Question – Beloved Osho, Can one Meditate too much?

Osho – Shanti Animisha, there are things which you can never do too much. For example, you cannot love too much; more is always possible, and there is no limitation anywhere.

I am taking the example of love because that will be easily understood. The same is true about meditation: you cannot meditate too much, because silence knows no bounds — it is an abysmal depth. You can go on and on, and you will find there is always much more to be explored. There comes no point in meditation when you can say, “Now it is the full stop.” There is no such thing as a full stop, because you are carrying the whole sky within your heart, a whole universe in your being.

Meditation is trying to find the ultimate limit. You always feel that you are coming closer to it; you are always coming closer, and closer, and closer. It is always coming closer, but you never reach it, because the limit that you seek is just like the horizon — you can go towards the horizon, thinking that it looks only a few miles away at the most, where the earth and the sky are meeting, but they do not meet anywhere. So as you go on, your horizon also goes on receding; you will never reach to the horizon. What is true about the inner consciousness is also true about the outer space.

Albert Einstein used to think, when he was young, that there must be a limit somewhere — because mind cannot see the unlimitable. It may be very far away, millions and millions of light years-away, but it must be there. But as he continuously worked on the stars and space, slowly, slowly he became aware that there is no limit at all.

And there cannot be, because a limit needs something else to make a limit out of it. For example, your house has a fence because there are other houses in the neighborhood. Your fence cannot exist if there is nothing beyond it.

Space is a nothingness in which stars are moving, millions of stars — three million stars have been counted up to now. You may or may not be aware that in the night when the sky is absolutely clear of clouds and you see the stars, you don’t see more than three hundred — but even three hundred seems to be so many. And if you don’t believe me, try to count. It is a very difficult task — from where to begin? And again and again you will be coming to a point: have I counted this star or not?

Scientists have figured out that with the eyes only three hundred stars at the most can be seen. And there are three million stars. That is not the limit of the stars, that is the limitation of our scientific instruments — because three years ago there were only one million. Then we improved our instruments, and there were two million, and then we improved our instruments, and there were three million.

Einstein said, “It all depends how refined the instruments we have are. Go on refining your instruments, and the stars will go on becoming more and more available to you.”

And these stars are in a very strange situation, which was not known before Albert Einstein. He has given us so many new insights: that all these stars are running away… as if you are running away from your home, farther and farther.

Scientists have not been able to find the center of the universe, but there must be some center, it seems, from which the stars are running away, farther and farther, with tremendous speed — at the same speed as the speed of light: one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second.

Hence, the new idea has come of an expanding universe. It is no longer a fixed thing, it is continuously expanding — and expanding into what? An immense nothingness, pure space; and that space has no limit. And we don’t know whether we will be able to know about all the stars, because it will all depend on our instruments. Every day, many stars are being found.
This expanding universe can give you a parallel: inside there is an expanding consciousness. In meditation you start feeling the expanding consciousness — there is no limit to it.

You cannot do too much. Whatever you are doing is always too little. And it will always remain too little. These are the mysteries of existence. The scientist becomes aware of the outer world, the mystic becomes aware of the inner world. And the inner world is far richer.

Source – Osho Book “The Razor’s Edge”

Question – Beloved Osho, What is orgasm in reference to meditation and higher levels of consciousness? Isn’t feeling orgasmic in a deep state of meditation totally nonsexual?

Osho – The experience of orgasm itself is always nonsexual. Even though you have achieved it through sex, it itself has no sexuality in it. You can reach to orgasm through sex. It is a merger of the negative and the positive polarities — such a deep merger that the man is no longer man, the woman is no longer woman. They are not two; there is only one energy surrounding them both. They have melted into that energy.

It may be for a moment — that does not matter — but the experience itself has nothing to do with sex. The first orgasm is bound to be attained through sex. And my own understanding is that meditation has grown out of the experience of orgasm, because the original founders — particularly Shiva who, in his VIGYAN BHAIRVA TANTRA, has written, just like a scientific formula, about one hundred and twelve meditations; each meditation just in one line or two lines…. The man is tremendously aphoristic. Those one hundred and twelve sutras are just like seeds. He has condensed everything about the method in them.

He is also known as a great lover. Perhaps he was the first man to discover meditation. And it can be very scientifically assumed that whoever experienced orgasm, if he had a little intelligence, would have seen that although it has come through sex, it itself is a nonsexual experience. That gives the insight that there may be possibilities of reaching it through nonsexual means, because it is not sexual itself, so sexuality is not necessarily the only way.

It does not need much intelligence if you experience it and see clearly that it does not have any impact of sexuality. Perhaps sexuality created the background, the groundwork in which it happened. But the experience of orgasm itself does not remind you of sex; it is purely spiritual.

Whoever experienced this must have concluded then that there can be other ways to reach it — because sex is not necessarily a part of it. There is no color, nor any impression of sex left in it. Then he must have watched how it happens. And then things are very clear: the moment the orgasm happens, time stops, you forget about time. Your mind stops, you do not think anymore. There is tremendous calmness, and a great awareness.

You are not asleep. You have not fallen into any hypnotic sleep. Everything is crystal-clear. The mind is no more functioning the way it functions continuously: the thought process has stopped. The sense of time is not there; it seems timeless. Afterwards you will think it lasted only a few seconds, but that is afterwards; in the experience itself, it seems it is eternity. And you are fully aware, as aware as you have ever been: wide-awake.

Any observer going through the experience will naturally think, “If these things can be managed without sex — awareness, thoughtlessness, timelessness — you will reach to the orgasmic state, bypassing sexuality.”

And this is my understanding: this is how man must have first discovered meditation; otherwise meditation is not something biological or natural, so that in the course of time you have to discover it. But biology has given you an experience; if you try to understand it, you are bound to search for other methods to make it possible. You know it has happened — that there was no thought, no time, and only pure awareness — so it is possible.

You are not groping in the dark, you are not just guessing: you know it is possible. You have known it through the biological route. Then if these three things can be maintained without sex, the orgasm happens. And the difference is that the sexual orgasm is very momentary. Although while it is there, it looks almost eternal, that feeling is just because of its depth. But through meditation you can have it as long as you want, because meditation is not dependent on anybody else — the woman or the man or a certain state of two minds, a certain rhythm of two energies. The sexual orgasm depends on many things, and particularly on the other person being there.

Meditation is independent of any other person; only you are to create the situation. And naturally the conclusion will be to start with awareness, because you don’t know how else to stop thoughts. It is not in your hands to stop thoughts or to stop time. Only one thing remains, and that is awareness — that you can be more aware or less aware.

You know it. If this house is suddenly on fire, you will be more aware. You know that your awareness goes up and down. At certain moments you are more aware; at certain moments, less aware. So it is possible to create the situation of being more aware.

That’s why awareness became the basis of meditation. And with awareness came the surprise that as you become aware, thoughts disappear. When you are fully aware, there are no thoughts, and suddenly time has stopped. Time can be there inside only with the movement of thoughts.

In fact time can be measured only with some movement. For example, with a watch, how are you measuring time? By the movement of the hands; otherwise, there is no way.

If everything is unmoving, you will not be able to think that anything like time exists. But you know that a car has passed, then a train is passing — there has been a gap. In the gap… it means time. Then you hear the sound of an airplane…. This is movement — you are finding movement around you.

Inside there is only one movement, and that is of thoughts. When thoughts stop, suddenly time disappears, because time can be measured only through some kind of movement. That’s why, if in the night you had many dreams, in the morning you will find that it was a long, long night, because so much movement happened. But if you had no dream at all, you will feel as if you have just fallen asleep, and now you are awake. The night has passed so quickly.

When you are in anxiety, in misery, in pain, time passes slowly because of your pain. You would like the pain to pass quickly, but with your expectation that the pain is not going, time is passing very slowly. But when you are meeting a friend after years, you find hours have passed, and it seems just minutes since you met. When you are joyful, when you are miserable, it makes a difference in the speed of time immediately. But when you are neither — just silent — time has no way to move.

So as one becomes aware, first one finds thoughts becoming less, and finally stopping. Then he finds time is not there — and he has found the key to the basic meditation. Then all other meditations are differentiations of the same method, different combinations of the same method. Different combinations, but essentially they are awareness or witnessing.

And it seems there is no other way to find it except through sexual orgasm, because that is the only experience in life given by nature that comes close to meditation. And the misery is that millions of people have no experience of orgasm, and all the religions have been preventing them from having that experience.

This is so ridiculous, because if they don’t have any orgasmic experience, meditation remains just a fiction; or maybe some giants can do it. “But we are human beings — it is not possible for us to be more aware. How can one be more aware? We are aware as much as we can be. How to stop thoughts?”

And the responsibility for keeping humanity away from meditation goes to all the religions because they are against sex. They have prevented people — not from sex but from orgasm, because they have poisoned people’s sex with guilt. They could not prevent sex, but they did not allow people to be playful about it, they did not allow people to be respectful about it, they did not allow people to go deeper into it.

On the contrary, because sex is sin, it makes people feel guilty. The man is in a hurry to finish as quickly as possible, because you should not continue any sin too long. Knowing that you are doing something wrong, you want to do it quickly and be finished with it.

And if the man is in a hurry he cannot attain to orgasm, only to ejaculation; which proves all the religious teachers right — that you are wasting your energy. Because the man feels he gains nothing, it is a waste, he feels tired. The next day he may have a headache, feels dull, is not so sharp. Perhaps the religious people are right — he is already punished.

So it is a very strange thing. They have created the idea of guilt, and the idea of guilt on its own has given proofs that you really are doing something wrong.

The woman has remained unmoving while making love, because she has been told that to enjoy herself while making love — or to move, or to be playful — is only for prostitutes, not for ladies. Ladies simply lie down almost dead, thinking, “Let him do what he wants to do and let him be finished soon” — because they don’t gain anything out of it. The man at least finds a certain release of the energy with which he was becoming burdened, but the woman does not get even that release. So naturally women are more against sex than men. And every woman thinks in her mind that all men are nothing but animals: their only desire is sex.

This is the by-product of all the religious teachings. In this way… they have not been able to prevent sex; otherwise humanity would have disappeared. And orgasm is not necessary for reproduction, so biology has no problem: it can continue its work without orgasm.

Orgasm was not something necessary for reproduction, it was something to open a window for the higher evolution of consciousness. But the idiots who have been religious leaders and priests prevented that window. They have been teaching continuously: “Meditate!” And when people fail, when they cannot attain to meditation, then the priests say, “You are sinners — how can you attain? First be celibate, fast, do penance.”

And all these things will prevent people from having orgasm — which is the only natural way to have a first glimpse of meditation. So you can understand my difficulty. If I say to people, “You have been prevented by your religious people from becoming religious,” they cannot understand what I am saying. But what I am saying is absolutely scientific.

There must be something in man’s nature that opens a window towards higher evolution; otherwise how can you convince the man that there are things like higher experiences? And how did the first man come to know? Why did he meditate in the first place, and how did he find the way to meditate?

Somebody, somewhere in the past, must have found some similarity with his nature, and must have seen that, although he passes through sex, he reaches to a point where sex has nothing to do with it: sex simply opens a door into a new reality. And that door can be opened without sex far more easily, without dependence.

It is one of the great misfortunes that has befallen humanity, that sex became taboo, prohibited, rejected, condemned. They did not succeed in preventing it, but they certainly succeeded in poisoning man’s spiritual growth. So it is not only the orgasm that you experience in meditation which is nonsexual, even the orgasm that you experience through sex is nonsexual. Orgasm itself is a nonsexual experience.

The natural way, the easier way, the primary way is through sex — and it is perfectly good; it is in accordance with nature’s intentions. And then you know that such an experience is possible for you. Then you can play with the experience, and you can find many ways to reach it.

All those ways have become meditations. And that does not prohibit you from using the sexual way, because it is sex that has given you the first experience of orgasm, has given you the first insight into meditation, has taken you far away from biology and nature. So one should be grateful to one’s sexuality.

There should be no question of guilt. If religions had taught people to be grateful to sex, we would have produced a totally different kind of man — not this miserable and suffering creature that you see all around the world. We could have produced really joyful, blissful people; people who would have forgotten how to be miserable, how to suffer, who would have forgotten completely the anguish in which they are living now.

Source – from Osho Book “Light on the Path’

[A sannyasin says she is not doing the meditations because: It feels too much of an effort. I enjoy just sitting and walking, and being with friends.]

Osho – Then don’t create problems! – because that sitting and enjoying you have been doing your whole life. That has not changed you. Your problems are there. When something is to be done, you don’t want to do it – you enjoy sitting – but the sitting is not going to help you. If it is helping, then there is no difficulty. If you can just change yourself by sitting with friends and enjoying, then I am not here to force you into any discipline, any hard work.

But it is not changing you. That’s what you have been doing for your whole life. You will remain the same Some hard work is needed. And when you have done hard work and you have earned rest, then sit silently and enjoy friends. It is beautiful… nothing is wrong in enjoying friends and sitting silently – it is good, but earn it first.

But how can you-think that sitting and enjoying friends is going to help? It may be just an occupation – just getting into things so that one can pass time, or it may be just an escape from yourself. It may be just a trick of the mind to waste time. If you are really interested in changing and in dropping your problems, then there are two things: either drop them… then I will not say to do any hard work. Simply drop them.

Then you are allowed to sit silently and enjoy and do whatsoever you like, but then drop the problems – and never raise them again. I’m not saying don’t talk about your problems to me – not even to yourself. Drop them completely. And if you cannot drop them, start meditating.

It is hard but it has to be done. At least two, three months hard work is needed. It will cleanse you and it will purify you. It will destroy the old structure and a new possibility will arise. Otherwise you will continue with the old.

And I see that there is a problem. If you want to avoid hard work, drop the problem. But I don’t see that you will be able to drop it so easily. It is a real problem – it is there hanging in your unconscious. And my feeling is that you are avoiding meditations. They are not hard… because so many people are doing them. You are perfectly healthy, full of energy; you are not old. It is just the mind that is avoiding meditation, because the mind knows if it goes into meditation, sooner or later the structure will explode and you will have to change.

My feeling is that you are enjoying your problems, your depression, your sadness; you are enjoying it in a subtle way. If you want to enjoy it, then too, there is no problem – but then enjoy it deliberately, knowingly. Then depression is no more depression.

So tomorrow, think about it – these two things. Sit silently tonight. The alternatives are there: either you drop the problems or you have to start meditating. And not so-so, lukewarm. You have to really work hard and go into it. Tomorrow write a letter about whatsoever you have chosen. And I am happy whatsoever you choose, so don’t bother about me; don’t think about what I would like.

Both are good, perfectly good. In fact if you can drop problems simply like that, that’s beautiful; nothing could be better. But if you cannot, then tomorrow morning get up and start Dynamic meditation. And all five you have to do. When the camp is finished, do two meditations and the Nadabrahma, the humming meditation, at home – three meditations. And after three weeks I am going to give you a meditation – but first you decide, mm? Good.

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”