“Religiousness is the science of how to find the forgotten language of ecstasy. Whenever you are in tune with existence, there is ecstasy, there is bliss, there is benediction.”
We have lost touch with our natural state of ecstasy, says Osho, because we no longer live existential lives; we live almost entirely in our minds, in our imaginations. This makes us unhappy, and unavailable for what life is really offering us.
We find ourselves existing to sustain our society rather than letting it support and protect us, as originally intended. And society naturally supports misery, not our natural ecstasy, because an ecstatic individual cannot be enslaved by any ideology or structure. The words of Kabir – a mystic, a weaver and a poet, who can touch the earth and catch the stars with his transcendent verse – are the starting point for these inspiring talks on how to live our lives to their utmost potential.
From the Jacket
“An ecstatic man is bound to be free. Ecstasy is freedom. He cannot be reduced to being a slave. You cannot destroy him so easily; you cannot persuade him to live in a prison. He would like to dance under the stars and he would like to walk with the wind and he would like to talk with the sun and the moon. He will need the vast, the infinite, the huge, the enormous.”
Luminous and numinous, Osho’s words dance like fire yet refresh the reader like cool river water. At the core of his message one encounters the celebration of consciousness, the bliss of awareness, the power of presence, the serenity of silence, and the courage to free oneself from social conditionings and unconscious patterns. Perhaps that’s why every attempt to categories Osho falls short.
What remains true is that his talks and meditations continue to inspire millions around the world. Hailed as one of the most innovative and creative contem porary geniuses, Osho is an experience impossible to ignore.
Don’t turn science inwards. If the application of scientific methodology has been so devastating for outer nature, it is going to be even more devastating for inner nature because you are moving towards the more subtle. Even for outer nature a different kind of knowledge is needed, knowledge which is rooted in love. Knowledge is not needed at all for the innermost core of your being, for the subtlest, the transcendental. Innocence is needed, innocence with love. Then you will know the inside; then you will know the interior of your being, the subjectivity.
But the West is obsessed with technology. And it seems technology has succeeded in nature: “We have become more powerful.” We have not become more powerful! The whole idea is just fallacious; we have not become more powerful. We are becoming weaker every day, because the natural resources are being exhausted. Sooner or later the earth will be empty, it will not grow anything. We are not becoming powerful; we are becoming weaker and weaker and weaker every day.
We are on our deathbed. The way humanity has been behaving with nature it cannot survive for more than fifty years, sixty years, or – at the most – one hundred years, which is nothing. If the Third World War does not happen, then we will be committing a slow suicide. Within a hundred years we will be gone, not even a trace will be left.
And man will not be the first to disappear; many other animals, very strong animals, have disappeared from the earth. They used to roam the earth; they were the kings of the earth, bigger then the elephant. They are no longer anywhere. They were thinking they had become very powerful – they were very huge, with tremendous energy – but then the earth could not supply food for them. They began to become bigger and bigger and bigger, then a moment came when the earth could not supply food for them. They had to die.
The same is happening with man. Man thinks he is becoming more and more powerful. He can reach to the moon, but he is destroying the earth. He is destroying the whole possibility of future life. Slowly, humanity is disappearing. Please, don’t turn your technology toward the inner; you have done enough harm. Enlightenment cannot be reduced to technology.
So the first thing: the inner journey is of innocence, not of knowledge; certainly not of science, absolutely not of technology. It is more of love, innocence, silence.
Meditation is not really a technique. Because you cannot understand anything other than technique, I have to talk in terms of technique, but really, meditation is not a technique at all. Meditation is nothing that you do. Meditation is something that you fall into, just like love. Meditation is something in which you can be, but you cannot do it. Doing ceases.
How can there be a technology for non-doing? Technology is relevant with doing: you have to do something. Meditation is not something that you do. It is only when your doer has gone and you are totally relaxed, not doing anything, in a deep let-go, resting, that there is meditation. Then meditation flowers. It is the flowering of your being. It has nothing to do with becoming. It is not an achievement, it is not an improvement; it is just being that which you already are. What technique is needed?
People are foolish; that’s why techniques have to be talked about. If you understand, nothing is needed. Just being silent and just being yourself, not moving in any direction, not moving at all, you will wee the benediction, the meditation.
When this meditation has become such a spontaneous flow that you need not even sit in a certain posture for it, you need not find a small corner in the house where nobody disturbs you; when it is also there in the market – place – talking, walking, doing, eating, it is there – you go on feeling it, it goes on like breathing, or the beating of the heart – that’s what Kabir calls sahaj Samadhi, spontaneous ecstasy. It needs no technique; it needs only spontaneity, it needs only naturalness, it needs only simplicity.
Osho defies categorization, reflecting everything from the individual quest for meaning to the most urgent social and political issues facing society today. His books are not written but are transcribed from recordings of extemporaneous talks given over a period of thirty-five years. Osho has been described by The Sunday Times in London as one of the “1000 Makes of the 20th Century” and by Sunday Mid – Day in India as one of the ten people – along with Gandhi, Nehru and Buddha – who have changed the destiny of India.
Osho has a stated aim of helping to create the conditions for the birth of a new kind of human being, characterized as “Zorba the Buddha” – one whose feet are firmly on the ground, yet whose hands can touch the stars. Running like a thread through all aspects of Osho is a vision that encompasses both the timeless wisdom of the East and the highest potential of Western science and technology.
He is synonymous with a revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation and an approach to meditation which specifically addresses the accelerated pace of contemporary life. The unique OSHO Active meditations are designed to allow the release of accumulated stress in the body and mind so that it is easier to be still and experience the thought – Free State of meditation.
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