Osho – Anand means bliss, nirbeeja means seedless. The word nirbeeja is a very specific word. In Yoga two kinds of samadhi are talked about, two kinds of ultimate states of consciousness. One is sabeeja; it means with seed. Another is nirbeeja; it means seedless, without seed. The sabeeja state of mind is where somewhere some desire is still lurking, the seed of desire is still there. In its time, in its season, it will sprout again. You will be caught in the desire again. For the moment it has left you, you cannot see any visible sign of it – there are moments when you cannot see any anger, and you can believe also that now it has gone forever – and then in a certain situation, out of nowhere it comes again.

One day you find that you are no more interested in people, you are perfectly happy alone. The desire for the other has disappeared, and it may look in that moment as if it is gone and you are free from the other. Now there is no bondage, now you can be on your own. You are free, you have freedom, you are no more dependent on anybody else; it is a great release, a great relief. But one day suddenly, out of nowhere, out of the blue, the desire for the other arises. That simply means that the seed was there. The tree had disappeared from the surface, but the seeds had fallen down into the soil. They were waiting for the rains to come, and then they will sprout again, and again the whole journey will start.

Nirbeeja means when the seed is burnt. That is the true state, the true attainment. One has to attain to a bliss where all seeds of desire are burnt, so there is no possibility of any desire arising again. The state is called the state of the mukta – the state of the free, the state of freedom.

One has to go on watching. Not only the roots and the branches and the foliage have to be cut, but the seeds have to be burnt. And watching, slowly slowly one becomes aware of where the seeds are. If one goes on watching one’s anger, sooner or later one will come upon the small seeds, and once you have those seeds in your hands they can be burnt, they can be destroyed. In fact the very awareness becomes a fire. And when all desires have disappeared, then for the first time one knows what joy is, what freedom is, what liberation is.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Look Before You Leap”

Question – For zen it is: “eat when you are hungry and drink when you are thirsty.” For Patanjali it is: “regularity — niyam.” How to reconcile spontaneity and regularity?

Osho – There is no need to synthesize. If you are really spontaneous you will become regular. If you are really regular you will become spontaneous. There is no need to reconcile. If you try to reconcile you will become a mess, so choose one and forget about the other. If you choose Zen forget about Patanjali as if he never existed; then he is not for you. And one day you will suddenly see that the regularity has come following spontaneity.

How it happens? If you are spontaneous, if you ea( when you feel hungry — and if you only eat when you feel hungry and you never eat against your desire, you never eat more than your desire, you always follow your need — by and by you will settle to a regularity, because the body is a mechanism, a very, very beautiful biomechanism. Then every day at the same time you will find you are hungry again; every day at the same time you will find you are sleepy again. Life will become regular.

But if you are afraid of spontaneity…. As people are afraid. because culture, civilization, religion — all the poisoners of the world — they have poisoned your mind and they have made you afraid of spontaneity; they say you are hiding an animal within you and if you are spontaneous you may go astray. If you are too afraid of spontaneity, then listen to Patanjali.

Patanjali is always a second choice to me, never the first. It is for ill people, corrupted by culture, unnatural, poisoned by civilization and religion, destroyed by priests and preachers. Then Patanjali. Patanjali is a therapy. That’s why I say Patanjali is useful for ninety-nine percent of the people, because ninety-nine percent of the people are ill. This earth is a great hospital. Patanjali is a physician, a scientist.

Zen is for natural people, uncorrupted, for innocent children. If there is going to come some day a beautiful world, Patanjali will be forgotten; Zen will remain. If the world is going to be becoming more and more in, Zen will be forgotten; only Patanjali will be there. Zen says be natural. Do you watch nature? Have you seen nature’s spontaneity and regularity both? Rains come, summer comes, winter comes — they follow in a regular pattern.

And if you see some disturbance it is because of you, because man has disturbed the climate, man has disturbed the ecology. Otherwise nature was so predictable — and so spontaneous — you could always see when the spring has come. You could have heard the first steps of spring all over: in the songs of the birds, in the trees, the happiness that spreads. It was absolutely certain, regular, but now everything is disturbed. That is not because of nature.

Man has not only poisoned man, man has started to poison nature also. Now everything is irregular: you don’t know when the rains are coming, you don’t know whether it is going to rain less or more this year, you don’t know how hot this summer is going to be. Nature’s regularity is disturbed by you, because you have broken the circle. Otherwise nature is absolutely spontaneous — and the nature does not need any Patanjali. Now it will need. Now, to set the ecology right, a Patanjali is needed.

So you have to choose. If you choose Zen forget Patanjali; otherwise you will be very much confused. And I tell you that Patanjali will come automatically — you need not worry. But if you feel that you are very ill and you cannot trust in yourself and you cannot be spontaneous, forget about Zen; it is not for you. It is just like there exists a book of exercises for a healthy man. hmm?… who is going to take part in a world olympic: you can read it if you like. but don’t try it — you will be in danger. You are Lying in the hospital; you don’t ask how to reconcile this book and your situation. You don’t ask. You listen to the physician: you follow. Someday when you are healthy, back to your natural spontaneous being, you may use This book, but right now it is not for you.

Patanjali is for unhealthy people, but almost everybody is unhealthy. Zen is for very natural people. You have to decide about yourself. Nobody else can decide it for you; you have to feel your own energy. But remember, you are not to reconcile — never do that. Choose one, the other follows. If you feel you are ill, already corrupted, you cannot be spontaneous; try to be regular. Regularity will bring you, by and by, to health and spontaneity.

Source – Osho Book “The Yoga, Vol5″

Osho on Patanjali Yoga Sutra “Attraction, and through it, attachment, is towards anything that brings pleasure. Repulsion is from anything that causes Pain”

Osho – These are your two ways of being here in the world: you are attracted towards something which you feel causes pleasure, you feel repelled, repulsed by something which you think causes pain. But if you become more and more alert, you will have a total mutation. You will be able to see that whatsoever causes pleasure also causes pain — pleasure in the beginning, pain in the end. Whatsoever causes pain also causes pleasure — pain in the beginning, pleasure in the end. These are the two ways in the world.

One is the way of the householder. Try to understand it — it is very, very significant. One is the way of the householder, the grahstha. He lives through attachment, attraction. Whatsoever he feels will cause pleasure. he moves towards it. He clings to it and finally he finds pain and nothing else, anguish and nothing else.

Just the opposite is the way of the monk, one who has renounced the world. He does not cling to pleasure. On the contrary, he starts clinging to pain, austerities, torture. He lies down on a bed of thorns, goes on a long fast, stands for years, does not sleep for months. He does just the opposite because he has come to know that whenever there is pleasure in the beginning, in the end there is pain. He has reversed the logic; now he seeks the pain. And he is right — if you seek pain there will be pleasure in the end.

But a man who practices pain becomes incapable of feeling pain. A man who practices pain becomes incapable of pleasure for small things, just small things. You cannot understand. For a man who has been fasting for a month, ordinary bread and butter and salt is such a great feast. A man who has been lying down on thorns, if you allow him to lie down just on the ground, on the plain ground, no emperor could sleep so beautifully.

But both are two aspects of the same coin, and both are wrong. The monk has just reversed the process: he is standing in a shirshasan, a head stand, but he is the same man. Both are attached: one is attached to pleasure, the other is attached to pain.

A man of awareness is unattached. He is neither a grahstha, a householder, neither is he a monk. He does not move to the monastery and he does not go to the mountains. He remains wherever he is — he simply moves ‘withinwards’. On the out side there is no choice for him. He does not cling to pleasure and he does not cling to pain. He is neither a hedonist nor a self torturer. He simply moves ‘withinwards’ looking at the game of pleasure and pain, light and shadow, day and night, life and death. He moves beyond both. Because there is duality, he moves beyond both, he transcends both. He simply becomes alert and aware, and in that awareness for the first time some thing happens which is neither pain nor pleasure, but which is bliss. Bliss is not pleasure; pleasure is always mixed with pain. Bliss is neither pain nor pleasure, bliss is beyond both.

And beyond both you are. That’s your nature, your purity, your crystal purity of being — just a transcendence. You live in the world but the world is not in you. You move in the world but the world doesn’t move in you. You remain untouched wherever you are. You become a lotus flower.

Source: Osho Book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4″

Osho – what is awareness? Awareness is to be aware that you are not the body, not because the Upanishads say so or Patanjali says so — because you can cram it into your mind that you are not the body. You can go on repeating every morning and evening, ‘I am not the body’ — that will not help. It is not a question of repetition, it is a question of deep understanding. And if you understand, what is the point of repeating?

Once a sannyasin, a Jain monk stayed with me. Every morning he would sit and chant a Sanskrit mantra: I am not the body, I am not the mind; I am the purest Brahma. He chanted and chanted and chanted for one and a half hours every morning. On the third day I said to him, ‘Have you not known it? Then why do you chant? If you have known it, it is foolish. If you have not known it, it is again foolish because just by repeating how can you know?’

If a man goes on repeating, ‘I am a man of great potential, sexual potential,’ you can be certain that he is impotent. Why repeat, ‘I am a man, and very potent and powerful?’ And if a man repeats this for one and a half hours every morning, what does it mean? It shows that something that is just the opposite is in the mind; deep down he knows that he is impotent. Now he is trying to befool himself with, ‘I am a very powerful man.’ If you are, you are. There is no need to repeat it. I told the Jain monk, ‘This shows that you have not known. This is a perfect indication that you are still identified with the body. And by repeating, how can you get out of *itl Understand that repetition is not understanding.’

To understand, watch. When hunger comes, watch whether it is in the body or in you. When illness comes, watch where it is, in the body or in you. An idea comes, watch where it is, in the mind or in you. A feeling arises, watch. By being more and more watchful you will attain to awareness. By repetition nobody has ever attained.

Source: Osho Book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4″

Osho – Lack of awareness is when you take your body as yourself. Ninety percent of your lives’ miseries are because of this: lack of awareness. You take the body as yourself and then you suffer. You are suffering in a dream.

The body is not yours. Soon it will not be yours. Where were you when your body was not there? Where were you before your birth, what face had you then? And after the death, where will you be and what will your face be? Will you be a man or a woman? Consciousness is neither. If you think that I am a man, this is lack of awareness. Consciousness? How can consciousness be divided into sex? — it has no sex organs. If you think you are a child or a young man or an old man, you are again lacking in awareness. How can you be old, how can you be young? Consciousness is neither. It is eternal, it is the same: it is not born, it doesn’t die and it remains — it is life itself.

Or, take the mind — that is the second, deeper layer. And it is more subtle and nearer to consciousness. You take your mind to be yourself. You go on saying: ‘I, I, I.’ If somebody contradicts your idea you say, ‘This is my idea,’ and you fight for it. Nobody debates for truth; people discuss and debate and fight for their ‘I’. ‘My idea means me. How dare you contradict? I will prove that I am right!’

Nobody is bothered about truth. Who bothers? — it is a question of who is right, not a question of what is right. But then people are identified, and not only ordinary people, even people who are religious.

A man renounces the family, the children, the market-place, the world, and goes to the Himalayas. You ask him, ‘Are you a Hindu?’ and he says, ‘Yes.’ What is this Hinduism? Is consciousness Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian? It is the mind. Lack of awareness is if you get identified with the non self and think it is the self.

And then there is the heart, the nearest to consciousness but still far away. There is body, thought and feeling. When you feel, you have to be very, very aware to feel that it is not you who feels. It is again a part of the mechanism. Of course, it is the nearest to consciousness. That’s why heart is the nearest to consciousness, head just in between, and body the farthest away. But still, heart is not you. Even feeling is a phenomenon: it comes and goes; it is a ripple, it arises and dies; it is a mood, it exists and then doesn’t exist. You are that which will always exist, always and always, forever and forever.

Source: Osho Book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4″

Osho – The mind has a persistent habit to go on believing in itself — even against all facts. Even if your old mind goes on giving you nothing but misery and hell, you go on believing in it.

People say that this is an age of unbelief. I don’t see it. The same old belief in the mind continues. Somebody is a Hindu; he believes in Hinduism because his mind has been conditioned to be a Hindu. Somebody is a Christian; he believes in Christianity because his mind has been conditioned to be a Christian. Somebody is a communist; he goes on believing in communism because his mind has been conditioned to be a communist. All the three are one. They are not different people. They may have different names and labels, but the same thing is happening to all of them they are all conditioned and clinging to the mind and they all believe in the mind.

I call that man religious who renounces the mind. I call that man religious who renounces all conditionings, who stops clinging to the mind, who starts moving into consciousness, who becomes more and more aware of the conditionings. And in that very awareness one becomes loose of the conditions — and that is the only freedom there is.

All else is just rubbish. All talk of freedom — political, economic, social — is just rubbish. There is only one freedom, and that freedom is freedom from conditionings, freedom from the mind, becoming alert, aware, attentive, and moving in a new dimension. Good, Saroj, that you have become aware that your questions have been repetitively the same. That’s why I was not answering them. It is useless because when the mind goes on persisting in its old habit; it doesn’t listen.

Try always to find the new, the fresh, the young — that which is just being born. Catch that before it becomes old dissolve into it before it becomes a pattern. Never make your life a patterned and structured thing. Let it remain a flow, unfrozen, fluid, moving always into the unknown. Mind means the known. And you are the unknown. If you understand this, you will use the mind and you will never be used by the mind.

source – osho book “the yoga, vol 7″

Osho – Samadhi is a word very difficult to translate into English; there exists no parallel. But in Greek there is a word which is parallel; that word is ataraxia. The Greek word means quiet, calm, of deep inner contentment. That is the meaning of samadhi so contented, so deeply contented, that nothing disturbs now, nothing distracts now. So deeply in tune with existence, in a sort of atonement — at-one-ment — that now there is no problem. There is no other who can disturb; the other has disappeared. The other disappears with your thoughts. The thoughts is the other. In the gaps is the samadhi, ataraxia. In the gaps is calm and quiet.

Not that when you have attained to it you will not be able to think, no. Not that your capacity to think will disappear. In fact, just on the contrary, when you live in the gap you become capable of thinking for the first time. Before it you were just victims, victims of a social atmosphere, victims of a thousand and one thoughts surrounding you — not a single thought of your own. They were thoughts; you were not capable of thinking. Those thoughts had settled on you as birds settle on a tree by the evening. They had entered in you. They were not original; they were all borrowed.

You had been living a life which is a borrowed life. That’s why you were sad. That’s why there was no life in you. That’s why you looked dead, there was no vibration. That’s why there was no joy, no delight. Everything was blocked by borrowed thoughts. Your whole stream was blocked. You could not flow because of borrowed thoughts. When you become a part of samadhi, ataraxia, a deep inner calm of the gaps, intervals; you become for the first time capable of seeing, of thinking — but now these thoughts will be your own. Now you will be able to create an original thought. You will be able to live an original life, fresh, fresh as the morning, fresh as the morning breeze. You will become creative. In samadhi you become a creator because in samadhi you become part of God.

There is a saying of Pascal’s that most of man’s troubles come from his not being able to sit quietly in his chamber. Yes, that is true. If you can sit quietly in your inner chamber, almost all the troubles will disappear. You create them by running hither and thither. You create them by unnecessarily getting attached to your thoughts — which are not yours. You create them because you cannot sit at rest.

source – osho book “the yoga, vol 7″

Osho – In the old ashrams everybody had to sleep on a rocky bed – actually also, because it helps. In yoga, your spine, your backbone, is very important, and not only in yoga but in biology also. Now biologists say man could become man because he started standing erect, his backbone erect. Animals’ backbones are parallel to the earth, only man has a backbone which is not parallel to the earth but makes an angle of ninety degrees.

This changed the whole being of man, this angle of ninety degrees with the gravitation created the possibility for the mind to develop. Now biologists say that just by standing on two feet the animal became human – because it changes the whole thing. Less blood flows in the head, so the head and the nervous system there can become more delicate and refined. When more blood flows in the head the subtle tissues are broken, they cannot grow.

So don’t do too much shirshasana. Unless a master suggests it to you don’t do shirshasana, because I have never seen a person who has been doing shirshasana who is not stupid. You will become stupid. You will become more healthy of course, because animals are more healthy; so if you are just after health, shirshasana is good, do it forever. You will become healthy like a bull but at the same time stupid also, because when more blood moves into the head delicate tissues are destroyed, and those delicate tissues are needed for intelligence. When man stood erect the possibility developed for more delicate tissues in the head.

You see primitives sleep without pillows, and they will remain primitives if they continue to sleep without pillows, because more blood flows in the night. A more intelligent person will need more pillows. He may not be healthier, but intelligence needs a certain mechanism in the mind, a very delicate mechanism. And mind is very complex; seventy million cells are there, and so delicate, bound to be so delicate, when in such a small head there are seventy million. They are very delicate, very small particles, and when blood flows fast, in great quantity, they are destroyed, they are killed.

So biologically, and scientifically also, the spine is the most important thing in man. Your head is nothing but a pole to your spine: you exist as a spine – on one pole is sex, on the other is your mind, and your spine is the bridge. Yoga worked very much on the spine, because yogis became aware of its significance – that the spine is your life. The angle of ninety degrees will be more exact if your spine is straight, so yogis say that when you sit, sit with a straight spine. They worked out many postures, asanas; all their asanas are based on an erect spine, straight. The straighter it is, the more is the possibility to grow in intelligence, awareness.

You may not have observed: if you are listening to me and you are interested your spine will be straight, if you are not interested then you can relax. If you are looking at a movie in a cinema, whenever something interesting comes you will sit straight immediately, because more mind is called for. When the interesting scene has gone you can relax again into your chair.

In the day the spine has to be erect for yogic postures, and in the night also it has to be trained to be more straight. On a rocky bed it is more straight than on a Dunlop mattress. On a rocky bed it is bound to be straight, because the rocky bed is not going to give way for it. If the spine is erect the whole night it will become conditioned to being erect, so in the day also, while walking, sitting, it will remain erect. This is good. So this is physiologically, biologically, and in the eyes of yogis, very helpful. But this is only one part of it, the other part is symbolic.

Whenever a person goes through suffering we say he is lying on a rocky bed. And the ashram is going to be a long suffering, because many old habits are to be broken and they are hard; many old patterns are to be broken and they are very fixed. Really you have to be destroyed and created again, and in between there is going to be suffering and chaos. That is the rocky bed.

With a master you will have to move through much suffering. You have got many blocks in the body and the mind; they have to be destroyed, and to destroy a block is painful. Unless those blocks are destroyed you cannot flow, you cannot become spontaneous, your energy cannot rise high, it cannot move from the sex center to the sahasrar, it cannot move to the ultimate center of your being. So many things have to be destroyed and every habit has a big pattern, its own system – it takes time.

If you are ready and you trust your master it will not take so much time, because trusting him you can pass through suffering. If you don’t trust, then every suffering becomes a problem, and the mind says, ”What are you doing here? Why are you suffering here? Leave this man, go away! You were happy before.” You were never happy before, but when suffering starts you will feel that you were happy before.

For the real happiness to happen you will have to throw all suffering, you will have to pass through it – it is part of growth. And when all suffering has been passed through, only then you become capable of bliss; for the first time you can become happy. And there is no other way.

Source – Osho Book “Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi”

Osho - How does this mechanism of hope function? Whenever you are in misery, sad, depressed, you immediately escape from it, you try to forget it. That’s how it continues. The next time you are miserable — and you will not have to wait long; the moment my talk is finished you will be — don’t try to escape. My talk may also be functioning as an escape — you listen to me, you forget yourself. You listen to me, you have to be attentive towards me, but towards yourself you turn your back. You forget, you forget what your real situation is. I talk about bliss, I talk about ecstasy. That is real to me, but to you it becomes a dream. Again it becomes the hope that if you meditate, if you work for it, then it is going to happen to you also. Don’t use it as a drug. You can use a Master as a drug, and you can be drugged.

My whole effort is to make you more aware, so whenever you are in misery don’t try to escape. Hope is the enemy. Don’t hope, and don’t dream against the reality. If you are sad, then sadness is the reality. Remain with it; remain with it, don’t move, concentrate on it. Face it, let it be. Don’t move to the opposite of it. It is going to be a very bitter experience in the beginning, be cause when you face sadness, it surrounds you from every, where. You become like a small island and sadness is an ocean all around — and such great waves of sadness! One feels afraid, one feels a trembling to the very being. Tremble, be afraid. Only don’t do one thing — don’t escape. Let it be, penetrate deeply into it. See, watch — don’t judge. You have been doing that for millions of lives. Just watch, penetrate into it. Soon, the bitter experience will not be so bitter. Soon, out of the bitter en, counter arises reality. Soon you will be moving, penetrating deeper and deeper — and you will find the cause, what the cause of misery is, why you are so miserable.

The cause is not outside, it is within you, hidden in your misery. Misery is just like smoke. Somewhere there is fire inside you; penetrate deep into the smoke so you can find the fire. Nobody can put the smoke out because it is a by-product. But if you put the fire out, the smoke disappears of its own accord. Find the cause, the effect disappears because then some. thing can be done. Remember, only with the cause can some. thing be done, never with the effect. If you go on fighting with the effect, all fight is in vain. That is the meaning of Patanjali’s method of prati-prasav: go back to the cause, penetrate the effect and reach to the cause. The cause must be there some where. The effect is just like smoke surrounding you; but once the smoke surrounds you, you escape into hope. You dream about days when there will be no smoke. This is all foolish. Not only is it foolish, but suicidal, because this is how you are missing the cause.

Patanjali says ‘the discriminating person’. The Sanskrit word is vivek — it means awareness, it means consciousness, it means discriminating force. Because through awareness, you can discriminate between what is what: what is real, what is false, what is the effect and what is the cause.

The discriminating person, the man of vivek, the man of awareness, realizes that everything leads to misery. As you are, everything leads to misery. And if you remain as you are, everything will go on leading to misery. It is not a question of changing the situations, it is a question of a very deep-rooted thing within you. Something within you frustrates the very possibility of bliss. Something in you goes against your flowering into a blissful state. The man of awareness comes to know that everything leads to misery, everything.

You have done everything, but have you watched that everything leads to misery? If you hate, it leads to misery; if you love, it leads to misery. There seems to be no logical system in life. A man hates, it leads to misery. Simple logic will say that if hate leads to misery then love must lead to happiness. Then you love, and love also leads to misery. What is this? Is life absolutely absurd, irrational? Is there no logic? Is it a chaos? You do what soever you want, and finally comes misery. It seems that misery is the road and every road leads to it. From wherever you want to start, you can start: right, left, in the middle; Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jain; man, woman, knowledge, ignorance, love, hate everything leads to misery. If you are angry it leads to misery; if you are not angry, that too leads to misery. It seems that misery is there and whatsoever you do is irrelevant. Finally, you come to it.
I have heard a story, and I have loved it always.

A psychoanalyst was visiting a madhouse. He asked the superintendent about a madman who was crying and weeping and beating his head against the wall. He had a beautiful picture of a woman in his hand. Asked the psychoanalyst, ‘What has happened to this man?’ The superintendent said, ‘This man loved this woman very much. He went mad because the woman did not agree to marry him. That’s why he has gone mad.’ Logical, simple, but next door to him was another madman and he was also crying and weeping and beating his head. He had a picture of the same woman in his hand, and he was spitting on the picture and using four letter words. Asked the psychoanalyst, ‘What has happened to this man? He has the same picture. What is the matter?’ The superintendent said, ‘This man was also madly in love with that same woman, and she agreed and married him. That’s why he is mad.’

Whether a woman rejects or accepts makes no difference; whether you get married or you don’t get married makes no difference. I have seen poor people in misery, I have seen rich people in misery. I have seen failures in misery, I have seen those who have succeeded in misery. Whatsoever you do, finally you come to the goal, and it is misery. Does every road lead to hell? What’s the matter? Then there seems to be no choice.

Yes, everything leads to misery — if you remain the same. I will tell you another thing: if you change, everything leads to heaven. If you remain the same, it is you, not what you do. What you do is irrelevant. Deep down, it is you. Whether you hate — you will hate — or whether you love — you will love — it is you who finally creates the phenomenon of misery or ecstasy, misery or bliss — unless you change. Just changing from hate to love, from this woman to that woman, this house to that house, won’t help. You are wasting time and energy. You have to change yourself.

source – osho book “yoga the alpha and the omega part4″

Osho – Asanas, pranayama — there are so many methods through which energies can be made to flow inward. When they flow inward they become one, because at the center there cannot be more than one. So the more energy goes inward, the more harmony there is. Conflicts drop. In the center there is no conflict. There is an organic unity of the whole. That is why bliss is felt.

Another thing: asanas and pranayama are bodily helps. They are important, but they are only physical helps. If your mind is in conflict then they will not be of much help, because body and mind are not two things really. They are two parts of one thing. You are not body and mind; you are body/mind. You are psycho/somatic or somato/psychic. We talk about the body as one thing and the mind as something different, but body and mind are two poles of one energy. The body is gross and the mind is subtle, but the energy is the same.

One has to work from both polarities. For the body there is hatha yoga: asanas, pranayama, etcetera; and for the mind there is raga yoga and other yogas that are basically concerned with your mental attitudes.

Body and mind are one energy. For example, if you can control your breath when you are angry, the anger will die. If you can go on breathing rhythmically, anger cannot overpower you. In the same way, if you go on breathing rhythmically, sexual passion cannot overpower you. It will be there, but it will not become manifest. No one will know it is there. Not even you will be able to know it. So sex can be suppressed; anger can be suppressed. Through rhythmic breathing you can suppress them so much that you yourself will not even be aware of it. But the anger or sex will still be there. The body has suppressed it, but it remains inside, untouched.

One has to work with both the body and the mind. The body should be trained through yogic methodology, and the mind through awareness. You will require more awareness if you practice yoga because things will become more subtle. If you are angry, you can ordinarily become aware of it because it is so gross. But if you practice pranayama, you will need more awareness, more acute sensitivity to be aware of anger, because now the anger will become more subtle. The body is not cooperating with it so there will be no physical expression of it at all.

If people practice awareness techniques and simultaneously practice yogic methods, they will know deeper realms of awareness. Otherwise they will be aware only of the gross. If you change the gross but do not change the subtle, you will be in a dilemma. Now conflict will assert itself in a new way.

Yoga is helpful, but it is only one part. The other part is what Buddha calls mindfulness. Practice yoga so that the body becomes rhythmic and cooperative with your inner movements, and simultaneously practice mindfulness.

Be mindful of breathing. In yoga, you have to change the breathing process. In mindfulness, you have to be aware of the breathing as it is. Just be aware of it. If you can become aware of your breathing, then you can become aware of your thought process; otherwise not.

Those who try to become aware of their thought process directly, will not be able to do it. It will be very arduous, tedious. Breathing is the door to the mind. If you stop your breathing for a single moment, your thoughts will also stop. When breathing stops, the thought process stops. If your thinking is chaotic, your breathing will be chaotic. Breathing will simultaneously reflect your thought process.

Buddha talks about anapanasati: the yoga of awareness of the incoming and outgoing breath. He says, “Begin from here.” And that is the correct beginning. One should begin from breathing and never from the thought process itself. When you can feel the subtle movements of breath, only then will you be able to feel the subtle movements of thought.

Awareness of the thought process will change the quality of the mind; asanas and pranayama will change the quality of the body. Then the moment comes when your body and mind are one, without any conflict at all. When they are synchronized, you are neither body nor mind. For the first time, you know yourself as the Self. You transcend.

You can transcend only when there is no conflict. In this harmonious moment when body and mind are one, with no conflict, you transcend both. You are neither. Now you are nothing in a sense: no-thing. You are simple consciousness. Not conscious of something, but just awareness itself.

This awareness without being aware of anything, this consciousness without being conscious of anything, is the moment of explosion. Your potential becomes actual. You explode into a new realm: the ultimate. This ultimate is the concern of all religions.

Source – Osho Book “The Psychology of the Esoteric”