Osho on Art of Meditation

My whole life I have been talking about meditation. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have gone through all those methods--and not intellectually. It took me years to go through each method and to find out its very essence, and after going through one hundred and twelve methods I was amazed that the essence is witnessing. The methods' non-essentials are different, but the center of each method is witnessing.

Hence I can say to you, there is only one meditation in the whole world and that is the art of witnessing. It will do everything--the whole transformation of your being.

Whatever I am doing, my meditation continues. It is not something that I have to do it separately; it is just an art of witnessing. Speaking to you, I'm also witnessing myself speaking to you. So here are three persons: you are listening, one person is speaking, and there is one behind who is watching and that is my real me. And to keep constant contact with it is meditation.

So whatever you do does not matter, you just keep contact with your witness. I have reduced religion to its very fundamental essence. Now everything else is just ritual. This much is enough. And this does not need you to become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or anybody, and this can be done by an atheist, by a communist, by anybody, because it needs no kind of theology, no kind of belief system. It is simply a scientific method of slowly moving inwards. A point comes when you reach to your innermost core, the very center of the cyclone.

The basic element running through all the methods of meditation is witnessing.

You ask me: What is witnessing?
Whatever you are doing. For example, right now you are writing. You can write in two ways. The ordinary way that you always write. You can try another method: you can write it and you can also inside witness that you are writing it.

And you ask: Does that mean some kind of detachment?
A detachment. You are a little distant, away, watching yourself writing. So any act, just moving my hand, I can watch. Walking on the road, I can watch myself walking. Eating, I can watch. So whatever you are doing, just remain a witness.

If you have any ego, it will destroy it, because this watching is very much poisonous to the ego. It is not ego that watches. The ego is absolutely blind. It cannot watch anything. You can watch your ego. For example, somebody insults you and you feel hurt, and your ego feels hurt. You can watch it. You can watch that you are feeling hurt, your ego is feeling hurt, that you are angry. And you can still remain aloof, detached, just a watcher on the hills. Whatever goes on in the valley you can see.

So all the methods are basically different ways of witnessing. I have condensed them in a very simple way:
First, watch your actions of the body.
Second, watch your actions of the mind: thoughts, imaginations.
Third, watch your actions of the heart: feelings, love, hate, moods, sadness, happiness.

And if you can succeed in watching all these three, and as your witnessing grows deeper and deeper, a moment comes that there is only witnessing but nothing to witness. The mind is empty, the heart is empty, the body is relaxed.

In that moment happens something like a quantum leap. Your whole witnessing jumps upon itself. It witnesses itself, because there is nothing else to witness. And this is the revolution which I call enlightenment, self-realization. Or you can give it any name, but this is the ultimate experience of bliss. You cannot go beyond it.

This is the simplest. And because it can be done without in any way interfering with your everyday life, because it is something that you can go on doing the whole day. Any other method you have to take some time apart for it. And any method that needs one hour or half an hour to sit and do it is not going to help much, because twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite. And whatever you have gained in one hour will be washed away in twenty-three hours.
This is the only method that you can continue around the clock. While falling asleep you can go on witnessing, witnessing, that the sleep is coming, coming, coming, that it is getting darker and the body is relaxing. And a moment comes when you can watch that you are asleep. And still there is a corner, a space in you which is awake.

When you can watch yourself twenty-four hours, you have arrived. Now there is nothing to be done. Then witnessing has become natural to you. You don't have to do it. It will be simply like breathing, happening to you.

Related Post:

• J Krishnamurti on Art of Meditation

Tantra & Intoxicants

There are several tantric rituals that require use of Intoxicants. Those who neither have proper knowledge about it nor do they understand it condemn Tantra for using intoxicants. There is nothing good or bad, everything in the world is relative. Food can be cooked using fire, but a house can also be burnt. It depends on your level of intelligence, how you use it. Same is the case with intoxicants.

If used properly, intoxicants can prove to be of immense help for humanity. They can unlock the door of deep recesses of unconscious and take you to the doorstep to Samadhi – the state of superconsciousness. In India, several sects of monks use intoxicants in order to get a glimpse of Samadhi. There’s a sect of such sannyasins called Rasayana. They use chemicals for intoxicating the mind in such a way that Kundalini can be arisen to reach Sahasrar. In Tantric terminology, this is called the union of Shiva and Shakti. Even in the Vedic era, ancient Aryans used the intoxicants for spiritual growth. They used a drink called "Soma" to raise the level of their consciousness. It was used widely during Yajnas they used to perform. But one must know how intoxicants should be used. It is a science and it can be very harmful physically and spiritually without proper knowledge.

These substances are not used just for intoxication. When certain amount of intoxicant is used during sadhana (while performing Tantric rituals), as mentioned in Tantric scriptures, it stops the flow of thoughts in mind. Mind becomes thoughtless, very relaxed and silent. This is the state of mind that can be used as the pedestal to step into the realm of superconsciousness. But a silent mind alone is not of any use in itself. Because silence created by intoxication is nothing but a kind of inertia. This is the similar state as deep sleep. During dreamless sleep, no thought penetrates the mind. Mind becomes inert and hence silent. Intoxicants do the same thing.

But this is the moment of sheer importance. If you can be fully alert in this moment, the divine transformation can take place. Because thoughts are the only hindrance in the path of enlightenment. Keep your mind awaken – aware in that very moment – and you will start to feel vibration in your spinal cord. Shakti is going upward to meet Shiva. The more aware, more alert you are; Kundalini will arise more rapidly – with a blast in your consciousness. At this point, Sadhaka should not frighten and keep the flame of awareness affirm. If Sadhaka does so, the real silence and divine bliss descends on him/her.

Rhonda Byrne's “The Secret” : Book Review

Recently I’ve come to know about a book called “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne. A friend of mine gave me the book and asked my opinion about it. This book topped the charts and soon became the bestseller. A Hollywood movie is also being made based on this book.

The book tells about the power of thoughts. It says that the universe works on the basis of certain laws like gravity etc. One of such laws is the law of attraction i.e. “like attracts like” in the field of thoughts. If one has the positive mind frame and keeps thinking about what one wants, he/she will get it for sure. If one wants to be rich, one should think of money in affirmative way all the time. The book says that negative words or thoughts shouldn’t be used as whoever applying this law doesn’t accept negative thoughts. If you’d say I don’t want to get poor, it would be interpreted as I want to get poor and the universal law of attraction will make you poor.

This is one of the most absurd books I have ever read in my life. Leave the content aside, it isn’t even original. There are several books written on this so called “law of attraction” before. And some of these books became quite famous too, like Napoleon Hills bestselling “Think & Grow Rich”. Both of these books are same, similar level of absurdity has been displayed in both.

A mediocre mind always craves that its desires come true. And cunning people encash their mediocrity. First of all, this is one of the biggest fallacies that thinking can get you anything. Sit and keep thinking about an ice-cream all the day, but you won’t get one. No law whatsoever, including this foolish law of attractiion, can get you even an ice-cream. But to deceive others, cunning people device imaginary laws like this and fools fall in trap. The author says that thoughts, as explained in the book, can solve all the problems one has. But the reality is – thoughts cannot solve any problem. Thoughts themselves are the cause of problem or to put it more clearly, thoughts are the only problem. No matter you think positive thoughts or negative thoughts; you dissipate your energy that can be used in doing something creative. One cannot be creative if one imagines something before doing as imagination is outcome of thoughts, of past and hence it cannot be new i.e. creative.

The best things in the world are unknown. The real secrets are unknown. You’ve never came in contact with those secrets ever before. So you cannot think of them because only that thing can be imagined which you already know. Therefore, to discover the immensity and the beauty of life, you must surpass the realm of thoughts, you must go beyond it. Be intelligent, leave mediocrity and take a leap into unknown.

The Path to Absolute

This is true that hope is life. But we should also remember that every coin has two sides. If you will see deeply, you will find that day is one with night, darkness is one with light, and life is one with death. It cannot be denied. If you believe that hope is life, you’re bound to accept that hope is death too. Man wants to be immortal – want to be free from death – but also want to cling to the life. But only he/she is free from death, who is free from life as well – the one has to be free from both life and death.

Hope is the inherent cause of bondage. Hope creates relativity, relativity of view – and then you see only those things what you want to see. Absolute truth disappears. We build the world in accordance with our own hopes, thoughts and desires. And in this way, hope creates resistance with reality, struggle comes into existence.

I’ve just reminded of a story. There was a boy who had recently completed his school and got admission in the college. All of his friends used to go to college by cars, but this poor fellow didn’t have a car and he had to walk to his college with inferiority. He has only this hope in his mind that someday his daddy would consider his problem and get him car. But he observed that it wasn’t going to happen as his father never pay any attention toward it. One day he went straight to his daddy and told him about it. Daddy shouted – “you fool! Your college touches the wall of our home and you insist that you’ll go by car only. God has given you two legs, for what?” – Daddy hadn’t become millionaire automatically; he had the PhD in greed and knew how to squeeze each and every penny very well. He had this hope in deep recesses of his heart that his son would learn this quality too, but he was just opposite. He answered – “God has given me two legs, for what? You asked a good question daddy. One leg to put on accelerator and the other to put on break.” Both have valid viewpoints. But this is not just a joke. This is a real struggle that comes into being when hopes, desires collide and we can see our own side only.

Hope is the root cause of all problems in life. The one who hope for requital, he’s bound to be sad. He’s bound to be troubled. A husband loves his wife in the hope that she’ll love him too, and when he don’t get the love or say that kind of love that he hoped, he feels sad. Somebody does something hoping that he’ll get something in return, but when he doesn’t get, he becomes unhappy. If one wants to get free of sadness, struggle, problems; he must also break free of hope. Because hope and hopelessness are two sides of a coin, if you’ll hold one side you cannot the other.

But I don’t mean that you should stop loving. It’s not intelligent to leave the rose due to fear of thorn. Love – to your wife, to your children, to the world – but don’t hope for anything, don’t want anything. Actually, only those who are hopeless can enjoy the life fully. Only the one who doesn’t want anything can play with kids in rain, can dance with sheer joy, can sing with ecstasy. Whatever that’s divine in the world is the outcome of desireless state of mind.

This is the secret. If you want to enjoy the world, want to feel the blessings; you must have the mind that is empty, like a white paper without any spot of ink - desire. The one who can break free the chains of hope and desire can feel the divine bliss, he reaches to the absolute or to put it more correctly, he becomes absolute, and this is the state of complete freedom. There is nothing left for that person to achieve.

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