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The evolution of life is to become more and more conscious, but the consciousness is always other oriented: you are conscious of some thing, some object. Yoga means to be evolving in the dimension where there is no object and only consciousness remains. Yoga is the method of evolving toward pure consciousness; not being conscious of something, but being consciousness itself.

When you are conscious of something, you are not conscious of being conscious. Your consciousness has become focused on something; your attention is not at the source of consciousness itself. In yoga the effort is to become conscious of both the object and the source. The consciousness becomes double arrowed. You must be aware of the object, and you must be simultaneously aware of the subject. Consciousness must become a double arrowed bridge. The subject must not be lost, it must not become forgotten when you are focused on the object.

This is the first step in yoga. The second step is to drop both the subject and the object and just be conscious. This pure consciousness is the aim of yoga.

Even without yoga man grows toward becoming more and more conscious, but yoga adds something, contributes something, to this evolution of consciousness. It changes many things and transforms many things. The first transformation is a double-arrowed awareness, remembering yourself at the very moment that there is something else to be conscious of.

The dilemma is this: either you are conscious of some object or you are unconscious. If there are no outside objects, you fall into a sleep; objects are needed in order for you to be conscious. When you are totally unoccupied you feel sleepy — you need some object to be conscious of — but when you have too many objects to be conscious of, you may feel a certain sleeplessness. That is why a person who is too obsessed with thoughts cannot go into sleep. Objects continue to be there, thoughts continue to be there. He cannot become unconscious; thoughts go on demanding his attention. And this is how we exist.

With new objects you become more conscious. That is why there is a lust for the new, a longing for the new. The old becomes boring. The moment you have lived with some object for a while, you become unconscious of it. You have accepted it, now your attention is not needed; you become bored. For example, you may not have been conscious of your wife for years because you have taken her for granted. You no longer see her face, you can’t remember the color of her eyes; for years you have not really been attentive. Only when she dies will you again become aware that she was there. That is why wives and husbands become bored. Any object that is not calling your attention continuously creates boredom.

In the same way, a mantra, a repeated sound vibration, causes deep sleep. When a particular mantra is being repeated continuously, you are bored. There is nothing mysterious about it. Constantly repeating a particular word bores you, you cannot live with it anymore. Now you will begin to feel sleepy, you will go into a sort of sleep; you will become unconscious. The whole method of hypnosis, in fact, depends upon boredom. If your mind can be bored with something then you go into a sleep, sleep can be induced.

Our whole consciousness depends on new objects. That is why there is so much longing for the new — for new sensations, a new dress, a new house — for anything that is new, even if it is not better. With something different, you feel a sudden upsurge of consciousness.

Because life is an evolution of consciousness — this is good. As far as life is concerned, it is good. If a society is longing for new sensations, life progresses, but if it settles down with the old, not asking for the new, it becomes dead; consciousness cannot evolve.

Source: OSHO, Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy

That is the most important question that can arise in anybody’s mind, but there is no answer for it. The most important question, the ultimate question, cannot have any answer; that’s why it is ultimate.

When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus remained silent. Not only that, the story says that when Pontius Pilate asked the question, “What is truth?” he did not wait to listen for the answer. He left the room and went away. This is very strange. Pontius Pilate also thinks that there cannot be an answer for it, so he didn’t wait for the answer. Jesus remained silent because he also knows it cannot be answered.

But these two understandings are not the same, because these two persons are diametrically opposite. Pontius Pilate thinks that it cannot be answered because there is no truth; how can you answer it? That is the logical mind, the Roman mind. Jesus remains silent not because there is no truth, but because the truth is so vast, it is not definable. The truth is so huge, enormous, it cannot be confined in a word, it cannot be reduced to language. It is there. One can be it, but one cannot say it.

For two different reasons they behaved almost in the same way: Pontius didn’t wait to hear the answer, he knew already that there is no truth. Jesus remains silent because he knows truth, and knows that it could not be said.

Chidvilas has asked this question. The question is absolutely significant. There is no question higher than that, because there is no religion higher than truth. It has to be understood; the question has to be analyzed. Analyzing the question, trying to understand the question itself, you may have an insight into what truth is. I will not answer it, I cannot answer it; nobody can answer it. But we can go deep into the question. Going deep into the question, the question will start disappearing. When the question has disappeared you will find the answer there at the very core of your heart — you are truth, so how can you miss it? Maybe you have forgotten about it, maybe you have lost track of it, maybe you have forgotten how to enter into your own being, into your own truth.

Truth is not an hypothesis, truth is not a dogma. Truth is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. Truth is neither mine nor yours. Truth belongs to nobody, but everybody belongs to truth. Truth means that which is: that is exactly the meaning of the word. It comes from a Latin root, verus. Verus means: that which is. In English there are a few words which are derivations of the Latin root verus: was, were — they come from verus. In German, war — that comes from verus. Verus means that which is, uninterpreted. Once the interpretation comes in, then what you know is reality, not truth. That is the difference between truth and reality. Reality is truth interpreted.

So the moment you answer the question, “What is truth?” it becomes reality; it is no longer truth. Interpretation has entered into it, the mind has colored it. And realities are as many as there are minds; there are multi-realities. Truth is one because truth is known only when the mind is not there. It is mind that keeps you separate from me, separate from others, separate from existence. If you look through the mind, then the mind will give you a picture of truth. That will be only a picture, a photograph of that which is. And of course, the photograph depends on the camera, on the film used, on the chemicals, on how it has been developed, how it has been printed, who has done it. A thousand and one other things enter in; it becomes reality.

The word reality is also beautiful to be understood. It comes from the root, res; it means thing or things. Truth is not a thing. Once interpreted, once the mind has grabbed it, defined it, demarked it, it becomes a thing.

When you fall in love with a woman there is some truth — if you have fallen absolutely unaware, if you have not ‘done’ it in any way, if you have not acted, managed, if you have not even thought about it. Suddenly you see a woman, you look into her eyes, she looks into your eyes, and something clicks. You are not the doer of it, you are simply possessed by it, you simply fall into it. It has nothing to do with you. Your ego is not involved, at least not in the very, very beginning, when love is virgin. In that moment there is truth, but there is no interpretation. That’s why love remains indefinable.

Soon the mind comes in, starts managing things, takes possession of you. You start thinking about the girl as your girlfriend, you start thinking of how to get married, you start thinking about the woman as your wife. Now these are things; the girlfriend, the wife — these are things. The truth is no longer there, it has receded back. Now things are becoming more important. The definable is more secure, the indefinable is insecure. You have started killing, poisoning the truth. Sooner or later there will be a wife and a husband, two things. But the beauty is gone, the joy has disappeared, the honeymoon is over.

The honeymoon is over at that exact moment when truth becomes reality, when love becomes a relationship. The honeymoon is very short, unfortunately — I’m not talking about the honeymoon that you go for. The honeymoon is very short. Maybe for a single moment it was there, but the purity of it, the crystal purity of it, the divinity of it, the beyondness of it — it is from eternity, it is not of time. It is not part of this mundane world, it is like a ray coming into a dark hole. It comes from the transcendental. It is absolutely appropriate to call love God, because love is truth. The closest that you come to truth in ordinary life is love.

Chidvilas asks: “What is truth?”

Asking has to disappear; only then do you know.

If you ask, “What is truth?” what are you asking? If I say A is truth, B is truth, C is truth, will that be the answer? If I say A is truth, then certainly A cannot be the truth: it is something else that I am using as synonymous with truth. If it is absolutely synonymous, then it will be a tautology. Then I can say, “Truth is truth,” but that is silly, meaningless. Nothing is solved by it. If it is exactly the same, if A is truth, then it will mean truth is truth. If A is different, is not exactly truth, then I am falsifying. Then to say A is truth will be only approximate. And remember, there cannot be anything approximate. Either truth is or it is not. So I cannot say A is truth.

I cannot even say, “God is truth,” because if God is truth then it is a tautology — “Truth is truth.” Then I’m not saying anything. If God is different from truth, then I am saying something, but then I am saying something wrong. Then God is different, then how can he be truth? If I say it is approximate, linguistically it looks alright, but it is not right. ‘Approximately’ means some lie is there, something false is there. Otherwise, why is it not a hundred percent truth? If it is ninety-nine percent truth then something is there which is not true. And truth and untruth cannot exist together, just as darkness and light cannot exist together — because darkness is nothing but absence. Absence and presence cannot exist together, truth and untruth cannot exist together. Untruth is nothing but the absence of truth.

So no answer is possible, hence Jesus remained silent. But if you look at it with deep sympathy, if you look into the silence of Jesus, you will have an answer. Silence is the answer. Jesus is saying, “Be silent, as I am silent, and you will know” — not saying it in words. It is a gesture, it is very, very Zen-like. In that moment when Jesus remained silent, he comes very close to the Zen approach, to the Buddhist approach. He is a Buddha in that moment. Buddha never answered these questions. He had eleven questions listed: wherever he would move his disciples would go around and declare to people, “Never ask these eleven questions of Buddha” — questions which are fundamental, questions which are really significant. You could ask anything else, and Buddha was always ready to answer. But don’t ask the fundamental, because the fundamental can only be experienced. And truth is the most fundamental; the very substance of existence is what truth is.

Go into the question. The question is significant, it is arising in your heart: “What is truth?” — a desire to know that which is, is arising. Don’t push it aside, go into it. Chidvilas, whenever it happens again, close your eyes, go into the question. Let the question become very, very focussed — “What… is… truth?” Let there arise a great concentration. Forget everything, as if your whole life depends on this simple question, “What is truth?” Let it become a matter of life and death. And don’t try to answer it, because you don’t know the answer.

Answers may be coming — the mind always tries to supply answers — but see the fact that you don’t know, that’s why you are asking. So how can your mind supply you an answer? The mind knows not, so tell the mind, “Keep quiet.” If you know, then there is no need for the question. You don’t know, hence the question.

So don’t be befooled by the mind’s toys. It supplies toys: it says, “Look, it is written in the Bible. Look, it is written in the Upanishads. This is the answer. Look, this is written by Lao Tzu, this is the answer.” The mind can throw all kinds of scriptures at you: the mind can quote, the mind can supply from the memory. You have heard many things, you have read many things; the mind carries all those memories. It can repeat in a mechanical way. But look into this phenomenon: that the mind knows not, and all that mind is repeating is borrowed. And the borrowed cannot help.

It happened at a railway crossing. The gates were closed, some train was to pass, and a man was sitting in his car, waiting for the train to pass, reading a book. A drunkard who was just sitting by the side of the gate came close, knocked on the air-conditioned car’s window. The man opened the window and said, “What can I do for you? Do you need any help?”

And the bum said, “Yes, for two days I have not eaten anything at all. Can you give me two rupees? That will be enough for me, just two rupees.”

The man laughed and said, “Never borrow and never lend money,” and showed the book to the bum and said, “Shakespeare — Shakespeare says so. Look.”

The bum pulled out of his pocket a very dirty paperback and said to the man, “You sonofabitch — D. H. Lawrence.”

Beware of the mind. The mind goes on quoting, the mind knows all without knowing at all. The mind is a pretender. See into this phenomenon: this I call insight. It is not a question of thinking. If you think about it, it is again the mind. You have to see through and through. You have to look deeply into the very phenomenon, the functioning of the mind, how the mind functions. It borrows from here and there, it goes on borrowing and accumulating. It is a hoarder, a hoarder of knowledge. Mind becomes very knowledgeable, and then whenever you ask a question which is really important the mind gives a very unimportant answer to it — futile, superficial, rubbish.

A man bought a parrot from a pet shop. The shop-owner assured him the bird would learn to say hello within half an hour. Back home he spent an hour ‘helloing’ to the parrot, but not a word from the bird. As he was turning away in sheer despair, the bird said, “Number engaged.”

A parrot is a parrot. He must have heard it in the pet shop. And this man was going on and on, “Hello, hello, hello,” and the bird was listening, and waiting for him to stop. Then he could say, “Number engaged!”

You can go on asking the mind, “What is truth, what is truth, what is truth?” And the moment you stop, the mind will immediately say, “Number engaged” or something. The mind will give you an answer. Beware of the mind.

The mind is the devil, there is no other devil. And it is your mind. This insight has to be developed — of looking through and through. Cut the mind in two with a sharp blow of the sword. That sword is awareness. Cut the mind in two and go through it, go beyond it! And if you can go beyond the mind, through the mind, and a moment of no-mind arises in you, there is the answer — not a verbal answer, not a scripture quoted, not in quotation marks, but authentically yours, an experience. Truth is an existential experience.

The question is immensely significant, but you will have to be very respectful towards the question. Don’t be in a hurry to find any answer, otherwise some rubbish will kill the answer. Don’t allow your mind to kill the question. And the way of the mind to kill the question is to supply answers, unlived, unexperienced.

You are truth! But it can happen only in utter silence, when not a single thought moves, when the mind has nothing to say, when not a single ripple is in your consciousness. When there is no ripple in your consciousness, your consciousness remains undistorted. When there is a ripple, there is a distortion.

Just go to a lake. Standing on the bank, look down at your reflection. If there are waves, ripples on the lake, and wind is blowing, your reflection is shaky. You cannot figure out what is what — where is your nose and where are your eyes — you can only guess. But when the lake is silent and the wind is not blowing and there is not a single ripple on the surface, suddenly you are there. In absolute perfection, the reflection is there. The lake becomes a mirror.

Whenever there is a thought moving in your consciousness it distorts. And there are many thoughts, millions of thoughts, continuously rushing, and it is always rush-hour. Twenty-four hours a day it is rush-hour, and the traffic goes on and on and on, and each thought is associated with thousands of other thoughts. They are all holding hands and linked together and interlinked, and the whole crowd is rushing around you. How can you know what truth is? Get out of this crowd.

That’s what meditation is, that’s what meditation is all about: a consciousness without mind, a consciousness without thoughts, a consciousness without any wavering — an unwavering consciousness. Then it is there in all its beauty and benediction. Then truth is there — call it God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you like to call it. It is there, and it is there as an experience. You are in it and it is in you.

Use this question. Make it more penetrating. Make it so penetrating; put everything at stake so that the mind cannot befool you by its superficial answers. Once the mind disappears, once the mind is no longer playing its old tricks, you will know what truth is. You will know it in silence. You will know it in thoughtless awareness.

Source: OSHO, The Heart Sutra

Concentration 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.

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.

We have become so conditioned and habits have become so mechanical that even when there is no business to be done, our minds are businesslike. When no narrowing is needed, you are narrowed. Even when you are playing, you are not playing, you are not enjoying it. Even when you are playing cards, you are not enjoying it. You play for the victory and then the play becomes a work; then what is going on is not important, only the result.

In business the result is important. In festivity, the act is important. If you can make any act significant in itself, then you become festive and you can celebrate it.

Whenever you are in celebration, the limits, the narrowing limits are broken. They are not needed, they are thrown. You come out of your straitjacket, the narrowing jacket of concentration. Now you are not choosing; everything that comes, you allow. And the moment you allow the total existence to come in, you become one with it. There is a communion.

This communion–this celebration, this choiceless awareness, this nonbusinesslike attitude–I call meditation.

The festivity is in the moment, in the act, not in the bothering about the results, not in achieving something.

There is nothing to be achieved, so you can enjoy that which is here and now.

You can explain it in this way: I am talking to you; if I am concerned about the result, then the talk becomes a business, it becomes a work. But if I talk to you without any expectations, without any desire about the result, then the talk becomes a play. The very act, in itself, is the end. Then narrowing is not needed. I can play with the words, I can play with the thoughts. I can play with your question, I can play with my answer; then it is not serious, then it is lighthearted.

And if you are listening to me without thinking about getting something out of it, then you can be relaxed; then you can allow me to be in communion with you and your consciousness will not be narrowed. Then it is open– playing, enjoying.

Any moment can be a business moment, any moment can be a meditative moment; the difference is in the attitude. If it is choiceless, if you are playing with it, it is meditative.

There are social needs and there are existential needs that are to be fulfilled. I will not say, “Do not condition children.” If you leave them totally unconditioned, they will be barbaric. They will not be able to exist. Survival needs conditioning but survival is not the end, so you must be able to put your conditioning on and take it off–just like clothes. You can put them on, go out and do your business, and then come home and take them off. Then you are.

Source: OSHO

Your body is feeling hungry and you are on a fast, because your religion says that this day you have to fast — and your body is feeling hungry. You don’t trust your organism, you trust a dead scripture, because in some book somebody has written that this day you have to go on a fast, so you go on a fast.

Listen to your body. Yes, there are days when the body says, “Go on a fast!” — then go. But there is no need to listen to the scriptures. The man who wrote that scripture has not written it with you in his mind, not at all. He could not have conceived of you. You were not present to him, he was not writing about you. It is as if you fall ill and you go to a dead doctor’s house and look into his prescriptions, and find a prescription and start following the prescription. That prescription was made for somebody else, for some other disease, in some other situation.

Remember to trust your own organism. When you feel that the body is saying don’t eat, stop immediately. When the body is saying eat, then don’t bother whether the scriptures say to fast or not. If your body says eat three times a day, perfectly good. If it says eat one time a day, perfectly good.

Start learning how to listen to your body, because it is your body.

You are in it; you have to respect it, and you have to trust it.

It is your temple; it is sacrilegious to impose things on your body. For no other motive should anything be imposed! And this will not only teach you trust in your body, this will teach you, by and by, a trust in existence too — because your body is part of existence. Then your trust will grow, and you will trust the trees and the stars and the moon and the sun and the oceans: you will trust people.

But the beginning of the trust has to be trust in your own organism.

Trust your heart.

A sannyasin is one who trusts in his own organism, and that trust helps him to relax into his being, and helps him to relax into the totality of existence. It brings a general acceptance of oneself and others.

Trust gives a kind of rootedness, centering. Then there is great strength and power, because you are centered in your own body, in your own being. You have roots in the soil.

Otherwise you see people uprooted, like trees that have been pulled up from the soil. They are simply dying, they are not living. That’s why there is not much joy in life. You don’t see the quality of laughter; the celebration is missing.

In your very body, in your very being, this very moment, the divine is there — and you have not celebrated it. You cannot celebrate.

Celebration has to happen first in your own home, at close quarters.

Then it becomes a great tidal wave and spreads all over existence.

The Heart Sutra

Confronting oneself in aloneness is fearful and it is painful, and one has to suffer it. Nothing should be done to avoid it, nothing should be done to divert the mind and nothing should be done to escape from it. One has to suffer it and go through it. This suffering and this pain is just a good sign that you are near a new birth, because every birth is preceded by pain. It cannot be avoided and it should not be avoided because it is part of your growth.

But why is this pain there?

This should be understood because understanding will help you to go through it, and if you go through it knowingly you will come out of it more easily and sooner.

Why is there pain when you are alone? The first thing is that your ego gets ill. Your ego can exist only with others. It has grown in relationship, it cannot exist alone. So if the situation is one in which it can exist no more, it feels suffocated; it feels just on the verge of death. This is the deepest suffering. You feel as if you are dying. But it is not you who is dying, only the ego, which you have taken to be yourself, with which you have become identified. It cannot exist because it has been given to you by others. It is a contribution. When you leave others you cannot carry it with you.

So in aloneness all that you know about yourself will fall; by and by it will disappear. You can prolong your ego for a certain period — and that too you will have to do through imagination — but you cannot prolong it for long. Without society you are uprooted; the soil is not there from where to get food. This is the basic pain.

You are no longer sure who you are: you are just a dispersing personality, a dissolving personality. But this is good, because unless this false you disappears the real cannot emerge. Unless you are completely washed and become clean again the real cannot emerge.

This false you is occupying the throne. It must be dethroned. By living in solitude all that is false can go. And all that is given by society is false. Really, all that is given is false; all that is born with you is real. All that is you by yourself, not contributed by someone else, is real, authentic. But the false must go and the false is a great investment. You have invested so much in it; you have been looking after it so much; all your hopes hang on it. So when it starts dissolving you will feel fearful, afraid and trembling: “What are you doing to yourself? You are destroying your whole life, the whole structure.”

There will be fear. But you have to go through this fear; only then will you become fearless. I don’t say you will become brave, no. I say you will become fearless.

Bravery is just part of fear. Howsoever brave you are, the fear is hidden behind. I say “fearless.” You will not be brave; there is no need to be brave when there is no fear. Both bravery and fear become irrelevant. They are aspects of the same coin. So your brave men are nothing but you standing on your head. Your bravery is hidden within you and your fear is on the surface; their fear is hidden within and their bravery is on the surface. So when you are alone you are very brave. When you think about something you are very brave, but when a real situation comes you are fearful.

One becomes fearless only when one has gone through the deepest fear of all — that is the dissolving of the ego, the dissolving of the image and the dissolving of the personality.

This is death because you don’t know if a new life is going to emerge from it. During the process you will know only death. Only when you are dead as you are, as the false entity, only then will you know that death was just a door to immortality. But that will be at the end; during the process you are simply dying.

Everything that you cherished so much is being taken away from you — your personality, your ideas, all that you thought was beautiful. All is leaving you. You are being denuded. All the roles and robes are being taken away. In the process fear will be there, but this fear is basic, necessary and inevitable — one has to pass through it. You should understand it but don’t try to avoid it, don’t try to escape from it because every escape will bring you back again. You will move back into the personality.

Those who go into deep silence and solitude, they always ask me, “There will be fear, so what to do?” I tell them not to do anything, just to live the fear.

If trembling comes, tremble. Why prevent it? If an inner fear is there and you are shaking with it, shake with it. Don’t do anything. Allow it to happen. It will go by itself. If you avoid it …and you can avoid it. You can start chanting “Ram, Ram, Ram”; you can cling to a mantra so that your mind is diverted. You will be pacified and the fear will not be there; you have pushed it into the unconscious. It was coming out — which was good, you were going to be free from it — it was leaving you and when it leaves you, you will tremble.

That is natural because from every cell of the body and of the mind, some energy that has always been there pushed down is leaving. There will be a shaking and a trembling; it will be just like an earthquake. The whole soul will be disturbed by it. But let it be. Don’t do anything. That is my advice. Don’t even chant. Don’t try to do anything with it because all that you can do will again be suppression. Just by allowing it to be, by letting it be, it will leave you — and when it has left, you will be altogether a different man.

Source: The Book of Secrets , OSHO

Concentration 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.

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.

Source: Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy
Chapter 1 – Meditation: The Art of Celebration ()

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

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