Prabhaker

@Moreira "The man who lives in the future, lives a counterfeit life. He does not really live, he only pretends to live. He hopes to live, he desires to live, but he never lives. And the tomorrow never comes, it is always today. And whatsoever comes is always now and here, and he does not know how to live here-now. The way to escape is called "desire.", tanha – that is Buddha's word for what is an escape from the present, from the real into the unreal. "The man who desires is an escapist. Now, this is very strange that meditators are thought to be escapists. That is utter nonsense. Only the meditator is not an escapist – everybody else is. Meditation means relaxing in the moment, in the present. Meditation is the only thing in the world which is not escapist, although it is thought to be the most escapist thing. People who condemn meditation always condemn it with the argument that it is escape, escaping from life. They are simply talking nonsense; they don't understand what they are saying. "Meditation is not escaping from life: it is escaping into life. Mind is escaping from life, desire is escaping from life." Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 1, Talk #7 Never be an escapist because escape is not going to help. The best arrangement is to work in the world but don't be lost in it. Work for five or six hours and then forget all about it. Give at least two hours for your inner growth, a few hours for your relationship, love, children, friends, society. Your profession should only be a part of life. It should not overlap into every dimension of your life, as ordinarily it does. A doctor becomes almost a twenty-four-hour doctor. He thinks about it, he talks about it. Even when he is eating he is a doctor. While he is making love to his woman, he is a doctor. My whole effort is to help you to be in the world and yet to be a meditator. Of course it is more difficult because there will be more challenge and situations. It is easier to be either a doctor or a meditator. It will be difficult to be both because that will give you many contradictory situations. But a person grows when there are contradictory situations. In the turmoil, in that clash of the contradictions, integrity is born. You become more centred. A wise man has to be so wise that he can allow himself a little foolishness also. That is the greatest wisdom: to use foolish-ness also as a part of life so that you can laugh -- not only at others but at yourself also; so that you can play for no profit, no motive; so that you can simply relate to people for no reason whatsoever. " The cypress in the courtyard ~ Osho

@John Iverson You can go into meditation just by sitting, but then be just sitting; do not do anything else. If you can be just sitting, it becomes meditation. Be completely in the sitting; nonmovement should be your only movement. In fact, the word Zen comes from the word zazen, which means, just sitting, doing nothing. If you can just sit, doing nothing with your body and nothing with your mind, it becomes meditation; but it is difficult. You can sit very easily when you are doing something else but the moment you are just sitting and doing nothing, it becomes a problem. Every fiber of the body begins to move inside; every vein, every muscle, begins to move. You will begin to feel a subtle trembling; you will be aware of many points in the body of which you have never been aware before. And the more you try to just sit, the more movement you will feel inside you. So sitting can be used only if you have done other things first. You can just walk, that is easier. You can just dance, that is even easier. And after you have been doing other things that are easier, then you can sit. Sitting in a buddha posture is the last thing to do really; it should never be done in the beginning. Only after you have begun to feel identified totally with movement can you begin to feel totally identified with nonmovement. So I never tell people to begin with just sitting. Begin from where beginning is easy, otherwise you will begin to feel many things unnecessarily ¯ things that are not there. If you begin with sitting, you will feel much disturbance inside. The more you try to just sit, the more disturbance will be felt; you will become aware only of your insane mind and nothing else. It will create depression, you will feel frustrated. You will not feel blissful; rather, you will begin to feel that you are insane. And sometimes you may really go insane. If you make a sincere effort to 'just sit,' you may really go insane. Only because people do not really try sincerely does insanity not happen more often. With a sitting posture you begin to know so much madness inside you that if you are sincere and continue it, you may really go insane. It has happened before, so many times; so I never suggest anything that can create frustration, depression, sadness ¯ anything that will allow you to be too aware of your insanity. You may not be ready to be aware of all the insanity that is 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. I begin with your insanity, not with a sitting posture; I 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 madness. The opposite is always the point of awareness. With your dancing madly, chaotically, with crying, with chaotic breathing, I allow your madness. Then you begin to be aware of a subtle point, a deep point inside you that is silent and still, in contrast to the madness on the periphery. You will feel very blissful; at your center there is an inner silence. But if you are just sitting, then the inner one is the mad one; you are silent on the outside, but inside you are mad. If you begin with something active ¯ something positive, alive, moving ¯ it will be better; then 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 posture or a lying posture ¯ the more silent meditation will be possible. But by then things will be different, totally different. A meditation technique that begins with movement, action, helps you in other ways, also. It becomes a catharsis. When you are just sitting, you are frustrated; your mind wants to move and you are just sitting. Every muscle turns, every nerve turns. You are trying to force something upon yourself that is not natural for you; then you have divided yourself into the one who is forcing and the one who is being forced. And really, the part that is being forced and suppressed is the more authentic part; it is a more major part of your mind than the part that is suppressing, and the major part is bound to win. Osho, Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy , Talk #5

I can suggest teachers who teach yoga for its physical benefits, I think teachers who teach yoga for psychic powers or Samadhi are not available on internet. Light on Yoga is widely called the bible of yoga and has served as the source book for generations of yoga students around the world. It is the classic text for all serious students of yoga. http://yogabog.com/sites/default/files/files/Iyengar_B_K_S__The_Illustrated_Light_On_Yoga.pdf

The Most Important Lesson From India

OSHO Kundalini Meditation Osho Kundalini Meditation is one of Osho’s most popular and potent meditation techniques. It involves shaking, dancing, sitting silently, and relaxing. Instructions: The meditation is one hour long, with four stages. First Stage: 15 minutes Be loose and let your whole body shake, feeling the energies moving up from your feet. Let go everywhere and become the shaking. Your eyes may be open or closed. Second Stage: 15 minutes Dance ... any way you feel, and let the whole body move as it wishes. Again, your eyes can be open or closed. Third Stage: 15 minutes Close your eyes and be still, sitting or standing, observing, witnessing, whatever is happening inside and out. Fourth Stage: 15 minutes Keeping your eyes closed, lie down and be still.

Many times I have seen, observed, persons coming to me for meditation. They say, ”I am very much disturbed, with pains inside, sufferings. Somehow, help me to still my mind.” I suggest to them something to do, then in a week they come back and say, ”What have you done? I have become more disturbed!” Why did it happen? Because when they begin to meditate, when they begin to feel a certain silence, they begin to feel the disturbance more. Against that silence, the disturbance is felt more keenly. Before they were simply disturbed, without any silence inside. Now they have something to judge against, to compare against. Now they say, ”I am going mad.” So whenever someone begins meditation, he will become aware of many things of which he was not previously aware, and because of that awareness he will suffer. This is how things are, and one has to pass through them. So if you start meditation and you do not suffer, it means it is not meditation, but just a hypnosis. That means you are just drugging yourself. You are becoming more unconscious. With a real, authentic meditation you will suffer more, because you will become more aware. You will see the ugliness of your anger, you will feel the cruelty of your jealousy, you will now know the evidence of your behaviour. Now, in every gesture, you will begin to feel where a hidden animal in you, and you will suffer. But this is how one grows. Growth is a painful birth. The child suffers when it comes out of the womb, but that is part and parcel of growth. So it is right that awareness and knowledge bring more richness and growth and depth in man’s life – not because man doesn’t suffer, but because man suffers. If someone has led just a snug existence – as it happens in rich families – you will feel, you will observe, that if a person is born rich, if he has lived without knowing suffering, without knowing the pain of living, without knowing anything, then whenever there is a demand, even before the demand the supply is there. He has not suffered hunger, he has not suffered love, he has not suffered anything. Whatsoever is demanded is supplied – rather. it is supplied even before the demand is there. But then look in the eyes of that man: you will not find any depth. It is as if he has not lived. He has not struggled; he does not know what life is. That is why it is always very difficult to find any depth in such men. They are superficial. If they laugh, their laughter is superficial. It just comes from the lips, never from the heart. If they weep, that weeping is superficial. It is not from the depths of the being: it is just a formal thing. The more the struggle, the more the depth. This depth, this richness, this knowledge, will create such a complexity that you would like to escape from it. When you suffer, you want to escape from it. If you are looking to escape from suffering, then alcohol can become appealing or LSD or marijuana or something else. Religion means not escaping from suffering but living with it: living with it, not escaping! And if you live with it, you will become more and more aware. If you want to escape, then you will have to leave awareness. Then, somehow, you will have to become unconscious. There are many methods. Alcohol is the easiest, but not the only method and not even the worst. You can go and listen to music and become absorbed in it; then you are using music as alcohol. Then for the time being, your mind is diverted toward music and you have forgotten everything else. Music is working as alcohol for everything else. Or, you can go to a temple or you can do japa. You can use these things as alcohol, as an intoxicant. Anything which makes you less aware of your suffering is antireligious. Anything that makes you more aware of your suffering, and which helps you encounter it without escaping, is religious. That is what tapas – austerity – means. tapas means this: not escaping from any suffering, but remaining there and living with it with full awareness. If you do not escape, if you remain there with your suffering, one day suffering will disappear and you will have grown into more awareness. Suffering disappears in two ways. You become unconscious; then suffering disappears for you. But, really, suffering remains there. It cannot disappear. It remains there! Really, your consciousness has disappeared, so you cannot feel it, you cannot be aware of it. If you become more conscious, in the meantime you will have to suffer more. But accept suffering as a part of growth, as a part of training, as just a discipline, and then one day, when your consciousness has gone beyond your suffering, suffering will disappear not just for you – it will disappear objectively. Use suffering as a stepping-stone; do not escape from it. If you escape from it, you are escaping from your destiny, from the possibility of going beyond knowledge by using suffering as a device. Source: Osho Book “The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 2″

Three-Step Let Go Step 1: Relaxing the body Sitting or lying down in a comfortable position, when you are ready you can allow your eyes to close now. Consciously letting your body relax. Feeling all the energy of the body moving inwards…moving inside the body…moving from the periphery and moving inwards now. Watching from inside as the body relaxes more and more…just as if it is someone else’s body relaxing…. The body becoming softer and softer…every part of the body so relaxed…. A letting go of any tension…. A letting go that one can simply allow to happen…. And as you relax even deeper, aware and present, perhaps you can see the body is left behind like a shell, an empty shell. Step 2: Breathing Relaxed and awake, with the next out-breath you can allow your breathing to relax in your own time now. With each out-breath, the feeling of relaxing happening easily and naturally. With each out-breath the sense of letting go a little deeper…. Noticing how the breathing becomes shallow…and still more shallow…so shallow it seems to stop…. And it can stop, for moments at a time, and you feel even more at peace, even more relaxed, and aware. Step 3: Thoughts Relaxed and aware, in just the same way perhaps you can notice how the thoughts are becoming silent…. Slowing down and becoming even more silent now…. Just as if a river is flowing by and you are sitting on the bank, you can watch thoughts drift by…. You can notice that there is a distance, a space, a place, between you and the river, between you and any remaining thoughts. Step 4: Coming Back And slowly coming back now…. Coming back to this moment, to this body here and now…. Let-go and Witnessing – Osho Let-go is the atmosphere in which witnessing flowers. They are almost two sides of the same experience — they are not different. One cannot allow let-go without witnessing, neither can one be a witness without being in a let-go. Let-go simply means total relaxation: no tension, no thought, no desire — mind not moving, not going anywhere, just not functioning. Mind in silence allows the greatest experience of life, the arising of a new phenomenon — witnessing. We are all living and we are all a little bit conscious too; otherwise life would be impossible. But our consciousness is very superficial, just skin-deep — or perhaps not even that deep. Witnessing is as deep as you are, as existence is. It is the deepest point of life in existence where one simply watches what remains to watch: a tremendous silence, a great joy, a beautiful existence surrounding you, and a deep ecstasy — a song without words and a dance without movement. Witnessing is the ultimate experience of religion. Only those who arrive at it have really lived; others have been only vegetating. -Osho From Golden Future, Chapter 18

Established by Sadhguru , in the foothills of the Velliangiri mountains, forty kilometers from the city of Coimbatore in South India, serve as home for the Isha Yoga Center. http://isha.sadhguru.org/isha-global-centers/isha-yoga-center/

OSHO International Meditation Resort offers a variety of meditations for every type of person including Vipassana . http://www.osho.com/visit/facilities-services/daily-meditations Yes , it is costlier , but it is one the most beautiful , luxurious, happiest meditation resort in India , it attracts large number of visitors all over the world, everybody wears same kind of cloths for a reason. There are many less costlier Vipassana centers in India and rest of the world. https://www.dhamma.org/en/locations/contacts http://www.thali.dhamma.org/ http://www.dhamma.net.in/

Man has suffered from many diseases and he has not even been aware that they are diseases. He has been punishing small criminals and he has been worshiping great criminals. Who is Alexander the Great? -- a great criminal; he murdered people on a mass scale. Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Nadir Shah, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane are all mass scale criminals. But their crimes are so big, perhaps, that you cannot conceive.... They have killed millions of people, burned millions of people alive, but they are not thought of as criminals. And a small pickpocket, who takes away a two rupee note from your pocket will be punished by the court. And perhaps the two rupee note that you were carrying was not authentic at all. But his mother is dying, and he has no money for medicine, and I cannot say that he is a criminal; he is simply a kind-hearted man who loves his mother. Society is concerned with itself, and that’s how it should be. They are not concerned that you should become a self-knower. They are concerned that you should become an efficient part in the mechanism of the society. You should fit into the pattern. So they are trying to give you an ego that fits with the society. They teach you morality. Morality means giving you an ego which will fit with the society. If you are immoral, you will always be a misfit somewhere or other. That’s why we put criminals in the prisons – not that they have done something wrong, not that by putting them in the prisons we are going to improve them, no. They simply don’t fit. They are troublemakers. They have certain types of egos of which the society doesn’t approve. If the society approves, everything is good. One man kills somebody – he is a murderer. And the same man in wartime kills thousands – he becomes a great hero. The society is not bothered by a murder, but the murder should be commited for the society – then it is okay. The society doesn’t bother about morality. Morality means only that you should fit with the society. If the society is at war, then the morality changes. If the society is at peace, then there is a different morality. Morality is a social politics. It is diplomacy. And each child has to be brought up in such a way that he fits into the society, that’s all. Because society is interested in efficient members. Society is not interested that you should attain to self-knowledge. A true morality arises only in a meditator's conciousness. It is not something imported from the outside. It is something arising in your very being. It is spontaneous. And when morality is spontaneous it is a joy, it is simply sharing your compassion and love. ~ OSHO

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@Anirban657 Life is not serious. You are serious. Life is not anything serious; nothing can be more nonserious than life. Life is absolutely nonserious! Intensity is a very different thing from seriousness. If you are serious, you can never really be intense; you can only be tense. That's a different thing. With seriousness, you can never be intense and deep. You will always be shallow. Life is not serious at all. It is just a nonserious play - with nothing to be achieved, with nowhere to reach. It is just a play, with no end. Serious is always end-oriented. It means that you are living in order to achieve something, and life will be meaningless if you don't achieve it. This is seriousness: the means lies in the end, not in The here and now. The end must be achieved. If you achieve it, then it is okay. If you don't achieve it, then everything ii lost. You are serious because you have made some condition for your life. You have identified the meaning of your life by some condition that has to be fulfilled. But you can never achieve anything because nothing is static, everything is constantly changing. You fix something today, but by tomorrow nothing is going to be the same. Not even you will be the same; everything will have changed completely. But in your mind, the end remains the same. The whole situation has changed now, so you can never achieve what you want. That is why there is so much frustration Why so much preparation? You try, you think, you plan, you work, and then there is no achievement. The thing that you desire never happens, it never comes. If life was a static, fixed thing - not dynamic and flowing - then you could achieve what you wanted, but then life would be a death. Life is life because it is dynamic, changing. You cannot predict its course, it is unpredictable. It is dynamic and flowing - always flowing nowhere. If you are serious, then you cannot flow. Then you are frozen inside; then you become just a dead stone. Then there are resistances around you. You cannot melt, you cannot change as life changes. You have a fixed pattern, a fixed shape, and because of that shape you will resist change. Then you are not flowing with life, you are struggling against it. Seriousness creates frozenness, and frozenness creates struggle. You can just let go. Be ready to be anyone, to be anything, to be in any shape at all. Any shape is good: trees are good and dogs are good and man is good. If you are ready to be anything at all - anything that life requires - you will be more alive, you will be able to live more intensely. Intensity is killed when you have become identified with a particular form, a particular way of being. Then you are shallow because you are concerned with your form not with your being. Then you will be tense, not intense. It you are ready to exist in any way whatsoever then you have become part of the ocean of life. Then there are no more waves, there is no rising and falling. You have become the ocean itself. You are ready to be anything: to rise or to fall, be or not to be, Then you can flow with everything. And the more you flow, the more alive you are. So if you know life, you know that life is not serious at all. Religious people have made it serious because they a!c anti-life. But to me, that is not religion at all. That is just a metaphysics for suicide. To me, relig on means a very non - serious attitude: very childlike, very innocent. A serious person can never be innocent, and one who is innocent can never be serious. They are contradictory; they cannot exist together. A child is never serious, but he is very intense. In everything he does, he is intense. If he is playing he is intense; if he is angry he is intense. But an old man is never intense. Hi is serious. He will turn even play into work because his play becomes a fight, a struggle; a competition. Their is either defeat or victory. All kinds of nonsense will emerge, it will not be just a play. Intensity is something else. It is not seriousness, it is something altogether different. Whenever there is seriousness, sadness is about to come. You cannot enjoy seriousness, you cannot laugh with seriousness. Saints have never laughed. Sadness is bound to be somewhere around the corner, always. Seriousness is sad, it cannot laugh. And even if it laughs, it is only a release mechanism. The laughter is not innocent it is only a release mechanism. A serious person can laugh but it is only to release the tension of seriousness. Then again he is ready to be serious, and more tensions are accumulated. If I tell a joke, I create tension in you, expectation. curiosity. What is going to happen? How will it turn out? You become tense with expectation. You become serious, your mind begins to work. How is the joke going to end? if it ends just as you expected it to, you will not laugh because then there is no release. But if the end turns out to be completely unimagined, if it is a complete turnabout; if you never expected that this could be the end, then the tension that has been brought to a climax is released. You laugh. But the laughter is not innocent because it is just a release of tension. Every joke has to create a tension in you. Then, when you laugh, you feel released. Innocent laughter is something very different. It is not a release mechanism, it is a way of living. It is just a way of living! Take laughing as a way of living. Exist as laughter You will be absolutely nonserious. It may be that you will not be able to achieve anything, but what is the meaning of achievement? Even one who achieves - what does he achieve7 Even when achieving, nothing is achieved. Then whole absurdity is this: that even if you achieve something, nothing is achieved and nothing lasts. But the nonachieving mind gains much, without gaining anything. Every moment, one who has a nonachieving mind gains. What he gains may not be something very beautiful - in the end he may not have achieved anything - but he will be rich inside. Every moment was rich: the achievement is in the being. He may not be a great man, a famous man - a great scientist, a great painter - he may be no one really, but he can die peacefully; he can die lovingly. He is rich inside. Life, as it was, has given much. Nothing was snatched, nothing was taken with a struggle. It was a blessing, it was a beatitude, it was a benediction. As it was without any conditions. The mind that is trying to achieve is saying to life, to the whole cosmos, "I can be happy only if 'this' is happening." The person is living with a condition. You cannot place any conditions on the whole. The whole will never hear your conditions, you will never feel any resonance from the whole if you have any conditions. Your own condition will become a stone around your neck. You will be crushed under it, by your own hands. It is not that the whole crushes you: you crush yourself with your own stone. Your conditions create a barrier between you and the whole. The whole cannot flow in you because you have a condition. You say, "Come in. But first fulfill this much.." Then the whole cannot flow in you and you cannot flow m the whole. Then everything is crippled and diseased. Don't place any conditions on the whole; don't make any bargains with the whole. Don't compete with the whole, don't struggle with the whole, and then you will be holy. Flow into the whole and let it flow into you. Unconditional movement, unmotivated movement. Then you will be non-serious, intense. You will live blissfully; there will be no possibility of sadness. Then there can be no frustration, it is impossible. No one can frustrate you. Whatsoever happens is good. Then good is not something opposite to bad; it is just a feeling. Whatsoever happens is good: there is nothing opposite to good. This I call a religious mind: nonserious, playful, innocent - without any struggle. Someone has written me a letter. He writes that he believed in someone as if he was bhagwan, a God. For fifteen years continuously he believed in him. Then one day he saw that the man he had believed in was angry He writes that on that day not only did that man become just human - not a God - but from that day on "I cannot believe that any human being can ever be bhagwan, can ever be a God." I have written to him that there are two possibilities. "If one whom you believed to be divine became angry, there are two possibilities. Either this man is not divine - or your definition of divine was wrong!" But no, your definition can never be wrong. This man who you thought was divine must be wrong. Your definition is more meaningful to you than fifteen years of faith and rust. But who says that the divine cannot be angry? Who says it? We don't know, but we have a particular definition. Who says that the divine cannot be angry? Of course a divine person must be angry in a divine way - that's another thing. We have certain definitions. But life always transcends definitions so we are frustrated. Because of our definitions we are frustrated. I have written to the man that that person was very honest: "He could be angry in front of you." It is very simple not to be angry in front of a person who has believed for fifteen years that you are bhagwan. Not to be angry is very simple, it is not a difficult thing. He was very sincere, he flowed: he could be angry. Rinzai died as a master and his disciple, the chief disciple, begin to weep. These were at least one lakh people there. They were very confused because this chief disciple was known to be enlightened. How could he weep? He must not weep because if even an enlightened person weeps then the whole point of it is lost. Then there is no difference between one who is enlightened and those who are not. Soon friends came to talk to him and requested him not to weep because his whole image would be destroyed. But the disciple said, "When have I promised you that I shall not weep? Was it a condition that you would believe that I am enlightened if I don't weep? When was this promise made? Two things: either decide that I am not enlightened, or change your definition!" An enlightened person can weep - of course, in an enlightened way. Really, a person who is one with life just flows. There is no resistance. Anything that comes from him, anything that happens, just happens. He has no resistance. He is not going tO say that such and such must not happen. He has become the whole, he was said yes to everything. We have created an image of divine persons, realized persons, according to our own definitions. If Mahavir laughs, his disciples will think that something has gone wrong. It is inconceivable that he should laugh - because of the disciples' definition, a dead definition. Definitions can never be alive because anything that is living changes, and definitions cannot change. And if a definition changes, it is not a definition at all. A definition is fixed, but life is never fixed. So don't think in terms of opposites. Just think about one thing: that you must be flowing. And let anything happen. Accept it. If you are going to be a loser, then be a loser. If you are going to be defeated, then be one who is defeated. And if you are ready to be defeated, to be a loser, then no one can defeat you because the whole thing becomes nonsense. Losing is meaningful because winning is meaningful, because you have a stake in it. Because you have it as a condition that you must win, losing becomes hard. you feel defeated, frustrated. To me, a divine existence means to just flow. If you win, that is good. If you lose, that too is good. Osho ~ The Eternal Quest

@Annetta one has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don't know who you are. Who are you going to love? If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. How many things you have admitted that you know perfectly well are not true. People say you are so loving, so sincere, so truthful, so beautiful, so honest -- and you never deny. This is not the love I have been talking about. Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don't know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary. And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don't have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence -- no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence -- suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love. Naturally, first you will love yourself, because that will be your first encounter. First you will become aware of the fragrance that is arising in you and the light that has been born in you, and the blissfulness that is showering on you. Then loving will become your nature. Then you will love many; then you will love all. In fact, what we know in our ignorance is a relationship, and what we know in our awareness is no longer a relationship. It is not that I love you; it is that I am love. And you have to understand the difference. When you say, "I love you," what about others? What about the whole existence? The more narrow your love is, the more imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it cannot fly in the sky across the sun. It does not have freedom; it is almost in a golden cage. The cage is beautiful, but inside the cage the bird is not the same bird that you see in the sky opening its wings. Love has to become not a relationship, not a narrowing, but a broadening. Love has to become your very quality, your very character, your very being, your radiance. Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular, unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed. Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, and then it starts radiating all around. Then you love not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love. You are asking, "What does it mean to love myself?" It means meditation. It means to be yourself. And nature will bring love as a reward. Just don't listen to the priests. They are the enemies of love. They have been teaching the world to hate yourself and to hate the world, because they have been teaching either it is a sin that you were born or it is because of the evil acts of your past life that you are suffering in this life. But no religion accepts this life with joy and rejoicing, as a gift, as a reward of which you are not worthy, of which you don't claim any right. You have not earned it. So the first thing is, avoid the priests. They have taught you life-negative values. And my effort here is to bring back life-affirmation. That's what I call loving yourself, accepting yourself not as a sinner. How can you accept yourself if you think you are a sinner? How can you love yourself if you think you are nothing but full of guilt, nothing but an accumulated past of evil acts of millions of lives? You will hate yourself. And that's what your priests have been saying: renounce life, hate life, hate pleasure, hate everything, and sacrifice everything if you want to enter into paradise. Nobody has ever returned from paradise, so there is no evidence of any paradise anywhere, no proof, it is just a futile exercise which has never been able to come to a conclusion. The old priest was warning his congregation about sin. "Sin," he said, "is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of greed, and finally, there is the big dog of sex. And you have to kill those big dogs before they kill you and prevent you from getting to heaven. It can be done. I know, because over the years I have done it. I killed the big dog of envy, the big dog of pride, the big dog of greed -- and yes, my children, I killed the big dog of sex." "Father," came a voice from the back of the church, "are you sure that last dog did not die a natural death?" You cannot change nature. If you can simply live naturally, transformations come. If they come, then sex disappears -- but not by your efforts. By your efforts it goes on hanging around you. The more you repress it, the more you have it. The more you live it, the more is the possibility to go beyond it. An old couple were sitting at home one evening listening to the faith healer on the radio. "Okay folks," he began, "God wants to heal you all. All you have to do is put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the part that is sick." The old lady got up, shuffled over to the radio and put her hand on her arthritic hip. Then the old man put one hand on the radio and the other hand on his fly. His wife looked at him with contempt and said, "You old idiot. The man said he would heal the sick, not raise the dead!" Live naturally. Live peacefully. Live inwardly. Just give a little time to yourself, being alone, being silent, just watching the inner scene of your mind. Slowly, slowly thoughts disappear. Slowly, slowly one day the mind is so still, so silent as if it is not there. Just this silence... in this moment you are not here, as if the whole Buddha Hall is empty. In this silence within you, you will find a new dimension of life. In this dimension greed does not exist, sex does not exist, anger does not exist, violence does not exist. It is not a credit to you; it is the new dimension beyond mind where love exists, pure, unpolluted by any biological urge; where compassion exists for no other reason -- not to get any reward in heaven -- because compassion is a reward unto itself. A deep longing exists to share all that treasure that you have discovered within yourself, and to shout from the housetops to the people, "You are not poor! Paradise is within you. You need not be beggars, you are born emperors." You just have to discover your empire, and your empire is not of the outside world; your empire is of your own interiority. It is within you and it has always been there, just waiting for you to come home. Love will come, and will come in abundance -- so much that you cannot contain it. You will find it is overflowing you, it is reaching all directions. Just discover your hidden splendor. Life can be simply a song, a song of joy. Life can be simply a dance, a celebration, a continuous celebration. All that you have to learn is a life-affirmative lifestyle. I call only that man religious who is life-affirmative. All those who are life-negative may think they are religious; they are not. Their sadness shows they are not. Their seriousness shows they are not. A man of authentic religion will have a sense of humor. It is our universe, it is our home. We are not orphans. This earth is our mother. This sky is our father. This whole vast universe is for us, and we are for it. In fact, there is no division between us and the whole. We are organically joined with it, we are part of one orchestra. To feel this music of existence is the only religion that I can accept as authentic, as valid. It does not have any scriptures, it need not have. It does not have any statues of God, because it does not believe in any hypotheses. It has nothing to worship, it has only to be silent, and out of that silence comes gratitude, prayer, and the whole existence turns into a godliness. There is no God as a person. God is spread all over: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in humanity, in the wise, in the otherwise. All that is alive is nothing but godliness ready to open its wings, ready to fly into the freedom, ultimate freedom of consciousness. Yes, you will love yourself and you will love the whole existence too. Source - Osho Book "The Invitation"

@2000 Growth is painful because you have been avoiding a thousand and one pains in your life. By avoiding, you cannot destroy them – they go on accumulating. You go on swallowing your pains; they remain in your system. That’s why growth is painful: when you start growing, when you decide to grow, you have to face all the pains that you have repressed. You cannot just bypass them. You have been brought up in a wrong way. Unfortunately, until now, not a single society has existed on the earth which has not been repressive of pain. All societies depend on repression. Two things they repress: one is pain, the other is pleasure. And they repress pleasure also because of pain. Their reasoning is that if you are not too happy you will never become too unhappy; if joy is destroyed you will never be deep in pain. To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life. And the logic has something in it. Both grow together – if you want to have a life of ecstasy you will have to accept many agonies. If you want the peaks of the Himalayas then you will also have the valleys. But nothing is wrong with the valleys; your approach just has to be different. You can enjoy both – the peak is beautiful, so is the valley. And there are moments when one should enjoy the peak and there are moments when one should relax in the valley. The peak is sunlit, it is in a dialogue with the sky. The valley is dark, but whenever you want to relax you have to move into the darkness of the valley. If you want to have peaks you will need to grow roots into the valley – the deeper your roots go, the higher your tree will grow. The tree cannot grow without roots and the roots have to move deep into the soil. Pain and pleasure are intrinsic parts of life. People are so much afraid of pain that they repress pain, they avoid any situation that brings pain, they go on dodging pain. And finally they stumble upon the fact that if you really want to avoid pain you will have to avoid pleasure. That’s why your monks avoid pleasure: they are afraid of pleasure. In fact, they are simply avoiding all possibilities of pain. They know that if you avoid pleasure then naturally great pain is not possible; it comes only as a shadow of pleasure. Then you walk on the plain ground; you never move on the peaks and you never fall into the valleys. But then you are living dead, then you are not alive. Life exists between this polarity. This tension between pain and pleasure makes you capable of creating great music; music exists only in this tension. Destroy the polarity and you will be dull, you will be stale, you will be dusty. You won't have any meaning and you will never know what splendor is. You will have missed life. One who wants to know life and live life has to accpet and embrace death. They come together, they are two aspects of a single phenomenon. That's why growth is painful. You have to go into all those pains that you have been avoiding. It hurts. You have to go through all those woulnds that somehow you have managed not to look at. But the deeper you go into pain, the deeper is your capacity to go into pleasure. If you can go into pain to the uttermost limit, you will be albe to touch heaven. ...To be free of pain the pain has to be accepted, inevitably and naturally. Pain is pain--a simple, painful fact. Suffering, however, is only and always the refusual of pain, the claim that life should not be painful. It is the rejection of a fact, the denial of life and of the nature of things. Death is the mind that minds dying. Where there is no fear of death, who is there to die? ...Growth is facing the reality, encountering the fact, whatever it is. And let me repeat: pain is simply pain; there is no suffering in it. Suffering comes from your desire that the pain should not be there, that there is something wrong in pain. ~OSHO, "Being in Love", pages 70-72

From Sex to Superconsciousness by Osho http://www.oshorajneesh.com/download/osho-books/hindi-translations/From_Sex_to_Superconsciousness.pdf

Meditation is a gamble. In all other ways of gambling we put something at stake, and in meditation we put ourselves at stake, but only the gamblers know what life is.. Only those who gamble everything for truth are the blessed ones.

We are not invited by Leo on this forum, neither Leo has made any promises. Leo is not morally bound to run this website till his last breath. One day Leo will realize need to stop all his mental activities to wait for enlightenment. Everything that begins has an end.

Born in India, heard about it since childhood.

There is nothing special in spiritual energy, it is the life energy, vitality. If you don't believe in it , there in no hurry, you will feel it when your meditation is ripened. When you spine is straight , you can breathe properly, you can be more alert. But don't do anything which makes you uncomfortable, when you will grow into a meditator , your posture will improve. Straight spine is helpful, but never torture yourself.

Everybody will express his aggression in a positive way if he has the opportunity. Everybody who has ego is a aggressor, nobody wants to repress his aggression, but due to social needs or lack of power, he represses it.

Everybody has ego but someone can have a stronger ego than others. Those who are not aggressors, they become depressed, fearful in similar situations, it is aggression expressed in a negative way. Those who do not show aggression in a positive way, don't think they will remain same when all the power is in their hands. Then their depression , fear will be expressed as anger, aggression.

Psychology is study of behavior, it knows nothing about how life energy works. Psychology means science of the soul, but it is is a misnomer. Everybody has ego but everybody live in a society where others have ego too, when others are more powerful, more clever, you don't show your aggression in a positive way. Then you become depressed, sad, fearful these are the negative ways of becoming aggressive. If a depressed or fearful person obtains power, you can see his true colors.

@Loreena The ego is aggressive. Ego is violent, dominating, political. So , conflict, struggle, violence, aggression, are needed for the ego to exist. They are the fuel, the food for it. If you are living in ego, then your life will be a struggle; it will be violent, aggressive. If you are an intellectual you will be aggressive. Intellect is aggressive. The woman wants the aggressive man, the man of initiative, but truth cannot be known by an aggressive mind, the truth cannot be discovered by violence.

In Search of the Miraculous by Osho http://www.oshorajneesh.com/download/osho-books/Meditation/In_Search_of_the_Miraculous_Volume_1.pdf http://www.oshorajneesh.com/download/osho-books/Meditation/In_Search_of_the_Miraculous_Volume_2.pdf

In the East it has been found, and found rightly, that the lotus posture — the way you must have seen the statues of Buddha; that is called the lotus posture… It has been a discovery of thousands of years that that is the most relaxed state of the body. But for Westerners who are not accustomed to sitting on the ground, the lotus posture is a nightmare! So avoid it, because it takes almost six months to learn the lotus posture; it is not necessary. If you are accustomed to sitting on a chair, you can find a way, a posture, a chair made in a certain way that helps your body to relax all its tensions. It does not matter whether you are sitting in the chair or in the lotus posture or lying down on the bed. Sitting is preferable because it will prevent you from falling asleep. The lotus posture was chosen for many reasons. If one can manage it without torturing himself, then it is the best, but it is not a necessity. It is certainly the best situation in which you can enter into watchfulness. The legs are crossed, the hands are crossed, the spine is straight; it gives many significant supports to being watchful. First, in this position, gravitation has the least effect on the body because your spine is straight. So the gravitation can effect a very small portion. When you are lying down, gravitation effects your whole body. That’s why for sleeping, lying down is the best posture. Gravitation pulls the whole body, and because of its pull, the body loses all tensions. Secondly, when you are lying down, if the purpose is to sleep then you should use a pillow because the less blood reaches to your mind, the less the mind will be active. The less blood reaches to the mind, the more possibility to fall asleep. A lotus posture is a great combination. It has the least effect of gravitation, and because the spine is straight a lesser amount of blood reaches to the mind, so mind cannot function. In that posture you cannot fall asleep easily. And if you have learned the posture from your very birth, it becomes so natural. The crossing of the legs, the crossing of the hands have a significance. Your body energy moves in a circle; the circle is not broken anywhere in a lotus posture. Both your hands… one hand gives the energy to the other hand; your one foot gives energy to the other foot — and the energy goes on moving in a circle. You become a circle of your bio-energy. Many things are of much help. Your energy is not being released so you don’t get tired. Your blood is reaching in a lesser amount so the mind does not function too much. You are sitting in such a position — your legs are locked, your hands are locked and your spine is straight — sleep is difficult. These are just supports; they are not essential. It is not that one who cannot sit in a lotus posture cannot meditate, meditation will be a little difficult but the lotus posture is only helpful, not absolutely needed. And for the people from colder countries where sitting on the ground is not possible — their bodies for centuries; their parents and their parents’ parents from Adam and Eve… Have you seen any picture of Adam and Eve sitting in a lotus posture? In fact, it would have been very good for them, because sitting in lotus posture they could sit naked and yet nobody would have been very much aware of their nakedness. That’s how the Jaina monks sit, always in lotus posture. You cannot see their genitals. Their legs are crossed, their hands are crossed; this functions almost as a protection for their nakedness. But if for centuries people have never sat, then it will unnecessarily create trouble; your body structure has taken a certain mode. It is better to follow the body and its wisdom: use a chair. The whole thing is you should be comfortable so that the body does not draw your attention. That’s why tension has to be avoided, because if you have a headache then it will be difficult to meditate. Again and again, your attention will go to the headache. If your leg is hurting, or if there is any slight tension anywhere in the body, it immediately alarms you. It is natural and it is part of the body’s wisdom. -Osho From The Invitation, Chapter 21