Osho – Meditation means a state of no-mind — where all the functioning of the mind has ceased. The moment the functioning of the mind ceases you have a profound silence such that you have never known before, such clarity, such transparency — because all the clouds are gone, all the smoke is gone, there is nothing to hinder your insight. All is absolutely clear.

Meditation gives you innocence, clarity, insight into your own being and into the very being of the existence that surrounds you. Suddenly all misery disappears, all desires disappear. Desires are by-products of misery; because you are miserable you are always hankering for a better state of things — more money, more power, more prestige and that more is non-ending. When you attain it, again the mind is there asking for more.

Mind simply means the desire for more and more, ad infinitum. Mind means discontent, unquenchable thirst. The moment mind ceases there is suddenly contentment, absolute contentment, because there is no desire. One is so utterly happy in the now and the here that one cannot even conceive that things could be better than this. Then one moves in a world which is absolutely perfect. It is the same world, only you are not the same person.

And when there is deep contentment inside you, of course it changes everything in your life. Your very aura becomes that of peace, you carry an energy field around you. You become infectious. Even people who sit by your side will start feeling that something very strange and mysterious is there.

Those who are sensitive will be immediately moved, their hearts will start beating with a new joy. They will be surprised at what is happening. You are not doing anything, it is simply happening; you become a triggering point, a catalytic agent. Just your presence triggers some process in them.

It is a synchronicity. You don’t cause it, it simply happens. You are not a doer in it. It is like the sun rising and the birds starting to sing; suddenly from nowhere the trees are awake and the flowers start opening. The sun is not telling them to do it, the sun is not doing anything, the sun is simply present, but the presence is enough. It stirs the life on earth immediately, sleep starts disappearing, a deep awakening happens in nature. When one is contented one carries the climate of contentment around oneself.

First become contented, then your very life will become a source of joy for others. That’s the only true service — not the service that Christian missionaries go on doing. That is mischief and nothing else. It is exploiting people in the name of service, it is converting people, it is a political game. And the people who are converting them are not themselves converted.

Conversion does not mean a change of religion; it means a change of consciousness. That’s exactly the meaning of conversion: when you are no more asleep but awake, when you are no more full of the rubbish of thoughts and memories and desires, when you are utterly silent — that is conversion. When the head has disappeared — you are no more a head person — when the heart has taken its place then you are headless and just a pure heart — that is conversion. It is not a Hindu becoming a Christian or a Christian becoming a Hindu — that is sheer stupidity; just changing prisons from one prison to another prison, that is not conversion.

Conversion is something inner. The only conversion I know of is from mind to meditation, because is changes your whole being; from discontent it brings tremendous contentment to you. The lifestyle of a sannyasin has to be that of contentment. He lives in the now and lives fulfilled. If he dies the next moment, he happily dies, dancingly dies — because there is nothing more! All is already complete! He does not need any more time to do anything, nothing is incomplete. At every moment all is complete, all is accomplished. He is ready to go at any time. He will not even want to linger a single moment more.

Source – Osho Book “Just the Tip of the Iceberg”

Question – Beloved Osho, The more i am able to absorb you, the more thirsty i become. please talk about meditation and passion.

Osho – There is no harm in becoming more thirsty for truth. There is no harm in becoming more thirsty for new spaces of experience, new challenges, voyages to new stars in your innermost being. I call it divine discontentment.

Only the fools are contented. You can see it. Watch a donkey… how contented he looks! He should be worshipped by all religious people. You cannot find a more contented being — having nothing, but you will never see him frustrated, in despair, freaking out. In the world of donkeys even psychotherapies don’t exist. Donkeys don’t need any psychotherapist. But it is not a quality; it is not to be praised, it is a condemnation. The man of any worth is discontented.

The smaller men are discontented about smaller things: money, power, prestige. These are not very far away from the donkeys — cousin-brothers. There is just a difference of a few inches between the donkeys and the presidents and prime ministers. The higher quality man, the man of superiority, the man who has the potential of growing into a Gautam Buddha, into a Mahavira, into a Zarathustra, will also be discontented — although his discontent is totally different, his dimension is different. He is not discontented because he wants to have more things; he is discontented because he wants to be more — not to have more, but to be more. He wants more being, he wants more awareness, he wants more alertness. He wants more lovingness, he wants more compassion. He wants the whole sky and all the stars within him. His discontent is immense.

These smaller people who are discontented for money and power and prestige may find them, and then they will be utterly frustrated. Their whole joy is in the hope, not in the finding. The moment they find they see that they have been running after shadows.

But the really discontented man goes on becoming more and more thirsty, because each step brings him to such immense ecstasies that he cannot stop searching for more. His search is eternal. It is not that what he finds is frustrating, no. It is because what he finds is so satisfying that naturally he wants to go beyond it; there must be more, existence cannot be so limited. It is perfectly good that the more you listen to me the more thirsty you become. Move on. Have an infinite thirst so that your journey towards the truth is unending; you are always, always coming and never reaching.

You have also asked that I say something about meditation and passion. Superficially it will look very strange — why are you putting these two together? — but they are together. It is only the more passionate man who becomes a meditator. His passion is so much that nothing ordinary can satisfy it; everything proves small. His passion is so big….

This has never been said so clearly as I am saying it: as proof, I can tell you that no impotent man in the whole history of man has ever become enlightened. Strange — if your religious people are right, then all impotent people should have become enlightened because they are the real celibates. Their celibacy is absolutely certain, nobody else’s is certain; everybody else’s celibacy is uncertain.

It is the more passionate one who cannot be satisfied by toys, who soon gets fed up with money, with men, with women, with being a celebrity, with fame, with name. They soon become fed up with everything that it is not the real thing. They want the real thing. Their passion is such that unless they find the truth they will not be satisfied.

So there is a relationship: only the passionate ones have become great meditators. And the overflowing energy of passion… unless it is too much it cannot move upwards. Otherwise, it is enough for the biological needs of creating children. When it is too much, then it is bound to rise beyond the boundaries of biology — and that’s how we have found the stages of where it moves in the inner world of man.

There are seven stages. At the seventh stage, when it reaches to the highest point in the head, it explodes, as if into thousands of suns. That’s what we have called `enlightenment’. It is the same energy that expresses itself in sex, creates life; it is the same energy, moving upwards in different stages.

For example, when it is near the heart it creates a tremendous power of love. When it is near the throat it creates a great power in music, poetry, the authority of every single word uttered. It is the same energy when it reaches to the third-eye center, between the two eyebrows; then a man becomes hypnotic, without his effort. Just to be in his presence, you suddenly find yourself agreeing with him. It is not a question of argument; you fall into the same rhythm.

This kind of man never tries to convert anybody. Just by chance if anybody comes close to him, he is bound to be converted. And this is true conversion because it is a transformation: the man will never be the same again. It is when the same energy is moving beyond the sixth center, the third eye, to the seventh, sahasrar that one attains to samadhi. But it is the same energy that we used to call passion; at the lowest level it is passion, at the highest level it is compassion.

Source – Osho Book “The Osho Upanishad”

Osho – Meditation means becoming absolutely silent, still, serene, as if nothing moves inside, everything stops — the mind, time. There comes a full stop to all movement. In that full stop, when the ordinary movement of the mind stops, you start moving into a now dimension. The ordinary movement of the mind is horizontal. When it stops, the energy cannot stop. Energy is basically dynamic, so when the horizontal movement stops, energy changes its movement to a new dimension; it becomes vertical.

Once the energy becomes vertical you are joined to god. That change from horizontal to vertical is meditation. You just have to drop all the old known movements of the mind so the energy accumulates and has to find a new path. It cannot remain static, remember. This is the whole strategy of meditation.

Because energy cannot remain static there is hope. If you stop the energy moving as it has always done, in thoughts, desires, memories, imagination, dreams, when you cut out all these, when you put a full stop there as if the road had ended… Energy cannot remain static, it is essentially dynamic. So when the old movement completely stops it takes a new turn, absolutely new — you are not even aware that such a possibility ever existed. From being horizontal it becomes vertical.

That is the symbol of the Christian cross. Christians have missed its meaning, they think it is just a cross. But it is part of the old eastern symbol, the swastika; it is just a part of the swastika. The swastika is a cross with a few more things added to it; but the cross is the middle section of the swastika. The cross symbolises these two possibilities. One is horizontal — Jesus’ hands are crucified on the horizontal and the whole of his body is on the vertical. His hands represent work, action, and his whole body represents rest, relaxation. The vertical means relaxation and rest.

So once your energy stops moving in the old structure and pattern a new door opens for you. You cannot open it because you don’t know where it is. All that you can do is stop the old flow and let it find the new route. Because energy can move only in two ways there is no problem; if the horizontal is blocked it has to move vertically; it will find its own way. That’s why I say meditation is the bridge between man and god — it is divine.

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

Osho – Without meditation one is bound to live in misery. One can cover it up, one can find a few consolations, one has to find a few consolations otherwise life would be intolerable. One has to remain occupied so that one does not feel the inner emptiness. And people find a thousand and one occupations just to keep themselves engaged. They are very much afraid to be left alone, to be left empty.

These are the people who have invented the proverb that an empty mind is the devil’s workshop. It is not so. The empty mind is the only door to god. The mind which is continuously occupied with thoughts is the devil’s workshop. Out of an empty mind no harm has ever happened. Adolf Hitler is not an empty mind, neither is Joseph Stalin, nor is Alexander the Great, nor Ivan the Terrible. These are people full of thoughts, great thoughts of changing the whole world, of bringing a revolution.

Buddha is an empty mind, Lao Tzu is an empty mind. And out of these empty people — Buddha, Lao Tzu, Basho — god has been experienced. They have been able to sing songs of joy. Their life is a festival, a festival of lights; their life is a continuum of celebration.

Meditation means making the mind empty, empty of all thoughts, discarding all thoughts, remembering that ‘I am not these thoughts,’ that ‘I am separate,’ that ‘I am just a watcher, a watcher on the hills, looking at the valley.’ Creating a distance between the thoughts and your awareness is the whole process of meditation.

The more distance there is, the better, because when the distance is great you cannot feed those thoughts and they start dying of their own accord. They need your co-operation, your continuous co-operation. And meditation means withdrawing your co-operation, you are not fighting with the thoughts, you are allowing them to move, to have their life, but you are no more co-operating, no more nourishing them, no more getting identified with them. And as you become unidentified, Just a watcher on the hills, they start dying.

They are no longer getting any feedback, they are no longer invited guests. They start turning away. A moment comes when the mind is utterly empty — and that is the moment when the heart explodes into songs, because songs need space and the mind is taking up the whole space with all kinds of junk and furniture, rotten furniture. But people are such that they call rotten furniture antique. They go on collecting antiques. The more rotten it is, the more old it is, the more valuable. And the mind is full of all kinds of nonsense — relevant, irrelevant, contradictory. Nothing has to be chosen out of the mind, all has to be categorically rejected: I am not it.

In the East we have defined meditation as a process of neti-neti. The word ‘neti-neti’ means neither this nor that; ‘I am neither this nor that.’ One goes on denying: “I am neither this nor that,’ and a moment comes when there is nothing to be denied any more. A vast emptiness surrounds you, infinite emptiness surrounds you. Only that much emptiness, that much space, can help the heart to open up for the first time. The heart needs infinite space, it needs the whole Sky, only then is there bliss and there is singing and there is dancing. And that singing, that dancing, that blissful state, is the ultimate goal of sannyas.

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

Osho – Meditation is not for the weaklings;
It is not for the cowards
It is not for those who are full of fear,
Because it is the ultimate adventure.
It is going into the uncharted –
No maps exist, no guidelines either.

The master can only create a thirst in you,
A tremendous thirst for truth
But he cannot give you a programme
He cannot give you a discipline.

He can give you an insight, a longing, a love
But then you have to go all alone
Because it is an inner journey –
Nobody can accompany you. That’s why
Many people become interested in meditation
But very few people ever do anyYthing about it.

Their interest remains
Only an intellectual curiosity,
It never becomes an experiment.
Or even if sometimes people try
They try with half-hearted efforts, lukewarm
And meditation needs your total commitment.
Unless you are boiling at hundred degrees
You will not evaporate.

And meditation is a kind of evaporation into god:
You disappear and only god remains.
Remember: the meditator never meets god.
If the meditator is, god is not
If god is, the meditator is no more,
Hence a really strong spirit

A really brave man is needed –
A man who is ready to die in the search
Because it is only out of that death
That a new life is born.

It is only through crucifixion
That resurrection happens.
Meditation is like a cross:
You have to carry it on your shoulders.

Source – Osho Book “No Man Is an Island”

Osho – The greatest courage in life is needed when you go inwards, for many reasons… The first is: it is a flight from the alone to the alone, it is going deeper into your aloneness. And man is caught up in such a way that he becomes accustomed to company, to people, to family. He forgets absolutely the joy of being alone; hence there is a fear of being left alone.

That’s why nations exist: it is because of fear, not because of any love. That’s why religions exist — not because of a longing for god. How many people really long for god? Not so many Christians, not so many Hindus, not so many Mohammedans. The whole world is religious in that way. But people are afraid of being left alone; they have to be part of some crowd — a political crowd, a social crowd, a religious crowd; any crowd will do, but they are dependent on the crowd. They feel good when they are surrounded by people; they start feeling shaky, scared when they find there is nobody and they are alone. That is the fear that grips you when you are lost in a jungle or in a desert where, as far as you can see, there is nobody. That utter aloneness creates great fear because we are conditioned by the crowd, for the crowd, as part of the crowd. We are not brought up as individuals. We are brought up as small units of a great mechanism called the society, the nation, the church.

People are not satisfied with these crowds — they create their small crowds — because when the crowd is very big you start losing yourself in the crowd. It becomes impossible for you to recognise people, to see who is who; hence people create small crowds of their own: the Rotary Club, the Lion’s Club. These are just small crowds where everybody knows everybody else, where everybody is acquainted with everybody else. The greatest fear arises when you move inwards… because it is possible to find a man in the desert, it is possible to find somebody in the jungle when you are lost.

I have heard a story: Once a hunter got lost in the jungle. He tried for three days continuously, but he could not find any way to get out. He got deeper and deeper in the thicker parts of the jungle. He became desperate: he could not sleep, there was nothing to eat. After three days he thought ‘This is death. Now I cannot survive.’ He shouted and did everything and on the third day evening, he suddenly saw a man coming. They both rejoiced, both ran towards each other and hugged each other. They were absolutely unacquainted, but what a joy to see another man! But soon they found that that joy was wrong, they were disillusioned: both were lost. Each was thinking ‘Now I have found a person who will help me to get out,’ and both rejoiced for a moment, but the moment they explained to each other why they were rejoicing so much, both were shocked.

They were still lost in the same way, but they were not in so much despair. At least they could share their misery, they could communicate, relate, talk to each other, converse, do something — together. They were still lost in the same way but somehow it felt different.

That’s how marriage came into existence. Two lost people for a moment enjoy the honeymoon, thinking ‘I have found the person whom I was seeking,’ and each is thinking the same; soon they will be disillusioned. But still, even though they will be miserable, they will be miserable together. It is better, people think, to be miserable together than to be miserable alone; in fact in togetherness misery is multiplied. But people love togetherness because we are brought up in that way. From the very first moment of birth the child depends on the mother, on the father, on the family. Then his circle becomes bigger, but he always remains part of some group, some collectivity.

Meditation is the only phenomenon where there is no possibility of meeting anybody, where you have to go alone, totally alone. Hence only very courageous people can enter into the world of meditation. That’s why so few people have ever entered, Why so few people have ever become enlightened.

Secondly: when you move inwards you move without any maps. Even if you go to the moon you have a certain map, a certain route. There have been people before you, their footprints are there, there are milestones everywhere. Even in the sea you are not totally lost, in the sky you are not totally lost: you can communicate with people, you can give messages — even from the moon! You can remain in some kind of relationship; it may be just through radio waves, but you can remain connected. You can still hear the voices of people, you can still see that others are there; you are connected.

But when you move inwards, the people who have gone in cannot leave any footprints for anybody. It is impossible, because everybody’s inner territory is so different that Buddha’s footprints won’t help you and if you follow Buddha’s footprints literally, you will never find yourself.

Jesus’ map won’t help you; you cannot follow it literally. It can help in a very indirect way; it can make you aware of certain things inside, but in a very vague sense. It can give you the confidence that ‘Yes, there is a world inside, no doubt about it, because so many people cannot be lying. Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Krishna, Mohammed, such beautiful people cannot all be lying. They cannot be in a conspiracy — for what? They never existed together — they lived in different ages, in different countries — yet they all speak almost the same language… But you cannot follow it exactly because Buddha’s inner territory is different. Each individual is unique, so unique that you have to discover yourself all alone; hence great courage is needed. This is the greatest adventure in life, and one who goes on this adventure is blessed.

Source – Osho Book “The Imprisoned Splendor”

Osho – Meditation is object-less. If you use any object, then it is not meditation; it becomes thinking. It becomes contemplation; it becomes reflection, but not meditation. This is the most essential point to be understood. This is the essence of a meditative state: that it is object-less. Only consciousness is there, but not conscious ABOUT anything.

Consciousness without being conscious of anything – this is the nature of meditation. But this may create a very depressed mood; this may create pessimism in the mind. It is so difficult to throw even a single thought out of the mind – how can one conceive of being totally thoughtless? It is so difficult to get rid of one object of the mind, that it is inconceivable how to be totally object-less; how to be just a mirror, how to be just conscious without being conscious of anything.

We are never conscious without being conscious of anything – something is always there. And there are some psychologists, some schools of psychology, who say that it is impossible to be conscious without any object. Consciousness to them means consciousness OF SOMETHING. Something must be there; otherwise, we will go to sleep; otherwise, we will become unconscious. But yoga says that ordinarily this is right: as far as the ordinary mind is concerned, if there is no object the mind will go down into sleep, slip down into unconsciousness.

We also are aware of it. If you are thinking something in the night, then sleep becomes impossible, because if some object is present in the mind then you cannot drop into sleep, into unconsciousness. So if you are thinking, then you cannot go to sleep; you go to sleep only when thinking has ceased. When thinking has ceased but there is no sleep, only then will you understand what is meant by meditation – but we never know any moment like that. When thoughts cease, thinking ceases, sleep takes over. You are not even aware when sleep has come; you become unconscious.

This is what hypnosis uses as a technique. Hypnosis – any method of hypnotism, any method – uses only this technique: to fix the mind somewhere on one object so intensely that the mind becomes bored of one object. This is the tendency of the mind – mind needs novelty; something new every moment, then it feels alert. If you are in a situation where you have to be aware of only one thing repeatedly then the mind feels bored, and boredom becomes the gate to sleep. So hypnotism uses it. It will give you any object to concentrate on, to concentrate your total consciousness on; then you will feel bored, by and by sleepy, and then sleep will take over. The very word hypnosis means induced sleep. So sleep can be induced if mind is devoid of thoughts.

But yoga says that this is right as far as the ordinary mind is concerned, but this is not right for a meditative mind. Through meditation, mind takes on a new quality, and it becomes possible to be conscious without thoughts. But it is difficult, and to take the jump is arduous.

In Zen there are two schools: one is known as the sudden enlightenment school, and another as the gradual enlightenment school. The sudden school says that any enlightenment is sudden. You have to take a jump from thought to no-thought, from ignorance to knowledge, from sleep to enlightenment. You have to take a sudden jump. But there are very few followers of the sudden school; there cannot be, because it is inconceivable.

There is another school which is known as the gradual enlightenment school. There are many many followers of it, because the moment one says ”gradual,” we are at ease – now we can do something. And in steps, gradually, in degrees we can proceed. In a sudden phenomenon there is no time, so you cannot postpone – you cannot say tomorrow. If the phenomenon can happen suddenly, this very moment, then your mind cannot excuse itself; there is no basis to postpone it. With a gradual school you can say, ”Okay, we will try in this life, and if not in this life, then in another life. Gradually we will reach the peak. One step, second step – by steps we will reach to the ultimate.” Then you have to divide.

But this UPANISHAD belongs to neither. This is neither sudden nor gradual. This UPANISHAD takes a middle way. It says: It is difficult to take a sudden jump, and it is tedious and long to think in terms of degrees. Then you can go on thinking in infinite degrees. So this UPANISHAD says: Only one step is enough – neither sudden nor gradual. Only one step – only one step in between. To be object-less, to be thought-less and conscious is the goal. Only take one step: from many thoughts to one thought, and from one thought to no-thought.

Source – Osho Book “That Art Thou”

Osho – Meditation is rest, absolute rest, a full stop to all activity — physical, mental, emotional. When you are in such a deep rest that nothing stirs in you, when all action as such ceases, as if you are fast asleep yet awake, you come to know who you are. Suddenly the window opens. It cannot be opened by effort, because effort creates tension and tension is the cause of our whole misery. Hence this is something very fundamental to be understood,,that meditation is not effort.

One has to be very playful about meditation, one has to learn to enjoy it as fun. One has not to be serious about it — be serious and you miss. One has to go into it very joyously. And one has to keep aware that it is falling into deeper and deeper rest. It is not concentration, just the contrary, it is relaxation, When you are utterly relaxed, for the first time you start feeling,,your reality, you come face to face with your being. When you are engaged in activity you are so occupied that you cannot see yourself. Activity creates much smoke round you, it raises much dust around you; hence all activity has to be dropped, at least for a few hours every day.

That is only so in the beginning. When you have learned the art of being at rest then you can be both active and restful together, because then you know that rest is something so inner that it cannot be disturbed by anything outer, the activity goes on on the circumference and at the centre you remain restful. So it is only for beginning that activity has to be dropped for a few hours. Then one has learned the art then there is no question: for twenty-four hours a day one can be meditative and one can continue all the activities of ordinary life.

But remember, the key word is rest, relaxation. Never go against rest and relaxation. Arrange your life in such a way, drop all futile activity, because ninety per cent is futile; it is just for killing time and remaining occupied. Do only the essential and devote your energies more and more to the inner journey. Then that miracle happens when you can remain at rest and in action together, simultaneously. That is the meeting of the sacred and the mundane, the meeting of this world and that, the meeting of materialism and spiritualism.

It is only in this way that the East and the West can meet and become one. It has not been possible up to now for the simple reason that the East has tried to remain at rest; hence it has fallen into a kind of inactivity. And the West has tried to remain active. The West has completely forgotten how to be at rest; it has become very feverishly active. Both have gone wrong: the East has become lazy and lousy and the West has become insane. And activity out of insanity is dangerous; the West is driving the whole world towards that danger, the third world war. And inactivity, lousiness, lethargy, laziness, is also dangerous — it is suicidal, it is a slow kind of death. So the East is starving and dying, withering away.

The meeting of the East and the West is one of the most essential things if humanity is to be saved. And my sannyasins have to become this meeting of action and rest; then they can herald the new man on earth.

Source – Osho Book “The Golden Wind”

Osho – Man can come to truth only through meditation. Truth is not something that mind can know. Mind can theorise about it, but ‘about’ means around — and mind goes about and about, around and around. It moves in a circle, it never reaches the centre. Its very nature is not to reach to the centre, it exists for the circumference.

Mind is needed only to relate with others. It is a method of communication. Truth is your very being. It is not a question of relating to it. It happens only when you fall into deep silence, when you forget the whole world, when the other is completely forgotten as if the other does not exist at all. In those moments of solitude and aloneness truth is revealed. It is not a conclusion of the mind but a revelation of no-mind.

Meditation simply means turning in. Mind is always turning out, mind is basically extroversion. It has its utility — I am not against utilising it, but I am certainly against being utilised by it. Use it as a servant, use it as a beautiful mechanism, but don’t let it become your master. It is a good slave, take every care of it, but don’t allow it to enslave you.

Remember that the real master is not on the circumference, the real master is at the centre. And at the centre there is only consciousness: no thoughts, no desires, no imagination. All the faculties of the mind stop functioning. You are simply alert, aware, watchful, you simply are. In that state you are truth. That is the meaning of Verity — it is one of the most beautiful names: the state of being true.

And once it is experienced it starts changing your whole life style. If you know your truth you cannot be untrue in any way. It becomes impossible. Even to be untrue to others becomes impossible. The joy of being truthful is such that who would like to fall into the darkness of being untrue? The simplicity of being truthful is such that who would like to create unnecessary complexities, complications, by being untruthful?

One lie brings in its wake a thousand and one other lies, because you have to defend it, you have to support it — and it cannot be defended by truth, it can only be defended by other lies. And every other lie will need in its own turn more lies. A single lie, and your whole life starts becoming untruthful, inauthentic.

Truth needs no defence. It is very simple, it is simply so. And the man who lives in truth need not bother what he has said, what he has done. We need not go on remembering all that he has said and all that he has done. The lying person has to be continuously calculating, watching. he may say something; which goes against something else which he said before, he may do something, that may undo something else. His life becomes more and more complicated, more and more entangled. It becomes a riddle, it becomes a problem; he becomes a problem to himself and to others. And a problematic life cannot know what bliss is.

Bliss is known only by the simple, the innocent. But the way to find it is to put the mind aside and to go in a state of no-mind. Slowly slowly a few glimpses will arise, and then those gaps start becoming bigger, then those beautiful intervals become vaster. And then sooner or later such a state arises that even if you are in the marketplace doing the ordinary things of life which are needed, your silence continues like an undercurrent; it goes on flowing. You can hear its melody, you can feel its beauty, you can taste its sweetness.

Truth brings many gifts, but one has to open the door of meditation. Nobody can give you the truth; truth is already given to you from god himself. It is not something that has to be found anywhere else; it is already the case, it is your suchness, verity! You just have to take a few steps inwards… Sannyas simply means this: a decision to find one’s truth, a commitment that ‘From this moment my life will be devoted to finding mY truth.’

And remember: the truth of Buddha, the truth of Jesus or the truth of Zarathustra cannot be your truth. If you repeat Jesus or Buddha you will be living in the mind. And when you put the mind aside, naturally you put your Christianity, your Hinduism, your Mohammedanism aside because they are all part of the mind. The moment you put the mind aside you have put the whole of history aside, the whole world aside. Then you are moving into your own being with no history, no past, with no society, as if you are alone on the earth, as if you are the first being on the earth, in existence.

Once this decision becomes a commitment… That’s why I insist on sannyas, otherwise people can simply listen to me and they can meditate and they can go on living ordinarily — there is no need to become sannyasins. And many people think ‘What is the need of becoming a sannyasin? We can meditate, we can listen, we can try to understand what is happening, we can go through therapy groups…’

But there is a very fundamental reason; the reason is: it is a deliberate commitment, a conscious decision, so from this moment it becomes your focus of life. You have to put all that is unessential aside, and you have to put more and more energy into the inward journey. The truth is not very far. It needs only one step, hence it is better not to call it a step: it is a quantum leap, a jump from mind to no-mind.

Source – Osho Book “The Golden Wind”

Osho – Once you have come to a point in your being, it can never be lost unless it was simply a dream. Only a dream can be lost. Drugs cannot give you reality. They can only give you very beautiful dreams. Or even horrible dreams – it depends on you, the dreamer. You can hypnotize yourself into a particular dream; there are hypnotic techniques. If you use them you will be in a state of autohypnosis, you will start feeling things, many things, but once you stop the technique, the whole thing will disappear. It was just a mental trick you were playing: you were dreaming, it was your imagination.

If you really grow into awareness, it cannot be lost. That is the distinction between real methods and false methods. A real method is a growth method; it is not simply a vision. You grow in it; the vision comes because you have grown to a new state of mind.

With drugs, or with a false technique, you never grow. A certain vision comes to you, but you remain the same. When you are not using the drug, or the technique, the vision will disappear. It was produced chemically; it was not coming through your own growth. Remember always, only growth matters. Visions are of no use. Even if you see God, it is meaningless. If you remain the same, then your God is nothing but a by-product of your own imagination. Visions are not meaningful. Christianity has placed too much emphasis on them.

That’s why drugs have become so prevalent in the West – because they can easily create visions. If you are looking for visions, then I will say that meditation is a waste of time; drugs are better. They give you visions easily. But you remain the same. Or, rather, you may even fall down from your ordinary state of mind; you may deteriorate.

With meditation, whatsoever is attained remains with you. If you stop the technique you will not proceed further, but whatever you have attained will remain with you. It cannot be lost; a real growth can never be lost. It is not something added to you that you can lose. It is you who has grown.

For example, if you have become a young man you cannot fall back to your childhood again. It is a growth. But if a child is simply dreaming that he has become a young man, he will fall down. When he awakens from his dream he will be a child again. That is the criterion to judge whether something has been a growth or it is just a dream. If it is a dream, it will be lost. If it has been growth, it will remain with you.

Source – Osho Book “The Eternal Quest”

Osho – Intellect may arrive at certain inferences, but intellect is an unconscious phenomenon. You are almost behaving sleepily. Intelligence is awakening, and unless you are fully awake, whatsoever you decide is bound to be wrong somewhere or other. It is bound to be so, it is doomed to be wrong, because it is a conclusion arrived at by an unconscious mind.

To bring intelligence into activity you don’t need more information, you need more meditation. You need to become more silent, you need to become more thoughtless. You need to become less mind and more heart. You need to become aware of the magic that surrounds you: magic that is life, magic that is God, magic that is in the green trees and the red flowers, magic that is in people’s eyes. Magic is happening everywhere! All is miraculous, but because of your intellect you remain closed inside yourself, clinging to your stupid conclusions arrived at in unconsciousness or given to you by others who are as unconscious as you are.

Savita, intelligence is certainly creative because intelligence brings your totality into functioning — not only a part, a small part, the head. Intelligence vibrates your whole being; each cell of your being, each fiber of your life starts dancing, and falls in a subtle harmony with the total. That’s what creativity is: to pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. That’s how one becomes a Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra. These are the real creative people.

Something like this is happening right now, here. If you are a disciple you will be able to feel something of it. If you are a devotee you will be able to drink out of this source that has become available to you. And then creativity will come to you, things will start happening on their own. Your heart will start pouring songs of joy, your hands will start transforming things. You will touch mud and it will become a lotus. You will be able to become an alchemist. But it is possible only through great awakening of intelligence, great awakening of the heart.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 4″