A MONK SAID TO TOZAN, “YOU ALWAYS TELL LEARNERS TO TAKE THE WAY OF THE BIRDS. WHAT IS THIS WAY OF THE BIRDS?”

TOZAN SAID, “YOU MEET NOBODY ON IT.”

THE MONK THEN ASKED, “HOW CAN WE GO ON THIS WAY?”

TOZAN ANSWERED, “BY EGOLESSNESS, ATTENDING TO EACH STEP AS IT COMES.”

THE MONK SAID, “ISN’T THE BIRDS’ WAY THE SAME AS ONE’S ORIGINAL NATURE?”

TOZAN SAID, “O MONK, WHY DO YOU GET EVERYTHING UPSIDE-DOWN?”

THE MONK ASKED, “WHAT IS THIS PLACE WHERE PEOPLE GET THINGS UPSIDE-DOWN?”

TOZAN SAID, “IF THERE WERE NO TOPSY-TURVINESS HOW COULD A SERVANT BECOME A LORD?”

THE MONK ASKED, “WHAT IS OUR ORIGINAL NATURE?”

TOZAN ANSWERED, “NOT TAKING THE WAY OF THE BIRDS.”

WHEN A MONK ASKED KASSAN, “WHAT IS THE WAY?” HE ANSWERED, “THE SUN OVERFLOWS OUR EYES; FOR TEN THOUSAND LEAGUES NOT A CLOUD HANGS IN THE SKY.”

“WHAT IS THE REAL FORM OF THE UNIVERSE?” ASKED THE MONK.

“THE FISHES AT PLAY IN THE CLEAR-FLOWING WATER MAKE THEIR MISTAKES,” REPLIED KASSAN.

The bird flying across the sky leaves no footprints. This is called the Way of the Birds — simply disappearing into the nothingness of the sky, without leaving a trace behind. Zen wants you to be just like the Birds’ Way — a nobody, a nothingness.

It is strange but true that in your nothingness you are for the first time born. The nothingness is the womb out of which your spiritual heights are revealed.

Just as you cannot follow the bird because he leaves no footprints, the buddha also leaves no footprints. You cannot follow a buddha for the simple reason that you are a buddha; you have just forgotten it. And once you try to follow a buddha, you are going astray.

Those who make footprints behind themselves — create organized religions, give commandments for the coming future, scriptures to be followed by those who have not come yet — are all engaged in nonreligious activity.

Religion is a rebellion — rebellion against following. This is a religious place. You are not my followers. You can love me, I can love you …. Following means a subtle spiritual slavery. I don’t have any follower and I don’t want anybody to be a follower of anybody else either. The moment you start following someone, you are going to miss yourself. You will be lost in dark nights and dark clouds and it will become more and more difficult to find the way back home.

A MONK SAID TO TOZAN, “YOU ALWAYS TELL LEARNERS TO TAKE THE WAY OF THE BIRDS.

WHAT IS THIS WAY OF THE BIRDS?”

TOZAN SAID, “YOU MEET NOBODY ON IT.”

Source: Zen: The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest Download Now!
Chapter 1 – The way of the birds

People often make me feel stupid, how can I change this?

People often make me feel stupid, how can I change this?

The ordinary mind always throws the responsibility on somebody else. It is always the other who is making you suffer. Your wife is making you suffer, your husband is making you suffer, your parents are making you suffer, your children are making you suffer, or the financial system of the society, capitalism, communism, fascism, the prevalent political ideology, the social structure, or fate, karma, God…you name it!

People have millions of ways to shirk responsibility. But the moment you say somebody else — X, Y, Z — is making you suffer, then you cannot do anything to change it. What can you do? When the society changes and communism comes and there is a classless world, then everybody will be happy. Before it, it is not possible. How can you be happy in a society which is poor? And how can you be happy in a society which is dominated by the capitalists? How can you be happy with a society which is bureaucratic? How can you be happy with a society which does not allow you freedom?

Excuses and excuses and excuses — excuses just to avoid one single insight that “I am responsible for myself. Nobody else is responsible for me; it is absolutely and utterly my responsibility. Whatsoever I am, I am my own creation.” This is the meaning of the sutra.

Drive all blame into one

And that one is you.

Once this insight settles:

“I am responsible for my life — for all my suffering, for my pain, for all that has happened to me and is happening to me — I have chosen it this way; these are the seeds that I sowed and now I am reaping the crop; I am responsible — once this insight becomes a natural understanding in you, then everything else is simple. Then life starts taking a new turn, starts moving into a new dimension. That dimension is conversion, revolution, mutation — because once I know I am responsible, I also know that I can drop it any moment I decide to. Nobody can prevent me from dropping it.

Can anybody prevent you from dropping your misery, from transforming your misery into bliss? Nobody. Even if you are in a jail, chained, imprisoned, nobody can imprison YOU; your soul still remains free. Of course you have a very limited situation, but even in that limited situation you can sing a song. You can either cry tears of helplessness or you can sing a song. Even with chains on your feet you can dance; then even the sound of the chains will have a melody to it.

Next sutra: Be grateful to everyone

Atisha is really very very scientific. First he says: Take the whole responsibility on yourself. Secondly he says: Be grateful to everyone. Now that nobody is responsible for your misery except you — if the misery is all your own doing, then what is left?

Be grateful to everyone

Because everybody is creating a space for you to be transformed — even those who think they are obstructing you, even those whom you think are enemies. Your friends, your enemies, good people and bad people, favorable circumstances, unfavorable circumstances — all together they are creating the context in which you can be transformed and become a Buddha. Be grateful to all — to those who have helped, to those who have hindered, to those who have been indifferent. Be grateful to all, because all together they are creating the context in which Buddhas are born, in which you can become a Buddha.

Osho, The Book of Wisdom, Talk #5

YOU HAVE TOLD US THAT THE MIND BECOMES MORE AND MORE QUIET IF WE MEDITATE REGULARLY

YOU HAVE TOLD US THAT THE MIND BECOMES MORE AND MORE QUIET IF WE MEDITATE REGULARLY. LAST YEAR, WHEN I WAS LIVING IN EUROPE OUTSIDE OF A COMMUNE, THOUGHTS BECAME STRONGER AND STRONGER DURING MY MEDITATIONS UNTIL I BEGAN TO DREAD SITTING.

NOW THAT I AM WITH YOU AGAIN, THIS PROBLEM HAS GONE AWAY. BUT I WONDERED: HOW CAN ONE BE A SANNYASIN FOR TEN YEARS, MEDITATING EVERY DAY, AND HAVE A MIND WHICH BECOMES MORE AND MORE NOISY?

Sagarpriya, the question you have asked has many implications. First, one has to understand that your mind is very ancient — twelve years are nothing compared to the mind’s history; it is the history of the whole universe from the very beginning.

It has been working so long, so efficiently that scientists say they have not yet been able to create a computer which can compete with human mind. And human mind is placed in a small space, in your skull; their computers are placed in big rooms. One scientist has calculated that it would need almost a one square mile space for a computer comparable to the human mind. Human mind is a miracle.

Sitting with me, you are sitting with a greater miracle. You are sitting with no-mind. Naturally, silence becomes easier; meditation comes on its own, just like a cool breeze. When you are left alone, your mind is all that you have. Unless your meditation goes to such depths that you have something more valuable than the mind, this problem will continue to happen.

With me you can have a glimpse, just for a moment. And that glimpse creates the longing to have that moment stretched to eternity. It is so peaceful, so cool, so calm, who would not like it?

But as you go back into the world, there are just computers walking all around; you have to communicate with computers. One physiologist has defined man’s body as nothing but a mechanism to facilitate the mind’s functioning. You think you are carrying the mind. The physiologist is saying just the opposite: it is the mind that is carrying you; your whole body is functioning just for the mind’s sake.

So the moment you go into the world — this is not part of the world; we have been trying to create small islands where mind as a computer is no longer required. But in the world you will need the mind. And the problem will continue, Sagarpriya, until you have something more than mind. Just having a glimpse of silence is not enough.

You need a centering, you need a realization, you need exactly enlightenment — only then can you remain in the world, without your mind functioning unless you want to use it.

Mind is a tremendously valuable mechanism, one of the greatest miracles in biology, in the evolution of man. Mind is simply unbelievable, the way it works… because you don’t know anything about it, although it is your mind. You don’t know how it accumulates millions of memories.

The scientists have calculated that a single man’s mind can contain all the libraries of the world. He can memorize everything that has been ever written, down the ages. That is the capacity; you may use it, you may not use it.

And you don’t know about the libraries. Just the British Museum Library has enough books that if you go on putting one book by the side of the other, just as you put them on the book shelf in the library, it will take three rounds of the whole world. And that is only one library! Moscow has perhaps a bigger library, and all the big universities of the world have similar libraries. Just India has one hundred universities with tremendously big libraries.

And the very idea that a single human mind has the capacity to memorize all that is written in all the books that are in existence in the whole world… it simply baffles, it looks unbelievable.

You don’t know what your mind is doing for you. Your mind is regulating everything in your body. Otherwise, how do you think that for seventy or eighty years, or even a hundred years — and there are people who have even passed that; they have reached their one hundred and fiftieth birthday, and there are a few hundred people in the Soviet Union who have passed the age of one hundred and eighty.

Scientists say there is no reason for the body to die for at least three hundred years. It is just an old hypnosis, autohypnosis, which has made the idea prevalent that you have only seventy years to live. It goes so deep in your consciousness that by the seventieth year you start thinking you are sinking, you are gone. Read more

Yoga: the Growth of Consciousness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OSHO, Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy

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

Children, as they are, are never focused; their consciousness is open from all sides.

Concentration is a choice. It excludes all except its object of concentration; it is a narrowing. If you are walking on the street, you will have to narrow your consciousness in order to walk. You cannot ordinarily be aware of all that is happening because if you are aware of everything that is happening you will become unfocused. So concentration is a need. Concentration of the mind is a need in order to live–to survive and exist. That is why every culture, in its own way, tries to narrow the mind of the child.

Children, as they are, are never focused; their consciousness is open from all sides. Everything is coming in, nothing is being excluded. The child is open to every sensation, every sensation is included in his consciousness.

And so much is coming in! That is why he is so wavering, so unstable. A child’s unconditioned mind is a flux–a flux of sensations–but he will not be able to survive with this type of mind. He must learn how to narrow his mind, to concentrate.

The moment you narrow the mind you become particularly conscious of one thing and simultaneously unconscious of so many other things. The more narrowed the mind is, the more successful it will be. You will become a specialist, you will become an expert, but the whole thing will consist of knowing more and more about less and less.

The narrowing is an existential necessity; no one is responsible for it. As life exists, it is needed, but it is not enough. It is utilitarian, but just to survive is not enough; just to be utilitarian is not enough. So when you become utilitarian and the consciousness is narrowed, you deny your mind much of which it was capable. You are not using the total mind, you are using a very small part of it.

And the remaining — the major portion — will become unconscious.

In fact, there is no boundary between conscious and unconscious. These are not two minds. “Conscious mind” means that part of the mind that has been used in the narrowing process. “Unconscious mind” means that portion that has been neglected, ignored, closed. This creates a division, a split. The greater portion of your mind becomes alien to you. You become alienated from your own self; you become a stranger to your own totality.

A small part is being identified as your self and the rest is lost. But the remaining unconscious part is always there as unused potentiality, unused possibilities, unlived adventures. This unconscious mind–this potential, this unused mind–will always be in a fight with the conscious mind; that is why there is always a conflict within.

Everyone is in conflict because of this split between the unconscious and the conscious. But only if the potential, the unconscious, is allowed to flower can you feel the bliss of existence; otherwise not.

If the major portion of your potentialities remains unfulfilled, your life will be a frustration. That is why the more utilitarian a person is, the less he is fulfilled, the less he is blissful. The more utilitarian the approach– the more one is in business life–the less he is living, the less he is ecstatic. The part of the mind that cannot be made useful in the utilitarian world has been denied.

The utilitarian life is necessary but at a great cost: you have lost the festivity of life. Life becomes a festivity, a celebration, if all your potentialities come to a flowering; then life is a ceremony. That is why I always say that religion means transforming life into a celebration. The dimension of religion is the dimension of the festive, the nonutilitarian.

The utilitarian mind must not be taken as the whole. The remaining, the greater–the whole mind–should not be sacrificed to it. The utilitarian mind must not become the end. It will have to remain there, but as a means. The other–the remaining, the greater, the potential–must become the end. That is what I mean by a religious approach.

With a nonreligious approach, the businesslike mind, the utilitarian, becomes the end. When this becomes the end, there is no possibility of the unconscious actualizing the potential; the unconscious will be denied. If the utilitarian becomes the end, it means that the servant is playing the role of the master.

Intelligence, the narrowing of the mind, is a means toward survival, but not toward life. Survival is not life.

Survival is a necessity–to exist in the material world is a necessity–but the end is always to come to a flowering of the potential, of all that is meant by you. If you are fulfilled completely, if nothing remains inside in seed form, if everything becomes actual, if you are a flowering, then and only then can you feel the bliss, the ecstasy of life.

The denied part of you, the unconscious part, can become active and creative only if you add a new dimension to your life–the dimension of the festive, the dimension of play.

So meditation is not a work, it is a play. Praying is not a business, it is a play. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal–peace, bliss–but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself.

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

The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment

The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment

Do at least one meditation every day. Choose any meditation, but persist with one method; don’t go on changing. Whether results come or not, go on persisting in it. Results certainly come; all that is needed is patience. Methods don’t work. What really works is patience. Methods are devices to help you to remain patient and open.

If a person simply sits in his room for one hour every day doing nothing — no method, no technique, just sitting there — if he sits long enough it is going to happen. All meditations are just explanations for people who cannot just sit, rationalisations for people who cannot allow themselves to just sit. They need something, so when they think they are doing meditations they can allow themselves a one-hour gap, otherwise they won’t allow. In fact meditation is nothing. It is simply waiting, resting, a state of no action… and that is our natural state.

Think of the child in the mother’s womb, doing nothing. That is a nine-month meditation marathon. And the child is utterly happy. In fact, because of that blissfulness, one always feels a suffering in life. Compared to it whatsoever happens in life falls short. Although consciously you have forgotten about it, unconsciously it persists as a nostalgia. We know in some subtle way, our body knows, that there was a time when all was just bliss. But you were not doing anything in the womb; you were in a state of no action — ‘wu-wei’. You were just there. That’s what meditation is all about: again creating a womb situation.

So close your doors, sit silently; even that will do. But make it a point that one hour has to be given every day. And results won’t pop up immediately, because we have learned habits of action and they have become so deep-rooted that even when you are sitting, you find some ways to do something. At least you can go on changing your posture, you can think of a thousand and one things. You can have dreams. You can wonder ‘Who is this child crying? Why? Why is this dog barking?’ Or you can create subtle mechanisms in the body to distract you. Maybe an ant is creeping on your leg or there is pain and you have to change the posture. These are nothing but tricks, strategies of the mind to keep you occupied, because the mind dies utterly if there is no occupation. The mind is occupation. Meditation means a state of no occupation.

So if you like any method, you can do it; if you don’t, just sit. Twenty-three hours are yours; one hour give to me.

And finally you will see that only that one hour has been saved; all the other twenty-three hours have gone down the drain.

You have to put the energy into your earning because you have to come forever, so settle things. But one hour for meditation, mm? that will be a contact with me, a connection, and it will rejuvenate you every day. It will go on creating new spaces for you. But don’t hanker for them and don’t expect them. Don’t even think about them. When they happen say ‘thank you’ to the sky and forget all about it.

And don’t for a single moment have the idea in your mind ‘Now it has happened it has to happen every day.’ Once you desire a repetition you are getting into trouble; it will not happen again. It happens only in an innocent mind. It happens only when there was no expectation, no desire, no action, no occupation, just a simple passivity. One was, nothing else — a pure being, a naked, bare being. One was just breathing, one was aware.

So give one hour to meditation and put your energies into the work and come back as soon as you can.

Source: OSHO

Seeds of Wisdom

I too am a farmer and I sowed some seeds. They sprouted and now flowers have come to them. My whole life is filled with the fragrance of these flowers and because of this fragrance now I am in a different world. This fragrance has given me a new birth, and now I am no longer that which is seen by ordinary eyes.

Seeds of Wisdom

The unseen and the unknown have flung open their closed doors, and I am seeing a world which is not seen through the eyes, and I am hearing music which ears are not capable of hearing. Whatsoever I have found and known is eager to flow just as the mountain waterfalls and springs flow and rush towards the ocean.

Remember, when the clouds are full of water they have to shower. And when the flowers are filled with fragrance they have to give off their fragrance freely to the winds. And when a lamp is lit, the light is bound to radiate from it.
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CAN PROBLEMS BE SOLVED THROUGH THINKING?

Yes, certain problems can be solved through thinking — only those problems which are created by thinking can be solved by it. But no real problem can be solved by it, no lived problem can be solved by it. It is not created by it; it is there in life itself. Thinking will not be of much help. Only in one way can thinking help you, and that is that through thinking and thinking and thinking, you will stumble upon the truth that thinking is futile. And the moment you realize that thinking is futile for existential problems, it has helped you in a way. It is through thinking that you have come to this realization.

But problems which are created by thinking can be solved by thinking itself. For example, a mathematical problem: it can be solved by thinking, because the whole mathematics is created by thinking. For example, if there is no man on earth, will there be mathematics? There will be no mathematics. With the disappearance of human mind, mathematics will disappear. There is no mathematics in life and existence. In the garden, trees are there, but when you count ONE, TWO, THREE, three trees are not there, because the THREE is a mental thing. The trees are there, but the figures are not there. The figure three is in your mind. If you are not there, the trees will be there, but not three trees, only trees. The THREE is a quality given by the mind, it is a projected quality.

Mind creates mathematics, so any problem of mathematics will be solved by mind, it will be solved by thinking. Remember, you cannot solve a mathematical problem through non-thinking. No meditation will be of help, because meditation will dissolve the mind, and with the mind the whole mathematics will dissolve. So there are problems which are created by the mind; they can be solved. But there are problems which are not created by the mind, but are existential. Those problems cannot be solved by the mind. You will have to move deep in existence itself.

For example, love. It is an existential problem. You cannot solve it by thinking; rather, you will get more puzzled. The more you think, the less you will be in touch with the source of the problem. Meditation will be of help. It will give you insight, it will lead you to the unconscious roots of the problem. If you think about it, you will remain on the surface.

So remember, life problems cannot be solved by thinking. On the contrary, really, because of too much thinking you are missing all solutions, and more problems are created. For example, death. Death is not a problem created by thinking; you cannot solve it by thinking. Whatsoever you think, how can you solve it? You can console, and you can think that consolation is a solution — it is not. You can deceive yourself; that’s possible through thinking. You can create explanations, and through explanations you can think that you have solved it. You can escape the problem through thinking, but you cannot solve it. And see the distinction clearly.

For example, death is there. Your beloved dies, or your friend, or your daughter — the death is there. Now what can you do? You can think about it. You can think and you can say that the soul is immortal — because you have read it. In the Upanishads it is said that the soul is immortal, only the body dies. You don’t know it at all, because if you really know, there is no problem — or is there a problem? If you really know that the soul is immortal, then death has not occurred; there is no problem at all. But the problem is there: death has occurred, and you are disturbed and deep in sorrow. Now you want to escape this sorrow. Now somehow you want to forget this sorrow.

You can take the explanation that the soul is immortal — now this is a trick. Not that the soul is not immortal — I am not saying that — but for you this is a trick. You are trying to deceive yourself. You are in sorrow, and now you want to escape this sorrow, so this explanation will be helpful. Now you can console yourself that the soul is immortal, no one dies, only the body — just as if one changes the clothes, or one changes the abode — so from one house to another the soul has gone. You can go on thinking, but you don’t know anything about it. You have heard, you have collected information; but through these explanations you will be at ease. You can forget the death.

Really this is no solution to the problem. Nothing has been solved. The next day someone else will die and the same problem will be there. Again someone will die and the same problem will be there. And deep down you know that you will have to die. You cannot escape death — and the fear is there. But you can go on postponing, and you can go on escaping through explanations. This won’t do.

Death is an existential problem. You cannot solve it through thinking. You can create only fake solutions. What to do then? Then there is another dimension — the dimension of meditation; not of thinking, not of mentation. You just encounter the situation.

Death has occurred. Your beloved is dead. Don’t move in thinking. Don’t bring the Upanishads and the Gita and the Bible. Don’t ask the Christs and Buddhas. Leave them alone. Death is there: face, encounter. Be with this situation totally. Don’t think about it. What can you think? You can only repeat old rubbish. The death is such a new phenomenon, it is so unknown, that your knowledge is not going to help in any way. So put aside your mind. Be in a deep meditation with death.

Don’t do anything, because what can you do which can be of any help? You don’t know. So be in ignorance. Don’t bring false knowledge, borrowed knowledge. Death is there; you be with it. Face death with total presence. Don’t move in thinking, because then you are escaping from the situation, you are becoming absent from here. Don’t think. Be present with the death.

Sadness will be there, sorrow will be there, a heavy burden will be on you — let it be there. It is part — part of life, and part of maturity, and part of the ultimate realization. Remain with it, totally present. This will be meditation, and you will come to a deep understanding of death. Then death itself becomes eternal life.

But don’t bring the mind and knowledge. Remain with death; then death will reveal itself to you, then you will know what death is. You will move into the inner mansions of it. Then death will take you to the very center of life — because death is the very center of life. It is not against life; it is the very process of life. But mind brings the contradiction that life and death are opposites. Then you go on thinking, and because the root is false, the opposition is false, you can never come to any conclusion which can be true and real.

Whenever there is a lived problem, be with the problem without your mind — that’s what I mean by meditation — and just being there with the problem will solve it. And if you have really been there, death will not occur to you again, because then you know what death is.

We never do this — never with love, never with death, never with anything that is authentically real. We always move in thoughts, and thoughts are the falsifiers. They are borrowed, not your own. They cannot liberate you. Only the truth which is your own can become your liberation. And you can only come to your own truth through a very silent presence. With any problem, that fails. Thinking will not solve the real problems, but thinking can solve unreal problems created by thinking itself — because those problems follow the rules of logic. Life doesn’t follow the rules of logic. Life has its own hidden laws, and you cannot force logic on them.

One point more about this: wherever you bring the mind, the mind dissects, analyzes. Reality is one, and mind always divides. And when you have dived a reality, you have falsified it. Now you can struggle for your whole life — nothing will be achieved, because basically the reality was one and the mind divided into two, and now you are working with the division.

For example, as I was saying, life and death are one, but for the mind they are two and death is the enemy of life. It is not, because life cannot exist without death. If life cannot exist without death, how can death be the enemy? It is the basic situation. It makes life possible. Life grows in it; it is the soul. Without it life is impossible. But mind, thinking, divides it and puts it as a polar opposite. Then you can go on thinking about. Whatsoever you think will be false, because in the beginning you have committed a sin — the sin of division.

Source: Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2
Chapter 12 – Enter this moment

Kundalini: The Awakening of the Life Force

Beloved OSHO

One reason is that any knowledge about kundalini or about esoteric paths of bioenergy — the inner paths of elan vital — is generalized. It differs from individual to individual; the root is not going to be the same. With A it will be different, with B it will be different, with C it will be different. Your inner life has an individuality, so when you acquire something through theoretical knowledge it is not going to help — it may hinder — because it is not about you. It cannot be about you. You will only know about yourself when you go within.

There are chakras, but the number differs with each individual. One may have seven, one may have nine; one may have more, one may have less. That is the reason why so many different traditions have developed. Buddhists talk of nine chakras, Hindus talk of seven, Tibetans talk of four — and they are all right!

The root of kundalini, the passage through which kundalini passes, is also different with each individual. The more you go in, the more individual you are. For instance, in your body your face is the most individual part, and in the face the eyes are even more individual. The face is more alive than any other part of the body; that is why it takes on an individuality. You may not have noticed that with a particular age — particularly with sexual maturity — your face begins to assume a shape that will continue, more or less, for the whole life. Before sexual maturity the face changes much, but with sexual maturity your individuality is fixed and given a pattern, and now the face will be more or less the same.

The eyes are even more alive than the face, and they are so individual that every moment they change. Unless one attains enlightenment, the eyes are never fixed. Enlightenment is another kind of maturity.

With sexual maturity the face becomes fixed, but there is another maturity where the eyes become fixed. You cannot see any change in Buddha’s eyes: his body will grow old, he will die, but his eyes will continue to be the same. That has been one of the indications. When someone attains nirvana, the eyes are the only door by which outsiders can know whether the man has really attained it. Now the eyes never change. Everything changes, but the eyes remain the same. Eyes are expressive of the inner world.

But kundalini is still deeper.

No theoretical knowledge is helpful. When you have some theoretical knowledge, you begin to impose it on yourself. You begin to visualize things to be the way you have been taught, but they may not correspond to your individual situation. Then much confusion is created.

One has to feel the chakras, not know about them. You have to feel; you have to send feelers inside yourself. Only when you feel your chakras, and your kundalini and its passage, is it helpful; otherwise, it is not helpful. In fact, knowledge has been very destructive as far as the inner world is concerned. The more knowledge gained, the less the possibility of feeling the real, the authentic, things.

You begin to impose what you know upon yourself. If someone says, “Here is the chakra, here is the center,” then you begin to visualize your chakra at that spot; and it may not be there at all. Then you will create imaginary chakras. You can create; the mind has the capacity. You can create imaginary chakras, and then, because of your imagination, a flow will begin that will not be kundalini but will be simple imagination — a completely illusory, dreamlike phenomenon.

Once you can visualize centers and can create an imaginary kundalini, then you can create everything. Then imaginary experiences will follow, and you will develop a very false world inside you. The world that is without is illusory, but not so illusory as the one you can create inside.

All that is within is not necessarily real or true, because imagination is also within, dreams are also within. The mind has a faculty — a very powerful faculty — to dream, to create illusions, to project. That is why it is good to proceed in meditation completely unaware of kundalini, of chakras. If you stumble upon them, then it is good. You may come to feel something; only then, ask. You may begin to feel a chakra working, but let the feeling come first. You may feel energy rising up, but let the feeling come first. Do not imagine, do not think about it, do not make any intellectual effort to understand beforehand; no pre-notion is needed. Not only is it not needed, but it is positively harmful.

And another thing: kundalini and the chakras do not belong to your anatomy, to your physiology. Chakras and kundalini belong to your subtle body, to your sukshma sharira, not to this body, the gross body. Of course, there are corresponding spots. The chakras are part of your sukshma sharira, but your physiology and anatomy have spots that correspond to them. If you feel an inner chakra, only then can you feel the corresponding spot; otherwise you can dissect the whole body, but nothing like chakras will be found.

Source: Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy
OSHO – Kundalini: The Awakening of the Life Force

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