Osho – The mind is a chattering box. You cannot stop it. The very effort to stop it gives it more nourishment to go on. Millions of people, for centuries have been trying to stop it, and they have all failed, for the simple reason that the desire to stop it is also part of it. It is not beyond it.

One side of the mind is desiring the other side of the mind to become silent. This is not possible. The only way few people have been able to stop it without making an effort to stop it, are the people who have disidentified themselves with the mind. There is not even a desire to stop it or to continue it, because all desires belong to it.

One simply watches it. Let it chatter. You simply become a watcher. Let the traffic of thoughts move. There is nothing to be worried. It is going to harm nobody. These thoughts are only soap bubbles. Don’t take them seriously. Don’t become tense while watching them. Be relaxed.

I will tell you a story to understand it. Gautam Buddha told one day, while they were passing into a mountainous region — it was the midday, hot sun and he was getting old — he told his disciple, Ananda, that “I am very thirsty. You should go back. Because while we had been we had passed a small current of the mountainous water, few bullock carts have passed through the current, making it muddy. Dead leaves, which may have rested in the bed, are floating over the water, It was not worth drinking. And particularly for Gautam Buddha he could not take that water.

He knew that, if he goes ahead, where he had left Gautam Buddha, then five miles ahead of that place there is a big river and he can find good crystalclear water. He came back empty-handed. Buddha was very strict. He said, “You go back and you bring that water, because I remember when we had passed, it was so pure and so crystalclear.” But Ananda said, “You should understand me. In the meantime some bullock carts have passed.”

Buddha said, “I understand, but you go sit by the side of the bank — however long it takes. You just go and sit there. Don’t get into the current, because your getting into the current will make it muddy again. You simply wait, watching, doing nothing. All those dead leaves will be taken away. The mud will settle down. Then you fill the begging bowl and come back.”

Ananda wanted to go ahead towards the river, but he could not disobey Gautam Buddha. Unwillingly, he went back — but he was for a great surprise. By the time he reached there, the miracle has already happened. The dead leaves had moved with the current, and the mud has already settled. And the water was as clean and as pure as it could be.

Taking that bottle back, he tried to figure out why Gautam Buddha insisted, because he never does anything without some purpose behind it, some meaning behind it. And then he realized on the way, that it is a message to him, that “Ananda, don’t get into the river, into the current of the mind. That’s what you have been doing all your life. Just wait on the bank, and simply watch.

It is one of the secrets of inner life, that as your watcher becomes more and more strong, the thoughts become less and less. It is exactly in proportion. When there are hundred percent thoughts in the mind, you have zero watcher. When you have ten percent consciousness involved in watching, ten percent of your thoughts will disappear — because it is the same energy that creates thoughts, that creates the watcher.

When you are hundred percent a watcher, a pure witness, a mirror, all thoughts disappear. You cannot stop them, but you can manage a situation, a device in which they get stopped. They simply disappear. And to know such a state, when you are aware and alert, fully conscious and watchful and there are no thoughts there, your whole consciousness for the first time in your life returns back on itself. Becomes aware of awareness. You become conscious of consciousness.

In the silence, when the chattering mind is no more there, one realizes oneself. Unless the mind is silent, you cannot realize yourself. You will remain involved with the thoughts and those thoughts are almost meaningless — memories, fragments of memories, imagination, dreams, daydreams, all mixed up. It is a chaos. Even if sometimes you find some beautiful thoughts moving, they are all borrowed. You have heard them, you have read them, but they are not yours. And that which is not yours is not true.

This has to be remembered. Everything borrowed is untrue. Only your own realization can give you authentic truth. You can recite the whole Bible or the Koran or Dhammapada — it does not matter. You are simply being a parrot, and sometimes even worse than a parrot.

I have heard about a bishop whose pet parrot has died, and he was missing the parrot very much. It was such a religious parrot. He used to repeat the whole sermon on the mount. And it was such a joy for anybody to come and listen to the parrot, so he went to the biggest petshop and wanted some religious kind, some spiritual parrot. The shopkeeper said, “What are you talking about? Parrots and spiritual?”

He said, “Yes. I had one, and with great effort made him learn the whole sermon on the mount, and he used to repeat it with perfection.” The shopkeeper said, “Now I ko understand what you mean by spiritual. You mean the parrot who can repeat scriptures. I have something for you you would love.”

He took him inside the shop. He said. “It is a very special parrot and I was keeping it for myself — but you are in such a desperate need and you are missing your own parrot which is dead, I will be happy to give it to you. Before you take it, let me introduce you about its qualities. Just watch and you will see one thread hanging by its right leg, another thread hanging by his left leg. The threads are very thin. Nobody can see them unless one comes very close. You have just to pull the thread of the right leg and he will repeat the sermon on the mount.”

“But sometimes you may be having a visitor, who is not a Christian. Then you have to pull the left leg. Then he repeats a beautiful portion, in pure Sanskrit, of Srimad Bhagavat Gita.”

The bishop was enchanted to find such a rare parrot. He asked the shopkeeper, “And if I pull both the threads together?” Before the shopkeeper was going to say anything, the parrot said, “You idiot. I will fall on my ass. Never do that!”

Even parrots are more intelligent that your bishops, your pandits, your rabbis. Even the parrot said, “This is absolute stupidity.”

But for centuries people have used their mind almost like a parrot, and have thought that they are spiritual, that they are religious. Now all that can be done by a computer more perfectly, but a computer is not religious, not spiritual. Neither you are, just by repeating words from scriptures. Don’t be a His Master’s gramophone record!

It is below humanity. And it good of the company that makes those records, that they have chosen a dog as their symbol! His Master’s Voice. But what millions of people are doing in the world, then repeating His Master’s Voice? Their masters may be different, but the function of the dog is the same.

The mind can stop, but not by your effort but by your effortless witnessing. That is the whole meaning of meditation. Relax. Don’t force, and just watch. Let the mind do its things. It will take a little patience, but it has always happened. It is almost a scientific law, without exception, that if you can manage a little patience you will come to a point where the watcher is nourished and the mind becomes unnourished, and the thoughts start disappearing. When the whole energy of your consciousness moves into watching, you will find there is no mind at all. And to know a state of no-mind is the greatest experience in life a man is capable of. It is ecstasy. It is superconsciousness. It is self-realization. There is nothing higher than that.

Source – Osho Book “Last Testament Vol 6″

Question – Beloved Osho, my mind, the monster, distracts me even when i’m sitting in discourse. It simply takes over and thinks all sorts of silly thoughts and by the time discourse is over i get the feeling i missed another golden opportunity to be with you, drink from you, tune in with you. This leaves me very, very sad. what can i do?

Osho – Nishigandha, everybody has cultivated his mind for so long, for centuries, that it has got deep roots in you. You cannot destroy it in one day, it will take a little time. And if you become depressed that you are losing the opportunity then it will take even longer. What is missed is missed.

Never look backwards. Nothing can be done about it. If you miss a train, the second train will be coming. There is no point in crying and weeping and making a fuss because you have missed the train. One understands that what has happened, has happened: now be more alert so that you don’t miss the second train. And also be alert that you don’t catch the wrong train.

I have heard… three professors were standing on the platform and got involved in a deep philosophical discussion, and then they suddenly realized the train had left. So they ran — two of them managed to enter the last compartment. Only one was left behind, who was standing there with tears in his eyes.

A porter was watching all this. He came to the third man and he said, “Many times people miss — I work here — but there is no need to cry. Within just half an hour another train will be coming. You can catch that train.”
He said, “You don’t understand the situation. Those two fellows had come to see me off! In a hurry they got into the train — and they have taken my luggage too! What am I going to do with the train that is coming? First I have to get the luggage…

“And those two must be crying inside the train. They were not going anywhere; they had just come to see me off. But it was all such a hurry, so sudden, that everybody forgot who had come to send off and who was going… we all belong to the university’s philosophy department.”

It happens almost to everybody, so take it naturally. You say, “My mind, the monster…” Don’t call it “monster,” because that creates a hate relationship. Just as there are love relationships, there are hate relationships. People are not aware about their hate relationships.

I am reminded: In the freedom struggle of India, Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah were arch enemies. Jinnah was asking for a separate country for Mohammedans, Pakistan, and Gandhi was insistent that the country should remain one: “Mohammedans and Hindus and Christians and Jains have always lived together — there is no need for Mohammedans to have a separate country. And why cut the country into parts?”

But Jinnah was very stubborn and he said, “Unless you agree to the separation, India will never become free, because Mohammedans will not agree to that freedom.”

And finally, in 1947 Gandhi had to agree, seeing that either you remain a slave forever or you divide the country: “It is better to divide the country; at least both countries will be independent.” The country was divided and in 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was shot, assassinated — of course by a man from Poona. Poona is a fertile land for murderers.

I am telling this because Jinnah was sitting in his garden in Karachi, Pakistan, talking to his secretary about some official work and suddenly a friend came running in and told Jinnah what had happened: “Gandhi has been assassinated!”

Nobody had seen tears in the eyes of Jinnah in his whole life. He was a very strong, stubborn, very logical, very rational man. The shock… his friend and his secretary could not believe it. He should be happy; his arch-enemy is dead — but there were tears.

He stood up, went inside the house, and told the friend, “Now I will not be living much longer either. Only today I realized how much I was related with Mahatma Gandhi. Without him, the whole world seems to be empty. We have been fighting our whole lives, and I never recognized that this fighting has also created a deep relationship. Without him I am almost half dead. All my joy for living is finished.”

Up to that day Jinnah never used to have bodyguards, because he could not believe that Mohammedans, for whom he had been fighting his whole life, could make an attempt on his life. The next day, Karachi was surprised: he had four people with loaded guns around him wherever he went. And somebody asked him what happened, because he used to go alone even in the market. There was no need even for a single bodyguard. He said, “If Hindus can kill Mahatma Gandhi, who has been fighting for them his whole life, what is the difficulty? Mohammedans can kill me.”I am already half dead, and now I cannot trust Mohammedans. Gandhi, who was loved and worshiped as a great soul, as a mahatma, has been killed by Hindus themselves. I was never loved as a great soul, as a mahatma. In fact Mohammedans have never thought that I am a proper Mohammedan,” because he never used to do the five prayers every Mohammedan is supposed to do. He never used to go to the mosque. He was a very ultra-modern man.

He was never in any way a man who can be considered a Mohammedan. He was educated in the West. He was not interested in the holy KORAN — he was just born into a Mohammedan family, that was all. And strangely enough, just within one year, he died. He started dying the same day Gandhi was assassinated. Hate is also a relationship, just as love is a relationship.

And psychology is now absolutely certain that the energy of love and hate is not different. It is the same energy: standing upside down it becomes hate, standing right side up it becomes love — it is the same energy. That’s why it is not very difficult — a friend turning into an enemy, an enemy turning into a friend.

Psychology has become aware of one more very significant thing: that you hate the same person you love. So there is a constant change: in the morning you love, in the afternoon you hate, in the evening you love, in the night you hate — just like a pendulum of a clock, your mind goes on moving between love and hate.

Don’t call your mind the “monster” because you are creating a hate relationship. And relationship is relationship, whether it is love or hate. Just be a silent watcher. “The mind distracts me even when I am sitting in discourse.”

So let him distract; you simply watch. You don’t interfere. You don’t try to stop, because any kind of action on your part is going to give energy to the mind. So whenever you can manage, you listen, and whenever mind wanders and takes you away, go easily with the mind. There is no harm.

It will look strange to you that I am saying go with the mind easily. Just be watchful — without condemning the mind, without abusing the mind — just be watchful that the mind is going somewhere else. And you are in for a great surprise.

It will take a little time, but slowly, slowly the mind will not wander so much. You will have a few gaps to listen to me; then those gaps will become bigger. And because you are not creating any relationship with the mind — of love or hate — you are becoming indifferent to mind.

Gautam Buddha has made it a meditation. He called it upeksha — indifference. Just be indifferent to the mind, and it won’t be a disturbance for long. And it is worthwhile to wait and not be in a hurry, because the very hurry will make your mind more stubborn. If you want to push it away, it will come back with force. You just let it do whatever it wants to do. It is none of your concern, this way or that. Suddenly a watchfulness arises. It takes a little time. It depends on you, how much indifference you can create towards the mind, how much you can be watchful. The mind will become slowly, slowly rejected. It will stop doing its things, because now nobody is interested. For whom to do all the circus?

Just a few days before… my sister is here; her son had come. Now he is married and has children. The moment I saw him I remembered. It must be twenty years ago… they used to live in Kanva.

The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh was also from Kanva. He wanted to meet me and he invited me to have dinner with him, so my brother-in-law took me in his car. And this boy was very small, he may have been five years old. He also went with us. He was sitting on the front seat by the side of his father; I was in the back seat. My brother-in-law got out of the car and told me, “I will go and look, and make arrangements, and inform him that you are here, so he can come out and welcome you.”

It took a long time. The minister was phoning somebody in the capital of Bhopal. The little boy fell asleep and struck his head on the steering wheel. I saw it, I heard it, but I started looking out of the window. He looked at me. I did not give any attention to what had happened. He tried two or three times to look at me: whenever he would look at me, I would look out of the window, so he thought: “It is useless.”

When we went back home, after two hours, as he got out of the car he started crying. I said, “What has happened? Why are you crying?”

He said, “It happened two hours before! I had hit my head on the steering wheel. But you are strange: whenever I would look at you for some consolation, you would not look at me. So I thought, what is the point of crying? This man will not even say anything, and even if I cry or weep, my father is out. Now we are back and my mother is here. Now I can cry.” “But,” I said, “two hours ago?”

But I could see his argument, it was right. If there is nobody to pay attention to you, what is the point in crying? At home everybody is going to pay attention. Then to make a fuss and cry… although now he is not hurting; it had happened two hours before. And just a few days ago he was here, and I remembered. Now he has a child of the same age. Mind is nourished by your attention, for or against. You just be indifferent; look out of the window.

“It simply takes over and thinks all sorts of silly thoughts and by the time discourse is over I get the feeling I missed another golden opportunity to be with You.” Don’t call them “silly” thoughts. These adjectives are dangerous: “monster” mind, “silly” thoughts. You are taking great interest in it. Maybe you are against it, but the interest is there. Be utterly indifferent. It is a golden key. And slowly, slowly the mind will start remaining silent.

And afterwards you repent that “I have missed another opportunity.” Never repent about the past because that is again wasting the present. First you wasted the past; now you are wasting the present.

If you have wasted the golden opportunity to be with me, now don’t waste the golden opportunity to be with the sun, to be with the moon, to be with the trees. It is the same opportunity. The whole thing boils down to one single point: be silent. And everything becomes a golden opportunity.

But you are taking attitudes. You are saying, “This makes me very, very sad.” You are in a vicious circle. First the mind takes you away; it is a “monster,” all its thoughts are “silly.” And when you are leaving here, you become sad, and you start condemning your mind.

There is no need to be sad: it is mind’s nature, and what has gone is gone. What is available herenow, don’t make it sad for that which is dead. On the contrary, make it so joyful that you can take revenge for the past too. Dance and sing so that what has been lost in the past moments is gained in the present. By sadness you cannot gain it, but by being joyous you can gain it.

And a few days or a few months are nothing much. In the long, long eternity they are just like small seconds. Nishigandha, a Frenchman staying at an English country house for the weekend was attracted to a debutante, and without much difficulty, seduced her. Several months later they met by chance at a very select society ball. He stepped forward with outstretched hand, but she walked straight past him without acknowledgement. As soon as he could, the Frenchman
cornered her and said, “Surely you remember me?”

“Of course I do young man, but you are not to assume that in England a one-night frolic constitutes an introduction.”

In a way she is right. Just a one-night frolic cannot be an introduction. The reality is that you may be living with your wife for thirty or forty years — even then you are strangers, you are not introduced to each other yet.

You have lived with the mind for centuries, for many, many lives, yet you are not introduced to it. You don’t know its workings, you don’t know its strategies. The repentance afterwards is also part of your mind; the sadness afterwards is also part of your mind. So you are moving in a vicious circle: first you miss the opportunity, then you abuse the mind, call the mind names: it is a “monster,” the thoughts are “silly,” then you become sad. And this whole game is of the mind.

You have to detach yourself and be a witness. Let the mind do whatsoever it is doing, but don’t get identified with it. It is not you. You are pure awareness. You are just awareness.

If you can remember only this much… Gautam Buddha has used the words samma sati — right remembrance — and the mind will disappear with all its silliness, sadness, monstrosity. A single thing you have to keep: a remembering that “I am not the mind.” You are not to say to yourself, “I am not the mind.” The moment you say it, it becomes part of the mind, because language belongs to the mind. You have to remember it without any language, just a feel: I am not the mind.

I am using words because I have to tell you, but you are not to use words. You have just to be aware and remember without using language. The mind will go. It has always happened. You cannot be an exception.

Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Splendor”

Osho – If you kill anger you will never be compassionate in your life, because it is anger, and the energy involved in anger, which becomes compassion. If you kill sex you will be simply impotent, that’s all; you will not attain to love. It is sex transformed that creates love energy. Love energy is confined to sex. When you bring awareness to it, sex disappears but love energy is released. Anger disappears but compassion is released. Greed disappears and sharing comes in its place.

It is not a question of killing; these are energies. Don’t be such a fool as to kill anything, because if you kill it you will miss something very essential in your life. Transform. Religion has to be the real alchemy, the science of transformation. It is not murderous.

But the stupid religious people go on murdering, destroying. They are destructive, self-destructive. Hence even if they drop their anger they don’t become graceful, they don’t attain to creativity, they don’t contribute to the world and its beauty. They are burdensome, they are not in any way a help. They are a hindrance in the progress of humanity. Buddha will not suggest to you to kill anything. He says: Just be awake. BE THE WITNESS OF YOUR THOUGHTS.

Anger is a thought, sex is a thought. Just watch, be alert, let them move on the screen — anger, greed, lust — and you remain aloof, cool, just a witness. In the beginning it is very difficult, but only in the beginning. If you persist then within three to nine months you will be able to do the impossible.

One day it happens that your witness has become so perfect that the screen remains empty, nothing passes — no thought, no desire. That day you have attained to the first state of samadhi, the first satori. And the first satori is the beginning; it triggers many satoris in you, culminating ultimately into samadhi, into nirvana. When the mind becomes just a pure mechanism… when you want to use it, you use it, when you don’t want to use it, it remains silent.

Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 9″

Osho – To be asleep means to live a life in which awareness has no place. You are doing something, but your mind is somewhere else. You are walking along the street, your body is there in the street, but your mind is having a conversation with your wife, or may already have reached the office ahead of your physical arrival there. Your mind is already making arrangements in the office while you are still walking along the street. Mind in one place, body in another, is the characteristic of lack of awareness. Mind accompanying body is the characteristic of awareness.

You are here, listening to me. In these moments of listening, if your hearing is all, if only your hearing remains and your mind wanders nowhere else but is here and now, if hearing is the only thing happening, as if the rest of the world has disappeared, as if nothing else remains. Here, I am the speaker, there, you are the listener and a bridge is created between us. Your mind does nothing else, it falls silent, utterly silent; it hears, only hears. When only hearing remains, you experience awareness. For the first time, you discover what meditation is.

Meditation means being in the moment, not leaving this moment. Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?”
Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?

There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.

Meditation cannot come about just because you visit a temple or mosque or gurudwara.. If you were not awake in the shop, in the marketplace, or at home, how can you all of a sudden be awake in the temple? Nothing is going to come about suddenly, when it is not part of an internal flowing. This is why Buddha has said that meditation can happen only if you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day.

So understand well that meditation is not just one of life’s innumerable activities. It is not just one link in the chain of man’s endless doings. It is like the thread on which all the flowers of a garland have been strung. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity. If one is meditative in everything one is doing, if the thread is running through each of the flowers, only then a garland is created. The thread is not even visible, it is hidden underneath the flowers. Nor can the meditator be seen; he is present, but hidden behind all the activities being done through him. An individual is awakened the day when he begins to live meditatively. While he lives nonmeditatively, he sleeps.

Someone asked Mahavira what was the definition of a sadhu. Nobody else has ever given the answer that Mahavira gave. He said, Asutta muni, sutta amuni – the one who is not asleep is a sadhu, the one who is asleep is no sadhu”. Who is not asleep? The one whose every action is meditative is not asleep. Religion, liberation, is an experience that happens in such a wakeful consciousness

Source – Osho Book “Nowhere To Go But In”

Osho – Remembrance is a beautiful word. It corresponds with Buddha’s right mindfulness. Whatever you do, do it mindfully. Be mindful when you talk, when you walk, even when the eyes blink. Do nothing senselessly, unconsciously; for whatever you do in such a fashion will lead invariably to sin. Whatever you do without awareness leads you away from your self. The only method of coming close to your self is to become more and more aware. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the situation, hold fast and never let go of your awareness – even should you stand to lose everything. Even if your house catches fire, move only with complete awareness.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the philosopher and social reformer, has given the following account in his memoirs. He was once invited by the viceroy who was about to confer an honor on him. He was a poor man, his clothes were old and threadbare, and he dressed in the Bengali style of kurta and dhoti. Friends advised him to get new clothes in keeping with the occasion. At first he refused but later thought better of it and let them order new clothes for him.

One day shortly before the event, as Vidyasagar was returning from his evening walk he saw walking in front of him a well-dressed Mohammedan in coat and pajamas, twirling a stick in his hand. He was walking at his own pace enjoying the evening. Soon a man – by all appearances his servant – came running and told him, ”Hurry, sir, your house is on fire!” There was no change in the man’s stride; he continued walking along as if nothing had happened. The servant, thinking maybe he hadn’t heard, repeated loudly, ”Sir, your house is on fire! Haven’t you heard what I said?”

Even the poor servant, who stood to lose nothing, was trembling and perspiring with fear, but the master remained unaffected. ”I have heard,” he told the servant. ”Should I change my habitual way of walking just because the house has caught fire?” Ishwar Chandra was shocked. Here is a man whose house is actually on fire, and he is not prepared to change his lifelong walk; and there he was, ready to give up his lifelong attire just to see the viceroy!

Ishwar Chandra was curious to know more about this unique man. As he followed, he saw him walking at the same pace twirling his stick; when he reached the house and saw the flames he calmly gave orders to put out the fire, directed it all, but himself stood on one side and watched without one iota of difference in his attitude.

Ishwar Chandra writes: ”My head bowed in reverence to this man. Never had I come across the like of him.” What is it that this man was guarding so zealously? He was guarding his surati, his awareness, and he was not prepared to lose it at any cost. Whatever happens, happens. All that was required to be done was being attended to; that is enough. On no account can contemplation be bartered away. Nothing is so precious in life that you can afford to lose your remembrance for it.

But you abandon your awareness for the slightest thing. A one – rupee note is lost and you go mad looking for it. You look for it even in places where it could not possibly be. A man has lost something and you find him looking in the tiniest box, much too small for such an object. You are always ready to lose your awareness, or is it better to say you have no awareness to lose – you are unconscious!

Nanak says: Through contemplation awareness is born within the mind and the intellect. As the Omkar settles more and more within, the external utterance stops first. The arrow now turns within, for now there is no one without to speak to; in other words, the external relations created by speech are no more. To speak is to build a bridge to reach others. It is the relationship between us and others. By not speaking, this relationship is broken; you have become silent.

To become silent means now the journey is reversed: the arrow has turned inwards, the journey within has begun. As soon as this happens, the first glimpse of awareness begins to appear, and for the first time in full awareness you know that YOU are! So far you could see everything except yourself. Only you were in shadow, as there is darkness directly under the flame. Now you will awaken. As the intensity of Omkar increases, contemplation settles on the word and awareness increases proportionately.

Take it this way: There are two sides to the scales; when one goes up the other comes down to the same extent. Proportional to your going inward, so awareness increases. On the third plane when even the word is lost and only the resonance of Omkar remains – pure sound – suddenly the awareness becomes complete. You get up. You awaken, as if the sleep of a thousand years has been broken. Darkness flees and there is light, and light alone. It is as if you were in a deep slumber through innumerable lives and dreaming away. Suddenly the dream is broken, and lo, It is morning. You see the dawn as if for the first time in your life.

Source – Osho Book “The True Name, Vol 1″

Osho – Identification is the root and everything else is nothing but leaves. Being identified with greed, being identified with anger, being identified with sex, is the root. And remember, it is the same whether you are identified with greed, or sex, or even meditation. Love, MOKSHA, God – it makes no difference, it is the same identification. Being identified is the root, and all else is just like leaves. Don’t cut the leaves, leave them, nothing is wrong in them.

That’s why tantra does not believe in improving your character. It may give you a good shape – if you prune a tree you can make any shape out of it – but the tree remains the same. Character is just an outer shape – but you remain the same, no transmutation happens. Tantra goes deeper and says, ”Cut the root!” That’s why tantra was misunderstood too much, because tantra says, ”If you are greedy, be greedy; don’t bother about greed. If you are sexual, be sexual; don’t bother about it at all.”

The society cannot tolerate such a teaching: ”What are these people saying? They will create chaos. They will destroy the whole order.” But they have not understood that only tantra changes the society, the man, the mind, nothing else; and only tantra brings a real order, a natural order, a natural flowering of the inner discipline, nothing else. But it is a very deep process – you have to cut the root.

Watch greed, watch sex, watch anger, possessiveness, jealousy. One thing has to be remembered: you don’t get identified, you simply watch; you simply look, you become a spectator. By and by, the quality of witnessing grows; you become able to see all the nuances of greed. It is very subtle. You become capable of seeing how subtly the ego functions, how subtle are its ways. It is not a gross thing; it is very subtle and delicate and deep-hidden.

The more you watch, the more your eyes become capable of seeing, become more perceptive, the more you see and deeper you can move, and the more distance is created between you and whatsoever you do. Distance helps because without distance there can be no perception. How can you see a thing which is too close? If you are standing too close to a mirror, you cannot see your reflection. If your eyes are touching the mirror, how can you see? A distance is needed – and nothing can give you a distance except witnessing. You try it and see.

Move into sex; nothing is wrong in it, but remain a watcher. Watch all the movements of the body; watch the energy flowing in and out, watch how the energy is falling downwards; watch the orgasm, what is happening – how two bodies move in a rhythm. Watch the heartbeat – faster and faster it goes, a moment comes when it is almost mad. Watch the warmth of the body; the blood circulates more. Watch the breathing; it is going mad and chaotic. Watch the moment when a limit comes to your voluntariness and everything becomes involuntary. Watch the moment from where you could have come back, but beyond that there is no return. The body becomes so automatic all control is lost. Just a moment before the ejaculation you lose all control, the body takes over.

Watch it: the voluntary processes, the nonvoluntary process. The moment when you were in control and you could have gone back, the return was possible, and the moment when you cannot come back, the return has become impossible – now the body has taken over completely, you are no more in control. Watch everything – and millions of things are there. Everything is so complex and nothing is as complex as sex, because the whole bodymind is involved – only the witness is not involved, only one thing remains always outside.

The witness is an outsider. By its very nature the witness can never become an insider. Find out this witness and then you are standing on a top of the hill, and everything goes in the valley and you are not concerned. You simply see; what is your concern? It is as if it is happening to somebody else. And it is the same with greed and it is the same with anger; everything is very complex. And you will enjoy it if you can watch – negative, positive, all the emotions. You simply remember one thing, that you have to be a watcher; then the identification is broken, then the root is cut. And once the root is cut, once you think you are not the doer, everything suddenly changes. And the change is sudden, there is no gradualness to it.

Source – Osho Book “Tantra: The Supreme Understanding”

Osho – When you are in deep anger you are so concentrated that the whole world disappears. Only the cause of anger is focused. Your total energy is on the cause of anger, and you are so much focused on the cause that you forget yourself completely. That’s why in anger you can do things about which, later on, you can say, ”I did them in spite of myself.” You were not.

For awareness you have to take an about-turn. You have to concentrate not on the cause outside, but on the source inside. Forget the cause. Close your eyes, and go deep and dig into the source. Then you can use the same energy which was to be wasted on someone outside – the energy moves inwards. Anger has much energy. Anger is energy – the purest of fires inside. Don’t waste it outside.

Take another example. You are feeling sexual: sex is again energy, fire. But whenever you feel sexual, again you are focused on someone outside, not on the source. you begin to think of someone – of the lover, of the beloved, A-B-C-D – but when you are filled with sex your focus is always on the other. You are dissipating energy.

Not only in the sexual act do you dissipate energy, but in sexual thinking you dissipate it even more because a sexual act is a momentary thing. It comes to a peak, the energy is released, and you are thrown back. But sexual thinking can continuously be there. You can continue it in sexual thinking, you can dissipate energy. And everyone is dissipating energy. Ninety percent of our thinking is sexual. Whatsoever you are doing outside, inside sex is a constant concern – you may not even be aware of it.

You are sitting in a room and a woman enters: your posture changes suddenly. Your spine is moire erect, your breathing changes, your blood pressure is different. You may not be aware at all of what has happened, but your whole body has reacted sexually. you were a different person when the woman was not there; now again you are a different person.

An all-male group is a different group, and all-female group is a different group. Let one male come in or one female, and the whole group, the whole energy pattern, changes suddenly. You may not be conscious of it, but when your mind is focused on someone, your energy begins to flow. when you feel sexual, look at the source, not at the cause – remember this.

Science is more concerned with the cause and religion is more concerned with the source. The source is always inside; the cause is always outside. With cause you are in a chain reaction. With cause you are connected with your environment. With source you are connected with yourself. So remember this. This is the purest method to change unconscious energy into conscious energy.

Take an about-turn – look inside! It is going to be difficult because our look has become fixed. We are like a person whose neck is paralyzed, and who cannot move and look back. Our eyes have become fixed. We have been looking outside for lives together – for millennia – so we don’t know how to look inside.

Do this: whenever something happens in your mind, follow it to the source. Anger is there – a sudden flash has come to you – close your eyes, meditate on it. From where is this anger arising? Never ask the question: who has made it possible? who has made you angry? That is a wrong question. Ask which energy in you is transforming into anger – from where is this anger coming up, bubbling up, what is the source inside from where this energy is coming?

Are you aware that in anger you can do something which you cannot do when you are not in anger? A person in anger can throw a big stone easily. When he is not angry he cannot even lift it. He has much energy when he is angry. A hidden source is now with him. So if a man is mad, he becomes very strong. Why? From where is this energy coming? It is not coming from anything outside. Now all his sources are burning simultaneously – anger, sex, everything, is burning simultaneously. Every source is available.

Be concerned with from where anger is bubbling up, from where the sex desire has come in. Follow it, take steps backwards. Meditate silently and go with anger to the roots. It is difficult but it is not impossible. It is not easy. It is not going to be easy because it is a fight against a long, rooted habit. The whole past has to be broken, and you have to do something new which you have never done before. It is just the weight of sheer habit which will create the difficulty. But try it, and then you are creating a new direction for energy to move. You are beginning to be a circle, and in a circle energy is never dissipated.

My energy comes up and moves outside – it can never become a circle now; it is simply dissipated. If my movement inwards is there, then the same energy which was going out turns upon itself. My meditation leads this energy back to the same source from where the anger was coming. It becomes a circle. This inner circle is the strength of a Mahavir. The sex energy, not moving to someone else, moves back to its own source. This circle of sex energy is the strength of a Buddha.

We are weaklings, not because we have less energy than a Buddha: we have the same quanta of energy, everyone is born with the same energy quanta, but we are accustomed to dissipating it. It simply moves away from us and never comes back. It cannot come back! Once it is out of you, it can never come back – it is beyond you.

A word arises in me: I speak it out; it has flown away. It is not going to come back to me, and the energy that was used in producing it, that was used in throwing it away, is dissipated. A word arises in me: I don’t throw it out; I remain silent. Then the word moves and moves and moves, and falls into the original source again. The energy has been reconsumed.

Silence is energy. Brahmacharya is energy. Not to be angry is energy. But this is not suppression. If you suppress anger, you have used energy again. Don’t suppress – observe and follow. don’t fight – just move backwards with the anger. This is the purest method of awareness.

Source – Osho Book “The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 1″

[An indian visitor said that he would like to ask what was the most important question in his life – and that was that he found it difficult to maintain ever-present awareness, that sometimes awareness came as a delayed response, and this was the problem for him.]

Osho – You are creating the problem, and people who try to be aware, almost always create the problem. The first thing: awareness can only be of the moment. The very idea that it should always remain, that it should become a permanent state, is wrong. And why be worried about the next moment? The very idea of permanence is part of greed. Greed is part of unawareness, so unawareness is playing a trick and creating a problem. It is not out of awareness that the problem is coming; it is out of unawareness.

This moment is enough. Be aware in this moment. I understand – next moment you forget, so forget! Be aware of your forgetfulness. One has to be attentive even to one’s unattentiveness. There are moments you are aware – then you are aware of awareness. It is not a simple awareness. It is complex; you are aware of your awareness. Then there are moments when you are aware of your unawareness, but awareness continues as a substratum.

So whatsoever happens…. Sometimes you forget – what can you do? There is no point in crying for the spilled milk. That which is gone is gone. If one moment has passed and you were not aware, and later you became alert that this moment has gone and you were not aware, don’t waste any moment for it now, because this other moment is passing by. Just be aware of it.

And why ask for permanence? One person never gets two mo-ments together. You always get one moment. When that one is gone, another is supplied. So if you can remain alert in one single moment – enough! Whatsoever time will be coming in front of you, your torch of awareness will be there. Asking for permanent awareness is as if you are going for a long journey, a thousand-mile journey in the night, and I give you a small torch and you say, ’By this torch I can only see a few feet. The journey is very long – one thousand miles. How am I going to manage? It is impossible. This torch is too small.’

But I will tell you to go four, five feet, and then the torch will be falling four, five feet ahead again. Just by a small torch, one can move into the darkest night, and one can go on moving for a thousand miles; there is no problem. But if you start calculating, and you sit down and put it on paper and you see that the torch is only capable of lighting four, five feet, and the journey is one thousand miles – impossible.

One moment is enough for your awareness. Then comes another moment. Your awareness is there. Another moment will be lighted, then another, then another. The whole eternity can pass in front of you. Why be worried about making it permanent? That too is part of greed. Life is momentary. Let awareness also be momentary. That’s why buddha called his philosophy ’chhanikawada’ – the philosophy of the moment. He said it is enough to be mindful of the moment. Only the moment exists – all else is imagination.

So the past is gone. If you missed, you missed. Forget about it. There is no need to worry and beat your head. The future has not come. There is no need to bring it in. Just look at the moment that is passing right now, and look with awareness. Still you will miss many times, but nothing is wrong in it.

When you miss, just note with full alertness that you missed – that’s all. By and by you will miss less and less. Just take a simple note, observe it and finished! Go ahead. By these observa-tions, more and more awareness will be happening. And I’m not saying permanent. I’m saying more – because more has depth. Awareness is going to remain of the moment. It can be shallow, it can be deep. That is a totally different dimension.

It will become more and more deep, more and more deep. It will become so deep one day that whatsoever comes in front of you will be lighted well. But don’t think in terms of permanence. It can become eternal, but not permanent. Permanence is part of time. But we always think of making things stable. If something is fleeting we become worried. Then we think, ’What is the point of making so much effort and it is gone again, gone again?’ Simply drop that worry. Awareness is the key word and the key question. If you can open it, you have found the master key. It opens all the locks. No other question is necessary then. But don’t make it a greed. It will come.

Source – Osho Book “Dance Your Way to God”

Osho – The message is to never think about yourself in any way which condemns. One has to learn to respect oneself; that is the beginning of a great change. We have been taught to condemn, to despise, to hate. We have been told to love others but we have not been told to love ourselves, so we don’t have a good image of ourselves. And without a good image of yourself, you will never be able to know who you are.

One does not want to look at oneself if one is condemned as a sinner. One can enter into oneself only when one feels that one is going into something beautiful. The beginning of love is to love oneself. The beginning of god is to think of oneself as divine. Nobody is a sinner, but if you believe you are a sinner you remain a sinner; it is only a question of belief.

Swayam means self, bhu means existent – self-existent. There are things which are not self-existent; they depend on others’ existence. For example, water is not self-existent, it depends on hydrogen and oxygen; it is a combination. If hydrogen and oxygen disappear from existence, water will disappear. It is a secondary phenomenon, not primary.

Consciousness is a primary phenomenon. It is not a combination of anything else; it is itself. That is the meaning of swayambhu. You cannot disappear from existence. There is no way to destroy you; no death can kill you, no poison can touch you. The innermost core of your being is eternal. It has been always and it will be always. And it cannot be destroyed because it is not a composition, it cannot be destroyed because it is not caused by anything else.

Sam means right, buddho means awareness – right awareness. Awareness can also be wrong. It is wrong when it is cultivated, practised, forced, somehow managed by effort. Then it is wrong. It creates a tension in your being; rather than relaxing you it makes you more tense, it creates stress.

Awareness is right when it is spontaneous, when it is not forced, when it arises not out of effort but out of understanding. Sambuddho means right awareness. Don’t practise it; a practised thing is always false. And when we start practising something we close the doors for the spontaneous; then the spontaneous cannot happen. You become so full of the practised that your very practice hinders it.

If somebody practises love, his love will be false; it will be a practised phenomenon, it will be rehearsed. He will be simply doing an act. He may perform it perfectly but the real will not be in it, the real cannot be in it. The real can never exist in the performed. It can be skilful, the false can be very skilful, very efficient; it can deceive the whole world but it cannot deceive you. You will know all the time that you were just making it, that it was an empty gesture, that you were not behind it, that it was not supported by you, that it had no roots in your being, that it was just a plastic flower. Allow the spontaneous to happen, and the spontaneous happens just by living life intensely.

Whenever you live anything intensely there arises a kind of awareness which is totally different from the practised one. If you are running, are intensely in it, you will find a floating awareness around you. You need not make it, it is there. You are looking at a sunset: you are thrilled and you come to a peak of experience; suddenly there is awareness. It is always there when the peak comes. Just as at the peak it is always sunlit and the darkness disappears, so at any peak moment you are aware, and that awareness arises on its own accord. That is called sambuddho. So live life intensely, totally; live life at the optimum. Put yourself utterly into each and everything that you do; don’t hold.

Then love becomes awareness, walking becomes awareness; then even sleep becomes awareness, because at each peak awareness automatically happens and then it has a beauty of its own. The practised is a poor thing, a poor substitute.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

Osho – Sudhindra means god of remembrance, god of awareness, god of mindfulness. The most important thing in your life will be awareness. Pour your whole energy into that dimension: become more alert, more attentive, more mindful. Whatsoever you are doing, make it a point that you should do it with awareness… small things: washing your clothes, do it with full awareness. You can do it mechanically, you can think of a thousand other things and you can go on washing the clothes. That does not need awareness: you know how to do it, your body has learned the trick of it, it goes on doing it. You are not needed; you can think, you can fantasise, you can dream and the body will do the work. The body is functioning like a robot: it is programmed, so it will do its acts.

Bringing awareness in means dissolving the body robot, its mechanicalness, creating awareness deep in the body. And when awareness penetrates the body it becomes luminous. When awareness penetrates the body there is no separation between the soul and the body; they are one unity, functioning in unison. And that’s a great blessing. It is what blissfulness is all about: when the body and the soul are functioning as one, when they are coupled together in deep loving embrace, when all boundaries dissolve.

But from our very childhood we have been taught one thing, that we are separate from the body. Control the body; we are the master and the body is the slave – manipulate the body. Because of these teachings, every human being on the earth is a victim; no human being finds a harmony between his body and soul. With that harmony missing you can’t feel god; god can be felt only in a harmonious being.

Each child has been forced to become a kind of schizophrenic, a duality, a division: the mind and the body. And between the two a gap has been created; that gap is ugly, that gap is a calamity. Man has lost all joy because of that gap and man has lost contact with nature because of that gap. We are connected to nature through the body but we are disconnected from the body so we have become ghosts in a machine. the body is being used as a machine, as a robot.

Awareness means dissolving the robot, awareness means unlearning the nonsense that has been taught by the society, bringing the mind closer and closer to the body, penetrating the body with awareness. and when it happens, a great thrill passes through the whole body mechanism, and then it is no more a mechanism at all: it becomes an organic unity with the soul. Then the body vibrates in unison. You don’t have the division, you don’t possess the body; you are the body – there is no possessor, no possessed. That’s where sanity and health and wholeness arise; otherwise everybody remains schizophrenic.

So that is going to be your work here: become more and more alert in small things. In drinking water, drink it with absolute alertness, as if everything depends on it. In that moment don’t do anything else. Taste the water, feel its coolness going down your throat. Feel the quenching of the thirst, feel the entry of the water in the body. In that moment only be that. Eating, do the same. In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot. It is not a machine, you are not the manipulator. It is you; it is your visible being, you are its invisible source. But you are not two, you are two aspects of one energy. Matter and mind are not two but two states of the same energy; matter is more condensed, the mind is more abstract.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

Osho – My sannyasins have to do only one thing, that is, they have to become watchers of the mind, not controllers, just watchers. and then allow the process to take its own course. Whenever you have time, just sit silently and watch with no motive. Don’t wait for any result, don’t think that now great light will arise or a one-thousand-petalled lotus will open inside you and chakras and the energy will rise upwards. Don’t be worried about these things. Even if they happen, watch them; they are part of the mind.

Everything that you can watch is part of the mind — that’s the very key to unlock the door. Everything that can be watched — kundalini arising, lotuses opening, beautiful fragrances and light inside… all can be watched, so that simply means they are subtle processes of thought. Mind is playing, trying to play its last tricks, trying to enchant you that ‘Look, what are you doing? Trying to drop me? I can supply such a good circus and I contain so many mysteries. What are you doing? Trying to go beyond me? Then watch this light, watch this energy and see: your third eye is opening. These are all tricks of the mind, subtle tricks. One has to remain absolutely unaffected.

Those are the real temptations. There is no devil other than the mind. If one can go on watching and enjoying these temptations: ‘Yes, you go on playing your tricks — I am ready to watch, I will watch everything. I will watch even nothing…’ Because that is the final and ultimate strategy. The mind says ‘Okay, you are interested in nothing? Have it!’ If you cling to nothing you are back in the mind; the mind has conquered you, you have been defeated.

So you say ‘Okay, I will even watch nothing. I am not going to be entangled in anything again, even by nothing.’ And then the real nothing happens; it is no more a thought. You don’t see it, you can’t hold it, you can’t touch it. All has disappeared; even the idea of nothing is no more there. You are not feeling a great joy, ‘Look, now I have achieved nothing. That’s what happens when a man becomes a Buddha.’ Even that is not there; hence Buddha says ‘If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately.’ That’s what he means: even if you come to the idea ‘Now I have become the Buddha’. kill it immediately. That is the last temptation of the mind.

Go on watching and watching and watching till there is nothing to watch, not even nothing to watch. Then the watcher is left alone, then there is no object, when subjectivity is left alone, in that absolute silence is the revolution.

Source – Osho Book “The Golden Wind”