[A sannyasin returning to the west says: It doesn’t happen here, but at home by the end of the week I feel very tired. Sometimes I can’t even stand.]

Osho – I understand. Do one thing. Every night before you go to sleep, just sit in the bed and imagine an aura around your body, just six inches away from your body, the same shape as the body, surrounding you, protecting you. It will become a shield. Just do it for four, five minutes, and then, still feeling it, go to sleep. Fall into sleep imagining that aura like a blanket around you which protects you so that no tension can enter from the outside, no thought can enter from the outside; no outside vibrations can enter you. Just feeling that aura, fall asleep.

This has to be done the last thing at night. After it, simply go to sleep so the feeling continues in your unconscious. That is the whole thing. The whole mechanism is that you start by consciously imagining, then you start falling asleep. By and by when you are on the threshold of sleep, a little imagination continues, lingers on. You fall asleep but that little imagination enters the unconscious. That becomes a tremendous force and energy.

I don’t see that the problem is within you. The problem is coming from the outside. You don’t have a protective aura. It happens to many people, because we don’t know how to protect ourselves from others. Others are not only there – they are broadcasting their being continuously in subtle vibrations. If a tense person passes by you, he is simply throwing arrows of tension all around – not particularly addressed to you; he is simply throwing. And he is unconscious; he is not doing it to anybody knowingly. He has to throw it because he is too burdened. He will go mad if he doesn’t throw it. It is not that he has decided to throw it. It is overflowing. It is too much and he cannot contain it, so it goes on overflowing.

Somebody passes by you and he goes on throwing something at you. If you are receptive and you don’t have a protective aura…. And meditation makes one receptive, very receptive. So when you are alone, it is good. When you are surrounded by meditative people, very good. But when you are in the world, in the marketplace, and people are not meditative but are very tense, anxious, have a thousand and one strains on their mind, then you just start getting them. And you are vulnerable. Meditation makes one very soft, so whatsoever comes, enters.

After meditation one has to create a protective aura. Sometimes it happens automatically, sometimes it doesn’t. It is not happening automatically to you, so you have to work for it. It will be coming within three months. Any time between three weeks and three months, you will start feeling very very powerful. So in the night, fall asleep thinking this way.

In the morning the first thought has to be again this. The moment you remember that now sleep Is gone, don’t open your eyes. Just feel your aura all over the body protecting you. Do it for four, five minutes again, and then get up. When you are taking your bath and your tea, go on remembering it. Then in the daytime also whenever you feel you have time – sitting in a car or a train, or in the office doing nothing – just again relax into it. For a single moment feel it again.

Between three weeks and three months you will start feeling it almost like a solid thing. It will surround you and you will be able to feel that you can now pass amidst a crowd and you will remain unaffected, untouched. It will make you tremendously happy because now only your problems will be your problems, nobody else’s.

It is very easy to solve one’s own problems because they are one’s own. It is very difficult when you go on getting others’ problems; then you cannot solve them, because in the first place they don’t belong to you. Many people come to me and they say they had some problem but suddenly here it is gone. It was never their problem – otherwise it cannot go. It must have been somebody else’s.

They must have been step-fathering it, fostering it. It must have entered from somebody else’s mind. But people are so unaware that they don’t know what is theirs and what is the others. Everything goes on getting into a mess. You don’t have many problems, and you will be able to solve your problems; that is not a big thing. This time try to create a protective aura – and you will be able to see it and its function. You will see that you are completely protected. Wherever you go, things will be coming to you but they will be returned; they will not touch you.

Source – Osho Book “Dance Your Way to God”

[A group member says: All the emotional things, catharting things, seemed to be superficial on the one side, yet on the other seemed to be true, as I feel them. I don’t know if it is because of my knowing it or.... It’s not acting or theatre, because I feel it. Perhaps it’s because I’m aware of it, and that’s why I see the difference, that’s why I see myself doing it.]

Osho – If you become aware, then everything becomes superficial, outside you. When a moment of awareness is there, then nothing is deep; everything is outer and superficial because you are standing at the innermost core of your being. From that vantage point everything is superficial. For example we are sitting here in the porch. It is not on the outer or superficial, but from inside the house it will be just on the boundary, on the surface.

The more aware you become, the more things will become superficial. One can become scared sometimes, because even love will look superficial. If you watch and are alert, then whatsoever you do will look like acting, because you are no longer identified with it. It is no longer an act, but acting.

So a really aware person becomes an actor on the great stage of the world. He is never in anything deeply. He cannot be, because something transcendental is always there. Whatsoever he is doing he is always far away. Not that he is not authentic. He is, but he is so deep himself that nothing can be deeper; anything relative is superficial This is a good insight. Nourish and enjoy it more, and don’t start condemning because then you will miss the whole point. Don’t start saying that this is superficial and that nothing deeper is coming – there is nothing deeper.

When consciousness is there, that is the most profound and the deepest thing there is. Even if God is standing there He will be superficial, because He cannot be deeper than your awareness. He will be an object of awareness, just like any other object. Your consciousness is depth itself, abysmal. So it has been a good insight.

Now try to live it twenty-four hours a day. Accept it, and don’t condemn it. It is beautiful, and everything will look superficial and like acting.

Source – Osho Book “Hammer on The Rock”

Osho – Prem means love, vatayana means now, the present moment – love now. And my whole emphasis is on this moment, because this moment contains all. Now is the only reality – all else is either memory or imagination. And even for the past to exist as memory, now is needed. It doesn’t exist as the past; it exists as a thought in the present. And so is the case with the future: the future does not exist as the future; it exists as imagination in the present moment. All that exists, exists in the now. Now is the only time there is, and to become more and more alert about now is to become aware of the presence of god.

We are very unalert. We think much of the past and we also think much of the future and our whole life is wasted in that thinking. Because of and between these two – the past and the future – the present is crushed, sandwiched, and has almost become negligible, it has become so small. The real has become small and the unreal has grown so big.

If you think of the past, it is long: your past, then the society’s past, then humanity’s past, then the past of life on earth and then the earth’s past, and then the sun and the moon and the stars; it is infinite. And so is the future infinite: it will go on and on. Compared to the past and future, the present seems almost nothing – it is just a small point, atomic – and between these two it is almost lost track of. And that is the only reality; everything else is unreal compared to it.

If you see a rose flower you see it now, in the now. If you smell it, you smell it in the now. If you feel and touch it, you touch it in the now. You cannot touch the rose flower in the future and you cannot smell the rose flower in the past. But if you start thinking of past and future, then the rose flower is there and yet is not there; it disappears.

Just meditate on this: you are facing a rose flower, a beautiful rose flower. It is there – the fragrance is released into your nostrils, you are delighted with it. Now bring the past in. Think of something in the past: somebody insulted you yesterday or yesteryear, or think of a childhood incident, your mother was beating you. Bring it into memory and suddenly the mind is clouded. Now you will not feel the presence of the flower so much. It is still there, the same flower, but you are no more here; you are distracted, you have become foggy, clouded. A screen of memory has come between you and the rose flower.

Or think of the future – some plan, some fantasy, something that you want to do tomorrow – and the flower fades, bows out further and further. The more deep in thought you go, the farther the flower recedes. Come out of the thought and the sky is clear, the clouds have separated and again the sunshine and again the presence of the flower; you can again smell it. While you were thinking of the past and the future the smell was still knocking at the doors of your nose, but you were not available. The colour of the flower was still coming to your eyes but you were not there. It was as if you were looking through a dark glass; things became unclear, hazy, a mist surrounded you.

The whole work of meditation is nothing but this: how to become utterly present in the present, how to collect oneself in the now. Then everything is beautiful. Then walking is meditation, sitting is meditation, talking is meditation, listening is meditation, because whether you walk or sit, it is always now; whether you are silent or talking it is always now. There is only one time. Now is eternity. That is the meaning of vatayana – it means the utterly present.

Let this be the key. You have to work on it, you have to play around this idea more and more. In whatsoever you are doing, again and again pull yourself into the present. In the beginning the mind rebels, resists; old patterns are powerful, old habits go on dragging you here and there. But slowly slowly as the joy of the present becomes deepened, as you start becoming more and more saturated with it, as you see the contentment that arises out of it and the silence and the celebration, the old patterns are broken, the habits disappear.

And that day – when you start living in the present twenty-four hours a day – is the day of enlightenment. It does not mean that one will never think about the past but that one will be aware of the present. Even when a thought of the past is present in your mind, you will look at it as a present thought; you will not be dragged into the past. It will be just like a rose flower, there inside, blooming – a memory flower – but you will remember that this is the moment, the now moment. You remain centred in the now; then there is no problem.

Yes, the past can be used, and so too can the future. One has to plan – tomorrow one has to leave and the tickets have to be purchased, the journey has to be booked, but that is not the future either; that too is in the present. One remains in the present whatsoever one is doing – in memory or imagination. And once this penetrates deeply, even in dreams you will be present. You will see the dreams blooming there and you will know that this is a dream. And to know that a dream is a dream is a great experience. Then you have really come home – you are centred in your being.

Source – Osho Book “Nothing to Lose But Your Head”

[A sannyasin says: I’m feeling a bit more inward these days and meditations are feeling good to me.]

Osho – One has to go inward. And you have roamed outward long enough – it is time to go inward! Have the taste of the inner now. And once you have tasted the inner then there is nothing in the outer. Once you have seen the inner beauty, the outer simply pales, is reduced to nothing; it is only a reflection.

If you have seen the real moon, who bothers about the moon reflected in a mirror? The outer world is just a reflection of the inner. That’s very good. Go, go whole-heartedly. The mind may create trouble. The mind will say ’What is happening? What are you doing? This way you will be isolated, you will become alone, you will be cut off from people.’

The mind will find so many excuses to go out – don’t listen. You are not being cut off from people; you are only getting joined together with yourself. And when one is oneself, when one is joined with oneself, then only can one be with others; there is no other way. If you are not yourself, if you have not known what your inner reality is, all your relationships are just bogus, just games to keep you occupied… of no value. The real relationship arises only when you are, when you are rooted, centred, in your being. Then you can spread your hands, then you can embrace somebody and you can love. And that love will have a totally different flavour – the flavour of freedom.

So don’t be distracted by the mind. The mind is the devil in the old scriptures, mm? You read that Jesus is tempted by the devil. That devil is nobody else but the mind, the old name for the mind, a mythological name for the mind. It always tempts, it always says ’Go out – do this, be that. Don’t waste your time sitting and gazing at your navel.’ Inwardness is not an accepted value in the world of the mind because they are polar opposites. If you become inward, the mind has to die. The mind can exist only if you remain without and never come within. So beware! The devil will tempt you. And the devil is not somewhere else; it is just your mind.

If one is alert, slowly slowly one understands that there is no need to be distracted by the mind. And once you have entered into your being, there is no fear; then the mind cannot do anything. Then the mind becomes a beautiful servant. The mind is a beautiful servant but a very ugly master. So allow it.

Source – Osho Book “The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment”

Osho – If you can live this moment, if you can be here this moment, then everything takes care of itself. Then you need not be anxious. Then there is no need to ask — before you ask, the answer is delivered. The answer has been always there, but we are not aware. So the whole effort of Zen is how to bring awareness to you.

Man is as if asleep. Man lives in a stupor — moves, works, is born, lives and dies, but almost fast asleep, snoring. Man’s mind is very dull. Mind is dullness. Mind has no intelligence in it. There has never been an intelligent mind. I don’t mean that there have never been intelligent people; there have been intelligent people, but there has never been
an intelligent mind. Intelligence is something that comes when mind is dropped. Mind is never original, never radical. Mind is always orthodox. Mind is always repetitive, mechanical; it functions like a robot. It goes on repeating the same thing again and again.

It is like a computer: whatsoever you feed into it, it goes on chewing it again and again. Have you watched your own mind and its functioning? Nothing new ever happens to it. Nothing new can happen to it. And because of it you remain oblivious of all that is happening all around you; you go on ignoring it. You are too much attached to this mediocre, stupid instrument. It is good to use it; it is good as a reservoir, as memory; it is good to keep records — but it is not a way to see into reality. It has no eyes. Mind is blind like a bat. It has no eyes. Mind can never be intelligent — only no-mind is intelligent. Only no-mind is original and radical. Only no-mind is revolutionary — revolution in action.

This mind gives you a sort of stupor. Burdened by the memories of the past, burdened by the projections of the future, you go on living — at the minimum. You don’t live at the maximum. Your flame remains very dim. Once you start dropping thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises — clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is.

Consciousness without thinking: that’s what awareness is. Being alert and with no thought. Try it! whenever you see thinking gathering, disperse it! pull yourself out of it! Look at the trees with no screens of thinking between you and the trees. Listen to the chirping of the birds with no chirping of the mind inside. Look at the sun rising and feel that inside you also a sun of consciousness is rising… but don’t think about it, don’t assert, don’t state, don’t say. Simply be. And, by and by, you will start feeling glimpses of awareness, sudden glimpses of awareness — as if a fresh breeze has entered into your room which was getting stale and dead; as if a ray of light has entered into the dark night of your soul; as if, suddenly, life has called you back.

Source – Osho Book “A Sudden Clash of Thunder”

Osho – Man can live in constant conflict or in constant music. It is the game energy that become conflict or that becomes music. The whole thing is to learn the art of creating harmony within your being — and the whole conditioning of humanity is to create conflict. They tell you not to be angry but they never tell you how. They insist that it is bad to be angry but nobody ever tells you the science of not being angry. So the only thing left for you is to repress anger, not to show it. It will be there and it goes on accumulating.

That’s how one creates conflict, one becomes double: anger is there and one is smiling, sex is there and one is taking a vow of celibacy, desire is there and one is renouncing the world, greed is there but one is pretending non-greediness, violence is there and one has cultivated a mask of non-violence, hate is there and one is trying to project love. So in a thousand ways one becomes divided and there is constant conflict, inner war, civil war. Everybody is sitting on a volcano, it can erupt any moment. One insane any time.

The society has taken every care to drive you insane. It is really a miracle how people somehow manage to keep themselves together. Life can be music and should be music because only then do you know what life is. But then repression won’t help. You will have to learn something of the inner alchemy, of how anger is transformed into compassion, how hate is transformed into love with no residue so there is no conflict left, how violence becomes non-violence and how living in the world one can yet be not of it.

This is what I call the whole science of sannyas, the whole inner alchemy, It is the greatest science in the world because it transforms man, and nothing is more valuable than man. Even if we could transform iron into gold that would be nothing; if we can transform our ugly instincts into beautiful flowers that is real magic. And it is not difficult either. Just a simple phenomenon has to be learned — I call it meditation. It has been called by different names. Buddha used to call it sammasati, right mindfulness. George Gurdjieff used to call it self-remembering, Krishnamurti calls it awareness. It is the same. The whole thing is how to become a witness.

When you are angry there is no need to fight with it — it is a great opportunity to watch. No need to indulge in it no need to act according to it, no need to follow its dictates, and no need either to go to the opposite extreme and start fighting with it. Avoid both. Just remain cool, detached, a simple observer, as if it has nothing to do with you. Your concern should be scientific, you are observing, so you have to look minutely at what anger is in all its details, in its whole mystery. Your interest has to be scientific; ‘I have to go deeper into the whole method of it. If I follow it I will not be able to go into it. I will become angry.’ In that hot state how can you watch? ‘If I fight with it again, it will be the same: I will be running away, repressing, avoiding.’ How can you watch something of which you are afraid?

No need to be afraid, no need to follow — just sit silently and watch and a miracle starts happening slowly: the more you watch, the more you see that it is dispersing on its own. Just as dewdrops evaporate in the morning sun, as your awareness becomes more intense it starts evaporating faster. And the same is the process for sexuality, for greed, for jealousy, for all the problems — the key is one, it is a master key. Try it on one and then you will know that it can be tried on everything.

A day arrives when you have understood all your baser instincts and in that very understanding they are transformed, transmuted, and your life becomes a melody. I call that melody sannyas. That musical phenomenon, that harmony, that beautiful silence, that song of silence, is the greatest achievement in life.

Source – Osho Book “Going All the Way”

Osho – Revolution is concerned with outer things: the economic structure of the society, the political structure, the state. Rebellion is inner: it is concerned with the state of consciousness. Revolution is political, rebellion is spiritual. And a true rebellion transforms you into divinity; it reveals your godhood to you. It makes you aware that you are not the body, nor the mind; that you are nothing but pure consciousness, that you are only a witness. Once this is experienced, realized, life becomes a play.

Misery comes: you witness it, you don’t get identified with it. Happiness comes and you witness it. Sometimes it is cloudy, very cloudy, and sometimes very sunny — but it is all the same to you because, as far as you are concerned, you remain rooted in your witnessing, which never changes. You remain immovable, unchanging.

Life is a flux: everything is changing, everything is in movement. In life there are no nouns, only verbs. There is only one noun and that is God. Everything else is a verb because nothing else is eternal. Everything is momentary: one moment it is there, the next moment it is gone.

Witnessing all, slowly slowly you are neither happy nor unhappy; that is bliss. You are neither cold nor hot; that is Buddhahood. You are neither man nor woman; that is God-realization. And remember: even if you have realized God the world continues to be the same. Illness will happen to you, old age will come, and death too. But because now you have a different vision everything happens and yet nothing happens to you.

A Zen master was asked once, “Before you became enlightened you used to say that you were miserable. Now that you have become enlightened — what is the state? In what state are you now?”
The master said, “I was miserable before enlightenment and I am miserable after enlightenment!”
The questioner was puzzled. He said, “Then what is the difference?”

The master laughed. He said, “The difference is that before I used to get identified with my misery; now I remain aloof, just a witness. The misery comes and goes, clouds gather and disperse — it has nothing to do with me. Before it used to affect me, now it does not affect me at all. I am just a mirror, I only reflect. If it is sunny I reflect it: if it is cloudy I reflect it.”

His answer is tremendously beautiful: “Before enlightenment I was miserable, and after enlightenment I am miserable.” Even being God ain’t a bed of roses, remember. Thorns are always there, but your vision changes. You look in a different way, your attitude is different, your approach is different, because you are different. You are on a different plane: a watcher on the hill, and in the valley the same world continues.

The same master was again asked the same question, by another inquirer, and he said the same thing: “I was miserable before my enlightenment and I am miserable after my enlightenment,” but when he was asked to explain it further, he said something more, he added something more. He said, “Before, I was miserable for myself, now I am miserable for others.” But that is a revolution. To be miserable for oneself is ugly; to be miserable for others is compassion, is beauty, is grace.

This is what I call divine rebellion: moving from identification to witnessing, moving from getting lost in things and the world, to a point where you are always alert, clear, transparent, unaffected, untouched. You become a lotus leaf in the pond: the water can touch it but cannot affect it; in fact it cannot even touch it. It can be as close as possible but the lotus leaf remains utterly untouched by it. It remains in the pond and yet beyond it. This transcendence is divine rebellion.
Sannyas is basically a movement towards such a rebellion, such a radical transformation.

Source – Osho Book “Even Bein’ Gawd Ain’t A Bed of Roses”

Osho – Ananda means bliss, ida means now. Bliss is never then; it is always now. Bliss is never there; it is always here. Bliss knows only one space: the space that is created around the here, and knows only one time: that is created around now. If you think in terms of then and there you will remain miserable; that is the way of misery. And people are miserable because they go on living somewhere else. The present is the only time to live and to be. So start falling more and more into the present.

That’s what meditation is. Because thoughts take you astray, meditation techniques say to drop thinking. The moment you drop thinking you cannot go anywhere. To go anywhere you have to ride on a thought. If you want to go into the past, you will need a horse to ride: the horse of memory. If you want to go into the future, you will need another horse; the horse called imagination. But they are all thought-horses. Once you drop thinking you cannot move even an inch; there is no way to move. In that unmoving movement is the point called now. Now is eternity; it is not part of time.

Time is thought to consist of three things — past, present and future. In fact, it consists only of two; past and future. Present is not part of time; it is timelessness. It never comes, never goes — it is always there. Only we go on moving, shunting between past and future, and the present is always here. But we cannot stop, we are like a pendulum: it goes from one extreme to the other extreme and then gathers momentum to go to the other extreme; it never stops in the middle.

To stop in the middle is meditation, neither going this way nor that, not going at all. When one is not going anywhere, not even going into meditation, not going at all, one is in meditation. That stillness is called ida; it is one of the most beautiful words. That utter silence is called ida; that immenseness, that eternity, is called ida.

Sometimes it happens unawares: seeing a sunset you are in it. Deep in love, sometimes it happens that you are in it. Lovers tend to forget time. They tend to enter a different kind of world where there is no movement, all is still and quiet, not even a stir, not even a wave. And sometimes in deep love you are there. That is the reason why love has such appeal, because it gives you a few moments of now; that is the only natural way. That’s why beauty has appeal, because when you are fascinated by beauty — a flower, a woman, a man, a child, a star — suddenly time stops. You are so fascinated by it that you forget thinking; for a moment you stop in the middle and the clock of time stops.

Cherish those moments, nourish those moments, and create occasions for them to occur. They cannot be brought directly but we can create occasions. All religions are nothing but occasions to create those moments. For example, if it happens always in the early morning when the sun is rising, the air is pure, the world is still silent, the birds are singing and the earth is awakening — if it happens in that moment, then make it a point not to lose that moment. Just watch and see when it happens naturally. Then those are occasions which can be created. You cannot directly bring that moment but indirectly you can persuade the moment to happen.

For example, when you sit in a closed room with incense burning and it happens, then that is just an occasion. That’s how religions discovered prayers, techniques for meditation. Those were all discovered just as occasions. There is no guarantee that when you bum incense before a buddha it is going to happen. There is no guarantee, but there is slightly more possibility, that’s all, just slightly more possibility. When you bow down to Jesus, slightly more possibility. When you are in a church or in a temple or in a mosque, slightly more possibility — because the church and the mosque and the temple are no ordinary things like the shop, the restaurant, the cinema hall and the house, where there are so many associations.

When you move in a temple you move out of your ordinary mundane relationships, associations, and there is more of a possibility of seeing the cross and the crucified Jesus or a Buddha statue sitting silently, of feeling the silence of the temple, the purity, the cleanliness and the incense. They all help just as occasions.

I am also just an occasion. Sannyas is an occasion. There is no guarantee that by becoming a sannyasin you will attain, but it is slightly more possible. Just looking into my eyes there is some possibility; it is an occasion. Just feeling me, being here with me, being in this commune of orange people, things lean a little more towards that happening, that’s all. But that is much, it is not small. That will make all the difference.

Source – Osho Book “The Sun behind the Sun behind the Sun”

Osho – Mind is never silent. It is constantly chattering. It is constantly crowded with many thoughts, desires. It goes on dreaming and dreaming. It is never still even for a single moment. And we have become identified with the mind, we think that we are our mind. That is creating the whole misery.

Get out of the mind and you will come back to your senses. Get out of the mind because the mind is a kind of madness. But one can get out of the mind in two ways. One is falling below it — then you will have to be put in a mental asylum. The other is going beyond it — then you become a Buddha or a Jesus. So please choose this way, the second.

There is a fear of going out of the mind. The fear is because mad people are also out of the mind. But they have fallen below, and one has to rise above. When you rise above the mind great silence descends. You see the mind deep down in the valley chattering still, but the distance becomes bigger and bigger every day and one day you cannot hear all that chattering at all. That day one becomes enlightened.

Mind lives either in the past or in the future. If you are young then the mind lives in the past. The old man has no future. He knows that there is death so he is afraid to look at the future. He goes on reminiscing about the past, all that has been and is no more. He enjoys those golden days. Much of it is just imagination, it has never been there; much of it is just invention to remain occupied.

The moment a person starts living in the past is the moment when he starts becoming old. Psychologically, that is the point from where one becomes old. Physiologically, it may not coincide, that that is the psychological old age, when you start thinking about the past and the beauties of the past and those golden experiences and those nice days, and how everything was just great. The future is so dark that you are afraid to look at it and you want to remain occupied with the past.

But that is not so with the young person. The young person looks at the future. Death is far away, in fact the young person never thinks of death. It is so far away, it is beyond his scope to think about it; he does not have that much insight. So he lives in the future, he makes castles in the air:”I will do this and I will get that and I will be this and tomorrow it is going to happen; if not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow.”

The old man wastes his present in the past, the young man wastes his present engaged in the future. Both exercises are absolutely futile. Not only futile but very harmful, because the present which is, is being wasted for that which is not.

Don’t think of the future. Live in the present. That’s my message to you. Be in the present moment. And if you can be present to the moment you escape from all kinds of stupidities of the old people. If you can be in the present you transcend time. Time consists of past and future, eternity consists only of the present. Eternity is now, always now and never then, always here and never there. And to enter into the now and the here is to enter into God.

This has to become your meditation, to come more and more close to the present moment. I am not saying not tp prepare for a journey. If you are going somewhere you will have to purchase the ticket ahead of time, you will have to plan it. I’m not saying not to do that. That has nothing to do with the future. What I mean is a psychological hope, desire, because the present seems to be unfulfilling you escape into the future and you start hoping that there will be fulfilment.

Stop going into the psychological future. The factual future is okay, it is not a disturbance at all. The factual past is also okay, it is not a disturbance at all. You have to remember your name and your address and when you meet your father you have to recognise him. You can’t say to him “The past is the past and I don’t know who your are!”(laughter) These are factual things, they are perfectly okay. But deep inside, the past should not possess you and the future should not be your occupation. Relax into the moment. And then one is entitled to all kinds of miracles.

Source – Osho Book “If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself”

Question – Whenever a certain feeling of opening comes and a certain peace, always a strong anxiety and a depression follow and make me very tired. It seems to be a vicious circle. What is the attitude to take?

Osho – It always happens, it is natural, not vicious. Whenever you are happy, very happy, you are at a peak, suddenly the valley will follow. There are always valleys with peaks, you cannot be on the peak forever – soon you will fall into the valley, in a deep depression. If you are feeling very, very energetic, soon a tiredness will settle in.

The opposite is always round the corner. It has to be so because the opposite is not the opposite, it is the complementary. If you are happy continuously for a long time it will be too much excitement, it will be moving to the extreme – and that can be dangerous to life. You have to be thrown back into sadness. Sadness is relaxing, it is not an excitement; it is like night following day – tired, you fall asleep.

It is not vicious, it is natural, and nature has its own economy. So what to do? Don’t disturb the circle. The only thing that you have to do is that when you are high, don’t get identified with that highness. When you feel very, very happy, remember always that it is only a mood, not you; a climate surrounding you, but not you. When it is raining you don’t think that you are the rain. When the rains have stopped and the sun has come out and it is very sunny, you don’t think that you are the sun or the sunniness… it is something happening around you. It is the same inside – remember.

Happiness is just like rains or the sunniness, it is a climate, a mood around you, an environment – but not you. You are the watcher, you are the witness who knows that now everything is very beautiful. If you are the watcher you will always remember that sooner or later the other opposite will follow. You are already ready for it.

If you are ready for it, it will not be so depressing: the height will not be such an excitement, and the sadness will not be so sad. And by and by, by and by, the peak and the valley will start coming nearer and nearer and nearer and a moment comes when the peak disappears, the valley disappears, and you are on plain ground. That plain ground is neither happiness nor unhappiness, we have given it a different name, we call it bliss, ANAND. It is not happiness. A man of bliss is not happy in the ordinary sense, because he is not excited at all. He is absolutely calm and quiet without any excitement.

It is not sadness either, because a man of bliss is silent but not sad. In a man of bliss, sadness and happiness have met, they have come to a harmony. All that is beautiful in sadness – and remember, there is much that is beautiful in sadness – and all that is beautiful in happiness, is there together. And all that is bad in happiness – there is much that is bad – and all that is bad in sadness – of course you know that much badness is there – both are gone. What is good in happiness? The feeling of euphoria. What is bad in happiness? The excitement, because every excitement is tiring.

Excitement is a dissipation of energy; excitement is fever, excitement is feverish, it is an ill state of affairs. That feverishness will not be there in a man of bliss. He will be happy but not feverish. There will be no excitement, you will not even be able to see whether he is happy or not. If you come across a Buddha you will not be able to feel whether he is happy or not he is so unexcitedly happy that on the surface nothing shows, he is so deeply happy that on the surface nothing shows. His happiness is not the happiness of a storm, with excitement and fever, his happiness is of a silent lake.

In sadness the bad thing is that you feel dull, you feel heavy. In a man of bliss there is no dullness. He’s weightless, he is not heavy at all. He does not walk on the earth in fact, he flies, he has wings. He has no weight, gravitation doesn’t affect him. He is like a feather.

And what is good in sadness? The depth. Sadness is very deep, no laughter can be as deep as sadness. No laughter can be as deep as sadness, because laughter is always superficial, a little profane, a little vulgar. Sadness has a sobriety of its own, sadness has a depth of its own, sadness has a deep feeling – the feeling of the valley, very deep and penetrating. It has something sacred about it, holy about it. A man of bliss is in that depth, in that holiness, in that sacredness.

He is both, and is not both; he transcends both and he is a harmony of both. A man of bliss is a miracle, a rare combination of opposites, a rare synthesis of opposites. So don’t think that this is vicious, it is natural. All that you have to do is to remember that you are separate. When happy, know that happiness is around you, bubbling everywhere; laughter is all around, shaking you to your very roots – but remain alert. Don’t get identified with the mood.

Don’t become the mood, remain a watcher because the watcher always knows the other is coming, following. Soon you will see the day is disappearing and the night is coming. Remain a watcher. When you have become sad, again go on watching. As the day has passed, the night will also pass, everything passes. After a few alert moments you will remember that you are completely separate – you are neither, neither this nor that. This is how for the first time you will feel blissful. Now you know unhappiness cannot disturb you, and happiness cannot disturb you. You have attained to an unperturbable state, the state of bliss. That is the goal of all buddhas.

Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 2″

Osho – Meditation means no-thought, no-mind, no words. They have all been left behind; one has come to an immense, infinite silence. But that silence is not dead, it is a singing silence. It is throbbing, pulsating with life. It has a dancing quality to it. You cannot see the dance, you can only feel it. You cannot hear the song but it reverberates in your whole being. Your every cell becomes bathed in it.

It is a tremendous experience of beauty, of bliss — but it is inexpressible. It is so vast that no word can contain it. The thing that comes closest to it is music, but that too just expresses it approximately, not exactly. Obviously music is also sound — it is very harmonious sound, but the sound is there. In meditation there is no sound, it is soundlessness. Everything has stopped, no movement, one has come to a complete halt. But the experience can only be described as a song, as a tremendous harmony. All these words fall short but these are the only words that give little bit of help. They are only fingers pointing to the moon. They are not the moon themselves, just fingers pointing to the moon.

But I emphasise its dancing quality for a certain reason — because many meditators have become dead; they have tried to silence the mind. And if you persist you can silence the mind. You can repress it and there will be a certain kind of silence, but that will be the silence of a cemetery: forced, violently forced. Something has been crushed, something has been killed. a beautiful experience. That’s why so many of your so-called saints look so sad, so serious. They have lost laughter, they have lost love, they have lost life. They themselves have committed the crime, they themselves have committed suicide. They are sincere people but a little bit foolish too. They missed the point.

They followed it literally but they did not understand the symbolic message, Meditation is silence, not an enforced silence but a silence that comes out of deep understanding, not repression. And then the quality is totally different. When silence comes out of understanding it is a singing silence, a dancing silence, and your life immediately bursts into creativity.

Everybody is carrying a song in their hearts which has to be sung, whatsoever it is. One cannot know it beforehand, one knows it only when one goes understandingly into meditation. With awareness, when one reaches to one’s core, one finds that there is something which has to be shared. It may be painting, it may be dancing, it may be cooking — it may be anything. It does not matter what it is, but one always discovers that there is something which one has to share. One has to create, one has to participate in existence through it.

To me that is true prayer. That is true worship — when you participate in existence by creating something. God is the creator; then the only way to commune with him is to be a creator in your own way, in a small way of course. But you have to do something creative.

And this creativity should not be thought up by the mind, otherwise it won’t be true to your innermost core. It has to be discovered in meditation. Everybody has to discover their song. And the moment you have discovered it your life becomes a blessing — not only to you, it becomes a blessing to others too. And that’s how a sannyasin has to live: in a dance, in a trance, sharing whatsoever he has with no miserliness, with no possessiveness. Just pouring oneself whole-heartedly into existence. And that is the only offering that is accepted by god. All other offerings in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques are pseudo.

Source – Osho Book “Source: Osho Book “I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am””