What is Meditation: Osho

Here is something tremendously beautiful I read recently. The great master Osho explains what meditation is in The Psychology of the Esoteric:
Meditation is not an Indian method; it is not simply a technique. You cannot learn it. It is a growth: a growth of your total living, out of your total living. Meditation is not something that can be added to you as you are. It cannot be added to you; it can only come to you through a basic transformation, a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth is always from the total; it is not an addition. Just like love, it cannot be added to you. It grows out of your totality. You must grow towards meditation.


The Great Silence

Silence usually is understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because very few people have ever experienced silence. All that they have experienced in the name of silence is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon. It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It is overflowing with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen by the inner eyes.

It is not something fictitious; it is a reality, and a reality which is already present in everyone - just we never look in.

Your inner world has its own taste, has its own fragrance, has its own light. And it is utterly silent. immensely silent, eternally silent. There has never been any noise, and there will never be any noise. No word can reach there, but you can reach.

Your very center of being is the center of a cyclone. Whatever happens around it does not affect it. It is eternal silence: days come and go, years come and go, ages come and pass. Lives come and go, but the eternal silence of your being remains exactly the same - the same soundless music, the same fragrance of godliness, the same transcendence from all that is mortal, from all that is momentary.

It is not your silence.

You are it.

It is not something in your possession: you are possessed by it, and that's the greatness of it. Even you are not there. Because even your presence will be a disturbance.

The silence is so profound that there is nobody, not even you. And this silence brings truth, and love, and thousands of other blessings to you.

Growing In Sensitivity

Meditation will bring you sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. It is our world - the stars are ours, and we are not foreigners here. We belong intrinsically to existence. We are part of it, we are the heart of it.

You become so sensitive that even the smallest blade of grass takes on an immense importance for you. Your sensitivity makes it clear to you that this small blade of grass is as important to existence as the biggest star: without this blade of grass, existence would be less than it is. This small blade of grass is unique, it is irreplaceable, it has its own individuality.

And this sensitivity will create new friendships for you - friendships with trees, with birds, with animals, with mountains, with rivers, with oceans, with stars. Life becomes richer as love grows, as friendliness grows.

Love, the Fragrance of Meditation

If you meditate, sooner or later you will come upon love. If you meditate deeply, sooner or later you will start feeling a tremendous love arising in you that you have never known before - a new quality to your being, a new door opening. You have become a new flame and now you want to share.

If you love deeply, by and by you will become aware that your love is becoming more and more meditative. A subtle quality of silence is entering in you. Thoughts are disappearing, gaps appearing...silences! You are touching your own depth.

Love makes you meditative if it is on the right lines.

Meditation makes you loving if it is on the right lines.

You want a love which is born out of meditation, not born out of the mind. That is the love I continually talk about.

Millions of couples around the world are living as if love is there. They are living in a world of 'as if.' Of course, how can they be joyous? They are drained of all energy. They are trying to get something out of a false love; it cannot deliver the goods. Hence the frustration, hence the continuous boredom, hence the continuous nagging, fighting between the lovers. They are both trying to do something which is impossible: they are trying to make their love affair something of the eternal, which it cannot be. It has arisen out of the mind and mind cannot give you any glimpse of the eternal.

First go into meditation. Because love will come out of meditation - it is the fragrance of meditation. Meditation is the flower, the one-thousand-petal lotus. Let it open. Let it help you to move in the dimension of the vertical, no-mind, no-time, and then suddenly you will see the fragrance is there. Then it is eternal, then it is unconditional. Then it is not even directed to anybody in particular, it cannot be directed to anybody in particular. It is not a relationship, it is more a quality that surrounds you. It has nothing to do with the other. You are loving, you are love: then it is eternal. It is your fragrance. It has been around a Buddha, around a Zarathustra, around a Jesus. It is a totally different kind of love, it is qualitatively different.

Compassion

Buddha has defined compassion as "love plus meditation." When your love is not just a desire for the other, when your love is not only a need, when your love is a sharing, when your love is not that of a beggar but that of an emperor, when your love is not asking for something in return but is ready only to give - to give for the sheer joy of giving - then add meditation to it and the pure fragrance is released, the imprisoned splendor is released. That is compassion; compassion is the highest phenomenon. Sex is animal, love is human, compassion is divine. Sex is physical, love is psychological, compassion is spiritual.

Abiding Joy for no Reason at all

For no reason at all you suddenly feel yourself joyous. In ordinary life, if there is some reason, you are joyful. You have met a beautiful woman and you are joyous, or you have got the money that you always wanted and you are joyous, or you have purchased the house with a beautiful garden and you are joyous, but these joys cannot last long. They are momentary, they cannot remain continuous and uninterrupted.

If your joy is caused by something it will disappear, it will be momentary. It will soon leave you in deep sadness: all joys leave you in deep sadness. But there is a different kind of joy that is a confirmatory sign: you are suddenly joyous for no reason at all. You cannot pinpoint why. If somebody asks, "Why are you so joyous?" you cannot answer.

I cannot answer why I am joyous. There is no reason. It's simply so. Now this joy cannot be disturbed. Now whatsoever happens, it will continue. It is there, day in, day out. You may be young, you may be old, you may be alive, you may be dying – it is always there. When you have found some joy that remains – circumstances change but it abides – then you are certainly coming closer to Buddhahood.

Intelligence: the Ability to Respond

Intelligence simply means ability to respond, because life is a flux. You have to be aware and to see what is demanded of you, what is the challenge of the situation. The intelligent person behaves according to the situation and the stupid behaves according to the readymade answers. Whether they come from Buddha, Christ or Krishna, it does not matter. He always carries scriptures around himself, he is afraid to depend on himself. The intelligent person depends on his own insight; he trusts his own being. He loves and respects himself. The unintelligent person respects others.

Intelligence can be rediscovered. The only method to rediscover it is meditation.

Meditation only does one thing: it destroys all the barriers that the society has created to prevent you from being intelligent. It simply removes the blocks. Its function is negative: it removes the rocks that are preventing your waters from flowing, your springs from becoming alive.

Everybody is carrying the great potential, but society has put great rocks to prevent it. It has created China Walls around you; it has imprisoned you.
To come out of all prisons is intelligence – and never to get into another again.
Intelligence can be discovered through meditation because all those prisons exist in your mind; they cannot reach your being, fortunately. They cannot pollute your being, they can only pollute your mind - they can only cover your mind.

And when you are out of the mind, watching it, being aware of it, just being a witness, you are intelligent. Your intelligence is discovered. You have undone what the society has done to you. You have destroyed the mischief; you have destroyed the conspiracy of the priests and the politicians. You have come out of it, you are a free man. In fact you are for the first time a real man, an authentic man. Now the whole sky is yours.

Intelligence brings freedom, intelligence brings spontaneity.

Aloneness: Your Self-Nature

Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart. Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself. It is the joy of having your own space.

Meditation means: bliss in being alone. One is really alive when one has become capable of it, when there is no dependence anymore on anybody, on any situation, on any condition. And because it is one's own, it can remain morning, evening, day, night, in youth or in old age, in health, in illness. In life, in death too, it can remain because it is not something that is happening to you from the outside. It is something welling up in you. It is your very nature, it is self-nature.

An inside journey is a journey towards absolute aloneness; you cannot take anybody there with you. You cannot share your center with anybody, not even with your beloved. It is not in the nature of things; nothing can be done about it. The moment you go in, all connections with the outside world are broken; all bridges are broken. In fact, the whole world disappears.

That's why the mystics have called the world illusory, maya, not that it does not exist, but for the meditator, one who goes in, it is almost as if the world does not exist. The silence is so profound; no noise penetrates it. The aloneness is so deep that one needs guts. But out of that aloneness explodes bliss. Out of that aloneness – the experience of God. There is no other way; there has never been any and there is never going to be.

Celebrate aloneness, celebrate your pure space, and a great song will arise in your heart. And it will be a song of awareness, it will be a song of meditation. It will be a song of a lone bird calling in the distance - not calling to somebody in particular, but just calling because the heart is full and wants to call, because the cloud is full and wants to rain, because the flower is full and the petals open and the fragrance is released...unaddressed.

Let your aloneness become a dance.

Your Real Self

Meditation is nothing but a device to make you aware of your real self – which is not created by you, which need not be created by you, which you already are. You are born with it. You are it! It needs to be discovered. If this is not possible, or if the society does not allow it to happen - and no society allows it to happen, because the real self is dangerous: dangerous for the established church, dangerous for the state, dangerous for the crowd, dangerous for the tradition, because once a man knows his real self, he becomes an individual.

He belongs no more to the mob psychology; he will not be superstitious, and he cannot be exploited. And he cannot be led like cattle, he cannot be ordered and commanded. He will live according to his light; he will live from his own inwardness. His life will have tremendous beauty, integrity. But that is the fear of the society.

Integrated persons become individuals, and the society wants you to be non-individuals. Instead of individuality, the society teaches you to be a personality. The word 'personality' has to be understood. It comes from the root, persona – persona means a mask. The society gives you a false idea of who you are: it gives you just a toy, and you go on clinging to the toy your whole life.

As I see it, almost everybody is in the wrong place. The person who would have been a tremendously happy doctor is a painter and the person who would have been a tremendously happy painter is a doctor. Nobody seems to be in his right place; that's why this whole society is in such a mess. The person is directed by others: he is not directed by his own intuition.

Meditation helps you to grow your own intuitive faculty. It becomes very clear what is going to fulfill you, what is going to help you flower. And whatsoever it is, it is going to be different for each individual - that is the meaning of the word 'individual': everybody is unique. And to seek and search for your uniqueness is a great thrill, a great adventure.

O0O