[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

“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

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

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

Shankaracharya is talking about knowledge so that the layers of ignorance collected within you may be cleared away. And once the soil of the mind is cleared of all the unnecessary wild grass and plants the seeds of devotion can be sown. Then it is possible to sing the song of the divine.

There is no contradiction between the two. Devotion is the culmination of knowledge and knowledge is the beginning of devotion, because man has both heart and mind, and both of them have to be approached, both of them have to be transformed. If you get stuck only in knowledge then you will be like a desert — very clean but nothing will grow there; clean but seedless; vast but without any height or depth.

Knowledge is dry and lonely. And if you remain a devotee, a bhakta only, then there will be trees, flowers and greenery in your life but you will not know how to protect that greenery. You will not be able to protect those plants. If anyone puts the seeds of doubt in your fertile soil, they also will sprout.

If a devotee has not passed through the process of knowledge then his building is going to be shaky. Anyone can put doubt in him. He knows how to believe the believers, those who are leading him on the path, and he believes even those who are misleading him. He does not have the sense of discrimination and discretion. He gets hold of the wrong in the same way as he gets hold of the right. The devotee is like a blind man and the knowledgeable person is like a lame man. If they both get together then things work out beautifully.

You must have heard this story. A blind man and a lame man were caught in a fire in a jungle. The blind man could not run away as he could not see. He had strong legs and feet and could save himself by running away, but he had no sense of direction. The lame person could see the path, he could see which part of the jungle had not yet caught fire, but he could not run away as he was lame. According to the story both of them got together. The blind man carried the lame one on his shoulders. By becoming one, they overcame their shortcomings. With the joint effort of the blind man’s feet and the lame man’s eyes they could come out of the jungle safely. The fire could not destroy them.

You cannot save yourself from the flames of life until the intellect and the heart unite. Intellect has eyes but no feet; intellect is lame. Heart has feet, but no eyes; heart is blind. That is why they say that love is blind. When they meet, there is perfume. When they unite, there is attainment, there is enlightenment, there is nirvana. If they oppose each other, both will be destroyed. Then it will be impossible to get out of the jungle which is on fire. Alone, both are crippled. United, both become whole. And you have both, you have to use both. Hence make knowledge a support of devotion; make devotion a support of knowledge.

You can fly in this sky if you make them both your wings. No bird can fly with one wing, no man can walk with one foot, nor can a boat be rowed with one oar; both the oars are needed. There is no contradiction, and those who have told you that there is a contradiction are wrong. They made this error because they did not know this great harmony. They were either mind-dominated people who possessed only dry thoughts and logic and never experienced the dance of the heart, or they were heart-dominated people who could dance but did not have any understanding.

It will be a fortunate moment when you can dance with understanding. That moment will be fortunate when you can love with understanding. And never refuse anything which existence has given you, because if you do so you will become disabled to that degree. You are whole, but everything has to be properly adjusted and made to coincide. It is as if there is a musical instrument, a veena: the strings are there, and the strings have to be fixed to the veena, they have to be tightened and adjusted.

Everything is within you but the coincidence is not there. The name of that coincidence which can adjust your inner veena and its strings is sadhana.

Sufis say that a man was dying of hunger. In his house there was flour, water, fuel, an oven, but he did not know how to knead the flour, how to light the fire and how to bake the bread. Everything was there but he was hungry. The uncooked food was there. But these things did not coincide so he died of hunger.

This story applies to everybody. You have got all the means but you are hungry. You have got everything; existence sends everyone with all the means. But these means are to be adjusted in the proper proportions, the proper harmony and music; only then the light of the divine will shine within you.

You are not to be dominated either by intellect or by the heart; your consciousness should flow like a river between these two banks. If you become the Ganges, then the sea is not very far away. But do not insist on flowing with the support of one bank only, because the support of both the banks is needed. In the end both the banks will be given up. But this end is possible only through that support. In the ultimate condition, in the ultimate realization, there is neither devotion nor knowledge. When a river flows into the sea then both banks disappear and the river becomes the sea.

Therefore, there are three types of people in this world. The first are the mind-dominated people — philosophers, metaphysicians. They go on thinking and arguing but reach nowhere. Their life is full of the dry sand of logic.

The second type are the heart-dominated people. They sing and dance a lot but their singing and dancing is without any understanding or discretion. They are not doing so out of freedom; it is a sort of madness or intoxication. Heart is like an intoxication for those who do not have awareness or discretion.

The third type are those who have made full use of mind and heart and have gone beyond both. Your aim should be the third. You must desire, you must aspire for this great transcendence.

Ultimately the Ganges has to leave both the banks and flow into the sea. But do not hurry, you have to reach the sea with the support of the two banks, and you can give up the banks as soon as you reach there.

Source: OSHO

The Great Transcendence
Chapter 2 – The Attraction of the Transient

Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it. Then you become a Baul, then you become a lover—because love can exist only with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight. Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic is in tune. be non-serious. I’m not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic leela, this cosmic play.

You say: I have heard that Your sannyasins celebrate death.

You have heard rightly! My sannyasins celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my sannyas—not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God.

The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word “God” exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you—in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life.

I teach love for life.

I teach the art of living your life totally, of being drunk with the divine through life. I am not an escapist….

I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to samadhi—everything is divine!…

Celebration has to be total, only then can you be multidimensionally rich. And to be multidimensionally rich is the only thing we can offer to God.

If there is a God, and someday you have to face him, he will ask you only one question: “Have you lived your life totally or not?”—because this opportunity is given to you to live, not to renounce.

My sannyasins celebrate death too, because to me death is not the end of life but the very crescendo of life, the very climax. It is the ultimate of life. If you have lived rightly, if you have lived moment to moment totally, if you have squeezed out the whole juice of life, your death will be the ultimate orgasm.

The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to the orgasm that death brings, but it brings it only to the person who knows the art of being total. The sexual orgasm is a very faint thing compared to the orgasm that death brings. What happens in sexual orgasm? For a moment you forget that you are a body, for a moment two lovers become merged into one unity, into one organic union. For a moment they are not separate entities; they have melted into each other like two clouds which have become one.

But it is only for a single moment, then they are again separate. Hence all sexual orgasms bring in their wake a kind of depression, because you fall from the height. You reached a crescendo, and for only a fragment of a moment you remained on the peak and then the peak disappeared. And when you fall from that height, you fall into the depth of depression.

This is one of the contradictions of sex: it gives you the greatest pleasure and also the greatest agony. It gives you ecstasy and agony—both. And each time you reach an orgasmic state, you know that soon it will disappear. Then there is disillusionment, disappointment.

Death gives you the ultimate in orgasmic joy: the body is left behind forever and your being becomes one with the whole. It is immeasurable. If to become one with a single person gives you so much joy, just think how much joy will happen in becoming one with the infinite! But it does not happen to everybody who dies, because the people who have not lived rightly cannot die rightly either. The people who have lived in deep unconsciousness will die in deep unconsciousness. Death will give you only that which you have lived all your life; it is the essence of your whole life.

If your life was of meditativeness, awareness, witnessing, then you will be able to witness death too. If your whole life you remained cool, centered in different situations, death will give you the ultimate challenge, the ultimate test. And if you can remain centered, calm and cool and watching, then you will not die an unconscious death, your death will bring you to the ultimate peak of consciousness. And then, certainly, it has to be celebrated.

So whenever one of my sannyasins dies, we celebrate, we dance, we sing. We give him a good farewell….

Yes, my sannyasins celebrate death because they celebrate life. And death is not against life; it does not end life, it only brings life to a beautiful peak. Life continues even after death. It was there before birth, it is going to continue after death. Life is not confined to the small space that exists between birth and death; on the contrary, births and deaths are small episodes in the eternity of life.

We celebrate everything. Celebration is our way to receive all the gifts from God. Life is his gift, death is his gift; the body is his gift, the soul is his gift. We celebrate everything. We love the body, we love the soul. We are materialist spiritualists. Nothing like this has ever happened in the world. This is a new experiment, a new beginning, and it has a great future.

(In the words of the Great Master OSHO who teaches the Art of Living).

Source: OSHO

For awareness you have to take an about-turn. You have to concentrate not on the cause outside, but on the source inside. Forget the cause. Close your eyes, and go deep and dig into the source. Then you can use the same energy which was to be wasted on someone outside — the energy moves inwards. Anger has much energy. Anger is energy — the purest of fires inside. Don’t waste it outside.

Take another example. You are feeling sexual: sex is again energy, fire. But whenever you feel sexual, again you are focused on someone outside, not on the source. you begin to think of someone — of the lover, of the beloved, A-B-C-D — but when you are filled with sex your focus is always on the other. You are dissipating energy.

Not only in the sexual act do you dissipate energy, but in sexual thinking you dissipate it even more because a sexual act is a momentary thing. It comes to a peak, the energy is released, and you are thrown back. But sexual thinking can continuously be there. You can continue it in sexual thinking, you can dissipate energy. And everyone is dissipating energy. Ninety percent of our thinking is sexual. Whatsoever you are doing outside, inside sex is a constant concern — you may not even be aware of it.

You are sitting in a room and a woman enters: your posture changes suddenly. Your spine is moire erect, your breathing changes, your blood pressure is different. You may not be aware at all of what has happened, but your whole body has reacted sexually. you were a different person when the woman was not there; now again you are a different person.

An all-male group is a different group, and all-female group is a different group. Let one male come in or one female, and the whole group, the whole energy pattern, changes suddenly. You may not be conscious of it, but when your mind is focused on someone, your energy begins to flow. when you feel sexual, look at the source, not at the cause — remember this.

Science is more concerned with the cause and religion is more concerned with the source. The source is always inside; the cause is always outside. With cause you are in a chain reaction. With cause you are connected with your environment. With source you are connected with yourself. So remember this. This is the purest method to change unconscious energy into conscious energy. Take an about-turn — look inside! It is going to be difficult because our look has become fixed. We are like a person whose neck is paralyzed, and who cannot move and look back. Our eyes have become fixed. We have been looking outside for lives together — for millennia — so we don’t know how to look inside.

Do this: whenever something happens in your mind, follow it to the source. Anger is there — a sudden flash has come to you — close your eyes, meditate on it. From where is this anger arising? Never ask the question: who has made it possible? who has made you angry? That is a wrong question. Ask which energy in you is transforming into anger — from where is this anger coming up, bubbling up, what is the source inside from where this energy is coming?

Are you aware that in anger you can do something which you cannot do when you are not in anger? A person in anger can throw a big stone easily. When he is not angry he cannot even lift it. He has much energy when he is angry. A hidden source is now with him. So if a man is mad, he becomes very strong. Why? From where is this energy coming? It is not coming from anything outside. Now all his sources are burning simultaneously — anger, sex, everything, is burning simultaneously. Every source is available.

Be concerned with from where anger is bubbling up, from where the sex desire has come in. Follow it, take steps backwards. Meditate silently and go with anger to the roots. It is difficult but it is not impossible. It is not easy. It is not going to be easy because it is a fight against a long, rooted habit. The whole past has to be broken, and you have to do something new which you have never done before. It is just the weight of sheer habit which will create the difficulty. But try it, and then you are creating a new direction for energy to move. You are beginning to be a circle, and in a circle energy is never dissipated.

My energy comes up and moves outside — it can never become a circle now; it is simply dissipated. If my movement inwards is there, then the same energy which was going out turns upon itself. My meditation leads this energy back to the same source from where the anger was coming. It becomes a circle. This inner circle is the strength of a Mahavir. The sex energy, not moving to someone else, moves back to its own source. This circle of sex energy is the strength of a Buddha.

We are weaklings, not because we have less energy than a Buddha: we have the same quanta of energy, everyone is born with the same energy quanta, but we are accustomed to dissipating it. It simply moves away from us and never comes back. It cannot come back! Once it is out of you, it can never come back — it is beyond you.

A word arises in me: I speak it out; it has flown away. It is not going to come back to me, and the energy that was used in producing it, that was used in throwing it away, is dissipated. A word arises in me: I don’t throw it out; I remain silent. Then the word moves and moves and moves, and falls into the original source again. The energy has been reconsumed.

Silence is energy. Brahmacharya is energy. Not to be angry is energy. But this is not suppression. If you suppress anger, you have used energy again. Don’t suppress — observe and follow. don’t fight — just move backwards with the anger. This is the purest method of awareness.

But certain other things can be used. For beginners certain devices are possible. So I will talk about three devices. One type of device is based on body awareness. Forget anger, forget sex — they are difficult problems. And when you are in them, you become so mad that you cannot meditate. When you are angry you cannot meditate; you cannot even think about meditation. You are just mad. So forget it; it is difficult. Then use your own body as a device for awareness.

Buddha has said that when you walk, walk consciously. When you breathe, breathe consciously. The Buddhist method is known as ANAPANASATI YOGA — the yoga of the incoming and outgoing breath, incoming and outgoing breath awareness. The breath comes in: move with the breath; know, be aware, that the breath is moving in. When the breath has gone out again, move with it. Be in, be out, with the breath.

Anger is difficult, sex is difficult — breath is not so difficult. Move with the breath. Don’t allow any breath to be in or out without consciousness. This is a meditation. Now you will be focused on breathing, and when you are focused on breathing thoughts stop automatically. you cannot think, because the moment you think your consciousness moves from breath to thought. you have missed breathing.

Try this and you will know. When you are aware of breathing, thoughts cease. The same energy which is used for thoughts is being used in being aware of breath. If you start thinking, you will lose track of the breath, you will forget, and you will think. You cannot do both simultaneously.

If you are following breathing, it is a long process. One has to go into it deeply. It takes a minimum of three months and a maximum of three years. If it is done continuously twenty-four hours a day… it is a method for monks, those who have given up everything; only they can watch their breathing twenty-four hours a day. That’s why Buddhist monks and other traditions of monks, they reduce their living to the minimum so that no disturbance is there. They will beg for their food and they will sleep under a tree — that’s all. Their whole time is devoted to some inner practice of being aware — mm? — for example, of breath.

A Buddhist monk moves. He has to be continuously aware of his breath. The silence that you see on a Buddhist monk’s face is the silence of the awareness of breathing and nothing else. If you become aware your face will become silent, because if thoughts are not there your face cannot show anxiety, thinking. Your face becomes relaxed. Continuous awareness of breathing will stop the mind. The continuously troubled mind will stop. And if the mind stops and you are simply aware of breathing, if the mind is not functioning, you cannot be angry, you cannot be sexual.

Sex or anger or greed or jealousy or envy — anything needs the mechanism of mind. And if the mechanism stops, you cannot do anything. This again leads to the same thing. Now the energy that is used in sex, in anger, in greed, in ambition, has no outlet. And you go on continuously being concerned with breathing, day and night. Buddha has said, “Even in sleep try to be aware of breathing.” It will be difficult in the beginning, but if you can be aware in the day, then by and by this will penetrate into your sleep.

Anything penetrates into sleep if it has gone deep in the mind in the day. If you have been worried about a certain thing in the day, it gets into the sleep. If you were thinking continuously about sex, it gets into the sleep. If you were angry the whole day, anger gets into the sleep. So Buddha says there is no difficulty. If a person is continuously concerned with breathing and awareness of the breathing, ultimately it penetrates into the sleep. You cannot dream then. If your awareness is there of incoming breath and outgoing breath, then in sleep you cannot dream.

The moment you dream, this awareness will not be there. If awareness is there, dreams are impossible. So a Buddhist monk asleep is not just like you. His sleep has a different quality. It has a different depth and a certain awareness in it is there.

Ananda said to Buddha, “I have observed you for years and years together. It seems like a miracle: you sleep as if you are awake. You are in the same posture the whole night.” The hand would not move from the place where it had been put; the leg would remain in the same posture. Buddha would sleep in the same posture the whole night. Not a single movement! For nights tog3ether ananda would sit and watch and wonder, “What type of sleep is this!” Buddha would not move. He would be as if a dead body, and he would wake up in the same posture in which he went to sleep. Ananda asked, “What are you doing? Were you asleep or not? You never move!”

Buddha said, “A day will come, Ananda, when you will know. This shows that you are not practising anapanasati yoga rightly; it shows only this. Otherwise this question would not have arisen. You are not practising anapanasati yoga — if you are continuously aware of your breath in the day, it is impossible not to be conscious of it in the night. And if the mind is concerned with awareness, dreams cannot penetrate. And if there are no dreams, mind is clear, transparent. Your body is asleep, but you are not. Your body is relaxing, you are aware — the flame is there inside. So, Ananda,” Buddha is reported to have said, “I am not asleep — only the body is sleep. I am aware! and not only in sleep. Ananda — when I die, you will see: I will be aware, only the body will die.”

Practise awareness with breathing; then you will be capable of penetrating. Or practise awareness with body movements. Buddha has a word for it: he calls it “mindfulness”. He says, “Walk mindfully.” We walk without any mind in it.

A certain man was sitting before Buddha when he was talking one day. He was moving his leg and a toe unnecessarily. There was no reason for it. Buddha stopped talking and asked that man, “Why are you moving your leg? Why are you moving your toe?” Suddenly, as the Buddha asked, the man stopped. Then Buddha asked, “Why have you stopped so suddenly?”

The man said, “Why, I was not even aware that I was moving my toe or my leg! I was not aware! The moment you asked, I became aware.”

Buddha said, “What nonsense! Your leg is moving and you are not aware? So what are you doing with your body? Are you an alive man or dead? This is your leg, this is your toe, and it goes on moving and you are not even aware? Then of what are you aware? You can kill a man and you can say, “I was not aware.’” And, really, those who kill are not aware. It is difficult to kill someone when you are aware.

Buddha would say, “Move, walk, but be filled with consciousness. Know inwardly you are walking.” You are not to use any words; you are not to use any thoughts. You are not to say inside, “I am walking,” because if you say it then you are not aware of walking — you have become aware of your thought, and you have missed walking. Just be somatically aware — not mentally. Just feel that you are walking. Create a somatic awareness, a sensitivity, so that you can feel directly without mind coming in.

The wind is blowing — you are feeling it. Don’t use words. Just feel, and be mindful of the feeling. You are lying down on the beach, and the sand is cool, deeply cool. Feel it! — don’t use words. Just feel it — the coolness of it, the penetrating coolness of it. Just feel! Be conscious of it; don’t use words. Don’t say, “The sand is very cool.” The moment you say it you have missed an existential moment. You have become intellectual about it.

You are with your lover or with your beloved: feel the presence; don’t use words. Just feel the warmth, the love flowing. Just feel the oneness that has happened. don’t use words. don’t say, “I love you,” you will have destroyed it. The mind has come in. And the moment you say, “I love you,” it has become a past memory. Just feel without words. Anything felt without words, felt totally without the mind coming in, will give you a mindfulness.

You are eating: eat mindfully; taste everything mindfully. Don’t use words. The taste is itself such a great and penetrating thing. Don’t use words and don’t destroy it. Feel it to the core. You are drinking water: feel it passing through the throat; don’t use words. Just feel it; be mindful about it. The movement of the water, the coolness, the disappearing thirst, the satisfaction that follows — feel it!

You are sitting in the sun: feel the warmth; don’t use words. The sun is touching you. There is a deep communion. Feel it! In this way, somatic awareness, bodily awareness, is developed. If you develop a bodily awareness, again mind comes to a stop. Mind is not needed. And if mind stops, you are again thrown into the deep unconscious. With a very, very deep alertness you can penetrate, Now you have a light with you, and the darkness disappears.

Source: OSHO

You can start by simply watching the thoughts that cross your mind… just sit back and watch the thoughts come and go. You will be surprised that most of the thoughts that keep your mind occupied are useless and have no relation to reality; to the present. You will either be making castles in the air of a future that hasn’t even come, a future that is unpredictable which we cannot steer even if we wanted to. OR, it will be dwelling in the past which has already passed now, and we couldn’t re-live it even if we wanted to.

Another starter would be to watch your breathing. Become aware of each breath you take; watch it all the way in, and all the way out(closing your eyes would help still your mind all the more). We normally breathe unconsciously; the very root of our existence, and we are not even aware of it.

Whatever you do, try to be conscious of your actions. Many a tasks we do absent mindedly which proves that the mind has wandered off elsewhere, and is not present with us in what we are doing.

It has nothing to do with God or the devil. But the way the religions have functioned in the world, they have changed its whole quality, the very fabric. Instead of making it a science of integration, so that man is not many, but one…. Ordinarily you are many, a crowd. To melt this crowd into one wholeness, so that everything in you starts functioning in harmony with everything else within you, and there is no conflict, no division, no fight — nobody higher, nobody lower, you are just one harmonious whole….

The religions around the world have helped humanity to forget even the meaning of the word. They are against the integrated man, because the integrated man does not need God, does not need the priest, does not need the church. The integrated man is enough unto himself. He is whole. And to me that makes him holy — because he is whole. He is so fulfilled that there is no psychological need for a father figure, a God somewhere in heaven taking care of you. He is so blissful in the moment, you cannot make him afraid about tomorrow. Tomorrow does not exist for the integrated man. Only this moment is all — neither there are yesterdays nor tomorrows.

You cannot manipulate the integrated man through these childish stupid strategies of “If you do this you will attain to heaven and all its pleasures; if you do that you will fall into hell and you will suffer for eternity.” The integrated man will simply laugh at all this nonsense.

He has no fear of the future, you cannot create hell; he has no greed for the future, you cannot create heaven. He needs no protection, nobody to guide him, nobody to take him somewhere. He has no goals, no motivations. Each moment is so complete that it is not waiting to be completed by another moment which will come sometime in this life, or maybe in the next life…. Each moment is full, overfull, overflowing, and all that he knows is a tremendous gratitude for this beautiful existence.

That too he does not say, because the existence does not understand language. That gratitude is his very being, so whatsoever he is doing, there is gratitude. If he is not doing anything, just sitting silently, there is gratitude. It is not something like Mohammedans who five times a day thank God — but what are you doing between those five times? You are not thanking between those five times. So your thankfulness is just a ritual, it is not your life.

Source: From Unconciousness to Consciousness, OSHO