I have been hearing about OSHO and his charismatic talks as well as unique approach to sexuality, religion and spirituality since decades but never had the urge to read his transcription of talks (He never wrote any book, he gave talks that his disciples and followers made into books). Though I have been to Poona many times but never did enter his ashram (A- It was procedure driven and takes time, and I was always on business trip to the city, so never had the time; B- Never could relate to his thoughts at inner level; C- It was more geared up towards western followers, so it was a big put off for me) but as I have read Patanjali’s ‘Yoga Sutra’ (To read my feature on the same, please click here... ) and when this book “Secrets of Yoga” based on the talks by OSHO on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, appeared in one of my searches for books to read, I decided to read it and understand the thoughts behind the man, whose followers called him “Bhagwan Rajneesh” – God Rajneesh.I liked some of his explanation and some were just geared up towards western followers so it was a mixed feeling but one thing that did come through reading the book, was that he has a different point of view – sometimes not very comfortable, some time outrageous but sometimes carried gem of thought within that touched me. One thing that did stand out was his palpable aversion to the present common Indian religious doctrine that is prevalent in India at the superficial level. So here is my gist from the book, thoughts that I liked and sometimes did not.
But before getting into the book, let me give you a brief biography of Chandra Mohan Jain also known as Bhagwan Rajneesh.
Brief Biography
Curtsey - Wikipedia
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain (11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who garnered an international following.
A professor of philosophy, he travelled throughout India in the 1960s as a public speaker. His outspoken criticism of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi and institutionalised religion made him controversial. He also advocated a more open attitude towards sexuality, a stance that earned him the sobriquet "sex guru" in the Indian and later international press. In 1970, he settled for a while in Bombay. He began initiating disciples (known as neo-sannyasins) and took on the role of a spiritual teacher. In his discourses, he reinterpreted writings of religious traditions, mystics, and philosophers from around the world. Moving to Poona in 1974, he established an ashram that attracted increasing numbers of Westerners.
In 1981, Osho relocated to the United States and his followers established an intentional community, later known as Rajneeshpuram, in the state of Oregon. Within a year the leadership of the commune became embroiled in a conflict with local residents, primarily over land use, which was marked by hostility on both sides. Osho's large collection of Rolls-Royce automobiles was also notorious. He was deported from the United States in accordance with a plea bargain. Twenty-one countries denied him entry, causing Osho to travel the world before returning to Poona, where he died in 1990. His ashram is today known as the Osho International Meditation Resort.
His syncretic teachings emphasise the importance of meditation, awareness, love, celebration, courage, creativity and humour—qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious tradition and socialisation. His teachings have had a notable impact on Western New Age thought, and their popularity has increased markedly since his death.
NOW HERE IS MY SELECTION OF THOUGHTS FROM THE BOOK
Osho – Secrets of Yoga
Patanjali needs great attention because there are very, very rare people who can be compared to the height of Patanjali, to his scientific attitude. He has made religion almost a science. He has brought religion out of all mystifications, but the interpretations have been trying to force all his sutras back again into the world of mystifications. That is a vested interest.
Secrets of Death and Karma
Death is of ego. If the ego exists, death exists. The moment the ego disappears, death disappears. You are not going to die, remember; but if you think you are, you are going to die.
The ego knows emptiness, it’s always unfulfilled. By the very nature, by its very intrinsic nature, it cannot attain fulfillment.
Sutra is a very condensed thing. A sutra is like a seed. You have to accept it deep down in your heart; your heart has to become a soil for it. Then it sprouts, and then the meaning.
A sutra is a seed. Intellectually, it’s very easy to understand it. Existentially, to attain to its meaning is arduous. That’s what Patanjali would like everyone to understand from...
Buddha is right when he says, ‘If you can see death, death will not be able to see you.’ Because the moment you see death you have transcended death.
Death is a God given gift. It’s a great opportunity to pass through. It can become a breakthrough: if you can die alert, conscious, and aware, you will never be born again – and there will be no death anymore.
The whole life is nothing but a learning about death, a preparation for death.
The sex act is a very minor death: and one who can achieve deep orgasm is one who allows himself to die in love.
Death is the greatest orgasm there is.
Religion is the search for the deathless, but that deathless is possible only through the door of death.
Types of Karma :
Sanchit – the total of all your past lives.
Prarabdha- the part of sanchit that you have to full fil in this life, which has to be worked out in this life.
Kriyaman – Day to day karma
Too much change erodes your being, splits you. Hence the eastern insistence to create a love in which you can remain for a longer period (if not a life time) as long as possible.
Each moment there are millions of opportunities to see God but you are not there. He comes and knocks at your door, but you are noth there, you are never found there. You go on roaming around the world. This roaming as to be stopped; that is what is the meaning of dharma. Dharana is the first step of the great synthesis of samyama
People like Patanjali are so cautious; they have to be cautious because of you. First he tells how to attain to samyama; immediately he talks about compassion and friendliness; then talks about power. Because if you have compassion then power cannot be misused
In yoga terminology, man is in a subtle way a small universe, condensed into a small existence.
Becoming is dreaming; being is truth
Whenever you fight, the ego cannot be transcended, because the ego lives by fight, struggle. So by overcoming, ego is never overcome. The more you will try, the more you will become egoist. Of course now your ego will be religious, holy pious. And remember whenever your ego becomes pious it becomes more subtle and more dangerous – it’s purified poison.
The Indians have become like parrots; they go on repeating without understanding, because if you understand then there is no need for any Bhagwat Gita. Your own divine song arises; you start your own singing.
All Indians, almost all, have become imitators; they have false faces, masks. And they go on thinking the country is very religious. It’s not: it’s one of the most cunning countries in the world.
Samyama can be described because samyama is the method. Enlightenment cannot be described. It happens out of samyama.
Enlightenment is like love: if you have fallen in love, you know what it is, but if somebody asks what is love, you will get puzzled.
Men can have one orgasm at a time, women can have multiple orgasms. A man can make love to only one woman at a time; a woman can make love to as many people as she wants. If a woman is allowed total freedom, no man will be adequate eough to satisfy her – no man.
Sex energy gives you life. The more you use sex energy, the more death comes closer. Hence, yogis become so afraid of releasing sex energy.
Each centre (chakra) is a star in your inner sky, and each centre has to be known and you have to bring your samyama on it, because it has many mysteries hidden behind it. It will reveal them to you. You are a great book – the greatest – unless you read yourself, all reading is useless.
Except your awareness, everything is constantly moving. Once you this witness, you will be able to see how fast everything else is moving.
When consciousness is perfect, breathing almost stops. But don’t be worried; that is not death. That is simply stillness. The whole effort of you is to bring you to such stillness that it cannot be broken by anything, to such a state of consciousness that cannot be disturbed.
The whole effort (of yoga) is how to find the permanent, how to find the one behind many, how to find the unmoving behind all the changes, the flux – how to find the deathless, how to find the beyond. Your habits will create trouble because you have lived with wrong habits for so long.
Your mind is conditioned for wrong habits – you always divide. Your whole intellect has been trained to divide and dissect and make many out of one. Mans lived up to now through the intellect, and he has forgotten how to put them together.
Science has come to discover the atom, and yoga came to discover Atma (Soul); Atom means minutest, and atma means biggest. Yoga came to know the whole and to realise total....
Man means mind
Ego is nothing but the false substitute for the self.
The problem is not with Mansoor, Krishna or Jesus, (Who declared themselves as God) the problem is with you. You cannot understand the language of no Ego. They just said what was truth...
We understand the language that we have lived up to now.
An enlightened person is the one who knows who he is, so there is no need to carry false identity.
When you love – if you have ever loved – you are not lover, you become love.
When you see a flower, you don’t say it’s beautiful, there is no need – it’s beautiful without you saying so. You don’t add any more beauty to it by saying so. So what is the point.
Once you are in tune with your inner man and woman, suddenly you are in tune with others also. That is what Patanjali’s whole effort is: how to transform the Solar energy (masculine) into lunar energy (feminine). And then how to be a witness to both: meeting, merging, becoming one: how to be transcendental to them.
A holy man has no mind
However virtuous, the mind remains unholy because the mind can not be whole.
It’s not that you breathe,; on the contrary, the whole breathes you.
Drop memories and imagination. Be here now
The meeting of Sun and Moon
Matter is the beginning, God the end. Man is the bridge: matter passes through amn and is transformed into God.... God is evolving through you; God is becoming through you.
Yoga has mapped the whole journey, the whole pilgrimage of man; from sex to Samadhi, from lowest centre, muladhar to the highest centre, the very peak, the pinnacle of evolution, the sahasrar.
Whenever there is light things are separate and then comes the darkness of the night and everything disappears – the separation. Everything is one.
When science and poetry meet, then a perfect world is possible. Otherwise, intellect goes on condemning intuition; intuition goes on condemning intellect.
Man is yet a form without content. The content has to be achieved, the great alchemy has to be achieved. ... you have to bring your energy from the Muladhar , from the sex centre, upward to sahasrar
YOU CANNOT CORNER A MAD MAN
A Buddha is not a man who has all answers; A Buddha is a a man who has no questions.
Love is food for intuition. If you are not loved, your intuition will not develop.
Avoid and escape from anybody who is on any ego trip because the possibility is he will give you some infection or the other.
Laughter is so spiritual. Nothing like it. When you laugh deeply all tension disappears.
When you become enlightened, there is no need to say anything about it. You will not really be able to say anything; all yuour thinking will stop. It is so tremendously silent. And it has such absolute authority that there is no need to ask anybody.
BEYOND THE ERROR OF EXPERIENCING
And to be desireless of the other is to attain to your pristine clarity of being. Then you are, and you are the whole, and there exists nobody except you. This Patanjali calls Kaivalya.
And the way, the path, toward Kaivalya is: first, the most essential step, vivek, discrimination; the second important step is vairagya, renunciation; and the third is the realisation of kaivalya, aloneness.
The spiritual is only a realisation of pure awareness, purush.
In Patanjali, God is absolute, pure presence. He does not do anything, but by His presence, things happen – the prakriti, the nature, starts dancing.
When one person dies, only one reflection dies. But the one who is being reflected remains undying; it is deathless.
Thinking is just dreaming logically, it is creating verbal; palaces; and sometimes one can get caught so much in the verbal, then one completely forgets the real. The verbal is just reflection.
What Buddha says is reflection, what Patanjali says is a reflection, what I am saying is reflection; don’t get caught in it. If the reflection is so beautiful, try reality.
Women are more intuitive; they live by hunches, they suddenly jump to conclusions – that is why it’s very difficult to argue with a woman – she has already arrived at the conclusion, argument is not needed.
You are looking at me; your eyes are just the holes in the body, but you the seer inside. If you can get out of the body, the same will happen as will happen if you can open the door and can come out in the open sky.
Yoga says come out, get out, go beyond. Get out of these holes, and you will become all knowing, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. This is pratibha.
The real seeker goes on sacrificing whatsoever he attains, and he remains always empty of attainment. That is spirituality: to remain always empty of attainment, and whatever comes by the way, one goes on sacrificing it.
ALWAYS REMEMBER TO LAUGH TWICE
Just watch and in watching, one, suddenly the consciousness takes a shift, changes, a Radical change – from the object, suddenly, it starts focussing on the subject, if you are a watcher. In that moment you know that you are not the mind.
There is no technique of awareness. You have to be aware to be aware.
What is the technique of love? You have to love to know what love is.
‘Seeing it’ is something which has nothing to do with the mind.
(In deep danger) the mind is put aside and you function out of no-mind, you function out of your being.
Your being can exist without the mind; there is no necessity for the mind to be there. Its just a structure that is useful in the society, but don’t get too fixated with the structure. Remain loose so that you can slip out of it. It’s difficult but if you start doing it, by and by, you will be able to.
The failure (failure to quit smoking, dieting etc) becomes permanent thing in you. By and by you start becoming driftwood; you say, ‘I cannot do anything.’ And if you feel you cannot do, then who can do.
Mind lives on your energy, it lives on your failure; it lives on your defeated self, defeated will.
You rather the silent and listen; in silence, there is no-mind. In small gaps, when there is no word, there is no-mind. Mind is absolutely linguistic – its language. So start slipping into the gaps. Sometimes just see, as if you are an idiot. Not thinking, just seeing.
If you can sit for one hour like an idiot every day, you will attain (enlightenment)
In that utter silence, one comes to perfection, to the very peak of life, of existence.
If you are really doing well, no encouragement is needed... the need arises because of an inner ambiguity, an inner confusion, an inner vagueness, an inner uncertainty.
All encouragement, all inspiration, is dangerous – it puffs you up. The ego enjoys it very much, but ego is your illness, your disease. You don’t need encouragement; you need understanding, you need clarity to see.
There is no need to compete with anybody; there is no need to prove anything. You are already proved! You are there; the existence has accepted you, given you birth. God has already made an abode in you. What more you need?
Zen is very pure; eyes filled with doctrine miss it. Zen is so pure that even a single word arise in your mind and you miss it. Zen is an indication.
Zen people are sincere but no serious: sometimes so sincere that they look almost profane.
TO KNOW WHAT IS
Nietzsche declared that God is dead and man is free now, but infact once God is dead and man is not there.. Then man is just matter, nothing more explainable, is a mystery no more, has depth no more, has infinity no more, and has meaning no more, significance no more, is just an accident – has appeared accidently, will disappear accidently.
If Nietzsche comes back, he will not be able to believe what has happened; the more the scientific mind penetrated into matter, the more it came to know that matter does not exist. God Survived, matter died....
The deeper scientific penetration became, the deeper they came to understand that it is energy not matter.
Unless you come to know prana within yourself, you will not be able to know what God is. And if you cannot know it within yourself, you can no know it without, because within you it is so close.
If you go within, you have found the shortest route to know what is.
If I say I am God, it becomes an offence. I am simply saying that you can also become Gods, never settle for less. But you feel offended. And you are living only 2% of your possibilities; 98% are being wasted.
If you can blaze to your utmost, you become God.
When your prana flowers, you are God. Right now, your prana is just crawling the earth – not even standing or walking.
If you come across Buddhahood; you will only see his body. Because you can see only that which you are, you cannot see anything more. You are your confinement.
Don’t crawl; stand up. Upanishads say,’Uttishtha jagarat prapya varnanni bodhayat’ – Stand up; become aware, because to become aware is the only way to stand up, to rise and soar high.
The cause of bonding is identification... ‘if you can loosen it a little, relax it a little, if you can uproot yourself from your body and mind, you will attain to a very great experience; and that experience is: you can enter into another’s body.
God comes at the moment of absolute, utter sacrifice.
NOWHERE TO GO
I want to take all the paths away. Pathless, not knowing where to go, you will go in. If all your paths – all the possibilities to escape from yourself – are taken away, what will you to? You will be yourself.
Competition is one of the most irreligious thing in the world. But that’s what everybody is doing.
Your whole enjoyment is always just comparative... you are alone, tremendously alone. You are unique, you are alone, you are one; and there is nobody else there to be compared with.
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