OSHO - Meditation

Meditation in the East is not what is understood by it in the West. In the West, meditation means contemplation: meditating in God, meditating on truth, meditating on love. But if you meditate on something, you are not meditating at all, because you are focusing on something outside yourself. It may be love, it may be truth, it may be God, it makes no difference.

Meditation in the East has a totally different meaning, just the opposite of the Western meaning. Meditation in the East means having no object in the mind, no content in the mind, no meditating upon something but dropping everything - neti, neti. neither this or that. Meditation is emptying yourself of all content. When there is no thought moving inside you there is stillness, and that stillness is meditation. Not even a ripple arises in the lake of your consciousness, and that silent lake, absolutely still, is meditation.

And in that meditation you will know what truth is, you will know what love is, you will know what godliness is. Not by meditating on God ... See the point: how can you mediate on God? You don't know anything about God. All your meditation is going to be just imagination, an exercise of imagination. You don't know truth - what are you going to meditate upon? Some idea given by others, some belief, some concept? That is not going to help.

First become meditation, and then in meditation, truth, godliness, love and all that is transcendental will be revealed to you.

Mediation is just being, not doing anything - no action, no thought, no emotion. It is very simple - a totally relaxed state of consciousness where you are not doing anything. The moment doing enters, you become tense, anxious. What to do? How to do it? How to succeed? How not to fail? You have already moved into the future.

In meditation you just are. And it is a sheer delight. Meditation is just being delighted in your own presence; meditation is a delight in your own being.

Where does this delight come from, when you are not doing anything? It comes from nowhere or it come from everywhere. It is not caused by anything, because existence itself is made of the stuff called joy. It needs no cause, no reason. If you are unhappy you have a reason to be unhappy; if you are happy, you are simply happy - there is no reason for it. Your mind tries to find a reason because it cannot believe in 'the uncaused' because it cannot control the uncaused - with the uncaused the mind simply becomes impotent. So the mind goes on finding some reason or other. But I would like to tell you that whenever you are unhappy, you have a reason to be unhappy, because happiness is just the stuff you are made of. It is your very being, it is your innermost core. Joy is you inner most core.

-Osho

OSHO - The Rebellious Spirit

question - OSHO, WHEN YOU SAY THAT YOU WANT US TO RAISE THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE WORLD, IT PUZZLES ME. I FEEL I NEED ALL MY ENERGY TO GET MY OWN FEET OFF THE GROUND. AND I AM IN A WAY TOTALLY FORGETTING "THAT WORLD," AND GLAD TO BE ABLE TO LET GO AND DISAPPEAR IN THIS BUDDHAFIELD OF DRUNKEN BLISS, DANCE AND SILENCE.
SO WHAT IS IT THAT WE NEED TO DO IN ORDER TO FULFILL THIS VISION?


Answer- All that is needed from you to raise the consciousness of humanity, is just to raise your consciousness to its fullest peak. You don't have to do anything else. So there is no puzzle at all -- the puzzle is created by your mind; because mind always separates, divides: you, and the world. And then the problem arises: if you have to put energy into raising the consciousness of the world, what about yourself? Your own consciousness is still not on the wing.


But as far as I am concerned -- and it should be remembered by all, it is not only this question -- you are the world. There is no division. The moment you are raising your consciousness higher, you are raising the world's consciousness higher. If you can become enlightened, you have done everything that was possible, within your capacity, to raise the world's consciousness. No extra effort is needed. In fact, every extra effort will be a hindrance. You should concentrate totally on your own being and its blossoming.


There is a secret law of life: just as water tries to be on one level, consciousness also tries in the same way to be on one level. If one person's consciousness reaches a high peak, soon many people will find explosions happening within them. It is also a well-known fact that if you are awakened, your very awakening triggers processes around you.

It is not by your action, not by any doing -- but just by being awake: suddenly all around you, sleep starts disappearing. Just as when you bring light into a dark room: you don't ask, when we have brought the light into the dark room, now, how are we going to dispel the darkness? Do you think some extra effort will be needed? Just the light itself will dispel the darkness.


Become a light unto yourself, and you have done all that was possible within the capacity of a human being to raise the whole world's consciousness.


It is perfectly right: be totally drunk, be totally blissful, be totally silent, and dance so intensely that the dancer disappears and only dance remains -- and your very dance... with such intensity and such totality, will make thousands of hearts suddenly dance. They may never know who is the source; they may never know who has triggered the process... you may never know how many people you have transformed. But that is unimportant; your drunkenness will become the drunkenness of many; your dance will drown many into the same blissfulness; your song will be sung on many lips, and your silence will resound in thousands of hearts. You just change yourself.

I repeat again: you are the world.



The Rebellious Spirit
Chapter #13