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‌CHAPTER 29

29 May 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine and dhyana means the state of meditation – divine state of meditation. The word ‘meditation’ is not as adequate as dhyana, because nothing like dhyana has ever existed in the West so no western language has any appropriate word for it. Meditation comes closest but still misses the target. Meditation means contemplation, to think about, and dhyana means not thinking at all, just being. So meditation is an activity and dhyana is a state of being. Meditation is still thinking – maybe more concentrated. Christians say ‘meditate upon god.’ We cannot say that in the East, because if you meditate upon something it is no more meditation. You will think about god – what else will you do? You will think of the attributes of god, the qualities of god – that god is compassionate, that god is infinite, that god is this and that. What else will you do? Whenever there is an object you will think about the object.

In the east we say that dhyana is a state of non-thinking, of being fully aware, fully alert, not asleep, but with no object, no content in the consciousness. A non-thinking awareness is what dhyana is, a contentless consciousness is what dhyana is. One simply is. There is no activity, neither bodily nor mental. It is absolute passivity – nothing is happening, nothing is being done; one simply is.

Out of dhyana, out of this sanskrit word came ‘chan’ in China and ‘zen’ in Japan, but they come from the same root ‘dhyana’.

There are a few things to be understood – because I would like you to become a real ‘dhyani’... and the possibility is there! If you act totally, if you really become involved in it, it is going to happen.

The mind has three layers: the first layer is of thoughts – the most superficial layer. The second layer is of emotions – a little deeper, but not yet deep enough.

The third layer is of silence, soundlessness, no thought, no emotion. The first layer consists of the head, the second layer consists of the heart, the third layer consists of your being.

You are not existing even in the first layer. The first layer is there: thoughts go on rushing around inside but you are not conscious of them. You remain outside even the outermost layer. You are not even in the porch of your building – you are standing outside the porch – and you don’t look back. Just behind you a great circle of thoughts is continuously moving. Within that there is another wheel, a wheel within a wheel: the wheel of emotions, sentiments, of the heart. And within that wheel is the hub of silence, the centre of the cyclone. When one becomes aware of the first layer, that is the first step towards dhyana – to turn in and to start looking at your thoughts.

When people start meditating for the first time, they are puzzled – they think that there have never been so many thoughts in their mind as there are now! That’s a misunderstanding. Thoughts have always been there but they were not aware of them.

When you turn your focus on your thoughts, suddenly you become aware of a great crowd and a continuous crowd moving day and night. There is never any rest: the body sometimes goes into rest but this thought-process continues. And it is always a rush-hour there. The traffic is always jammed, and each thought is trying to compete with another thought. There is great conflict, struggle; thoughts are very violent things.

So when one turns one’s focus or one’s torch on the first layer, one becomes puzzled, a little worried too, because one has never known so many thoughts. One had always thought: ‘Yes, they are there; sometimes they come.’ One was only very dimly aware of them – as if they were very distant. When you focus on them they come very close and you become aware of layer upon layer, queues of thoughts – irrelevant, absurd, meaningless, futile, rubbish... all kinds of things jumbled, like a junkyard, with no organic unity.

This layer creates madness, and one who has not become aware of this layer can become a victim of madness any day, any time. If you don’t turn consciously towards it and transform it, it is there getting ready. Any day it can explode, any day it can throw you into a volcano, and then it will be difficult to come out of it. If it explodes on its own, you are helpless. If you go with your searchlight, by and by you are in control, you become your master.

Sigmund Freud has done one of the greatest services to the western world in that he has made people aware of this first layer, but his psychoanalysis ends there – with the first layer. It is an analysis of thoughts; it does not go very deep, but he started at least!

Jung went a little deeper – he ends with the second layer: visions, sensitivity, smells, light, the world of myth and the world of dream and the world of heart. He went a little deeper than Freud, but a meditator has to go even deeper than that; and he stopped there. He was very much afraid of the third layer.

Freud was very much afraid of the second layer. It was natural that he must have become aware of it: when you analyse the first layer too much, the second is just close by. Some fragments are bound to enter from the second layer into the first. That’s why he started analysing dreams too; but he was very much afraid. He put all those dreams in the service of thoughts; he remained analytical and confined to the thought-process. Psychoanalysis helps people to sort out their thoughts.

Jung took a little more courage, took a little more risk and entered into the world of feelings, but then he became afraid. He started feeling the third layer close by. The third layer is like death because it

is absolute silence: nothing to grab onto – neither thought nor feeling – nothing to analyse, nothing to think about... one simply disappears into emptiness.

Freud was against Jung because Jung was taking a risk which was dangerous. Jung was against the eastern meditative techniques because he thought that those techniques were dangerous. Who knows what will happen if you enter into a dark silence? You may not be able to come back; you may be lost.

He was very much against meditative techniques. He insisted that one should remain confined to the second layer: think about dreams, think about feelings, love, visions, myths, but don’t go beyond that. Beyond that is a danger point.

Yes, there is a danger point because beyond that is god himself... and god is the most dangerous experience! That third layer is the layer of dhyana, of real meditation.

So you will have to start by becoming aware of your thoughts, be more and more alert. Whenever you are sitting, just close your eyes and watch with no judgement, with no evaluation: don’t say that this thought is good and this thought is bad. All thoughts are simply thoughts; there is no distinction of good and bad. A thought is a thought is a thought; it has nothing to do with good and bad.

Once you say ‘this is good’. you start clinging to it; once you say ‘this is bad’, you start pushing it out. Then conflict arises, then you cannot remain detached, you cannot remain distant, you cannot become a witness – you become involved. So no friendship, no enmity, neither for nor against – just a detached observation of what goes on.

Don’t label, don’t say ‘This is absurd – why should it be there?’ Whatsoever is, is. It is not going to be changed by labelling it good or bad, absurd, relevant or irrelevant, consistent or inconsistent, meaningless or meaningful. It is not going to change by your labelling it, by categorising it, so don’t pigeonhole anything – simply watch.

Watching in this way for a few weeks, one day you will start seeing that thoughts have gone a little further away. Yes, they are there, distant, you can hear the noise, but they are not very close by.

A new layer arises into your vision; you start feeling feelings, emotions arise. Sometimes you find yourself crying for no reason at all, and sometimes you find yourself laughing for no reason at all. Allow that too. Sometimes you feel yourself full of love and sometimes full of hatred – not directed towards anybody; it is simply there, undirected.

Watch it, again remember: no justification, no rationalisation, no criticism, no appreciation – nothing. Remain aloof and go on watching. That too is a game of the mind – subtler than the first but still the same game on a different plane.

Then after a few weeks you will start feeling that that too is going far away; you are coming closer home. Then sometimes gaps of silence will come. Suddenly the road is empty and nobody is walking, neither thought nor feeling. Emptiness passes by, and it will come like a breeze, it will refresh you, it will make you new, it will give you a new birth and a new way of living. That’s exactly what sannyas is!

So this is just a hypothetical sannyas, this is just a hope and a promise – now it has to be worked out!

[A visitor says he has been meditating here but prefers passive meditations – like TM that he has been doing for some time. He wonders if he should keep using a mantra or just watch his breath: I feel just as good not using a mantra – to do it with my breath is just as good.]

Then using just the breath is far better, because a mantra is again an arbitrary thing, an artificial thing. It is better to drop artificial things. The breath is more natural. It is the mantra of life itself, it is god’s mantra. So no need to create any mantra, there is no point, because with the mantra comes the mind.

When you are repeating a mantra you are using the mind, you are using the memory – and the whole point is to go beyond memory, beyond the mind. Using the mind continuously you cannot get beyond it. It will soothe the mind, it will give a certain tranquility... and it has nothing to do with any specific mantra.

If you repeat any sound continuously – blah, blah, blah – that will also give the same result, because when you repeat one sound monotonously, continuously, it helps to create a sort of subtle sleep. You start getting into the alpha waves, because when your mind is engaged with the mantra it cannot think many thoughts. The mind cannot think two thoughts together; that’s the whole trick of the mantra. To give a mantra to the mind is just like giving a toy to a child.

When the child is engaged with the toy he will not do anything else; he cannot do two things together. So if the father is reading the newspaper and the child is disturbing him – coming again and again and asking questions – it is better to give him a toy so the child enjoys the toy and forgets the father, and the father can read his newspaper or do whatsoever he wants to.

The mantra is a very childish thing; it is a toy, a sound toy. You give a toy to the mind and the mind gets involved in it, it cannot think many thoughts. Because the mind cannot think many thoughts you will feel a certain tranquility, a stillness, a quiet.

If the mantra is dropped you will go far deeper, because breathing is more natural.

[The visitor asks: Concentrating should be here (indicating third eye) or at the tummy? Where is it best to concentrate?]

In fact if you don’t concentrate, if you simply move with the breathing, that will be the best thing. There are three possibilities: either concentrate at the belly – that’s how Zen people do it; that too is good – or concentrate at the nose where the breath touches the nostril; that too is done in burmese buddhism – but the best way is not to concentrate at all anywhere. Just go with the breath: the breath goes in, you go in. The consciousness just moves with the breath: the breath goes out and you go out. So then there is no concentration... and meditation is not concentration.

Concentration is again a very superficial thing. If you concentrate on the belly, there is an object and you become stuck; it gives a sort of non-flowing meditation. While everything is flowing, nothing is static.

So be in a flow. My suggestion is to move with the breath. Just go in with the breath, go to the very belly, but there is no need to concentrate anywhere. Then come out with the breath. Come in, go out, come in; this will give you a tremendous insight into yourself. First, it will make you aware that you are not the breath. It will make you aware that you are the witness who is seeing this breath coming and going. So even when the breath disappears in death, you are not going to die. That is one of the greatest experiences – to feel that.

When it suddenly comes it is a great ‘aha’ experience – just as it happened to archimedes. He jumped out of his tub and he was naked, but he ran towards the palace; he forgot that he was naked. He was thinking about a certain problem the king had given to him. He found the answer, and it was so sudden and the insight so great that he forgot that he was naked. He reached the palace naked and people thought that he had gone mad! But he was in sheer joy.

When for the first time you are able to see that you are a witness – that the breath comes and goes and you are not the breath; you are the one who is seeing it coming and going, and sometimes when you are really silent, the breath stops too – those gaps come. Sometimes you have taken the breath in, then there is a slight, a momentary gap, a pause; the breath stops. Sometimes you have exhaled and the breath is not coming in, for a moment there is a pause – very small, a split second – but in that pause for the first time you become aware of what is going to happen in death.

But you will not be dying – you are deathless! And that experience is a great revelation. So don’t concentrate – just float with the breath.

[A sannyasin tells Osho that everything is fantastic – his work, the relationship he is in – yet a sadness keeps surfacing.

Osho tells him to accept that too, as a gift from god. If he can do that, he has learnt something valuable. The trouble is that the mind wants to control, to manipulate, and that causes misery.

Look at trees, Osho says: they don’t complain and cry when their leaves fall in autumn. In the spring new leaves come, and in fact the old had to go to make way for these new ones.

Day/night, happiness/sadness are part of a natural rhythm, and my whole effort, says Osho, is to help you to accept whatsoever comes, to never complain or demand that things be otherwise. Just go hand in hand with life wherever it leads. That’s what I call the life of a sannyasin.]

[Another sannyasin says he has been stuck in a space between yes/no, good/bad. He felt at times he was going crazyIt’s very frightening!]

Yes, it is frightening – every beautiful thing is frightening. Every authentic experience is frightening because it is so unfamiliar, it is so new that you cannot figure out what it is. Your whole mind is at a loss; all your expertise just falls flat on the ground. You become ignorant in that moment, you lose all capacity to think in that moment. You feel impotent, you feel powerless; that’s why the fear.

But if you understand it, it is taking you beyond yourself. If you accept it and you don’t get too frightened – if you don’t go out of your wits and you can go with it – soon you will see that there was nothing to fear. In fact this is what you have always been searching for.

That’s what I am teaching continuously: the middle way, the golden mean – neither yes nor no, neither good nor bad. In that moment all morality disappears, all categories disappear. There is pure existence, uncategorised, undefined, uncontaminated by the mind – pure, simple, with no boundaries.

Because you are in that gap, silence has fallen on you. You cannot say yes because yes is half, and it is the total – how can you say yes? You cannot say good because good is half, and it is the whole! You cannot say bad, you cannot say no. It is bigger than yes plus no: it contains both and yet transcends both. It is far bigger than good and bad; it is tremendously vast, so one starts losing track of oneself in that vastness.

It is as if a small stream has fallen into the ocean: it is naturally afraid of where it is going to land. The ocean is so vast and there seems to be no possibility that it will ever be able to come back to its own personality.

In those moments you were standing just at the door of your personality. The whole personality will pull you back: ‘Come back and close the door. It is dangerous, it is stormy outside. Come back to the shelter, it is cozy inside!’

But if you can go outsideYes, it is chaotic, but it is freedom too. It is insecure, but it is real life. It

is dangerous, but it is the only adventure for which we are here. We have to go on this pilgrimage – the pilgrimage of the non-dual, where duality has to be dropped .

I can understand.… It is very dangerous and one comes back many times, mm? It is nothing to be worried about. Many times one goes, hesitates, closes the door, comes back and tries to forget about it. One even tries to forget that door, tries to forget there is a way towards it, avoids it, but once it has happened it will happen again and again; you cannot avoid it!

[The sannyasin answers: I’m working on a book at the moment, and this is where it came up, because I have to come to a definite decision. I got caught up with this space – feeling that a decision is not possible any more.]

Let it come out of no-decision.

The book is not so valuable. Mm? this space is far more significant. Whether the book happens or not is immaterial. If it happens, let it happen through your totality; there is no need to decide. And when things happen out of no-decision they have a beauty of their own. They have some touch of the infinite, something of the beyond is in them. If they come out of your decision, naturally, they will be lesser than you, they cannot be bigger than you.and that has to be remembered by every

creative person.

You can write two kinds of poetry. One is that you have managed – that will be lesser than the poet. It cannot be very big; it will be just human. It will have a temporary appeal – it cannot have an eternal message. Yes, it can be in fashion and it will go out of fashion. That’s how things are happening today: a certain music becomes very very fashionable and then within days it is gone.

But Beethoven lives on, Michelangelo lives on, Mozart lives on – and they will continue to. Goethe lives on, Shakespeare lives on, Kalidas lives on – and they will continue to live on. I cannot see

any time when Kalidas or Shakespeare will become irrelevant, out of fashion, no. Then what has happened?

When a poet is writing something, managing through his mind, then it cannot have eternal appeal. When a poet is not managing – when a poet is just a vehicle, when the musician is just a vehicle, a receptivity, a passivity then something is born which is bigger than the musician, bigger than the singer, bigger than the poet, bigger than the painter. Then the painter will die but the painting will live on. Van gogh is dead but the paintings live on and they always will! Always remember that what you do is not important – what you allow to happen is important. Mm? – that is divine.

So if the book happensFor the book you are not to lose such beautiful spaces. The book can be

lost; it is nothing to worry about. But it will happen, and these spaces will make you able to create a really valuable thing.

So allow it to happen. Don’t decide, don’t will it. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. Either way you should not be worried about it... and then something good can happen. And when I say ‘good’ I’m not saying it as being against bad. To me good means that which is beyond good and bad. Something really good will happen!

[A sannyasin says she feels that she is going mad, that she is blocked in her body somewhere, is feeling confused about her relationship]

It is very simple, mm? it is not a complex case. My observation is that you cannot be happy with one person for very long. This has to be accepted and you have to live accordingly.

There are different kinds of people, and there is no need to impose anything upon you which is not natural to you. You cannot be happy for a long time with one person. You are not the monogamous type. If you are not then you are not, and there is no point in worrying about it.

You can only be happy with a person for a few days, a few weeks. And if you know that it is only for a few days, a few weeks, you will be very very happy. Once you have the feeling that it is settling now, that you are caught up with this person to whom you have made promises and committed yourself, then you will start feeling very very sad and miserable. You will start taking revenge on the other person, as if it is his fault. It has nothing to do with him; he is just a victim of a non-monogamous person! You are happy only when a certain kind of love starts – you are very happy; when it starts settling you become unhappy.

I’m not saying that something is wrong in it; one has to listen to one’s nature. There are monogamous people who can be happy only with one woman or with one man, and the longer their relationship, the better it gets. If they change their relationship too often, they feel very very uprooted, they feel very sad and depressed.

Now this is one of the eternal problems of humanity – that we never listen to different types of people; we impose one pattern on everyone. In the past monogamy was the pattern, so many people have suffered... those who were not monogamous have suffered tremendously. Now in the West, particularly in America, monogamy is out of fashion – people are changing. Now a few monogamous people are suffering because they cannot change, but the fashion is to change so

they change. If they don’t change they feel that something is wrong. Up to now humanity has not been mature enough to accept the person as he or she is, and to allow him total freedom.

This you have to understand. I have been watching you for all these years, mm? and this is an absolute fact about you – that you are happy only when you know that the relationship is just a friendship, that any day you can back out. You are very happy then, you enjoy it, you really enjoy it, you go into it.

The moment you think ‘Now things have settled’.… And you may be doing it yourself – settling, thinking that you were happy with this person so you will be more happy if you are together with him for a longer time. That is wrong for you – it won’t work; then you feel guilty.

Now [your boyfriend] was here – you were happy; then you became unhappy, he went away. Then you were happy with [another boyfriend]... and I knew that you would take him to Italy and leave him there... and then you caught hold of [the first boyfriend] again and you brought him, now you want to be finished with him. But you cannot be very very clear about it.

Once you are clear there will be no problem. Don’t settle – you are not that type, you are not a wife- type. Don’t settle. You will remain happy only when you are a mistress, not a wife. Otherwise you will feel dead, dull, and that the body will not respond; you will start thinking of committing suicide or going mad. Those are tricks! I don’t see that you are suicidal at all. It is just this problem that creates the whole thing.

So now say good-bye to [him], and tell him, ‘This is how I am! Maybe I will come in search of you again in Italy and I will get hold of you again, but be alert because I am not monogamous.’

Remain the way you are... and nothing is wrong or immoral in it. Anything that you do against your nature is immoral, anything that you do according to your nature is moral. That’s my definition of being moral. So just make it clear to him that your love goes only so far. Now you have brought him here, things are settling and you are getting fidgety. You have prepared the trap for yourself and now it will be difficult to get out of it.

You are happy when you can have one honeymoon after the other honeymoon – and it is difficult to have a honeymoon with the same person continuously! It is not possible; you have to change the person. So be happy – there is no need to be unhappy – and next time don’t make any commitments. Next time say from the very beginning ‘This is the type I am, so it will go well for a few days and I will be really happy with you’ – but no more promises. If it lasts, good, if it doesn’t last, that too is good.

Mm? nothing is wrong with your body and nothing is wrong with your mind. You are intelligent enough to understand it, and it is not a complex thing either.

But many times we go on playing games with ourselves. We may even see it but we don’t want to, because sometimes it goes against our own commitments.…

One day you say to [your boyfriend] ‘I love you so much that I will love you forever and ever’ – and next day you are finished. Now it goes against your own statement – and we have been taught the virtue of being consistent, so you are trapped! Now how to go against it? Just the other day you

said.So you will hide the fact that now it is no more true. It was true in that moment and now it is

no more true; you will hide it.

In fact when you say to a person ‘I will be happy with you forever and forever’, you are simply saying that this is the mood, the feeling of this moment. Who knows about the next moment? It has nothing to do with future. It is just an assertion about this moment.

Just make things clear, and [he] will understand – nothing to worry about. Next time, don’t start settling. Just remain free, floating. Right?

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