Monthly Archives: August 2015

The sixth technique:
WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE BORN ANEW.
WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS… Forget breaths – keep attentive in between. One breath has come: before it returns, before it is exhaled out, there is the gap, the interval. One breath has gone out; before it is taken in again, the gap. IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE BORN ANEW.
But this has to be done continuously. This sixth technique has to be done continuously. That is why this is mentioned: WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY… Whatsoever you are doing, keep your attention in the gap between the two breaths. But it must be practiced while in activity.
We have discussed one technique that is just similar. Now there is only this difference, that this has to be practiced while in worldly activity. Do not practice it in isolation. This practice is to be done while you are doing something else. You are eating – go on eating and be attentive of the gap. You are walking – go on walking and be attentive of the gap. You are going to sleep – lie down, let sleep come, but you go on being attentive of the gap. Why in activity? Because activity distracts the mind, activity calls for your attention again and again. Do not be distracted, be fixed at the gap. And do not stop activity, let the activity continue. You will have two layers of existence – doing and being.
We have two layers of existence: the world of doing and the world of being; the circumference and the center. Go on working on the periphery, on the circumference; do not stop it. But go on working attentively on the center also. What will happen? Your activity will become an acting, as if you are playing a part.- for example, in a drama. You have become Ram or you have become Christ. You go on acting as Christ or as Ram, and still you remain yourself. In the center, you know who you are; on the periphery you go on acting as Ram, Christ or anyone. You know you are not Ram – you are acting. You know who you are. Your attention is centered in you; your activity continues on the circumference.
If this method is practiced, your whole life will become a long drama. You will be an actor playing roles, but constantly centered in the gap. If you forget the gap then you are not playing roles, you have become the role. Then it is not a drama; you have mistaken it as life. That is what we have done. Everyone thinks he is living life. It is not life, it is just a role – a part which has been given to you by the society, by the circumstances, by the culture, by the tradition, the country, the situation.

~ OSHO – Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Volume 1
chapter 5 : Five techniques of attentiveness

Die Without Any Question and Without Any Answer
To solve your problems means to give you an answer that intellectually satisfies you; and to dissolve your problem is to give you a method that makes you yourself aware that there is no problem at all: problems are all our own creations and there is no need for any answer.
The enlightened consciousness has no answer.
Its beauty is that it has no questions.
All its questions have been dissolved, have disappeared. People think otherwise: they think that the enlightened man must have the answer for everything. The reality is he has no answer at all. He has no questions. Without questions how can he have any answer?
Gertrude Stein, a great poet, was dying surrounded by her friends when suddenly she opened her eyes and asked, “What is the answer?”
Somebody said, “But we don’t know the question, so how can we know the answer?”
She opened her eyes a last time and she said, “Okay, so what is the question?” and she died. A strange last statement.
It is very beautiful to find out the last statements of poets, painters, dancers, singers. They have something tremendously meaningful in them.
First she asked, “What is the answer?”…as if the question cannot be different for different human beings. The question must be the same; there is no need to articulate it. And she was in a hurry, so rather than going through the proper channel – asking the question and then listening to the answer – she simply asked, “What is the answer?”
But people don’t understand that every human being is in the same position: the same question is everybody’s question. So some stupid person asked, “But how can we answer if we don’t know the question?”
It looks logical, it is not: it is simply stupid – and to a dying person…. But the poor woman opened her eyes once more. She said, “Okay, what is the question?” And then there was silence.
Nobody knows the question, nobody knows the answer. In fact there is no question and there is no answer; there is only a way of living in confusion, in the mind. Then there are millions of questions and millions of answers, and each answer brings hundreds more questions in, and there is no end to it.
But there is another way of life: living in consciousness – and there is no answer and no question.
If I was present as Gertrude Stein was dying I would have said to her, “This is not the moment to bother about questions and answers. Remember that there is no question and there is no answer: existence is absolutely silent about questions and answers. It is not a philosophy class. Die without any question and without any answer; simply die silently, consciously, peacefully.”

~ OSHO – The Path of the Mystic, Talk #43

HEAVEN & HELL –

Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you.
When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

~ OSHO – A Bird on the Wing, Talk #3