Prabhaker

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@Anna1 Sankara and the Outcaste One Summer noon at Varanasi Sri Sankara after taking a bath in the holy Ganga was proceeding towards the temple of Lord Viswanath along with his disciples. The Great Acharya saw an outcaste, a Chandala, coming along with his dogs in his way. He told the Chandala “get away, get away - move away, move away”. These innocent looking remarks led to an unexpected questioning from the Chandala and caused Sankara to give out to the world an immortal poem entitled ‘Maneeshaa Panchakam’ which elaborated the Vedantic ideas and brought into focus that even a person belonging to a low caste could rekindle the light of wisdom in the greatest among the great teachers. Sri Sankara’s encounter and dialogue with the outcaste on the streets of Varanasi were of immense and eternal significance. Issues raised by the Outcaste The Chandala asked Sankara: 1. By saying ‘Move away, Move away’ do you wish to move matter from matter or you mean to separate spirit from the Spirit? You have established that the Absolute is everywhere - in you and me and yet you want me to get away from you as if I were different. Is it this body, built up of food that you wish to keep at a distance from that body which is also built up of food? Or do you wish to separate Pure Awareness which is present here from the same Awareness present there? 2. Does it make any difference to the sun when it is reflected in the waters of Ganga or in the dirty waters of the cesspools in the streets of Chandalas? Is there any difference in the space as such, be it in a golden pot or in a mud pot? In the self-existing ocean of Blissful Consciousness, in the inner self, where there are no waves of agitating thoughts, how can there be this great delusory distinction - this is a Brahmin and this is an untouchable? SANKARA’S RESPONSE These words of the Chandala struck the Sadguru with astonishment. As a teacher of Advaita propagating the one Infinite Self in all, he immediately recognized that the Chandala taught him his own philosophy correctly. http://www.esamskriti.com/essay-chapters/An-Encounter-between-The-Holy-and-The-Lowly-~-Adi-Sankara`s-Maneesha-Panchakam-1.aspx

Shankaracharya was in Varanasi. One day, early in the morning – it was still dark because traditionally the Hindu monks take a bath before sunrise – he took a bath. And as he was coming up the steps, a man touched him on purpose, not accidentally, and told him, “Please forgive me. I am a sudra, I am untouchable. I am sorry, but you will have to take another bath to clean yourself.” Shankaracharya was very angry. He said, “It was not accidental, the way you did that; you did it on purpose. You should be punished in hell.” The man said, “When all is illusory, it seems only hell remains real.” That took Shankaracharya aback. The man said, “Before you go for your bath, you have to answer my few questions. If you don’t answer me, each time you come up after your bath, I will touch you.” It was lonely and nobody else was there, so Shankaracharya said, “You seem to be a very strange person. What are your questions?” He said, “My first question is: Is my body illusory? Is your body illusory? And if two illusions touch each other, what is the problem? Why are you going to take another bath? You are not practicing what you are preaching. How, in an illusory world, can there be a distinction between the untouchable and the brahmin? – the pure and the impure? – when both are illusory, when both are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of? What is the fuss?” Shankaracharya, who had been conquering great philosophers, could not answer this simple man because any answer was going to be against his philosophy. If he says they are illusory, then there is no point in being angry about it. If he says they are real, then at least he accepts the reality of bodies…but then there is a problem. If human bodies are real, then animal bodies, the bodies of the trees, the bodies of the planets, the stars…then everything is real. And the man said, “I know you cannot answer this – it will finish your whole philosophy. I’ll ask you another question: I am a sudra, untouchable, impure, but where is my impurity – in my body or in my soul? I have heard you declaring that the soul is absolutely and forever pure, and there is no way to make it impure; so how can there be a distinction between souls? Both are pure, absolutely pure, and there are no degrees of impurity – that somebody is more pure and somebody is less pure. So perhaps it is my soul that has made you impure and you have to take another bath?” That was even more difficult. But he had never been in such trouble – actual, practical, in a way scientific. Rather than arguing about words, the sudra had created a situation in which the great Adi Shankaracharya accepted his defeat. Osho, The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Talk #9

Mahatma Gandhi at the age of seventy was having wet dreams. Forty years he struggled to remain celibate, and the only result was that he was having wet dreams. So, try to become a celibate.

The original fault must be with the founder, Patanjali himself. Patanjali has divided yoga into eight parts. His division is clear-cut, very scientific, but he was not really aware of human stupidity. He started with the body – and that's the right way to start. The first part of yoga must be physiological because man lives on the circumference, in the body, so the work has to start there, only then can it reach the mind. And when one has gone beyond the body and beyond the mind, then the third, meditation, happens. So according to Patanjali the first part belongs to the body. But he was not clearly aware that millions of people would remain entangled with the first part. Hence yoga has become synonymous with yoga postures: people standing on their heads and doing all sorts of contortions. That has become synonymous with yoga. It is not a true yoga, it is just the preface, the introductory part; and the person who thinks the introduction is the whole book is idiotic. But Patanjali did not warn people. If he had warned people it would have been better. People like Patanjali believe in others' intelligence – which is not there! They trust. Their trust is immense, their trust is as immense as people's stupidity is! They respect people's intelligence. So he did not warn people, but the warning was absolutely necessary: 'Don't get entangled in the physiological part.' A few people, only very few – if a hundred people become interested in yoga then only one person will get out of the physiological entanglement. And that one person will become entangled in the psychological. If a hundred persons are entangled in the psychological then only one person gets out of it...and only when you get out of the mind does the real yoga begin. The physiological part of yoga will give you great physiological powers; it can make you live a really long, healthy life. But what are you going to do with a long life? If you are idiotic, instead of being idiotic for seventy years you will be idiotic for two hundred years. It is not going to help anybody; it will be a calamity. The physiological part is ordinary, the psychological part is ordinary. Both can give power, but power is not the goal of meditation. Power is politics, all kinds of power is politics. And power corrupts – all kinds of power – it corrupts unconditionally and absolutely. It always corrupts. Hence I say the only essential thing, the real core of all religion, of all yoga, of all methods of search, is meditation. One should put aside everything non-essential. You can use things as stepping stones, but not more than that – just like jumping boards. You need not bother too much about them. Your whole concern should be one-pointed; you should move like an arrow towards meditation. Only then in this small life, with so little time, power and energy available and with so many problems surrounding you, can you hope that the arrow will reach the target. Osho, Nirvana: Now or Never

Latihan cannot bring the great awakening. It became fashionable in the West and then disappeared completely, because it created many people who had to be put into mental asylums – for the simple reason that it has no stop built into the process. Once you start Latihan you are overtaken by the process of catharsis, and it goes on and on and you don’t know what to do. You are almost without any control. But Dynamic Meditation I have divided into different sections. Latihan has to be done alone; Dynamic Meditation has to be done under instruction. Then once you have learned it you can do it alone. Under instruction, after each ten minutes, the process can be changed. So you are always in control. It never becomes so big as to take all control into its own hands. These devices are needed just to clear the rubbish that Christianity has created, and to bring you to a state of naturalness, simplicity ... And from there the only way is witnessing, which is called, by Buddha, Vipassana. Vipassana means ‘looking at’. If you want to do Vipassana, or any silent meditation, Dynamic Meditation becomes absolutely essential, because Christianity having poisoned your mind, that poison has to be thrown out. You have to go completely crazy to throw it out; otherwise that craziness remains inside you, and won’t allow you to get into a silent, watching, witnessing meditation. So do some Dynamic Meditation, do some jogging, do some running, swimming and when you feel utterly tired, when you feel an intrinsic need to relax, you are free from Christianity. Then you can sit silently, then you can watch your mind – and it is not much. You have thrown out almost ninety-nine percent of it. Maybe here and there a few pieces are clinging because they are very old and have become glued to you ... Just watch them. Watching is a process of ungluing those small pieces hanging here and there in the mind. Once they also disappear, you don’t have a mind, you have a vast sky opening. That is the explosion, and that explosion will bring you to sachchidanand, to truth, to consciousness, to bliss. Sat Chit Anand ~ Osho

@Yonkon Hope is not the right thing. Live in the present so deeply, so completely, that nothing is left. Then there will be no projection. You will move very smoothly into the tomorrow without carrying any load from today. And when there is no yesterday haunting you, then there is no tomorrow. When the past is not hanging around you, there is no future. Hope is an illness, a disease of the mind. It is hope that is not allowing you to live. Hope is not the friend, remember; it is the foe. It is because of hope that you go on postponing. But you will remain the same tomorrow also, and tomorrow also you will hope for some future. And this way it can go on for eternity, and you can go on missing. Stop postponing. And who knows what the future is going to reveal to you? There is no way to know about it. It is an opening; all alternatives are open. What is really going to happen, nobody can predict. People have tried. Maturity happens when you start living without hope. Hope is childish. You become mature when you don't project hope into the future. In fact, you are mature when you don't have any future; you just live in the moment — because that is the only reality there is. Life has to become very intense in this moment. A man who lives in hope dissipates life. He spreads life; it becomes too thin. And when it becomes too thin, it is never happy. Happiness means intensity, tremendous depth. If you spread your hope into the future, life will become very thin. It will lose depth. When I say drop all hope, I mean be so intense in the moment that there is no need for the future. Drop hope. But whenever I say to somebody to drop hope, he thinks that I am telling him to become hopeless. No, I'm not doing that. When you drop hope there is no possibility of becoming hopeless, because hopelessness exists only because of hope. You hope and it is not fulfilled; hopelessness arises. You hope, and you hope again and again in vain; hopelessness arises. Hopelessness is frustrated hope. The moment you drop hope, hopelessness is also dropped. You are simply without hope and without hopelessness. And that is the most beautiful moment that can happen to a man, because in that very moment one enters into the shrine of God. OSHO

To live religiously does not mean to live seriously, it means to live meditatively. And meditation has nothing to do with seriousness. Meditation is playfulness. That’s why my insistence here is more and more on dancing, on singing. I have put vipassana and zazen in the background, because they can create seriousness in you, and you are already serious and it is dangerous. First your seriousness has to be destroyed, only then will you be able to enjoy vipassana without becoming serious. First you have to dance, so in dance your armor drops. First you have to shout in joy, and sing, so your life becomes more vital. First you have to cathart, so all that you have repressed is thrown out and your body is purified of toxins and poisons, and your psyche also is purified from repressed traumas and wounds. When this has happened and you have become able to laugh and you have become able to love, then vipassana. Now vipassana will not drive you serious, will not drive you in any way into some ego trip. Now you can sit silently; now sitting silently is not serious. Unio Mystica, Vol 1 ~ Osho

This guy is acting like a madman, but is not mad. He is not enlightened either.

@john5170 A madman sometimes can have glimpses which the rational man cannot have because the madman has stepped out of the mechanism of mind; of course on the wrong side, from the back door, but still he is out of the mind. Even from the back door he can have some glimpses which are not available to the people who never come out of the house. Certainly he is not so fortunate as to have come from the front door: that needs tremendous effort. Madness is a disease. It happens to you - you don't have to make an effort to be mad. It is a sickness and it is curable. Enlightenment happens through tremendous awareness and arduous effort. Enlightenment is the supreme health. In the West, once in a while - it is not an everyday phenomenon, but once in a while - an enlightened person has been understood as being mad, because the West understands only one thing: if you are out of your mind, you are mad. It has no category for above the mind; it has only one category - below the mind. In the East the misunderstanding happens because for centuries the East has known people who are out of their mind and at the same time above the mind; hence, they are similar to madmen. For the Eastern masses it creates a confusion, it creates a problem. They have decided it is better to misunderstand a madman as being an enlightened man than to misunderstand an enlightened man as being a madman - because what are you losing by misunderstanding a madman as being an enlightened man? You are not losing anything. But by misunderstanding an enlightened man as being a madman you are certainly losing a tremendous opportunity. But the misunderstanding is possible because of the similarities. Osho ~ From Personality To Individuality

Between a master and a teacher what is transferred? Not truth, not knowledge -- then what is transferred? In fact, nothing is transferred. In the presence of the master something arises in the deepest core of the disciple, not that it is transferred. Nothing travels from the master to the disciple, nothing at all, but the presence of the master, the very presence of the master, and something that was deep inside starts surfacing. The presence of the master calls forth the being of the disciple -- not that something is given or transferred. Just the very presence of the master becomes a catalytic presence and the disciple starts changing. Of course, a disciple will think that something is being done by the master. Nothing is being done. No real master ever does anything. All his doing consists of is being present to you, is being available to you. All his work consists of one simple thing -- that he should be there, just like the sun. The sun rises in the morning and buds open and become flowers. Not that the sun gives them something, not that the sun comes and opens the buds -- nothing is done by the sun, just the presence of the light and the bud starts opening. The opening comes from the bud itself... and the flowering and the fragrance -- it all comes from the bud itself. The sun has not added anything to it, but the presence has been catalytic. Without the sun being present there the bud would find it almost impossible to open. It would not know that opening is possible. It would never become alert of its possibilities and potential. A master simply makes you aware of your potential. If he has achieved, you can achieve. He is just like you -- the blood and the bones and the body. He is just like you. If something is possible in his being, if his bud can become a flower, then why can't you become? This very idea sinks deep into the heart, stirs your whole being, and energies start surfacing, your bud starts opening. This is called SATSANGA in the East -- to be in the presence of the master. And the real disciple is one who has come to know how to be present to the master. The master is present, but how to be present to the master? Have you seen the sunflower? That is the symbol for the disciple. Wherever the sun moves, the sunflower moves that way. It is always present to the sun. In the morning it is facing East, in the evening it is facing West. It has moved with the sun. Wherever the sun is, the sunflower moves. The sunflower is the symbol, the metaphor for the disciple. The Diamond Sutra ~ Osho

The real teaching cannot be taught, but still it is called a teaching. It cannot be taught, but it can be shown, indicated. There is no way to say it directly, but there are millions of ways to indicate it indirectly. Lao Tzu says that the Truth cannot be said, and the moment you say it, you have already falsified it. The words, the language, the mind, are utterly incapable. Truth defies reason; it defies the head-oriented personality; it defies the ego. It cannot be manipulated. It is utterly impossible for reason to encounter it. This is the first thing to be understood, and the more deeply you understand it, the more possibility will be available to me to indicate towards it. Whatsoever I am saying is not the Truth. It cannot be. Through words, only a situation can be created in which Truth may be possible. But that too one can never be definite about. It is unpredictable. No cause can be produced for it to happen – it happens when it happens. The only thing that can be done is to become available to it. Your doors should be open. When it knocks at your door, you should be present there. If you are present, available, receptive, it can happen. But remember, through scriptures, through the words of the Enlightened Ones, you cannot attain it. So the first thing is that it cannot be said. And every Master has to create an indirect situation, has to push you towards the Unknown. All that he is saying is just pushing you towards that which cannot be said. The second thing, before we can understand Kakua and this beautiful Zen story: the real teaching defies words but it cannot defy the heart. If there were a language of the heart, it could be said through it. But the heart has no language, silence is the only language of the heart. When the heart is silent, it says something; when the mind is silent, it says nothing. Words are the vehicle of the mind. No words, silence, is the vehicle of the heart. Silence is a language without words, but one has to learn it. Just as one has to learn the languages of the mind, one has to learn the language of the heart: how to be silent, how to be wordless, how to be without a mind, how to be a no-mind. When the mind stops functioning, immediately the whole energy moves towards the heart. When the mind is not functioning the heart functions; when the heart functions, only then can something be taught to you. The real teaching can be taught through the heart. You MUST be near the heart. The nearer you are, the more capable you become of understanding the silence. Remember, silence is not emptiness. To the reason, it may appear that silence is emptiness – it is not. Silence is the most fulfilled moment possible. It is not only fulfilled, it is overflowing. But it is of a felt significance. The heart is not empty; it is the only thing which is full. The mind is just empty because mind has nothing but words. And what are words? – ripples in emptiness. And what is silence? – silence is the Total. When you think, you are separate from Existence. When you don’t think, you are one. In a nonthinking moment you lose all boundaries; suddenly you disappear, and still you are. And this felt moment of non-ego, of no-mind, of no-thought is the situation in which it becomes possible for the Truth to descend into you. When you are empty of yourself, you will be filled by Truth. So all that a Master has to do is to kill you utterly and completely; is to destroy your ego utterly and completely; is to cut your head so that you can become the heart. And then the whole energy moves into the heart. Can you be headless? If you can be, only then can you be a disciple. If you cling to the head, then you cannot be a disciple. Can you live without the head? If you cannot live without the head, then you are closed to the Truth. Head is the barrier, and heart is the opening. Returning to the Source ~ Osho

@Nichols Harvey @egoeimai OSHO comments on Sankara’s sutra: ‘Do not be infatuated by the beauty, the breasts, the navel and the waistline of a woman’ These are nothing but contortions of flesh and fat ,contemplate this again and again. Man is attracted to woman and woman is attracted to man. The opposite always attracts; it is hypnotic. A newborn’s first contact with this world is the breast of the mother; his journey in this world begins with the mother’s breast. Hence man’s obsession with woman’s breasts; that’s the first impact. That is why all paintings, pictures statues, films, stories, all go on revolving around the breasts of women. Women keep trying to hide the breasts and men keep trying to uncover them. Tribal people who live close to nature — who we call “primitive” — have no attraction to the breasts because their women’s bodies and breasts are not covered. Every child is free to suck milk from the breast of his mother as long as he wants. Sometimes he does so until the age of 10, even. In so-called “civilised” societies, they try to wean away the child from the breast of the mother as early as possible. The sooner they wean the child away from the breast, the deeper becomes the attraction for it. People go on writing poetry, painting pictures & making statues depicting beauty of breasts. Their mind is totally obsessed with breasts. This means that the child was not satiated, he remained dissatisfied. “Sankara” says to remember this continuously — the earlier impact can only be removed by remembering this again & again. One scientist was experimenting with chickens. When a chicken was born of a hen’s egg, he did not let the chicken see the hen but kept it with a duck. When the chicken opened its eyes it saw the duck, & this was its first imprint. It would run after the duck & it would not recognise the hen. The duck could not tolerate the chicken running after her all the time so she used to kick it, beat it; despite this it would follow her everywhere. The hen tried her best to win it over, to get it near her, but it would be frightened of her & stand far away. At night also the chick wanted to sleep in the same place where the ducks were kept, but the ducks would throw it out. The hen wanted to take it to the hen house, but it was not ready to go there. The first imprint, the first conditioning, is very important. It goes on haunting you the whole of your life. The first event of life, whatever it is, always haunts a person, and you keep dreaming about it. What is so attractive in a man’s or a woman’s body? Every person is half woman & half man. Your whole existence is incomplete. The womanly half in you goes on yearning for the man and the manly half in you goes on yearning for the woman. Psychologists say that in the unconscious mind of every man is hidden the woman & in the unconscious mind of every woman is hidden the man. They go on searching outside till their inner man & inner woman meet. Until this happens, until your conscious & unconscious minds become one, attraction for the opposite will always be there. A man will be attracted towards a woman and a woman will be attracted towards a man. In a statue of “Ardhanarishawara”, Shiva is shown as half woman & half man. Until the half man & half woman within you become the image of “Ardhanarishawara”, until you become whole within yourself, you will go on searching outside feeling lost & thinking that meeting a woman will bring fulfilment. But the woman is there in your unconscious mind. That is why all the yogas & tantras are basically the process of uniting your inner energies. When you become united & one within you, then your outer desire ceases to exist. At the same time, when the outer desire ceases to exist, only then can you become one. These two things are interdependent. No, it is not a question of a man or a woman. The attraction for the opposite is of no use. You must contemplate that these are perversions of flesh and thereby remove this imprint in the mind. Continuous remembrance is like the waterfall which breaks the stone. Eventually, the stone turns to sand granules and water continues falling in the same way. This imprint is very strong and deep but if the thought continues like the trickle of water, one day the stone will break and disappear. And the day your imprints disappear, you become free.

There is only God's Justice, a Jesus will not suffer even on a cross, a Socrates will not suffer even when poisoned, a Buddha will not suffer even when abused and stoned. We can suffer even when we are living in a palace, in all luxuries. Any act done unconsciously is a sin, we can punished for that by the court, law or we can suffer without intervention of legal system. A Buddha will not suffer even when jailed. Our life can be a celebration but we live an ordinary life, because we live less consciously, it is God's Justice.

It is difficult to get rid of pain, misery, and suffering for the simple reason that they have been your companions for your whole life. Except them, you don't have any friends in the world. It is easier to be in pain, misery, suffering, than to be utterly lonely, because there are ways you can have pain-killers, you can have drugs, as an escape from misery. You can get engaged in all kinds of stupidities to forget your suffering. But there is no way - no painkiller is going to help you out of your loneliness, no drug, no stupidity. Loneliness is so deep that all these superficial methods cannot reach to it, cannot touch it. That's why it is so difficult to get rid of these few friends that you have got. This is your world, your family. Your suffering makes you somebody special. Without all your suffering, you are nobody. Who are you? You will not even have something to talk about with anybody. You will be at a loss - what are you going to talk about? At least your suffering, your pain, your misery, makes you somebody special. It gives you a certain character, it gives you a certain identity. Moreover it is your misery, nobody else's. It is your possession, your prestige. If it is just taken away from you, you will be a beggar. Suffering also becomes a support to your ego. A man without suffering, without pain, without any misery - how can he manage his ego? He won't have any props for the ego. You cannot get rid of your miseries for the simple reason that you don't have anything else to cling to. You will be empty - and nobody wants to be empty. ~ OSHO

@Bastian

◄ Matthew 19:24 ► Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

I can't give you logical reply to subjective truths. Successful people are happier than unsuccessful people, but their happiness is not everlasting. Some of them even suicide, some of them are treated for depression. Unless you yourself become successful , you can't know what they miss in their life. If you can't grow into a meditator , it is better to be a successful person rather than a unsuccessful person but blessed are those who find inner richness.

Sadhguru is happy due to his inner richness, outer success can't give you everlasting happiness.

You are misinformed ! Why Do Gurus Have Beards?

Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. Why? — because they seem to be polar opposites. Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means sharing with the world. Meditation you can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful you will have to come back to the world. Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when you are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life. Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face. They have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation, they have forced their mind to be still. It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden.

If you are unhappy, that simply means that you have learned tricks for being unhappy. Nothing else! Unhappiness depends on the frame of your mind. There are people who are unhappy in all kinds of situations. They have a certain program in their mind that transforms everything into unhappiness. If you tell them about the beauty of the rose, they immediately start counting the thorns. If you say to them, "What a beautiful morning, what a sunny day!" they will say, "Only one day between two dark nights, so why are you making so much fuss?" The same thing can be seen from a positive reference; then suddenly each night is surrounded by two days. And then suddenly it is a miracle that the rose is possible, that such a delicate flower is possible among so many thorns. All depends on what kind of frame you are carrying in your head. Millions of people are carrying crosses. Naturally, obviously, they are burdened; their life is a drag. Their frame is such that it immediately becomes focused on everything that is negative. It magnifies the negative. That is a morbid approach towards life, pathological. But they go on thinking, "What can we do? The world is such." No, the world is not such! The world is absolutely neutral. It has thorns, it has roses, it has nights, it has days. The world is utterly neutral, balanced - it has all. Now it depends on you as to what you choose. That´s how people create hell and heaven on the same earth. Osho, The Book of Wisdom, Talk #9

@Nahm Take an example, a person is preparing to steal. Stealing is not predetermined; it can’t be claimed that stealing is inevitable or unavoidable, there is complete freedom whether to steal or not. But once stealing has been committed, it is as if one foot has been lifted and the other foot remains on the earth: after doing it, you cannot undo the act. And the total effect of the act of stealing will spread over the personality of the person who did it. But as long as stealing is not done, the other alternative is present and available. The mind of a person swings between yes and no. If he says yes, he will be thrown towards the periphery; if he says no, he will move towards the center. Thus, in the middle, there is a choice. If he makes a wrong choice he is thrown towards the periphery; if he makes a right choice he moves towards the center. If a person lives in the peripheral and middle areas in such a way that he begins to move towards the center, he will become religious. But if he lives in such a way that he is never able to move towards the center, his life will remain irreligious. An unconscious man cannot be free, cannot have any freedom. Freedom comes as a consequence of consciousness, freedom is the function of consciousness. An unconscious man exists like a machine, like a robot. You may not know, but you are continuously functioning as a robot. Somebody abuses you and anger arises. It is almost like when you push the button and the fan starts moving. Somebody pushes the button and you become angry. What kind of freedom is this? You don't have any choice, to be angry or not to be angry. If the choice is not there there is no freedom. Freedom means freedom to choose -- you can decide whether to be angry or not, then you are free. But can you decide? At the most you can decide to show your anger or not -- that is another thing. But to be angry or not to be angry, have you got any decision about it, any choice about it?

@Josh2 WHAT AM I DOING AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT? I eat when I am hungry, and I sleep when I feel sleepy. I am doing exactly the same thing that you are doing, but the quality has changed, the significance has changed, my approach has changed. You also drink tea, I also drink tea; but your drinking of tea is just drinking of tea. When I am drinking tea I am drinking God -- God in the form of tea. I am sipping God. From the outside it is the same; from the inside it is totally different. A Zen Master is reported to have said... somebody had asked the same question: "What did you use to do when you were not enlightened?" He said, "I used to chop wood and carry water from the well." And the man asked, "Now what do you do since you have become enlightened?" He said, "I chop wood! and I carry water from the well." Naturally, the questioner was puzzled. He said, "What is the difference? I don't see any difference. Chopping wood, carrying water from the well, you were doing before, you are doing now. And the Master laughed. He said, "Yes, before I was doing it -- now it is simply happening. Now there is no doer. I am no more. Wood is chopped, water is carried -- I am no more." Zen people don't use the word 'God'. If it was asked of a Sufi he would say, "Now God chops the wood, God carries the water." Zen people say, "It chops the wood, it carries the water." That is their name for God; they don't personify God. Everything remains the SAME! and yet nothing is the same. Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1~ Osho

@Joseph Maynor There were many Hindus who challenged Atman, Brahman. Charvaka , originally known as Lokāyata and Bṛhaspatya, is the ancient school of Indian materialism. Charvaka holds direct perception, empiricism, and conditional inference as proper sources of knowledge, embraces philosophical skepticism and rejects Vedas, Vedic ritualism, and supernaturalism. Ajita Kesakambali is credited as the forerunner of the Charvakas, while Brihaspati is usually referred to as the founder of Charvaka or Lokāyata philosophy. Much of the primary literature of Charvaka, the Barhaspatya sutras (ca. 600 BCE), are missing or lost. Its teachings have been compiled from historic secondary literature such as those found in the shastras, sutras, and the Indian epic poetryas well as in the dialogues of Gautama Buddha and from Jain literature. One of the widely studied principles of Charvaka philosophy was its rejection of inference as a means to establish valid, universal knowledge, and metaphysical truths. In other words, the Charvaka epistemology states that whenever one infers a truth from a set of observations or truths, one must acknowledge doubt; inferred knowledge is conditional. Charvaka is categorized as a heterodox school of Indian philosophy. It is considered an example of atheistic schools in the Hindu tradition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka If you watch the Indian mind, it IS materialistic. And it is not that it is materialistic only today -- it has always been, because twenty-five centuries ago Buddha was telling people not to be materialists, and he was talking to the Indians. And even before Buddha, almost twenty-five centuries before Buddha, Parshvanath was telling Indians not to be materialists. India has given the greatest materialist philosophy to the world: the philosophy of the Charvakas. The Greek philosopy of Epicurus is nothing compared to the philosophy the Charvakas have given to the world. The word CHARVAKA is significant; it comes from CHARUVAK. Charuvak means sweet message, beautiful message. Another name of the philosophy of the Charvakas is LOKAYAT. Lokayat means popular; in which the majority of the people believe. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 4 ~ Osho