Awareness

Awareness (The Key to Living in Balance) One of the most important things to be understood about man is that man is asleep.

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About Awareness

190 Pages
Most of us move through our lives like sleepwalkers. Never really present in what we are doing, never fully alert to our environment, and not even aware of what motivates us to do and say the things we do.
At work we are always “multi-tasking” – planning our tomorrows before we have even begun our todays, reading e-mail while talking on the phone, worrying about what is left undone on the to-do list as we take notes in a meeting that produces more to-do’s.
And in our personal relationships, we have all experienced moments when we have lashed out in anger, or found ourselves suddenly in a tangle of misunderstandings without quite knowing how we got there – “I did it in spite of myself,” or “I don’t know what came over me.” So unaware of our own inner processes that the path between inner feeling and outer expression is shrouded in darkness not only to others but also to ourselves.
At the same time, all of us have experienced moments of awareness – or awakening, to use another term – in extraordinary circumstances. On the road, in a sudden and unexpected accident, time seems to stop and one is suddenly aware of every movement, every sound, every thought. Or in moments that touch us deeply – welcoming a new baby into the world for the first time, or being with someone at the moment of death.
Awareness, says Osho, is the key to being self-directed, centered and free – at work or at play, alone or in relationship, in the marketplace or on the mountaintop, in every aspect of our lives.

Chapter Titles

Foreword
PART I: The Understanding
Chapter 1: Of Men and Rats
Chapter 2: The Roots of Suffering
Chapter 3: Private Worlds
Chapter 4: Awareness and Centering
PART 2: Many Illnesses, One Prescription
Chapter 5: The Analyst and the Witness
Chapter 6: Tension and Relaxation
Chapter 7: Mind and Meditation
Chapter 8: The Rut and the Wheel
PART 3: Awareness in Action
Chapter 9: Start From the Center
Chapter 10: Be Spontaneous
Chapter 11: Be Decisive
Chapter 12: Complete Each Moment
Chapter 13: Stop Trying to Be Good
PART 4: Experiments in Watching
Chapter 14: Time Yourself into Timelessness
Chapter 15: The Invisible Touch
Chapter 16: Vipassana
Chapter 17: The Night Shift
Afterword: Hanging by a Thread

Excerpt from Awareness

from the Foreword
One of the most important things to be understood about man is that man is asleep. Even while he thinks he is awake, he is not. His wakefulness is very fragile; his wakefulness is so tiny it doesn’t matter at all. His wakefulness is only a beautiful name but utterly empty.

You sleep in the night, you sleep in the day – from birth to death you go on changing your patterns of sleep, but you never really awaken. Just by opening the eyes don’t befool yourself that you are awake. Unless the inner eyes open – unless your inside becomes full of light, unless you can see yourself, who you are – don’t think that you are awake. That is the greatest illusion man lives in. And once you accept that you are already awake, then there is no question of making any effort to be awake.

The first thing to sink deep in your heart is that you are asleep, utterly asleep. You are dreaming, day in, day out. You are dreaming sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed eyes, but you are dreaming – you are a dream. You are not yet a reality.

Of course in a dream whatsoever you do is meaningless. Whatsoever you think is pointless, whatsoever you project remains part of your dreams and never allows you to see that which is. Hence all the buddhas have insisted on only one thing: Awaken! Continuously, for centuries, their whole teaching can be contained in a single phrase: Be awake. And they have been devising methods, strategies; they have been creating contexts and spaces and energy fields in which you can be shocked into awareness.

Yes, unless you are shocked, shaken to your very foundations, you will not awaken. The sleep has been so long that it has reached to the very core of your being; you are soaked in it. Each cell of your body and each fiber of your mind have become full of sleep. It is not a small phenomenon. Hence great effort is needed to be alert, to be attentive, to be watchful, to become a witness. If all the buddhas of the world agree on any one single theme, this is it – that man as he is, is asleep, and man as he should be, should be awake. Wakefulness is the goal and wakefulness is the taste of all their teachings. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha, Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak – all the awakened ones have been teaching one single theme… in different languages, in different metaphors, but their song is the same. Just as the sea tastes of salt – whether the sea is tasted from the north or from the east or from the west, the sea always tastes of salt – the taste of buddhahood is wakefulness.

But you will not make any effort if you go on believing that you are already awake. Then there is no question of making any effort – why bother?

And you have created religions, gods, prayers, rituals, out of your dreams – your gods are as much part of your dreams as anything else. Your politics is part of your dreams, your religions are part of your dreams, your poetry, your painting, your art – whatsoever you do, because you are asleep, you do things according to your own state of mind.

Your gods cannot be different from you. Who will create them? Who will give them shape and color and form? You create them, you sculpt them; they have eyes like you, noses like you – and minds like you! The Old Testament God says, “I am a very jealous God!” Now who has created this God who is jealous? God cannot be jealous, and if God is jealous then what is wrong in being jealous? If even God is jealous, why should you be thought to be doing something wrong when you are jealous? Jealousy is divine!

The Old Testament God says, “I am a very angry God! If you don’t follow my commandments, I will destroy you. You will be thrown into hellfire for eternity. And because I am very jealous,” God says, “don’t worship anybody else. I cannot tolerate it.” Who created such a God? It must be out of our own jealousy, out of our own anger, that you have created this image. It is your projection, it is your shadow. It echoes you and nobody else. And the same is the case with all gods of all religions.

It is because of this that Buddha never talked about God. He said, “What is the point of talking about God to people who are asleep? They will listen in their sleep. They will dream about whatsoever is said to them, and they will create their own gods – which will be utterly false, utterly impotent, utterly meaningless. It is better not to have such gods.”

That’s why Buddha is not interested in talking about gods. His whole interest is in waking you up.

It is said about a Buddhist enlightened master who was sitting by the side of the river one evening, enjoying the sound of the water, the sound of the wind passing through the trees…. A man came and asked him, “Can you tell me in a single word the essence of your religion?”

The master remained silent, utterly silent, as if he had not heard the question. The questioner said, “Are you deaf or something?”

The master said, “I have heard your question, and I have answered it too! Silence is the answer. I remained silent – that pause, that interval, was my answer.”

The man said, “I cannot understand such a mysterious answer. Can’t you be a little more clear?”

So the master wrote on the sand “meditation,” in small letters with his finger. The man said, “I can read now. It is a little better than at first. At least I have got a word to ponder over. But can’t you make it a little more clear?” The master wrote again, “MEDITATION.” Of course this time he wrote in bigger letters. The man was feeling a little embarrassed, puzzled, offended, angry. He said, “Again you write meditation? Can’t you be a little clear for me?”

And the master wrote in very big letters, capital letters, “M E D I T A T I O N.”

The man said, “You seem to be mad!”

The master said, “I have already come down very much. The first answer was the right answer, the second was not so right, the third even more wrong, the fourth has gone very wrong” – because when you write “MEDITATION” with capital letters you have made a god out of it.

That’s why the word God is written with capital ’G’. Whenever you want to make something supreme, ultimate, you write it with a capital letter. The master said, “I have already committed a sin.” He erased all those words he had written and he said, “Please listen to my first answer – only then I am true.”

Silence is the space in which one awakens, and the noisy mind is the space in which one remains asleep. If your mind continues chattering, you are asleep. Sitting silently, if the mind disappears and you can hear the chattering birds and no mind inside, a silence…this whistle of the bird, the chirping, and no mind functioning in your head, utter silence…then awareness wells up in you. It does not come from the outside, it arises in you, it grows in you. Otherwise remember: you are asleep.

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And be playful. Remember this word ‘playful’ always—with me, it is very basic. In this country we call creation God’s leela—God’s play. God has not created the world; it is his play.

First stage: 40 minutes

With eyes closed dance as if possessed. Let your unconscious take over completely. Do not control your movements or be a witness to what is happening. Just be totally in the dance.

Second stage: 20 minutes

Keeping your eyes closed, lie down immediately. Be silent and still.

Third stage: 5 minutes

Dance in celebration and enjoy.

There is nothing better than dance for dropping the ego; hence I insist that all meditators should dance. Because if you go really in a whirlwind, if you are really a whirling pool of energy, if you really are in the dance, the dancer is lost. In the dance the dancer is always lost. If it is not lost then you are not dancing. Then you may be performing, then you may be manipulating, then you may be doing some bodily exercises, but you are not dancing.

Dancing means so lost, so drunk—and enjoying the energy that is created by dance. By and by you will see your body is no more so solid as it was before. By and by you will see that you are melting; the boundary is losing its sharpness, it is becoming a little vague. You cannot exactly feel where you end and where the world starts. A dancer is in such a whirlpool, he becomes such a vibration, that the whole life is felt as in one rhythm.
OSHO