longing for pleasure, the fear of misery, and the fear of pain are the root causes - the longing for pleasure and the effort to avoid any pain, any suffering, any DUKKHA. And the illusion is created because pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, are not two things, are not two opposites; they are two polarities of one phenomenon, two ends of one phenomenon. They are joined and one.
That's why pleasure turns into misery; they are convertible. Anything that you feel as pleasurable this moment may become unpleasurable the next. So pleasure and pain are not qualities of a thing, because the thing remains the same. I love you and feel happy; you remain the same. And the next moment, I hate you and feel miserable. But happiness and misery are not qualities of YOU, you remain the same. They must belong to MY mind, to MY attitude; they must belong to ME.
That's why the same thing can be a source of deep happiness to one, and a deep source of misery to someone else. The same thing can be a source of happiness to you this moment, and the next moment a source of your very hell. Pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering are not qualities of things as we presume; they are not. They are your attitudes - they belong to you.
So try an experiment: You are feeling happy in some situation - then be in that situation and begin to feel unhappy. And soon, soon you will begin to feel unhappy - it depends on your choice. Your beloved is nearby; you are feeling happy - now begin to feel unhappy, and soon you will be able to create unhappiness. Begin to feel happy, and soon you will change the whole situation - it depends on you.
Once you know the secret, the whole clinging drops - with pleasure or with fear of pain, the whole clinging just drops. The moment you know you are the master - whether to feel happy or to feel miserable depends on you - you become free of all dependence on others. But one has to know, one has to experience.
Things are just neutral; they don't give you anything. It is you who contributes the feeling - not the thing. Really, you determine the whole thing UNCONSCIOUSLY; that is why there is clinging.
Determine it CONSCIOUSLY.
Try an experiment. You are feeling very pained, suffering, you are ill. Then accept the illness; don't fight it, remain in it, be a companion to it - don't try to escape. Accept it totally, be with it, and soon a moment comes when you explode into a new dimension. The illness may be there still, but now it belongs only to the body, not to you. It is just on the periphery somewhere, as if it belongs to someone else - you have transcended.
Once the consciousness begins to feel that there is no bondage from the outside, then the longing for pleasure drops, because it is your projection. Then the fear of suffering drops, because it is your projection. In a very subtle way you become the master, the converter. You can convert anything into anything, because it is only your choice, your decision, your mind. Whatsoever you put into things you can get back - it is really just an echo.
You fall in love with someone, and if I ask you why, you will say, "Because the face is beautiful, the person is beautiful." But really the thing is quite the reverse. It is not that the person is beautiful and so you have fallen in love; rather, because you have fallen in love the person looks beautiful. Your falling in love is primary, and the second thing is just a projection, because the same person can become ugly the next day - he remains the same with the same face, but everything has changed.
This happens so often but still we are unaware. You say, "I cannot live without you!" And soon a moment comes when you cannot live WITH him. Why? - because you have not taken things in the right order.
You fall in love - that means you begin to project; love is a hypnosis. Love is a very delicate state of mind in which you can project anything - anything! So the beloved is not really there outside, it is here inside. It is a projection, and the person is just a screen. And you have projected much, you have contributed much. The moment you withdraw your contribution, the person is just ordinary.
There is no halo around, no aura; everything has just dropped. The person is just ordinary, even more ordinary than ordinary, because now, it is so without luster. Now dreams have dropped, and dreams were the thing the whole stuff was made of.
Remember this fact: It is your mind which begins to feel happy or miserable - it depends on you.
And once you know the secret, you have become really the master. Now you know the alchemy; you are the alchemist now, you can change any base metal into the higher. Now, you have the secret to turn anything into gold - now you can convert. And once you begin to convert base metals into higher metals, nothing is higher and nothing base. Now you know it is just you and your projection - your mind is doing the whole trick.
But one has to do much to be aware of this fact; one has to go deep into the facticity, into the very phenomenon of desiring, of avoiding, of longing for this and trying to escape that - one has to go deep into it. And it is not a doctrine - whatsoever the rishi is saying is not a doctrine - it is not a conception really; it is the facticity. It is how the mechanism of the mind works; it is just a fact. It is not a philosophy; it is a science in the sense that it is how the mind works. You project first, then you begin to believe. Then any moment you can withdraw your projection and the idol is lost, the temple is destroyed, and there is nothing left. But again you will do the same thing, and you will go on doing the same thing: projecting, then feeling miserable or happy, and never being aware that you are creating - that you are the creator.
Everyone is a magician - EVERYONE is a magician, and everyone goes on doing tricks with himself.
Then these tricks become habits, mechanical habits; you can repeat them ad infinitum. And we have repeated them ad infinitum - lives and lives and lives. We have been repeating them always. [....]
In each life you have done the same. It is a repetition: the same love - the falling in love and then frustration; riches, and then the feeling of inner poverty; prestige and power, and yet the helplessness. And the same!"
But we forget. Every life we drop all memories and we forget, and we begin anew. Esoteric science says that this forgetfulness is intentional. It is intentional that you have forgotten your past lives, because you wanted to forget. Psychologists say that you forget all that you want to forget. [....]
Buddha and Mahavira will say, "First go deep" - and there are methods. There are methods which can bring you back all the memories of your past lives. And once you know and go back on this time track, once you know that you have done the same nonsense every time, and you have longed for the same things, and always received quite the opposite.... This has been a wheel constantly turning and turning and turning, and always forgetting and forgetting, and doing the same thing again and again. If one becomes aware of it, the very awareness becomes transforming.
The very awareness is transformation. It is an inner revolution.
But leave aside past lives; even this life is enough - if you can go back in this very life and can find out that whatsoever was happiness one day became misery the other, that whatsoever you longed for, when you achieved it, was totally frustrating.... One of the greatest miseries of human life is to get that which you long for. If you never get it you are still happy, happy in the hope, happy in the possibility. But when you get it, even hope is lost. Now there is no future - you have got it.
Every achievement is frustrating. They say, "Nothing succeeds like success." But I say, "Nothing fails like success."
Nothing fails like success.
The moment you succeed, you know nothing has been achieved. It was just a dream, and now you are disillusioned.
So go back in this life, even this life is enough; go back and feel. Really we always go to the future, never to the past; we always go for the tomorrow, never for the yesterday. Go back and feel, go back. You have lived with the same desires, with the same longing, with the same dreams. Now take account of your past - what have you achieved? What have you gained? Was any hope ever fulfilled, or has every hope just proved hopeless? - go back. Don't always move into the future, because in the future you will be doing the same - repeating the past. Go back. Realize your whole past; feel what has been wrong with it and don't continue that wrong again. Drop it. Drop it consciously because it has become a habit now, it has become a mechanical routine. Drop it consciously!
Don't repeat the past in the future, and you will be a new man.
This is what I mean by sannyas, by renunciation - to be a new man. This is what I mean by "breaking with the past," discontinuity with the past. Remember what you have done with yourself in the past, and then drop it! Don't drop it in steps, because you can never drop anything in steps - drop it totally, suddenly. Only then there is a discontinuity; otherwise, if you drop it in steps, there is a continuity.
Drop it suddenly. This is what is meant by sannyas: Dropping the past as useless for the future.
This is a reorientation of all your attitudes, a reorientation of your total consciousness. Once this reorientation is there, you begin a new journey, and that journey is inwards. Then you can pass all the five bodies and come to the one which is embodied, but is not a body itself.
-Osho, “That Art Thou, #8”
Meditation is a state of no-mind
Question 2: What is meditation?
Meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too much full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust. The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are moving, memories are moving, ambitions are moving - it is a constant traffic! day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the mind is functioning, it is dreaming. It is still thinking; it is still in worries and anxieties. It is preparing for the next day; an underground preparation is going on.
This is the state of no meditation - just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thought moves, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent - that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise.
Meditation is a state of no-mind.
And you cannot find meditation through the mind because mind will perpetuate itself.
You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind; by seeing the mind pass, but not getting identified with it, not thinking that "I am it."
Meditation is the awareness that "I am not the mind." When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive - moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still. In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know what the mystery of this existence is.
And once you have tasted those few dewdrops of nectar, great longing will arise in you to go deeper and deeper into it. Irresistible longing will arise in you, a great thirst. You will become afire!
That's what sannyas is all about. When you have tasted a few moments of silence, of joy, of meditativeness, you will like this state to become your CONSTANT state, a continuum. The desire to make meditation your whole lifestyle is what sannyas is all about.
And if a few moments are possible, then there is no problem. Slowly slowly, more and more moments will be coming. As you become skillful, as you learn the knack of not getting involved in the mind, as you learn the art of remaining aloof, away from the mind, as you learn the science of creating a distance between you and your own thoughts, more and more meditation will be showering on you. And the more it showers, the more it transforms you.
A day comes, a day of great blessings, when meditation becomes your natural state.
Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state - which we have lost. It is a paradise lost, but the paradise can be regained.
Look into the child's eyes, look and you will see tremendous silence, innocence. Each child comes with a meditative state, but he has to be initiated into the ways of the society - he has to be taught how to think, how to calculate, how to reason. how to argue; he has to be taught words, language, concepts. And, slowly slowly, he loses contact with his own innocence. He becomes contaminated, polluted by the society. He becomes an efficient mechanism; he is no more a man.
All that is needed is to regain that space once more. You had known it before, so when for the first time you know meditation, you will be surprised - because a great feeling will arise in you as if you have known it before. And that feeling is true: YOU HAVE known it before. You have forgotten. The diamond is lost in piles of rubbish. But if you can uncover it, you will find the diamond again - it is yours.
It cannot really be lost: it can only be forgotten. We are born as meditators, then we learn the ways of the mind. But our real nature remains hidden somewhere deep down like an undercurrent. Any day, a little digging, and you will find the source still flowing, the source of fresh waters. And the greatest joy in life is to find it. [....]
MEDITATION MEANS BECOMING AWARE that the source of life is inside. The body depends on the outside, true - but you are not the body alone. You don't depend on the outside. You depend on the inner world. These are the two directions: to move outwards or to move inwards. Mind is a process of moving outwards, and mind starts the day the child finds the mother's breast. That is the beginning of the mind. And mind takes you farther and farther away from yourself.
Meditation is the recognition that "There is an inner world too, and I have to search for it."
Mind is focussed on some goal, some object. Meditation is the search to know the pure longing - not the object, but the longing for the object. "What is this longing in me that wants to have much money, that wants to have great power, that wants to become famous... what is this longing in me? Who is this longing in me? What is its nature?"
To know this longing is meditation. And to know it in its purity is to know God. Longing without any content, pure longing, just the flame without any smoke, is God. Meditation brings you to God, because it brings you to your innermost core. And when you start moving inwards, the circle is complete.
You become mature only when meditation has started; otherwise you remain childish.
Your toys may go on changing - small children are playing with small toys, and big children, aged children, elderly children, are playing with big toys - but there is no qualitative difference.
You can see... sometimes your child will do it. He will stand on the table when you are sitting at the side on the chair, and he will say, "Look, Daddy, I am bigger than you." He is standing higher, on the table, and he says, "Look, I am bigger than you," and you laugh at him. But what are you doing? When you have more money, just watch how you walk.
You are saying to all the neighbours, "Look! I am bigger than you." Or when you become a president of a country, or a prime minister, look how you walk, with what haughtiness, with what ego. You are telling everybody, "I have defeated you all. I am sitting on the biggest chair." These are the same games! From your childhood to your old age, you go on playing the same games. You can play the game of Monopoly, or you can go and play the real game of monopoly in the sharemarket - it makes no difference, it is the same game just played on a bigger scale.
Once you understand it, that this is the root of your childishness, the outgoing mind....
Small children start reaching for the moon, and even the biggest scientists are trying to reach the moon - they have reached. There is not much difference.
Reaching outside, you may reach other stars but you will remain childish. Even if you reach the moon, what are you going to do there? You will be the same! With the same rubbish in your head, with all the holy cow dung that you go on carrying in your heart, you will be standing on the moon. There will be no difference at all! You can be a poor man, you can be very rich; you can be absolutely anonymous, you can be world-famous - - it makes no difference at all. Unless the mind takes a turn and starts moving inwards, unless mind takes a totally new dimension and becomes meditation....
Meditation is mind turning towards its own source.
Meditation makes you mature; meditation makes you really a grown-up. Growing in age is not really becoming a grown-up, because I see people eighty years old and still playing games, ugly games of power politics - even at the age of eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four! The sleep seems to be so deep. When are they going to awaken? When will they think of the inner world?
And death will take all that you have accumulated - your power, your money, your prestige. Nothing will be left. not even a trace. Your whole life will be nullified. Death will come and destroy all that you have made; death will come and prove that all your palaces were nothing but palaces made of playing cards.
Maturity is to know something in you which is deathless, to know something in you which will transcend death - that is meditation. Mind knows the world: meditation knows God.
Mind is a way to understand the object: meditation is a way to understand the subject.
Mind is a concern with the contents, and meditation is a concern with the container - the consciousness. Mind becomes obsessed with the clouds, and meditation searches for the sky. Clouds come and go: sky remains, abides.
Search for the inner sky. And if you have found it, then you will never die. The body will die, the mind will die, but you will never die. And to know it is to know life. What you call life is not real life because it is going to die. Only a meditator knows what life is because he has reached the very source of eternity.
-Osho, "Philosophia Perennis, Vol. 2, Talk #5, Q2"
No thought, no mind, no choice
The only thing to be learned is not to do anything, but just be. Doing moves you. Doing, in the beginning at least, may take you away from witnessing; you may forget to witness. So in the beginning, just be -- silent, utterly immobile, as if dead, so that you can experience being in its purity.
Once experienced, you can bring the same quality, the same grace, the same bliss, to your actions in the ordinary life.
Then there is no difference between meditation and life. Then whatever you are doing is your meditation.
If you are not doing anything, that is your meditation, because all along, twenty-four hours, you are rooted in your being. You are luminous. Your light, your fire is burning so high that there is no way to forget it. It is radiating all around you. Those who are perceptive, receptive, sensitive, will experience your fire, your life, your song... your dance, even though you are not moving at all.
All that is needed is, mind should be empty. The ultimate experience is the experience of no mind.
Mind is a faculty to work in the world. It has no way to reach to your very center which is far away, back. Mind cannot go backwards, it has no reverse gears; it can only go forward. You can take it to the mountains, to the stars, wherever you want, but you cannot take it to your own being.
If you want to go to your own being, you will have to leave the mind; you will have to go alone. You will have to go in silence, without thought.
And once, just once you know what freedom, what joy, what eternity, what tremendous life bursts forth in you as no-mind is entered, the spring has come to you. Thousands of flowers of eternity blossom. You have come to know the master key which opens all the doors of all the mysteries of existence.
But it has nothing to do with the mind or thinking.
No thought, no mind, no choice -- just being silent, rooted in yourself, rejoicing. Thrilled with the experience, overflowing with great benediction to the whole universe -- this is the only religion I know of.
All other religions are just frauds.
-Osho, “No Mind: The Flowers of Eternity, #12”
You have to become a buddha in your day-to-day affairs, twenty-four hours. Living or dead, you have to be a buddha. Only the buddha does not die.
To be a buddha is your destiny.
There is no other blessing that goes higher. There is no other ecstasy that goes wider. There is no other blissfulness that goes deeper.
Meditation is the only revolution in the world. All other revolutions are fake.
-Osho, “Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky, #7”
What is Meditation?
The meditation I am talking about is not a meditation on something: rather, it is a state of meditation. So this is what I mean when I am talking to you about meditation as a state. Meditation does not mean remembering someone. Meditation means to drop everything which is in one’s memory and to come to a state where only consciousness remains, where only awareness remains.
If you light a lamp and remove all the objects surrounding it, the lamp will still go on giving light. In the same way, if you remove all objects from your consciousness, all thoughts, all imagination, what will happen? – only consciousness will remain. That pure state of consciousness is meditation. You don’t meditate on somebody. Meditation is a state where only consciousness remains.
When only consciousness remains without an object, that state is called meditation. I am using the word meditation in this sense.
What you practice is not meditation in the real sense; it is only a concept. But meditation will happen on its own through this. Try to understand that what you are practicing at night, exercises involving the chakras, and in the morning, exercises involving the breath, is all a discipline, it is not meditation. Through this discipline a moment will come when the breath will seem to have disappeared. Through this discipline a moment will come when the body seems to have disappeared and thoughts have also disappeared. What will remain when everything has disappeared? That which remains is meditation. When everything has disappeared, that which is left behind is called meditation."
-Osho, “The Path of Meditation, #6”
When people come to me and they ask, 'How to meditate?' I tell them, 'There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation – how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.'
When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the center, it settles down towards the center. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Non-doing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read the Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.
Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed – courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that – the courage to be meditative.
But people who are engaged outside with worldly things or nonworldly things, but occupied all the same, they think -- and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers -- they say that if you are an introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about you: "What are you doing? -- gazing at your navel? What are you doing? -- opening the third eye? Where are you going? Are you morbid?... because what is there to do inside? There is nothing inside."
Inside doesn't exist for the majority of people, only the outside exists. And just the opposite is the case. Only inside is real; outside is nothing but a dream. But they call introverts morbid, they call meditators morbid. In the West they think that the East is a little morbid. What is the point of sitting alone and looking inwards? What are you going to get there? There is nothing.
-Osho, “Just Like That, #6”
"If you want to understand exactly what meditation is, Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition – that is witnessing."
-Osho, “The Invitation, #21”
Osho, What is meditation?
Meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too much full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust. The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are moving, memories are moving, ambitions are moving – it is a constant traffic! Day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the mind is functioning, it is dreaming. It is still thinking; it is still in worries and anxieties. It is preparing for the next day; an underground preparation is going on.
This is the state of no meditation – just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thought moves, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent – that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise. Meditation is a state of no-mind.
And you cannot find meditation through the mind because mind will perpetuate itself. You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind; by seeing the mind pass, but not getting identified with it, not thinking that “I am it.”
Meditation is the awareness that “I am not the mind.” When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive – moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still. In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know what the mystery of this existence is.
-Osho, “Philosophia Perennis, Vol. 2, #5”
What is meditation? Is it a technique that can be practiced? Is it an effort that you have to do? Is it something which the mind can achieve? It is not.
All that the mind can do cannot be meditation – it is something beyond the mind, the mind is absolutely helpless there.
The mind cannot penetrate meditation; where mind ends, meditation begins. This has to be remembered, because in our life, whatsoever we do, we do through the mind; whatsoever we achieve, we achieve through the mind.
And then, when we turn inwards, we again start thinking in terms of techniques, methods, doings, because the whole of life's experience shows us that everything can be done by the mind. Yes – except meditation, everything can be done by the mind.
Yes, except meditation, everything is done by the mind. Everything is done by the mind except meditation because meditation is not an achievement. It is already the case, it is your nature. It has not to be achieved; it has not only to be recognized, it has only to be remembered. It is there waiting for you – just a turning in, and it is available. You have been carrying it always and always.
Meditation is your intrinsic nature. It is you, it is your being, it has nothing to do with your doings. You cannot have it. You cannot not have it. It cannot be possessed, it is not a thing. It is you, it is your being.
Once you understand what meditation is things become very clear. Otherwise, you can go on groping in the dark.
Meditation is a state of clarity, not a state of mind. Mind is confusion. Mind is never clear. It cannot be. Thoughts create clouds around you -- they are subtle clouds. A mist is created by them, and the clarity is lost. When thoughts disappear, when there are no more clouds around you, when you are in your simple beingness, clarity happens. Then you can see far away; then you can see to the very end of existence; then your gaze becomes penetrating -- to the very core of being.
Meditation is clarity, absolute clarity, of vision. You cannot think about it. You have to drop thinking. When I say, 'You have to drop thinking,' don't conclude in a hurry, because I have to use language. So I say, 'Drop thinking,' but if you start dropping, you will miss, because again you will reduce it to a doing.
'Drop thinking' simply means: don't do anything. Sit. Let thoughts settle themselves. Let mind drop on its own accord. You just sit gazing at the wall, in a silent corner, not doing anything at all. Relaxed. Loose. With no effort. Not going, anywhere. As if you are falling asleep awake -- you are awake and you are relaxing but the whole body is falling into sleep. You remain alert inside but the whole body moves into deep relaxation.
Thoughts settle on their own accord, you need not jump amongst them, you need not try to put them right. It is as if a stream has become muddy...what do you do? Do you jump in it and start helping the stream to become clear You will make it more muddy. You simply sit on the bank. You wait. There is nothing to be done. Because whatsoever you do will make the stream more muddy If somebody has passed through a stream and the dead leaves have surfaced and the mud has arisen, just patience is needed. You simply sit on the bank. Watch, indifferently. And as the stream goes on flowing, the dead leaves will be taken away, and the mud will start settling because it cannot hang forever
After a while, suddenly you will become aware -- the stream is crystal-clear again.
Whenever a desire passes through your mind the stream becomes muddy. So just sit. Don't try to do anything. In Japan this 'just sitting' is called zazen; just sitting and doing nothing. And one day, meditation happens. Not that you bring it to you; it comes to you. And when it comes, you immediately recognize it; it has been always there but you were not looking in the right direction. The treasure has been with you but you were occupied somewhere else: in thoughts, in desires, in a thousand and one things. You were not interested in the only one thing... and that was your own being.
-Osho, Ancient Music in the Pines, #7
What then is meditation? Just sitting silently doing nothing, Witnessing whatsoever is happening all around; just watching it with no prejudice, no conclusion, no idea what is wrong and what is right.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 8, #2"
A state of meditation is an innocent, silent state. You are blissfully unaware of your awareness. You are, but you are utterly relaxed. You are not in a state of sleep; you are fully alert, more alert than ever. Rather, you are alertness.
-Osho, “Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen, #1”
When I use the words “inner journey”, I simply mean that you have looked at one aspect of the journey in your life called “outer”, now try to look at another aspect of the journey called “inner”. You have been running after money, now run after meditation. You have been running after power, now run after God. Both are running. Once you start running after meditation then one day I will tell you, “Now drop meditation too. Now stop running.” And when you stop running then real meditation happens.
Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
So meditation has two meanings. That’s why in India we have two words for it: dhyana and samadhi. dhyana means the temporary meditation, arbitrary meditation; samadhi means you have come home, now meditation is not needed. When even meditation is not needed, one is in meditation – never before it. When one simply lives in meditation, walks in meditation, sleeps in meditation, when meditation is just one’s way of being, then one has arrived.
-Osho, “The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol. 2, #3”
Then what is meditation? Meditation is just being delighted in your own presence; meditation is a delight in your own being. It is very simple – a totally relaxed state of consciousness where you are not doing anything. The moment doing enters you become tense; anxiety enters immediately. How to do? What to do? How to succeed? How not to fail? You have already moved into the future.
If you are contemplating, what can you contemplate? How can you contemplate the unknown? How can you contemplate the unknowable? You can contemplate only the known. You can chew it again and again, but it is the known. If you know something about Jesus, you can think again and again; if you know something about Krishna, you can think again and again. You can go on modifying, changing, decorating – but it is not going to lead you towards the unknown. And “God” is the unknown.
Meditation is just to be, not doing anything – no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are. And it is a sheer delight. From where does this delight come when you are not doing anything? It comes from nowhere, or, it comes from everywhere. It is uncaused, because the existence is made of the stuff called joy. It needs no cause, no reason. If you are unhappy you have a reason to be unhappy; if you are happy you are simply happy – there is no reason for it. Your mind tries to find a reason because it cannot believe in the uncaused, because it cannot control the uncaused – with the uncaused the mind simply becomes impotent. So the mind goes on finding some reason or other. But I would like to tell you that whenever you are happy, you are happy for no reason at all, whenever you are unhappy, you have some reason to be unhappy – because happiness is just the stuff you are made of. It is your very being, it is your innermost core. Joy is your innermost core.
-Osho, “Dang Dang Doko Dang, #5”
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