Category Archives: Osho Insight

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

DOES THE UNIVERSE LOVE ME?
It is a wrong question to ask. You should ask the other way round, “Do you love the universe?” because universe is not a person. It cannot love you. It has no center, or you can say “everywhere it has the center,” but it is a nonpersonal phenomenon. How can a nonpersonal existence love you? You can love.
But when you love, the universe responds — responds absolutely. If you take one step towards the universe, the universe takes a thousand and one steps towards you; but that’s a response.
You will have to understand what Lao Tzu says: that the nature of existence is feminine. A woman waits; she never initiates. The man has to go and initiate. The man has to come and woo and court and persuade. Existence is feminine — it waits You have to woo it; you have to court it; you have to take the initiative and then the universe showers on you — showers in infinite ways, fulfils in infinite ways. Just like a woman: when you have persuaded her she showers tremendously.
No man can be such a lover as a woman can be. A man remains always a part lover; his total being is never in love. A woman is totally in it; it is her whole life, her every breath. But she waits. She will never take the initiative, she will never chase you; and if a woman chases you — howsoever beautiful the woman — you will become scared of her. She won’t look feminine. She will be so aggressive that her whole beauty will turn into ugliness. A woman is passive. Remember this word “passive,” passivity.
Universe is the mother. It is always better to call the God “mother than “father.”
The father is not so relevant. Universe is the mother: feminine, waiting for you — waiting for you for ever and ever — but you will have to knock at the door. You will find it immediately opened if you knock, but if you don’t knock you can go on standing at the gate. The existence is not going to open it; it is not aggressive.
Even in love it is not aggressive. That’s why I say it will respond.
But don’t ask the wrong question. Don’t ask, “Does the universe love me?” Love the universe and you will find that your love is nothing. The universe gives you such infinite love, returns your love with such infinite response…. But it is a response — the universe never initiates; it waits. And it is beautiful that it waits; otherwise the whole beauty of love will be lost.
But this question arises; it has a relevance with your mind. This is how human mind functions: it always asks, “Does the other love me?” The woman, the wife, asks, “Does the husband love me?” The husband goes on asking, “Does the wife, the woman, love me?” The children go on thinking, “Does the mother, the father, love me?” and the parents go on thinking whether the children love them. You always ask about the other. You are asking a wrong question. You are moving in a wrong direction. You will come across a wall; you will not find a door. You will feel hurt because you will clash against the wall. The very beginning is wrong.
You should always ask, “Do I love the wife?” “Do I love the husband?” “Do I love the children?” “Do I love my father and my mother?” But always start from yourself — do you love.
And this is the mystery: if you love, suddenly you know everybody loves you. If you love the wife, she loves you; if you love the husband, he loves you; if you love the children, they love you. A person who loves from his heart is being responded to from everywhere. Love can never be fruitless. It blooms.
But you should start rightly, on the right track; otherwise everybody is asking, “Does the other love me?” and the other is also asking the same question. Then nobody loves, then love becomes just a fantasy, then love disappears from the earth — as it has happened. It has disappeared; it exists only in the poetries of poets — fantasies, imagination, dreams. Reality is absolutely devoid of love now, because you have started with a wrong question.
Drop that question like a disease. Drop it and escape from it, and always ask, “Do I love?’ and that will become the key. With that key you can open any heart, and with that key, by and by, you will become so artful that you can open the very existence with that key; then it becomes prayer. Just ask the question, “Does the universe pray to you?” Then it will look foolish; then it will look just absurd.
“Does the universe pray to you?” — you will not oven ask that; but prayer is nothing but the highest blossoming of love.
You pray to the universe and then you find from everywhere rivulets of love flowing towards you. You become fulfilled. The universe has much to give to you, but for that you have to be open. And the opening is possible only if you love: then you become open, otherwise you remain closed. And even the universe is helpless against your closedness.

~ OSHO – Yoga The Alpha and the Omega Volume 5
CHAPTER 6 : Does the universe love me?

There is a subtler level to the sexual experience than the mere physical routine.

It is a level that is religious in essence. To understand this experience you must pay careful attention. If you cannot grasp the meaning of this experience, you will live and die in sex alone.

Lightning shines in the darkness of the night, but the darkness is not part of the lightning. The only relation between the two is that lightning only stands out at night, only in the darkness. And the same is true of sex. There is a realization, an exhilaration, a light that shines in sex, but that phenomenon is not from sex itself. Although it is associated with it, it is just a by-product. The light that shines in orgasm transcends sex; it comes from beyond. If we can comprehend this experience of the beyond we can rise above sex. Otherwise, we will never be able to.

You can liberate yourself from sex if you can learn to attain to samadhi without sex. If a man who wants an article costing one thousand rupees is shown where one can be had for free, he would not be in his right senses if he were to go to the market to buy it so expensively. If a man can be shown how he can attain the same ecstasy he derives from sex by some other means and in much greater measure, his mind will automatically cease its rush towards sex; his mind will start racing in the other direction.

Man had his first realization of samadhi in the experience of sex.

But sex is a costly affair, a very costly affair indeed. And it does not last for more than a moment; after a momentary climax, we return again to our original position. For a second, we reach towards a different plane of existence; for a second, we climb towards a peak of immense satisfaction. The momentum is towards the pinnacle, but we have hardly taken a step when we fall back to first base. A wave aspires to reach the sky, but it has hardly risen noticeably when it already starts to fall. We are the same. It is for that ecstasy, for that joy, for that realization, that we accumulate energy from time to time and again start the ascent. We almost touch that subtler plane, that higher realm, but again we fall back to our original position, minus a considerable amount of power and energy.

So long as man’s mind remains immersed in this river of sex he will repeatedly rise and fall again. Life is a continuous push towards egolessness, towards timelessness — whether conscious or unconscious. The intense desire of the being is to know its real self, to know the truth, to know the original, eternal, timeless source — to unite with that which is beyond time, to attain pure egolessness. It is to satisfy this unconscious inner desire of the soul that the world rotates around the axis of sex.

~ Osho – Sex to Superconsciousness,Chapter 2