OSHO MEDITATION QUOTES

Meditation is not contemplation either because it

is not thinking at all -- consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts -- trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

OSHO HEALING AND MEDITATION EXPERIENCE

So meditation is not really mind-effort. Real meditation is not effort at all. Real meditation is just allowing the mind to have its own way, and not interfering in any way whatsoever -- just remaining watchful, witnessing. It silences, by and by, it becomes still. One day it is gone. You are left alone.
Mind is elusive, you cannot hold it in your hand. You cannot force it into a test-tube. The only way to know it is to know it from within, from your witnessing self. The more you become aware, the more you can watch your mind -- its subtle functioning. The functioning is tremendously complex and beautiful. Mind is the most complex phenomenon on the earth, the most subtle flowering of consciousness. If you want to really understand what the mind is, then you will have to detach yourself from your mind, and you will have to learn how to be just a witness. That's what meditation is all about.
I have been teaching you all the methods of meditation. You can choose any method that suits you. There are only one hundred and twelve methods; there is no possibility of adding more. It is exhaustive. All the methods possible have been explored. The simplest is witnessing.
There is a difference. You watch television, you don't witness it. But, while watching television, if you start witnessing yourself watching television, then there are two processes going on: you are watching television, and something within you is witnessing the process of watching television. Witnessing is deeper, far deeper. It is not equivalent to watching. Watching is superficial.
So remember that meditation is witnessing.
When your witnessing is ninety percent, your mind is reduced to ten percent. And when your witnessing is one hundred percent -- total, absolute -- the screen is empty, the film has disappeared. This is the state of meditation: when there are no thoughts, no feelings -- nothing moves, everything stops. There is tremendous serenity. Out of this serenity, silence, peace, a new kind of experience arises, new flowers blossom.
Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation.
Witnessing can be called the seed and enlightenment can be called the flowers. But begin from witnessing, and then it starts growing. Go on nourishing it, go on caring for it, go on watering it, strengthen it in every possible way -- and one day it is going to blossom. That day will be the greatest day of your life.
Meditation, witnessing, silently sitting and looking at the mind, will be of much help. Not forcing, simply sitting and looking. Not doing much, just watching as one watches birds flying in the sky. Just Lying down on the ground and watching, nothing to do, indifferent. Not your concern really, where they are going; they are going on their own.
Remember, thoughts are also just like birds: they are moving on their own. And sometimes it happens that people who are around you, their thoughts enter into your sky, your thoughts go on entering into their sky. That's why sometimes you feel that with some man suddenly you become sad; with some other man suddenly you feel an upsurge of energy and happiness and delight. Just looking at somebody, being near to him, something changes in your mood.

FOR HEALING AND MEDITATION
Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle -- the whole mystery of life.
Meditation is nothing but putting the mind aside, putting the mind out of the way, and bringing a witnessing which is always there but hidden underneath the mind. This witnessing will reach to your center, and once you have become enlightened, then there is no problem. Then bring the mind in tune with you.
You are the witness, to whom things happen but who remains a witness. Witnessing is the art of nonidentification, and nonidentification is all. Nonidentification is all there is to meditation. It is the whole meditation.
Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes. That's my method of meditation. It is not a prayer because there is no God to pray to. It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts passing before you. Just witnessing -- not interfering, not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say this is good, this is bad, you have already jumped into the thought process. It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise: you are not the mind, you are the witness, a watcher.
This process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion, because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. A moment comes when there is no thought at all. You are, but the mind is utterly empty. That is the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment when for the first time you become unconditioned, sane, a really free human being.
(Osho) whatever I am doing, my meditation continues. It is not something that I have to do it separately; it is just an art of witnessing. Speaking to you, I'm also witnessing myself speaking to you. So here are three persons: you are listening, one person is speaking, and there is one behind who is watching and that is my real me. And to keep constant contact with it is meditation. So whatever you do does not matter, you just keep contact with your witness.
(Osho) My teaching is meditation. Meditation means to me, witnessing on three levels: action of the body, thoughts of the mind, feelings of the heart. Once a person becomes aware of these three things, the fourth step happens on its own accord. A quantum leap, suddenly he is at his very center, which is his life, deathless life. You can call it his soul, his being, and it is the greatest bliss in existence. There is nothing above it.
Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it. Mind is only a machine. You are not. Meditation is the experience: "I am not my body, not my mind -- I am the witness of it all." This experience, this transcendental experience, immensely transforms the whole situation. Many things which were driving you crazy simply drop away.
Slowly slowly each act of your life should turn into a meditative act. Then there is a possibility to attain to enlightenment. Then you can sit also because that too is an act, but you are not specifically identifying sitting with meditation -- that too is a part. Walking you meditate, working you meditate, sometimes sitting silently you meditate, sometimes lying on your bed you meditate... meditation should become your constant companion.
And this meditation that can become constant companion is a very simple thing, I call it witnessing. Just go on witnessing whatsoever is happening. Walking you witness, sitting you witness, eating you witness yourself eating, and you will be surprised that the more you witness things the better you can do them because you are non-tense, their quality changes. You will also note that the more meditative you become every gesture of yours becomes soft, non-violent, has a grace in it. And not only you will notice it, others will start noticing it.
With your witnessing there will be a few difficulties: your old friends may not remain your friends any more, not that you have done any harm to them but simply you have changed and now you no longer fit with their state, with their consciousness. So don't be worried about that. If you are married and you find that your wife is falling far away from you then it is better to tell her what you are doing: that if she wants to be with you, if she loves you the way you love her, you would like her also to be a companion on the path of meditation. Otherwise, soon you will be so far away from each other that everything will be misunderstood.
Your children will find that you are a different person -- you are no more the same old papa. It is better to help your children to learn a little bit of witnessing. And don't think that they cannot learn; they can learn better than grown up people because they are fresh, they are not loaded with any past. Just you have to be more friendly with them than fatherly. And before the rift happens it is better to make it clear to them, "It will not be my fault if the family falls apart. I have chosen a path which is going to give me something and I would like it to be shared by you all."
I don't want any family to be disturbed by anybody in the name of spirituality, and if we can be a little more loving and compassionate and make them understand -- and they will be able to see that you are less angry, you are less tired, you are less frustrated, you are more loving, more compassionate -- they will surely come with you.
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.
You don't have to do anything, you have just to sit silently doing nothing, because any kind of doing is going to take you away from yourself. When you are not doing anything, the whole energy gathers inside; it is not invested anywhere. The moment you pass your mind, all the energy that was invested in thoughts is released. When you pass your heart, all the energy that was invested in your emotions, feelings, sentiments, is released. Now you are becoming too full of energy. This abundance of energy gives you the first taste of existence, and as this energy becomes a pillar of tremendous height and depth, you have found the connection with the cosmos. You are no longer alone. In fact, you are no more, only existence is. Then the existence, the cosmos, the life, is a sheer dance.
This insight is the beginning of real life. How to start this insight? That's what meditation is all about. Start witnessing. Walking on the street, become a witness. Watch the body walking... and you, from the innermost core, are just watching, witnessing, observing. Suddenly you will have a sense of freedom. Suddenly you will see that the body is walking, you are not walking. Sometimes the body is healthy, sometimes the body is ill. Watch, just watch, and suddenly you will have a sense of a totally different quality of being.
You are not the body. The body is ill, of course, but you are not ill. The body is healthy, but it has nothing to do with you. You are a witness, a watcher on the hills... far beyond. Of course, tethered to the body, but not identified with the body; rooted in the body, but always beyond and transcending. The first meditation is to separate yourself from the body. And by and by, when you become more acute in your observation of the body, start observing the thoughts that continuously go on within your mind.
But first watch the body, because it is gross, can be observed more easily, will not need much awareness. Once you become attuned, then start watching the mind. Whatsoever can be watched becomes separate from you. Whatsoever you can witness, you are not it. You are the witnessing consciousness. The witnessed is the object; you are the subjectivity.
The body, and the mind also, remain far away when you become a witness. Suddenly you are there -- with no body and no mind... a pure consciousness, just simple sheer purity, an innocence, a mirror. In this innocence, for the first time you know who you are. In this purity, for the first time existence becomes life. For the first time you are. Before it, you were simply asleep, dreaming; now you are.
Any judgment is past oriented, and existence is always herenow, life is always herenow. All judgments are coming from your past experiences, your education, your religion, your parents -- which may be dead, but their judgments are being carried by your mind and they will be given as a heritage to your children. Generation after generation, every disease is being transferred as a heritage. Only a non-judgmental mind has intelligence, because it is spontaneously responding to reality.
One has to become more and more centered in the process of watching. One has to disidentify oneself from the bodymind complex and this is the whole process of meditation: the process of disidentification. That is the negative part of the process. And the positive part is centering into the process of witnessing, becoming more and more rooted in watchfulness.
These two things done, the negative and the positive -- disidentification with the bodymind complex and centering in the process of awareness -- that's the whole of religion. Nothing else is needed. No scripture, no doctrine, no dogma. This is enough to liberate. More than that is an unnecessary burden.
Meditation does not mean concentration, it does not mean contemplation: it means getting beyond the mind. Concentration, contemplation, are both of the mind. Meditation means getting unidentified with the mind, seeing the mind as separate, knowing the mind as separate, witnessing the mind but not getting identified with it. Slowly slowly as witnessing grows, the distance grows between you and the mind. Soon the mind is a faraway echo, and finally you cannot even hear the echo; then you are left utterly alone.
That needs courage, hence very few people have been able to know their own selves, and very few people have been able to become Buddhas. Before one can become a Buddha, one has to pass through a death -- of the mind, of the ego, of all that we think we are. We have to lose all that we think we possess, then only can we possess the eternal.
Bliss follows witnessing -- and that is going to be your meditation. Witness your body as separate, witness your mind as separate. Remain rooted in witnessing: "I am only a watcher." That is going to transform your whole life, it is going to give you the ultimate.
Wake up from your dreams and make every possible effort to get deeper into meditation, into awareness, into witnessing. Become more and more conscious and you will become a king. Everybody has the potential to become a king. If we miss, we miss only because of our lethargy. We never make any effort, we never try to go inwards.
Or if once in a while we try, within minutes we are tired and again we start running and rushing into the outside world. A persistent effort is needed and perseverance is needed and patience is needed. Victory is bound to happen, but it happens only when you are really ready. That readiness comes through intense effort. Make every effort to be meditative -- that is the key, the master key to the doors of the kingdom of god.
Man can live in freedom only if he is meditative, otherwise not. Meditation is the source of all freedom. Without meditation you are a slave, a slave of your own instinct, a slave of your unconscious desires. You may think and believe that you are free, but you are not. Somebody insults you and you become angry.
Are you free to be angry or not to be angry? You are not free. He has simply pushed your button and you have behaved in a mechanical way. You are predictable. It was not within your capacity not to be angry.
You see something and greed arises. You are not free, you can't do anything about this greed. Or lust arises and you are simply a victim of it.
It is only through meditation that slowly slowly more consciousness is created within you, more light is created; more watchfulness, witnessing, happens. And that is the miracle of awareness: if you become aware of anger you become a master of anger. Then it is up to you whether to be angry or not. You are absolutely free to be this way or that way.
To people who have not meditated may go on believing that they are free but they are deceiving nobody else except themselves. Be more meditative and you will know how to live in freedom. And of course, life is life only when you are able to live in freedom.
In samadhi, in the highest form of meditation, the same thing happens: the mind stops functioning... but you are conscious. That is the only difference, but the difference that makes the difference. One is fully alert, luminous. One is there witnessing, watching, but there is no cloud of thought. The sky is utterly empty: as far as you can see you cannot see any content.
Meditation is a simple method. Your mind is like a TV screen. Memories are passing, images are passing, thoughts, desires, a thousand and one things are passing; it is always rush hour. And the road is almost like an Indian road -- no traffic rules, everybody, is going in every direction. One has to watch it without any evaluation, without any judgement without any choice, simply watching unconcerned as if it has nothing to do with you, you are just a witness. That is choiceless awareness.
If you choose, if you say 'This thought is good -- let me have it', or 'It is a beautiful desire, a beautiful dream, I should enjoy it a little more, I can go into it a little deeper'... if you choose you lose your witnessing. If you say 'This is bad, this is immoral, this is a sin, I should throw it out,' you start struggling, again you lose your witnessing.
You can lose your witnessing in two ways; either being for or against. And the whole secret of meditation is to be neither for nor to be against, but unconcerned, cool, without any preference, likes, dislikes, without any choice. If you can manage even a few moments of that witnessing one will be surprised how much bliss happens, how ecstatic one becomes.
In the beginning there are only a few moments, then those moments become bigger. And as you become a true witness, without any choice, in that moment the whole traffic disappears. Suddenly the TV screen just a white screen, there are no pictures at all. And to see your mind as utterly empty is the greatest experience in life because it turns your consciousness inwards. There is nothing to see there, so the consciousness takes a turn, a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn, an about-turn. And in that turning you encounter yourself. That is selfknowledge, and to know oneself is to know all. You have found the door to the divine.
Meditation means that no outer light is going to help, no outer treasure is going to make you rich, no outer conquest is going to make you a real conqueror. The real treasure is within you and the real conquest has to be made there. It is such a ridiculous thing that we go on searching for something which we have already got, but we never look within. We look everywhere else we can go to the very corners of the earth or even to the moon in search of some illusory pleasure -- just one territory we never enter, and that is our own being.
Meditation is a simple technique of entering it. Meditation means awareness, alertness, watchfulness, witnessing. Witness your actions, witness your thoughts witness your feelings so that slowly slow you can see you are neither the body nor the mind nor heart -- that you are the witness of it all.
When you start meditating on your ego, on your thoughts, on your mind, you are suddenly separate, because whatsoever you meditate on, you are separate from it. That has become the object and you have become the subject.
Meditation brings a third state: mind is non- functioning, just as it is in deep dreamless sleep -- that is one part of meditation, the circumference of meditation. And the second part is when you are not asleep, you are fully awake, alert, a flame of witnessing -- that is the centre of meditation. Whenever these two things happen -- you are aware and there is no mind, no thought, no desire, no dream passing through the screen of consciousness -- you attain to ultimate clarity. That is the meaning of Beryl: crystal clear.
In that crystal clarity one knows what truth is, what bliss is, what beauty is. And to know it is to have attained the ultimate flowering, to know it is to have come to the highest peak. Then one feels at home, at rest. Now finally there is nowhere to go, nothing to attain. One has arrived. We in the East call it samadhi. Samadhi means a state of ultimate realisation, of truth, beauty, bliss, consciousness, freedom -- of all the higher values.
You can repeat a certain mantra continuously -- it will hypnotise you, it is auto-hypnosis. You will fall into a peaceful sleep, that's true, and if you are searching fora peaceful sleep a mantra can be used. I am not against it. It is a good non-medicinal tranquilliser but it is not meditation and not at all transcendental meditation, because transcendence simply means transcending the mind, and that can be done only by one thing and that is witnessing the mind; not by doing anything, not by repeating a mantra, chanting or anything. Any doing will be part of the mind.
There is only one secret which is not part of the mind, and that is witnessing, watching. Thoughts are passing, desires are moving, memories are coming and going like clouds in the sky and you are sitting silently simply watching, not doing anything. If you do anything immediately the mind starts functioning. What you do does not matter -- doing is part of mind. A non-doing witnessing, just witnessing, as if a mirror goes on witnessing whatsoever passes by -- that is awareness. And that awareness takes you beyond the mind. It is true meditation.
Go deep into meditation. And by meditation I mean awareness, watchfulness, witnessing. It is only through meditation that the inner light begins. Otherwise man lives in darkness. Meditation enkindles something that is latent in all of us, but needs to be provoked. We are looking outwards. Our backs are at our inner source; hence it is being neglected, ignored. and to ignore one's inner being is the only ignorance. To know it is the only knowledge. All other knowledge is worthless. It may help you in the world but it can't help you in eternity.
Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created.

And through meditation comes wisdom -- not through studying books, not through scriptures. Through scriptures one can become knowledgeable but no wise. and knowledgeable people are sad, they are bound to be sad because all their knowledge is borrowed. There can be no song in it.
Meditation means undoing what the society has done to you. It has reduced you to a machine; you have to de-automatise yourself, you have to become a man again. You have to come out of this state of unconsciousness, of mechanicalness. You have to come out of this sleep. It is possible only through meditation. There is no other way, there has never been, there will never be. The only way to reduce a man to a machine is take away his consciousness force him to function unconsciously. And just the opposite is the way of meditation: give him back his consciousness.
Dhyan means meditation. Meditation means awareness, watchfulness, a silent witnessing of all the processes of the mind. And the magic of watching is that as your watchfulness deepens, the mind starts evaporating. When the watchfulness is absolute mind becomes nil, a zero. And the disappearance of the mind gives you clarity, absolute clarity, transparency; you can see through and through, you become a mirror. And then life is reflected as it is -- not according to any doctrine, not according to the Bible or the Koran or the Gita but as it is. And to know life as it is, is to know god.
this witnessing is possible only if you slowly move into meditation. Choose one meditation, whichever fits with you, and then go on working on it without any desire for any immediate result; forget all about result. Just go on doing it, enjoying it, and one day the result comes. But it comes only when meditation has come to a certain intensity. It is like water evaporating: when it comes to a one-hundred-degree heat it evaporates. At ninety-nine degrees it still does not evaporate, it is still water; just one degree more and it disappears. The same happens with meditation: you go on working, a certain intensity comes, a certain degree of heat is created, and the ego evaporates. And when the ego is no more, god is.
It is only through meditation that purity comes. Meditation means jumping out of the mind. There is no need to purify the mind, it can be put aside. One can become disidentified with the mind. To know "I am not the mind," is real purity because then you are only consciousness, awareness, a witnessing. To live twenty-four hours a day as a witness is the way of the sannyasin.
Meditation is basically the process of witnessing: looking from your centre all that is happening. Many things are happening on the outside -- the noise of the train far away; something is happening in you body -- your knees are hurting -- right? Your mind is churning many thoughts, that 'What am I doing here?' Your heart is feeling many emotions, you have waited for this moment for so long. There is joy in the heart, a certain ecstasy, a mood, a receptivity. All those things have to be watched very minutely.

Watching them opens your inner being. Just watching them opens your inner eye and that is the real eye; the outside eyes are of not much use. You are fortunate that you don't have them. You are blessed! Blessed are the blind for they shall not be forced to see this ugly world! And it is really ugly -- believe me!

And you can put your total energy for the inner eye. The outside eyes are wasting eighty percent of energy -- it is the major part. Man has five senses, eighty per cent is taken away by the eyes and only twenty per cent is left for the other four senses. They are very poor people, those four. Eyes are very rich, they have monopolised the whole thing; hence it is good -- eighty per cent energy is saved -- and that can be immediately used for witnessing, for seeing your inner world. hence in the East we call a person who is blind 'pragyanshakshu' -- this word is untranslatable.

It simply means one who has the inner eye: The outer eyes are not there but that is a great opportunity because eighty per cent of energy is available for the person and he can easily become a meditator, more easily then anybody else. It is a well-known fact that blind people have better ears than anybody else. They become beautiful musicians, good singers, for the simple reason, for their eighty per cent energy is diverted towards the ears. Ears are the closest to the eyes, so when the eyes are not using the energy the ears start using it. But that is again a misuse because ears will again take it outside.

It is better to use this available energy for your observation, inner observation. Just watch everything -- and it is good because you have nothing much to do. You have not to go here and there and visit people and become a member of the Rotary Club. You are saved from so much nonsense that I felt really jealous of you! Enjoy it! And feel sorry for everybody else! They are poorer and you can become immensely rich. And the art of that richness is witnessing. Witnessing is another name for meditation.
For dignity of character, consciousness is needed, not conscience and that's the function of meditation. Meditation does not give you any character directly. It does not say what to do and what not to do. It never gives you any commandments. It simply gives you a technique for becoming more aware, for being more alert, watchful, witnessing.

Meditation is the art of awareness. And once you are aware, out of your awareness your actions will arise -- not out of conscience. Conscience is cultivated by others, by the vested interests, by the establishment. Consciousness is yours. It is individual, it is not collective. Conscience is part of the mob psychology. Consciousness gives you dignity because it gives you individuality. It gives you rebellion, it makes you capable of saying yes or no of your own accord. There is no foreign agency manipulating you in the name of religion, morality, etcetera.

My effort here is just to help you to be more aware so whatsoever you do comes out of that awareness. That awareness has no ready-made answers; it is just like a mirror: it reflects the situation, the challenge of the situation, and you act immediately, spontaneously. You don't look for an answer in the memory, in the scriptures, in your parent's ideas, in all that has been taught to you. You simply encounter the situation immediately; in your own light. Your action then has dignity, beauty, grace, because it is coming out of freedom. Freedom makes everything graceful. Freedom is the greatest value in life.

And then certainly, whatsoever you do -- your character, your behaviour -- is yours, authentically yours. It has your signature on it. Then you are not a carbon copy, you are original. The Zen people call it finding the original face.

For that, one has to drop all the masks, one has to risk many things, particularly respectability. That is a bribe by the society. It will give you a Nobel prize and it will give you many honours; it will do everything to make you feel great, if you can fulfil one condition: if you are obedient, obedient like a robot, then all respect is for you. Then the society will make you a great hero, but there will be no grace, no beauty, no freedom, no truth, no being; you have committed a real suicide.

Meditation opens the doors of your inner treasures, what Jesus calls the kingdom of god. Meditation is only a key, and keys are always small things, but they can unlock immense treasures. Everybody is born as a prince or a princess, but gets lost in the blind crowd of beggars.
The moment you become attached to what is happening, the mind arises. The mind is an attachment. A thought moves and you become attached to it, you become identified with it. You say 'I am it. I am a Christian.' This is an attachment. 'I am a Hindu.' This is an attachment, this is the mind. The self is neither Hindu nor Christian. The mind is Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan and so on, so forth. The mind is Communist, the mind is Catholic, the mind is this and that. The self is a pure witness. There may be a thought which is Catholic or Hindu or Communist, but it is only a thought; the mind is a witness to it. Knowing it, remaining in this witnessing, the mind disappears. Then you are no more attached, and in that detachment is meditation. Meditation is a state of no-mind.
So when you become a witness to what is happening in you, all that society has taught you to repress will begin to rise, because witnessing means that the weight holding it all down is removed. Right now you are sitting on top of it, so everything remains suppressed. People come to me to tell me about the strange states arising out of their meditations. They expected meditation to bring them peace, and instead they find themselves facing inner tempests. They expected meditation to bring them satisfaction, and find themselves aflame with dissatisfaction. They thought anger would disappear, and find themselves, to their dismay, hot with anger!

In the beginning this is bound to happen. You have been sitting on the lid that covers your repressions, and you have been riding on that lid a long time, trying continuously to hold down everything beneath it. To become a witness means that you have finally jumped off the lid; now you will only stand aside and will not do anything. Now you will no longer repress, now you will just witness. So everything suppressed will arise, all the repressions will catch fire; you will find flames leaping where there were only ashes.

All the anger and sex and turmoil will surge up, will surround you, but even in these moments you maintain your witnessing. It will not last for long, because it is just the explosion of the repressions. As these flames flare up, and fade, the fire below will begin to disappear; and as the smoke is dispelled into the vastness, you will find a clear, smokeless space within. A day comes when you find suddenly that you are standing alone, nothing is left to be seen. The witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed -- no anger, no sex, no hatred, no envy, no jealousy. But this will take time....

If you were dealing with the accumulated repressions of only one lifetime, it would be different. But these are the repressions of numerous lives. Nobody knows how many times you have been born, and how many societies have crushed you. And each time a different society, and all these societies destroying you in different ways... this is why you carry so many inner contradictions.

Once you were a Hindu, and you were taught that this is right and that is wrong. Then once you were a Mohammedan and you were taught exactly the opposite, that this is wrong and that is right. Once you were a Jaina, and once a Buddhist... the number of societies you have wandered through is endless. You have learned so many rights and so many wrongs, and they are so contradictory to each other that you are in deep inner conflict and great confusion. So many people have carved and shaped you that no single image of you has developed. So many images have been carved, and your stone would have looked so much more beautiful if it had been left untouched. The sculptors have made it deformed and ugly.

The process of witnessing will take time, and this will depend on the effort you put into witnessing, and also on how much is repressed within you. If your effort is really profound, things may happen very quickly. If the effort is only lukewarm, you may begin to feel the effects only after a few lives, or may never feel it at all. The time taken will depend on how intensely, how enthusiastically and how totally you give yourself to the effort to become grounded in witnessing. If your witnessing can be total, all the turmoils can come to an end in an instant! If you become the very awareness, if in the moment of awareness all your energy becomes awareness itself -- no doer remains at all, only the watcher -- then even in an instant such a seeing will burn up everything lying suppressed within you.
To live moment to moment is the life of meditation. Then life becomes spontaneous without any effort; then nobody can make you miserable, nobody can disappoint you, nobody can make you a failure because in the first place you were not trying to be a success; you were not asking the future to be in a certain way. So whatever happens, the next moment you can rejoice. It is always your victory.
If you were only to listen, it becomes meditation. Without meditation you cannot hear. What is the meaning of meditation? Meditation exists only where mind is not; where the internal dialogue is gone.
If you meditate, meditation is so beautiful, who bothers about the result? And if you bother about the result, meditation is not possible. This result oriented mind is the only barrier, the only block. There are not many blocks, the only block is that of the result oriented mind: never here-now, always somewhere else thinking of the result; while making love, thinking about the result.
Real music will help you move towards meditation, beyond the mind needs, towards spiritual needs. Real poetry will give you a glimpse of the minds of the sages -- a glimpse of course. It will open a window so you can see the faraway distant Himalayas. And then an urge arises in you, and you start travelling.
Use the head, use the heart, and if you can use both a tremendous revolution will happen. If you can use both you will become aware that you are the third force -- neither; you are neither head nor heart; because if you can move so easily from one to another you cannot be either; you must be separate from both -- then the witnessing arises; then the identification is broken. And that witnessing is what meditation is all about.
Be aware, and wine becomes water. Be aware -- sex becomes love. Be aware -- love becomes prayer. Be aware -- prayer becomes meditation. Simply one thing has to be remembered: do whatsoever you like, but do it with full consciousness, and then you will not go astray.
Meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for the original face.
Meditation is to attain to a no-mindness, to a state of no-thought. In that opening of no-thought, in that kind of space, suddenly you become pure, innocent, uncorrupted. You have never been like that before nobody has ever been like that before nobody is going to be like that again. Unique. And to know that is to realize one's self. To know that is to know all. If you have not known that, whatsoever else you know is just rubbish, garbage.
My meditation techniques ARE dangerous. In fact there cannot be any meditation techniques which are not dangerous. If they are not dangerous, they are not meditation techniques, they are tricks. Just like Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They are mental tricks. Just consolatory. No danger. At the most they can give you good sleep, that's all. If you miss, you don't miss anything, you remain the same. If you attain, you attain to good sleep, that's all. No danger involved.
One man has discovered that by running there is no need to meditate, just by running meditation happens. He must be absolutely body oriented. Nobody has ever thought that by running meditation is possible -- but I know, I used to love running myself. It happens. If you go on running, if you run fast, thinking stops, because thinking cannot possibly continue when you are running very fast. For thinking an easy chair is needed, that's why we call thinkers armchair philosophers; they sit and relax in a chair, the body completely relaxed, then the whole energy moves into the mind.
If you feel you are the body type, then running can be very beautiful for you: a four, five mile run every day. And make it a meditation. It will transform you completely.
In fact everything can become a sort of meditation, because in everything there are two dimensions -- just as there are in the first breath: the outer and the inner.
It is better not to call anything to anybody — just remain centered in yourself. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you — no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness. This watchfulness, I call meditation.
The West is concentration of the mind: the East is meditation of the mind. The West is thinking: the East is non-thinking. The West is mind: the East is no-mind.
Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being. You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand.
Real music will make you more and more refined. It will become more and more silent. In fact, real music will help you to listen to silence, where all notes disappear, where only gaps remain. One note comes, disappears, and another has not come, and there is a gap. In that gap meditation flows in you.
All methods of meditation are nothing but methods to help you to remember the art of let-go.
Meditation should not be a thing apart from life; it should be amidst life, it should be a part of life an organic part, nothing ‘put separate’. The temple should exist exactly in the middle of the market, and all distinctions between the sacred and the secular should be dissolved.
Children can be taught meditation more easily because they are not yet spoiled. When you have been spoiled the hard work is to help you to unlearn.
Meditation means you don’t have anything, any object to think about. You are just in a state of absolute aloneness. You don’t have anything on which you can focus yourself — not a sutra, not a mantra, not any great value of life, just pure space all around you. Then you are in meditation. Meditation is never about something. Meditation is a state.
Drop dreaming and you are there where you have really been always, but you were never aware. All meditation techniques are just antidream efforts, just dream-negating devices.
When you are in deep meditation you don't feel meditation, you feel bliss. When you are deep in meditation, when you are deep in awareness, you don't feel awareness, you feel bliss. When you begin to feel bliss, that means now you have begun to be aware. Awareness creates the situation in which bliss is felt.
Meditation means how to be not a mind. How to be not a mind! Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness. It doesn't mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.
By meditation we try to slow down the mechanism of projections. If the mechanism is slowed down and even for a single moment you begin to be aware of the gap -- imageless gap of the screen -- you have the glimpse. Suddenly you know that you have lived in the dreams of your own creation; and whatsoever you have known as the world was not the world really, it was YOUR world.
So silently, peacefully, without hurry, without any tension, without any anguish, move into yourself instantly. It is urgent. Unless meditation becomes urgent to you, it will never happen; you will die before it. Put meditation on your laundry list as the most important, urgent… number one. But meditation in your life is just at the very end of your laundry list — and the laundry list goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And before you finish your laundry list, you are finished, so the time for meditation never comes.
Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent — not even a flicker of thought — and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.
Don't move outward and you will find yourself in the heart, in the cave of the heart. Mind moves with desires, outwards. Then it can continue, continue, and go on and on -- to the very end of the world it can go. Don't move with any desires. Desirelessness is the method to come in, and desirelessness is meditation. Do not desire anything. Even for a single moment, if you are in a desireless moment, you will find yourself in. And then you can encounter the flame of life which is immortality, which is non-dying, which has never been born and will not die. Once known, there will be no fear of death. And when there is no fear of death, only then you can live authentically. Then your life will have a different quality altogether. It will be aware, it will be alive, it will be fresh. It will be blissful, it will be a deep ecstasy, a continuous ecstasy.
This is what meditation means: how to be not identified with the mind -- how to create a space between yourself and your own mind. It is difficult because we never make any separation. We go on thinking in terms that the mind means me: mind and me are totally identified. If they are totally identified, then you will never be at peace; then you will never be able to enter the divine, because the divine can be entered only when the social has been left behind.
If you want to do Vipassana, or any silent meditation, Dynamic Meditation becomes absolutely essential, because Christianity having poisoned your mind, that poison has to be thrown out. You have to go completely crazy to throw it out; otherwise that craziness remains inside you, and won’t allow you to get into a silent, watching, witnessing meditation.
There are six senses: five are outer; they tell you about the world. I say something about the light; without eyes you will not know light. Ears say something about the sound; without ears you will not know anything about the sound. There is a sixth sense, the inner sense, that shows and tells you something about yourself and the ultimate source of things. That sense has to be discovered.
Meditation is nothing but the discovery of the inner sense.
The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning. Mind is learning; meditation is unlearning: that is — die constantly to your experience; let it not imprison you; experience becomes a dead weight in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.
Meditation is unlearning. Peel your onion. It is difficult, because you have become identified with the onion, you think these layers are YOU so to peel them is difficult, it is painful also, because it is not like just throwing your clothes, rather it is like peeling your skin; you have become too much attached to them. But once you know, once you drop one layer, you feel freshness arising. You become new. Then courage increases. Then hope. Then you feel more confident. Then you can peel another layer. The more you peel, the more silent, the more happy, the more blissful you become. Now you are on the right track. Now it is not very far off until you will throw the whole onion.
I would like the whole world to be full with authentic art, throbbing with it, living with it, because that is the only way: through authentic art, real art, you transcend it. If the music is real, soon you will move into meditation, because the music will only give you a little glimpse of meditation, nothing more.
Put your whole energy into meditation. Once you are centered in your being, once you know the inner path, then wherever you are you can manage to go to the center without any difficulty. Even when you are dying, it will not make any difference. You may be sick, it will not make any difference.
Meditation cannot be taught, it can only be caught. I am meditation. If you are available you can catch it.
Meditation cannot be purchased and no one can give it to you. You have to achieve it. It is not something outer, it is something inner, a growth, and that growth comes through awareness.
Objects must cease, mind must become just a pure mirror -- a mirroring, not mirroring anything -- just a mirror without any object in it, a pure mirror. By dhyan, this purity of the mind is indicated. So first, no object should be in the mind. Mind must remain alone without thinking about anything -- with no thought, just a consciousness, just an awareness, just an alertness. This alertness without any object is meditation.
You cannot force meditation, you can only create the situation. And if the situation is created rightly, then meditation happens automatically.
Meditation is object-less. If you use any object, then it is not meditation; it becomes thinking. It becomes contemplation; it becomes reflection, but not meditation. This is the most essential point to be understood. This is the essence of a meditative state: that it is object-less. Only consciousness is there, but not conscious ABOUT anything. Consciousness without being conscious of anything -- this is the nature of meditation.
Meditation is not doing something. But you cannot take a jump immediately into non-doing. So I suggest that you make your doing total. Move into it so deeply, and so totally that suddenly the doing drops, and you alone are left, just existing.
To be choiceless is to be in meditation. To be choiceless is to enter the eternal. To be of choice is to enter the world: the dream world, the divided world, the false, the pseudo, the illusory world.
Through meditation one has to achieve a dreamless sleep with full alertness. Once this happens, the drop falls into the ocean and becomes the ocean.
Mind is knowledge, meditation is non-knowledge. Mind knows, meditation experiences. Mind can only give you a certain acquaintance but not the taste. If you want the taste of the Tao you have to move to no-mind, to Meditation.
Meditation is the art of transforming madness into Buddhahood. Meditation is the art of taking you beyond logic and yet keeping your sanity intact. Meditation is the greatest discovery ever made, and I don't think there is ever going to be another discovery which can surpass meditation.
Because of watching your breath and thoughts you have come to know now that you are neither thoughts nor your breath, you are the watcher, the witness. This is awareness. This is what I call meditation. Once you have known this awareness you are unidentified with your body, with your mind. Now you experience a vastness inside you, in one sense utterly empty and in another sense overflowingly full. Because of its emptiness you will remain calm and quiet. And because of its overflowing fullness you will be creative.
Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage.
What is meditation? It is not your character, it is not what you do. It is what you are. It is not the character, it is the consciousness that you bring to whatsoever you do. The doing is irrelevant. Whether you are doing it consciously or not is the question, whether moral or immoral. Are you alert? If you are alert, meditation happens. If you are not alert, you live in sleep.
The man of meditation becomes the man of understanding because his energy accumulates. He is not wasting it. He is not interested in trivia; he does not put any energy at all into petty things. So whenever the time arises to give, he has to give. Energy is understanding. Be conscious of it and use your energy very consciously, and use your energy in such a way that you don't simply go on wasting it.
Except witnessing, I don’t teach anything else. So just witness your mind and the meditation will be happening. And once you have got in tune with your being, you know the way, you know the how. Then it does not matter where you are. Alone or in the crowd, in the silences of the forest or in the noises of a marketplace, it is all the same. You can simply close your eyes and disappear inwards.
Meditation is nothing but a way to learn how to do a thing totally -- once you have learnt, make your whole life a meditation, forget all about meditations, let the life be the only law, let the life be the only meditation. And then time disappears.
For a prayer oriented religion the concept of a personal God is needed -- to relate to. For meditation-oriented religions God is a useless hypothesis; it can be discarded easily into the dustbin. It is not needed.
To be a criminal needs great unconsciousness. Meditation destroys your unconsciousness, opens the doors of light and suddenly what you were doing in the darkness starts disappearing.
Meditation is just a situation; silence is not going to be the consequence of it. No, meditation is just creating the soil, the surrounding, preparing the ground. The seed is there, it is always there; you need not put in the seed, the seed has always been with you. That seed is Brahma; that seed is atma. – that seed is you. Just create the situation and the seed will become alive. It will sprout and a plant will be born, and you will start growing. Meditation doesn’t lead you to silence; meditation only creates the situation in which the silence happens. And this should be the criterion — that whenever silence happens laughter will come into your life. A vital celebration will happen all around.
Meditation is totally different. When you concentrate you close your mind to everything else. Meditation means just an openness, a relaxed openness. It is not concentration. While listening to me you are listening to the birds singing in the trees too. The wind passing through the trees singing its song — you are open to it too. The aeroplane passing by, or the train — you are open to it too. This is meditation — you are simply open, available, conscious, available, all doors are open.
Ordinarily, the mind is the master and you have to follow it. The mind gives you something to think about and you have to think about it. The mind gives you some dream and you have to dream it. And the mind goes on.... And sometimes even if you say to your mind, "Stop!" it is not going to stop, it is not going to listen to you at all. Because you have cooperated with it so much, and you have given it your energy and identification so much, that the mind doesn't remember your mastery at all. You are just a slave. Meditation means to create a gap so that you can become master, master of your own mind. And mastery means that you are not identified.
The more your meditation goes deep, the less and less you will feel the burden of the mind. The more and more meditation goes deep, the less and less you will be a mind. Thoughts will become rare, and ultimately they cease. That doesn't mean you become unthinking; it only means that your consciousness becomes clear, transparent, without thoughts moving continuously as clouds. Whenever you need to think you can think; but now thought becomes an instrument to you, not an obsession as it is presently. Thoughts are an obsession without meditation.
The more meditation goes deep, the more you will become master of your own thoughts. You will say, "Stop!" and the mind stops. You will say, "Move!" and the mind begins to move. Once this capacity comes to you, you will not fall down again. Unless this is achieved, if you discontinue meditation, soon every result will be washed away.
As meditation goes deep you will feel less and less desires, more and more contentment with whatsoever you have. There will be less and less desire for that which you don't have, and more and more contentment with whatsoever you have. As meditation goes deeper, a very contented consciousness evolves. Ultimately there is no desire, only contentment.
When someone is dancing madly in a blissful state, in ecstasy after meditation, he is creating vibrations around him. They may penetrate into anyone. They can become infectious; they do become infectious. This ecstasy can go to others also; this ecstasy can be felt. Others' hearts will be touched by it. And if you can create ripples around you, vibrations, you have served the world, and there is no other way to serve it -- you have served the divine, and there is no other way to serve it.
Meditation needs you in your totality. Nothing less will do. If you withhold something, and just do it halfheartedly, it is better not to do it, because the whole effort is useless. You will be simply tired and nothing will happen. So why unnecessarily tire yourself? If you are half in it you will be tired. And if someone feels tired -- remember this, and find out -- he will be half in it. If you are totally in it, you will be refreshed, not tired. This is the difference. If you are TOTALLY in it -- nothing has been retained, nothing has been withheld; you were in it totally, the doer was not standing outside; the doer has become the doing -- then you will come out of it fresh, fresh like the dew in the morning, fresh like a rose just opening; fresh, full of energy, light, dancing... blessed. And not only blessed, in such a state of mind that you can bless others.

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