.... Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. [A sannyasin said that she had been practising Yoga for about ten years. Osho said that it would be helpful for her if she did a few growth groups while she was here, as though there are many benefits in Yoga, it is slightly repressive... ] The more you train your body, the more you are able to control it, the more repressive you become, unknowingly, because all...

... sorts of control brings repression. When Yoga first developed, people were very simple. They had nothing to repress really, so the system functioned perfectly well. The system is five thousand years old, and man was in a totally different world. Now the whole world has changed. The mind of man has changed, the body has changed, but the system continues to be the same. It has not evolved with man. A...

... resistance is there, just relax the body and exhale. Exhalation will help immediately, because whenever we resist something, we keep, we hold the breath in. That is the physical part of resistance. Whenever you are resisting somebody you will not allow a deep breath; you will hold the breath. If you relax the breath, the resistance will be relaxed immediately. So whenever you feel the resistance is there...

... the illogical becomes the end. Your prose also becomes, by and by, more poetic. But it will take a little time, so don't be worried. It has been very very good. [A group member said she had tension but was not sure where in the body.] .... sometimes it happens that the mind goes on avoiding the real place. The mind tries not to know it. Whenever one is holding something, it is almost always in the...

... follows itself if you fulfill the first. Something starts descending in you. But when emptiness comes, things will happen. Sometimes one loses the alignment of the body, sometimes the vision. Sometimes the hearing is affected, sometimes the taste disappears, sometimes one cannot smell. It is such a critical moment that the whole body goes through a change, and the change is great. And the mind is...

... connected so deeply with the eyes, that eighty percent of the information the mind receives comes from the eyes - eighty percent - and twenty percent from the rest of the body. So from each of the other senses, there is only five percent. So when the mind feels empty, the eyes lose alignment. Sometimes there is distortion. You will see double vision ... you can see things round shaped which are not round...

... shaped. So just remain a little alert. [Osho suggested to him that three or four times a day he should rub his eyes until they were hot and then splash them with cold water. He said that whenever something in the body is disturbed, the thing that brings it back to normality is a hot sensation followed by cold. When the eyes are made hot, they expand. When they are made cold, the fibres shrink. Through...

... clothes - yes, that's what they are. And because of those clothes you never come into contact with reality. One has to be naked to come into contact with the sunrays. One has to be naked to be in contact with the wind. One has to be naked if one wants to dance in the rains and feel the rain showering on one's being and body. Exactly so has one to be spiritually naked and nude if one wants to have any...

.... DEAR FRIEND, IF YOU PLACE THE WICK IN THE OIL, YOU WILL GET LIGHT WHEN FIRE IS APPLIED TO IT... first. Second: IF YOU POUR OUT THE OIL AND PUT THE WICK IN THE WATER, YOU WILL GET NO LIGHT. Third: IF YOU SHAKE UP THE OIL AND WATER AND THEN PLACE THE WICK IN THEM, YOU WILL GET A SPLUTTERING AND A GOING OUT. First these three things have to be understood. Man is a trinity - body, mind, soul - and that's...

... what those three things represent. The bottle represents the body, the water represents the mind, and oil represents the mind if it becomes meditation. So mind has two possibilities: either it can be water or it can be oil. If it is with thoughts, it is water; if it is with no thoughts, it is oil. And the soul is the fire. These are the three things. We have the bottle and we have the possibility of...

... filling it either with oil or with water. And both are possibilities of the mind. Mind with thoughts becomes water - then you can go on applying fire to it and darkness will remain there. That's why you live in darkness - your mind is water and the fire is continuously being put out. With a mind too full of thoughts the spirit disappears, the fire disappears, the soul is no longer there. Unless the body...

... is filled with no-mind, unless the body is filled by thoughtlessness or a thoughtless mind, you will not be enlightened. Once mind is no longer watery, once thoughts have disappeared and there is silence, purity, innocence, it becomes oil. And suddenly you will see a light arising. The fire is there - just the oil is needed. The bottle is there, the fire is there, but between the two there is water...

... disappear, let no-mind arise. If the body and the soul are connected by no mind, they are in tune. And suddenly there is song and there is dance and there is celebration. There is joy, there is eternal joy, what Hindus call SATCHIDANANDA - truth, consciousness, bliss - all are there. Once your trinity is in tune.... If the trinity is not in tune you will remain in darkness. If the mind is there...

... be known by simple methods, that there is no need to philosophise . Many times people come to me, people who are knowledgeable, and they say - particularly Indians - 'What is the meaning of dancing? How can one attain to God by dancing?' Dancing is an experiment, an experiment to bring your body, your mind, your soul, in tune. Dance is one of the most rhythmic phenomena. If you are really dancing...

... there is no other activity which creates such unity. If you are sitting, the body is not used; then you use only your mind. If you are running very fast, your life is in danger, then you use your body and you don't use your mind. In dance you are neither sitting nor running for your life. It is movement, a joyful movement. The body is moving, the energy is flowing, the mind is moving, the mind is...

... flowing. And when these two things are flowing they melt into each other. You become psychosomatic. A certain alchemy starts happening. That's why you see a new kind of grace on the face of the dancer, it is alchemical - the body- mind meeting, merging, the body-mind becoming one tune, one rhythm, one harmony. When this harmony has happened then the third, the soul, starts entering into it. The soul can...

... enter into your existence only when your body and mind are no longer in conflict, when your body and mind co- operate, when your body and mind are deep in love, embracing, hugging each other... that's what happens in dance. Then immediately you will find the third entering also. When the body-mind is really in harmony, when the two are no more two, the third enters. For the first time you become a...

... a thought, it is not an act in the church. In this place God is not a thought; it is an act, it is a dance. And the dance has to be of the total: body, mind, soul. Nothing has to be denied, because if you deny anything something will be missing, something will certainly be missing. And then your synthesis will not be the highest possibility, it will remain some-where low, it will not reach towards...

...? What would be your definition then? Mind gone, ego goes. The ego is the centre of the mind, the very heart of the monkey . Mind gone, greed is gone. Mind gone, ambition is gone. Mind gone, competition is gone. Mind gone, future and past are gone. Mind gone, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, are gone. Mind gone, Indian, German, Chinese - nationalities are gone. Mind gone, the body is no more you. Your...

... to eat, force myself to drink. The body was so non-existential that I had to hurt myself to feel that I was still in the body. I had to knock my head against the wall to feel whether my head was still there or not. Only when it hurt would I be a little in the body. Every morning and every evening I would run for five to eight miles. People used to think that I was mad. Why was I running so much...

... fifth symptom: TITLES AND REWARDS CANNOT INDUCE ME, PUNISHMENTS AND FINES CANNOT AWE ME; PROSPERITY AND DECLINE BENEFIT AND HARM CANNOT CHANGE ME.... When equanimity happens, when you have become SAMYAK-DRISHTI when you have attained to the equal eye.... Jesus says, 'Attain to one eye, and if you can attain to one eye your whole body will become full of light.' When you start looking at things as if...

.... Ancient Eastern medicine is more concerned with the metaphysical, with the para-physical. Now a few insights in the West are gaining strength slowly; radionics, kirlian photography, acupuncture and ayurveda are entering the Western consciousness. But ancient Eastern medicine was not just medicine, not just a cure for the body, but a cure for the soul. The East says that the body only shows the symptoms...

... interested in the symptoms. The symptoms are not to be treated, the person is to be treated. And, one thing more, the East knows that illnesses are not always illnesses - there are a few illnesses which are blessings. When a person moves beyond the body, the body will never be healthy in the same way it was before, it cannot be - because a distance arises between the innermost being and the body. The...

... bridges are broken. That's why an enlightened person will never be born again - he cannot enter into the body again because the bridges are broken. So the enlightened person, once enlightened, can never come back. Then he is gone forever - GATE GATE PARA GATE; gone, gone, gone forever - gone to the beyond from where there is no coming back, gone to the point of no return. But the thing starts happening...

... in this life. If you become enlightened you loosen your connection with your body. The body can never be as healthy as it was before, cannot be healthy in the same way that it was before. But those illnesses are not really illnesses, they are simply symptoms that your inner being is being transformed. Something of tremendous revolution is happening within you, a radical change is happening within...

... you. So the body will have many changes. This man, this physician, Wen Chih, must not only have been a physician, he must have been a man of great insight. What does he say? He says, 'I SEE YOUR HEART. THE PLACE AN INCH SQUARE IS EMPTY.' This is the beginning of enlightenment. The man is one step below. He is just one step below. One step more and his whole heart will become an empty space; for the...

... naturally they had to go to the physician when things like this happened. It was an everyday thing, it was not rare. The physician had to come again and again to such people who were not really ill but who had moved within themselves so much that their body was suffering, their mind was suffering - or at least it looked like suffering. So the physician had to tell them that this was not a physical illness...

... metaphysic, the beyond. Or call them paraphysicians - they treat not the body, they treat the soul; they treat not the form but the innermost emptiness that is covered by the form. Your body and mind are just forms. You are empty. But if you are close to a Master you will never feel it as emptiness. The moment it happens the Master will help you to understand it and it will start looking like fullness. It...

... follow every funeral procession. My parents were continually worried: "You don't know the man who has died, you have no relationship, no friendship with him. Why should you bother and waste your time?" - because the Indian funeral takes three, four or five hours. First, going out of the city, the procession walking, taking the dead body, and then burning the body on the funeral pyre.... And...

... make small cliques and sit all around the funeral pyre. I would go from one clique to another: nobody was talking about death. And I know for certain that they were talking about other things to keep them occupied so that they didn't see the burning body - because it was their body too. They could see, if they had a little insight into things, that they are burning there on the funeral pyre - nobody...

... solid strategy: to condemn this life. In Jaina scriptures, which are the most condemnatory of all the religions... all religions are condemnatory but Jainas are superb. Jaina monks continually give sermons: "What is this body? - blood, flesh, bones, mucus, feces. What does this body consist of? - all kinds of dirty thingS just covered with a thin skin." This is described in such detail that...

... your own body too. And life is possible only through the body. By their condemning the body so much, life becomes impossible. And once your whole energy is blocked it cannot move into life. But energy has to move: it is its intrinsic nature to move. It will find some other way to move. Religions immediately give you a substitute: love God. He is not a bag of mucus and blood and bones! I used to ask...

... the monks, particularly the Hindu monks, "You call human beings'bags of every dirty thing'; then your incarnations of God, what were they? What about Rama? - no mucus?" Then he would be as dry as Oregon. He would have died, for the mucus is absolutely necessary. It keeps your body going. It is a kind of lubricant for your inner mechanism. Yes, once or twice a year you get a cold and you...

... all. As you come to know life, slowly your awareness grows. And with awareness growing, you start feeling that you are not the body. You are in the body, but you are not the body. With awareness growing still more, you start feeling that you are not the mind either; you are in the mind, but not the mind. Slowly you are coming to your very center. And that center is simply awareness, from where you...

... can watch your mind, your emotions, thoughts, body, pain, pleasure - everything. But you are simply a watcher, unidentified with anything else that you are watching. Now this watcher remains watching even in your sleep. The day you can feel your watcher even in your sleep, that day you know: now death is nothing but a longer sleep. For the body it is eternal sleep, but the watcher simply moves...

... forwards, enters into another womb, into another body. And this movement continues, this transmigration of the soul continues till your watchfulness is absolutely pure. When the flame is without any smoke, then you disappear into the universal, into the existential. Then you are not going into another house; you don't need any house any more, you have learned the lesson. That was a school: moving from...

... understand that there is nothing in life to be afraid of If death is a celebration, then what else can be a cause of fear? And if you can celebrate death, you have attained a maturity. It is possible only to those who live life as a rejoicing, a constant celebration. Then death is not the termination, but only a small incident of changing your clothes, your house, your body. But you remain exactly the same...

... of habit. People say that habit is second nature. This is not exaggeration. On the contrary, this is an understate ment. In fact, habit finally becomes first nature and nature be comes secondary. Nature becomes just like an appendix or footnotes in a book, and habit becomes the main part, the main body of the book. You live through the habit; that means that the habit lives basically through you...

... slave. And the imprisonment is very subtle: it is of your habits and conditioning and the actions that you have done. It is all around your body and you are entangled in it, but you go on thinking and befooling yourself that you are doing it. When you get angry, you think you are doing it. You rationalize it and you say that the situation demanded it:'I had to be angry, otherwise the child would go...

... wrong. Why am I unhappy? Why am I angry? -- close the eyes and let it be a deep meditation. Lie down on the floor, close the eyes, relax the body and feel why you are angry. Just forget the wife; that is an excuse -- A, B, C, D, whatsoever, forget the excuse. Just go deeper into yourself, penetrate the anger. Use anger itself as a river; into the anger you flow and the anger will take you inwards. You...

... at one o'clock. One o'clock reminds you that it is the time to be hungry. Not only does it remind you, it triggers the whole body and the whole body starts feeling hunger. You will say that just by being reminded, one cannot feel hungry -- right. But the body follows your mind. Immediately the body is reminded that it is one o'clock, 'I must be hungry.' The body follows suit: in the stomach you...

... habit, your anger is a habit. You live out of the past. That's why your life is so meaningless, with no significance, with no lustre in it, with no splendor. It is a desert-like phenomenon with no oasis. A Buddha lives in the spontaneity of the moment. If he feels hunger, he feels hunger not because of the past. Right now, the body is hungry. His hunger is real, true. Right now he feels thirsty. The...

... body is hungry, will feel thirsty when the body is thirsty, will feel death coming when the body is dying. It is simply strange that people die and they cannot see that the body is dying, they cannot feel. They have become so unfeeling, so mechanical, robot-like. Death is a great phenomenon. When you can feel hunger, why can't you feel death? When you can feel that body is going sleepy, why can't you...

... feel that body is going into death? No, you cannot feel. You can feel only out of the past, and in the past there has been no death so you don't have any experience. The mind carries no memory so when death comes, it comes, but the mind is unaware. Buddha says, 'Now you can ask if you have to ask something, because I am going to die.' And then he sits under a tree and dies consciously. First he...

... removes himself from the body, then the subtle layers, the subtle body, then he goes on moving inwards. In the fourth step he dissolves. He takes four steps withinwards. In the fourth step, he dissolves; he takes four steps inwards. Buddha doesn't die because of death, he dies himself. And when you die yourself it has a beauty of its own, it has a grace. Then there is no fight. When a man is aware he...

... attracts the crowd? He is doing something that the crowd cannot do. He is proving mind over body, he is proving spirit over nature. Torturing his body he is proving that he is not the body, it does not affect him. By fasting, not sleeping, or standing for days he is proving that what you cannot do he can do; he is superior to you. You also can do what he is doing, you just have to be a little stupid, you...

... condemned, I will be criticized. Every religion, every tradition, every morality, every ethical code is going to condemn me. That does not surprise me! I expect it, because what I am saying and doing is changing the very course of human consciousness. I don't think that by torturing yourself you can meditate more easily; on the contrary, if your body is pleasantly at ease you can meditate more easily. I...

... don't think that when you are fasting you can meditate. You can only think of food and nothing else; you will dream of food and nothing else. But if you are well fed, well nourished, you don't think of food -- there is no need. The body is completely satisfied, it does not create any disturbance. To live pleasurably, to live joyously is not against meditation. It is really the basic need of meditation...

... themselves, more and more people come to worship them. Now this is to me just an insane chapter in the history of man; it has to be closed. It is time that we start a new chapter -- natural, existential, life-affirmative -- and create a bridge between the body and the soul... not a wall but a bridge. There is no need for any conflict and war. Fighting with yourself, you are not going to get anything; you...

... want? And what more can spirituality be? We want people to be fulfilled and contented, and this journey towards contentment, fulfillment, enlightenment should start with the body. You cannot begin from anywhere else. You can begin only from the beginning. You cannot ignore the roots and just go on praising the flowers. Your flowers will die, and you will have to replace them with plastic flowers if...

... that you can love your enemy, so much that you can even love your neighbor. We talk about flowers, but nobody is interested in the roots. The question is: "Why are we not loving beings?" It is not a question of being loving to this person, to that person, to the friend, to the enemy. The question is whether you are loving or not. Do you love your own body? Have you ever cared to touch your...

... own body with a loving caress? Do you love yourself? No, all your religions teach you to hate yourself: you are the wrong person and you have to put yourself right; you are a sinner and you have to become a saint. How can you love yourself? -- you cannot even accept yourself. And these are the roots! I will teach you to love yourself. And if you can love yourself, if you can rejoice in being...

... really the impossible! He came across a Hindu yogi who was able to drink any kind of poison. He had exhibited his great achievement at many universities -- in Oxford, in Cambridge, in Varanasi, in Calcutta. But in Calcutta an accident happened. He was capable of keeping the poison in his body, without getting it into his bloodstream, only for half an hour: more than that he was incapable of. He had...

... just like a child. It took Isan, his master, forty years of hard work to make Kyozan enlightened. He was determined, and he said he would not leave the body until Kyozan became enlightened - though he was old enough. Kyozan did everything that Isan said, but nothing penetrated to his very being. He was a very ordinary man. Heaven and hell, God and the beyond had never worried him. He was not a seeker...

... will be a witness that, "This fellow is good; as punishment he has given five dollars to you." But God is going to be in a difficulty, particularly in India. Most of the population believe in fire and burn the dead body. When he opens the Hindu graves, he himself may freak out - just skeletons, and not even a passport! But I always think how you will look, something similar to the photo...

... - if he can become enlightened, it will be a proof. To give this proof to humanity he chose Kyozan and worked hard on him. And the day Kyozan became enlightened, the day Isan transferred his enlightenment and the two flames became one, Isan disappeared from the world of matter, body, mind. Kyozan was so radiant now. He was not only once enlightened, he was twice enlightened. His master has given him...

... will see in the temple twenty-four statues of the Jain masters. And you will be puzzled because they all look alike; there is no way to find out who is who. I am trying to make the point clear to you that it does not matter who is who. Those statues don't represent the physical body; they represent spiritual silence, spiritual grace, spiritual peace. If you sit there, you will be engulfed if you are...

... peace inside, a strange fragrance inside. And the most puzzling thing that came to light was a cat that must have died hundreds of years before, but there was no rottenness of the body. It was as if she had died just then. They could not believe it because the stupa was three thousand years old, and it had never been opened. When they were closing the last doors, somehow the cat must have got in, and...

... interested except in their architecture. Studying the architecture is not the way to find the mystery of why these stupas were made in a certain way. In India, in Tibet, in China, in Japan, in Ceylon - wherever Buddhism went, these stupas, these memorials were raised to give an indication that nobody dies; only the body and the mind are left behind and you open your wings of consciousness. And for the...

...;Today he is not ready, he is just a seed. But tomorrow you will know why I have chosen him. I am trying to serve two purposes in a single event. If this man can become a buddha, then the doors are open for all men." And he made it a promise that he would not leave his body until Kyozan could satisfy the whole assembly of disciples that the master had not been wrong. The sutra: OUR BELOVED MASTER...

...: Maneesha has asked: OUR BELOVED MASTER, IS OUR ORIGINAL FACE THAT OF THE WITNESS? IS IT THAT WE LIVE AS AMNESIACS, FORGETTING THAT WE HAVE ONLY ARBITRARILY ADOPTED A BODY AND MIND, AND THAT ENLIGHTENMENT IS SIMPLY REGAINING OUR MEMORY? Yes, Maneesha. You have condensed in your question the whole answer. But she goes on writing: P.S. WHY DO YOU CALL ME "POOR" MANEESHA? Stonehead Niskriya, give a...

... people I know." "Why is that?" asks Sally. "Because," replies Ernie, "as Herbert was leaving, he and Sally decided to do the same thing again next week!" Nivedano... (Drumbeat) (Gibberish) Nivedano... (Drumbeat) Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with your total consciousness, with an urgency as if this is the last...

... you are the buddha. Just witnessing, doing nothing - the same mirror that Isan has sent to Kyozan as a gift. The mirror only witnesses. To make it clear, Nivedano... (Drumbeat) Relax and witness the body is separate from you, the mind is separate from you. Your only identity is witnessing. The Sanskrit word for witnessing is buddha. You are those few blessed people on the earth today, who are...

... concern is only that somehow I should help you to cross the barrier from where you cannot return. Beyond that, existence takes care of you. Question 3: BELOVED OSHO, A FEW YEARS BACK, EVERY NIGHT WHEN I WAS GOING OFF TO SLEEP I WOULD GO INTO A SPACE THAT WAS IN BETWEEN SLEEP AND WAKEFULNESS AND FEEL LIKE I WAS LEAVING MY BODY. THERE WAS NO EFFORT ON MY PART; IT WAS HAPPENING ON ITS OWN. IT FELT LIKE I...

... WOULD ALWAYS ONLY GO A LITTLE WAY OUT, AND THEN MY BODY WOULD SUDDENLY JERK - ALTHOUGH THERE WAS NO OUTER OR INNER DISTURBANCE - AND IMMEDIATELY I WOULD RETURN TO MY BODY. NOW THIS SPACE HAS NOT COME UP FOR ME FOR A WHILE. I'M WONDERING IF IT IS THAT I AM LESS RELAXED. ALSO, WHAT WAS HOLDING ME BACK WHEN IT WAS HAPPENING THAT DID NOT ALLOW ME TO GO OUT FURTHER? First, there is no need to be worried...

... about it. Out-of-body experiences are good nourishment for your spiritual growth, but they are not necessary. So if they are happening, or just by relaxing they come upon you, it is good; otherwise, don't bother about them. They don't have any essential meaning for your growth. So just out of curiosity don't try to get out of your body. It won't work. It either works spontaneously for certain reasons...

... of which you are not aware... and I cannot say what the reasons were in your situation at that moment which caused your being to go out of the body. One thing is certain: whenever you spontaneously get out of the body, the body will give a jerk - because it is the death of the body, and you are going into a dangerous state. If something happens that disturbs your coming back, if somebody suddenly...

... opens the door and your silver cord is broken.... The body has its own wisdom; it allows you a certain rope of freedom, so it allowed you in a certain state to go out, but not to go too far. That's where it jerked, and that jerk was enough to bring you back because the relaxation was gone. And now it is not happening; there is no need, because it helps in no way in your spiritual growth. It only helps...

... again into the human body. You are released from the prison, from the pain, from the anguish, from the meaningless, miserable existence. You are no more confined in any form; you enter into a formless universal consciousness. Once enlightened, your death is going to be the last death. In other words, only enlightened people die. The unenlightened ... very difficult - they go on coming back, they never...

... coming back." Krishna says, "I will be coming back." No enlightened person can come back. Then why are these people saying these things? They know they cannot come back. But people will be becoming enlightened - and enlightenment has no name. Whether it is in the body of Gautam Buddha or in the body of Krishna or in the body of Jesus or in the body of anybody else, it is the same...

... body; not the skeleton but the consciousness. I was in Nagpur speaking in a Buddhist conference. I am not a Buddhist ... only Buddhists were invited to speak; I was the only one who was not a Buddhist. The president of the conference, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, was a little puzzled. I was just sitting next to him. He whispered in my ear, "Have you become a Buddhist?" I said, "I don't...

..., I cannot think that way." "Do you think he will come exactly in the same body? That body you have burned. Do you think he will be born as a prince? - because now there are no kings. Where are you going to find a beautiful woman like Yashodhara for him to marry?" He said, "My God, in all these details ... naturally they cannot be repeated, because to repeat all those details...

... enlightened, the awakened. It is up to you to be wise or to be a fool." Purna, you must have come across me many times - not in this body, but you must have come across the same experience. Sometimes a Mohammedan, Farid; a weaver, Kabir; a shoemaker, Raidas. Sometimes a prince, Gautam; sometimes a businessman, Tuladhar. Sometimes a man ... sometimes a woman, like Rabiya al-Adabiya. Enlightenment is...

... world; or growing up, the way of my people. Growing old, you have not to do anything - you will grow old, biology will take care of it. Growing up means a conscious alertness - so that the body goes on growing old, but your consciousness goes on growing upwards, growing up. But it is always growing; even in death a conscious being is growing. The whole existence is a great verb, not a noun - not a...

... Available: Yes Video Available: Yes Length: 91 mins Question 1: BELOVED OSHO, A WHILE AGO YOU SAID SOMETHING ABOUT SILENCE WHICH STARTLED ME. IN MY SLEEPINESS, I'D SIMPLY THOUGHT OF IT AS JUST AN ABSENCE -- AN ABSENCE OF NOISES. BUT YOU WERE SAYING IT HAD POSITIVE QUALITIES, A POSITIVE SOUND. AND IN MY MEDITATIONS, I'VE NOTICED THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN A SILENCE IN MY BODY AND A SILENCE IN MY MIND. I CAN...

... in my sleepiness. I had simply thought of it as just an absence -- an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations, I have noticed a distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind." Your experiences are true. The body knows its own silence -- that is its own well-being, its own overflowing health, its own joy. The...

... mind also knows its silence, when all thoughts disappear and the sky is without any clouds, just a pure space. But the silence I am talking about is far deeper. I am talking about the silence of your being. These silences that you are talking about can be disturbed. Sickness can disturb the silence of your body, and death is certainly going to disturb it. A single thought can disturb the silence of...

... your mind, the way a small pebble thrown into the silent lake is enough to create thousands of ripples, and the lake is no longer silent. The silence of the body and the mind are very fragile and very superficial, but in themselves they are good. To experience them is helpful, because it indicates that there may be even deeper silences of the heart. And the day you experience the silence of the heart...

... to you. This is the search, this is the longing of all the hearts, of all those who have a little intelligence. But remember, don't get lost in the silence of the body, or the silence of the mind, or even the silence of the heart. Beyond these three is the fourth. We, in the East, have called it simply "the fourth," turiya. We have not given it any name. Instead of a name we have given it...

... a number, because it comes after three silences -- of the body, of the mind, of the heart -- and beyond it, there is nothing else to be found. So, don't misunderstand. Most of the people... for example, there are people who are practicing yoga exercises. Yoga exercises give a silence of the body, and they are stuck there. Their whole life, they practice, but they know only the most superficial...

... three. But still it is not the goal, the target; your arrow is still falling short. It is very deep because Sufis know the heart more than anybody else. For centuries they have been working on the heart, just as yogis have been working on the body, and people of concentration and contemplation have been working on the mind. The Sufis know the immense beauty of love. They radiate love, but still the...

... greatest friend is also within you. The greatest enemy is just your first encounter, and your greatest friend is going to be your last encounter -- so don't be prevented by any experience of the body or the mind or the heart. Remember always one of the famous statements of Gautam Buddha. He used to conclude his sermons every day with the same two words, charaiveti, charaiveti." Those two simple...