Question – How can a meditator know that he is going higher and deeper, or if he is stuck somewhere?

Osho – It is very simple. First, there are qualities which grow as meditation deepens. For example, you start feeling loving for no reason at all. Not the love that you know, in which you have to fall — not falling in love. But just a quality of lovingness, not only to human beings. As your meditation deepens, your lovingness will start spreading beyond humanity to animals, to trees, even to the rocks, to the mountains.

If you feel that something is left out of your love — that means you are stuck. Your lovingness should spread to the whole existence. As your meditation goes higher, your lower qualities will start dropping. You cannot manage both. You cannot be angry as easily as you have always been. Slowly, slowly, it becomes impossible to be angry. You cannot deceive, cheat, exploit, in any way. You cannot hurt. Your behavior pattern will be changing with your inner consciousness change.

You will not fall into those sad moments that you usually fall into — frustrations, failures, sadness, a feeling of meaninglessness, anxieties, anguish; all these are slowly, slowly, going to become foreigners. A moment comes when even if you want to be angry, you will find it impossible; you have forgotten the language of anger. Laughter will become easier. Your face, your eyes, will be aglow with some inner light. You will feel yourself that you have become light, as if gravitation does not function as it used to function before. You have lost heaviness, because all these qualities are very heavy — anger, sadness, frustration, cunningness. All these feelings are very heavy. You don’t know, but they are making you heavy-hearted and they also make you hard.

As meditation grows you will feel yourself becoming soft, vulnerable — just as laughter will become easy to you, tears will also become easy to you. But these tears will not be of sadness or sorrow. These tears will be of joy, blissfulness; these tears will be of gratitude, of thankfulness. These tears will say what words cannot; these tears will be your prayers.

And for the first time you will know that tears are not only to express your pain, your misery, your suffering; that’s how we have used them. But they have a far greater purpose to fulfill: they are immensely beautiful when they come as an expression of ecstasy.

And you will find, on the whole, expansion — that you are expanding, you are becoming bigger and bigger. Not in the sense of the ego but in the sense that your consciousness is spreading, that it is taking people within its area, that your hands are becoming bigger and hugging far away people, that distances are falling away, that even far away stars are close, because your consciousness now has wings.

And these things are so clear and so certain that a question or doubt never arises. If a doubt arises that means you are stuck; then be more alert, then put forth your energy more intensively in meditation. But if these things come without any question….

This is a strange world: if you are miserable, if you are suffering, nobody says to you that somebody has brainwashed you, somebody has hypnotized you. But if you are smiling, joyously dancing on the street, singing a song, people will be shocked. They will say, “What are you doing? Somebody has brainwashed you — are you hypnotized, or have you gone mad?”

In this strange world suffering is accepted as natural. Anguish is accepted as natural. Why? Because whenever you are in suffering and whenever you are miserable you make the other person feel happy that he is not so miserable, he is not so unhappy. You give him a chance to show sympathy to you, and sympathy costs nothing.

But if you are so blissful, so happy, then that man cannot feel himself happier than you; you are putting him down. He feels something is wrong with him. He has to condemn you, otherwise he has to think about himself, which he is afraid to do. Everybody is afraid to think about himself because that means changing, transforming, going through some processes.

It is easy to accept people with sad faces, it is very difficult to accept people with laughter. It should not be so. In a better world, in a world with more conscious people, it should not be so, it should be just the opposite — that when you are suffering people will start asking you, “What is the matter, what has gone wrong?” And when you are happy and you are dancing by the side of the road, if somebody passes by he may join you, he may dance with you, or he may at least feel happy seeing you dance. But he will not say you are mad, because dancing is not mad, singing is not mad, joy is not mad; misery is mad. But madness is accepted.

With your meditation developing you have to be aware that you will be creating so many critics around you who will say, “Something is going wrong with you. We have seen you smiling when you were sitting alone. Why were you smiling? This is not sane. “To be sad is sane, but to be smiling, that is not sane.

People will find it hard if they insult you and you don’t react. You simply say `thank you’ and go on your way. This is hard to take because it deeply insults the person’s ego. He wanted to drag you down into the gutter and you refused; now he is alone in the gutter. He cannot forgive you.

So if these things start happening you can be certain you are on the right path. And soon people of understanding, people of experience, will start finding the changes in you. They will start asking you what has happened to you, how it has happened to you. “We would also like it to happen to us.” Who wants to be miserable? Who wants to remain continuously in inner torture?

As your meditation deepens all these things are going to happen: somebody will condemn you, somebody will think you are mad, somebody who has some understanding will ask you, “What has happened to you and how can it happen to me?” You remain centered, rooted, grounded in your being — whatsoever happens around does not matter. You have to become the center of the cyclone. And you will know when you have become the center of the cyclone. There is no need to ask, “How will we know?” How do you know when you have a headache? You simply know.

One of my teachers in school was a very strange man. The first day in his class he said to us, “Remember one thing: headache I don’t believe, stomachache I don’t believe, I believe only things which I can see. So if you want freedom from school any day, don’t make the excuse of a headache, a stomachache, et cetera; you have to bring something real to show me.”

And he was thought to be a very strict man. It was very difficult to get even one hour’s leave. Just in front of his house there were two kadamba trees — very beautiful trees. At evening time he used to go for a walk and it would be almost dark when he was returning.

So the first day I said, “It has to be settled.” I climbed one of the trees and when he came underneath the tree, I dropped a stone on his head. He screamed, shouted. I came down. I said, “What is the matter?”
He said, “It hurts, and you are asking what is the matter”

I said, “You have to show it. Unless you show it to me I am not going to believe it. I am your student! And never mention this to anybody — I don’t want you tomorrow to call me to the principle’s office because you will be in trouble. You will have to show your hurt, you will have to put it on the table, otherwise it is just fiction; you have invented it; it is imagination. Why should I climb the tree in front of your house? I have never done that in my whole life. Suddenly have I gone mad?”

He said, “Listen, I understand what you want me to understand, but don’t tell anybody. If you have a headache I will accept it, but don’t tell anybody because that is my lifelong principle. I am making an exception.”

I said, “That’s okay. I don’t bother about anybody else. Just understand that when I raise my hand, either it is a headache, or it is a stomachache — something invisible. You have to let me go.”

The whole class was surprised: “What is the matter? The moment you move your hand, he simply says ‘Get out! Get out immediately!’ And the whole day you are free from his torture. But what is the significance of that hand movement, what does it mean? And why does he get so affected?”

You will know; it is far deeper than a headache, and far deeper than a stomachache, far deeper than heartache. It is soul-ache; you will know it.

Source – Osho Book “Last Testament Vol 6″

Question – Having never had the opportunity to truly fall in love, to know that surrender, is that keeping me from truly falling in love with you, being in that mad state of love? Is it enough just to feel quiet love, respect — though not necessarily that odd form of insanity?

Osho – Don’t be worried. Because you must be comparing yourself with others, that creates the problem. This is YOUR odd kind of insanity.

Everybody has his own way of being in love. Never compare it. Somebody may be dancing, may be ecstatic and singing, and somebody else may be sitting silently with closed eyes. Both are mad in their own ways. Don’t think that you are not mad and the one who is dancing is mad, because one who is dancing will think, “Are you mad? You have fallen in love and are still sitting with closed eyes? What are you doing there? Dance!”

Everybody has his own way of madness also. Just as nobody has the same face as you, nobody has the same eyes as you, nobody has the same fingerprints as you — nobody has the madness that you have. Everything is unique.

Everybody falls in love in his own way. And it is good; it has to be so. Never compare. With comparison the trouble arises. Then you feel that you are missing something. Your love is calm and quiet and respectful. Then you start thinking there must be something wrong. Why are you not so passionately in love? Why are you not like a storm, why are you blowing like a small breeze? But that is your way. And God needs both. Storm and storm and storm…. He also needs a little rest. A little breeze is always handy.

Don’t be worried. This is how God is happening to you. Never compare. Just look within you and enjoy whatsoever is happening so it can happen more. Enjoy it, delight in it, and it will happen more. You may become even more gentle; even the breeze may disappear and stop. It has happened that way also. There are as many ways towards God as there are seekers. Everybody has his own way and there are no superways, remember — no superhighways. Everybody walks on his own path.

In fact, the path is not found ready-made. You create it by walking, and it disappears when you have gone on ahead. Nobody else can walk on it; it is never left behind. It is just like the birds flying in the sky. Once they have flown, they don’t leave any footprints. Nobody can follow it. There is no need. Don’t compare. Be contented with yourself. Enjoy, delight — help yourself to be yourself. This is YOUR way.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 2″

Question – Beloved Osho, When you said that if we don’t achieve total consciousness in this life, we will have to start from the very beginning again, and go through the whole evolution of mankind one more time, I was very touched. Is it possible that we will totally lose these few glimpses of light, beauty, and consciousness that we have got through being sannyasins?

Osho – Antar Ashiko, it is a very complicated question. Whatever you achieve in this life will remain with you, but it has to be an achievement not just a glimpse. And there is a great difference between an achievement and a glimpse. You can see the Himalayan peaks from thousands of miles away — it is a glimpse; but to reach those peaks will be an achievement. A glimpse helps you to move onward, towards achievement; but unless something becomes a crystallized experience in your life, it is going to be lost — you will have to start from the very beginning.

There will be a little difference, and that will be that in your unconscious a shadow of your past life, a faraway echo — as if you have seen something — will remain. And when you again get the glimpse you may feel that this is not new, I have known it before. But otherwise, only crystallized achievements go with you, consciously, into the other life… knowingly, not just a dark shadow, a faraway echo in the unconscious, but consciously knowing that these Himalayan peaks exist, and you have been on those peaks. There will be no doubt about it, no wavering about it, no question about it.

You are asking, “Is it possible that we will totally lose these few glimpses of light, beauty, and consciousness that we have got through being sannyasins?” Such glimpses you have got in many lives before too, and you have lost them. They never became part of your being; they remained only beautiful memories. But the memories are not achievements. It is as if you have seen something in a dream — perhaps it may be true, perhaps it may not be true.

So if you feel that there is something happening now, make every effort that it does not remain only a glimpse but becomes an actual experience, becomes part of your being. Only then can it go with you into another life. It is possible to take all your experiences with you into another life, and never to begin from scratch but always to begin where you had left off in the past life. But be clear that just a glimpse is very fragile, just a glimpse is very superficial. Howsoever touching it may be in the moment, even tomorrow you may start doubting whether it really happened or you imagined it. And the life after this life is a faraway journey.

Glimpses are simply incentives to move towards crystallization. Make it an experience so deep that it becomes part of you, and there is no way to forget it or to lose it. Don’t remain satisfied with glimpses. Enjoy them, but use them only as an indicator towards greater things to happen.

To see something from far away is one thing, and to become that thing is totally another. A glimpse of love is just like a breeze that passes within seconds; a glimpse of silence is just like the fragrance of a rose flower that you felt for a moment, and now you don’t know where it has gone.

When I say, “Crystallize your experience,” I mean it is not enough to have beautiful glimpses. It is good, but not good enough. You should become the fragrance of the rose itself; the glimpse was only an arrow pointing towards the possibility — it did its work, but you remain there. In the past life also, many times you have come across many beautiful experiences and right now you don’t know even that there have been past lives.

Only once in a while you see somebody, and you have a very strange feeling, almost weird, as if you have seen this man before — and certainly not in this life. You come to a place, and suddenly you are startled, as if you had come to this place before too — although certainly not in this life. Everything seems to be known, but has been dormant
in your unconscious.

Life has a mechanism that whenever a person dies, unless he is enlightened, he becomes almost unconscious; he goes into a coma before death, actual death, happens. So he knows nothing about the death, and he remains in a state of coma till he is born again. All those nine months in the mother’s womb are a state of coma; the child is fast asleep twenty-four hours a day for nine months.

It rarely happens that somebody dies consciously. It happens only to great meditators, who know well the path death will be coming on because in their meditations they have traveled on the path again and again — it is the same path. As they go deep in their meditation the body is left far away, mind is left far away, the heart is left far away; only a beautiful silence — fully alert and conscious — remains.

The same happens when you die. If you have been meditating, then death is not a new experience. You will be surprised that in your meditation you have been dying every day, and you have been coming back to life every day. Such a person dies very consciously, so he knows what death is — and such a person remains conscious in the mother’s womb. He
is also born consciously. From his very first moment on the earth, he knows all that has passed before in the past life, and he remembers it.

I have come across many children…. And this happens most particularly in India, because outside India — where Christianity is prominent or Judaism is prominent or Mohammedanism is prominent — they have conditioned the mind that there is only one life. They don’t know anything about meditation. They have substituted meditation with prayer, and prayer is praising a fictitious god; it is very childish.

Meditation needs no god — you are enough. You are a reality, and you explore your reality to the deepest core. In India all the religions are agreed on one point; they differ in their philosophies, they differ on every other thing, but on one thing they are all agreed — that life is a continuity; death comes millions of times. Death is only a change of the body, a change of the house, and this process goes on — unless you become totally enlightened. Then there is no need to enter another womb, because life was just a school, a training; you have completed it.

Your enlightenment is the culmination of your education about existence. Now you need not enter into another body. You can enter into the womb of the universe itself — you are prepared for it. So whenever you are having glimpses, don’t be satisfied with them. Your glimpses should create great discontent in you, not content. They should create a longing that what is seen far away you would like to come closer, and closer, and closer. You don’t want just to see it, even from c closeness; you want to become it.

You can become love, you can become silence, you can become joy, you can become all these experiences: beauty, light, consciousness. These are not things that you cannot become; they are your potentials. So take every glimpse to its ultimate end. That’s what I call crystallization.

Once it is crystallized, once you have known yourself to be love, yourself to be light, yourself to be consciousness, then there is no problem of forgetting it. Then these experiences will go with you. And in your future life you will be growing further ahead, from consciousness to superconsciousness; you will be going beyond these experiences.

But if you remain satisfied with your glimpses, there is every danger they will be erased. Death is such a shock and such a surgery and such a long coma that when you wake up, you will have forgotten all those glimpses.

“Someone stole my bike,” complained a priest to his minister friend.
“Bring up the Ten Commandments in your sermon tomorrow, and as soon as you mention, `Thou shalt not steal,’ look around in your congregation; you will find the guilty party. Invite him to come forward. Tell him that this is the way to confess, and this is the way to get the forgiveness of God,” the minister said confidently.

The next day the priest visited the minister and happily reported that he had found his bike. “Yes”, he went on, “when I came to `Thou shalt not commit adultery’ I remembered where I had left it.”

Source – Osho Book “The Golden Future”

Question – Beloved Osho, In rhese days I feel a little plant growing inside of me, which is still very delicate and fragile. I feel like I have to take immense care of this little flower just starting to open, not to water it too much, nor too little. Nor to expose it too much to the wind. My Beloved Osho, please tell me how to take care of this little plant, since in this moment it would still be very easy for me to destroy it.

Osho – Deva Premal, it is good news that you are feeling a little plant growing inside you. Naturally it will be, in the beginning, very delicate and very fragile. And your feeling is right, that you “have to take immense care of this little flower just starting to open, not to water it too much, nor too little, nor to expose it too much to the wind.”

All that is needed are three things. When your consciousness starts growing, you need more meditation. And there is no limit to meditation, so you need not be worried that meditation can be too much and can kill the flower. Meditation is always too little, because there is always too much ahead of you, and meditation will make the fragile and delicate flower more and more strong. You need a silent being.

Caring too much can be dangerous, it can become an anxiety. Being worried too much that you should water less or you should water more, that you may expose it to the winds, to the sun, to the rain too much or too little… caring can become a tremendous turmoil in your being, and your very caring can destroy the flower. Instead of caring, you need a
more silent, more conscious, more peaceful being, which will give a strength to something new that is growing in you.

Secondly, care is not enough; love is needed. Care is more a technical word; love is totally different. Care needs a certain education. Care is just like a nurse who knows what has to be done, what is right to be done — but there is no love in her heart, she functions technically. Love is more like a mother, who may not know the art of nursing, but she need not know. Love is enough unto itself. Love is a mysterious phenomenon; it knows what is needed. It simply knows without any education.

So what you need is meditation, love, and the third thing — which you may not have thought of at all — a joyous life, because all that is great in you only grows when joy is showering on it. It grows only when you are in a space of blissfulness, when there is laughter, there is song and there is dance.

And I know perfectly your fear. You say, “Please tell me how to take care of this little plant.” I will not say how to take care, because I don’t want you to become a nurse. I want you to become a mother. I want you to be love, not technical knowledge, because these flowers don’t need technical knowledge.

You are afraid, “since in this moment, it would still be very easy for me to destroy it.” That danger is very real. When something inside you grows it brings new responsibilities, because now you need more meditation, you need more love, you need more joy. This flower inside you can become a burden to you if you don’t understand the language of meditation, the language of love, the language of blissfulness. You can destroy the flower by your own hands, just to get rid of the responsibility. But this flower is not only responsibility: it is also your growth, your maturity. This flower is not something separate from you. It is your own being. To destroy it means to commit suicide.

But your question is more concerned about the technicalities of care, and I would like you to change the focus. Inner growth does not need any technical knowledge, any technical expertise. All that it needs is very simple and very joyful, and it is not a burden. Meditation will make you lighter, less loaded with all kinds of rubbish. Love will also give you new skies, new freedoms. Blissfulness will give you wings to move into those new skies and new spaces.

But the question carries the implication that for centuries in the West the mind has become technically oriented. It has created great technology, great science, but it has destroyed man completely. The house is full of all kinds of gadgets, just the master of the house has disappeared, is lost in the gadgets.

The East has never been technically oriented; it is more concerned with values than with techniques. For example, in the East if somebody is sick, then the wife will not be ready for her husband or her lover to be taken care of by a nurse. It simply will not come to her mind. This is the time when she is needed, and if love cannot heal, then no other technique is going to heal. It is not a question of expertise.

In the West the same situation will have a totally different response. The wife or the husband would like to call a nurse to take care. And he seems, or she seems, to be more logical because the nurse is trained in taking care; She knows the know-how.

But in the East it is almost inconceivable that love can be replaced by expertise of any kind. Expertise can be called in only when there is no love, when the wife feels it is a burden and it is a good chance to get rid of this fellow… call a nurse. And she has good reason; every logic is in her support. The doctor will support her, that this is a very loving decision. But the reality is just the opposite; it is not a loving decision.

So don’t ask me about how to take care. Ask me how to be more meditative, how to be more loving, how to be more joyful, because that which is growing within you needs nourishment — and your meditation will give it nourishment, your joy will give it warmth, your love will give it dignity.

A man, narrowly reared by a widowed mother, got married. He telephoned back to his
mother from the honeymoon hotel to say that he knew there was something he had to do
in bed, but he did not know what it was.
“Why,” said his mother, “you put your… eh, that is, you put the hardest part of yourself in
the place where your wife wee-wees.”
At midnight the hotel rang the fire brigade for help. “We have got a young man with his
head jammed in a chamber pot.”
Avoid technical knowledge!

Source – Osho Book “The Golden Future”

[A sannyasin says: My mouth opens when I’m meditating; I feel energy there. I don’t know what I should do about it.]

Osho – No problem at all. When the mouth opens, just allow it. Don’t close the mouth when it wants to open. It is nothing of a problem. It is perfectly good. The mouth opens because the energy reaches the mouth; the opening of the mouth is perfectly beautiful.

It’s perfectly beautiful. If it is closed then it will be troublesome. Then the energy will be there like a tension. Your jaws will start feeling the tension. A few people have that problem: energy comes there but the mouth does not open; then their jaws become too tense.

And if your jaws become tense you will feel angry, you will feel irritated, you will feel continuously irritated for no reason at all and you will find excuses to be angry. This is perfectly beautiful; it is a relaxation.

Source: from Osho Book “Turn On, Tune In and Drop the Lot”

[A sannyasin describes an experience he had at a full-moon party when his mind became clear and he saw that people are in difficulty. He wanted to make himself useful, but he closed up again.]

Osho – No, you cannot do anything about it. You cannot retain it… you cannot bring it. Whenever it comes it comes, and whenever it goes it goes. One has to simply be a host to it. When the guest comes, be a host – when the guest goes, say good-bye.

You cannot do anything about it. It has nothing to do with your doing – it is a natural phenomenon. And on the full moon night, sometimes it starts. That is the night when it starts. The full-moon night has a very alchemical impact on the human consciousness. Buddha became enlightened on the full-moon night – not only that, he was born on the same full moon night, he became enlightened on the same full-moon night, he died on the same full moon.

His birthday, his death day, his enlightenment day, all fall on one day – the full-moon night… the same month, the same night. The full moon has tremendous importance, so just do one thing: you can remain available, that’s all. If it happens, good; if it doesn’t happen don’t feel worried about it.

Next time again you try – when the full-moon night comes, start at least five days before, sitting in the night, just waiting. Wait one hour every night for five days, then the full moon will come. That night wait for at least two, three hours – not that you have to do anything: you are just there, available.

If it happens, you are ready; if it doesn’t happen, nothing to be worried about. If it doesn’t happen don’t feel frustrated, because it has nothing to do with your doing. If it happens, don’t feel that you have done a great thing, otherwise it will never happen again. If it happens, feel grateful; if it doesn’t happen, simply wait again.

Each full-moon night start waiting. It will be coming more and more and it will be staying more and more. And when it comes, don’t try to control it. Don’t try to be in that state a little longer; don’t bring desire in, because those are all disturbances and they poison the whole thing.

It is a door of the beyond. Just start waiting for it… waiting but with tremendous patience, with no hurry. Don’t try to drag it. It is beyond human control but one can manage to invite it in a very indirect way. Take a bath, sing a song, sit silently in the night – wait for it. Sway with the moon, look at the moon, feel full with the moon… feel the moon showering on you, dance a little, sit again, wait. Let the full-moon night become your particular night for meditation – it will be helpful.

Source: from Osho Book “What Is, Is, What Ain’t, Ain’t”

[A sannyasin says: The other night I got very frightened. I was in my room lying on my bed, and for some reason I started thinking that I am not my body alone. The room stood out very strongly, everything in the room stood out strongly, but it wasn’t warm, it was cold.]

Osho – It was an effortless meditation. It suddenly happened and that’s why you got frightened. Now try it on purpose and consciously tonight. Be in the same room; lie down and start thinking that you are not the body, that you are separate from the body. The moment that you start thinking that you are not the body, everything will become very present and strong, because the warmth is within the identification with the body.

Suddenly you are in a strange land: only things are there, and your own body has become like a corpse – that’s why you got frightened. Try again tonight. Go in deeper and deeper, and don’t become afraid. If you become very afraid, take the locket (the locket, which is part of the mala all sannyasins wear, has a picture of Osho in it) in the hand and remember me. Continue the feeling that you are not the body, and by and by take the next step – that you are also not the mind.

Thoughts are there, but you are not them. You are the observer of both the body and the mind, you are a witness. Go on feeling it as deeply as possible. In the beginning it will look like death – it is. But soon you will see that a new sense of life is arising. The fear will disappear and instead you will feel a weightlessness. You will feel a new sort of freedom as if suddenly wings have grown to you and you can fly, and the whole world is yours.

But before you attain to that, fear will be there and it will become very very terrible. One has to pass through it. Now for seven nights do it, and become as frightened as you can – but don’t run away from it, don’t escape. Go deeper. You will feel like sinking, dying, suffocating. Take the locket in the hand and accept it, that it is okay.

To come to oneself, one has to pass through many fears. After the dark night there is the dawn, the morning. It has been good, you should be happy. When will you do it, at exactly what time? – so I can watch you.

[He replies:: Ten o’clock.]
Osho – Ten o’clock. Then be particular – exactly ten o’clock. And if you feel me there, don’t get frightened. (a chuckle) Mm? and don’t get scaredl

Source: from Osho Book “Hammer on the Rock”

[An Indian sannyasin had come before darshan to talk to Osho about a frightening experience he had had recently while meditating. As people arrived for the darshan Osho was saying:]

Osho – One gets really scared. Really, it came too early and you weren’t yet ready. It can happen that suddenly a key fits, and then the experience of deep meditation is exactly like death. The problem is created because one gets scared. Meditation leads you deep into yourself. Beyond a certain point it is felt like drowning, sinking, suffocating. If you accept it and cooperate with it and simply say that you are ready to die, then you don’t create the opposite process of trying to come out of it. Then there comes a peak where all disturbance disappears.

Something has happened – but you are still there. In fact for the first time you are there – and everything becomes blissful. Before it comes to the peak there is pain and anguish, and it is natural that one starts thinking about how to get out of it somehow. In the getting out, that cooperation is broken, so you are moving now in two ways. Something you have done in meditation is taking you deep, while you are trying to cling to the surface. In that confusion and conflict the whole body can feel in turmoil.

It was not really because of the experience, but because you created this conflict. This phenomenon has to be faced one day by anyone who is moving into meditation; there is no way to avoid it. When it happens one naturally becomes afraid to meditate again. So, don’t do this method for a few days; do something else. Humming is good. It is very slow, and will subdue the energy. Do a camp, and if something happens then I am here, so you rely on me more easily.

You could rely on me there too… but it was for the first time, so you were not aware of what was happening. Next time it happens simply take the locket in your hand, and leave it to me. Simply say that you are ready to die, and relax; sink, and allow it. Once you allow it, the whole of the energy is moving in one direction so there is no inner conflict; and because there is no conflict there is no anxiety. The whole body will feel rejuvenated. Otherwise you create a disturbance.

It is just as when you are driving a car. You go on pushing the accelerator, and at the same time you brake: the whole engine feels the shock because you are doing two contradictory things – racing and braking simultaneously. That’s what you have done. The meditation turned the energy inwards – and it is a tremendous experience, deeper than any death.

We are accustomed to live on the surface, and we think that that is life. We have forgotten our own depths completely. So when we encounter death for the first time, it is like an abyss, and fear takes over – because if one falls… it is bottomless. This is the point where a master is needed. He is not needed in the beginning because one can start on one’s own, but when this experience comes then someone is needed who can give assurance, who can give you confidence again, who can put you back on the path.

In a way it has been a blessing. It is rare, because usually people work for years before it happens. If you have worked for years there is not so much fear, because by and by you are gradually being prepared. Little glimpses of it come and go, so you know something of it and that it is going to happen. When it happens so suddenly, then either the body suffers or the mind – which is worse; some people can go mad. So both are possible. But you have to understand that it happened not because of the meditation but because you started fighting; you started to come up, to surface.

If you are in the river and you are caught in a whirlpool, the natural tendency is to somehow fight it. But this is wrong. Masters of swimming will tell you that if you are caught in a whirlpool, you should cooperate with it. If you go with it, if you give all your energy to it, there is no conflict, so no energy is wasted. At the rock-bottom of the whirlpool it is so small that it cannot hold you, so there is no need even to come out of it; you will be simply out of it. But if you start fighting it on the surface you are wasting your energy, and you will lose it before you get to the bottom; you will be gone.

[The sannyasin said that it was just like an explosion.... ]

Yes, it was an explosion! People long for it all their lives! The opportunity was very close, mm?… but it will come again. That method is your method, and you have found the key!
[A sannyasin describes an experience which happened during the Gourishankar mediation: Something cold was rising up, and something was happening here. (indicating his third eye)... I was screaming for thoughts to come because there were no thoughts at all... I got very frightened... After it was over I was very ashamed that I didn’t go through it.]

Osho – Yes, that too is right. It was good, mm? It is such an unknown state when thoughts stop. We have always lived with thoughts – that is the known, the familiar; we are moving on a well-trodden path. When you stop thinking for the first time, then the wildness of existence opens its door. It is chaotic. The greatest fear that can come to a man is to not be able to think.

When you cannot think, you cannot be, for without thinking you disappear. The father of modern western philosophy was Rene Descartes. His whole philosophy was based on three words: Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am. If this is the mind: ’I think, therefore I am’ – and it is – then when thoughts stop, you are not. One simply looks crazy, as if in an insane world, because what is happening is beyond control. You cannot even think – which was always so easy!

In fact it was difficult to stop thinking! But when it does stop, fear takes over. It is bound to happen the first time. The next time it will be easier. Don’t try to do anything when it happens again. Just remain in it.

Source: from Osho Book “Hammer on the Rock”