You’ve just got to change the way you look at things

By Pooja Kumar

You’ve just got to change the way you look at things, and as soon as you do that… you will see everything with renewed eyes. First of all,

-do only what you can reason with, and what seems right to you. Do not blindly follow what others are doing without YOU believing in it.

-come to terms with the fact that whatever has come to life has to die one day. Don’t take life too seriously, you won’t get out of it alive. So, take it easy. It’s all just a temporary affair. Don’t slog and plan. Don’t wait to first save, and live a secure life later. Nothing is certain in life, not even life. We are not here to only think about our blood relations and only our own desires…. Not to only focus on banking money and give undue importance to sex. It makes us very small to be limited/confined to these petty desires. We are very vast… as vast as this universe. The reason we humans are here is to add more beauty and art to this beautiful planet. But, we have a certain life span, and we will perish one day just like all the other creations of existence. So hurry up and make your mark… leave some contribution of the art you have been blessed with for the world to see. Add some Poetry? Music? Sculpture?… Anything you do best and have been blessed with. It will give you pleasure too Be creative.

Do you like being with yourself… ? Ask yourself the question

By Pooja Kumar

If you are at peace with yourself, you will never be in search of other company. But, if you are running away from yourself, no other company will ever be enough… including alcohol, tobacco, and all other temporary intoxicants.

So, sit down with yourself, close your eyes and inquire within… what is it you are running from… are you unhappy ? … with what..? are you afraid..?… of what..? do you feel lonesome..? …. why…? are you emotionally hurt…?… is it worth to stay that way..? Face it… Change it! You cannot keep running away from yourself forever! You can temporarily cheat yourself, intoxicate yourself… but then what after that… it’s you again!

You are beautiful! One of a kind in this vast universe! You are priceless! Unique! There is no another exactly like you. Is that not a compliment enough ? Doesn’t that make you feel precious…?

You are the child of this beautiful universe… this wonderful nature! Recognize your true worth…. You are amazing!… precious! You can do miracles, wonders… just like you see some others doing around you! You are no less! Only you need the eyes and confidence to see it. You are loved by your Father Universe and Mother Nature just the same.

Undoubtedly surrender to your parents… trust your source! How can a parent ever betray its child..? Nature will never let you down. Listen to your heart… you can never go wrong! Never do injustice, and also never bear injustice.

You have a right to be happy Love being with yourself… love yourself ?.. and you will automatically become capable of loving others ?… and you will never need another again, nor any other temporary support… ever! Bring up the courage to know yourself. Come to peace with yourself ?

Happiness achieved!

By Pooja Kumar,

Just sit down in any comfortable posture, close your eyes, and study your mind. Watch the thoughts crossing your mind. Simply watch them come and go. Don’t try to control or suppress. You can also practice this as you drift off to sleep, or whenever you can find some time to yourself.

How many thoughts passing your mind you find useless or irrelevant.. that you could do without at that present moment…? These insignificant thoughts just tend to keep the mind busy resulting in lack of awareness with your present actions. Most of the time, the mind is cluttered with the thoughts of the past or the future, resulting in its absence in the present… which is where exactly we most need it! These thoughts occupy most of the space of the mind, leaving very little for us to use. It’s simple logic.

A simple example here: You have a cabinet you use regularly, and it gets cluttered with irrelevant stuff… things that you may have used in the past and are no longer relevant,  or things that you hardly use from it, or things that you may or may not use some time in the future. What happens to such a cabinet…? And what happens to the person using that cabinet…? You can no longer use that cabinet effectively until you empty it of the things you don’t use. But, if you yet insist and continue to use it that way, you will not be able to use it effectively… thereby wasting your time and energy. You will finally have to clear it, clean it, and arrange it of things that are of current use to de-stress yourself, for your own ease and comfort… for your own happiness. This is exactly the case with the mind. Clean it of the past and future, so that it can effectively live in the present. It’s you who will benefit from it extremely, and you will witness it.

Start by breathing with awareness, and being alert of your present actions. While you perform your routine tasks… any action… say brushing, showering, eating… take pleasure in them. Enjoy each task with complete awareness. Be aware of your thoughts during each task and see where the mind is..? Has it again wandered into the past or future…? As soon as you become aware, the mind will snap back to the present, to reality. Even if it is for a short while, it’s better than no awareness at all. It will be tough in the beginning, but slowly you will regain control of your mind, and in turn gradually regain your peace and happiness. You’ve got to do it! Not for anyone else, but for your own self…. for your own happiness! When you will be at peace yourself, only then will you be able to spread happiness and peace to others. Awaken and send out your love to this entire universe you belong to. The universe needs you, it’s missing you… you are the child of the universe… become one with the universe!

I, me, mine…. Use these as parts of speech. Don’t weigh them down with the EGO

By Pooja Kumar,

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. – Lao Tzu
I, me, mine…. Use these as parts of speech. Don’t weigh them down with the EGO.
I, Me — Who are you ? Our name has been given to us after we were born into this wor

Whatever you strongly place your belief in actually starts generating powers and creating miracles!

By Pooja Kumar

Whatever you strongly place your belief in actually starts generating powers and creating miracles!
Actually it’s your belief that’s showing you the miracles rather than the object you place your belief in. For example: what is working for

You can live meditation — that is the only way to convey some fragrance

You can live meditation — that is the only way to convey some fragrance of it and some fragmentary indications about it. But talking about it … the words are too small.

And words are meant for the marketplace, not for the temple. The temple knows only the language of silence, and when you try to convert silence into sound, everything that was living in it disappears and what is left in your hands is a dead word. And the difficulty is multiple. First, you cannot bring your experience into words; secondly, the person who hears them hears according to his own conditioning.

A Japanese scholar had come to see me a few years ago, and I told him that all his problems needed only one solution, and that is meditation. If you try to solve each single problem separately it will be like pruning the leaves of a tree — you go on pruning, and new leaves will go on coming up. Meditation is like uprooting a tree; the very foundation is demolished. This much he understood, but the word `meditation’ created a problem. Immediately he asked, “I am ready to meditate, but tell me, on what?”

That is our whole mind’s approach — objective. Even meditation has to be on something — a name, a form, a god, a chanting, a mantra, but something has to be there. Otherwise how are you going to meditate? On what?

The reality is, English has no word to translate exactly the Sanskrit word dhyana. English has three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. But they are all objective. In concentration you put your whole mind energy on one subject. It is a useful technique for all scientific research. No science can grow without concentration.

Contemplation is thinking about a subject but not going astray. If you are thinking about beauty then you go on thinking about beauty, of its different aspects, heights and depths, but you confine yourself to one object. In concentration you are static; in contemplation you move but you move almost the way a train moves, on the same track; it does not go on running into fields and streets. Out of contemplation was born all philosophy. Without contemplation there would be no philosophy at all.

And meditation, in the Western world, is a special kind of concentration, or a special kind of contemplation. When you concentrate or contemplate about ordinary, worldly things it is not meditation. When you contemplate about the other world — God, heaven and hell, the existence of the soul — then it becomes meditation. It is a particular specialization of contemplation and concentration. But there is no word which can convey the meaning of dhyana.

And it is not a new phenomenon. When Buddha spoke, he was not speaking in Sanskrit he was speaking in the living language of his people. The language was Pali, but he had to take the word dhyana, from Sanskrit; Pali had no word for it of its own. But it changed its form. Instead of dhyana, in Pali it became zana. And when Bodhidharma took the message to China, in Chinese there was no word with a parallel meaning to zana, so they took the word itself, and in Chinese it became ch’an — but it is dhyan.

When from China it went to Japan, again there was the same problem. They figured it out, what was more suitable for them as far as pronunciation was concerned. But the word dhyan continued — in zana, in ch’an, and in Japanese it became zen. It is a very interesting history of a word which has never been found in any other language — for the simple reason that nowhere else has it been developed. And unless you develop something, you cannot have a word for it. It was always exported: from India to China, from China to Japan.

In English they thought the word `meditation’ will do; it was a wrong decision. The translators have been using `meditation’ and now it has become established, but the meaning has to be changed. If you are not going to change the word, you will have to change the meaning.

Meditation means no object, no concentration, no contemplation, but an absolute silence … nothing on the screen of the mind, just a tabula rasa.

In this situation — only when you are neither thinking, nor concentrating, nor contemplating — the energy of your awareness has no involvement with any object. And energy has an intrinsic quality. It cannot remain static, it is basically dynamic; it moves, it is movement. When it cannot find any object … and you have to understand the meaning of the word `object’: that which hinders, that which prevents. It is an objection, it is a wall. Awareness goes and is objected by the wall; it shows the wall, it shows the details of the wall. But meditation is when there is no object, the energy goes on moving.

Source: OSHO

Yoga has nothing to do with Islam, Hinduism, Jainism or any other religion

Yoga has nothing to do with Islam, Hinduism, Jainism or any other religion. But Jesus or Mohammed or Zarathustra or Buddha or Mahavira or anyone who has realized the truth, has not realized it without passing through Yoga. Except for Yoga, there is no way for life to rise to the state of inner paradise. The so-called religions are nothing but belief systems. Yoga is a systematic methodology of scientific experiments done in the search for the truth of life, and not for belief systems.

[Note: This is a translation from the Hindi Neo-Yoga Sutras, which is in the process of being edited. It is for research only.]

Hence, the first thing that I would like to say to you is that Yoga is a science, not a belief. For experiencing Yoga, one need not have faith of any kind. To experiment with yoga, superstitious belief of any kind is not needed. An atheist can enter into its experiments as much as a theist can. Yoga does not bother whether you are an atheist or a theist.

Science does not depend on your concepts. On the contrary, you have to change your concepts because of science. Science does not expect you to have any kind of prior reasoning or any accepted beliefs, it only expects you to experiment. Science says, do and see. Because scientific truths are real truths, they do not need any faith whatsoever. Two and two make four, it is not an assumption. And if someone does not accept it, he will be in trouble himself — it is not that the truth of two and two making four will be in trouble.

Science does not begin with assumptions, it begins with investigation. In the same way, Yoga does not begin with assumptions, it begins with search, quest and investigation. Hence, all that is required is the capability to experiment. Only the capacity to experiment is needed; only courage to search is needed, nothing else.

When I say Yoga is a science, I would like to talk to you about some sutras that are the fundamental basis for the science of Yoga. These sutras have nothing to do with any religion, because without them no religion can stay alive. These sutras do not need the support of any religion, but without their support religion cannot exist even for a moment.

The first sutra of Yoga is that life is energy.

For a long time science did not agree with this, but now it does. For a long time science used to think that the universe is matter. But those who declared thousands of years before the discoveries of science that matter is an untruth, a lie, an illusion — did not mean that it does not exist — by illusion they meant that it is not as it appears, or it does not appear to be what it is.

But in the last thirty years, science in its every single step has been in accord with Yoga. In the eighteenth century, the declaration of the scientists was that God is dead, soul has no existence, matter is all that there is. But in the past thirty years, the situation is reversed. Science has had to say that matter does not exist, it only appears to exist; energy alone is the truth. It is due to the fast movement of the energy that matter appears to be.

The walls are visible, and if someone tries to pass through them, his head will get broken — how to say then that the walls are illusions? They are clearly visible. There is ground underneath your feet. If there is not then how are you standing on it? No, science is not saying in this sense that matter does not exist. Science says so in the sense that things are not as they are appear to us. If we run an electric fan very fast, its three blades will stop appearing to be three because the blades will run so fast that the empty space between the blades will be filled before it can be noticed by our eyes. If the fan is run very fast, separate blades will not be seen, only a circle will be noticed that is revolving. You won’t be able to count and say how many blades there are. If the fan can be run even faster, you cannot throw a stone through the gaps. The stone will fall back on the thrower’s side. If the fan can be run even faster, as fast as atoms are moving, then you will be able to sit on the fan comfortably. Neither will you feel the gaps nor will you fall, nor will you notice that underneath you the blades are running. Because the time taken by the blade to fill the gap will be less than the time taken by your brain to register the gap. Before your feet can inform your brain that a blade has left a gap behind, the next blade comes and fills the gap. Thus if the gap can be bridged before it really exists for you, you can happily stand on it.

In the same way we are standing on surfaces. The electrons in the atoms are revolving at such tremendous speed that things seem to be static. But nothing in existence is static, the objects that seem to be static, are all moving. Had there been only objects moving, even then there would be no difficulty. But as science went on breaking things down, it came to know that after the atom there remains no matter — only energy particles, electric particles remain. Even to call them particles is not right, because particle again gives the idea of matter. Hence a new word ‘quanta’ had to be coined in the English language. Quanta means particles and no-particle at the same time — particle and a wave simultaneously. There can only be waves of electricity, not particles. Energy can have only waves, not particles. But because of our old language we go on calling them particles. There is nothing like a particle. In the eyes of science, the whole universe is an expansion of energy, electrical energy. And this is the first sutra of Yoga: Life is energy.

Source: Sun of Consciousness
Chapter 2 – The Universe — A Family

OSHO

“How shall we meditate?”

“Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment — this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?

There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.

Meditation cannot come about just because you visit a temple or mosque or gurudwara.. If you were not awake in the shop, in the marketplace, or at home, how can you all of a sudden be awake in the temple? Nothing is going to come about suddenly, when it is not part of an internal flowing. This is why Buddha has said that meditation can happen only if you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day.

So understand well that meditation is not just one of life’s innumerable activities. It is not just one link in the chain of man’s endless doings. It is like the thread on which all the flowers of a garland have been strung. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity. If one is meditative in everything one is doing, if the thread is running through each of the flowers, only then a garland is created. The thread is not even visible, it is hidden underneath the flowers. Nor can the meditator be seen; he is present, but hidden behind all the activities being done through him. An individual is awakened the day when he begins to live meditatively. While he lives nonmeditatively, he sleeps.

Source: Nowhere To Go But In, OSHO

Conceive of yourself without eyes, and your whole life goes dead — then a very minor part remains.

So first visualize. Use your eyes inwards and see the letters. Letters are more related to ears than eyes because they are sounds, but for us, because we are reading, reading, reading, they have become associated with eyes. Basically, they are associated with ears — they are sounds. Start with the eyes, then forget the eyes by and by. Then move away from the eyes to the ears. First imagine them as letters, then see them, hear them MORE SUBTLY AS SOUNDS, THEN AS MOST SUBTLE FEELINGS. And this is a very beautiful exercise.

When you say “A”, what is the feeling? You may not have been aware of it. What is the feeling inside you? Whenever you use any sound, what type of feeling comes into existence? We are so feeling-less that we have simply forgotten. When you see a sound, what happens inside? You go on using it and the sound is even forgotten. You go on seeing it. If I say “A”, you will see it first. In your mind, “A” will become visible; you will visualize it. When I say “A”, do not visualize it. Just hear the sound “A”, and then go and find out what happens in your feeling center. Does nothing happen?

Shiva says, move from letters to sounds, uncover sounds through the letters. Uncover sounds, and then, through the sounds also, uncover feelings. Be aware of how you feel. They say that man has now become very insensitive; he is the most insensitive animal on earth.

I was reading about one poet, a German poet, and he relates one incident of his childhood. His father was a lover of horses, so he had many horses at the house, a big stable, but he would not allow this child to go to the stable. He was afraid, as the child was very small. But when the father was not there the child would sometimes steal into the stable where he had a friend — a horse. Whenever the child would go in, the horse would make some sounds.

And the poet has written, “Then I also started making sounds with the horse, because there was no possibility of language. Then, in communication with that horse, for the first time I became aware of sounds — their beauty, their feeling.”

You cannot be aware with a man because he is dead. A horse is more alive, and he has no language. He has pure sound. He is filled with his heart, not with his mind. So that poet remembers, “For the first time, I became aware of the beauty of sounds and their meaning. This was not the meaning of words and thoughts, but a meaning filled with feeling.” If someone else was there, the horse would not make those sounds, so the child could understand that the horse meant, “Do not come in. Someone is here and your father will be angry.”

When there was no one, the horse would make the sounds meaning, “Come in. There is no one.” So the poet remembers that “It was a conspiracy, and he helped me very much, that horse helped me very much. And when I would go and love that horse, he would move his head in a particular way when he liked it. When he did not like it, he would not move his head in that way. When he liked it, then it was a certain thing, he would express it. When he was not in the mood, then he would not move in a certain way.”

And this poet says, “This continued for years. I would go and love that horse, and that love was so deep, I never felt any affinity with anyone else so deeply. Then one day when I was stroking his neck and he was moving and enjoying it ecstatically, suddenly for the first time I became aware of my hand, that I was stroking, and the horse stopped. Now he would not move his neck.” And that poet says, “Then for years I tried and tried, but there was no response, the horse would not reply. Only later on did I become aware that because I became aware of my hand and myself, the ego came in and the communication broke. I couldn’t recapture again that communication with the horse.”

What happened? That was a feeling communication. The moment ego comes, words come, language comes, thought comes, then the layer is changed completely. Now you are above sounds; then you were below sounds. Those sounds are feelings, and the horse could understand feelings. Now he couldn’t understand, so the communication broke. The poet tried and tried — but no effort is successful because even your effort is the effort of your ego.

He tried to forget his hand, but he couldn’t forget. How can you forget? It is impossible. And the more you try to forget it, the more you remember. So you cannot forget anything with effort. Effort will simply emphasize the memory more. The poet says, “I became fixed with my hand; I couldn’t move that horse. I would go up to my hand, and then there was no movement. The energy would not move into that horse and he became aware of this.”

How did the horse become aware? If I suddenly start speaking some other language, then the communication is broken, then you will not be able to understand me. And if this language were not known to you, you would suddenly stop because now the language is unknown to you. Thus, the horse stopped.

Every child lives with feeling. First come sounds, then those sounds are filled with feeling. Then come words, then thoughts, then systems, religions, philosophies. Then one goes farther and farther away from the center of feeling.

This sutra says, come back, come down — down to the state of feeling. Feeling is not your mind: that is why you are afraid of feeling. You are not afraid of reasoning. You are always afraid of feeling because feeling can lead you into chaos. You will not be able to control. With reason, the control is with you; with the head, you are the head. Below the head you lose the head, you cannot control, you cannot manipulate. Feelings are just below the mind — a link between you and the mind.

Then Shiva says, THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. Then leave the feelings. And remember, only when you come to the deepest layer of feelings can you leave them. You cannot leave them just now. You are not at the deepest layer of feelings, so how can you leave them? First you have to leave philosophies — Hinduism, Christianity, Mohammedanism — then you have to leave thoughts, then you have to leave words, then you have to leave letters, then you have to leave sounds, then you have to leave feelings — because you can leave only that which is there. You can leave that step upon which you are standing; you cannot leave a step upon which you are not standing.

You are standing at the step of philosophy, the farthest away one. That is why I insist so much that unless you leave religion you cannot be religious.

This sutra, this technique, can be done very easily. The problem is not with feelings, the problem is with words. You can leave a feeling, just as you can undress — as you can get out of your clothes. You can throw off your clothes; you can leave feelings simply in that way. But right now you cannot do it, and if you try to do it, it will be impossible. So go step by step.

Imagine letters — A, B, C, D — then change your emphasis from the written letter to the heart sound. You are moving deep, the surface is left behind. You are sinking deep — then feel what feeling comes through a particular sound.

Because of such techniques, India could discover many things. It could discover which sounds are related to particular feelings. Because of that science, the MANTRA was developed. A particular sound is related to a particular feeling, and it is never otherwise. So if you create that sound within you, that feeling will be created. You can use any sound, and then the related feeling will be created around you. That sound creates the space to be filled by a particular feeling.

So do not use just any mantra, that is not good; it may be dangerous for you. Unless you know, or unless a person who gives you the mantra knows, what particular sound creates what particular feeling, and whether that feeling is needed by you or not, do not use any mantra. There are mantras which are known as death mantras. If you repeat them, you will die within a particular time. Within a particular period you will die, because they create in you a longing for death.

Freud says that man has two basic instincts: libido — eros — the will to live, the will to be, the will to continue, the will to exist. And thanatos — the will to die. There are particular sounds which, if you repeat them, the will to die will come to you. Then you would like just to drop into death. There are sounds which give you eros — which give you more libido, which give you more lust to live, to be. If you create those sounds within you, that particular feeling will overwhelm you. There are sounds which give you a feeling of peace and silence, there are sounds which create anger. So do not use any sound, any mantra, unless it is given to you by a master who knows what is going to happen through it.

Source: Osho

Nobody has the guts to say to you directly, “Don’t live for yourself.”

The reality is the individual. And the problem arises because the reality has not been accepted. The real has been denied expression; and the unreal, the abstract, has been imposed upon it.

You have been told continuously, “Live for humanity.” Where is humanity? Have you ever come across humanity? Do you think you are ever going to have an encounter with humanity? It is just like all those big, bombastic, bogus words: God, motherland, fatherland, Holy Ghost. They don’t exist, they are only projected. “Live for humanity” means don’t live for yourself.

Nobody has the guts to say to you directly, “Don’t live for yourself.” So they have found a cunning, clever, indirect way of saying the same thing: Live for God, live for humanity, live for man, live for the universe. Live for anything — XYZ — but please don’t live for yourself. And here is the root of the whole problem.

Your life is your life, and it can be lived only one way; there is no other alternative. And the only way that it can be lived has to be found by you. It is not all ready like a super-highway, ready-made, with millions of people moving on it, going towards their goal, and you have just to join the crowd.

No, there is no super-highway to existence.

There are only small footpaths which are walked in total aloneness.

And remember, even those footpaths are not ready-made, available for you so that you can go on number eleven footpath. They don’t exist other than when you walk upon them; it is through walking you create them. It is a very beautiful and mysterious way life has, that it does not make you like a railway train which runs on rails. A railway has no choice, it cannot just go anywhere it likes. Those rails are fixed, somebody else determines them. Those rails are the destiny — the train simply moves according to somebody else’s dictates.

Source: OSHO

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