All that is wrong with man is somewhere associated with love?

Only compassion is therapeutic, because all that is ill in man is because of lack of love. All that is wrong with man is somewhere associated with love. He has not been able to love, or he has not been able to receive love. He has not been able to share his being. That’s the misery. That creates all sorts of complexes inside.

Those wounds inside can surface in many ways: they can become physical illness, they can become mental illness — but deep down man suffers from lack of love. Just as food is needed for the body, love is needed for the soul. The body cannot survive without food, and the soul cannot survive without love. In fact, without love the soul is never born — there is no question of its survival.

That’s why I say compassion is therapeutic. What is compassion? Compassion is the purest form of love. Sex is the lowest form of love, compassion the highest form of love. In sex the contact is basically physical; in compassion the contact is basically spiritual. In love, compassion and sex are both mixed, the physical and the spiritual are both mixed. Love is midway between sex and compassion.

You can call compassion prayer also. You can call compassion meditation also. The highest form of energy is compassion. The word compassion is beautiful: half of it is passion — somehow passion has become so refined that it is no more like passion. It has become compassion.

In compassion, you simply give. In love, you are thankful because the other has given something to you. In compassion, you are thankful because the other has taken something from you; you are thankful because the other has not rejected you. You had come with energy to give, you had come with many flowers to share, and the other allowed you, the other was receptive. You are thankful because the other was receptive.

Compassion is the highest form of love.

The greatest anguish in life is when you cannot express, when you cannot communicate, when you cannot share. The poorest man is he who has nothing to share, or who has something to share but has lost the capacity, the art, of how to share it; then a man is poor.

The sexual man is very poor. The loving man is richer comparatively. The man of compassion is the richest — he is at the top of the world. He has no confinement, no limitation. He simply gives and goes on his way. He does not even wait for you to say a thank-you. With tremendous love he shares his energy.

This is what I call therapeutic.
Unless compassion has happened to you, don’t think that you have lived rightly or that you have lived at all.
Compassion is the flowering. And when compassion happens to one person, millions are healed. Whosoever comes around him is healed. Compassion is therapeutic.

A Sudden Clash of Thunder OSHO

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Can technology create a great barrier to our spiritual growth?

Many people in the west are engaged in the creation of a science or technology of enlightenment. The need is certainly there. Is it irresponsible to engage in its creation without having reached the state of enlightenment?
Is the Aria method a valid approach?

“The first and most fundamental thing to be remembered is that enlightenment can never have a technology. By its very nature it is impossible. But the west is obsessed with technology, so whatsoever comes into the hands of the west, it starts reducing it into a technology.
Technology is an obsession. For the outside world, science is a valid approach, but partial, not total; not the only approach, but only one of the approaches. Poetry is as valid as science.

Science is knowledge without love, and that is the danger in it. Because it is knowledge without love, it is always in the service of death and never in the service of life. Hence, the whole progress of science is leading man towards a global suicide. One day when man has committed suicide — the Third World War — cockroaches will think, `We are the most fit to survive.’ Some Darwin, some cockroach-Darwin, will prove, `We are the fittest because we have survived; the survival of the fittest.’

Man has committed suicide; he has destroyed himself. Knowledge without love is dangerous, because in its very root is poison.

Love keeps balance, never allows knowledge to go too far, so it never becomes destructive. Science is knowledge without love; that is its danger. But it is one of the valid approaches: the object, the material, can be known without love — there is no need. But life is not only matter. Life is suffused with something tremendously transcendental. That transcendental is missed. And then science, by and by, automatically turns into a technology. It becomes mechanical. More and more it becomes a means to exploit nature, to manipulate nature. The very beginning of science has been with that idea: how to conquer nature. That’s a foolish idea.

We are not separate from nature; how can we conquer it? We are nature, so who is going to conquer whom? It is absurd. With that absurdity, science has destroyed much: the whole nature is destroyed, the climate is poisoned, the air, the water, the seas, everything polluted. The whole harmony is dying, the ecology is being continuously destroyed. Please remember — this is enough, more than enough.

Don’t turn science inwards. If the application of scientific methodology has been so devastating for outer nature, it is going to be more devastating to the inner nature — because you are moving towards the more subtle. Even for the outside nature, a different kind of knowledge is needed which is rooted in love; but for the innermost core of your being, the subtlest, the transcendental, knowledge is not needed at all. Innocence is needed. Innocence with love — then you will know the inside, then you will know the interior of your being, the subjectivity.

But the west is obsessed with technology. It seems technology has succeeded in nature: we have become more powerful. We have not become more powerful! The whole idea is just fallacious; we have not become more powerful. We are becoming weaker every day because the natural resources are being exhausted. Sooner or later the earth will be empty, it will not grow anything. We are not becoming powerful, we are becoming weaker and weaker and weaker every day. We are on the deathbed. Humanity cannot survive, the way it has been behaving with nature, for more than fifty years, sixty years, or, at the most, one hundred years — which is nothing. If the Third World War does not happen, then we will be committing a slow suicide. Within a hundred years, we will be gone. Not even a trace will be left.

And man will not be the first to disappear. Many other animals, very strong animals, have disappeared from the earth. They used to roam the earth, they were the kings of the earth, bigger than the elephant. They are no longer anywhere. They were thinking they had become very powerful. They were very huge, with tremendous energy, but then the earth could not supply feed for them. They began to become bigger and bigger and bigger; then a moment came when the earth could not supply food for them. They had to die.

The same is happening with man: man thinks he is becoming more and more powerful, he can reach to the moon; but he is destroying the earth. He is destroying the whole possibility of future life. Slowly, humanity is disappearing. Please, don’t turn your technology towards the inner; you have done enough harm. Enlightenment cannot be reduced to a technology.

So the first thing: the inner journey is of innocence, not of knowledge; certainly not of science, absolutely not of technology. It is more of love, innocence, silence. Meditation is not a technique really. Because you cannot understand anything other than technique, I have to talk in terms of technique. Otherwise, meditation is not a technique at all. Meditation is nothing that you do. Meditation is something that you fall into, just like love. Meditation is something in which you can be, but you cannot do it. Doing ceases.

How can there be a technology for non-doing? Technology is relevant with doing; you have to do something. Meditation is not something that you do. It is only when your doer has gone and you are totally relaxed, not doing anything, in a deep let-go, rest… there is meditation, then meditation flowers. It is the flowering of your being. It has nothing to do with becoming. It is not an achievement, it is not an improvement; it is just being that which you already are. What technique is needed?

People are foolish; that’s why techniques have to be talked about. If you understand, nothing is needed. Just being silent and just being yourself, not moving in any direction, not moving at all, and you will see the benediction, the meditation. When this meditation has become such a spontaneous flow that you need not even sit for it in a certain posture, that you need not find a small corner in the house where nobody disturbs you, when in the marketplace also it is there — talking, walking, doing, eating, it is there — when it is always there, even when you are asleep it is there, you go on feeling it, it goes on like breathing, or the beating of the heart, that’s what Kabir calls sahaj samadhi, spontaneous ecstasy. It needs no technique. It needs only spontaneity, it needs only naturalness, it needs only simplicity.

So I say to you: Blessed are the ignorant, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Become innocent and become ignorant. Don’t remain knowledgeable.

But in the west it is happening. Now they are trying to manipulate the mind, they are trying to create mechanisms to manipulate the mind. This is going to be far more dangerous than science. This is going to be far more dangerous, because once you know how to manipulate the mind of man, you will reduce man also to automata: that’s what’s going to happen.
Once you know that man and his mind can be manipulated, totally manipulated, then all freedom will be gone, all individuality will be gone. Then electrodes can be put into your head without your ever knowing, and you can be manipulated from Delhi, from Moscow, from Washington, the Capitol. Just by radio-waves you can be manipulated. The whole country can be ordered, and nobody will see the order coming from anywhere — it will come from within you. An electrode is there; just on radio-waves you can be ordered, and you will follow it automatically. All freedom will be gone. You can be hypnotized at any moment. You can be put into any hallucination and you will believe in it; it will be so real — and it will be coming from within you.

Then from Delhi, from Moscow, from Washington, from London, from the capital places…. There is no need to keep police and no need to keep a magistrate: this is too costly and uneconomical. These are like bullock carts — no need. Better technology will be available; no need to keep all these people to enforce, no need even for the priest to go on teaching morality and religion. Just from the capital place the orders can be given: that you are all happy — and you will all feel happy; that you are all contented — and you will feel contented. You may be on your deathbed, suffering, but if the order comes that you are happy and there is no death, you will believe you are happy and there is no death. And this will be coming from within you.

That’s what Delgado proposes to do someday, and he says: “Then man will be happy. Nobody will be unhappy.” But this happiness will not be true happiness.

Then there are mechanisms by which alpha-waves can be created in your mind, just by electrical stimulation. That is dangerous, because that will not allow you to know the reality. And those alpha-waves will be created from the outside; they will not be true, they will not be real. And God will disappear. Then there is no need for God. You are not unhappy, so why seek happiness? And you will believe in dogma — whatsoever dogma happens to be there, followed by your politicians and your priests — you will believe in the dogma, you will absolutely believe in the dogma, and there will be no doubt. Skepticism will disappear. This is a dangerous step.

Meditation should not be reduced into technology, and enlightenment cannot be reduced.

Enlightenment means awareness, witnessing. Enlightenment is neither of the body nor of the mind. It is of the beyond. The body can be manipulated by mechanisms, the mind can be manipulated by mechanisms, but your soul is beyond and cannot be manipulated by any mechanism whatsoever.

You ask, Many people in the west are engaged in the creation of a science or technology of enlightenment. Those people are criminals. They are dangerous people; avoid them. Just these same people were engaged in creating technology two hundred years ago. They have destroyed nature, now they are turning towards consciousness. They will destroy that too.

Now there is a movement all over the world to protect the ecology of nature, the naturalness of nature. But it is too late really. Now nothing can be done, nothing much can be done. And these people who propagate in favor of ecology appear to be eco-nuts, another species of Jehovah’s witnesses — fanatics, desperately fighting something which seems impossible. Before the plague of technology turns to human consciousness, stop it. Stop it in the seed.

And you say, The need is certainly there.
It is not, certainly not. There is no need. `But how do you see the possibility?’ There is no possibility either. But man is dangerous: the more impossible a thing, the more he becomes attracted and challenged. That’s what Edmund Hillary said when he reached to the top of Everest. Somebody asked him, `Why did you try it at all? What is the point? Why?’ Edmund Hillary said, `I had to, because Everest is there. Because it is there, I had to. It stands like a challenge.’ Anything unconquerable is a challenge to man’s ego. There is no possibility; naturally, it will never happen — but that very impossibility can become a challenge to these mad, obsessed people who want to reduce everything into technique. They cannot create a technology of enlightenment. That is not possible at all, in the very reality. But they can create a technology which can manipulate the mind, and even deceive people, and create an illusion of enlightenment.

That’s what is happening with drugs: drugs have become a technology of enlightenment. And the guru of drugs, Ginsberg, goes on talking as if all the mystics of the world were saying the same things, were trying to give you the same vision as LSD can give, or psilocybin, or marijuana. It is nonsense. No drug can lead you to enlightenment, but drugs can create an illusion of enlightenment.

Is it irresponsible to engage in its creation without having reached the state of enlightenment?

Only people who have not known enlightenment can try it. Those who have known cannot even think of the possibility. And it is irresponsible.

Is the Aria method a valid approach?

The Aria method is technology, techniques, knowledge without love — and hence the danger is there. it will turn people into robots.

Remember always, freedom is the goal; moksha, absolute freedom, is the goal. You can turn human beings into robots; they will be less miserable. In fact, if you become a perfect robot, how can you be miserable? A machine is never miserable; of course, never happy too, but never miserable. Aria methods, or any methods which exist without love, are dangerous. And in this again it is very difficult to make a distinction — because the same method can be used with love, and then it is meaningful; and the same method can be used without love, and it becomes dangerous. And it is very difficult to see from the outside whether the method is being used with love or without love.

The Aria methods have been chosen from different schools: Sufi, Gurdjieff, Tibetan, Indian, Japanese. It is eclectic. From all over the world, they have chosen techniques. In the first place, they are chosen from different schools; there is not a harmony in them, there is no center in them. It is just like a piled-up thing — a crowd of people, a mob, not a family — because the techniques come from different schools.

A Sufi technique is bound to be different from a Zen technique. Both function, both work, but they work in their own system. They cannot work outside the system. It is as if you take one part of one car, and try to fix that part into another car of a different make. And it doesn’t work, and you are puzzled: `why doesn’t it work?’ It used to work in the first car; there was a harmony, it was meant for that car. A Zen method works in a Zen philosophy; a Sufi method words in a Sufi philosophy; a Tibetan method works with Tibetan occult esoteric Buddhism; a Yoga method works with Patanjali’s system. You cannot just choose those methods from anywhere, otherwise you can make a car with a few parts from the Rolls Royce, a few from Lincoln, a few from Cadillac, and a few from Fiat — and you go on jumbling parts from everywhere. You can is dangerous…. It is not going anywhere in the first place, and you are fortunate if it doesn’t move. It moves? — then you are more unfortunate.

Aria has chosen from different schools. Aria is very greedy, eclectic; but there exists no center. It is not an orchestra, it is a market noise.

First thing: if you follow the Aria method too much, you will not arrive to your center. You will come to many experiences on the periphery, but you will never arrive to your center. And all your experiences will not be of a family, but fragmentary. And it is dangerous; you can fall into pieces.

The second thing: there is no love, because there is no center — and love arises only from the center. This collection of so many methods is soul-less, there is no soul in it. So you can become very, very efficient in the methods, and yet you will see that your heart is not flowering. You will become efficient, but you will not become blissful. You may become less miserable, you may be less tense, you may become more capable of controlling yourself, you may have a stronger ego, but you will not have a soul.

The methods are all valid taken in their own context. But Aria has not yet any philosophy, it has no harmony. And this is not a way to create a harmony; the way is just opposite. In fact, Buddhism was born when Buddha became enlightened. The center came first and then he started creating a few methods to help those people who were not yet enlightened, to help them come to the center that he had already achieved. The center came first, then the periphery.

So it is with Jalaluddin Rumi, he became enlightened first, and when he became enlightened he was dancing, he was whirling — not to become enlightened; he had never known about it. He just liked whirling very much, and he felt very peaceful. It was a coincidence. While he was whirling he became enlightened. When he became enlightened, he started thinking of how to help people; the center came first. Then he started the Sufi methods. The same was the case the Patanjali.

With Aria, it is totally different. There is no enlightened being at the center; of course, a very clever person who has collected many methods from many sources and many directions and many traditions — but there is no center. It is only a periphery. So people who go into Aria will, sooner or later, feel stuck. It will take you to a certain extent, and then suddenly you will see: there is going to be no growth. And you will become dry, like a desert… because unless love flows, flowers never come up, trees don’t grow, rivers don’t flow.

The ultimate blooming is always that of love.”

Source: Osho, excerpted from Path of Love, chapter 2

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Seeds of Wisdom

I too am a farmer and I sowed some seeds. They sprouted and now flowers have come to them. My whole life is filled with the fragrance of these flowers and because of this fragrance now I am in a different world. This fragrance has given me a new birth, and now I am no longer that which is seen by ordinary eyes.

Seeds of Wisdom

The unseen and the unknown have flung open their closed doors, and I am seeing a world which is not seen through the eyes, and I am hearing music which ears are not capable of hearing. Whatsoever I have found and known is eager to flow just as the mountain waterfalls and springs flow and rush towards the ocean.

Remember, when the clouds are full of water they have to shower. And when the flowers are filled with fragrance they have to give off their fragrance freely to the winds. And when a lamp is lit, the light is bound to radiate from it.
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Sku: sow

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Ninety-nine percent of people start meditating because meditation is talked about

Question

NO EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO BE BORN.

NO EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO DIE.

NO EFFORT IS REQUIRED TO FALL IN LOVE

WHY IS SUCH EFFORT REQUIRED TO KNOW GOD (THROUGH MEDITATION)

WHEN THIS SEEMS TO BE THE MOST NATURAL THING?

IS GOD TRYING TO TEST US IN SOME WAY?

First thing: no effort is required in meditation either. Meditation also comes on its own accord. Through effort it never comes. To whom has meditation happened through effort? It will be almost like making an effort to love somebody. How can you make any effort to love somebody? The more effort you make, the more the love will be false, pseudo, just a pretension. Love has to arise naturally. So arises meditation.

But all meditators are not spontaneously in it — and neither are all lovers spontaneously in it. In fact, psychologists say — a tremendous discovery — that if love is not talked about, ninety-nine percent of people will never know anything about it. If love is not talked about, if poets don’t go on praising it, and if traditional literature is not available about love, ninety-nine percent of people will never be aware that anything like love exists. They will know about sex, but not about love. But because of the poets and because of the novelists and because of the films and the TV, love is talked so much about that everybody starts thinking that he is in love. That love is also false.

And the same is the case with meditation. Ninety-nine percent of people start meditating because meditation is talked about. There are times when it becomes fashionable. If you are not doing it you must be missing something. You don’t feel any need for it, it has not arisen in your being, you have not come to that point of evolution where meditation happens on its own accord; but everybody is doing it and everybody is going to the Masters and everybody is sitting silently. Somebody is doing Vipassana and somebody is doing Nirvana and somebody is doing Dynamic. You must be missing something. So greed arises; out of greed you start making effort.

That effort is not for meditation. That effort is to gain something which you think will be gained out of meditation.

These phases come and go. These cults arise and disappear. These are just like fashions. The real meditator has not come to meditate because others are meditating, but a deep need has arisen in him, has become a knocking in his heart, a continuous knocking. The whole world seems to be meaningless; he wants to go in. He wants to know who he is. Not because others have known! If there is nobody propagating meditation and no books are available and all books are destroyed and all Masters go and hide in the caves in the Himalayas, then too there will be a few people who will meditate, who will find out how to meditate on their own accord. Those will be the real meditators. And for them meditation will be just as easy as anything. It will be just like breathing.

Source: OSHO The First Principle
Chapter 4 – Go with the River

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THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY

Just the opposite is the student of  Tao, the student of truth, not of knowledge, the student of being, not of becoming. He is just the opposite. He goes on losing day by day, he unburdens himself, he unlearns. His only learning is how to unlearn. The only thing he is interested in is how to be totally unburdened.

A German philosopher came to see Maharshi Raman. Of course he had travelled long, and he must have thought much about what he was going to ask. When he reached Raman he said, I have come to sit near you, to learn much. Raman looked at him with deep compassion and said, Then you have come to the wrong person because here I teach only unlearning. If you have come to learn you have come to the wrong place, go somewhere else; but if you are ready to unlearn, mature enough to unlearn, then you can stay here.

He was right. Near a sage you go to unlearn. When you are fed up with your learning, when you have learned much and gained nothing, when you know much and you are lost in your knowledge, when you know much but you have completely forgotten who you are, when you know much about unnecessary things, non essential things, and the essential knowledge about your own being is lost, then you come to a sage to unlearn.

And that is the greatest surrender. It is easy to surrender your wealth, because it is outside you. Robbers can take it, it can be stolen, it is nothing that is part of you, it is outside! You can drop it easily. But your knowledge becomes an inner phenomenon, it gets inside you, it runs in your blood, it becomes part of your bones, it becomes your very marrow; it is difficult to surrender it.

It is easy to learn a thing, it is very very difficult to unlearn it. How to unlearn when you know a certain thing? It becomes very very difficult to not know it. How to drop it? It is so deep in you. Unless you move beyond the mind, for you are identified with the mind, you cannot drop it because then you think ‘It is me’. Then you think your knowledge is your being.

Move! All meditations are techniques to move from the mind, to gain a little distance from the mind, to become a little aloof and unidentified with it, to transcend the mind, to become a watcher on the hills so you can see what is happening in the mind. When you are separate from the mind, only then is there a possibility to drop something, to drop knowledge, to unlearn.

THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY.

That is his gain. He gains by losing day by day. That is his learning, he learns by unlearning day by day. A moment comes when he is again a child, not knowing anything. A moment comes when he enters into the paradise again.

He tasted the bitter fruit of knowledge, but he found out it was stupid. Knowledge is deep stupidity.

He found it out, now he comes into paradise again. Now no serpent can seduce him. He comes mature — childlike but mature; a child, innocent — but alert, aware, conscious.

Now he attains to a greater purity, because a purity which has no awareness is bound to be lost. Somebody is going to seduce, somebody is going to corrupt, and if there is nobody, you yourself will corrupt yourself, because you are not alert.

Adam had to be thrown out of the garden of paradise. He was simply innocent. He was Buddha like in one part: he was innocent, he was like Jesus in one part: he was innocent, but the other part was lacking, he was not aware.

Adam is the be inning, Jesus is the end. Adam is half, Jesus is complete — the other half has become aware. Now Jesus is incorruptible. He is not only pure he is also incorruptible, his innocence is now absolute.

THE STUDENT OF TAO AIMS AT LOSING DAY BY DAY. BY CONTINUAL LOSING ONE REACHES DOING NOTHING.

This is very subtle. Pay as much attention as you can pay to it. Be as meditative about it as possible.

You may not know that the word meditation comes from the same root as medicine, medical, and the original meaning of the word was — a technique to become whole, a technique to become healthy. Medicine is medicinal, just like that, meditation is also medicinal. It makes you whole, integrated, healthy.

Pay attention, listen to it as meditatively as possible. When you listen meditatively you understand, when you listen concentratedly you learn. If you listen with concentration, you will gain knowledge, if you listen meditatively, you will lose knowledge. And the difference is very subtle.

When you listen attentively, attention means a tension, it means you are tense, too eager to learn, to absorb, to know. You are interested in knowledge, concentration is the way towards knowledge; mind focussed on one thing of course, learns more.

Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being.

You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand. These are different ways of listening.

If you are trying to know, then you are trying to memorize what I am saying, deep down you are repeating it, you are taking notes inside the mind, you are writing it in the world of your memories, you are interested in letting it become deeply rooted in you so you don’t forget. Then it will become knowledge.

And the same seed could have become unlearning, understanding. Then you simply listen, you are not interested in accumulating it, you are not interested in writing it in your memory, in your mind. You simply listen open, as you listen to music, as you listen to birds singing in the trees, as you listen to wind passing through ancient pines, as you listen to the sound of water in a waterfall — there is nothing to remember, nothing to memorize, you don’t listen with a parrot mind, you simply listen without any mind — the listening is beautiful, it is ecstatic, there is no goal in it, in itself it is ecstatic, it is blissful.

Listen meditatively, not with concentration. All schools, colleges, universities, teach concentration, because the goal is to memorize. Here the goal is not to memorize, the goat is not to learn at all, the goal is to unlearn.

Source:  Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3
Chapter 3 – Conquering the World by Inaction

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Meditation: The Art of Celebration

The Art of EcstasyConcentration is a choice. It excludes all except its object of concentration; it is a narrowing. If you are walking on the street, you will have to narrow your consciousness in order to walk. You cannot ordinarily be aware of all that is happening because if you are aware of everything that is happening you will become unfocused. So concentration is a need. Concentration of the mind is a need in order to live–to survive and exist. That is why every culture, in its own way, tries to narrow the mind of the child.

Children, as they are, are never focused; their consciousness is open from all sides. Everything is coming in, nothing is being excluded. The child is open to every sensation, every sensation is included in his consciousness.

And so much is coming in! That is why he is so wavering, so unstable. A child’s unconditioned mind is a flux–a flux of sensations–but he will not be able to survive with this type of mind. He must learn how to narrow his mind, to concentrate.

The moment you narrow the mind you become particularly conscious of one thing and simultaneously unconscious of so many other things. The more narrowed the mind is, the more successful it will be. You will become a specialist, you will become an expert, but the whole thing will consist of knowing more and more about less and less.

The narrowing is an existential necessity; no one is responsible for it. As life exists, it is needed, but it is not enough. It is utilitarian, but just to survive is not enough; just to be utilitarian is not enough. So when you become utilitarian and the consciousness is narrowed, you deny your mind much of which it was capable. You are not using the total mind, you are using a very small part of it.

The Art of Ecstasy : OSHO

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A small part is being identified as your self and the rest is lost

And the remaining — the major portion — will become unconscious.

In fact, there is no boundary between conscious and unconscious. These are not two minds. “Conscious mind” means that part of the mind that has been used in the narrowing process. “Unconscious mind” means that portion that has been neglected, ignored, closed. This creates a division, a split. The greater portion of your mind becomes alien to you. You become alienated from your own self; you become a stranger to your own totality.

A small part is being identified as your self and the rest is lost. But the remaining unconscious part is always there as unused potentiality, unused possibilities, unlived adventures. This unconscious mind–this potential, this unused mind–will always be in a fight with the conscious mind; that is why there is always a conflict within.

Everyone is in conflict because of this split between the unconscious and the conscious. But only if the potential, the unconscious, is allowed to flower can you feel the bliss of existence; otherwise not.

If the major portion of your potentialities remains unfulfilled, your life will be a frustration. That is why the more utilitarian a person is, the less he is fulfilled, the less he is blissful. The more utilitarian the approach– the more one is in business life–the less he is living, the less he is ecstatic. The part of the mind that cannot be made useful in the utilitarian world has been denied.

The utilitarian life is necessary but at a great cost: you have lost the festivity of life. Life becomes a festivity, a celebration, if all your potentialities come to a flowering; then life is a ceremony. That is why I always say that religion means transforming life into a celebration. The dimension of religion is the dimension of the festive, the nonutilitarian.

The utilitarian mind must not be taken as the whole. The remaining, the greater–the whole mind–should not be sacrificed to it. The utilitarian mind must not become the end. It will have to remain there, but as a means. The other–the remaining, the greater, the potential–must become the end. That is what I mean by a religious approach.

With a nonreligious approach, the businesslike mind, the utilitarian, becomes the end. When this becomes the end, there is no possibility of the unconscious actualizing the potential; the unconscious will be denied. If the utilitarian becomes the end, it means that the servant is playing the role of the master.

Intelligence, the narrowing of the mind, is a means toward survival, but not toward life. Survival is not life.

Survival is a necessity–to exist in the material world is a necessity–but the end is always to come to a flowering of the potential, of all that is meant by you. If you are fulfilled completely, if nothing remains inside in seed form, if everything becomes actual, if you are a flowering, then and only then can you feel the bliss, the ecstasy of life.

The denied part of you, the unconscious part, can become active and creative only if you add a new dimension to your life–the dimension of the festive, the dimension of play.

So meditation is not a work, it is a play. Praying is not a business, it is a play. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal–peace, bliss–but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself.

The festive dimension is the most important thing to be understood–and we have lost it totally. By festive, I mean the capacity to enjoy, moment to moment, all that comes to you.

Source: OSHO

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Ignorance is indulgence & Knowing is renunciation

Renunciation is not a doing; it is not something to be done, it just happens. It is a natural result of knowing. Indulgence is mechanical: that too is not a doing — it is a natural result of ignorance.

Hence, the idea that renunciation is a hard and arduous task is meaningless. In the first place it is not an act — activities alone can be difficult and strenuous — it is an outcome. Secondly, in renunciation what apparently drops is worthless, and what is attained is priceless.

In fact, renunciation as such does not exist, because we gain immensely more than we drop. The reality is that we drop only our bondage, but we gain liberation; we drop only shells but we receive diamonds; we forsake only death but attain immortality; we leave only darkness but attain the light — eternal and infinite.

Where then is the renunciation? Dropping nothing and receiving everything cannot be called renunciation.

Source: Seeds of Wisdom: OSHO

Popularity: 5% [?]

It is necessary to have such a civilization which does not teach distinctions from the very childhood and which may lead to the understanding of oneness

The reality is that from the beginning there are no distinctions in the mind of a child. Distinctions are taught by us. It is true to such an extent that a child is not able to distinguish between a dream and reality.

A child weeps in the morning after seeing a dream at night. He is weeping for a toy which he saw in a dream; he is asking for that toy. The child is not able to distinguish between what he sees in a dream and what he sees when he is awake. His seeing is without any distinction. A person addresses his father as ”father,” but a child who hears this will also address that person as ”father.” For the child it is difficult to understand that that person was not his father. He does not know whether he is a Hindu or a Mohammedan; he does not know anything. He is still in the world of oneness, but that oneness is full of ignorance.

A saint ultimately enters into the same world of oneness, but then his oneness is full of knowing. Whosoever is ignorant can be divided; we cannot divide the oneness of the saint, because his oneness is born out of his knowing. Children are born out of oneness, but they are taught distinctions; it is necessary to teach them some distinctions; it is useful for living. It is necessary to teach what is poison and what is nectar, it is necessary to know where there is a door and where there is a wall. It is also necessary to teach where is harm and where there is safety — these distinctions have to be taught.

But it is necessary to see that behind all this teaching of distinctions there should develop continuously a sense of oneness in his mind — meaning he should remain aware of the fact that sometimes poison acts like nectar and sometimes what is taken to be nectar acts like poison. He should be able to understand that there are times when a man recovers when poison is administered and there are times when nectar taken in excess may kill the person. When a child grows up some distinctions will have to be taught, but the child’s awareness should also develop to understand that all the distinctions are just functional, that the distinctions are made looking to the limitations of man. Within him a current of oneness should continuously flow. He should be aware of the fact that all things are united from within.

The impact of our life on the child should be such that he visualizes life in its oneness. He should not feel that inner and outer, subjective and objective are two things — he should feel life as a whole. He should understand that he is the same person when he is eating and when he is praying; that his prayer is connected in some deep way with his eating, it cannot be separate. The child should become aware of this inner principle, and it is not difficult for a child, who in reality feels that he is the same person, to become aware who eats and who prays. But he becomes confused when he sees that his father becomes a different person when he eats, a different person when he is sitting in his shop, and a third person when he is praying. When he comes home he becomes a different person, and when he is facing a servant he becomes yet another person. The child is not able to understand this.

A child is being told that he should respect his father because he is old. The child then wants to respect the old servant also, because if old age is a matter for respect, then the old servant should also get respect. Such behavior on the child’s part is beyond our understanding. We then tell the child to respect his old father, not the old servant. Then we are creating a distinction.

But this distinction is not just limited to one between a father and a servant; it creates two faces within him: one to be shown to the father and the other to be shown to the servant. The child learns that he has to stand in a temple one way and sit in the shop in a different way. One has to be clever in the shop and simple in the temple. This way we are teaching him divisions. Slowly all these distinctive impressions, layer after layer, will get built in and the child will take these distinctions as conclusive in his life.

Source: Revolution in Education

Popularity: 5% [?]

Vipassana comes in end

Question: Beloved master, Over the past five years I’ve spent many weeks in isolation at dharmagiri, practicing vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka. I’ve never experienced such pain, suffering and doubt ever before. Presently I feel very exhausted, tired, yearning deeply to connect with my heart. My interest in the meditation practice is passing away. Beloved master, is this type of meditation practice necessary? Is it helpful? Can awareness and celebration alone pierce to the depth of the mind and dissolve the darkest nights?

Osho: Sagaresh, the vipassana meditation was invented by Gautam Buddha, and for twenty-five centuries Buddhists have been torturing themselves. Now, who told you to go to Dharmagiri to S.N. Goenka, to learn a meditation for which the whole context is missing? The meditation was perfectly right for a man like Gautam Buddha. Always remember, everything is related, interdependent with a certain context.

A German poet, Heine, was lost in a forest for days. Utterly tired, exhausted, hungry, he could not find the way; neither could he find anyone who could show him the way. In the nights he was resting up on the trees; otherwise wild animals would destroy him. And there came the full-moon night. He had written many poems… the moon had been one of his most loved objects, and he had written beautiful songs about it.

But that night, tired and hungry and afraid, he looked at the full moon and he could not believe it – what he saw in the full moon he had never seen before. And he had been a lifelong moon gazer. That night he saw a loaf of bread! What you see depends on you. People see the faces of their loved ones, people see their dream girls in the moon, but nobody has ever seen a loaf of bread. But his experience was absolutely authentic – but only in his context.

I am reminding you of this because people tend to forget that life is a very interwoven, interdependent, cosmic whole. You cannot take a part out of it and keep it alive, meaningful. I will not tell you to do vipassana unless I can also give you the experience of Gautam Buddha. Poor Goenka cannot understand this. He is just a businessman. What does he understand about the context in which vipassana arose?

Gautam Buddha had lived in tremendous luxury, surrounded by beautiful girls, beautiful palaces. The whole night was a celebration; the day was for rest, the night for dances and drinking. Out of this experience he became tired. He had seen all the beautiful girls; there was nothing more to be seen. He had seen that every man and woman is just a skeleton, covered with a thin skin. Just think for a moment: here all of you are skeletons covered with thin skin! This body and its beauty fades very soon.

He had seen all that was possible in those days for a man of power and riches to see, but he could not find peace, contentment, silence. He could not find himself. Utterly frustrated, he moved out of the palace one night – because this life is going to end in a few days, or in a few years. It is not something to cling to. Each moment death is coming closer; before death grabs you, you have to figure out something which is eternal, which is immortal.

All that you see around you is made of the same stuff as dreams are. Do you think you are for the first time on the earth? On the same earth millions of people have come and simply disappeared into thin air. Scientists have calculated that the place you are occupying has been occupied by at least ten people before you. You are sitting on ten corpses! And don’t think much of yourself, because you cannot get out – you will be the eleventh. And remember, it is not a laughing matter for you.

Those ten corpses will laugh at you: ”Look, the poor fellow was thinking of great things and finally is flat on the pile of corpses.” Gautam Buddha’s search for truth, for himself, for the source of life which is eternal, cannot be the search of a poor man who is hungry, who is searching for a loaf of bread. But people have completely forgotten Gautam Buddha. They have taken his meditation out of context. Read more

Popularity: 15% [?]