Man - CONVERSATIONS

DR. GUINEBERT: ACHARYAJI, WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY YOGA, YOGI AND MEDITATION?

Osho: The first thing about meditation is that it is not something which can be done. In the whole world we have a notion that meditation means 'doing something'. It is not a doing. It is not an act.

It is some thing which happens. It is something that comes to you. It comes to you. It penetrates you. It destroys you in a way and recreates you. It is something so vital and something so infinite that it cannot be a part of your doing. To me meditation is something which happens, which cannot be done.

So, what is to be done? You can create the situation in which it comes about. All that we can do is just to be open, vulnerable, open towards the happening. We can be in a situation in which we are not closed but as a windowless, doorless existence-like the Lebanese Minaret. We are imprisoned without any opening, closed from all sides, closed in ourselves. There is no opening. In a way we are dead in our caskets, closed. One can say we have become 'life-proof' as life cannot come to us.

We have created our own barriers and hindrances against life, because life can be dangerous, can be uncontrollable, which again is something not in our hands. So, we have created barriers and a closed existence. The more closed we are, the less we live, and the more open we are, we live more.

Meditation to me is an open existence, open towards all dimensions. open towards everything. Of course to be open to everything is dangerous To be open to everything unconditionally is to be insecure. To be open to everything cannot be the comfortable because it does not depend. on us and anything can happen.

So, a mind which longs for security, which longs for comfort, which longs for certainty, cannot be a meditative mind. A mind which is open to anything that life gives, ever welcoming even death, can create a situation in which meditation takes place. It is to be totally receptive, not towards a particular happening, but towards anything that may come about.

So meditation in a way is not a particular dimension it is a dimensionless existence. Existence is open to each and every dimension-without any condition, without any longing, without any expectation. If there is any expectation then the opening cannot be total.

There must not be something unopened and if you are not totally open then that vital, vigorous, infinite happening cannot be received by you. It cannot become the guest and you cannot become the host to it. So meditation, as far as we are concerned is just creating the situation, a receptive situation.

The last type of ignorant people are those who are not aware of their ignorance. This type of mind will automatically conceive itself as knowing. So this is ignorant knowledge. The other type who is aware of his ignorance, this is knowing ignorance, an ignorance which is completely knowing itself. And the moment you become aware of your ignorance you come on the verge from where knowledge begins.

And the moment you become aware of your knowledge you imprison yourself more solidly. So a pandit. h person who thinks he knows, is a person who cannot he religious. A pandit can never be a religious man. A person who thinks that he knows is bound to be non- religious. Because the knowing ego is the most subtle thing The moment you know your ignorance there is no ego. So the greatest attack on the ego is through becoming aware of your ignorance, while the greatest strengthening of it is through your claim of knowledge. The second thing which I would like to note about meditation is, your mind must be totally aware of its ignorance.

And you can only become aware of your ignorance when the acquired knowledge is known as no- knowledge. Ii is simply information. Information is not knowledge. But information can appear as knowledge. Even a person who knows is not dogmatic about his knowledge, but a person who thinks that he knows is dogmatic, assertive. One must become aware that what he has not known cannot be knowledge to him. We cannot borrow knowledge.

So there is a difference between a theological mind and a religious mind. Theology is one of the most irreligious things in the human world And theologians are the most irreligious people. Because the borrowed has been claimed by them as the known, and the known itself never claims, because it is its intrinsic point that the moment you know, your 'I' is lost. The moment you know, the ego is not there. The knowledge comes when the ego is not. So the ego cannot lay claim to it. But the ego can collect information. It can quote scriptures. To go into meditation is to transcend your accumulated something which is a must. It is something which is absolutely purposeless. There is something which is intrinsically the End in itself.

There is nothing to be achieved by it or through it. It cannot be made a means. But, as I see it, persons why become interested in meditation are not really interested. They may be interested in silence, non-tense states of mind, they may be interested in anything, and so they cannot be open to meditation.

The Divine comes, rather it would be better to say that everything becomes divine, everything becomes blissful, but it is not longed for. It is a by-product. It comes indirectly. It comes as a shadow of meditation.

This is one of the mysteries of life-all that is beautiful, all that is true, all that is lovely-always comes indirectly, you cannot put your finger directly on it-if you do, you will lose it.

Happiness comes, but as a direct goal. You cannot endeavour for it. It comes when you are completely unaware of it. It comes and overwhelms you. It comes like a mystery.

So seriousness is a barrier to it. And this seems impossible to some persons, to be religious without being serious. All religious persons are serious. So all religious persons of this type are in a way diseased They are not like children playing. A temple must be a play-house where everyone becomes a child and plays with existence. Meditation is a play regained.

The childhood has gone, but you have regained the playful mood. So you can play with coloured stones, with flowers, you can play with anything. You can be just relaxed in a playful mood, not playing at all. In this relaxed moment the situation is created. The ecstasy is created, and there, is the happening. But meditation should not be taken as an act, and the person who is meditative is a yogi.

WHAT IS YOGA AND WHO IS A YOGI?

You ask me what is yoga and who is a yogi. A person who lives, eats and sleeps meditatively is a yogi. His whole existence, everything that he does is meditative. That is to say, he lives in the moment. He is playful with the existence. He is not serious, he has not taken life as a burden but as a play. He is not concerned with the past, he is not concerned with the future. He is in the present or he is the present.

Life becomes a flowing. There is no goal to be leached, because in a play there is no goal. And when in play we create a goal we destroy the playfulness and make it a work. The work cannot exist without any goal. The play cannot exist with a goal.

If me end and the meaning are one, then the thing becomes meditative. If the means is in the beginning and the end is in the end and there is a continuity, a process, then it becomes work seriously taken. Then it creates tensions, conflicts, burdens and then it destroys your innocence.

Means is the end, end is the means. If these are not two, then anything taken with this attitude becomes meditative.

Then beginning is the end. Your step is the last. Your girth is your death. Meeting is the parting if these both can be taken as a whole. If they are one, then the mind becomes meditative. Then there is no burden. Then life is just a leela, a play.

The Cross of Jesus is a serious affair, but Krishna lived in playfulness. Krishna's dance is qualitively different from the carving of the cross by Jesus. The cross must have been a burden. It was a serious affair. So Christians say that Jesus never laughed in his whole life.

The achieving mind can never be beyond the future. it can never cut it from the future. The achieving mind is bound to be future-oriented. And the mind which is future-oriented must be past based.

Because the future can be nothing but a projection of the past.

We project our past memories into the future longings. Our dreams of the future are our experiences of the past-painted more beautifully, longed for more aesthetically, but it is nothing but a picture, essentially of the past, projected into the future. But a meditative person lives in the present. If you want to live, the present is the only possibility. If you just want to postpone living, then the past and the future are directions, dimensions.

So yoga is the method, not of meditation, but of creating the situation in which meditation happens.

It is creating the situation And the person who has begun to live and is not concerned with any life goals is a yogi, is a renunciate, a Sanyasi.

This is something very wonderful. Ordinarily we think a person who is a sanyasin renunciate, is a person who has given up life and living. This is absolutely nonsense. The Sanyasi is the only person who has begun to live.

It is renunciation of the suicidal tendencies. ll is renunciation of the postponement of living and initiation into life. So, yoga is Initiation into the Mysteries of Life, and the methods of creating the proper situations. There may be thousands and thousands of yogas.

So it is not that India is the only land' which has developed yoga. Wherever, whenever a person has lived. he has created a yoga. Buddha has his own yoga, Mahavira, Jesus, have their own respectively yogas. And to me every person, every individual, has his own door to approach reality.

So no one can follow anybody. Because the moment can never be a yoga, because individuals are so unique that there can be no path as such to be followed. Everyone has to create his own path. It is not that the path is readymade and one has to just walk on it and reach somewhere, it is life, creating a path and walking on it. And the path created by anyone else is not there to be treaded by anyone else, because the path of yoga is an inner path. There are no outer markings and milestones.

Buddha treaded a path, but the path was an inner one, a path that existed for himself alone. No one can go by his path. No one can be another's place. You cannot die in my place. You cannot die my death.

Everyone has to search in total loneliness and in totally dark realms. But the very search becomes the light. The very awareness of being alone destroys loneliness and creates its own courage. The moment one accepts his loneliness, he becomes a yogi. Now he transcends society. That is the only meaning of leaving the society. It is not leaving the actual society. Wherever you go, you create a society. Even with the tress, even with the animals, a family will be created and society will be there.

Now there is no guru, you are alone. As there is no one to adulterate it, it is so pure. innocent and beautiful. This aloneness is the path, this aloneness is the meditation. This aloneness is yoga.

Still you can ask what is to be done with his aloneness.

Nothing is to be done Because every doing, is nothing but the escape from this aloneness. This aloneness is not to be left and escaped from. You must be deeply in it and you must live with it. You must walk the path of life totally alone; amidst the crowd, with fellowtravellers. but totally alone.

When two persons are walking on a road, they are not walking as two, they are walking as one and one. There are two lonelinesses walking. You must live in the family. but alone. Now there may be five members, but there are five lonelinesses living in a home.

And the moment you understand your loneliness you become compassionate There is a compassion now for others and their loneliness. This compassion is a symbolic indication of a person who has gone into the initiation of yoga.

Everyone is lonely-the wife, the child, the husband. But they do not have compassion and sympathy.

They do not behave in a loving manner Because, they are using the others as an escape. The wife is using the husband as a means to escape from her loneliness, and because of this there is possession. There is every fear that if this man forgets her, if this is gone then she becomes lonely.

So this man has become an escape. She is not aware of her loneliness. She does not want to be aware of it. So she becomes aware of her husband and the possession. She clings The husband is clinging n his own way. The wife is an escape for his loneliness.

We are alone. The moment this realisation is there. that man is alone, then there is no escape Because there is no escape possible. This is just wishing There is no actual escape.

The wife with a husband is as lonely as she was before, but we create illusionary escapes, illusion of togetherness. Our whole society, our family, our nations, our clubs, groups, organisations, these are all escapes from one's loneliness, A person comes to yoga, the moment he becomes totally aware of his absolute loneliness and aware also that there is no go.

How ugly it is that no one thinks himself worth living with. If I am alone in my room, I am bored.

Bored with myself. So a bored person goes to another bored person, and they both try to transcend the boredom Mathematically the possibility is otherwise. The boredom will be doubled. Now the bored will be doubly bored. And everyone will think that the other does not wish to help.

You must begin to live the moment that comes to you. Live totally. Live it alone. Live it moment to moment Be open, open towards the unknown, open to anything that may happen. And accept it as it comes.

The denial, the non-acceptance is the only atheism. The acceptance, the attitude to always say 'yes' to everything and an unconditional welcome to everything that is to my mind true religiousness.

Create the situation and the happening will come by itself. It cannot be predicted by the mechanical things. Nothing valuable can be predicted.

But we cannot predict about life. So one must create the situation and wait and let things happen in their own course.

For example, I have prepared the home to receive a guest but the preparation is not the guest. He may come, he may not come. The Indian word for guest is very beautiful. It is atithi-it means a person whose date is unknown. He may or may not come, or he may come this very moment.

And one may have to wait for him for the whole life. His date is not known. Atithi means the date-less, the unpredictable.

If you are certain that the guest is bound to come, when you are not in a waiting mood. Then there is no waiting. The certainty has killed the waiting. If he is to come, then there is no question of waiting. So persons who are incapable of waiting have created all types of certainties They have said do this, and this will happen.

The happening has become a guarantee. It cannot be. It may be that one has to wait for lives and lives together. And yet he may not come.

With the full knowledge of this possibility, of this uncertainty, the heart becomes an awaiting. To every moment and everything that is happening, the rain or the flowers or the stars, one is aware of everything. because no one knows from where he may come. No one knows his door, his path. No one knows his name. no one knows in what moment he will come and knock at the door.

So a yogi is a person who awaits, who is not asleep. Even in his sleep he is waiting. Who knows He may come, when you are asleep, and He may have to go back. So he is awake every moment, waiting and waiting. And if, even for a single moment, one can be so totally absorbed in his waiting, the 'happening' happens. But that is not a guarantee. It happens, it has happened.

This waiting is the only difficult thing. the only arduous part of it. We are in much hurry. This hurry of modern man is the only irreligiousness, that has changed the whole modern society towards materialism.

In Japan, the word for Dhyana is Zazen, and Zazen means just sitting and waiting and doing nothing.

The word Zazen is beautiful-sitting, waiting and doing nothing. Because if you are occupied in doing you may escape from the waiting mind. You may be occupied and just sitting. It does not mean that one must sit for five hours. But if you are sleeping, just sleep and wait and do nothing. If you are eating. eat. But just eat. do not do anything else and wait. Then everything can go on and still there is sitting and still there is a waiting and still there is no doing.

This is meditation for me, this is yoga for me. And this is not a renunciation, but initiation into living.

I am against all types of so-called renunciation because they are life denying, life negating and in a way anti-God.

Persons who seem to be so engrossed with God, are not accepting Him totally, because this life is denial.

They say we choose between you and your world.

To me, there is no choice. The life is divine, the very life is God. So one must not choose. Being choiceless, live it. Be deep in it. Be involved in it, and still be alone, because you are alone.

Everything will come and go and your loneliness will not be destroyed. It is there as your nature. This Loneliness is the basic fact from which meditation begins to grow, from which comes the initiation of yoga and from which ultimately a person becomes a yogi.

But do not believe in dead formulae. Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Gyana yoga, Raja yoga these are all dead formulae. There are as many yogas as there are persons to travel on the path. Everyone creates and must create his own yoga. Then only the authentic being can be realised. The authenticity comes through individuality, otherwise a borrowed and a phony realisation is possible.

To me God is Absolute Aloneness. But the moment you say oneness with God, you create 'the other' again. Your God is now the escape, the other. It was previously your wife, friends, now you have created another other. Now it is God. And now you have to become one with Him. If you are one with Him then there is no question. But you cannot become one with Him. Your total aloneness is the realisation that you are with God, there is no oneness with Him.

There is no communion, because there are no two entities. A communion is only possible when there are two. When you realise your total aloneness, then it is not that now you will commune with God, but now you are God, you are the Divine. Even the language of one-ness is the hangover from the dualism of the other.

DR. GUINEBERT: YOU CANNOT TALK IN TERMS OF ONENESS WHEN THERE IS NO TWO. IS IT THE MIND THAT CREATES DUALITY?

Osho: There is no mind now. When you are alone, there is no mind, because the mind is your past.

as the other. So when you are alone you are talking with your mind, that is the other, now there is a dialogue.

Your mind is playing as the other, now you are talking with yourself, But when you are totally alone you are alone Now there is no mind and now there is no God. You are the Divine.

So I cannot say, 'you become one with the God', because to say so, is to presuppose the duality.

It is to presuppose that God is one, and you are the other. Even to say it is divine existence, is to divide it. There can be no non divine existence. It is divineness or it is existence. Do not use two terms. Say, it is Existence. It is enough. Say. it is Divineness It is enough.

The moment we say 'divine existence' then we create a division. The previous one is not divine, now this is divine. This is not the case. It is One-so the talk of oneness is incorrect That is why we have chosen a word Adwait. It says that there are not two. It does not say even that there is one. It only denies the twoness. It simply denies the two-ness. It says there are not two now So I cannot say that you become one with God, because you were always him. The separateness was your illusion, now you create another illusion of oneness. If the separateness was false, the oneness is bound to be false. You are one, not oneness There is no one else. To say it exactly, you will have to say that the mind is the other. When there is no mind there is no other.

Just like we put an earthen barrier between a river. The river is one. it has been one, but now an earthen barrier exists. The earths barrier is the only other. The river is one.

And this is the difference between religion and philosophy. Philosophy only creates anti-concepts and religion destroys the barrier. Philosophy says, there are not two, the twoness is false the 'oneness' is the reality. Against twoness the concept of 'oneness' is processed. But the religious man says, where is the one, where is the other. It has always been so. So do not say Divine do not say God and do not say that we have become one with Him. Now the loneliness is the all, oneness is the all, now we are.

Sleep and samadhi appear similar, but they are not. Because after samadhi, there is no survival of the mind. But after sleep, the mind when it is asleep comes back more strengthened in the morning, more fresh. Again, the mind has come back with more vigour to see the two. But after samadhi there is no coming back. This is the point of no return. You cannot come back. Sleep is recurring but samadhi is eternal. So samadhi and SUSHUPTI (Real Sleep) have a similarity.

You can say Samadhi is awakened Sushupti, or you can say Sushupti is Samadhi.

Osho: People 'cling' to discipline... but an unstill mind primarily needs to be anarchic, then only can it transcend itself. You can ordain discipline. Discipline is an outward conditioning. The inner being remains the same. The anarchy is within, whereas the discipline is without. The anarchy remains in the heart whereas the discipline forms a part of the cultivated personality So first, let the tension, confusion. anarchy reach its climax. Let there be an explosion. Discipline will come but as a fruit of it.

MAYOGABHAABTI: AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL THOSE 1500 PEOPLE WHO COME TO ME?

Osho: No, no, not at their expense. Tell them about this method. They themselves will feel it.

They will certainly feel the change, the transformation. Let them practise it-just as an experiment with their disturbed mind, their doubts. Let them experiment, just as an experiment. If 'something' happens, then the practice goes by itself. There is no need to convince them. And, the anarchy that is within must be exploded. It should not be stilled or cramped down. It must be expressed in total intensity. The calmness, the serenity, the Nirvana comes not by stilling the mind but by explosion.

Then the stillness comes but it is not a cultivated composure. Express what you are, totally. Of course that means madness, because we are mad. So, if you express it, the madness will come out. Even you yourself will feel strange about it, unknown to yourself. It is your own expression, but hitherto unknown to yourself. It was suppressed in the unconscious, and suppressed it is there from centuries and pre-births. This anarchic being is within us, unknown to ourselves. It must go out.

We have hypnotised ourselves to believe that we are normal and sane human beings. This is the hypnosis. The whole world is a great mad-house. We have hypnotised ourselves that we are sane, normal. But, the insanity that is curbed in the background always tries to come up, to come out For a Sadhaka (seeker), it has been an essential part of many old traditions to know one's self through chemical drugs. Various intoxicants are known to have been used to know the inner being, to know that which is within. And, it is total nonsense even to try to discipline the mind For you have not known the innermost core and are cultivating discipline from outside. the outcome is bound to be schizophrenic. There will be two beings living simultaneously in you and there will be indecision, a continuous conflict within. And, remember. conflict dissipated energy. The first step towards harmony and unity of the being is not the discipline but to know that which is within. And the 'within' so suppressed has been for centuries, that it has become a part of yourself. We are just a part of the system. The inhibited, the suppressed, the collective mind-the unknown factor-is the basis of the insanity, tensions, conflicts, the lack of harmony. There is an unconscious lurking fear that if we do this, something will happen And that is bound to happen. That fear creates doubt and the doubt is again an instrument in suppressing the fear. Just try as an experiment for fifteen days, not more than an hour a day. Intense, deep and fast breathing for ten minuteS to start with. And things will begin to more.

YOGACHARYA MAHENDRA: DO YOU THINK IT IS NECESSARY TO HAVE ANY PARTICULAR RHYTHM OR VIBRATION WHILE BREATHING? WILL IT HARM MEDICALLY THOSE PERSONS WHO ARE DELICATE AND HAVING HEART TROUBLE ETC?

Osho: No, no, there is no question of vibration and rhythm. And it never harms. If you try any rhythmic method then the explosion will not take place. Because then again you are disciplining.

So, let it be anarchic. The only emphasis is on depth, intensity and speed. The total being must be involved in it with total commitment. When you are totally involved, the whole body and the whole mind begins to vibrate and the body electricity begins to move. And when you feel it in your body, something which you never felt, then the technique has gripped you.

We never experience electricity in our body. That too is a suppressed part of our personality.

We are not as much in our body as Nature has prescribed, because there are so many things interconnected. We have suppressed the body wisdom also. If someone becomes completely vibrated, the electricity begins to move. Then he goes out of the grip of Society-in that very moment.

He vibrates so much so powerfully that later you cannot make him conform to rule. He has become something in his own capacity. When energy awakes in its own right you never feel any more that you are exuberant and that have you feel as unlimited power that moment people have declared themselves as God, Aham Brahmasmi-I am Brahman. The first feeling of Aham Brahmasmi I am God-is the feeling of the movement of the electricity that is sleeping in our body. The deep.

fast, intense and involved breathing creates that feeling. Then every experience through the body becomes true to us. Everything that we term as real is so because we feel it through our body.

Reality to us means something felt through our body. I say you are real because I see you, I can touch you. Reality for us is reality through the medium of body only.

Any technique that creates some new dimension of experience in our body, becomes real to us. No doubt arises then. Then only we can proceed further. That is why I emphasise on the first step.

Now, the second step. The first step will continue. the breathing will continue. Meanwhile, there will be many reactions on the body. It may take many forms. But those all will be happenings and will not affect your discipline.

Y. M.: HOW SHOULD WE DO IT'? IN WHICH BODY POSTURE'?

Osho: You can sit in any way, but it is better if you are standing. And still better if the eyes are closed. You should do this on an empty stomach, before taking any meals. Then, the second step:

completely relax the body Relax to give it freedom. Go on breathing. Let the body move; vibrate, dance, weep, laugh; let whatsoever happens happen. Do you suppress anything. The body will take its own course. And, many things will begin to happen. And in the third step, while the first two continue ask vigorously; 'who am I?' 'who am I?'

By and by it becomes vigorous. more and more vigorous!!

During the first step the total attention must be on breathing. The second step will emerge as an outcome. When you breathe deeply and vigorously. the body begins to move. There is no question of relaxing in the first step. Now you relax in the second one. Then after ten minute add the third The body will begin to move, dance etc. Then ask 'Who am I?' This is the moment to ask. Because then you will see through clearly that the body is something apart. You see it moving, taking various shapes, weeping, laughing, crying. You see it clearly that you cannot identify that it is you who is doing it. You merely see yourself jumping, dancing. Something is happening mechanically! You see it as a separate entity. Only when the body becomes an automation. then the consciousness separates itself.

Y. M.: CAN YOU TELL US WHY, IN THIS SO-CALLED NORMAL WORLDLY STAGE WE CANNOT FEEL THE SAME EXPERIENCE OF NONIDENTIFICATION?

Osho: You cannot feel it because every moment you are identified with it. There is no gap between you and your body. What you are doing, your body is doing and vice versa. You and the doings of your body are identified as one and the same. But when the body takes its own course it becomes an automata. The things begin to happen which you never planned, which you never thought of!

'Am I doing this? Am I feeling this? And you know that you are not doing it. You did not will it but the dance is going on and vigorously too. Then there is a gap between the doer and the done.

So now, the body has become an automata. The consciousness cannot identify itself with an automata. That is an impossibility, whereas if the machine works according to your will there is an identification. If I tell this mike to move and if it begins to move, then there is every possibility that I may identify myself with it, because now it has become a part and parcel of me. The mover and the moved have become one through the movement. But when the body moves without your will and conscious exertion then the body becomes a separate machine. Only then you are different.

This comes as a feeling so absolutely distinct that there remains no confusion. That is why I emphasise the body movements. Let them happen. Let go, whatsoever happens Then you see that your body becomes like that of a mad man or like an animal or like a machine. You cannot identify with it, you remain aloof As an outcome of the second step, you begin to witness all that is happening. The body is moving, the hand is moving, it is taking so many shapes, Mudra.... unknown, unchartered, unplanned. You begin to see what is happening. Now, you are the doer, but just a seer. There is no question of your doing anything. You begin to see. Now you have come to know the negative point that you are not the body.

Then the question comes, 'Who I am?' That too ii an outcome. If you do not add the third step and go on doing the second, there is every possibility that the third will come out of it, and the inner being itself will come to ask: 'Why am l?' Now, if you are not the body, then who are you? Then you start asking yourself 'WHO AM I?' Like the previous two stages this too must exhaust yourself completely.

Y. M.: EXCUSE ME, WHEN WE ARE DOING THE FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD, HOW CAN WE DO IT WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST IDENTIFICATION? HOW CAN WE MAKE ANY MOVEMENT WITHOUT IT?

Osho: The identification is there in the beginning, but as you move on the identification vanishes.

You see that the body has no more importance. Such a clear situation is created after the first two steps that there cannot be any confusion. The result is so dynamic, so energising-just a moving energy-that there is no room for any confusion. Confusion is a part of energy when it is dormant.

When the energy comes to its full path the person becomes like a dynamo. That is why 1 am adding the vital question in the third stage.

When you ask WHO AM I? in a vigorously moving stage of the body and mind, the whole body responds. The whole mind, every fibre of your being, everything in you begins to vibrate, tremble and the question itself becomes so paramount that there is no need of any answer. You yourself become the question. For the time being you become the Quest.

It is a delicate process. That is why the first two steps are very necessary Ramana Maharshi was guiding people to ask 'WHO AM I'? in the first step. Then it can never be vigorous. You ask as you ask anything else. The question is simple. When you start asking. WHO AM I?' in the first step, a very little part of the mind queries, whereas the remaining mind, the greater part, just remains and awaits the answer. Then there is every possibility that the answers that one has known that I am the soul. that I am the Brahman etc. will be supplied by the remaining part. This is a natural possibility.

In the third step the question becomes the whole. There is a fourth step also. In the third step you ask the question quietly and with total intensity. You must go very deep, till you become totally mad.

Every type of sanity is based on answers. You are a sane person when you know the answer.

The concept of sanity is based on answers, ready- made answers. If there is only questioning and no answer, you become mad. So go deep and deeper. You must come to the peak, for the depth is due to the peak only. You go into the depth when you fall from the peak. The more you become mad and fall from that point, the more sanity is there to it.

To my mind the real sanity is that which comes after the transcendence of madness. Then there is neither the question nor the answer. The mind becomes calm and quiet. Then the fourth stage is reached. It comes only when you have come to the peak, to the height of tension. Then comes Relaxation.

Having gone through the previous three stages each for ten minutes, for the next ten minutes or more just relax, and remain just as you are, without doing anything, because you are tired completely-The policy of 'LET GO' is achieved as an automatic process. The fourth step is the moment of doing nothing. That I call dhyana, meditation. The first three stages are steps only, the fourth is the door.

Then you are there without breathing or movement. Just silence! This fourth step comes of its own accord and in these moments comes Grace. You have become a Vacuum, an Emptiness and something fills you which is spiritual. It pours in when you are not. You cannot be there because you are doing nothing.

The ego vanishes with the Doer. The Does is the Ego. You can be in the first three steps, because vou are doing something, then breathing or questioning. But now you cannot be.

Our whole conception of the Ego is just an accumulation of memories of past actions. So the more a person has done the more ego-centric he is. If he has done any social service or any religious ritual, then too he is ego-centric. Any type of doing, accumulated in the long run, becomes a part of the Ego, which is just an accumulation of effects. It is not an entity, but only the memory of doing.

So, in those moments when there is no doing, you .are not. Then something happens. You are conscious even when you are not doing anything. You are totally conscious, silent, just dead, but conscious. Exhausted but conscious...

Y. M.: CAN WE UNDERSTAND CLEARLY THAT IN THE FOURTH STAGE THERE IS ONLY CONSCIOUSNESS WHICH HAS NO MEMORY LEFT AT THAT TIME? WHAT TYPE OF STAGE WILL IT BE?

Osho: You can feel it as a gap. The memory only records the gap. Your memory did continue till a particular moment, then there was a gap. Then it began again and this gap you feel afterwards.

The gap, the interval, becomes your memory. Our memory records events and this interval, void, is a great event. It is the phenomenon.

YOGACHARYA KRIYANANDA: WHAT RECORDS IT?

Osho: Your memory, your mechanism.

YOGACHARYA K.: IT MEANS MEMORY IS WORKING IN THE INTERVAL ALSO.

Osho: Your mechanism is always ready to record everything. This recorder here is working. It will record when we speak, and when we are not speaking. the silence also is recorded because mechanism is always there. It records everything and it is more keen, sensitive, more intense. This machine can err when we are silent. The memorable event is a burden, a tension. The gap is a calm, blissful interval and it is dhyana. Experience which is with psychic. Really speaking there can be no spiritual experience. There can only be the interval. The person who experiences was not there. So you cannot use the terminology of experience. You experience a moment which is of no-experience a total gap.

Every type of indication is bound to be negative because language is inadequate, it is just a choice between mistakes. So, every type of religion and language is equally erroneous, because the gap cannot be expressed. But... it can be felt, and feeling has no language and words.

Y. M.: SO. ACTUALLY AT THE END OF THE THIRD STAGE AND THE CULMINATION OF THE FOURTH STAGE, THERE IS DISSOLUTION OF THE EGO... OR WHAT IS THE PARTICULAR STAGE?

Osho: The ego evaporates Y. M.: WHAT IS THE PROCESS BY WHICH THE EGO COMES BACK TO THE ORIGINAL STATE?

Osho: It comes back because the whole mechanism and the part is there. It was as if you had gone out of your house and you come back. But, now yoU cannot be the same person, back in the same house, for you have known something beyond that.

The more it becomes easy to go out and come in. out and in, the more a new stage comes in which neither you are out nor you are in. You transcend both. That is the culmination, that is samadhi.

Some religions as Zen have mistakenly understood this, as Satori; this glimpse, as the ultimate experience or Samadhi. It is not Samadhi, for coming back is still a possibility. The Ego did not die, it only jumped You jumped out and you have come back-just like jumping on the ground. You jump above the ground, the gravitation is there, the Earth is there, so you come back. For a moment you were out of its grip, but now you are back.

You go out, return, and you think; 'I have achieved it,' because it is so blissful. But you have not known something that is beyond bliss. Each experience then becomes a groove. The gap. too, becomes a part of it.

There are religions which have stopped here. Hence they say there is a soul, an individual soul.

They cannot conceive Brahman because Brahman comes ultimately in the fifth stage. When you repeatedly come and go, and transcend it, you begin to witness these outgoings and incomings, the meditative and non-meditative state of mind.

When you start observing it then there descends a Silent Awareness. When we become silently aware of it then comes the ultimate explosion. You go beyond 'Out and In'. That means you yourself go in the explosion.

Now, there is no recording because the mechanism has dissolved. This is the point of Nirvana Brahma- Upalabdhi, Moksha or whatever you call it. This has never been and cannot be recorded.

Y. K.: AFTER THIS, DOES ONE LIVE IN THE BODY?

Osho: Certainly, because the working of the body is another process. It is there of its own and has a process of its own. One can live on or one can go out of it. To us it seems that one lives in the house but for the resident, now there is no house.

Y. K.: BUT THERE IS THE BODY'?

Osho: There is the body. But not as we feel it. The whole universe becomes the body.

Y. K.: BUT THERE IS STILL AN INDIVIDUAL BODY?

Osho: No, no. This is all for us. This fifth stage, whenever we talk about it becomes a puzzle. So. it can never be explained.

Y. M.: SO, IN THE FIFTH STAGE THERE IS THE EXPLOSION OF INDIVIDUAL AWARENESS, OR WHAT YOU CALL IT?

Osho: Explosion of everything, and of the total, that you were-your memory, intellect, ego.

personality, your being and your soul. Everything that you were is not so now. You just go beyond.

There is no You. You become everything. That is the point. of Brahman, Cosmic Consciousness.

The method and guidance can lead you upto Satori only, upto the fourth stage. The fifth is beyond any method only. That Silent Awareness is always beyond guidance. Either it happens or it does not happen.

Y. M.: IN THIS EXPLOSION, IS ONE AWARE OF IT?

Osho: No, no. There is no question of awareness or non-awareness.

Buddha was asked many times repeatedly the same question everyday:-'What happens of the Enlightened Person? Where does he go? Whether he exists or not?' And he said. "It is irrelevant.

Do not ask". He categorised eleven questions which must not be asked. And this question was one of them. Not that Buddha did not know, but because any type of statement was hound to create new puzzles.

Y. M.: WHAT IS THE MISSION OF LIFE?

Osho: No, no. No mission.

Y. M.: NOT FOR AN INDIVIDUAL. IN GENERAL, WHEN WE ARE LIVING IN THIS WORLD AND HAVE TO DO SO MANY THINGS WE HAVE TO UNDERGO MANY CHANGES SOMETIMES WE ARE DOING YOGA, SOMETIMES THIS TYPE OF DISCIPLINE, SOMETIMES THAT TYPE OF METHOD. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE? CAN ANYONE SOLVE THIS MYSTERY? ULTIMATELY, WHY ARE WE DOING ALL THESE THINGS?

Osho: Well, when you say it is a mystery, then it cannot be solved and if it can be solved then it will not be a mystery. It is a mystery. And there is no mission because in a mystery there can be no mission. There can be no purpose in a mystery. There can just be a playfulness, leela. So, this whole existence is just a 'playfulness' of the energy that which is of the existential energy. It is just a play of it-this whole creation. And play means something which is purposeless, every act is the achievement.

So, life has no mission because living itself is the achievement. You live in many ways-that too is the outflow of energy-this purposeless Cosmic Play. It is purposeless, that is why it is a mystery.

But the West could never conceive it as purposeless, that is why the West could never achieve a religious mind. It seems nonsense. It is nonsense, But the East could conceive and see sense in nonsense, could see no purpose having its own purpose, having its own intrinsic value. 'Life Is'.

that is all. Existence is. It is enough. Why ask for more? How can there be anything more than Existence? And when you come to the fourth stage, this feeling begins to dawn upon you in Satori.

Life becomes a play that is why Zen monks are gay and not serious.

A serious person means a person who has not felt the miraculous, the mysterious. So a serious person can never be religious. At the fourth stage, at the Satori stage of mind, you become playful.

So, a Zen monk can laugh at the Buddha. So beautiful! So beautiful!! It has never been achieved anywhere else.

Y. M.: BUT PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO COME TO THIS STATE BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT WILL DISTURB THE PATTERN OF SOCIETY.

Osho: It disturbs, because the Society is created by 'seriousness-diseased' people and everything has been demarcated. But Life manages itself, man has never managed it. Those who have tried to manage it, have done nothing but killed it. Life is so forceful that it manages itself. Do not manage it. Who are you to manage it? It is Life that is managing itself howsoever you may try.

M.Y.B.: SHOULD THIS EXPERIMENT GO TO THE PEAK?

Osho: Yes. It must go to the peak. You must go mad completely, only then the sanity will come.

LSD LSD or any other chemical drug, is nothing but a help to make the mind more projective. All the hindrances, all the ordinary hindrances are withdrawn. The ordinary reason and conscious mind are withdrawn. You are completely in the hold of the unconscious. But the unconscious itself will not bring Samadhi through LSD. It can only be possible if the unconscious has been fed with conceptions, colours and vital experiences. Everything that has been put into it can be projected.

LSD can only be a help to project, whatsoever is in the seed form of your unconsciouS mind. If it is love, then love will be projected-if it is hatred, then hatred will be projected LSD is an expanding drug, whatsoever is in the seed form will be expanded into a tree.

At night you dream because the conscious barriers are withdrawn. So whatever in your mind is suppressed. desired, longed for, begins to take shape and form and begins to be imagined. But when you are in a dream, you never know that it is a dream. It is so life-like, it is so real. LSD is a chemical way of dreaming.

So you can see things which you have never seen. know things that you have not known, realise things that you have never realised. But all these realisations are only apparent realisations. They are not real. They are beautiful, they have their own charm just like nice dreams. But LSD can project a nightmare also. It depends on you, not on LSD. If your mind is hallucinated and is suffering from some untoward images, these will be projected. So there are persons. Meditation will be a tame thing in comparison because it is real. It is not a dreamland. The progress is step by step. It is not so sudden.

So in LSD the thing is sudden. It is so sudden that it overwhelms you. It shatters your total memory.

All the tensions are non-existential for the moment. You are relaxed and the cosmic harmony is felt.

The barriers are not there. You don't exist as an I; and the world and you have become one. This is so sudden and blissful that you will have a cherished memory of it afterwards.

You must reach the door of Samadhi completely empty handed, naked, vacant, only then the authentic thing happens. Otherwise, you are meditating with the projections. You have been projecting in meditation, and you have been projecting in your LSD experiences. Both are projections.

In LSD you go nowhere, you are just where you were. Something happens to you because of chemical changes; because your ordinary mind is not functioning. It has been defunctioned. The ordinary reasoning, the ordinary checks are numbed. They are put off and the unconscious is put on. This has been done through a chemical agent. You are not the controller but the chemical agent is the controller. You are under its influence. You are not a free agent-now LSD is free in you and LSD will work something in you. It is not that you are working but you are being worked upon and something will happen to you-not that you have happened to something-you have jumped, you have encountered, you have gone! You are not where You were. You have changed. This change is a conscious change. with full awareness; and the change is your effort. Because you have done it, you have travelled, you have gone to some peak, you can be on the Everest.