STOP WAVERING, MAD MIND! COME WHAT MAY, ALLOW IT!

Certain things must be understood before we try to grasp what Kabir is saying. First, the mind is never sick nor is it ever healthy: the mind itself IS sickness. It is never quiet and so it is meaningless to say that it is restless: restlessness is the mind. The mind can never become mad because only one who is not mad can become a lunatic: the mind itself is madness.

The mind will always remain unsteady, because unsteadiness is its nature. If a wave does not move, it will cease to be a wave. It is called a wave because it is moving, because it remains in motion. What would a silent wave be? The existence of the wave is in its motion, in its restlessness.

Never hope for your mind to be quiet; it does not know how to be at peace. As long as the mind is there, there is certain to be restlessness. When the mind is no more, what remains is peace. The absence of mind is peace — to be in no-mind is peace.

The mind will always be shaky, will always remain indecisive. If you wait for a decision by the mind — if you think, “I shall do this when the mind decides” — you will never be able to do anything. To remain in indecision is the way of the mind. It will always remain divided, broken into parts. Some parts will be for something and other parts will be against it. Within the mind there is always a civil war, there is always an internal conflict, there is always a duel going on. Read more

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COULD YOU SPEAK TO ME OF MY FEAR OF INTIMACY?

Everybody is afraid of intimacy. It is another thing whether you are aware of it or not.Intimacy means exposing yourself before a stranger. We are all strangers — nobody knows anybody. We are even strangers to ourselves, because we don’t know who we are.

Intimacy brings you close to a stranger. You have to drop all your defenses; only then, intimacy is possible. And the fear is that if you drop all your defenses, all your masks, who knows what the stranger is going to do with you?

We are all hiding a thousand and one things — not only from others but from ourselves — because we have been brought up by a sick humanity with all kinds of repressions, inhibitions, taboos. And the fear is that with somebody who is a stranger — and it does not matter, you may have lived with the person for thirty years, forty years; the strangeness never disappears — it feels safer to keep a little defense, a little distance, because somebody can take advantage of your weaknesses, of your frailties, of your vulnerability.

Everybody is afraid of intimacy.

The problem becomes more complicated because everybody wants intimacy. Everybody wants intimacy because otherwise you are alone in this universe — without a friend, without a lover, without anybody you can trust, without anybody to whom you can open all your wounds. And the wounds cannot heal unless they are open. The more you hide them, the more dangerous they become. They can become cancerous.

Intimacy is an essential need on the one hand, so everybody longs for it. But he wants the other person to be intimate, so that the other person drops his defenses, becomes vulnerable, opens all his wounds, drops all his masks and false personality, stands naked as he is. And on the other hand, everybody is afraid of intimacy — with the other person you want to be intimate with, you are not dropping your defenses.

This is one of the conflicts between friends, between lovers: nobody wants to drop his defenses and nobody wants to come in utter nudity and sincerity, open — and both need intimacy.

Unless you drop all your repressions, inhibitions — which are the gifts of your religions, your cultures, your societies, your parents, your education — you will never be able to be intimate with someone.

And you will have to take the initiative.

But if you don’t have any repressions, any inhibitions, you don’t have any wounds either. If you have lived a simple, natural life, there will be no fear of intimacy, but tremendous joy — of two flames coming so close that they become almost one flame. And the meeting is tremendously gratifying, satisfying, fulfilling. But before you can attempt intimacy, you have to clean your house completely.

Only a man of meditation can allow intimacy to happen.

He has nothing to hide.

All that was making him afraid that somebody may know, he himself has dropped. He has only a silence and a loving heart.

You have to accept yourself in your totality — if you cannot accept yourself in your totality, how can you expect somebody else to accept you? And you have been condemned by everybody, and you have learned only one thing: self-condemnation.

You go on hiding it. It is not something beautiful to show to others, you know ugly things are hidden in you; you know evil things are hidden in you; you know animality is hidden in you. Unless you transform your attitude and accept yourself as one of the animals in existence…. The word “animal” is not bad. It simply means alive; it comes from anima. Whoever is alive, is an animal.

But man has been taught, “You are not animals, animals are far below you. You are human beings.” You have been given a false superiority. The truth is, existence does not believe in the superior and the inferior. To existence, everything is equal — the trees, the birds, the animals, the human beings. In existence, everything is absolutely accepted as it is; there is no condemnation.

If you accept your sexuality without any conditions, if you accept that man and every being in the world is fragile… life is a very thin thread which can break down any moment. Once this is accepted, and you drop false egos — of being Alexander the Great, Mohammed Ali the thrice great — if you simply understand that everybody is beautiful in his ordinariness and everyone has weaknesses…. They are part of human nature because you are not made of steel.

You are made of a very fragile body. The span of your life is between ninety-eight degrees temperature and one hundred and ten degrees temperature: just twelve degrees of temperature is your whole span of life. Fall below it, and you are dead; go beyond it and you are dead. And the same applies to a thousand and one things in you.

One of your most basic needs is to be needed. But nobody wants to accept it, that “It is my basic need to be needed, to be loved, to be accepted.” We are living in such pretensions, such hypocrisies — that is the reason why intimacy creates fear.

You are not what you appear to be. Your appearance is false. You may appear to be a saint but deep down, you are still a weak human being with all the desires and all the longings.

The first step is to accept yourself in your totality, in spite of all your traditions, which have driven the whole of humanity insane. Once you have accepted yourself as you are, the fear of intimacy will disappear. You cannot lose respect, you cannot lose your greatness, you cannot lose your ego. You cannot lose your piousness, you cannot lose your saintliness — you have dropped all that yourself. You are just like a small child, utterly innocent. You can open yourself because inside, you are not filled with ugly repressions which have become perversions.

You can say everything that you feel authentically and sincerely. And if you are ready to be intimate, you will encourage the other person also to be intimate. Your openness will help the other person also to be open to you. Your unpretentious simplicity will allow the other also to enjoy simplicity, innocence, trust, love, openness.

You are encaged with stupid concepts, and the fear is, if you become very intimate with somebody, he will become aware of it.

But we are fragile beings — the most fragile in the whole existence. The human child is the most fragile child of all the animals. The children of other animals can survive without the mother, without the father, without a family. But the human child will die immediately. So this frailty is not something to be condemned — it is the highest expression of consciousness. A roseflower is going to be fragile; it is not a stone. And there is no need to feel bad about it, that you are a roseflower and not a stone.

Only when two persons become intimate are they no longer strangers. And it is a beautiful experience to find that not only you are full of weaknesses but the other, too… perhaps everybody is full of weaknesses.

The higher expression of anything becomes weaker. The roots are very strong, but the flower cannot be so strong. Its beauty is because of its not being strong. In the morning it opens its petals to welcome the sun, dances the whole day in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, and by the evening its petals have started falling. It is gone. Everything that is beautiful, precious, is going to be very momentary.

But you want everything to be permanent. You love someone and you promise that “I will love you my whole life.” And you know perfectly well that you cannot be even certain of tomorrow — you are giving a false promise. All that you can say is, “I am in love with you this moment and I will give my totality to you. About the next moment, I know nothing. How can I promise? You have to forgive me.”

But lovers are promising all kinds of things which they cannot fulfill. Then frustration comes in, then the distance grows bigger, then fight, conflict, struggle, and a life that was meant to become happier becomes just a long, drawn out misery.

Ramaprem, it is good that you are aware of your greatest fear, that it is of intimacy. It can become a great revelation to you, and a revolution, if you look inwards and start dropping everything of which you feel ashamed. And accept your nature as it is, not as it should be. I do not teach any “should.” All shoulds make human mind sick.

People should be taught the beauty of isness, the tremendous splendor of nature. These trees don’t know any ten commandments, the birds don’t know any holy scriptures. It is only man who has created a problem for himself.

Condemning your own nature, you become split, you become schizophrenic — and not just ordinary people, but people of the status of Sigmund Freud, who contributed greatly to humanity, about mind. His method was psychoanalysis, that you should be made aware of all that is unconscious in you. And this is a secret, that once something unconscious is brought to the conscious mind, it evaporates. You become cleaner, lighter. As more and more unconscious is unburdened, your consciousness goes on becoming bigger. And as the area of the unconscious shrinks, the territory of the consciousness expands. That is an immense truth.

The East has known it for thousands of years, but to the West, Sigmund Freud introduced it — not knowing anything of the East and its psychology; it was his individual contribution. But you will be surprised: he was never ready to be psychoanalyzed himself. The founder of psychoanalysis was never psychoanalyzed.

His colleagues insisted again and again: “The method that you have given to us — and we all have been psychoanalyzed — why are you insisting that you should not be psychoanalyzed?”

He said, “Forget about it.” He was afraid to expose himself. He had become a great genius and exposing himself would bring him down to ordinary humanity. He had the same fears, the same desires, the same repressions.

He never talked about his dreams; he only listened to other people’s dreams. And his colleagues were very much surprised — “It will be a great contribution to know about your dreams” — but he never agreed to lie down on the psychoanalyst’s couch and talk about his dreams. Because his dreams were as ordinary as anybody else’s — that was the fear.

A Gautam Buddha would not have feared to go into meditation. That was his contribution — a special kind of meditation. And he would not have been afraid of any psychoanalysis, because for the man who meditates, by and by all his dreams disappear. In the day he remains silent in his mind, not the ordinary traffic of thoughts. And in the night he sleeps deeply, because dreams are nothing but unlived thoughts, unlived desires, unlived longings in the day. They are trying to complete themselves, at least in dreams.

It will be very difficult for you to find a man who dreams about his wife, or a woman who dreams about her husband. But it will be absolutely common that they dream about their neighbors’ wives and their neighbors’ husbands. The wife is available, he is not suppressing anything as far as his wife is concerned. But the neighbor’s wife is always more beautiful; the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. And that which is unapproachable creates a deep desire to acquire it, to possess it. In the day you cannot do it, but in dreams at least, you are free. Freedom of dreaming has not yet been taken away by the governments.

It won’t be long — soon they will take it away, because methods are available, already available, so that they can watch when you are dreaming and when you are not dreaming. And there is a possibility some day to find a scientific device so that your dream can be projected on a screen. Just some electrodes will have to be inserted in your head. You will be fast asleep, dreaming joyously, making love to your neighbor’s wife and a whole movie hall will be watching it — and they used to think that this man is a saint!

This much you can even see; whenever a person is asleep, watch: if his eyelids are not showing any movement of his eyes inside, then he is not dreaming. If he is dreaming then you can see that his eyes are moving.

It is possible to project your dream on a screen. It is also possible to enforce certain dreaming in you. But at least up to now, no constitution even talks about it, that “People are free to dream, it is their birthright.”

A Gautam Buddha does not dream. Meditation is a way to go beyond mind. He lives in utter silence twenty-four hours — no ripples on the lake of his consciousness, no thoughts, no dreams.

But Sigmund Freud is afraid because he knows what he is dreaming.

Source: The Hidden Splendor
Chapter 4 – Who is preventing you? join the dance! , OSHO

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HOW CAN ONE CONVERT THE SEX ACT INTO A MEDITATIVE EXPERIENCE? SHOULD ONE PRACTICE ANY SPECIAL POSITIONS IN SEX?

Positions are irrelevant; positions are not very meaningful. The real thing is the attitude – not the position of the body, but the position of the mind. But if you change your mind you may want to change your positions, because they are related. But they are not basic.

For example, the man is always on the woman — on top of the woman. This is an egoist posture because the man always thinks he is better, superior, higher — how can he be below the woman? But all over the world in primitive societies the woman is above the man. So in Africa this posture is known as the missionary posture, because for the first time when missionaries — Christian missionaries — went to Africa, the primitives just could not understand what they were doing. They thought it would kill the woman.

The man-on-top posture is known in Africa as the missionary posture. African primitives say this is violent that man should be on top of the woman. She is weaker, delicate, so she must be on top of the man. But it is difficult for man to think of himself as lower than woman, under her.

If your mind changes, many things will change. It is better that the woman should be on top, for many reasons. If the woman is on top she will be passive, so she is not going to do much violence; she will simply relax. And the man under her cannot do much, he will have to relax. This is good. If he is on top he is going to be violent, he will do much. And nothing is needed to be done on her part. For tantra you have to relax, so it is good that the woman should be on top. She can relax better than any man. The feminine psychology is more passive, so relaxation comes easy.

Positions will change, but do not be bothered about positions much. Just change your mind. Surrender to the life force, float in it. Sometimes, if you are really surrendered, your bodies will take the right position that is needed in that moment. If both partners are deeply surrendered, their bodies will take the right posture that is needed.

Every day situations change, so there is no need to fix postures beforehand. That is a problem, that you try to fix it beforehand. Whenever you try to fix it, this is a fixing by the mind; then you are not surrendering.

If you surrender then you let things take their own shape, and that is a wonderful harmony – when both partners have surrendered. They will take many postures or they will not take them and will just relax. That depends on the life force, not on your cerebral decision beforehand. You need not decide anything beforehand. Decision is the problem. Even to make love, you decide. Even to make love, you go and consult books.

There are books on how to make love. This shows what type of human mind we have produced. You even consult books on how to make love. Then it becomes cerebral; you think everything. Really, you create a rehearsal in the mind and then you enact it. Your action is a copy; it is never real then. You are enacting a rehearsal. It becomes acting; it is not authentic.

Just surrender and move with the force. What is the fear? Why be afraid? If you cannot be unafraid with your lover, then where will you be unafraid? And once you have the feeling that the life force helps by itself and takes the right path that is needed, it will give you a very basic insight into your whole life. Then you can leave your whole life to the divine. That is your beloved.

Then you leave your whole life to the divine. Then you do not think and you do not plan; you do not force the future according to you. You just allow yourself to move into the future according to Him, according to the total.

But how to make the sex act a meditation? Just by surrendering it becomes so. Do not think about it, let it happen. And be relaxed, do not move ahead. This is one of the basic problems with the mind: it always moves ahead. It is always seeking the result, and the result is in the future. You are never in the act; you are always in the future seeking a result. That seeking of a result is disturbing everything, it damages everything.

Just be in the act. What is the future? It is to come; you need not worry about it. And you are not going to bring it with your worries. It is already coming; it has already come. So you forget about it, you just be here and now.

Sex can become a deep insight in being here and now. That is, I think, the only act now left into which you can be here and now. You cannot be here and now while in your office; you cannot be here and now while you are studying in your college; you cannot be here and now anywhere in this modern world. Only in love can you be here and now.

But even then you are not. You are thinking of the result. And now many modern books have created many new problems. You read a book on how to make love, and then you are afraid about whether you are making it rightly or wrongly. You read a book on how a posture is to be taken, or what type of posture is to be used, and then you are afraid about whether you are taking the right posture or not.

Psychologists have created new worries in the mind. Now they say the husband must remember whether his wife is achieving orgasm or not, so he is worried over it. And this worry is not going to help in any way; it is going to become a hindrance.

The wife is worried whether she is helping the husband to relax totally or not. She must show that she is feeling very blissful. Then everything becomes false. Both are worried about the result, and because of this worry the result will never come.

Forget everything. Flow in the moment and allow your bodies their expression. Your bodies know well; they have their own wisdom. Your bodies are constituted of sex cells. They have a built-in program; you are not asked at all. Just leave it to the body and the body will move. This leaving it to nature together, both together, this let-go, will create meditation automatically.

And if you can feel it in sex, then you know one thing: that whenever you surrender you will feel the same. Then you can surrender to a master. It is a love relationship. You can surrender to a master, and then while you are putting your head at his feet, your head will become empty. You will be in meditation.

Then there is even no need of a master. Then go out and surrender to the sky. You know how to surrender — that is all. Then you can go and surrender to a tree. But it looks foolish because we do not know how to surrender. We see a person – a villager, a primitive man – going to the river, surrendering himself to the river, calling the river the Mother, the divine Mother, or surrendering himself to the rising sun, calling the rising sun a great god, or going to a tree and putting his head at the roots and surrendering.

For us it looks superstitious. You say, “What nonsense he is doing! What will the tree do? What will the river do? They are not goddesses. What is the sun? The sun is not a god.” Anything becomes a god if you can surrender. So your surrender creates divinity. There is nothing divine, there is only a surrendering mind which creates divinity.

Surrender to a wife and she becomes divine. Surrender to a husband and he becomes divine. The divinity is revealed through surrender. Surrender to a stone and there is no stone now: that stone has become a statue, a person — alive.

So just know how to surrender. And when I say “how” to surrender, I do not mean to know a technique; I mean you have a natural possibility of surrendering in love. Surrender in love and feel it there. And then let it spread all over your life.

Source: Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 “OSHO”

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TANTRA BELONG TO THE SCIENCE OF YOGA INSTEAD OF TO THE ACTUAL AND CENTRAL SUBJECT MATTER OF TANTRA. WHAT IS THE CENTRAL SUBJECT MATTER OF TANTRA?

This question arises to many. The techniques that we have discussed also belong to yoga. They are the same techniques, but with a difference: you can use the same techniques with a very different philosophy behind them. The framework, the pattern differs, not the technique. You may have a different attitude toward life, just the contrary to tantra.

Yoga believes in struggle; yoga is basically the path of will. Tantra does not believe in a struggle; tantra is not the path of will. Rather, on the contrary, tantra is the path of total surrender. Your will is not needed. For tantra your will is the problem, the source of all anguish. For yoga your surrender, your will-lessness is the problem.

Because your will is weak, that is why you are in anguish, suffering – for yoga. For tantra, because you have a will, because you have an ego, an individuality, that is why you are suffering. Yoga says, bring your will to absolute perfection and you will be liberated. Tantra says, dissolve your will completely, become totally emptied of it, and that will be your liberation. And both are right; this creates the problem. For me, both are right.

But the path of yoga is a very difficult one. It is just impossible, nearly impossible, that you can attain to the perfection of the ego. It means you become the center of the whole universe. The path is very long, arduous, and really, it never reaches to the end. So what happens to the followers of yoga? Somewhere on the path, in some life, they turn to tantra.

Intellectually yoga is conceivable; existentially it is impossible. If it is possible you will reach by yoga also, but generally it never happens. Even if it happens, it happens very rarely, such as to a Mahavir. Sometimes centuries and centuries pass and then a man like Mahavir appears who has achieved through yoga. But he is rare, an exception, and he breaks the rule.

But yoga is more attractive than tantra. Tantra is easy, natural, and you can attain through tantra very easily, very naturally, effortlessly. And because of this, tantra never appeals to you as much. Why? Anything that appeals to you appeals to your ego. Whatsoever you feel is going to fulfill your ego will appeal to you more. You are gripped in the ego; thus yoga appeals to you very much.

Really, the more egoistic you are, the more yoga will appeal to you, because it is pure ego effort. The more impossible, the more it is appealing to the ego. That is why Mount. Everest has so much appeal. There is so much attraction to reach to the top of a Himalayan peak because it is so difficult. And when Hillary and Tensing reached Mount. Everest, they felt a very ecstatic moment. What was that? It was because the ego was fulfilled — they were the first.

When the first man landed on the moon, can you imagine how he felt? He was the first in all history. And now he cannot be replaced; he will remain the first in all the history to come. Now there is no way to change his status. The ego is fulfilled deeply. There is no competitor now, and there cannot be. Many will land on the moon but they will not be the first. But many can land on the moon and many can go to Everest — yoga gives you a higher peak. And the more unreachable the end, the more there is the perfection of the ego — pure, perfect, absolute ego.

Yoga would have appealed to Nietzsche very much because he felt that the energy which is working behind life is the energy of will — the will to power. Yoga gives you that feeling. You are more powerful through it.

The more you can control yourself, the more you can control your instincts, the more you can control your body and the more you can control your mind, then the more you feel powerful. You become a master inside. But this is through conflict; this is through struggle and violence. And it always happens more or less that a person who has been practicing yoga for many lives comes to a point where the whole journey becomes drab, dreary, futile, because the more ego is fulfilled, the more you will feel it is useless. Then the follower of the path of yoga turns to tantra.

But yoga appeals because everyone is an egoist. Tantra never appeals in the beginning. Tantra can appeal only to the higher depths — to those who have worked on themselves, who have really been struggling through yoga for many lives. Then tantra appeals to them because they can understand. Ordinarily you will not be attracted by tantra, and if you are attracted you will be attracted by the wrong reasons, so try to understand them also.

You will not be attracted by tantra in the first place because it asks you to surrender, not to fight. It asks you to float, not to swim. It asks you to move with the current, not to go upstream. It tells you, nature is good; trust nature, do not fight it. Even sex is good. Trust it, follow it, flow into it; do not fight it. “no-fight” is the central teaching of tantra. Flow. Let go! It cannot appeal, there is no fulfillment of your ego through it. In the first step it asks for your ego to be dissolved, in the very beginning it asks you to dissolve it.

Yoga also asks you, but at the end. First it will ask you to purify it. And if it is purified completely it dissolves, it cannot remain. But that is the last in yoga, and in tantra that is the first.

So tantra will not appeal generally. And if it does appeal, it will appeal for wrong reasons. For example, if you want to indulge in sex then you can rationalize your indulgence through tantra. That can become the appeal. If you want to indulge in wine, in women, in other things, you can feel attracted toward tantra. But really, you are not attracted to tantra. Tantra is a facade — a trick. You are attracted to something else which you think tantra allows you. So tantra always appeals for wrong reasons.

Tantra is not to help your indulgence, it is to transform it. So do not deceive yourself. Through tantra you can deceive yourself very easily, and because of this possibility of deception Mahavir would not describe tantra. This possibility is always there. And man is so deceptive that he can show one thing when he really means another, he can rationalize.

For example, in China, in old China, there was something like tantra — a secret science. It is known as Tao. Tao has similar trends to tantra. For example, Tao says that it is good, if you want to be freed of sex, that you should not stick to one person — to one woman or one man. You should not stick to one person if you want to be freed. Tao says that it is better to go on changing partners.

This is absolutely right, but you can rationalize it; you can deceive yourself. You may just be a sex maniac and you can think that “I am doing tantra practice, so I cannot stick to one woman. I have to change.” And many emperors in China practiced it. They had big harems only for this.

But Tao is meaningful if you look deep down into human psychology. If you know only one woman, sooner or later your attraction for that woman will wither away, but your attraction for women will remain. You will be attracted by the other sex. This woman, your wife, will really not be of the opposite sex. She will not attract you, she will not be a magnet for you. You will have become accustomed to her.

Tao says that if a man moves amidst women, women, he will not only go beyond one, he will go beyond the opposite sex. The very knowledge of many women will help him to transcend. And this is right — but dangerous, because you would like it not because it is right but because it gives you license. That is the problem with tantra.

So in China also that knowledge was suppressed; it had to be suppressed. In India tantra was also suppressed because it said many dangerous things – dangerous only because you are deceptive. Otherwise they are wonderful. Nothing has happened to the human mind that is more wonderful and mysterious than tantra; no knowledge is so deep.

But knowledge always has its dangers. For example, now science has become a danger because it has come to know many deep secrets. Now it knows how to create atomic energy. Einstein is reported to have said that if he is again given a life, rather than being a scientist he would like to be a plumber, because as he looks back, his whole life has been futile — not only futile, but dangerous to humanity. And he has given one of the deepest secrets, but to a mankind which is self-deceptive.

I wonder… the day may come soon when we will have to suppress scientific knowledge. There are rumors that there are secret thoughts amid scientists about whether to disclose more or not — whether they should stop the search or whether they should go further, because now it is dangerous ground.

Every knowledge is dangerous; only ignorance is not dangerous, you cannot do much with it. Superstitions are always good — never dangerous. They are homeopathic. If the medicine is given to you, it is not going to harm you. Whether it is going to help you or not depends on your own innocence, but one thing is certain: it is not going to harm you. Homeopathy is harmless; it is a deep superstition. If it works, it can only help. Remember, if something can only help then it is deep superstition. If it can do both, help and harm, then only is it knowledge. A real thing can do both, help and harm. Only an unreal thing can just help. But then the help never comes from the thing, it is always a projection of your own mind. So, in a way, only illusory things are good; they never harm you.

Tantra is science, and it is deeper than atomic knowledge because atomic science is concerned with matter and tantra is concerned with you, and you are always more dangerous than any atomic energy. Tantra is concerned with the biological atom, with you — the living cell; with life consciousness itself and how its inner mechanism works.

That is why tantra became so much interested in sex. One who is interested in life and consciousness will automatically become interested in sex because sex is the source of life, of love, of all that is happening in the world of consciousness. So if a seeker is not interested in sex, he is not a seeker at all. He may be a philosopher, but he is not a seeker. And philosophy is, more or less, nonsense – thinking about things which are of no use.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was interested in girls, but he had very bad luck with girls, no one would like him. He was going to meet a certain girl for the first time, so he asked a friend, “What is your secret? You are wonderful with women, you simply hypnotize them, and I am always a failure, so give me some clue. I am going on a date for the first time with a girl, so give me some secrets.”

The friend said, “Remember three things: always talk about food, family and philosophy.”

“Why about food?” Mulla asked. The friend said, “I talk about food because then the girl feels good – because every woman is interested in food. She is food for the child, for the whole humanity she is food, so she is basically interested in food.”

Mulla said, “Okay. And why family?” So the man said, “Talk about her family so your intentions look honorable.”

Then Mulla said, “And why about philosophy?” The man said, “Talk about philosophy. That makes the woman feel that she is intelligent.”

So Mulla rushed. Immediately, when he saw the girl, he said, “Hello, do you like noodles?” The girl was startled and said, “No!”

Then the Mulla asked the second question: “Have you got two brothers?” The girl was even more startled and wondered, “What type of date is this?” She said, “No!”

So for a moment Mulla was at a loss. He wondered, “How to start talking about philosophy?” Just for a moment he was at a loss, and then he asked, “Now, if you had a brother would he like noodles?”

Philosophy is more or less nonsense. Tantra is not interested in philosophy; tantra is interested in actual existential life. So tantra never asks whether there is a God or whether there is MOKSHA, liberation, or whether there is hell or heaven. Tantra asks basic questions about life. That is why there is so much interest in sex and love. They are basic. YOU ARE through them; you are part of them.

You are a play of sex energy and nothing less, and unless you understand this energy and transcend it you will never be anything more. You are, right now, nothing but sex energy. You can be more, but if you do not understand this and you do not transcend it you never will be more. The possibility is just there as a seed. That is why tantra is interested in sex, in love, in natural life.

But the way to know it is not through conflict. Tantra says you cannot know anything if you are in a fighting mood because then you are not receptive. Then because you are fighting the secrets will be hidden from you — you are not open to receive. And whenever you are fighting you are always outside. If you are fighting sex you are always outside; if you surrender to sex you reach the very inner core of it; you are an insider. If you surrender; then many things become known.

You have been in sex, but always with a fighting attitude behind it. That is why you have not known many secrets. For example, you have not known the life-giving forces of sex. You have not them known because you cannot know — that needs you to be an insider.

If you are really flowing with sex energy, totally surrendered, sooner or later you will arrive at the point where you will know that sex cannot only give birth to a new life: sex can give you more life. To lovers sex can become a life-giving force, but for that you need a surrender. And once you are surrendered, many dimensions change.

For example, tantra has known, Tao has known that if you ejaculate in the act, then it cannot be life-giving to you. There is no need to ejaculate; ejaculation can be totally forgotten. Tantra and Tao both say ejaculation is because you are fighting; otherwise there is no need of it.

Source: Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 “OSHO”

The lover and the beloved can be in a deep sexual embrace, just relaxing into each other with no hurry to ejaculate, with no hurry to end the affair. They can just relax into each other. And if this relaxation is total, they both will feel more life. They both will enrich each other.

Tao says a man can live for one thousand years if he is not in any hurry with sex, if he is deeply relaxed. If a woman and man are deeply relaxed with each other, simply melting into each other, absorbed into each other, not in any hurry, not in any tension, many things happen — alchemical things happen — because the life juices of both, the electricity of both, the bio-energy of both, meet. And just by this meeting — because they are “anti”; one is negative, one is positive: they are anti-poles — Just by meeting with each other deeply, they invigorate each other, make each other vital, more alive.

They can live for a long time, and they can live never becoming old. But this can only be known if you are not in a fighting mood. And this seems paradoxical. Those who are fighting sex, they will ejaculate sooner because the tense mind is in a hurry to be relieved of the tension.

New research says many surprising things, many surprising facts. Masters and Johnson, they have worked scientifically for the first time with what happens in deep intercourse. They have come to realize that seventy-five percent of men are premature ejaculators — seventy-five percent Before there is a deep meeting they have ejaculated and the act is finished. And ninety percent of women never have any orgasm; they never reach to a peak, to a deep, fulfilling peak — ninety percent of women!

That is why women are so angry and irritated, and they will remain so. No meditation can help them to be peaceful and no philosophy, no religion, no ethics will make them at ease with the men with whom they are living. They are in frustration, in anger, because modern science and old tantra both say that unless a woman is deeply fulfilled orgasmically she will be a problem in the family. That which she is lacking will create irritations and she will be always in a fighting mood.

So if your wife is always in a fighting mood, think again about the whole thing. It is not simply the wife — you may be the cause. And because women are not achieving orgasm, they become anti-sex. They are not willing to go into sex easily. They have to be bribed; they are not ready to go into sex. Why should they be ready if they never achieve any deep bliss through it? Rather, they feel after it that the man has been using them, that they have been used. They feel like a thing which has been used and then discarded.

The man is satisfied because be has ejaculated. Then he moves and goes to sleep, and the wife goes on weeping. She has been just used, and the experience has not been in any way fulfilling to her. It may have relieved her husband or lover or friend, but it has not been in any way fulfilling to her.

Ninety percent of women do not even know what orgasm is. They have never known it; they have never reached a peak of such a blissful convulsion of the body that every fiber vibrates and every cell becomes alive. They have not reached it, and this is because of an anti-sexual attitude in the society. The fighting mind is there, and the woman is so repressed that she has become frigid.

The man goes on doing the act as if it is a sin. He feels it as guilt: “It is not to be done.” And while he is making love to his wife or beloved, he is thinking of some MAHATMA — so-called saint — of how to go to the mahatma and how to transcend this sex, this guilt, this sin.

It is very difficult to get rid of the mahatmas, they are already there even while you are making love. You are not two; one mahatma must be there. If there is no mahatma, then God is watching you doing this sin. The concept of God in people’s minds is just that of a Peeping Tom — he is always watching you. This attitude creates anxiety, and when anxiety is there ejaculation comes soon.

When there is no anxiety, ejaculation can be postponed for hours — even for days. And there is no need of it. If the love is deep, both parties can invigorate each other. Then ejaculation completely ceases, and for years two lovers can meet with each other without any ejaculation, without any wastage of energy. They can just relax with each other. Their bodies meet and relax; they enter sex and relax. And sooner or later, sex will not be an excitement. It is an excitement right now. Then it is not an excitement, it is a relaxation, a deep let-go.

But that can happen only if you have first surrendered inside to the life energy — the life force. Only then can you surrender to your lover or beloved. Tantra says, this happens, and it says how it can happen.

Tantra says, never make love while you are excited. This seems very absurd because you want to make love when you are excited. And normally, both partners excite each other in order that they can make love. But tantra says that in excitement you are wasting energy. Make love while you are calm, serene, meditative. First meditate, then make love, and when making love do not go beyond the limit. What do I mean by “do not go beyond the limit”? Do not become excited and violent, in order that your energy will not be dispersed.

If you see two persons making love you will feel that they are fighting. If small children sometimes see their father and mother making love, they think the father is going to kill the mother. It looks violent; it looks like a fight. It is not beautiful, it looks ugly.

It must be more musical, harmonious. The two partners must be as if they are dancing, not fighting — as if singing one harmonious melody, just creating an atmosphere in which both may dissolve and become one. And then they relax. This is what tantra means. Tantra is not sexual at all, tantra is the least sexual thing and yet it has so much concern with sex. And if through this relaxation and let-go nature reveals to you its secrets, it is no wonder. Then you begin to be aware of what is happening. And in that awareness of what is happening many secrets come to your mind.

Firstly, sex becomes life-giving. As it is now it is death giving, you are simply dying through it, wasting yourself, deteriorating. Secondly, it becomes the deepest natural meditation. Your thoughts cease completely. When you are totally relaxed with your lover, your thoughts cease. The mind is not there, only your heart beats. It becomes a natural meditation. And if love cannot help you into meditation, nothing will help, because everything else is just superfluous, superficial. If love cannot help, nothing will help!

Love has its own meditation. But you do not know love; you know only sex and you know the misery of wasting energy. Then you get depressed after it. Then you decide to take a vow of BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. And this vow is taken in depression, this vow is taken in anger, this vow is taken in frustration. It is not going to help.

A vow can be helpful if taken in a very relaxed, deeply meditative mood. Otherwise you are simply showing your anger, your frustration and nothing else, and you will forget the vow within twenty-four hours. The energy will have come again, and just as an old routine you will have to release it.

Tantra says, sex is very deep because it is life. But you can be interested in tantra for the wrong reasons. Do not be interested in tantra for wrong reasons, and then you will not feel that tantra is dangerous. Then tantra is life transforming.

Some tantric methods have been used by yoga also, but with a conflict, a fighting attitude. Tantra uses the same methods, but with a very loving attitude — and that makes a great difference. The very quality of the technique changes. The technique becomes different because the whole background is different.

It has been asked, “What is the central subject matter of tantra?” The answer is you! You are the central subject matter of tantra: what you are right now and what is hidden in you that can grow, what you are and what you can be. Right now you are a sex unit, and unless this unit is understood deeply you cannot become a spirit, you cannot become a spiritual unit. Sexuality and spirituality are two ends of one energy.

Tantra starts with you as you are; yoga starts with what your possibility is. Yoga starts with the end; tantra starts with the beginning. And it is good to start with the beginning. It is always good to begin with the beginning, because if the end is made the beginning, then you are creating unnecessary misery for yourself. You are not the end — not the ideal. You have to become a god, the ideal, and you are just an animal. And this animal goes berserk because of the ideal of the god; it goes mad, it goes crazy.

Tantra says, forget the god. If you are the animal, understand this animal in its totality. In that understanding itself, the god will grow. And if it cannot grow through that understanding then forget it, it can never be. Ideals cannot bring your possibilities out; only the knowledge of the real will help. So you are the central subject matter of tantra, as you are and as you can become, your actuality and your possibility — they are the subject matter.

Sometimes people get worried. If you go to understand tantra God is not discussed, moksha — liberation — is not discussed, nirvana is not discussed. What type of religion is tantra? Tantra discusses things which make you feel disgusted, which you do not want to discuss. Who wants to discuss sex? Everyone thinks he knows about it. Because you can reproduce, you think you know.

No one wants to discuss sex and sex is everyone’s problem. No one wants to discuss love because everyone feels he is a great lover already. And look at your life! It is just hatred and nothing else. And whatsoever you call love is nothing but a relaxation, a little relaxation, of the hatred. Look around you, and then you will know what you know about love.

Baal Shem, a fakir, went to his tailor every day for his robe, and the tailor took six months to make a simple robe for the fakir. The poor fakir! When the robe was ready and the tailor gave it to Baal Shem, Baal Shem said, “Tell me, even God had only six days to create the world. Within six days God created the whole world and you took six months to make this poor man’s robe?”

Baal Shem remembered the tailor in his memoirs. The tailor said, “Yes, God created the world in six days, but look at the world, at what type of world it is. Yes, he created the world in six days, but look at the world!”

Look around you; look at the world you have created. Then you will come to know that you do not know anything, you are just groping in the dark. And because everyone else is also groping in the dark, it cannot be that you are living in light. If everyone else is groping in the dark you feel good, because then you feel there is no comparison.

But you are also in the dark, and tantra starts with you as you are. Tantra wants to enlighten you about basic things which you cannot deny. If you try to deny them, it is at your own cost.

Source: Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1 “OSHO”

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How can one be successful in life?

“Richness, wealth, treasure — divine treasure — is there and you have not claimed it yet — and it is yours, just for the asking. You need not spread your hands anywhere before anybody. The treasure is hidden within your own heart.
And people go on searching everywhere else except in the heart. They can go to the moon and to mars; and that journey seems to be easy. Man seems somehow to be very stubborn about going into his own heart. Maybe he is afraid that he may find it there.

Psychologists say that there is a very deep-rooted fear of success in the human mind. It looks absurd when you hear for the first time that man is afraid of success, but when you ponder over it, slowly slowly it dawns on you that it has some deep relevance.
Man is afraid of success, because if he succeeds, then what? That is the fear: then what? So in a subtle way he tries to succeed and yet creates such obstacles that he cannot succeed.
On one hand he tries to succeed, on the other hand he disturbs his own success so the game can go on. Just think of a day when you have succeeded and all that you desired has been attained, all that you always longed for is in your hands. Then what? — that is the fear. Then what will you do? — because all doing is searching, all doing is desiring, all doing is possible because there are goals which we have not attained yet. One is occupied, happily busy.

Just think of it a moment and even in thinking you will start trembling inside: if all is fulfilled, then what? Would you like to succeed to that point? And when you think about that you will see the point of what psychologists mean when they say there is a deep-rooted fear of success.
And it does not happen only as far as the inner success is concerned: outer success also. It almost always happens that when a person is at the last rung of succeeding, something goes wrong. And he thinks something has gone wrong from the outside, no. He does something — he takes a wrong step, he moves in an opposite direction. He blames god and he blames fate and he blames society and others, but if you search deep down you will find that people fail only when they were just going to succeed.

There seems to be that deep fear which at the last moment says to them ‘What are you doing? Avoid it.’ It is very unconscious. They fail, and then they are busy again. That’s how people keep themselves busy; life in and life out they keep themselves busy. This is called the wheel, the samsara, in the East; this is the world. That’s why people don’t go into the heart, which is the closest point to go to. They go on great journeys and pilgrimages, but they don’t search within.”

Osho, excerpted from: The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment , Chapter 13

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You ask me: What happened when you became enlightened?

I laughed, a real uproarious laugh, seeing the whole absurdity of trying to be enlightened. The whole thing is ridiculous because we are born enlightened, and to try for something that is already the case is the most absurd thing. If you already have it, you cannot achieve it; only those things can be achieved which you don’t have, which are not intrinsic parts of your being. But enlightenment is your very nature.

I had struggled for it for many lives—it had been the only target for many many lives. And I had done everything that is possible to do to attain it, but I had always failed. It was bound to be so—because it cannot be an attainment. It is your nature, so how can it be your attainment? It cannot be made an ambition.
Mind is ambitious—ambitious for money, for power, for prestige. And then one day, when it gets fed up with all these extrovert activities, it becomes ambitious for enlightenment, for liberation, for nirvana, for God. But the same ambition has come back; only the object he changed. First the object was outside, now the object is inside. But your attitude, your approach has not changed; you are the same person in the same rut, in the same routine.
“The day I became enlightened” simply means the day I realized that there is nothing to achieve, there is nowhere to go, there is nothing to be done. We are already divine and we are already perfect—as we are. No improvement is needed, no improvement at all. God never creates anybody imperfect. Even if you come across an imperfect man, you will see that his imperfection is perfect. God never creates any imperfect thing.
I have heard about a Zen Master Bokuju who was telling this truth to his disciples, that all is perfect. A man stood up—very old, a hunchback—and he said, “What about me? I am a hunchback. What do you say about me?” Bokuju said, “I have never seen such a perfect hunchback in my life.”
When I say “the day I achieved enlightenment,” I am using wrong language—because there is no other language, because our language is created by us. It consists of the words “achievement,” “attainment,” “goals,” “improvement” “progress,” “evolution.” Our languages are not created by the enlightened people; and in fact they cannot create it even if they want to because enlightenment happens in silence. How can you bring that silence into words? And whatsoever you do, the words are going to destroy something of that silence.
Lao Tzu says: The moment truth is asserted it becomes false. There is no way to communicate truth. But language has to be used; there is no other way. So we always have to use the language with the condition that it cannot be adequate to the experience. Hence I say “the day I achieved my enlightenment.” It is neither an achievement nor mine.
[At this point there is a brief power failure: no light, no sound.]
Yes, it happens like that! Out of nowhere suddenly the darkness, suddenly the light, and you cannot do anything. You can just watch.

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Osho’s experiences leading to Enlightenment

Buddha says, ‘Fortunate is the man who has found a Master.’
I myself was not as fortunate as you are; I was working without a Master. I searched and I could not find one. It was not that I had not searched, I had searched long enough, but I could not find one. It is very rare to find a Master, rare to find a being who has become a non-being, rare to find a presence who is almost an absence, rare to find a man who Is simply a door to the divine, an open door to the divine which will not hinder you, through which you can pass. It is very difficult .

The Sikhs call their temple the gurudwara, the door of the Master. That is exactly what the Master is—the door. Jesus says again and again, ‘I am the gate, I am the way, I am the truth. Come follow me, pass through me. And unless you pass through me you will not be able to reach.’

Yes, sometimes it happens that a person has to work without a Master. If the Master is not available then one has to work without a Master, but then the journey is very hazardous.
For one year I was in the state…. For one year it was almost impossible to know what was happening. For one year continuously it was even difficult to keep myself alive. Just to keep myself alive was a very difficult thing—because all appetite disappeared. Days would pass and I would not feel any hunger, days would pass and I would not feel any thirst. I had to force myself to eat, force myself to drink. The body was so non-existential that I had to hurt myself to feel that I was still in the body. I had to knock my head against the wall to feel whether my head was still there or not. Only when it hurt would I be a little in the body.
Every morning and every evening I would run for five to eight miles. People used to think that I was mad. Why was I running so much? Sixteen miles a day! It was just to feel myself, to feel that I still was, not to lose contact with myself—just to wait until my eyes became attuned to the new that was happening.
And I had to keep myself close to myself. I would not talk to anybody because everything had become so inconsistent that even to formulate one sentence was difficult. In the middle of the sentence I would forget what I was saying in the middle of the way I would forget where I was going. Then I would have to come back. I would read a book—I would read fifty pages—and then suddenly I would remember, ‘What am I reading? I don’t remember at all.’
My situation was such:
The door of the psychiatrist’s office burst open and a man rushed in.
‘Doctor!’ he cried. ‘You’ve got to help me. I’m sure I’m losing my mind. I can’t remember anything—what happened a year ago, or even what happened yesterday. I must be going crazy!’
‘Hmmmmmmm,’ pondered the headshrinker. ‘Just when did you first become aware of this problem?’
The man looked puzzled, ‘What problem?’
This was my situation! Even to complete a full sentence was difficult. I had to keep myself shut in my room. I made it a point not to talk, not to say anything, because to say anything was to say that I was mad.
For one year it persisted. I would simply lie on the floor and look at the ceiling and count from one to a hundred then back from a hundred to one. Just to remain capable of counting was at least something. Again and again I would forget. It took one year for me to gain a focus again, to have a perspective.
It happened. It was a miracle. But it was difficult. There was nobody to support me, there was nobody to say where I was going and what was happening. In fact, everybody was against it my teachers, my friends, my well-wishers. All were against it. But they could not do anything, they could only condemn, they could only ask what I was doing.
I was not doing anything! Now it was beyond me; it was happening. I had done something, unknowingly I had knocked at the door, now the door had opened. I had been meditating for many years, just sitting silently doing nothing, and by and by I started getting into that space, that heartspace, where you are and you are not doing anything, you are simply there, a presence, a watcher.
You are not even a watcher because you are not watching—you are just a presence. Words are not adequate because whatsoever word is used it seems as if it is being done. No, I was not doing it. I was simply lying, sitting, walking—deep down there was no doer. I had lost all ambition; there was no desire to be anybody, no desire to reach anywhere—not even God, not even nirvana. The Buddha-disease had completely disappeared. I was simply thrown to myself.
It was an emptiness and emptiness drives one crazy. But emptiness is the only door to God. That means that only those who are ready to go mad ever attain, nobody else. tao209

I have been looking for the door to enlightenment as long as I remember—from my very childhood. I must have carried that idea from my past life, because I don’t remember a single day in my childhood in this life that I was not looking for it.
And as far as my craziness is concerned, naturally I was thought crazy by everybody. I never played with any children. I never could find any way to communicate with the children of my own age. To me they looked stupid, doing all kinds of idiotic things. I never joined any football team, volleyball team, hockey team. Of course, they all thought me crazy. And as far as I was concerned, as I grew I started looking at the whole world as crazy.
In the last year, when I was twenty-one, it was a time of nervous breakdown and breakthrough. Naturally, those who loved me, my family, my friends, my professors, could understand a little bit what was going on in me—why I was so different from other children, why I would go on sitting for hours with closed eyes, why I sat by the bank of the river and went on looking at the sky for hours, sometimes for the whole night. Naturally, the people who could not understand such things—and I did not expect them to understand—thought me mad.
In my own home I had become almost absent….
By and by they stopped asking me anything, and slowly slowly they started feeling as if I were not there. And I loved it, the way I had become a nothingness, a nobody, an absence. That one year was tremendous. I was surrounded with nothingness, emptiness. I had lost all contact with the world. If they reminded me to take a bath, I would go on taking the bath for hours. Then they had to knock on the door: “Now come out of the bathroom. You have taken enough bath for one month. Just come out.” If they reminded me to eat, I ate; otherwise, days would pass and I would not eat. Not that I was fasting—I had no idea about eating or fasting. My whole concern was to go deeper and deeper into myself. And the door was so magnetic, the pull was so immense—like what physicists now call black holes.
They say there are black holes in existence. If a star comes by chance to a black hole it is pulled into the black hole; there is no way to resist that pull, and to go into the black hole is to go into destruction. We don’t know what happens on the other side. My idea, for which some physicist has to find evidence, is that the black hole on this side is a white hole on the other side. The hole cannot be just one side; it is a tunnel.
I have experienced it in myself. Perhaps on a bigger scale the same happens in the universe. The star dies; as far as we can see, it disappears. But every moment new stars are being born. From where? Where is their womb? It is simple arithmetic that the black hole was just a womb—the old disappeared into it and the new is born. This I have experienced in myself—I am not a physicist. That one year of tremendous pull made me farther and farther away from people, so much so that I would not recognize my own mother, I might not recognize my own father; so far that there were times I forgot my own name. I tried hard, but there was no way to find what my name used to be.
Naturally, to everybody that one year I was mad. But to me that madness became meditation, and the peak of that madness opened the door. I passed through it. I am now beyond enlightenment—on the other side of the door. last120

I was taken to a vaidya to a physician. In fact, I was taken to many doctors and to many physicians but only one ayurvedic vaidya told my father, “He is not ill. Don’t waste your time.” Of course, they were dragging me from one place to another. And many people would give me medicines and I would tell my father, “Why are you worried? I am perfectly okay.” But nobody would believe what I was saying. They would say, “You keep quiet. You just take the medicine. What is wrong in it?” So I used to take all sorts of medicines.
There was only one vaidya who was a man of insight—his name was Pundit Bhaghirath Prasad…. That old man has gone but he was a rare man of insight. He looked at me and he said, “He is not ill.” And he started crying and said, “I have been searching for this state myself. He is fortunate. In this life I have missed this state. Don’t take him to anybody. He is reaching home.” And he cried tears of happiness.
He was a seeker. He had been searching all over the country from this end to that. His whole life was a search and enquiry. He had some idea of what it was about. He became my protector—my protector against the doctors and other physicians. He said to my father, “You leave it to me. I will take care.” He never gave me any medicine. When my father insisted, he just gave me sugar pills and told me, “These are sugar pills. Just to console them you can take them. They will not harm, they will not help. In fact, there is no help possible.” tao209

In my university days, and people thought that I was crazy. Suddenly I would stop, and then I would remain in that spot for half an hour, an hour, unless I started enjoying walking again. My professors were so afraid that when there were examinations they would put me in a car and take me to the university hall. They would leave me at the door and wait there: had I reached to my desk or not? If I was taking my bath and suddenly I realized that I was not enjoying it, I would stop. What is the point then? If I was eating and I recognized suddenly that I was not enjoying, then I would stop….
And, by and by, it became a key. I suddenly recognized that whenever you are enjoying something, you are centered. Enjoyment is just the sound of being centered. Whenever you are not enjoying something, you are off-center. Then don’t force it; there is no need. If people think you crazy, let them think you crazy. Within a few days you will, by your own experience, find how you were missing yourself. You were doing a thousand and one things which you never enjoyed, and still you were doing them because you were taught to. You were just fulfilling your duties. trans404

I used to go for a morning walk, and I used to pass a beautiful house every day—that was my route. And one day, when I was coming back, the sun was just shining on my face; I was perspiring—I had gone for four, five miles, and just…I could not move from that place. I must have been eighteen or seventeen. Something happened between the sun and the beautiful morning, that I simply forgot that I have to go home. I simply forgot that I am. I was simply standing there.
But the man who owned the house, he has been watching me for almost a year—that I come and go by the side of the house; today, what has happened? I am simply frozen. But frozen in such ecstasy!
He came and shook me, and it was like coming down from a very far away place, rushing into my body. He said, “What has happened?”
I said, “That’s what I was going to ask you. Something certainly happened, and something that I would like to happen forever. I was not. You unnecessarily got worried, shook me, and brought me back. I had moved into some space which was absolutely new to me—and it was pure isness.”
Anything can do, it seems that just your preparedness, knowingly or unknowingly, your closeness to the point where the phenomenon can be triggered…. But this kind of experience is not within your power. It happens to you like lightning. trans12

It happened once with me, many years ago. I used to get up at 3 a.m. and go for a walk. It was a lovely night and the roadside was thickly covered by clusters of bamboo groves. There was a slight opening at one point, otherwise it was covered all the way along. I used to run straight from one end to the other of that stretch one way and then run facing backwards the other way. In an hour—from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m.—I would do my exercise there. One day a weird thing happened. While I was running backwards and still under the bamboo-shaded area, a man—a milkman—was approaching me with all his empty containers on his way to collect milk from some dairy. Then suddenly as I emerged from the shaded area—it was a moonlit night—he could see me all of a sudden. A moment before I was not visible, so all of a sudden…and running backwards! Only ghosts are known to run backwards!
That milkman threw the empty containers away and ran off. There was something odd about the way he ran off. I had no idea he had become so scared of me, so I ran after him to help. Now he ran for his life! The faster I ran after him, out of concern, calling him to stop, the more speed he was gaining. I had never before seen anyone run like that! Then I had an inkling that perhaps I was the only other person around here and he had become scared of me.
Hearing the noise of the falling containers and running feet, a man in the nearby hotel woke up. I went to him and asked him if he knew what had happened. He said, “If you are asking me, I know that you run backwards here every day, but still I get scared sometimes. That man must have been new on this road.”
I said, “Keep these containers with you, maybe the man will return in the morning.” He has not returned even now! Whenever I have passed by that hotel again, I have inquired if that man has ever returned. He never came back.
Now there is no way of telling that man that what he had seen was ‘almost false’. There was no ghost there, but he managed to see it! For him the ghost was a complete reality, otherwise he would not have disappeared for that long a time. That man must have had some past experience that he imposed on the scene.
What really is is not what we are seeing; we are seeing what our eyes are showing us. Our mind is imposing things each moment and we are seeing who knows what, and it certainly is not out there in the world.

This whole world is the extension of our mind. What we see is projected by us. First we project and then we see. First we project a snake in a rope, then we see it and run away. This whole world is like that. finger07

For ten years I used to run eight miles every morning and eight miles every evening—from I947 to I957. It was a regular thing. And I came to experience many, many things through running. At sixteen miles per day I would have encircled the world seven times in those ten years. After you run the second or third mile a moment comes when things start flowing and you are no longer in the head, you become your body, you are the body. You start functioning as an alive being—as trees function, as animals function. You become a tiger or a peacock or a wolf. You forget all head. The university is forgotten, the degrees are forgotten, you don’t know a thing, you simply are.
In fact, by and by, after three or four miles, you cannot conceive of yourself as a head. Totality arises. Plato is forgotten, Freud has disappeared, all divisions disappear—because they were on the surface—and deep down your unity starts asserting itself.
Running against the wind in the early morning when things are fresh and the whole existence is in a new joy, is bathed in a new delight of the new day, and everything is fresh and young, the past has disappeared, everything has come out of deep rest in the night, everything is innocent, primitive—suddenly even the runner disappears. There is only running. There is no body running, there is only running. And by and by you see that a dance arises with the wind, with the sky, with the sun rays coming, with the trees, with the earth. You are dancing. You start feeling the pulse of the Universe. That is sexual. Swimming in the river is sexual. Copulating is not the only sexual thing; anything where your body pulsates totally, with no inhibitions, is sexual.
So when I use the word ‘sexual’ I mean this experience of totality. Genitality is only one of the functions of sexuality. It has become too important because we have forgotten the total function of sexuality. In fact, your so-called mahatmas have made you very, very genital. The whole blame falls on your saints and mahatmas—they are the culprits, the criminals. They have never told you what real sexuality is.
By and by sexuality has become confined to the genitals; it has become local, it is no longer total. Local genitality is ugly because at the most it can give you a relief; it can never give you orgasm. Ejaculation is not orgasm, all ejaculations are not orgasmic and each orgasm is not a peak experience. Ejaculation is genital, orgasm is sexual and a peak experience is spiritual. When sexuality is confined to the genitals you can have only relief; you simply lose energy, you don’t gain anything. It is simply stupid. It is just like the relief that comes out of a good sneeze, not more than that.
It has no orgasm because your total body does not pulsate. You are not in a dance, you don’t participate with your whole, it is not holy. It is very partial and the partial can never be orgasmic because orgasm is possible only when the total organism is involved. When you pulsate from your toe to your head, when every fibre of your being pulsates, when all cells of your body dance, when there is a great orchestra inside you, when everything is dancing—then there is orgasm. But every orgasm is not a peak experience either. When you are pulsating totally inside, it is an orgasm. When your totality participates with the totality of existence it is a peak experience. And people have decided on ejaculation, they have forgotten orgasm and they have completely forgotten the peak experience. They don’t know what it is.
And because they cannot attain the higher, they are confined to the lower. When you can attain the higher, when you can attain the better, naturally the lower starts disappearing on its own accord. If you understand me…sex will be transformed, but not sexuality. You will become more sexual. As sex disappears you will become more sexual. Where will sex go? It will become your sexuality. You will become more sensuous. You will live with more intensity, with more flame; you will live like a great wave. These tiny waves will disappear. You will become a storm, you will become a great wind that can shake the trees and the mountains. You will be a tide, a flood. Your candle will burn at both ends together, simultaneously.
And in that moment—even if you are allowed to live for only one moment, that’s more than enough—you have the taste of eternity. parad107

Let me tell you an incredible experience I had. It has just occurred to me; I have never told it before. About seventeen or eighteen years ago I used to meditate until late at night sitting in the top of a tree.
I have often felt the body has a greater influence over you if you meditate sitting on the ground. The body is made of earth, and the forces of the body work very powerfully if one meditates sitting on the ground. All this talk of the yogis moving up to the higher elevations—to the mountains, to the Himalayas—is not without reason; it’s very scientific. The greater the distance between the body and the earth, the lesser the pull of the earthly element on the body.
So I used to meditate every night sitting in a tree.
One night…I don’t know when I became immersed in deep meditation, and I don’t know at what point my body fell from the tree, but when it did, I looked with a start to see what had happened.
I was still in the tree, but the body had fallen below. It’s difficult to say how I felt at that time. I was still sitting in the tree and the body was below. Only a single silver cord connected me with the navel of my body—a very shiny silver cord. What would happen next was beyond my comprehension. How would I return to my body?
I don’t know how long this state lasted, but it was an exceptional experience. For the first time I saw my body from outside, and from that very day on the body ceased to exist. Since then I am finished with death, because I came to see another body different from this one—I came to experience the subtle body. It’s difficult to say how long this experience lasted.
With the breaking of dawn, two women from the nearby village passed, carrying milk pots on their heads. As they approached the tree they saw my body lying there. They came and sat next to the body. I was watching all this from above. It seems the women took the body to be dead. They placed their hands on my head, and in a moment, as if by a powerful force of attraction, I came back into the body and my eyes opened.
At that point I experienced something else too. I felt that a woman can create a chemical change in a man’s body, and so can a man in a woman’s body. I also wondered how the touch of that woman caused my return to the body. Subsequently, I had many more experiences of this kind. They explained why the tantrikas of India, who experimented extensively with samadhi and death, had linked themselves with women too.

During intensive experiences of samadhi, man’s luminous body, his subtle body, cannot return without a woman’s help if it has come out of the physical body. Similarly, a woman’s luminous, subtle body, cannot be brought back without a man’s assistance. As the male and female bodies connect, an electrical circuit is completed and the consciousness that has gone out returns swiftly to the body.
Following this event, I consistently had the same kind of experience about six times in six months. And in those six months I felt I had lost at least ten years off my life. If I were to live up to seventy, now I can only live up to sixty. I went through some strange experiences in six months—even the hair on my chest turned white. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
It occurred to me, however, that the connection between this body and that body had ruptured, had been interrupted, that the adjustment, the harmony that had existed between the two, had broken down. What also occurred to me was that the reason for Shankaracharya dying at the age of thirty-three and Vivekananda dying at the age of thirty-six was something else. It becomes difficult to live once the connection between the two bodies breaks abruptly. This explained why Ramakrishna was besieged with illnesses and Ramana died of cancer. The cause was not physical; rather, the breaking of the adjustment between their physical and subtle bodies was responsible for it.
It is generally believed that yogis are healthy people, but the truth is completely the opposite. The truth is, yogis have always been ill, and have died at early ages. The sole reason for this is that the necessary adjustment between the two bodies becomes interrupted. Once the subtle body comes out of the physical body it never reenters fully and the adjustment is never completely restored. But then it is not needed. There is no reason for it; it has no meaning.
With the use of will power, simply with will power, the energy can be drawn inside—just the thought, the feeling, “I want to turn in, I want to go back in, I want to return within, I want to come back in.” Were you to have such an intense longing, such a powerful emotion; if your whole being were to fill with a passionate, intense desire to return to your center; if your entire body were to pulsate with this feeling, someday it can happen—you will instantly return to your core and, for the first time, see your body from within.
When yoga talks about thousands of arteries and veins, it is not from the point of view of physiology. Yogis have nothing to do with physiology. These have been known from within; hence, when one looks today one wonders where these arteries and veins are. Where are the seven chakras, the centers within the body that yoga talks about? They are nowhere in the body. We can’t find them because we are looking at the body from outside.
There is one other way to observe the body—from within, through the inner physiology. That’s a subtle physiology. The nerves, veins and centers of the body known through that inner physiology are all totally different. You won’t find them anywhere in this physical body. These centers are the contact fields between this body and the inner soul, the meeting points for both.
The biggest meeting point is the navel. You may have noticed, if you suddenly get into an accident driving a car, the navel will be the first to feel the impact. The navel will become disordered at once, because here the contact field between the body and the soul is the deepest of all. Seeing death, this center will be the first to become disturbed. As soon as death appears, the navel will be disrupted in relation to the body’s center. There is an internal arrangement of the body which has resulted from the contact between this body and the inner body. The chakras are their contact fields.
So obviously, to know the body from within is to know a totally different kind of world altogether, a world we know absolutely nothing about. Medical science knows nothing about it, and won’t for some time. Once you experience that the body is separate from you, you are finished with death. You come to know there is no death. And then you can actually come out of the body and look at it yourself from outside.
Questions relating to life and death are not matters of philosophical or metaphysical thought. Those who think about these things never accomplish anything. What I am talking about is an existential approach. It can be known that “I am life;” it can be known that “I am not going to die.” One can live this experience, one can enter into it. now08

I am reminded of a dream I have never been able to forget.
In this dream, which came to me a number of times, there was a long ladder with its upper rungs completely lost in the clouds. It seemed to be a ladder that led to the sky. Urged by an irrepressible desire to reach the sky, I began to climb. But it was very difficult; each rung required great effort. My breathing grew strained and perspiration poured from my forehead. But my desire to reach the sky was so great that I went on climbing. Soon there was a feeling of suffocation and it seemed as if my heart would give out. But all at once I realized that I was not the only climber, that mine was not the only ladder. There was an infinite number of ladders and endless numbers of people were climbing upwards. I experienced a surge of great rivalry and I began to climb even faster. This mad race, this using of all our strength to keep climbing continued until it eventually faded into the end of the dream.
That is always the same.
I finally reached the last rung. There is no rung beyond, and turning around, I see that there is no ladder either. And then the fall, the descent from that great height begins. It is even more painful that the climb. Death seems inevitable. And sure enough, it is my death. And the shock of that death invariably awakens me.
But that dream shows me a great truth, and since the first time I have had it life has seemed nothing more to me than an extension of that dream. In every dream is there not some kind of vision of the mad rush in which mankind is involved? Doesn’t every mad scramble end in death? But then, ask yourself what “death” means. Doesn’t it just mean there is no higher rung on the ladder? Death is the end of rushing. It is an end to the future; it is the impossibility of any further possibilities. The rushing, racing mind leads a man to great heights, and what is death but the fall from those heights?
Whenever there is a mad race of any kind, death invariably steps in. It makes no difference whether the goal is wealth or religion or enjoyment or renunciation. Wherever there is rushing there is dreaming, but where there is no rushing, racing mind, there is truth. And there is life too—the life that has no death. long05

The desire to be on the peaks is a wrong desire—all desires as such are wrong, and religious desires are far more wrong than any other desires for the simple reason that other desires can be fulfilled. Of course, by their fulfillment you will not go beyond frustration; fulfilled or not fulfilled, frustration is inevitable. If your desire is fulfilled you will be frustrated—in fact, more so, because now you will see you were chasing a shadow; you have got it and there is nothing in it. If your desire is not fulfilled you will be frustrated, because your whole life is wasted and you have not been able to fulfill a single desire. All your hopes are shattered.
Hopes are bound to be shattered. To hope is to hanker for hopelessness, to desire is to breed frustration. But in the worldly things at least there is a possibility of succeeding, failing, attaining, not attaining. But in spiritual matters there is no question of attainment at all because the goose is out! Nothing can be done about it, it is already out. The moment you start enjoying your valley you are on the peak—there is no other peak!
One day I suddenly decided enough is enough. I dropped the idea of the peaks and started enjoying the valley, and a miracle I saw: the valley disappeared. In fact, from the very beginning there had been no valley, I was always on the peak, but because I was searching for a peak I could not see where I was.
Your eyes are focused far away, hence you miss the obvious. It is here, and your mind is there, arrowed into the blue sky. And the reality surrounds you: it is closer than your very heartbeat, it is closer than your breathing, it is closer than the circulation of your blood, it is closer than your very marrow, it is closer than your very consciousness. It is your very core, your very being! goose03

I used to ask myself, “Who am I?” It is impossible to count how many days and nights I passed in this query. The intellect gave answers heard from others, or born of conditioning. All of them were borrowed, lifeless. They brought no contentment. They resonated a little at the surface, and then disappeared. The inner being was not touched by them. No echo of them was heard in the depths. There were many answers to the question, but none was correct. And I was untouched by them. They could not rise to the level of the question.
Then I saw that the question came from the center but the replies touched only the periphery. The question was mine, but the answers came from outside; the question arose from my innermost being, the replies were imposed from outside. This insight became a revolution. A new dimension was revealed.
The responses of the intellect were meaningless. They had no relevance to the problem. An illusion had shattered. And what a relief it was!
It seemed as if a closed door had been flung open, filling the darkness with light. The intellect had been providing the answers—that was the mistake. Because of these false answers, the real answer could not arise. Some truth was struggling to surface. In the depths of consciousness some seed was seeking the way to break open the ground in order to reach the light. Intellect was the obstruction.
When this was made plain, the answers began to subside. Knowledge acquired from outside began to evaporate. The question went ever deeper. I did not do anything, only kept on watching.
Something novel was happening. I was speechless. What was there to do? I was, at the most, simply a witness. The reactions of the periphery were fading, perishing, becoming nonexistent. The center now began to resonate more fully.
“Who am I?” My entire being was throbbing with this thirst.
What a violent storm it was! Every breath quaked and trembled in it.
“Who am I?” – like an arrow, the question pierced through everything and moved within.
I remember—what an acute thirst it was! My very life had turned into thirst. Everything was burning. And like a flame of fire the question stood forth, “Who am I?”
The surprise was that the intellect was completely silent. The incessant flow of thoughts had stopped. What had happened? The periphery was absolutely still. There were no thoughts, no conditionings of the past.
Only I was there—and there was the question too. No, no— I myself was the question.
And then the explosion. In a moment, everything was transformed. The question had dropped. The answer had come from some unknown dimension.
Truth is attained through a sudden explosion, not gradually.
It cannot be compelled to appear. It comes.
Emptiness is the solution, not words. Becoming answerless is the answer.
Someone asked yesterday—and someone or the other asks every day—”What is the answer?”
I say, “If I mention it, it is meaningless. Its meaning lies in realizing it oneself.” sdwisd01

I tell you from my own experience that there is no easier path than merging with one’s own self. The only thing one has to do is stop seeking for the support of anything on the surface of the mind. By catching hold of thoughts you cannot drown and because of their support you remain on the surface.
We are in the habit of catching hold of thoughts. As soon as one thought passes on we catch hold of another—but we never enter the gap between two successive thoughts. This gap itself is the channel to drowning in the depths. Do not move in thoughts—go deep down between them in the gaps.
How can this be done? It can be done by awareness, by observing the stream of thoughts. Just as a man standing on the side of a road watches the people passing by, you should observe your thoughts. They are simply pedestrians, passing by on the road of the mind within you. Just watch them. Don’t form judgment about any of them. If you can observe them with detachment, the fist that has been gripping them opens automatically and you will find yourself standing, not in thoughts, but in the interval, in the gap between them. But the gap has no foundation so it isn’t possible just to stand there. Simply by being there you drown.
And this drowning itself is the real support because it is through this that you reach the being you really are. One who seeks support in the realm of thoughts is really suspended in the air without support—but he who throws away all crutches attains the support of his own self. pway07

A meditator has to remember not to struggle with the thoughts. If you want to win, don’t fight. That is a simple rule of thumb. If you want to win, simply don’t fight. The thoughts will be coming as usual. You just watch, hiding behind your blanket; let them come and go. Just don’t get involved with them.
The whole question is of not getting involved in any way—appreciation or condemnation, any judgment, bad or good. Don’t say anything, just remain absolutely aloof and allow the mind to move in its routine way. If you can manage…and this has been managed by thousands of buddhas, so there is not a problem. And when I say this can be managed, I am saying it on my own authority. I don’t have any other authority.
I have fought and have tortured myself with fighting and I have known the whole split that creates a constant misery and tension. Finally seeing the point that victory is impossible, I simply dropped out of the fight. I allowed the thoughts to move as they want; I am no longer interested.
And this is a miracle, that if you are not interested, thoughts start coming less. When you are utterly uninterested, they stop coming. And a state of no-thought, without any fight, is the greatest peace one has ever known. This is what we are calling the empty heart of the buddha. empti03

This mind is amazing. It comes to be experienced like an onion. One day, seeing an onion, I was reminded of this resemblance. I was peeling the onion; I went on peeling layer after layer, and finally nothing remained of it. First thick rough layers, then soft smooth layers, and then nothing.
Thus is the mind also. You go on peeling off, first gross layers, then subtle layers, and then remains an emptiness. Thoughts, passions and ego, and then nothing at all, just emptiness. It is the uncovering of this emptiness that I call meditation. This emptiness is our true self. That which ultimately remains is the self-form. Call it the self, call it the no-self, words do not mean anything. Where there is no thought, passion, or ego, is that which is.
Hume has said, “Whenever I dive into myself I do not meet any ‘I’ there. I come across either some thought or some passion or some memory, but never across myself.” This is right—but Hume turns back from the layers only, and that is the mistake. Had he gone a little deeper he would have reached the place where there is nothing to come across, and that is the true self. Where there remains nothing to come across is that which I am. Everything is based in that emptiness. But if somebody turns back from the very surface, no acquaintance with it takes place.
On the surface is the world, at the center is the self. On the surface is everything, at the center is nothing-ness, the void. sdwisd03

On my search I found no greater scripture than silence. When I had dug through all the scriptures I realized how futile they all were and that silence was the only thing that had any point to it whatsoever. long03

I remember the days when my mind was in darkness, when nothing was clear inside me at all. One thing in particular I recall about those days was that I did not feel love for anyone, I did not even love myself.
But when I came to the experience of meditation, I felt as though a million dormant springs of love had suddenly begun to bubble up in me. This love was not focused, not directed to anyone in particular, it was just a flow, fluid and forceful. It flowed from me as light streams from a lamp, as fragrance pours from flowers. In the wonderful moment of my awakening I realized that love was the real manifestation of my nature, of man’s nature.
Love has no direction; it is not aimed at anyone. Love is a manifestation of the soul, of one’s self.
Before this experience happened to me I believed love meant being attached to someone. Now I realize that love and attachment are two completely different things. Attachment is the absence of love. Attachment is the opposite of hatred, and hatred it can easily become. They are a pair, attachment and hatred. They are mutually interchangeable.
The opposite of hatred is not love. Not at all. And love is quite different from attachment too. Love is a completely new dimension. It is the absence of both attachment and hatred, yet it is not negative. Love is the positive existence of some higher power. This power, this energy, flows from the self towards all things—not because it is attracted by them, but because love is emitted by the self. Because love is the perfume of the self.

Source: OSHO

http://www.oshofragrance.com/2010/06/oshos-experiences-leading-to.html

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ALONE AT LAST!

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

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BREATH: A DOORWAY TO A NEW DIMENSION

We are breathing continuously from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Everything changes between these two points.

Everything changes, nothing remains the same.

Only breathing is a constant thing between birth and death.

The child will become a youth; the youth will become old. He will be diseased, his body will become ugly, ill; everything will change. He will be happy, unhappy, in suffering; everything will go on changing. But whatsoever happens between these two points, one must breathe. Whether happy or unhappy, young or old, successful or unsuccessful — whatsoever you are, it is irrelevant — one thing is certain: between these two points of birth and death you must breathe.

Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why you are not required to breathe, because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, and then nothing could be done. So, really, you are not breathing, because you are not needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. You are not required; breathing is something that goes on in spite of you.

It is one of the constant factors in your personality — that is the first thing. It is something that is very essential and basic to life — that is the second thing.

You cannot be alive without breath. So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it prana. We have given one word for both: prana means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath.

Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body.

Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe that has come to you, which is nearer to you.

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe — every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the bridge is broken, you are no longer in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no longer in the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath, therefore, becomes very significant…the most significant thing. If you can do something with the breath, you will suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it.

Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe.

We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the “no-body,” from the “no-body” to the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, transplanted into a different dimension.

One has not to practice a particular style of breathing, a particular system of breathing or a particular rhythm of breathing — no! One has to take breathing as it is. One has just to become aware of certain points in the breathing.

There are certain points, but we are not aware of them. We have been breathing and we will go on breathing — we are born breathing and we will die breathing — but we are not aware of certain points. And this is strange. Man is searching, probing deep into space. Man is going to the moon; man is trying to reach farther, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the nearest part of his life.

There are certain points in breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors — the nearest doors to you from where you can enter into a different world, into a different being, into a different consciousness.

Source: OSHO, The Book of Secrets

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By letting your fear of aloneness be there, by not rejecting it, denying it or repressing it, it will finally dissolve, according to the Osho perspective…. We continue this month from where we left off last month in this 2-part response to the issue of aloneness.

The cyclone has gone and you will now be centered, centered as you never were before. And once you know the art of letting things be, you will know one of the master keys that opens all the inner doors. Then whatsoever the case is, let it be; don’t avoid it.

If just for three months you can be in total solitude, in total silence, not fighting with anything, allowing everything to be, whatsoever it is, within three months the old will be gone and the new will be there. But the secret is allowing it to be…howsoever fearful and painful, howsoever apparently dangerous and deathlike.

Many moments will come when you will feel as if you will go mad if you don’t do something and involuntarily you will start to do something. You may know that nothing can be done, but you will not be in control and you will start to do something.

It is just as if you are moving through a dark street in the night, at midnight, and you feel fear because there is no one around and the night is dark and the street is unknown — so you start whistling. What can whistling do? You know it can do nothing. Then you start singing a song. You know nothing can be done by singing a song — the darkness cannot be dispelled, you will remain alone — but still it diverts the mind. If you start whistling, just by whistling you gain confidence and you forget the darkness. Your mind moves into whistling and you start feeling good.

Nothing has happened. The street is the same, the darkness is the same the danger, if there is any, is there, but now you feel more protected. All is the same, but now you are doing something. You can start chanting a name, a mantra: that will be a sort of whistling. It will give you strength but that strength is dangerous, that strength will again become a problem, because that strength is going to be your old ego. You are reviving it. Read more

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