Prabhaker

I have heard about an ugly woman.... She was so neurotic about mirrors – because only mirrors made her aware that she was ugly. Otherwise, without mirrors, as far as she was concerned, she was beautiful. Wherever she would see a mirror – even in somebody else’s house – she would immediately break it. The reason was that mirrors made her look ugly. Those poor mirrors had nothing to do with her ugliness. She was ugly, but she was forcing the responsibility on the mirrors, fighting with the mirrors. The World is a Mirror. If you are positive, then nothing is negative for you. If you are negative, then everything will be negative for you. You are the source of all that exists around you, you are the creator of your own world. And we are not living in one world, remember. There are as many worlds as there are minds. Each mind is living in its own world, it creates the world. So if everything looks negative and everything looks destructive and everything looks inimical, against you, it is because you do not have the positive center in you... If you feel negativity all around you, it simply shows you are negative within. The world is just a mirror, and you are reflected in it. Existence cannot be forced to go according to you, it flows in its own way. If you can flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the whole thing, the whole cosmos around you, will turn negative. It is just like a person who is trying to float upstream, then the stream is negative. If you are trying to float upstream in a river, then the river will seem negative and you will feel that the river is fighting you - that the river is pushing you downwards. The river is trying to move you downstream, not upstream, so it will seem as if the river is fighting you. The river is completely unaware of you, blissfully unaware. And it is good; otherwise the river will go to a madhouse. The river is not fighting with you, you are fighting with the river. You are trying to float upstream. The mind is always trying to go upsteam, to move upstream. Fighting with everything, you create a negative world around you. Obviously, this has to happen. The world is not against you. Because you are not with the world, you feel it is against you. Float downstream, and then the river will help you to float. Then your energy will not be needed. The river will become a boat, it will take you. You will not lose any energy floating downstream because once you float downstream you have accepted the river, the current, the flow, the direction, everything. Then you have become positive to it. When you are positive, the river is positive to you.

The posture should be steady and should be very, very blissful, comfortable. So never try to distort your body, and never try to achieve postures which are uncomfortable. For the Westerners, sitting on the ground, sitting in padmasan, lotus posture, is difficult; their bodies have not been trained for it. If you can be steady and comfortable in a chair, it is perfectly okay – no need to try a lotus posture and force your body unnecessarily. A posture should be such that you can forget your body. What is comfort? When you forget your body, you are comfortable. When you are reminded continuously of the body, you are uncomfortable. So whether you sit in a chair or you sit on the ground, that’s not the point. Be comfortable, because if you are not comfortable in the body you cannot long for other blessings which belong to deeper layers: the first layer missed, all other layers closed. If you really want to be happy, blissful, then start from the very beginning to be blissful. Comfort of the body is a basic need for anybody who is trying to reach inner ecstasies. Whenever a posture is comfortable it is bound to be steady. You fidget if the posture is uncomfortable. You go on changing sides if the posture is uncomfortable. If the posture is really comfortable, what is the need to fidget and feel restless and go on changing again and again? And remember, the posture that is comfortable to you may not be comfortable to your neighbor. Every body is unique. Something that is comfortable to you may be uncomfortable to somebody else.

His enlightenment, his Buddhahood.

Osho mentioned Charles Manson in his talks once Millions die but they die a wrong kind of death, because they yield, they surrender, they become slaves. Just the other night I was reading about this murderer, Charles Manson. When the court sentenced him to death, he laughed. He said, "Ha, ha! What are you doing? - trying to kill me and I have always been dead!" I liked that statement: "I have always been dead. You killed me when I was a child. My parents killed me, my society killed me, and because everybody killed me, I took revenge - I murdered innocent people. And now you are sentencing me to death? Ha ha! Trying to kill a dead man! I have never been alive." But that's how millions of people are: they have never been alive - they were born dead or were immediately killed the moment they were born, or we started poisoning them and sooner or later we got hold of them. My own feeling and observation is that by the time a girl is three and a boy is four they are butchered. Jesus lived a long life - thirty-three years - a really long life, because people die at three or four...although these dead people think, "Poor Jesus, died when he was only thirty-three." They feel sorry for Jesus. He lived those thirty-three years with intensity, with passion.

The east has suffered because the east became feminine. It lost zest, enthusiasm to live, it lost energy. It became very fatalistic, it became very relaxed. The whole history of the east is the history of being conquered by others; a history of poverty, a history of no science, no technology. It is not a beautiful history. Yes, a few beautiful people happen: Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, Kabir, Nanak, Dadhu -- a few beautiful people; but they are exceptional, they cannot be counted. The greater mass, the greater humanity, has lived in a very ugly way, a miserable way, in deep anguish. At this cost, if one Buddha happens, and one Kabir and one Nanak, it is not of worth. The cost is too much. The west has suffered from male orientation: conflict, struggle, violence, fight, and no rest, no possibility of any relaxation; a great tension in the mind, hankering for speed, ambition; competition, a cut throat competition, each fighting with everybody else -- a very hostile atmosphere. Of course, it has created mad people, it has created neurotic people. Still, a few beautiful people have exited on the fringe: a Christ, a Saint Teresa, a Saint Francis and an Eckhart. But this cannot be said to be a success: the philosophy has failed. The east and west have both failed. Kipling was wrong when he said: East is east and west is west, and the twain shall never meet. They can meet; they HAVE to meet. Now everything will depend on it, even the possibility of a future humanity will depend on that meeting. Kipling has to be proved wrong. They have not met up to now, that is true. Kipling is right about the past, but wrong about the future -- HAS to be wrong. Otherwise humanity cannot exist. Both are suffering the east from outward poverty, the west from inner poverty. Both have tremendously failed -- grand failures, but failures. A man has to be synthesis of will and surrender. A man has to grow his willpower, his ego, first. If life is going to be for an average of seventy years, then thirty-five years, the beginning of life, should be devoted to strengthening the ego and willpower. And one should listen to Nietzsche, and one should listen to Steiner, and one should listen to Freud -- and the ego has to be strengthened, made VERY integrated. And after the thirty-fifth year one has to learn relaxing, dropping the ego, and becoming more and more surrendered to the divine. The west is the first part of life; the east is the second part of life. Life should start like western and should end like eastern. One should first go into he world; in the world, will will be needed. One should go and fight and struggle, because struggle gives you sharpness intelligence. But one should not continue fighting and fighting to the very end. Then what is the point? Fight, sharpen your intelligence, know the ways of the world, wander all over the world, be a conqueror, and then... then move inwards. You have known the outside; now try to know the inner. And to know the inner one has to relax. One has to forget anxiety, anguish, tension. One has to be non-competitive; will is not needed. To conquer the world will is needed.

A technique to transform lust Whenever you feel sex desire arising, there are three possibilities: one, indulge in it - ordinary, everybody is doing that; second: repress it, force it down so it goes beyond your consciousness into the darkness of the unconscious, and the third is when the sex desire arises, close your eyes. It is a very valuable moment: desire arising is energy arising. It is like the sun rising in the morning. One small technique will be of tremendous help. Close your eyes; this is the moment to be meditative. Move downwards to the sex centre where you are feeling the thrill, the vibration. Move there and just be a silent onlooker. Witness it, don't condemn it. The moment you condemn, you have gone far away from it. And don't enjoy it, because the moment you enjoy, you are unconscious. Just be alert, watchful, like a lamp burning in a dark night. You just take your consciousness there, unflickering, unwavering. You see what is happening at the sex centre, what is this energy. Don't call it names because all words have become contaminated. Even if you say it is sex, immediately you have started condemning it. The very word has become condemnatory. Or, if you belong to the new generation, then the very word has become something sacred. But the word is always loaded with emotion. Any word which is loaded with emotion becomes a barrier on the path of awareness. Just watch the fact that an energy is arising near the sex center and you will feel a totally new quality of energy. Watching it, you will see it is rising upwards. It is finding a path inside you. And the moment it starts rising upwards, you will feel a coolness falling on you, a silence surrounding you, a grace, a beatitude, a benediction, a blessing all around you. It is no longer like a painful thorn. It no longer hurts; it is very soothing like a balm. And the more you remain aware, the higher it will go.

India is not just geography or history. It is not only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land. It is something more. For almost ten thousand years, thousands of people have reached to the ultimate explosion of consciousness. Their vibration is still alive, their impact is in the very air; you just need a certain perceptivity, a certain capacity to receive the invisible that surrounds this strange land. It is strange because it has renounced everything for a single search, the search for the truth. It has not produced great philosophers -- you will be surprised to know it -- no Plato, no Aristotle, no Thomas Aquinas, no Kant, no Hegel, no Bradley, no Bertrand Russell. The whole history of India has not produced a single philosopher -- and they have been searching for truth! Certainly their search was very different from the search that has been done in other countries. In other countries people were thinking about truth; in India, people were not thinking about truth -- because how can you think about truth? Either you know it, or you don't; thinking is impossible, philosophy is impossible. It is absolutely an absurd and futile exercise. It is just like a blind man thinking about light -- what can he think? He may be a great genius, may be a great logician -- it is not going to help. Neither logic is needed nor genius is needed; what is needed is eyes to see. Philosophy means thinking, and thinking is circular -- about and about, it never reaches to the point of experiencing. India is the only land in the whole world, strangely, which has devoted all its talents in a concentrated effort to see the truth and to be the truth. You cannot find a great scientist in the whole history of India. It is not that there were not talented people, it is not that there were not geniuses. Mathematics was founded in India, but it did not produce Albert Einstein. The whole country, in a miraculous way, was not interested in any objective research. To know the other has not been the goal here, but to know oneself. For ten thousand years millions of people persistently making a single effort, sacrificing everything for it -- science, technological development, riches -- accepting poverty, sickness, disease, death, but not dropping the search at any cost... it has created a certain noosphere, a certain ocean of vibrations around you. If you come here with a little bit of a meditative mind, you will come in contact with it. If you come here just as a tourist, you will miss it. You will see the ruins, the palaces, the Taj Mahal, the temples, Khajuraho, the Himalayas, but you will not see India -- you will have passed through India without meeting it. It was everywhere, but you were not sensitive, you were not receptive. You will have come here to see something which is not truly India but only its skeleton -- not its soul. If you are meditating, trying to be silent, you are allowing the real India to come in contact with you. The way you can find truth in this poor country you cannot find anywhere else. It is utterly poor, and yet spiritually it has such a rich heritage that if you can open your eyes and see that heritage you will be surprised. Perhaps this is the only country which has been deeply concerned with the evolution of consciousness and nothing else. Every other country has been concerned with a thousand other things. But this country has been one-pointed, a single goal: how human consciousness can be evolved to a point where it meets with the divine; how to bring the human and the divine closer. Excerpt from : The Osho Upanishad # 21, Only the real can meet the real

Your mind always wants change. It does not know devotion; it loves fashions, its interest is always in some novelty. So it will go on moving from one path to another path, becoming more and more confused because each path has its own language, each path has its own unique methods. If you move on many paths you will collect contradictory arguments; you will become so much divided you will not know what to do. And if it becomes your habit to change paths – because the new has a certain attraction for the mind – you will move a few feet on one path, a few feet on another path, but you will never complete the journey.

Martial arts enhances flexibility, strength and stamina as well as coordination, presence and calmness – all at the same time. This purifies the energetic system of the body, removes blockages and frees energy. Practicing tai chi ... slowly slowly you become more and more silent, more and more peaceful. The question of war and destruction disappears. Just do it more consciously, more gracefully, more lovingly and you have changed the very quality of the action. And once you know to change the qualities of your actions, your whole life becomes the life of a meditator. The head, the heart and the Hara are three levels to take action from. The head is for thinking, the heart is for connecting and the Hara is the centre of your total being. In the East, the Hara is seen as the conscious center of your body. In the West we mainly focus on the head, and the belly stays the most unconscious area of the body. When you begin to learn martial arts, you think about each movement and how you are supposed to do it - and then you stop moving, because all the energy goes into the thinking process. But when you are centered in your Hara, there is no thinking, there is no judgement - there is no doubt. When you are centered in the Hara, you are in balance. To be in the Hara means waiting for the right moment. Then you are in the present.

Osho and my intuition !

Man is made by nature to work hard for at least eight hours. Unless he works hard for eight hours he does not earn the right to have a deep sleep. And as a society grows richer, people are not working hard. There is no need; others can work for them. The whole day they are doing small things which they enjoy doing, but it is not hard work like that of a stonecutter or a woodcutter. The body is made so that after eight hours of hard work it naturally needs to fall into sleep to rejuvenate its energy. But it seems difficult…you have earned enough money and still you are chopping wood for eight hours? Then for what have you earned all that money? It seems stupid. You could have chopped wood even without becoming a millionaire. It has been known for centuries that beggars sleep better than emperors. Laborers, manual laborers sleep better than intellectuals. The poor sleep better than the rich, because they have to work hard to earn their bread and butter, but side by side they are also earning the right to have a beautiful sleep. Insomnia is not a disease, it is the richest way of life. In fact what is happening is: the whole day you are resting; then in the night you are tossing and turning in the bed. That is the only exercise left for you, and you don’t want to do even that exercise. Toss and turn as much as you can. If the whole day is of resting then the night cannot be of sleep. You have already rested. If the people who are suffering from insomnia really want to get rid of it they should not think of it as a disease. Visiting a doctor is meaningless. They should start working in their garden, doing some hard work, and forget all about sleep; it will come. It always comes, you don’t have to bring it.

In the East, SATSANGA has been one of the most valuable methods for enlightenment. The East has said that if you are in the presence of the Master, nothing else is needed. Just be in his presence, just sit silently with him, just be with him and enlightenment will take care of itself. Whenever the right moment comes it will happen. You need not worry about it, you need not plan it, otherwise you will be in a turmoil: 'When is this enlightenment going to happen?' Then enlightenment has also become a desire, a greed, a lust. It is very natural. Being in the presence of a master, silence happens on its own accord. Between a master and a disciple 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. 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? A disciple is one who does not bother about knowing but is interested in being. A disciple is one who has become immensely interested in being -- in truth itself, not knowing about it.

You may feel that you know the answers, but still questions will go on popping up, still questions will go on torturing you. Still questions are bound to arise because the root is not cut yet. The root is cut only when you disconnect yourself from the mind, when you become so aware, so watchful that you can see the mind as separate from you. When all identity with the mind is dropped, when you are a watcher on the hills and the mind is left deep down in the darkness of the valleys, when you are on the sunlit peaks, just a pure witness, seeing, watching, but not getting identified with anything — good or bad, sinner or saint, this or that — in that witnessing all questions dissolve. There are not answers, there is only The answer. And that answer is not of the mind, that answer cannot be of the mind. Mind is a multiplicity. Mind has answers and answers, but not the answer. That answer is a state of no-mind. It is not verbal. You can know it but you cannot reduce it to knowledge. You can know it, but you cannot say it. It is known in the innermost recesses of your being.

I think it is 'Ramana Puranam' composed by Muruganar in Tamil.

It Indian classical music played on 'Sitar' (a plucked stringed instrument) , with chanting verses in praise of Mahrishi Raman.

Not only that but Leo has also promised " Whoever receives 10,000 reputation points first, will inherit the kingdom of god."

You can practice Tai Chi as a low impact cardio exercise. A master for whom Tai Chi is a way of life, knows how to awaken the life energy.

It will be more aesthetic, more civilized, if guy bear the rejection, instead of expecting from girl to take initiative and get an unexpected reply.

We can't suggest him to remain passive and wait till girl make a declaration of love.

You can always press 'Ctrl + z' to undo the action.

There could be a possibility that she is interested in him. When a woman falls in love, she is never aggressive. She is not aggressive even in love - she waits. She gives you the opportunity of aggression. And although the fact is, that it is the woman who manoeuvres, she never takes the initiative. This is her mystery - to draw without any action - non-active attraction. Even when she falls in love, there is no hint from her. Her presence attracts you. It is you who first make the declaration of love. The woman is never the first to declare. She never takes the initiative, for initiative is aggressive, it is positive. When I say to someone, "I love you," I step out of myself, I have caused aggression, I have trespassed into someone else's boundary. A woman never trespasses, even then she is attractive - what is the reason? Verily, her attraction is negative, non-active. She calls but you cannot hear her voice. She stretches out her hand but they are not visible to sight. The invitation is there but there is no form to it. The action has to be taken by man. He has to take the first step. He has to go to her, appeal to her. Even then she may refuse and walk away. Whenever a woman says yes, hastily, know that she too is ignorant of the female-mystery for as soon as the woman says 'yes', she becomes useless. Her denial, her refusal - her constant refusal is the mystery of the infinite essence. Her 'no' however is such as a man can never say. When a man says 'no' he means no. When a woman says 'no' she means yes. If a woman has to refuse she does not say no, for that also, is too much for her. When a woman says 'yes', she speaks the language of man. Therefore, 'yes' always sounds hollow and insignificant and in a deeper sense, unethical when it comes from a woman's lips, for even this much is aggression. All the mystery and secret of a woman lies in the fact that she says no and she invites you. She makes no commitment on her own. All commitments come from the man. Yet, do not be under the illusion that a woman has done nothing. She does a great deal, only her method of doing is negative, like the valley or the darkness. Negation is her method. To step away is an invitation to come near, her very act of freeing herself is a call. This is feminine mystery.

You may not be sleeping well in the night. Very few people are sleeping well, so when you have not slept well in the night you are a little tired during the day. If that is the case, then do something with your sleep. It should be made deeper. Time is not much of a question – you can sleep for eight hours, and if it is not deep you will feel hungry for sleep, starved – depth is the question. Every night before you go to sleep do a small technique, and that will help tremendously. Put the lights off, sit in your bed ready to sleep, but sit for fifteen minutes.Close your eyes and then start any monotonous nonsense sound, for example: la, la, la – and wait for the mind to supply new sounds. The only thing to be remembered is those sounds or words should not be of any language that you know. If you know English, German, Italian, then they should not be of Italian, German, English. Any other language is allowed that you don't know – Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese. But if you know Japanese then it is not allowed, then Italian is wonderful. Speak any language that you don’t know. You will be in a difficulty for few seconds only for the first day, because how do you speak a language you don’t know? It can be spoken, and once it starts, any sounds, nonsense words, just to put the conscious off and allow the unconscious to speak.... When the unconscious speaks, the unconscious knows no language. It is a very, very old method. It comes from the Old Testament. It was called in those days glossolalia and a few churches in America still use it. They call it “talking in tongues”. And it is a wonderful method, one of the most deep and penetrating into the unconscious. You start by saying “la, la, la,” and then anything that comes you go on. Just for the first day you will feel it is a little difficult. Once it comes, you know the knack of it. Then for fifteen minutes, use the language that is coming to you, and use it as a language; in fact you are talking in it. This will relax the conscious so deeply. Fifteen minutes – and you then just simply lie down and go to sleep. Your sleep will become deeper. Within weeks you will feel a depth in your sleep, and in the morning you will feel completely fresh.

It was a misinterpretation that Buddha was not against meat , and he was against killing animals only, and this became a loophole. I and not saying that all meditators should become vegetarians to begin a spiritual journey. If you meditate long enough, deep enough , if you become more meditative you will become more and more vegetarian automatically. Your clothes change automatically; by and by you like looser and looser clothes. The more relaxed you are inside – loose clothes. But the inner change is the first thing and everything else is just a consequence.

Difficult Situation For Buddha, cunning mind of man One day a Buddhist monk came with a very puzzled look. He said to Buddha, ”I am in a strange difficulty. A bird flying dropped a piece of meat into my begging bowl. I was coming back from begging in the city, to settle under some tree” – in the garden where they were staying – ”to eat my food. Now the problem is, if I throw out this piece of meat I am going against your teaching that, ‘Everything has to be eaten that falls into your begging bowl.’ And if I eat it, I am still going against your teaching of, ‘Always be vegetarian.’ Now what am I supposed to do?” The whole assembly of monks also were in a strange position: how is Buddha going to solve it? Buddha thought, ”If I say ‘throw it’, that will become a universal thing. People will start choosing: whatever is good, delicious they will eat and the remaining they will throw out. The country supports the monks. This will be against the people who are supporting you. With great hardship they earn, and you throw away their food. So I cannot say to throw it out. ”And as far as birds are concerned, it is very unlikely that again, in the centuries following, any bird will repeat this. So there is no danger, if only one person eats on one day a small piece of meat.” He said, ”Eat everything that has fallen into your begging bowl.” And this became for the cunning mind of man a loophole, that, ”Buddha is not against meat; just you have not to kill, he is against killing. If meat is given to you, offered to you, you have to respectfully receive it.” So now in China and Japan, all the Buddhists are non-vegetarian. And in many food shop, restaurant they make it clear that here non-vegetarian food is available which has not been especially killed – it is from animals dying on their own. Now, so many animals don’t die on their own.

I agree ! A friend came to a cannibal and the food was prepared and the friend had never tasted anything like it. He had never even dreamed that food could be so tasty, so delicious. When he was leaving he said to the cannibal, “I loved the food. I have never loved food so much. When I come next, prepare the same dishes.” And the cannibal said, “That is difficult, because I only had one mother.” @My_Name_Is_Mud I am not saying that there is something wrong in non-vegetarianism, or it makes you nonspiritual. But the lighter the food, the deeper goes the meditation. I am not saying that meditation is impossible for a non-vegetarian -- it is not impossible, but it is unnecessarily difficult. It is like a man who is going to climb a mountain, and he goes on carrying many rocks. It is possible that even when you are carrying rocks you may reach to the mountain peak, but it creates unnecessary trouble. You could have thrown those rocks, you could have unburdened yourself, and the climb would have been easier, far more pleasant.