Prabhaker

What conditioning? I am tired of my mind, I want peace.

Facing boredom is meditation. Why people have invented alcohol, drugs. They are ways to escape from boredom. But you cannot really escape; you can only avoid for a while. Again and again the boredom will be coming, and again and again it will be more and more loud. You can escape in sex, in eating too much, in music - in a thousand and one kinds of things you can escape. But again and again the boredom will arise. It is not something that can be avoided; it is part of human growth. It has to be faced. The other response is to face it, to meditate on it, to be with it, to be it. That's what Buddha was doing under the Bodhi Tree - that's what all Zen people have been doing down the ages.

I am totally frustrated with my mind as it is. I can't hope that I can gain something through my mind. When I say total hopelessness, I mean that hope has failed and hopelessness also has become futile. I don't want enlightenment , if it happens, I am not going to create hindrance. I want to rest in peace.

You are the problem; Cabin in woods will not be of any help. It is not London that disturbs you or Paris or New York; it is You! And it is not that London has created you: you have created London. It is not the traffic and the noise and the mad rush: you have created this -- you and others like you. Look! The cause is within you. It is not that you are tense because of noise. The noise is there because you are tense, and you cannot live without it. That is why it is there. You need it, you cannot live without it. And in villages people are suffering. They want to come to Paris or to New York or to London. So don't think that because of the modern life you are so much in anxiety. It is because of you, not because of modern life, and you will be in anxiety anywhere, in any type of civilization. Go to a village for a few days -- two or three days -- and you will feel good for a while because even diseases need readjustment. But within three days you will be adjusted to the village, and then anxieties will start coming, disturbances will be felt again. Now the causes will not be the same, but you are the same. Life has always been so, modern or primitive. Tensions are there, anxieties are there. Objects change, but man remains the same. Two thousand years back you were driving a bullock cart; now you are driving a car -- but the driver remains the same. The bullock cart has changed -- things are different now, you are driving a car -- but the driver remains the same. He was anxious about his cart, tense about his cart; now you are tense and anxious about your car. Objects change, but the mind remains the same. Always try first to find the cause within you. How can the artificial light disturb you? How? If you are against it, it will disturb. If you have the attitude that it disturbs, it will disturb. But if you accept it, if you allow it to happen without any reaction, then you may even start enjoying it.

Kundalini can also awaken spontaneously, for no obvious reason or triggered by intense personal experiences such as accidents, near death experiences, emotional trauma, extreme mental stress, and so on. Madness happens many times, but if you know the technique, then meditation can happen. It always happens on the verge; that is why mystics have always used the term "the sword's edge." Either madness may happen or meditation may happen, and every method uses your body as a sword's edge from which either one or the other is possible.So be concerned with meditation and not with kundalini. And when you are aware, things will begin to happen in you.

When depressed, be depressed. Simply be depressed. Don′t get depressed about your depression. When depressed, simply be depressed. Don′t fight it, don′t create any diversion, don′t force it to go. Just allow it to happen; it will go by itself. Life is a flux; nothing remains the same. You are not needed; the river moves by itself, you don′t have to push it. If you are trying to push it, you are simply foolish. The river flows by itself. Allow it to flow. When depression is there, allow it to be. Don′t get depressed about it. If you want to remove it sooner, you will get depressed. If you fight it, you will create a secondary depression that is dangerous. If you get depressed, be happy that you are depressed and allow the depression to be. Then suddenly the depression will disappear and there will be a breakthrough. No clouds will be there and the sky will be clear. For a single moment, heaven opens for you. If you are not depressed about your depression you can contact, you can commune, you can enter this heavenly gate. And once you know it, you have learned one of the ultimate laws of life: that life uses the opposite as a teacher, as a back-ground.

If you begin with sitting, you will feel disturbed inside. The more you try to just sit, the more disturbance will be felt. You will become aware of only your insane mind and nothing else, it will create depression. You will feel frustrated, not blissful, you will begin to feel that you are insane. Sometimes you may really go insane. If you make a sincere effort to ‘just sit’ you may go insane. You may not be ready to be aware of all the insanity inside you. You must be allowed to get to know certain things gradually. Knowledge is not always good. It must unfold itself slowly as your capacity to absorb it grows. Begin with your insanity, not with a sitting posture. Allow your insanity. If you dance madly, the opposite happens within you. With a mad dance, you begin to be aware of a silent point within you; with sitting silently you begin to be aware of your madness. The opposite is always the point of awareness. If you begin with something active, positive, alive, moving, you will begin to feel an inner stillness growing. The more it grows the more it will be possible for you to use a sitting or lying posture.

This kind of forced celibacy is very difficult, it needs a different kind of lifestyle, food and many other things. I can't advise it to a person living normal life in the society.

Meditation brings a kind of celibacy, but not vice versa. A celibacy without meditation is nothing but sexual repression. And your mind will become more and more sexual, so whenever you sit to meditate your mind will become full of fantasies, sexual fantasies. celibacy cannot be taught. Only meditation can be taught. celibacy is the result. As meditation ripens, celibacy comes to fruit by itself. All effort is to be put into meditation. One who puts his effort directly into celibacy will sit suppressing sex in the name of celibacy. And celibacy is not happening – it is only superficial – within the being the worms of desire are crawling. Celibacy should be brought very slowly. All that brings you again and again to sexuality has to be dropped slowly, in steps. And once you start enjoying the energy that becomes available, when you are not obsessed with sex, just that pure energy becomes a dance in you — that is called enriching. Now, your energy is not wasted. Sex is the absence of meditation. When you live meditatively, sex is gone.

There is much difference between awareness and witnessing. Witnessing is still an act; you are doing it, the ego is there. So the phenomenon of witnessing is divided between the subject and the object. Witnessing is a relationship between subject and object. Awareness is absolutely devoid of any subjectivity or objectivity. There is no one who is witnessing in awareness; there is no one who is being witnessed. Awareness is a total act, integrated; the subject and the object are not related in it; they are dissolved. So awareness doesn’t mean that anyone is aware, nor does it mean that anything is being attended to. Awareness is total – total subjectivity and total objectivity as a single phenomenon – while in witnessing a duality exists between subject and object. Awareness is non-doing; witnessing implies a doer. But through witnessing awareness is possible, because witnessing means that it is a conscious act; it is an act, but conscious. You can do something and be unconscious – our ordinary activity is unconscious activity – but if you become conscious in it, it becomes witnessing. So from ordinary unconscious activity to awareness there is a gap that can be filled by witnessing. Witnessing is a technique, a method toward awareness. It is not awareness, but, as compared to ordinary activity, unconscious activity, it is a higher step. Something has changed: activity has become conscious; unconsciousness has been replaced by consciousness. But something more still has to be changed. That is, the activity has to be replaced by inactivity. That will be the second step. It is difficult to jump from ordinary, unconscious action into awareness. It is possible but arduous, so a step in between is helpful. If one begins by witnessing conscious activity, then the jump becomes easier – the jump into awareness without any conscious object, without any conscious subject, without any conscious activity at all. This doesn’t mean that awareness isn’t consciousness; it is pure consciousness, but no one is conscious about it. There is still a difference between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is a quality of your mind, but it is not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious, but when you transcend your mind, there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness. There is awareness. You are awareness. You live on the circumference, hence you are not able to see your own center.

If you can sit, there is no need for meditations. In Japan, for meditation they have the word zazen. It means just sitting, doing nothing. If you can sit, not doing anything, this is the ultimate in meditations. There is no need for any other thing. But can you sit? There is the crux of the whole problem. Can you sit? Can you just sit doing nothing? If that is possible – just sit, do nothing – everything settles by itself, everything simply flows by itself. You are not needed to do anything. But the problem is – can you sit? If it is possible, this is the ultimate in meditation. If it is not possible, then you will have to use techniques because through techniques only this will become possible. Through techniques, one day you will realize the whole absurdity. All techniques of meditation are just like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Meditation is absurd but one has to realize it. It is a great realization. When one realizes that his meditation is absurd, then it simply drops. 'Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.' There are inner seasons of life. So don't be worried - the spring is bound to come.

Can you live life happily for ever ? Are you ready to encounter old age, death ? Can't you see that humanity is in a miserable condition ? Why we need police, courts, jails, military, nuclear bombs, mental asylums, psychiatrists, millions of hospitals ? Men was not peaceful, healthy, loving and intelligent. We now need a new humanity.

If you are walking on the road, and you are also witnessing that you are walking -- not going along just like a robot, mechanical, everyday habit, the road is known, the legs know it, you can even walk with closed eyes. But walking with absolute alertness every step, every fall of a leaf, every ray of the sun, every bird flying in front of you, fully alert... slowly, slowly, you become aware that you are not the body that is walking, you are something inside which is witnessing. You should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand. You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing…you are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. You walk at a certain pace; that has become habitual, automatic. Now try to walk slowly. Buddha used to say to his disciples, "Walk very slowly, and take each step very consciously." If you take each step very consciously, you are bound to walk slowly. If you are running, hurrying, you will forget to remember. Hence Buddha walks very slowly. Just try walking very slowly, and you will be surprised – a new quality of awareness starts happening in the body. Eat slowly, and you will be surprised – there is great relaxation. Do everything slowly... just to change the old pattern, just to come out of old habits. Walk in a relaxed way, eat in a relaxed way, talk, listen in a relaxed way. Slow down every process. Don't be in a hurry and don't be in haste. Move as if all eternity is available to you.

@Parki It is reported of one Mohammedan saint, Farid, that he was passing near Benares (In India) where another saint Kabir lived. Followers of Farid said, "It would be just wonderful if you and Kabir met. For us it would be a blessing." The same thing happened to Kabir and his followers. They heard that Farid was passing, so they said to Kabir that it would be good if he would ask Farid to stay a few days in the ashram. Farid's disciples said, "You both talking would be a great opportunity for us, we would like to hear what two enlightened persons say to each other." Farid laughed when they said this and replied, "There will be a meeting, but I don't think there is going to be any talking. But let us see." Farid came; Kabir received him. They laughed and embraced each other. Then they sat in silence. Two days Farid was there, and for many hours they sat together, with the disciples restless, waiting for them to say something, utter something. But not a single word was communicated. The third day Farid left and Kabir came to see him off. They again laughed, embraced each other, parted. The moment they parted Farid's disciples gathered around him and said, "What nonsense! What wastage of time. We were hoping that something was going to happen. Nothing happened. Why did you suddenly become so dumb? You talk so much to us." Farid replied, "All that I know, he knows also. Nothing is to be said. I looked into his eyes, and he is there, where I am. Whatsoever he has seen I have seen; whatsoever he has realized I have realized. There is nothing to be said." Two enlightened persons cannot talk because they know the same. Nothing is to be said. Only one enlightened person and one unenlightened person can have a meaningful communication, because one knows and the other is yet in ignorance.

@Jonson You are breathing air! But yoga says that air is just the vehicle, not the real thing. You are breathing prana - vitality or what Taoists call chi.

How ?

How the material brain produces immaterial sense of consciousness ?

@Bruno Why do we reduce the beauty of relating to a relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? Because to relate is insecure, and a relationship is security, a relationship has certainty. Relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay, and in the morning we say goodbye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don’t allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun. You are in love with a woman or a man and immediately you start thinking of getting married. Make it a legal contract. Why? How does the law come into love? The law comes into love because love is not there. It is only a fantasy, and you know the fantasy will disappear. Before it disappears, settle down. Before it disappears, do something so it becomes impossible to separate. In a better world, with more meditative people, with a little more enlightenment… people will love, love immensely, but their love will remain a relating, not a relationship. In a better world, with more meditative people, with a little more enlightenment spread over the earth, people will love, love immensely, but their love will remain a relating, not a relationship. And I am not saying that their love will be only momentary. There is every possibility their love may go deeper than your love, may have a higher quality of intimacy, may have something more of poetry and more of godliness in it. There is every possibility that their love may last longer than your so-called relationships ever last. But it will not be guaranteed by the law, by the court, by the policeman. The guarantee will be inner. It will be a commitment from the heart, it will be a silent communion.

If you can change your work into meditation, that’s the best thing. Then meditation is never in conflict with your life. Whatsoever you do can become meditative. Meditation is not something separate; it is a part of life. It is just like breathing: just as you breathe in and out, you meditate also. And it is simply a shift of emphasis; nothing much is to be done. Things that you have been doing carelessly, start doing carefully. Things that you have been doing for some results, for example, money ... That’s okay, but you can make it a plus phenomenon. Money is okay and if your work gives you money, good; one needs money, but it is not all. And just by the side if you can reap many more pleasures, why miss them? They are just free of cost. You will be doing your work whether you love it or not, so just bringing love to it you will reap many more things which otherwise you would miss. Anyone engaged in creative work can make their livelihood a meditation.

We don't no know more than great masters like Gurdjieff , Buddha, Mahavira. Somebody can say , we talk a lot about non-duality, but yet animal species comes up. Gurdjieff has said that a woman cannot attain except through a man – and he is right. He is right because female energy differs from male energy. It is just as if someone says that only a woman can give birth to a child. A man cannot give birth to a child – he can give birth to a child only through a woman. The physical structure of the woman carries a womb; the physical structure of a man is without a womb – he can have a child only through a woman. And the same in reverse order happens in spiritual birth: a woman can get enlightened only through a man. Their spiritual energy differs also, just like their physical part. Why? Why is this so? And remember, this is not a question of equality or of inequality – this is a question of difference. Women are not lower than men because they cannot attain directly; man is not lower than woman because he cannot give birth to a child directly. They are different. There is no question of equality or inequality, there is no question of evaluation. They are simply different, and this is a fact. Love needs another; meditation can be done alone. Man can achieve through meditation – that’s why he can achieve directly. He can be alone. He is alone deep down. Loneliness comes naturally to man. For a woman, to be alone is difficult, very difficult, almost impossible. Her whole being is a deep urge to love, and for love, the other is needed. How can you love if the other is not there? You can meditate if the other is not there – there is no problem. Upto a certain level of spiritual development , male and female energies differ, mystics know about it. After fifth or spiritual body , there is no difference.

When Patanjali was working, a totally different quality of man existed in the world – very simple, primitive, unrepressed, with no neurosis, no enforced pattern; natural, more spontaneous, more in tune with nature. Trust was easy, doubt was difficult. In fact, to find a doubter was almost impossible. Trust was as natural as breathing. Now just the opposite has happened. Trust is almost impossible, doubt is as natural as breathing. And the whole energy is repressed. First a great and intense catharsis is needed.So all repressions have to be released. Before one enters on the path of Yoga, at least now, one has to drop all repressions whatsoever. Act out all your madnesses through Osho dynamic meditation http://www.oshodynamic.com/index.html http://www.oshonisarga.com/?page=dynamicmeditation Reduce the time and intensity of different stages if required.

Normally, so long as you are carried away by your speeding thoughts, you do not feel disturbed by the thoughts. But if you pause in-between, and study your mind, you realize how feverishly it works, and disturbs your peace. This pause is essential for curbing the over-activity of mind. You have to halt and watch your thoughts; for, if your thoughts are running fast, you cannot know your mind. Therefore, I reiterate, your experience is a good omen. Do not be worried about it, on the contrary, be glad. But then take the next step: take a completely impersonal view of the thought process. Be only an observer of thoughts; have nothing to do with them except to observe them. When thoughts cloud your mind, and harass you, ask them, ‘Oh thoughts! To whom do you belong? Do you belong to me?’ You will get no reply to this inquiry! Because the thoughts do not belong to you! Try and find out. Thoughts are your guests. They have made a lodging house of your mind. It is wrong to think of them as yours; and this same mistake comes in the way of getting rid of them. If you identify as yours, you stand in the way of their exit. And the thoughts which are your temporary guests become permanent lodgers. By looking at thoughts impersonally, you sever connection with them. Whenever a thought or desire is born in you, watch its birth, see it grow before the mind’s eye, and then observe its decline, and the final departure. Repeat this observation with the second thought that enters the mind; watch also its birth, and growth, decline and death. Thus, in a quiet and detached manner—that is, as a witness—observe the constant stream of thoughts. Feel nothing about them, good or bad. Form no opinions about them, favourable or unfavourable. Just watch. Thus, by silent choiceless observation, the traffic of thoughts slows down; and finally, a state of thoughtless Bliss is achieved.

Relax, these are tricks of mind, don't listen to it, mind will give up, don't hurry. On the path nothing more is needed than patience.

When you are really aware & not thinking, you are just aware, you have no mind to tell anything. Without thinking you can't conclude that awareness is fake.

Real women don't do sacrifice by fighting with naked sword in hand, killing as many men as possible. Women are not like Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong. Yes, there are men who are far more feminine than any woman, and there are women who are far more masculine than any man. But this is not a beautiful state. The woman, to be really a woman, has to be more and more feminine, has to touch the heights of softness and vulnerability. And the man, to be really a man, has to move into his masculinity as deeply as possible. What is happening now is a kind of uni-sex: men becoming more and more feminine, women becoming more and more masculine.