as the mind is just on repeat, repetitive mantras, uttered a thousand times, re-mind-ing yourself of that which needs no reminding of at all, of you loving, losing all truth and value as we bla and blah. When the phrase I love you, becomes a religion all by itself, a religious practice for happy hormones, dopamine, as you soothe your way through life, pretending to love someone.
You may want to try some meditative therapy: https://www.osho.com/osho-multiversity/meditative-therapies/osho-mystic-rose
“IT DEPENDS on you. You can be conditioned by me — but am not conditioning you. Let that be absolutely clear!
You can be conditioned by me. If you are listening only through the mind you will be conditioned, because the mind goes on gathering knowledge. The mind is very suggestible, corruptible, vulnerable. If you are listening to me through your mind, through your reason, through your argumentative faculty, through your intellect, you will be conditioned. Even if you are not convinced by me, even if you go thinking that you are not convinced by me, still you will be conditioned. Maybe against me, but that too will condition you. For or against does not matter: if you listen through the mind you will be conditioned — because mind is the faculty of conditioning.
Centuries of conditioning have made you more like machines. You have lost your manhood, you have bargained for security. You are secure and comfortable and everything has been planned by others. And they have put everything on the map, they have measured everything. This is all absolutely foolish because life cannot be measured, it is immeasurable. And no map is possible because life is in constant flux. Everything goes on changing. Nothing is permanent except change. Says Heraclitus, ‘You cannot step in the same river twice.’
The moment you are born, conditioning starts, from your very first breath; it cannot be avoided. The parents will condition you, the children you play with will condition you, the neighborhood will condition you, the school, the church, the state. And consciously not much conditioning is being done, but unconsciously the child goes on and on accumulating it. The child learns by imitating.
So don’t be worried. This is the normal situation in the world: everybody is conditioned. Read more
You know that moment, at the end of the night and u wake up, knowing, determent, clearheaded, when u realise things fall back into place, yes fall back into, as u come back to knowing that u realise stuff, more, when information has made sense. As the wind gently howls across the building in late autumn.
I was so stuck and fucked up just a few months ago, and clearly needed some kind of help, support, guidance perhaps, as I had wiggled my way into distress and mental suffering through reading stuff way over my head, trying to get things that one might not get from just reading, from reading someone else’s experience even, it simply does not always work that way.
So I guess I sort of booby trapped myself in my own process, and was reading both ‘The Experience of No-Self‘ by Bernadette Roberts as well as the very dark ‘Brahma’s Long Night‘ by Ra Uru Hu in the Rave Cosmology Teacher Training right after having finished the fucked up ‘The Nature and Mechanics of the Rave (2027)‘ semester which really did not make things any lighter, and it just fucked me up, big time. And here is the kicker, I got what was said even, that was tough to swallow, I got what was said, what was meant, I could follow this experience of Bernadette, but I could not possibly also share her experience or recognize it in my own life, my own perception of what she was sharing about. And so I came to a grinding halt
Zoned out and outshined
So I stopped, I stopped reading Bernadette while gently continuing Rave Cosmology, but giving myself some space and time, knowing I got fucked up, knowing I needed to take a breather, a step back, unwind the tension just a bit, and reorient myself. But first, just back off a bit, simply ease off, and not push myself over this edge of not understanding, of not having the same experiential knowing, and allow for that. Read more
Osho, You said yesterday that surrender happens when there is no ego, but we are with egos. How can we move towards surrender?
“THE EGO is you. You cannot move towards surrender; in fact you are the barrier, so whatsoever you do will be wrong. You cannot do anything about it. You simply, without doing anything, have to be aware. This is an inner mechanism: whatsoever you do is done by the ego, and whenever you don’t do anything and remain just a witness, the non ego part of you starts functioning. The witness is the non-ego within you and the doer is the ego. The ego cannot exist without doing anything. Even if you do something to surrender, it will strengthen the ego and your surrender will become again a very subtle egoistic standpoint. You will say, ‘I have surrendered.’ You will claim surrender, and if somebody says that it is not true, you will feel angry, hurt. The ego is now there trying to surrender. The ego can do anything; the only thing that the ego cannot do is non doing, witnessing.
So just sit silently, watch the doer, and don’t try in any way to manipulate it. The moment you start manipulating, the ego has come back. Nothing can be done about it; one has just to be a witness to the misery that ego creates, of the false pleasures and gratifications that ego promises. Doings in this world and doings in the other world; the spiritual world, the Divine, the material, whatsoever the realm, the doer will re main the ego. You are not supposed to do anything and if you start doing something you will miss the whole point. Just be there, watch, understand, and don’t do. Don’t ask, ‘How to drop the ego?’ Who will drop it? Who will drop whom? When you don’t do anything, suddenly the witnessing part is separate from the doer; a gap arises. The doer goes on doing and the seer goes on seeing. Suddenly, you are filled with a new light, a new benediction: you are not the ego, you have never been the ego; how foolish that you ever believed in it.
There are people who are trying to fulfill their egos; they are wrong. There are people who are trying to drop their egos; they are wrong. Because when the witness arises you simply see the whole game. There is nothing to be fulfilled and nothing to be dropped. The ego is not of any substance. It is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of. It is just an idea, an air bubble — just hot air within you and nothing else. You need not drop it, because in the very dropping or in asking how to drop it, you believe in it, you are still clinging to it.
It happened that a Zen Master awoke one morning and he told his disciple, ‘I had a dream in the night. Will you please interpret it for me?’ Read more
“Very few understood what freedom really implies. The freedom a spiritual master of India is most likely envisaging for his people is called moksha, and it implies much much more than freeing the personality. It means freedom from the personality itself, not freedom for it. In fact, freedom for the personality is a contradiction in terms because the personality cannot be free ever. It can only be better or worse.
Osho once said: “I am cooking something else.” – I am afraid that he is still waiting for us to complete the cooking and finally eat the meal! When I was a therapist in Poona, Osho was constantly hammering on us that we should move on from the personal to the spiritual. But except for including the daily meditations and discourse in the groups nothing much happened. He had made life so wonderful for most of us and opened up such a great inner adventure playground – why not enjoy more and more and more of it before leaving it behind?
This lead to a deep misunderstanding of spirituality being something confined to expanding the possibilities of the personality or, when tired of that, being content and fine with what is. Even though this may be kind of wise, it is understating by far the true potential of human beings. Yes, a good sannyasin life is definitely much better than most people’s lives are because of the personal liberation processes we went through. But this is nothing compared to what is possible.” – Sitara Mittag Read more on OshoNews
“Zen is unique because no other religion exists on anecdotes. They are not holy scripture; they are simply incidents that have happened. It is up to you… if you understand them, they can open your yes and your heart. These small anecdotes in their very smallness, just like dewdrops, contain the whole secret of the ocean. If you can understand the dewdrop, there is no need to understand the ocean-you have understood it.
A naive young man who had lived a sheltered life finally decided he could not take any more. He arranged an appointment with his doctor and poured out the whole story.
“It is this girl I have been going with,” he said. “I suspected she was fast, but I never dreamed she was a sex maniac. Every night now for weeks and weeks on end, I keep trying to break off the romance, but I haven’t got the will power. What can I do? My health just can’t stand the pace. ”
“I see, “said the doctor grimly. “Tell me just what happens; you can trust me.”
“Well, every night I take her driving in my car. We park in some secluded street. Then she asks me to put my arms around her. And then, every night, she reaches over and holds my hand.”
“And then?”
“What do you mean ‘and then’?” gasped the youth. “Is there more?”
Once a beginner asked a Zen master, “Master, what is the first principle?”
Without hesitation the master replied, “If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle. “
THE FIRST PRINCIPLE cannot be said.
The most important thing cannot be said, and that which can be said will not be the first principle. The moment truth is uttered it becomes a lie; the very utterance is a falsification. So all the scriptures of all the religions contain the second principle, not the first principle. They contain lies, not the truth, because the truth cannot be contained by any word whatsoever. The truth can only be experienced. The truth can be lived, but there is no way to say it.
The word is a far, faraway echo of the real experience. It is so far away from the real that it is worse than the unreal because it can give you a false confidence. It can give you a false promise. You can believe it, and that is the problem. If you start believing in some dogma, you will go on missing the truth. Truth I has to be known by experience. No belief can help you on the way; all beliefs are barriers. All religions are against religion-it has to be so by the very nature of things. All churches are against God. Churches exist because they fulfill a certain need. The need is that people do not want to make any efforts; they want easy shortcuts. Belief is an easy shortcut.
The way to truth is hard; it is an uphill task. One has to go through total death-one has to destroy oneself utterly; only then is one newborn. The resurrection comes only after the crucifixion.
To avoid the crucifixion we have created beliefs. Beliefs are cheap. You can believe and yet remain the same. You can go on believing, and it doesn’t require any basic change in your life pattern. It does not require any change in your consciousness, and unless your consciousness changes, the belief is just a toy. You can play with it, you can deceive yourself with it, but it is not going to nourish you.
A wealthy horse-owner died and left a large fortune to a university. A provision in the will, however, was that the school must confer the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon his favorite horse. Since the university was anxious to receive the money-it was a really big sum-the Dean set a date for the animal to receive a degree of DD.
This unusual occasion was attended by the press, and one of the reporters asked the Dean, “What is your reaction to this strange arrangement?”
“Well,” replied the Dean, “in my experience I have awarded many degrees. However, I must admit that this is the first time I have awarded a degree to a whole horse.”
All others were donkeys, not whole horses.”-Osho, Zen: Its History and Teachings and Impact on Humanity
Lao Tzu was going for a morning walk. A neighbour who used to go with him, knew him – knew that he was a very silent man and did not like talking.
Once the neighbour mentioned that the morning was beautiful – it was a beautiful morning. Lao Tzu looked very puzzled. He looked at him as if he had said something mad. The man became restless.
He said, ’What is the matter? Why are you looking at me in such a way? Have I done anything wrong?’
And Lao Tzu said, ’I am also looking at the morning, so what is the point of saying that it is beautiful?
Do you think I am dead, I am dull or asleep? The morning is beautiful, but what is the point of saying it? I am also here, as much as you are.’
Since then the neighbour stopped talking. He used to follow him, walk with him, and after years of going for a morning walk with Lao Tzu he also became alert about what meditation is.
Then a visitor came to the neighbour and he also wanted to come for a walk. And the visitor said that day, ’It is a beautiful sunrise.’ That day the neighbour understood. He looked puzzled as once Lao Tzu had looked puzzled at him, and he said, ’Why should you mention it? I am also here.’
And Lao Tzu said, ’Now do you understand?’ – Osho, Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol. 1
Only once in the history of human consciousness, says Osho, has a thing like Zen come into being. In Zen: Its History and Teachings, the noted mystic explains that Zen has no rituals, no chanting, no mantras, no scriptures — only short, evocative parables and teachings that make it ideal for the modern seeker. Using his characteristic humorous, encouraging style, Osho guides readers through the origins and development of this seminal spiritual tradition that is neither religion nor dogma nor creed. He provides a context for those who have not been born into the Zen tradition, introducing them to its timeless approach to existence. The book argues that the only preparation for fully experiencing Zen’s power is meditative awareness, and Osho presents simple techniques to achieve this awareness. Stunning color photographs throughout offer further inspiration and illumination.
Publisher: Osho International. Format: Paperback | 144 pages. Dimensions: 140mm x 190mm x 12mm | 342g. ISBN 10: 0981834167. ISBN 13: 9780981834160. Illustrations note: Color photos throughout
“The way of the Buddha is not a religion in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has no belief system, no dogma, no scripture. It does not believe in God, it does not believe in the soul, it does not believe in any paradise. It is a tremendous unbelief-and yet it is a religion. It is unique. Nothing has ever happened like it before in the history of human consciousness, and nothing afterward.
Buddha remains utterly unique, incomparable. He says that God is nothing but a search for security, a search for safety, a search for shelter. You believe in God, not because God is there; you believe in God because you feel helpless without that belief. Even if there is no God, you will invent one. The temptation comes from your weakness. It is a projection.
Humans feel limited, helpless, almost victims of circumstance-not knowing from where they come, not knowing where they are going, not knowing why they are here. If there is no God it is difficult for ordinary people to have any meaning in life. The ordinary mind will go berserk without God. God is a prop-it helps you, it consoles you, it comforts you. It says, “Don’t be worried-the Almighty God knows everything about why you are here. He is the Creator, He knows why He has created the world. You may not know but the Father knows, and you can trust in Him.” It is a great consolation.
The very idea of God gives you a sense of relief-that you are not alone; that somebody is looking after the affairs; that this cosmos is not just chaos, it is truly a cosmos; that there is a system behind it; that there is logic behind it; it is not an illogical jumble of things; it is not anarchy, Somebody rules the cosmos; the sovereign King is there looking after each small detail-not even a leaf moves without His moving it. Everything is planned, You are part of a great destiny. Maybe the meaning is not known to you, but the meaning is there because God is there.
God brings a tremendous relief, One can believe that life is not accidental; there is a certain undercurrent of significance, meaning, destiny, God brings a sense of destiny.
Buddha says there is no God-it simply shows that we do not know why we are here, It shows our helplessness. It shows that there is no meaning available to us. By creating the idea of God we can believe in meaning, and we can live this futile life with the idea that somebody is looking after it.
Just think: you are in an airplane and somebody says, “There is no pilot.” Suddenly there will be a panic, No pilot?! No pilot means you are doomed. Then somebody says, “The pilot is there, but invisible. We may not be able to see the pilot, but he is there; otherwise, how is this beautiful mechanism functioning? Just think of it: everything is going so beautifully, there must be a pilot! Maybe we are not capable of seeing him, maybe we are not yet prayerful enough to see him, maybe our eyes are closed, but the pilot is there. Otherwise, how is it possible? This airplane has taken off, it is flying perfectly well, the engines are humming. Everything is a proof that there is a pilot.”
If somebody proves it, you relax again into your chair. You close your eyes, you start dreaming again, you can fall asleep. The pilot is there; you need not worry.
Buddha says: The pilot exists not; it is a human creation. Humankind has created God in its own image. It is a human invention. God is not a discovery, it is an invention. And God is not the truth, it is the greatest lie there is.
That’s why I say Buddhism is not a religion in the ordinary sense of the term. A Godless religion-can you imagine? When for the first time Western scholars became aware of Buddhism, they were shocked. They could not comprehend that a religion can exist and be without God. They had known only Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All these three religions are in a way very immature compared with Buddhism.
Buddhism is religion come of age. Buddhism is the religion of a mature mind. Buddhism is not childish at all, and it doesn’t support any childish desires in you. It is merciless. Let me repeat it: There has never been a man more compassionate than Buddha, but his religion is merciless.
In fact, in that mercilessness he is showing his compassion. He will not allow you to cling to any lie. Howsoever consoling, a lie is a lie. Those who have given you the lie are not friends to you, they are enemies-because under the impact of the lie you will live a life full of lies. The truth has to be brought to you, howsoever hard, howsoever shattering, howsoever shocking. Even if you are annihilated by the impact of the truth, it is good.
Buddha says: The truth is that human religions are human inventions. You are in a dark night surrounded by alien forces. You need someone to hang on to, someone to cling to. And everything that you can see is changing-your father will die one day and you will be left alone, your mother will die one day and you will be left alone, and you will be an orphan. From childhood you have been accustomed to having a father to protect you, a mother to love you. Now that childish desire will again assert itself: you will need a father figure. If you cannot find it in the sky, then you will find it in some politician.
Stalin became the father of Soviet Russia; they had dropped the idea of God. Mao became the father of China; they had dropped the idea of God. But people are such that they cannot live without a father figure. People are childish! There are very few rare people who grow to be mature.” – Osho, Buddha; his life and teachings and impact on humanity
The way of the Buddha is known as via negativa -the path of negation. This attitude, this approach has to be understood.
Buddha’s approach is unique. All other religions of the world are positive religions, they have a positive goal -call it God, liberation, salvation, self-realization- but there is a goal to be achieved. And positive effort is needed on the part of the seeker. Unless you make hard effort you will not reach the goal.
Buddha’s approach is totally different, diametrically opposite. He says you are already that which you want to become, the goal is within you; it is your own nature. You are not to achieve it. It is not in the future, it is not somewhere else. It is you right now, this very moment. But there are a few obstacles and those obstacles have to be removed.
It is not that you have to attain godhood, godhood is your nature-but there are a few obstacles to be removed. Once those obstacles are removed, you are that which you have always been seeking. Even when you were not aware of who you are, you were that. You cannot be otherwise. Obstacles have to be eliminated, dropped. Nothing else has to be added to you.
The positive religion tries to add something to you: virtue, righteousness, meditation, prayer. The positive religion says you are lacking something; you have to be in search of that which you are lacking. You have to accumulate something.
Buddha’s negative approach says you are not lacking anything. In fact, you are possessing too many things which are not needed. You have to drop something.
It is like this: You go trekking into the Himalayas. The higher you start reaching, the more you will feel the weight of the things you are carrying with you. Your luggage will become more and more heavy. The higher the altitude, the heavier your luggage will become. You will have to drop things. If you want to reach to the highest peak, you will have to drop all.
Once you have dropped all, once you don’t possess anything, once you have become a zero, a nothingness, a nobody, you have reached the peak. Something has to be eliminated, not added to you. Something has to be dropped, not accumulated.
When Buddha attained, somebody asked him, “What have you attained?” He laughed. He said, “I have not attained anything, because whatsoever I have attained was always with me. On the contrary, I have lost many things. I have lost my ego. I have lost my thoughts, my mind. I have lost all that I used to feel I possessed. I have lost my body-I used to think I was the body. I have lost all that.
Now I exist as pure nothingness. This is my achievement.” – Osho, Buddha; his life and teachings and impact on humanity
One day Buddha is passing through a forest. It is a hot summer day and he is feeling very thirsty. He says to Ananda, his caretaker, “Ananda, you go back. Just three, four miles back we passed a small stream of water. You bring a little water-take my begging bowl. I am feeling very thirsty and tired.”
Ananda goes back, but by the time he reaches the stream, a few bullock carts have just passed through the stream and they have made the whole stream muddy. Dead leaves that had settled into the bed have risen up; it is no longer possible to drink this water-it is too dirty. He comes back empty-handed, and he says, “You will have to wait a little. I will go ahead. I have heard that just two, three miles ahead there is a big river. I will bring water from there.”
But Buddha insists. He says, “You go back and bring water from the same stream.”
Ananda could not understand the insistence, but if the master says so, the disciple has to follow. Seeing the absurdity of it that again he will have to walk three, four miles, and he knows that water is not worth drinking-he goes. Read more
“Gautam Buddha was the first man to use the words “to be in the middle”, and of course nobody has been able to improve upon the meanings that he gave to the word middle.
He called his path the middle path. The first meaning is that if you can avoid both the extremes, the rightist and the leftist – if you can be exactly in the middle of both extremes, you will not be in the middle you will have transcended the whole trinity of extremes, and the middle. If you drop both the extremes, the middle disappears on its own accord. Middle of what…?
Gautam Buddha’s insistence on the middle is not the middle itself; it is, in fact, a subtle way to persuade you for transformation. But to tell you directly to be transformed may make you apprehensive, afraid. To be in the middle seems to be very simple.
Gautam Buddha played with the word out of sheer compassion. His own term for the middle is majjhim nikaya, the middle path. Every extreme has to exclude the other extreme; every extreme has to be in opposition to the other polarity. The negative is against the positive, the minus is against the plus, death is against life. If you take them as extremes, they naturally appear as opposites.
But the man who can stop exactly in the middle immediately transcends all the extremes and the middle together. From the higher standpoint of the transformed being, you can see there is no opposition at all. The extremes are not opposites, not contradictories, but only complementaries. Read more
“Before enligtenment the master prepares the people who are going to succeed him, makes them more articulate, makes them better able to transform the wordless into words, the absolutely silent into song, the absolutely unmoving into dance. Only then will he be able to convey something of help to blind humanity.
Buddha divided his enlightened people into two categories. They both have the same height-there is no quality of lower or higher-they both belong to the same cosmic reality, the fundamental nature. One category is called the arhatas-the arhatas are the ones who become enlightened and remain silent and the second category is called bodhisattvas. They also become enlightened, but their work is to convey something, some device, some hint about their experience to people. Read more
“people have condemned the body, condemned matter, called matter “illusory,” maya – it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the reason for the East remaining poor, sick, in starvation. Half of humanity has been accepting the inner world but denying the outer world.
The other half of humanity has been accepting the material world and denying the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented. You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me.” -OSHO
a young child died; the father had died, and the woman was living only for this child. That young child was her whole life and her only hope; otherwise, there was nothing for her to live for. And the child died. She was almost on the verge of going crazy. She wouldn’t allow people to take the child to the crematorium. She was hugging the child in the hope that perhaps he might start breathing again. She was ready to give her life if the child could live.
The people said, “This is not possible, it is against the law of nature.” But she was in such misery, she could not listen to anybody. Then somebody said, “The best way is, let us take this woman to Gautam Buddha who, just by chance, is in the village.” Read more
“Argument is possible between two people who don’t know truth. They can argue till eternity because neither knows. Both are ignorant so they can go on playing with words and logic and quotations and scriptures, but because neither knows, there is no possibility of their coming to a conclusion. At the most what can happen is whoever is more clever and cunning and tricky may defeat the other, and the other will become the follower of the more cunning or more sophisticated. But is this any decision about truth?” – Osho, Buddha; his life and teachings and impact on humanity Read more
“Buddhism does not believe in a God; neither does Jainism believe in a God, but they believe in gods. They are far more democratic in their concepts than Mohammedanism, Judaism or Christianity — these religions are more elitist. One God, one religion, one holy scripture, one prophet — they are very monopolistic. But Buddhism has a totally different approach, far more democratic, far more human. It conceives millions of gods. Read more
A while ago, Nisarg mentioned I could have a look in Pune for doing Work as Meditation, as we spoke on and off about my life and work/money, but having been negative to anything guru or religion, it took me a while to even get used to the idea, but having read their website, they did seem to know what they were doing. So I became curious to this new way of looking at work which they claim/advertise
I knew no-one at the resort and application/reservation went all through email, which as it turned out, were other WAM people, new or old-timers, and having never been to India either, was quite the experience.
And I hated India, the stench, the pollution, the differences in wealth living side by side, death and misery next to luxurious mansions. Hate it ! Read more
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