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

Buddha replied, “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
Chapter 2 – OSHO (26 May 1974 am in Buddha Hall)

meditation is not a technique but an understanding. It cannot be taught; it can only be indicated. You cannot be informed about it because no information is really information. It is from the outside, and meditation comes from your own inner depths.

So search, be a seeker, and do not be a disciple. Then you will not be a disciple of some guru, but a disciple of the total life. Then you will not just be learning words. Spiritual learning cannot come from words but from the gaps, the silences that are always surrounding you. They are there even in the crowd, in the market, in the bazaar. Seek the silences, seek the gaps within and without, and one day you will find that you are in meditation.

Meditation comes to you. It always comes; you cannot bring it. But one has to be in search of it, because only when you are in search will you be open to it, vulnerable to it. You are a host to it. Meditation is a guest. You can invite it and wait for it. It comes to Buddha, it comes to Jesus, it comes to everybody who is ready, who is open and seeking.

But do not learn it from somewhere; otherwise you will be tricked. The mind is always searching for something easier. This becomes the source for exploitation. Then there are gurus and gurudoms, and spiritual life is poisoned.

The most dangerous person is the one who exploits someone’s spiritual urge. If someone robs you of your wealth it is not so serious, if someone fails you it is not so serious, but if someone tricks you and kills, or even postpones, your urge toward meditation, toward the divine, toward ecstasy, then the sin is great and unforgivable.

But that is being done. So be aware of it, and don’t ask anybody, “What is meditation? How do I meditate?” Instead, ask what the hindrances are, what the obstacles are. Ask why we aren’t always in meditation, where the growth has been stopped, where we have been crippled. And do not seek a guru because gurus are crippling. Anyone who gives you ready-made formulas is not a friend but an enemy.

Grope in the dark. Nothing else can be done. The very groping will become the understanding that will liberate you from darkness. Jesus said: “Truth is freedom.” Understand this freedom. Truth is always through understanding. It is not something that you meet and encounter; it is something you grow into. So be in search of understanding, because the more understanding you become, the nearer you will be to truth. And in some unknown, expected, unpredictable moment, when understanding comes to a peak, you are in the abyss. You are no more, and meditation is.

When you are no more, you are in meditation. Meditation is not more of you; it is always beyond you. When you are in the abyss, meditation is there. Then the ego is not; then you are not. Then the being is. That is what religions mean by God: the ultimate being. It is the essence of all religions, all searches, but it is not to be found anywhere ready-made. So be aware of anyone who makes claims about it.

Go on groping and don’t be afraid of failure. Admit failures, but do not commit the same failures again.

Once is all; that is enough. The person who goes on erring in the search for truth is always forgiven. It is a promise from the very depths of existence.

OSHO

Meditation is an insight that all goals are false. Meditation is an understanding that desires don’t lead anywhere. Seeing that…. And this is not a belief that you can get from me or from Buddha or from Jesus. This is not knowledge; you will have to see it. You can see it right now! You have lived, you have seen many motives, you have been in turmoil, you have thought about what to do, what not to do, and you have done many things. Where has it all led you? Just see into it! I’m not saying agree with me, I’m not saying believe in me. I’m simply making you aware of a fact that you have been neglecting. This is not a theory, this is a simple statement of a very simple fact. Maybe because it is so simple, that’s why you go on without looking at it. Mind is always interested in complexities, because something can be done with a complex thing. You cannot do anything with a simple phenomenon.

The simple is overlooked, the simple is neglected, the simple is ignored. The simple is so obvious you never look into it. You go on searching for complexities — the complexity has a challenge in it. The complexity of a phenomenon, of a problem, of a situation, gives you a challenge. In that challenge comes energy, friction, conflict: you have to solve this problem, you have to prove that you can solve this problem. When a problem is there you are thrilled by the excitement that there is a possibility to prove something. But what I am stating is a simple fact, it is not a problem. It gives you no challenge, it is simply there. You can look at it or you can avoid it. And it doesn’t shout; it is so simple. You cannot even call it a still, small voice within you; it does not even whisper. It is simply there — you can look, you may not look.

See it! And when I say, “See it,” I mean see it right now, immediately. There is no need to wait. And be quick when I say, “See it”! Do see it, but quickly, because if you start thinking, if you don’t see it quickly, immediately, in that split second then the mind comes in and the mind starts brooding, and the mind starts bringing thoughts, and the mind starts bringing prejudices. And you are in a philosophical state — many thoughts. Then you have to choose what is right and what is wrong, and speculation has started. You missed the existential moment.

The existential moment is right now. Just have a look, and that is meditation — that look is a meditation. Just seeing the facticity of a certain thing, of a certain state, is meditation. Meditation has no motive, hence there is no center to it. And because there is no motive and no center, there is no self in it. You don’t function from a center in meditation, you act out of nothingness. The response out of nothingness is what meditation is all about.

Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. It is a pure response to the present, it is not reaction. It acts not out of conclusions, it acts seeing the existential.

Watch in your life: there is a great difference when you act out of conclusions. You see a man, you feel attracted — a beautiful man, looks very good, looks innocent. His eyes are beautiful, the vibe is beautiful. But then the man introduces himself and he says, “I am a Jew” — and you are a Christian. Something immediately clicks and there is distance: now the man is no more innocent, the man is no more beautiful. You have certain ideas about Jews. Or, he is a Christian and you are a Jew; you have certain ideas about Christians — what Christianity has done to Jews in the past, what other Christians have done to Jews, how they have tortured Jews down the ages… and suddenly he is a Christian — and something immediately changes. This is acting out of conclusions, prejudices, not looking at this man — because this man may not be the man that you think a Jew has to be… because each Jew is a different kind of man, each Hindu is a different kind of man, so is each Mohammedan. You cannot act out of prejudices. You cannot act by categorizing people. You cannot pigeonhole people; nobody can be pigeonholed. You may have been deceived by a hundred communists, and when you meet the hundred and first communist don’t go on believing in the category that you have made in your mind: that communists are deceptive — or anything. This may be a different type of man, because no two persons are alike.

Whenever you act out of conclusions, it is mind. When you look into the present and you don’t allow any idea to obstruct the reality, to obstruct the fact, you just look into the fact and act out of that look, that is meditation.

Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening — it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative. Never act out of conclusions; those conclusions are your conditionings, your prejudices, your desires, your fears, and all the rest of it. In short, you are there!

You means your past. You means all your experiences of the past. Don’t allow the dead to overrule the living, don’t allow the past to influence the present, don’t allow death to overpower your life — that’s what meditation is. In short, in meditation you are not there. The dead is not controlling the living.

Meditation is a kind of experience which gives you a totally different quality to live your life. Then you don’t live like a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, Indian or German; you simply live as consciousness. When you live in the moment and there is nothing interfering, attention is total because there is no distraction — distractions come from the past and the future. When attention is total the act is total. It leaves no residue. It goes on freeing you, it never creates cages for you, it never imprisons you. And that is the ultimate goal of Buddha; that’s what he calls nirvana.

‘Nirvana’ means freedom — utterly, absolute, unobstructed. You become an open sky. There is no border to it, it is infinite. It is simply there… and then there is nothingness all around you, within and without. Nothingness is the function of a meditative state of consciousness. And in that nothingness is benediction. That nothingness itself is the benediction.

Source: OSHO

Meditation brings peace. Peace has its own power, but that is an altogether different phenomenon. The power that is created out of friction is violent, aggressive, male. The power — I am using the word because there is no other word — the power that comes out of peace, is feminine. It has a grace to it. It is passive power, it is receptivity, it is openness. It is not out of friction; that’s why it is not violent.

Buddha is powerful, powerful in his peace, in his silence. He is as powerful as a roseflower, he’s not powerful like an atom bomb. He’s as powerful as the smile of a child… very fragile, very vulnerable; but he’s not as powerful as a sword. He is powerful, as a small earthen lamp, the small flame burning bright in the dark night. It is a totally different dimension of power. This power is what we call divine power. It is out of non-friction.

Concentration is a friction: you fight with your own mind. You try to focus the mind in a certain way, towards a certain idea, towards a certain object. You force it, you bring it back again and again. It tries to escape, it runs away, it goes astray, it starts thinking of a thousand and one things, and you bring it again and you force it. You go into a self-fight. Certainly power is created; that power is as harmful as any other power, that power is as dangerous as any other power. That power will again be used to harm somebody, because the power that comes out of friction is violence. Something out of violence is going to be violent, it is going to be destructive. The power that comes out of peace, non-friction, non-fight, non-manipulation, is the power of a roseflower, the power of a small lamp, the power of a child smiling, the power of a woman weeping, the power that is in tears and in the dewdrops. It is immense but not heavy; it is infinite but not violent.

Concentration will make you a man of will. Meditation will make you an emptiness.

That’s what Buddha is saying to Sariputra. Prajnaparamita means exactly ‘meditation, the wisdom of the beyond’.

You cannot bring it but you can be open to it. You need not do anything to bring it into the world — you cannot bring it; it is beyond you. You have to disappear for it to come. The mind has to cease for meditation to be. Concentration is mind effort; meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is pure awareness, meditation has no motive in it.

Meditation is the tree that grows without a seed: that is the miracle of meditation, the magic, the mystery. Concentration has a seed in it: you concentrate for a certain purpose, there is motive, it is motivated. Meditation has no motive. Then why should one meditate if there is no motive?

Source: OSHO

Your mind is constantly projecting ? projecting itself. Your mind is constantly interfering with reality, giving it a color, shape and form which is not its own. Your mind never allows you to see that which is; it allows you to see only that which it wants to see.

Just twenty years ago, scientists used to think that our eyes, ears, nose and our other senses, and the mind, were nothing but openings to reality, bridges to reality. But within twenty years ? the last twenty years ? the whole understanding has changed. Now they say our senses and the mind are not really openings to reality but guards against it. Only two percent of reality ever gets through these guards into you; ninety-eight percent of reality is kept outside. And the two percent that reaches you and your being is no longer the same; it has to pass through so many barriers, it has to conform to so many mind things, that by the time it reaches you it is no longer itself.

Meditation means putting the mind aside so that it no longer interferes with reality and you can see things as they are. Why does the mind interfere at all? ? because the mind is created by society. It is society’s agent within you; it is not in your service, remember! It is your mind but it is not in your service; it is in a conspiracy against you. It has been conditioned by society; society has implanted many things in it. It is your mind, but it no longer functions as a servant to you; it functions as a servant to society.

If you are a Christian then it functions as an agent of the Christian church, if you are a Hindu then your mind is Hindu, if you are a Buddhist your mind is Buddhist. And reality is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist; reality is simply as it is. And you have to put these minds aside: the communist mind, the fascist mind, the Catholic mind, the Protestant mind….

There are three thousand religions on the earth ? big religions and small religions and very small sects and sects within sects ? three thousand in all. So there exist three thousand minds, types of mind ? and reality is one, and God is one, and truth is one! Meditation means: put the mind aside and watch. The first step ? love yourself ? will help you tremendously. By loving yourself you will have destroyed much that society has implanted within you. You will have become freer from the society and its conditioning.

And the second step is: watch ? just watch. Buddha does not say what has to be watched ? everything! Walking, watch your walking. Eating, watch your eating. Taking a shower, watch the water, the cold water falling on you, the touch of the water, the coldness, the shiver that goes through your spine ? watch everything, today, tomorrow, always.

A moment finally comes when you can watch even your sleep. That is the ultimate in watching. The body goes to sleep and there is still a watcher awake, silently watching the body fast asleep. That is the ultimate in watching. Right now just the opposite is the case: your body is awake but you are asleep. Then you will be awake and your body will be asleep. The body needs rest but your consciousness needs no sleep. Your consciousness is consciousness; it is alertness, that is its very nature.

Osho: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 5, Chapter 5

Meditation is a simple process
Of watching your own mind.
Not fighting with the mind
Not trying to control it either
Just remaining there, a choiceless witness.
Whatsoever passes you simply take note of it
With no prejudice for or against.
You don’t call it names
That this should not come to my mind
That this is an ugly thought and
This is a very beautiful and virtuous thought.
You should not judge
You should remain non-judgmental
Because the moment you judge, you lose meditation.
You become identified.
Either you become a friend or you become a foe.
You create relationships.
Meditation means
Remaining unrelated with your thought process
Utterly unrelated, cool, calm
Watching whatsoever is passing.
And then a miracle happens:
Slowly slowly one becomes aware
That less and less thoughts are passing.
The more alert you are, the less thoughts pass
The less alert you are, the more thoughts pass.
It is as if traffic depends on your awareness.
When you are perfectly aware
Even for a single moment, all thinking stops.
Immediately, there is a sudden stop
And the road is empty, there is no traffic.
That moment is meditation.

Slowly slowly those moments come more and more
Those empty spaces come again and again
And stay longer.
And you become capable of moving easily
Into those empty spaces with no effort.
So whenever you want you can move
Into those empty spaces with no effort.
They are refreshing, rejuvenating
And they make you aware of who you are.
Freed from the mind you are freed
From all ideas about yourself.
Now you can see who you are without any prejudice.
And to know oneself
Is to know all that is worth knowing.
And to miss self-knowledge is to miss all.
A man may know everything in the world
But if he does not know himself
He is utterly ignorant
He is just a walking Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Freedom without awareness is only an empty idea.
It contains nothing.
One cannot be really free without being aware
Because your unconscious goes on dominating you
Your unconscious goes on pulling your strings.
You may think, you may believe that you are free
But you are not free, you are just a victim
Of natural forces, blind forces.

So there are two types of people. The majority
Follows the tradition, the society, the state.
The orthodox people, the conventional
The conformists ? they follow the crowd
They are not free.
And then there are a few rebellious spirits
Drop-outs, bohemians, artists
Painters, musicians, poets;
They think they are living in freedom
But they only think. Just by rebellion
Against the tradition you don’t become free.
You are still under the rule of natural instincts.
You are possessed by lust, by greed, by ambitions.
And you are not a master of these things
You are a slave. Hence I say
Freedom is only possible through awareness.
Unless one transforms ones unconsciousness
Into consciousness there is no freedom.

And that is where only very few people
Have succeeded ? a Jesus, a Lao Tzu
A Zarathustra, a Buddha
Just a few people
Who can be counted on one’s fingers.
They have really lived in freedom
Because they lived out of awareness.

That has to be the work for every seeker:
To create more and more awareness.
Then freedom comes of its own accord.
Freedom is the fragrance of the flower of awareness.

Osho: Eighty Four Thousand Poems, Chapter 5

Question: Beloved master, Over the past five years I’ve spent many weeks in isolation at dharmagiri, practicing vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka. I’ve never experienced such pain, suffering and doubt ever before. Presently I feel very exhausted, tired, yearning deeply to connect with my heart. My interest in the meditation practice is passing away. Beloved master, is this type of meditation practice necessary? Is it helpful? Can awareness and celebration alone pierce to the depth of the mind and dissolve the darkest nights?

Osho: Sagaresh, the vipassana meditation was invented by Gautam Buddha, and for twenty-five centuries Buddhists have been torturing themselves. Now, who told you to go to Dharmagiri to S.N. Goenka, to learn a meditation for which the whole context is missing? The meditation was perfectly right for a man like Gautam Buddha. Always remember, everything is related, interdependent with a certain context.

A German poet, Heine, was lost in a forest for days. Utterly tired, exhausted, hungry, he could not find the way; neither could he find anyone who could show him the way. In the nights he was resting up on the trees; otherwise wild animals would destroy him. And there came the full-moon night. He had written many poems… the moon had been one of his most loved objects, and he had written beautiful songs about it.

But that night, tired and hungry and afraid, he looked at the full moon and he could not believe it – what he saw in the full moon he had never seen before. And he had been a lifelong moon gazer. That night he saw a loaf of bread! What you see depends on you. People see the faces of their loved ones, people see their dream girls in the moon, but nobody has ever seen a loaf of bread. But his experience was absolutely authentic – but only in his context.

I am reminding you of this because people tend to forget that life is a very interwoven, interdependent, cosmic whole. You cannot take a part out of it and keep it alive, meaningful. I will not tell you to do vipassana unless I can also give you the experience of Gautam Buddha. Poor Goenka cannot understand this. He is just a businessman. What does he understand about the context in which vipassana arose?

Gautam Buddha had lived in tremendous luxury, surrounded by beautiful girls, beautiful palaces. The whole night was a celebration; the day was for rest, the night for dances and drinking. Out of this experience he became tired. He had seen all the beautiful girls; there was nothing more to be seen. He had seen that every man and woman is just a skeleton, covered with a thin skin. Just think for a moment: here all of you are skeletons covered with thin skin! This body and its beauty fades very soon.

He had seen all that was possible in those days for a man of power and riches to see, but he could not find peace, contentment, silence. He could not find himself. Utterly frustrated, he moved out of the palace one night – because this life is going to end in a few days, or in a few years. It is not something to cling to. Each moment death is coming closer; before death grabs you, you have to figure out something which is eternal, which is immortal.

All that you see around you is made of the same stuff as dreams are. Do you think you are for the first time on the earth? On the same earth millions of people have come and simply disappeared into thin air. Scientists have calculated that the place you are occupying has been occupied by at least ten people before you. You are sitting on ten corpses! And don’t think much of yourself, because you cannot get out – you will be the eleventh. And remember, it is not a laughing matter for you.

Those ten corpses will laugh at you: ”Look, the poor fellow was thinking of great things and finally is flat on the pile of corpses.” Gautam Buddha’s search for truth, for himself, for the source of life which is eternal, cannot be the search of a poor man who is hungry, who is searching for a loaf of bread. But people have completely forgotten Gautam Buddha. They have taken his meditation out of context.

He could meditate because there was nothing else in the world to think about, to desire, to be ambitious for. The world was, in a way, finished the day he left his house; he never looked back. I am reminded of a beautiful story…. Buddha was afraid that if he went into the mountains of his own kingdom, his father’s armies would find him; he would not be able to escape. He was the only son of an old king, who was hoping that he would succeed him. And he had made a big kingdom for him.

So he immediately passed beyond the boundaries of his kingdom to the neighboring kingdom. And the king was very furious. He ordered the armies not to leave even a single inch unsearched: ”Look around, all over the country.”

Gautam Buddha was not found, but he was not aware that the kingdom he had entered belonged to a friend of his father. So the father informed this king and other kings surrounding his kingdom, ”You have to find my son. In my old age at least you can do this much for me; we have been friends.”

The neighboring king found Gautam Buddha and he said, ”If you are angry, if you have fought with your father… It happens. It is not something strange or unfamiliar; fathers and sons have always been fighting. Don’t be worried. I have only one daughter and no son – get married to my daughter and you will have two kingdoms together. Your father is old; he cannot live long.

And my kingdom is far bigger than your father’s. He is my friend and I have come with a request. You have everything to gain, nothing to lose. You get a beautiful wife, a great kingdom, and of course your own kingdom is there. You will be a greater king than me or your father because your kingdom will be bigger than the kingdoms we have. You will have two kingdoms together.”

Gautam Buddha said, ”You don’t understand the point. I have not fought with my father, I have not been angry with him, and I have not come here in search of a girl. I am not interested in a kingdom, howsoever big it is. But I would like to ask you a few questions; you are my father’s friend. First tell me, you say your girl is very beautiful – is this beauty going to remain forever? Will she not one day be old?”

The king said, ”You ask strange questions. Everybody becomes old.”

”And do you think,” Gautam Buddha asked, ”she will never die?” The king laughed. He said, ”You are hilarious. Everybody dies.”

Gautam Buddha said, ”I don’t want to get married with someone who is going to die.”

The king said, ”She is not going to die tomorrow.”

Gautam Buddha said, ”You cannot give any guarantee. Are you sure you will be alive tomorrow?”

The king said, ”I have never thought about it. I hope that I will be alive, but I cannot be certain.

But you are creating anxieties in my mind. I had come to take you to the palace and it seems you are trying to convince me to follow you to the mountains.”

Gautam Buddha said, ”It is better – there is still time, it is still light; maybe you have a few days more to live. Devote these few days to a search for something which cannot be taken away from you. Your youth will disappear, your beauty will disappear, your kingdom will one day belong to somebody else. And what does it matter, when you are dead, to whom your kingdom belongs, whether he is your son or somebody else’s son?”

The king said, ”You are a dangerous fellow. I don’t want to talk to you.”

He informed Gautam Buddha’s father, ”I have met your son; he is in the mountains in my kingdom. I tried hard, but he is very convincing. And he has created such anxiety in me that I have not slept since. I am continuously thinking of death – what is going to happen after death? What have I gained by having this big kingdom? I am a poor man inside. I have never looked into my own being; I am not even acquainted with myself. I request to you: don’t try to prevent him, let him go and let him search. What we have missed, perhaps we can hope he will find it.”

Gautam Buddha could sit silently, desireless, thoughtless, moving inwards, because the outside had lost all interest. He had seen it – that it is just a phenomenon, the way you see a film. But there are idiots who even seeing a film will cry, will weep, will laugh, because they will become identified and they will forget that there is nothing on the screen, it is just a projected film.

Our whole life is not much more than that, but to know it you have to go through it. Gautam Buddha had a great chance to experience life and see its futility. This gave him the opportunity to sit in deep silence, undisturbed. Vipassana was discovered in these moments. My own effort here is not to give you, Sagaresh, any meditation like vipassana directly.

This place is not a place of ascetics – people are enjoying everything. I want you to enjoy and to see the futility of it. I want to see how many times you become enlightened and how many times you become unenlightened. I know one day you will simply get tired and you will say, ”Finished!” Not finished like Nandan – she has started again. But she is going to be finished one day. When she says goodbye to her last boyfriend it will be possible for her to meditate; particularly a meditation like vipassana.

Otherwise you can sit with closed eyes and beautiful girls will harass you. That has been the experience, down the ages, of thousands of meditators: it is strange, the moment you sit to meditate, suddenly, from nowhere, such beautiful girls start coming. And you open your
eyes and there is nobody.

And not only girls. If you have not known money, thoughts of money; if you have not known power, thoughts of power; if you have not known what it means to be a celebrity, then a deep desire to become famous… And the mind will go on weaving a thousand and one thoughts and desires.

And so-called teachers like Goenka will go on teaching you, ”Don’t allow these thoughts in your mind.” And the more you push them away, the more they will come close to you. You will throw away one girl and you will find there is a queue of girls, and at the end of the queue is standing Sophia Loren. Now, naturally you think, ”Vipassana can be done later on.”

A man said to his friend, ”Last night was just the greatest experience of my life.”

The other asked, ”What happened?”

He said, ”I went fishing and I caught such big fish that I could not believe it. Even to carry one fish to the shore was difficult. And the whole night I was fishing.”

The other said, ”This is nothing. You are saying you had the greatest experience – the greatest experience happened to me. Last night when I dreamt, what I saw I could not believe. On one side was Marilyn Monroe, utterly nude; on the other side was Sophia Loren, utterly nude.” The other man could not contain himself. He said, ”Stop. Why did you not call me?

At such a moment! And what were you going to do with two such women? One is enough for you; one you should think of for your friend. You call me your best friend? – this is great friendship.” The man said, ”You haven’t heard the whole thing. I had gone to your home to find you, but your wife said you had gone fishing!”

If life has not been a rich experience – if it has been a repressive, religion-dominated, conditioned phenomenon – you cannot do vipassana. In twenty-five centuries, millions of people have been doing vipassana. How many have become Gautam Buddhas? My own analysis is very simple, but very significant: you should not repress anything in your life. Live a non-repressive, joyous life. Soon you will find all those joys and all those pleasures are empty.

Unless you have found through your own experience that pleasures are not pleasures, but simply toys to keep you ignorant, to keep you engaged… Once you have found that through your own experience – remember that is most fundamental; it has to be your own experience – then vipassana is the simplest meditation. You don’t have to go to any businessman to learn it.

Buddha had never gone to S.N. Goenka. These kind of people existed at that time too –
businessmen who were ready to teach you at a certain price. I have never met or seen Goenka, but I saw one of his interviews. He says that he met me in Madras. In my whole life I have been only once in Madras, and I remember perfectly, I have not met any Goenka.

He is simply lying. And his Dharmagiri is not very far away from here. If he wants to meet me he can come any day – perhaps a five-hour drive. But he does not have the guts, because I am very merciless. When I see a fox pretending to be a lion, then I do what needs to be done: expose the fox, take away the hypocrisy. He has not lived a life of love, he has not lived a life of pleasures; he has not lived at all that which can create the context in which vipassana is possible.

He is simply a refugee from Burma. And because Burma is a Buddhist country, everybody knows what vipassana is; just as every Christian knows the Christian prayer, every Buddhist knows vipassana. Coming from Burma he knew the structure, intellectually, of what vipassana is. And here he found many people searching for meditation.

And he does not create a situation in which to be associated with him becomes dangerous for you. He is a non-controversial businessman. You will not offend anybody if you go to Dharmagiri. But if you come here, you don’t see many Indians here. The reason is clear: to be associated with me in any way is to be condemned by the outside society. People start saying that you have also been hypnotized, you have also become corrupt.

Dharmagiri is safe, because he does not say to you, ”You have to drop tradition, you have to drop your conditioning, you have to get out of all the knowledge that has been forced upon you. Unless you are so clean, unconditioned, unorthodox – neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian – you will not be able to enter the world of meditation.” He does not say anything like that. You just enter vipassana as you are.

Nothing is demanded from you, that you are first to go through a fire to be purified, that you have to get rid of the society which is utterly polluted. I was surprised when I was in America: almost every week somebody would phone from San Francisco, somebody from New York, saying, ”We are coming from Bombay,” or, ”We are coming from Poona and we want to meet Shree Rajneesh.”

I told my secretary to tell those people, ”Shree Rajneesh has been there in Poona for seven years – couldn’t you manage to see him? He will come back again to Poona, you can see him then.” Strangely enough, not a single one has turned up. I have been here for two years. Those people who phoned – from Bombay, from Poona – they have not dared to enter the door. In America they were happy that nobody would know that they had been to see a dangerous man. Here the wife will start crying, the children will say, ”Papa, where are you going?” The neighbors will crowd around saying, ”Don’t do this. Just look at your old parents.” It will become a scene.

And you yourself deep down are such a coward that you believe in all the lies that have been spread. You never come here to check – who is being hypnotized? But the trouble is, people say, ”Once you are there you will become hypnotized, you will start saying the same things.” It is a very strange world.

One German sannyasin is here. He is an old, experienced journalist. He had come from STERN magazine to write of what was happening here. But he was a man of integrity; he reported exactly what was happening. They refused his report. They said, ”You have been hypnotized.” If you lie you are not hypnotized, if you say the truth you are hypnotized. They did not publish his article.

He insisted and finally they published it, but he had to change much in it. But he became so disgusted that he resigned and came back. And since then he has been here, he has been in America; he is again here. There are many writers who have had a strange experience: if they write just a positive account, factual, neither for nor against, nobody is ready to publish their books.

They say, ”These books won’t sell because they don’t have any sensation. Make them sensational.” But how to make them sensational? Lie, create fictions which do not exist, and publishers are ready and magazines are ready to publish them. And these books and these publishers and these magazines spread unfounded things all around the world. So people are so much afraid. But even to mention my name is dangerous.

One of my sannyasins who is a Nobel Prize winner asked the president of the Nobel Prize committee, the King of Norway, ”A man has written five hundred books and you have not taken any note of it.”

The King suggested to him, ”Remember never to mention his name. This time you did because you were not aware, but next time it will be dangerous for your job” – he has a big post – ”it will be dangerous for your reputation. You simply forget about this man.”

And he told me, ”I could not believe that he was not even ready to listen about you. He did not even enquire, just for manners’ sake.” On the contrary, from that day the King kept a certain distance from him. Whenever there was a meeting of the Nobel Prize committee he did not allow him to come close to him; he showed absolutely that a certain China wall had arisen between himself and the poor Nobel Prize winner.

And the only crime he had committed was that he had mentioned my name. Indira Gandhi, who was a very powerful woman, had at least six times made appointments to come here to see me, and every time, just one day before, a phone call would come, ”An emergency has arisen and the meeting has to be postponed.”

In fact, now the meeting is postponed forever! My secretary asked Indira Gandhi, ”Why do you do this? If you don’t want to come, we are not asking you to come. You ask us, that you want to come.”

She met me once in Delhi and she said, ”Since then that man’s eyes have been haunting me and I want to see him again. And whatever he has said has changed the whole of history. I want his advice on other problems.”

My secretary said, ”Then why do you go on canceling? – because this is absolute nonsense, that every time on the very day some emergency arises.”

She said, ”To be honest to you, there has been no emergency, just my colleagues, my cabinet stands in the way. Everybody says, ‘Don’t go there, you can even lose your prime ministership. There will be so much turmoil – just avoid.’”

… Just by going for a meeting with a man who has no power, who is not interested in politics! But I can understand, those politicians were right. If she had come here Mohammedans would have said, ”We are not going to vote for you”; Hindus would have said, ”That man has spoken against our VEDAS, we are not going to vote for you. That man has spoken against our shankaracharya.”

A powerful woman like Indira Gandhi is so cowardly that she cannot come when she wants to come, because of the fear that the voters may start objecting, ”You have been to a man for some advice. And any advice that man gives is going to be dangerous. In the first place you will be hypnotized.”

And she asked my secretary, an intelligent woman, well educated, ”Is it true that whoever goes to meet Shree Rajneesh becomes hypnotized?”

People like Goenka are non-controversial, kindergarten school teachers. They don’t understand the complexity of meditation. Vipassana comes in the end; you cannot begin with vipassana. To begin with vipassana you will have to go through what you are saying – the dark night of the soul. And you will not find the dawn anywhere.

The dark night will go on becoming longer and darker. It is a simple psychology: you are not prepared, you have not done your homework, and you have started a work which needs a
tremendous background of experience. They are all against me because I want you to live first as hotly as possible.

I used to go to Allahabad. One of my sannyasins, Jayantibhai, would take me from the airport or from the railway station, and suddenly on a bridge he would accelerate the speed of the car. And I would say, ”What is the matter?”

He said, ”The matter is that board.”

Because I had been telling him again and again, ”That board is very religious. You should once in a while go near the board and look at it.” It was an advertisement, but very beautiful. It said, ”Live a little hot. Sip a Gold Spot.”

I said, ”I am not concerned about Gold Spot, but live a little hot!” People live lukewarm. They live just at the minimum, because from that minimum they are protected from many dangers. If you don’t want to fall, crawl – you are safe! And that’s what you are doing in your life. I say live hotly while the season lasts. And this season will not last forever.

Don’t hesitate, because in that hesitation you are losing time. A roseflower does not hesitate to open in the early morning sun, knowing perfectly well that by the evening the petals will fall and not even a mark will remain behind. Whether that roseflower ever existed or not, it will be the same. But while the sun is rising and the morning breeze is welcoming to dance, the rose dances.

All the religions have destroyed your dance. They have made you crippled, they have destroyed your sensitivities. They have dulled your intelligence and then they say, ”Do vipassana.” A man who has lived hotly is bound to do vipassana – but in the evening. He has seen the day. It was beautiful, but it was ephemeral; it is gone. Now begins the search for that which comes and never goes.

One of the great Hindu scriptures is Badarayana’s sutras. The first sutra is: Athato brahma jigyasa – now the enquiry into the ultimate. That ”now” has been for almost two thousand years or more a problem – how to interpret it? Because this is the beginning. Books don’t begin from now. It seems as if something has preceded it.

And now there are many commentaries on Badarayana’s athato, but no one has got the point. The man was saying, ”You have lived hotly, you have loved deeply. You have done everything that you wanted to do, unrepressed, uninhibited. Now it is time for the enquiry into the ultimate. But only now. If you have not lived at the maximum, that which has been left unlived will go on lingering in your mind.

That which has been repressed will go on asking for your attention. Your heart and your mind will be pulled by the unlived, the repressed, the denied, the condemned, and you cannot sit silently.” Otherwise vipassana is not an effort, it is a very simple experience. After the whole hot day of life, when you see the futility of it all… you have to see. You cannot see from other people’s eyes; you have to see the futility with your own eyes. Then what is the problem? You sit silently, you settle silently within yourself, into your very interiority.

The word ‘vipassana’ simply means perceptivity, clarity, seeing directly into truth. But if something you always wanted – it may be a small thing – is there in your unconscious, it won’t allow your perception to be pure. It will try again and again, ”I am still unfulfilled.” First have the experience that you have denied yourself.

And all these religions have been teaching you to deny this, to deny that. They have driven the whole of humanity bananas; otherwise human beings are beautiful as they are. If they live naturally, one day they are going to ripen, one day they are going to mature. One day they are going to graduate from this so-called world of desires, ambitions, jealousies.

After that graduation, vipassana is not a doing. It is a non-doing. You simply sit silently and it starts showering over you as if the whole sky is rejoicing in your silence. One of the stories about Manjushri, a disciple of Gautam Buddha who became enlightened, depicts it correctly. He is sitting under his tree, silently, and flowers start showering on him. Those flowers are not visible, but they are fragrant, and they have tremendous power to transform your whole being.

Sagaresh, it was in a way good that you went into isolation at Dharmagiri practicing vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka. It has been a good experience. You say, ”I have never experienced such pain.” You deserved it. Why did you go there?

You say, ”I have never experienced such suffering and doubt ever before. Presently I feel exhausted, tired.” Very good. At least you are alive! Just a few days rest, a few days nourishment in my commune and all pain, all suffering, all doubt and all tiredness will disappear. If you have understood me correctly it has already disappeared. You will be dancing and singing and rejoicing.

We have so many meditations here, but I have put vipassana at the very end. First go through all other kinds of experiences, purifying, so that you can become capable of entering vipassana. People want to jump into paradise directly, and they don’t see the place where they are standing, that if they jump from there they will have multiple fractures. One has to reach to the steps and one has to move step by step, consciously, cautiously. It is a pilgrimage.

But this experience has been really good. You needed it. It will be easier now for you to see my arrangement of meditations. You are saying, ”My interest in the meditation practice is passing away.” Your interest in Dharmagiri should pass away, not in meditations. Just it is too fresh… the wound is open. Just wait, and in a few days you will be doing vipassana here. But here vipassana is a juicy experience; it is not dry.

I have a few criticisms against the vipassana that is being practiced in Buddhist lands. They have all made it very dry, desert-like; nothing blossoms, no greenery; everything is simply businesslike. I want you to learn meditation as a play, as playfulness. Your meditation and your love should be synonymous. And that’s what you are asking. You are asking, ”I am yearning deeply to connect with my heart.”

That guy, S.N. Goenka, has disconnected you from your heart, because in the Buddhist tradition there is no place for the heart. It is a very dry approach to reality. Buddha never even mentions the word ‘love’. He was so afraid that for twenty years continuously he did not allow women to be initiated into his commune – because women are impossible. They will bring some juice, whatever you do; something will start growing in the desert, some flowers.

It is impossible for a woman not to be the heart. It is very easy for the man not to be the heart. The woman is the heart and the man is the head. And once you deny women, then there are only dry heads – coconuts! My approach is, I never make any distinction, whether somebody is woman or man. Anybody who is a seeker of the path is welcome. Hence this is a totally different commune; such a commune has never existed before. Here you can sing and dance, here you can fall in love and fall out of love, there is no harm.

Life is accepted in its totality. And in this total acceptance arises the awareness that will enable you to meditate. And this meditation will be far richer than any vipassana of Gautam Buddha. This meditation may create songs in you, may create dances in you, may give a new impetus to creativity in all dimensions of life.

Your silence should not be the silence of a graveyard, your silence should be the silence of a garden. Once in a while a bird starts singing, but it does not disturb the silence, it deepens it. Once in a while the breeze comes with its song, passes through the pine trees, but it does not disturb the silence, it deepens it.

I do not teach you the desert. I teach you the garden, the garden of the heart. That is where, with great respect, I differ from Gautam Buddha. I love the man, but that does not mean I have to agree with everything done by the man. His meditation is heartless, and a meditation that is heartless is not of any worth. I want a meditation that can laugh, that can dance.

Sagaresh, you suffered well. This is what in the East people call the law of karma. You must have committed some grave sin in your past life; otherwise, why should you go to Dharmagiri? –Dharmagiri of all places! But in a way it is good. That evil act and its punishment is finished. Now you can start afresh.

I teach you a meditation which is totally different from anything that has ever been taught in the name of meditation. Now a few things just to relieve your pain and your suffering and your tiredness, and to help you to forget that you have been to Dharmagiri – you simply dreamt about it, there is no such place as Dharmagiri. This guy S.N. Goenka does not exist; it was just a nightmare.

A man parked his car on a street in New York. But when he returned he found that someone had smashed into the rear end of his car. On the windshield he found a note that read:

Dear Sir, I just smashed into your car. The people who saw the accident are watching me. They think I am writing down my name and address, so you can contact me regarding the damage. They are a bunch of idiots!

Hymie Goldberg is stopped in the street by a neatly dressed salesman who says, ”Sir, would you like to buy a toothbrush for ten dollars?”

”Ten dollars?” cries Hymie. ”That’s robbery!”

The salesman seems hurt. ”Well then,” he says, ”how about a nice piece of homemade chocolate cake for ten cents?” This seems fair, so Hymie hands ten cents to the man and unwrapping the cake takes a bite.

Suddenly he screams and spits out the mouthful. ”My God!” he shouts. ”This cake tastes like
shit.”

”It is,” replies the salesman. ”Wanna buy a toothbrush?”

Tired of being a Yuppie, Bogart decides to leave the city life and buy a small farm. He goes to a sale of farm animals and asks to buy a rooster.

”Out here,” says the salesman, ”we call them cocks.”

”Okay,” says Bogart, ”give me a cock. And can you sell me a hen?” he asks.

”Out here,” says the salesman, ”we call them pullets.”

”Okay, give me a pullet,” says Bogart. ”And what else do you have for sale?”

The salesman explains that he has a jackass for sale, so Bogart buys that too. As he is leaving, the salesman warns Bogart that sometimes the jackass stands still and won’t move until he is scratched between the ears. Sure enough, on his way home the jackass stops and does not move, and Bogart has forgotten what the salesman had said.

Grandma Faginbaum happens to be walking nearby and stops to ask if she can help. Just then
Bogart remembers about scratching the jackass between the ears. ”Ah, yes, you can help me,” says Bogart. ”Would you hold my cock and pullet while I scratch my ass?”

Source: OSHO

Meditation is a way of settling in oneself, at the innermost core of your being. Once you have found the center of your existence, you will have found both your roots and your wings.

The roots are in existence, making you a more integrated human being, an individual. And the wings are in the fragrance that is released by being in contact with existence. The fragrance consists of freedom, love, compassion, authenticity, sincerity, a sense of humor, and a tremendous feeling of blissfulness.

The roots make you an individual, and the wings give you the freedom to love, to be creative, to share unconditionally the joy that you have found. The roots and wings come together. They are two sides of one experience, and that experience is finding the center of your being.

We are continuously moving on the circumference, always somewhere else far away from our own being, always directed towards others. When all this is dropped, when all objects are dropped, when you close your eyes to all that is not you –even your mind, your heartbeats are left far behind – only a silence remains.

In this silence you will settle slowly into the center of your being, and then the roots will grow on their own accord, and the wings too. You need not worry about them. You cannot do anything about them. They come on their own.

You simply fulfill one condition: that is, to be at home – and the whole existence becomes a bliss to you, a benediction.

The inner revolution brings freedom and the only way to make oneself go through the inner revolution is meditation. Meditation simply means learning to forget all that you have learned. It is a process of deconditioning, a process of dehypnosis.

The society has burdened everybody with thousands of thoughts. Meditation simply helps you to come out of that world of thoughts, into a state of silence. It is a process of cleaning your slate completely, it is emptying all that has been forced and stuffed inside you.

Once you are empty, spacious, silent, clean, the revolution has happened, the sun has risen; then you live in its light! And to live in the light of your inner sun is to live rightly. In fact that is the only way to live. Others are only dying, just dying slowly, moving in a queue that goes on becoming shorter and shorter every moment, and any moment you may be the first in the queue. In fact everybody is trying to be first in the queue; a great desire to be the first everywhere.

The ordinary life is only called life – it is not. It is only so-called life. It is a process of gradual death or to be more accurate, a process of gradual suicide.

The moment you become silent and aware and clear and your inner sky is full of delight, you know the first taste of true life. One can call it god, one can call it enlightenment, one can call it liberation; the experience of truth, love, freedom, bliss – different names but the phenomenon is the same.

As you move above to the fourth center – that is the heart – your whole life becomes a sharing of love. The third center has created the abundance of love. By reaching to the third center in meditation, you have become so overflowing with love, with compassion, and you want to share. It happens at the fourth center, the heart. Thats why even in the ordinary world people think love comes out of the heart. For them it is just hearsay, they have heard it; they dont know it because they have never reached to their heart. But the meditator finally reaches to the heart. As he has reached to the center of his being – the third center – suddenly an explosion of love and compassion and joy and blissfulness and benediction has arisen in him with such a force that it hits his heart and opens the heart. The heart is just in the middle of all your seven centers – three centers below, three centers above. You have come exactly to the middle.

Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things…. Not everybody can be a painter – and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live! And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative. Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine. You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I dont know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is!

There are many different, even contradictory ideas, about what meditation is. Primary to the Osho approach is the need for the meditator to understand the nature of the mind, rather than fight with it.

Most of us most of the time are run by, dominated by our thoughts or feelings. It follows that we tend to think we are those thoughts and feeling. Meditation is the state of simply being, just pure experiencing, with no interference from the body or mind. It’s a natural state but one which we have forgotten how to access.

The word meditation is also used for what is, more accurately, a meditation method. Meditative methods, techniques or devices are means by which to create an inner ambience that facilitates disconnecting from the bodymind so one can simply be. While initially it is helpful to put time aside to practice a structured meditation method, there are many techniques that are practiced within the context of one’s everyday life – at work, at leisure, alone and with others.

Methods are needed only until the state of meditation – of relaxed awareness, of consciousness and centering – has become not just a passing experience but as intrinsic to one as, say, breathing.

OSHO