Posts from Life is a dream. Auto-translated

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FIRST STEP:

My system of Dynamic meditation begins with breathing, for breathing is deeply rooted within us. Perhaps you have not observed this, but by changing your breathing, you can change a great deal. Observe your breathing carefully, and you will find that when you are angry, you have one rhythm of breath, and when you love—a completely different one. When you relax, you breathe one way; when you tense up—another. You cannot be angry and at the same time breathe as you do in a relaxed state. It is impossible.

When you are sexually aroused, your breathing changes. If you prevent it from changing, your sexual arousal will automatically disappear. This means that breathing is deeply connected to the mental state. By changing your breathing, you can change the state of your mind. And if you change the state of your mind, the breathing will change as well.

Therefore, I begin with breathing, and in the first stage of this technique, I suggest ten minutes of chaotic breathing. By chaotic breathing, I mean deep, frequent, energetic breathing without any rhythm—inhaling air and pushing it out, but inhaling and exhaling as energetically, deeply, and strongly as possible. Inhale the air, then push it out.

Chaotic movement should generate chaos within your suppressed system. In every manifestation, you breathe in a very specific way. A child does not breathe like an adult. If the prospect of sexual contact frightens you, your breathing changes. You will be unable to breathe deeply because a deep breath hits your sexual center. If you are afraid, you cannot breathe deeply. Fear generates shallow breathing.

Chaotic breathing is intended to destroy all your patterns. Chaotic breathing is intended to destroy what you have turned yourself into. Chaotic breathing creates chaos within you, for as long as there is no chaos, you will not be able to release your suppressed emotions. These emotions now rush into your body.
You are not body and mind; you are this body-mind, you are psychosomatic. You are both together. Therefore, all actions of your body reach the mind, and all actions of your mind reach the body. Body and mind are two ends of the same organism.

Ten minutes of chaotic breathing is wonderful! But the breathing must be chaotic. This is not a variety of pranayama, yogic breathing, but the creation through breathing of the chaos that you need for various reasons.
Deep, frequent breathing brings more oxygen. The more oxygen there is in the body, the more alive you become, the more you resemble an animal. Animals are alive, while man is half dead, half alive. You need to become an animal; only then can something higher arise within you.

If you are only half alive, nothing can be done with you. Chaotic breathing will make you like an animal: alive, vibrating, energetic—with a large amount of oxygen in the blood, with a large amount of energy in the cells. The cells of your body will come to life. Oxygen saturation helps produce bodily electricity—one could call this bioenergy. When there is electricity in the body, you can dive deep into yourself or go far beyond your limits. Electricity will help you in this.

The body has its own sources of electricity. If you hit them with intensified breathing and a large amount of oxygen, they begin to gush forth. If you truly come alive, you cease to be a body. The more you come alive, the more energy fills your system and the less you feel yourself as a physical body. You will perceive yourself more and more as energy and less and less as matter.

In all those cases where you become more alive, you stop focusing on the body. One of the reasons for the special appeal of sex is as follows: if you are fully involved in the sexual act, in a holistic movement, becoming absolutely alive, then you cease to be a body—you are only energy. Perceiving this energy, living by it, is absolutely necessary if you want to go beyond your limits.


SECOND STEP

The second step in my technique of Dynamic meditation is catharsis. I call you to conscious madness. Whatever comes into your head, let it happen; facilitate it. No resistance, only a flow of emotions.

Want to scream—scream. Facilitate the scream. A loud scream, a real scream involving your entire being, possesses a special, deeply healing power. Screaming releases much; screaming heals many diseases. If this scream is real, it will encompass your whole being.
Therefore, for the next ten minutes (the second stage also lasts ten minutes), allow yourself to express through shouting, dancing, screaming, crying, jumping, laughing—so to speak, to "pour yourself out." After a few days, you will feel what this is.

Perhaps at first you will have to force yourself, make an effort over yourself, even act. We have become so fake that we cannot do anything authentic and true. We are unable to sincerely laugh, shout, or scream. All our actions are merely a facade, a mask. When you move to this technique, your actions may be forced at first. You may require effort, a bit of acting. But let this not bother you. Continue. Soon you will reach those sources where you have suppressed much within yourself. You will touch these sources, release them, and feel that your burden has disappeared. A new life will come to you; you will be born again.
This shedding of the burden is the foundation without which no meditation is possible. I repeat, I do not mean exceptions; they are insignificant for us.

Having taken the second step—throwing everything out of yourself—you will find yourself empty. And by emptiness, I mean the following: emptiness from all suppressions. In this emptiness, something can happen. Transformation may occur; meditation may happen.

THIRD STEP

In the third step, I use the sound HUU. In the past, many sounds were used, each acting in its own way. Hindus, for example, used the sound Om. You probably know this. But I do not offer you Om. Om knocks at the center of the heart, but modern man is not focused on the heart; Om knocks at the door of a house where no one is home.

Sufis used the sound huu. If huu is pronounced loudly, this sound penetrates deeply into the sexual center. This is why it is used to knock inside you. When you have become empty, the sound huu can penetrate deep within you.

The movement of this sound is possible only if you are empty. If you are filled with suppressions, then nothing will happen. In that case, resorting to mantras or sounds is sometimes even dangerous. Each layer of suppression will change the path of the sound, and ultimately something will happen that you never dreamed of, which you did not expect and did not want. Your mind must be empty; only in this case can a mantra be pronounced.

Therefore, I never offer a mantra without preliminary preparation. First, catharsis must occur. The huu mantra should not be used without having done the two previous steps. Without these steps, it cannot be used. Only on the third step (lasting ten minutes) can you resort to huu—pronounce it as loudly as possible, put all your energy into it. You are knocking with this sound at the house of your energy. And if you are empty—and you have become empty thanks to catharsis in the second step—huu penetrates deep and hits your sexual center.

The sexual center can be hit in two ways. First, naturally. Whenever you are attracted by the face of the opposite sex, a blow is dealt to the sexual center from the outside. This blow is also a subtle vibration. A woman has attracted a man, or a man has attracted a woman. Why? Through what in the man and through what in the woman does this happen? Positive or negative electricity hits them, a subtle vibration. In fact, it is sound. For example, you have noticed that birds use sound as a sexual signal. Their singing is sexual. They hit each other repeatedly with certain sounds that land in the sexual center.

Subtle vibrations of electricity hit you from the outside. When your sexual center is hit from the outside, your energy rushes outward—toward another. After which reproduction, birth is possible. Someone will be born from you.
Huu hits the same energy center, but from the inside. And when the sexual center is hit from the inside, energy flows inward. This internal flow of energy completely transforms you. You are transformed: you have given birth to yourselves.

You are transformed only when your energy changes its direction of movement. Just now it flowed outward, and now it flows inward. Just now it flowed down, and now it flows up. This upward movement of energy is the famous kundalini. You will feel that it truly moves along your spine, and the higher it rises, the higher you rise with it. If this energy reaches brahmarandhra—the last, seventh center located at the top of the head—you will become the highest human.

In the third step, I apply huu as a way to raise your energy. The first three steps bring catharsis. They are not yet meditation, only preparation for it, a "run-up" for the jump, but not yet the jump.

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FOURTH STAGE: The fourth stage is the jump. In the fourth stage, I say to you: “Stop!” When I say “Stop!,” you must freeze. Do absolutely nothing, because any movement can distract you, and then everything will be in vain. Anything – a cough, a sneeze – you won’t succeed; your mind has been distracted. The upward flow of energy will immediately cease because your attention has shifted.
Do nothing, and you will not die. Even if you really want to sneeze, and you don’t sneeze for ten minutes, you won’t die. Even if you want to cough and you feel irritation in your throat, endure it and do nothing, and you won’t die either. Let your body freeze so that energy can flow upward through it as a single stream.

As energy flows upward, you gain more and more silence. Silence is a byproduct of energy rising; tension is a byproduct of energy flowing downward.
Your entire body will become so silent that it will be as if it has disappeared. You will not be able to feel it. You have lost your body. And when you are silent, all of existence is silent, for existence is a mirror. It reflects you. It reflects you in thousands and thousands of mirrors. When you are silent, all of existence becomes silent. I will tell you this: in your silence, simply be a witness – with continuous attention; do nothing, remain a witness, remain with yourself; do not create anything – no movement, no desire, no becoming – simply be here and now, silently witnessing everything that is happening.

This being in the center, this being in oneself, is made possible by the first three stages. Until these three stages are completed, you cannot remain with yourself. You can talk about it, you can think about it, you can dream about it, but it will not happen because you are not ready.

The first three stages prepare you for the encounter with the moment. They make you conscious. This is meditation. Something happens in meditation that is beyond words. Once this happens, you will never be the same; it is impossible. It is growth, not just an experience. It is growth.

PRACTICE:

FIRST STAGE - 10 minutes.

Breathe chaotically through your nose, focusing on the exhale. The body will take care of the inhale. Do this as quickly and fully as possible – and then even more intensely, until you literally become the breath itself. Use the natural movements of your body as an aid in raising the energy. Feel it rising, but do not allow it to flow freely during the entire first stage.

SECOND STAGE - 10 minutes.

Make sounds, run, scream, jump, laugh – do whatever you want. Explode! Let everything that needs to be released come out. Become completely crazy, shout, scream, jump, shake, dance, sing, laugh, “throw yourself out.” Hold nothing back, move your entire body. Some small action often helps to get started. Never allow the mind to interfere with what is happening. Be total.


THIRD STAGE - 10 minutes.

Jump with your arms raised, chanting the mantra “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” as deeply as possible. Each time you land on the entire sole of your foot, let the sound strike deeply into the sexual center. Give everything you have, completely exhaust yourself.


FOURTH STAGE - 15 minutes.

Stop, freeze. Stop! Freeze where you are, and in the position you are in at that moment. Do not control your body in any way. Coughing, movement, anything will dissipate the flow of energy, and the effort will be lost. Be a witness to everything that is happening to you.

You become so sensitive that even the smallest blade of grass acquires infinite meaning for you. Your sensitivity reveals to you that this small stem of grass is as important for existence as a giant star; without this stem, existence would be less than it is. And this tiny stem is unique, irreplaceable, and possesses its own individuality. And this sensitivity will bring you a new kind of friendship – friendship with trees, with birds, with animals, with mountains, with rivers, with oceans, with stars. As love grows, as friendship grows, life becomes richer...(Osho)

And this miracle is possible through meditation. Meditation is simply an unusual surgical method that cuts you off from everything alien and leaves only what is your true essence. It burns away everything superfluous and leaves you naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. You become like the first person who came to earth, who knows nothing, who must discover everything, who must be a seeker, who must embark on a journey.

The second principle is the journey. Life should be a search – not a desire, but an exploration; not a claim to be something, to be this – the president of a country or the prime minister – but a search for the answer to the question: "Who am I?" It is very strange that people who do not know who they are try to become someone. They don't even know who they are in the present! They are not familiar with their essence, but they have a goal to become someone. Becoming is a disease of the soul. Essence is what you are. And to discover your essence means to begin to live. Then every moment is a new discovery, every moment brings new joy. A new mystery opens its doors, a new love begins to appear in you, a new compassion that you have not felt before, a new feeling of beauty, of divinity.

• The first thing you need to reclaim is innocence. Throw away your knowledge, forget your writings, forget your religions, your theology, your philosophy. Be born again, become innocent – and this is in your hands. Cleanse your mind of all alien ideas, of everything borrowed, of everything that has come from traditions, customs, of everything that has been given to you by others – parents, teachers, university professors. Just get rid of it. Become simple again, become a child again.

In the life of Saint Francis, there is a very beautiful story. Francis is dying. And he always traveled on a donkey from one place to another, sharing his experience with people. All his disciples gathered to hear his last words. A person's last words are always much more significant than everything he said before, because they contain the entire experience of his life. But what the disciples heard – they could not believe their ears... Saint Francis did not address them; he addressed his donkey. He said: "Brother, I am in insurmountable debt to you. You carried me from place to place, never getting angry. Never complaining. Before I leave this world, I want to ask for your forgiveness; I have done little good for you." These were the last words of St. Francis. It takes great sensitivity to say to a donkey, "Brother donkey," and ask for forgiveness.

As you become more and more sensitive, life becomes more expansive. It is no longer a small pond; it becomes like an ocean. It is less and less limited by you, your wife, and your children – it is no longer limited by anything. All of existence becomes your family, and until all of existence becomes your family, you will not know what life is – because no person is something separate; we are all connected. We are a vast continent, connected by millions of paths. Our life is shortened exactly as much as our hearts are not filled with love for the whole.

Meditation will bring you sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. This is our world – these stars are ours; we are not strangers here. We belong to existence from birth. We are part of it, we are its heart. Secondly, meditation will bring you great silence – because all the garbage of knowledge will be removed. Thoughts that are part of knowledge have also gone... a vast silence, and you are amazed: this silence is the only existing music.

Any music is an attempt to somehow realize silence. The sages of the ancient East attached great importance to all the great arts – music, poetry, dance, painting, sculpture – because all of this was born from meditation. They are an attempt to somehow bring the unknowable into the world of the knowable for those who are not ready for the journey – simply a 'gift' for those who are not ready to embark on a journey. Perhaps a song will evoke a desire to go in search of the source, perhaps a sculpture...
Osho

A person who desires is an escapist. It is very strange that meditators are considered escapists. This is complete nonsense. Only the meditator is not an escapist – unlike any other person. Meditation is not an escape from life: it is an escape into life. The mind runs away from life, desire runs away from life...

A person who lives in the future lives a false life. In reality, he does not live; he only pretends to live. He hopes to live, he wants to live, but he never lives. And tomorrow never comes; it is always today. And whatever happens, it is always here and now, and he does not know how to live here and now; he only knows how to run away from here and now. The way of escape is called "desire," tanha – it is with this word that Buddha designated the escape from the present, the escape from the real to the unreal.
A person who desires is an escapist.

It is very strange that meditators are considered escapists. This is complete nonsense. Only the meditator is not an escapist – unlike any other person. Meditation means getting out of desires, getting out of thoughts, getting out of the mind. Meditation means relaxing in the present, in the given moment. Meditation is the only thing in the world that is not an escape, although it is considered an escape. People who condemn meditation always condemn it on the pretext that it is an escape, an escape from life. They are simply talking nonsense; they do not understand what they are saying.
Meditation is not an escape from life: it is an escape into life. The mind runs away from life, desire runs away from life.
He never surrenders to desire... He meditates.

He brings himself back to the present again and again. Again and again, the mind begins to function, and he brings it back to the present again. Gradually, this begins to happen: a window opens, and for the first time you see the sky as it is. And for the first time you feel the wind, the rain, and the sun in their immediacy, because you have become meditative. You begin to touch life. Life is no longer a word, but a tangible reality; then love is no longer a word, but an energy that fills you. Blessing is no longer a desire, a hope – you feel it, you possess it, you are it.

What is meditation? It does not mean thinking about something; the English word misleads you. In English, there is no word that exactly corresponds to the translation of Buddha's word sammasati. It has been translated as meditation, as right mindfulness, as awareness, consciousness, vigilance, observation, witnessing – but in reality, there is not a single word that has the quality of sammasati.

Sammasati means: there is awareness, but without any content. There is no thought, no desire, nothing stirs in you. You are not thinking about God and about great things... about nature and its beauty, about the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, and their immeasurably important statements. You are not thinking! You are also not focusing on any particular object. You are not reciting a mantra, because all of this is the mind's belongings, the mind's content. You are not doing anything! The mind is completely empty, and you are here, in this emptiness. A kind of presence, pure presence, and there is nowhere to go – you are completely relaxed in yourself, you are at peace, you are home. This is the meaning of Buddha's meditation.

No one has ever been able to express meditation as beautifully as Buddha did. Many people have attained it, but no one has been so expressive, no one has been able to convey the message so well as Buddha. He never surrenders to desire.

"He meditates. And in the strength of his determination, He discovers true happiness."

Bliss is true happiness. What you call happiness is only suffering and illusion. What you call happiness is nothing more than entertainment, pleasure. It is momentary – it cannot be true. Truth must have one quality, and that quality is eternity. If something is true, it is eternal; if something is untrue, it is momentary.
True happiness is found only when the mind completely ceases to function. It does not come from outside. It begins to flow within your being, it begins to fill you. You become radiant. You become a fountain of bliss.
OSHO

What do you believe is the most surprising thing in life?
 
The most surprising thing in life is that no one seems surprised. People take life for granted. Everything is a mystery, everything is simply astounding! It is a miracle that a tree grows from a seed, that birds begin to sing in the morning when the sun rises. It is a miracle! You encounter miracles every single moment, and yet you do not look surprised. This is the most surprising thing in life—that people take life for granted. Only children do not take it for granted. That is why children possess beauty, compassion, innocence. They always live with a sense of wonder; everything evokes awe in them. Pebbles on a shore or seashells... Observe children, see with what joy they run, with what joy they collect simple colored pebbles as if they had found stunning diamonds. When they pick flowers, wild flowers, look into their eyes. Or when they catch butterflies—observe them. Their entire being, every cell of their body is immersed in mystery. And this is the most important quality that makes life worth living.
 
He who loses the capacity for wonder is dead. The moment astonishment dies within you, you die. The moment the sense of miracle dies within you, you die. The moment you become unable to feel awe, you lose all your strength.
And to be born with the gift of joy and the feeling that the world is wild—that is the quality that makes life worth living, not only worth living, but worth dancing, worth celebrating.
The only thing that surprises most of all is that you do not seem surprised. And that is exactly how your life turns into a boring life, a life full of sorrow.
Bring back your ability to be astonished, as it was in childhood. Look at the world again with those same innocent eyes. Dionysus calls this agnosia, a state of non-knowing; the Upanishads call it dhyana, samadhi, a state of non-knowing. This is not ignorance. Ignorance and knowledge belong to one dimension: ignorance means less knowledge, knowledge means less ignorance—the difference is only in degree. Agnosia, samadhi—this is not ignorance; it lies beyond it. It is a pure state of wonder. When you are filled with astonishment, existence is filled with the divine.
 
Where does freshness come from?
It comes from nowhere; it is always here. Existence itself is freshness. Existence is fresh because it is always here and now. It is not burdened by the past; it is never old. Time has no effect on existence; time does not exist for it. Time flows only for the mind. In essence, time and mind are synonyms. Stop the mind, and time will stop.
 
 
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Someone asked Jesus:
— What will be the most surprising thing in your kingdom of God?
And Jesus said:
— There will no longer be time.
 
 
A very unexpected answer: "There will no longer be time." That is what will be most astounding in the kingdom of God—because the mind will vanish, so where could time come from?
Time does not consist, as is commonly believed, of three tenses: past, present, and future. Time consists only of two tenses: past and future. The present is not part of time—the present lies beyond it. And the present is always fresh. The present is a part of eternity. The present is the penetration of the eternal into the dream-filled world of time, a ray of light in the darkness of the mind.
The past is never fresh—it cannot be, that is obvious. It is always dirty, it always reeks—reeks of death, reeks of everything that has already rotted, reeks of tradition, reeks of corpses. The past is a cemetery. And the future is nothing other than a projection of this dead past. And how can the future be alive? The dead can only give a projection for the dead. What is your future? A modified past, slightly corrected here and there, a bit better, a bit more refined, a bit more comfortable, but it is the same past. You passionately desire to repeat it.
 
Your future carries nothing new—and cannot carry any. The mind accepts nothing fresh. It is powerless regarding that which is new, fresh, and young. It can move only within the small world of familiar, known things—and the known is the past. The future is nothing other than a desire to repeat it—better, of course. Therefore, the future is also not fresh. Only the present is fresh.
You ask me: "Where does freshness come from?"
 
Freshness never comes and never goes. It is always here; it is always now. Be here and now, and suddenly you will become fresh, you will bathe in eternity, something timeless will pour over you. Call it God, call it the kingdom of God, call it nirvana—as you wish. All these names point to the same thing—that which cannot have a name. All these words attempt to express the inexpressible.
 
Just cast the human mind aside. And by saying this, I mean that one must set aside the past and future and look. This very moment... The entire sky descends upon you. You are overflowing. Birds sing—and their songs are fresh; they do not repeat old songs. They have no concept of yesterday evening and do not sing of the future. They do not rehearse tomorrow. Trees are fresh. Everything is fresh, except for man.
 
So there is no need to ask: "Where does freshness come from?" Better ask: "Where does this grayness, this staleness, this lifelessness come from?" Because this lifelessness comes and goes. Freshness is always here; it is the very essence of existence. It is the presence of God.
 
Meditation is nothing other than a way, a method to connect you with the eternal, to lead you beyond time, beyond that which is born and dies, beyond all boundaries, into the inconceivable and unknowable. And this is not somewhere far away; it is as close as can be. Even saying that it is close would be wrong, because it is exactly your being, it is you. Freshness is your soul.
 
Your mind is boring, utterly boring. Get out of the mind. At least for a few moments a day, cast the mind aside, strip yourself completely bare. And then you will know that it springs forth within you—that very freshness you ask about. Where does it come from? It comes from the deepest core of your being—and in fact, it does not "come." Suddenly you discover that it was always there. It was always present there, like an underground current hidden by many, many layers of memories, dreams, and desires.
Buddha says: cast away all desires, and you will know. Cast away all desires, and you will reach those limits that lie beyond the edge of birth and death, and enter the infinite.
But why does man not move toward his own being, which is so close? He is ready to go to the Moon; he is ready to go anywhere! He is ready to strive for the stars, but not for his own heart. Why? There must be some deep reason behind this. The reason is that in a journey inside yourself, you will have to lose yourself. And man is afraid to lose himself. He clings; he wants to remain himself. He does not want to lose his personality, and even if it is fake, it is better than nothing. Such is our logic.
We do not know who we are, and therefore we cling to the body, to the mind, to whatever we are given—to conventions, to Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam. We cling to everything that was imposed upon us because it gives us a sense of comfort, an illusion as if we know ourselves: "I am a communist"—this becomes my knowledge of myself. "I am a Catholic"—this becomes my knowledge of myself. "I am a Hindu," "I am a German"—this becomes my knowledge of myself
 
Buddha says: "Know thyself." Socrates says: "Know thyself." They all say: "Know thyself." All awakened ones carry only one message: know thyself. We listen and do not hear. We continue to walk across the same rotten bridges; we continue to live in unhappiness just as before. And the reason is that this old life of unhappiness can give you only one thing—the ego. If you go inside, you will have to pay for it. And this price equals the loss of your ego...
Osho

Why is there so much disappointment in the world?

Because there are so many expectations. Live with expectations, and disappointment is inevitable. Expect nothing, and there will be no disappointment. Disappointment is a byproduct of expectation: the more you expect, the stronger your disappointment will be. So disappointment is not, in fact, the problem, but the result. The problem is the expectation.

Disappointment is merely a shadow that follows expectation. If you live for even one moment without expectations, if expectations vanish from your mind, everything becomes simple: you ask a question — an answer comes — you are satisfied. But if you ask with any expectations, the answer will disappoint you.
Everything we do, we do with expectations. If I am in love with someone, expectation arrives without me even knowing it. I expect love in return. I have not yet loved, I have not yet grown into love, but expectation is already here, and now it will destroy everything. Love breeds more disappointment than anything else in the world because when you love, you immerse yourself in expectations, you drown in utopias. You haven't even started the journey, yet you are already thinking about returning home.

The stronger your expectation of love, the harder it will be for love to flow back to you. The one from whom you expect love will feel it as shackles; for them, loving you will be an obligation, something they must do. And when love is an obligation, it brings no satisfaction, for as an obligation, love is dead.
Love can only be a game, not an obligation. Love is freedom, and obligation is shackles, a heavy burden that you must carry. And when you have to carry something, it loses its beauty. The freshness and poetry vanish, and the other person instantly feels that they are being offered something dead. If you love with expectation, consider that you have killed love. It is barren — your love will be a dead child. And disappointment awaits you.

Let your love be like a game, not like a deal; love not because you want to receive something in return. Let your love for another person be an end in itself. Be grateful to existence for the fact that you have loved, and do not think about whether you will be rewarded for it or not.
Do not turn love into a transaction, and you will never be disappointed; your life will be filled with love. And when love blooms in all its fullness, bliss arrives, ecstasy arrives.
I used love only as an example. The same law applies to everything. There is so much disappointment in the world that it is difficult to find a person who has not been disappointed. Even your so-called saints are disappointed: disappointed because of their disciples, disappointed because they had expectations regarding them: the disciples should do this and not do that, the disciples should be such-and-such and not such-and-such. With such an approach, disappointment will inevitably occur; it has already occurred.

Your so-called workers are also disappointed because they, too, have expectations. Whatever their ideal may be, society must conform to it; whatever their utopia may be, everyone must follow it. They expect too much. They believe that the whole world should immediately transform according to their ideals. But the world continues on its own path, and therefore they are disappointed.
It is very difficult to find a person who has not been disappointed. And if you find such a person, know this: they are a religious person. It does not matter what became the object, the cause, the source of disappointment. One can be disappointed in power, in prestige, in wealth. One can be disappointed in love. One can be disappointed even in the divine.

You want the divine to descend upon you. You begin to meditate, and expectation arises. I have met people who meditate for fifteen minutes every day for a week, and then come to me and say: "I meditate, but I still have not known the divine. It seems that my efforts are useless." They dedicate fifteen minutes to meditation for seven days, and divinity has still not visited them. "I still do not feel the divine, so what should I do now?" Even in the search for the divine, we have expectations.

Expectation is poison. It is because of it that disappointment arises; it must be so. Realize the hypocrisy, the toxicity of the expecting mind. Gradually, if you begin to realize this, expectations will vanish, and there will be no disappointments.
So do not ask: "Why is there so much disappointment in the world?" Ask: "Why am I so disappointed?" Such a question will change everything completely. If someone wonders why the world is so disappointed, expectation is already present: the world could be less disappointed. But regardless of whether the world is disappointed or not, you will remain disappointed.
The world is disappointed — that is a fact. But go and try to figure out why you are disappointed. It will turn out that you are disappointed because of your own expectations. This is the source, the root cause. Stop this!
Do not think about the world, think about yourself. You are the world, and if you change, the world changes too. Its part, its integral part, has become different: the world has begun to change.

We are too concerned with changing the world. This is simply an escape. I have always felt that people who try to remake others are actually running away from their own disappointments, from their own conflicts, from their worries, from their sufferings. They focus their attention on something outside, they occupy their mind with something external, because they cannot change themselves. It is easier to try to change the world than to change oneself.
Do not forget that you need to find the cause of your own disappointments. And the sooner you do this, the better. Situations change, but the source of disappointment is always the same: expectation.
Osho

I must remind you of the last words Socrates spoke on earth: "When I was young, I thought I knew everything. I boasted because I could outargue anyone. When I grew a little older, I realized that I did not know many things; I was simply boasting. And since others could argue with me, they thought that perhaps I knew—because my arguments were more weighty. And as I continued, little by little it became clear to me that I knew nothing. Let this be my last statement on earth: that I do not know."
Socrates became a child again, but he staked his wisdom, his philosophy, his outstanding mind, all his arguments, and the efforts of his entire life to defeat opponents in debates and discussions. He became the smartest man in Greece. And he possessed incredible courage to say: "I know nothing."
No one knows anything.

Existence is a mystery; it cannot be solved. And because existence is a mystery, it reveals itself only to the heart of a child. It does not reveal itself to knowledge, because knowledge is aggression. It reveals itself to innocence, because innocence is simply receptivity, not aggression, but open doors, waiting. If truth enters, you are ready to meet it.
Truth cannot be conquered; it cannot be solved. You must be available for the truth so that the truth can conquer you. That is why simplicity is the most important religious quality. I want you to become innocent, knowing nothing—filled with expectation.

Jesus says: "Seek and ye shall find."
I say: "Wait! Never seek," because seeking is interference; you are poking your nose into the mysteries of existence. It is not beautiful; it is simply ugly. I say: "Wait! And you will find."

Jesus says: "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Wait. The doors are always open for those who have patience, who can wait indefinitely, but who will not cross boundaries. Even knocking on someone's door is already an invasion of another's territory.
Jesus says: "Ask, and it shall be given own to you."
I say: "Ask and forget about ever receiving it." In the very act of your asking, you have destroyed the possibility of receiving. Do not ask. Do not become a question.

Let me repeat: do not become a question! And a great surprise awaits you, because you are the answer. If you become a question, you will fall into a trap from which it is impossible to escape. You will continue to ask—and the more you ask, the further you will move away from the answer, because you are that answer!
In innocence, in simplicity, you find this—your very being.

In the laboratory, be a scientist, but when you leave there, completely forget about science. Listen to the birds—but not scientifically! Look at the flowers—but not scientifically, because looking at a rose scientifically means looking at a completely different object. It is not the same rose that the poet sees.

Perception does not depend on the object; perception depends on the perceiver, on the quality of the experience. When a scientist looks at a rose, he thinks of botany, chemistry, physics, atoms, electrons, neurons, everything all at once—only not beauty. Beauty does not enter his field of vision, and that is exactly what a rose represents.
For the poet, for the artist, a rose is a completely different experience: it is a manifestation of the unknown, the transcendent, the very secret of life. It embodies something divine; it brings something from heaven into existence, something from distant stars. It grows on earth, it is rooted, but it is not just a part of the earth; it contains much more. A rose is not the sum of its components. The scientist understands it only as the sum of its constituent parts—there is nothing more in it, but the poet begins to feel something beyond that.

The moment you dissect a rose, the beauty disappears. The rose was merely a possibility for beauty to descend. It is the earth perceiving the sky; it is the coarse perceiving the delicate. The poet feels this, but it is a feeling, not a thought.

Therefore, leaving your laboratory, forget everything about atoms, forget everything about space; instead, begin to look with a fresh gaze, through another vision—the vision of a child, the vision of a poet, the vision of a lover. When you look at the woman you love, never think of her in terms of biology, otherwise you will miss the whole essence. She is not biology; her being is much greater than any science can contain. When you kiss a woman, do not think about what chemical exchange is happening between lips, otherwise you will feel disgust! You will see no poetry; it will be unclear to you what all these poets are eternally talking about. It is merely an exchange of bacteria, microbes, millions of microbes—it is even dangerous. It could become a matter of life and death—be on your guard!

When you make love to a woman, do not think about hormones; avoid this nonsense, otherwise the entire act of love will be just a mechanical phenomenon. You will be there, and at the same time, you will not be. You will end up as a mere observer, not a participant. And the whole secret of the poet is in participation.

Looking at a flower, become the flower; dance beside the flower, sing a song. The wind is cool and fresh, the sun gives warmth, the flower dances in the wind, rejoices, sings. Share this with it! Cast aside indifference, objectivity, detachment. Cast aside all your scientific approaches. Become a bit more fluid, more melting, more merging. Let the flower speak to your heart; let the flower enter your being. Invite it—it is a guest! And then you will feel the taste of mystery.

This is the first step toward the mysterious, the ultimate step: if you can for a moment become a participant, it means you have found the key, learned the secret. Then become a participant in everything you do. Walking, do not step mechanically; stop simply observing—become this. Dancing, do not think about technique; technique has nothing to do with it. You can do everything technically correct and yet miss all the joy. Dissolve yourself in the dance, become the dance, forget the dancer.

When such a deep union begins to happen in many spheres of your life, when everywhere you begin to experience such incredible moments of disappearance, of absence of ego; when the flower is there but you are not, when the rainbow is there but you are not; when clouds float across the sky and you are neither outside nor inside, when you become absolutely silent; when inside you there is no one, only a pure virginal silence that nothing distracts, which logic, thoughts, emotions, feelings do not disturb—that is the moment of meditation. The mind has gone, and when the mind goes, the mystery enters.
Osho

Man's last hope is to listen to the heart and act as it commands. Then your life will turn into a blessed spiritual journey...

-Why do I try to subject circumstances to my own will, why not simply accept them and allow everything that must happen to happen?

-Upbringing is so poisonous, so destructive, that it destroys all that is most essential and valuable within a person, replacing it with cruelty, violence, and the desire to dominate. Society supports the destruction of your innocence in every way; it is profitable for society.

On one hand, attempts to subject circumstances lead you to turn strength against yourself. This creates schizophrenia, splits the personality, condemning it to internal struggle. This disgusting and destructive technique has been used by interested parties for millennia.

It is an easy way to destroy individuality. When a person proves to be a unique individual, they become dangerous. Uniqueness is a threat to exploitation, a threat to slavery, a threat to any kind of violence. A person possessing individuality would rather die than submit.

Individuality has dignity... But a person can be stripped of their individuality in a very simple way: by bringing them to internal conflict. As you know, a broom is broken stick by stick.

You are constantly fighting with yourself because idiotic ideas have been hammered into your head. You must choose between your own nature, the relaxation within your own essence, and millennia of conditioning. And this conditioning captures you more and more every day, striking at your very core. Pleasures are condemned, a lack of seriousness is also condemned, playfulness is condemned. All of humanity has become terribly serious, and seriousness is a psychological disease. It can penetrate even deeper and infect the soul.
Nothing should be taken seriously.

Your life consists of only three things. One has already happened, and you can do nothing about it — you were born. The second thing is death, and although it has not yet arrived, you also cannot do anything about it. So leave these two phenomena alone; they are beyond your understanding. And between them remains life, love, jubilation.
It is not so easy to pressure a living, energetic person. If a person loves and possesses clarity, they are hard to fool. You will encounter no playful, cheerful person in a church, nor in a Temple, nor in a mosque, nor in a synagogue. All these places are visited by living corpses who stand against life, against love and joy, against the ability to play, against the entire universe.

On the other hand, if circumstances blind you, then you deny any possibility of being alive, of being more loving, of experiencing bliss and ecstasy. You fight with yourself and your own past. The past has a very long history; it has become a part of you. Only if you are vigilant do you still have time to escape the nets of the past, to cast off its shackles.

One can live freely in the present only by liberating oneself from the past. And one must remember one strange thing: having liberated themselves from the past, feeling as though they have arrived on this beautiful planet for the first time, a person automatically stops thinking about the future, hoping for the future.
The future is merely a projection of the past. The past is already gone; the future has not yet arrived. But ambitions, desires, and all sorts of foolish ideas, accompanied by greed and a desperate desire to acquire something, are rooted in the past. Automatically, in search of salvation, you begin to look into the future.

But reality exists only in the present. Reality has nothing to do with either the past or the future. It is concentrated in this moment. So, if you live in the present, you receive everything you seek, everything toward which you strive.
The present moment opens before you the doors to the space of the divine.

All I want here is to help people forget their past and not think about the future; I want them to learn to enjoy the incredible beauty of the present moment.
Live from moment to moment, constantly leaving the past behind, getting rid of it like dust on a mirror. A person content with the present will not dwell on the future. You think about the future because in the present you have only misfortunes; you are in agony. To avoid this, so as not to see how you live, you shift your gaze toward distant horizons. Your dreams will never come true. You will always be tied to ambitions and goals, but remember: wherever you are, there is always and everywhere only the present; there is no future.

The moment you stop living in the present, you die. It may take another sixty, seventy, eighty years before you are finally buried or burned on a funeral pyre, but all this time you will be dead. The second you lose connection with the present, you die. But if you restore contact, you can be reborn.

Only staying in the present will give you the space where you can relax and stop acting by force. The past imposes on you ideals, a morale that goes against your nature. A drop of dew cannot resist the ocean. Sooner or later, it will merge with it anyway.
From my point of view, a true, true seeker of truth is a person who strives to find the present.

You ask: "Why do I try to subject circumstances to my own will?" This is all nonsense. First of all, you have no will. The very idea of will is a complete lie. Will is a category belonging to existence. You can connect with this will if you renounce your own personality, your duality, and then the will of the universe will live within you. You have no individual will, and if you are told that you are a strong-willed person, it only aggrandizes your ego.

What is man? Just a handful of dust... Yes, there is something in this dust too, but that something does not belong to you. It belongs to the whole.
Secondly, why force events? Have you ever seen a mountain river? It begins at the highest mountain peaks, where the snows do not melt, then descends into the valley, crossing unexplored territories. Where does this river flow? It is utterly relaxed. It has no goal relative to which it would be tense; it has nothing to achieve. Every minute it enjoys what is around it. And one day, all rivers without exception flow into the ocean.

But people are unlucky. Many get lost in the desert, evaporate on a funeral pyre. Only a few lucky ones manage to reach the ocean. And the secret is actually simple, completely obvious. But every time people miss the most important thing.

Who are you to force events? Who gave you the power to dispose of circumstances? Trials are sent to you from above. It would be far wiser to learn to accept them instead of opposing them. By agreeing with what is happening, you can "ride" the situation, "go along with it," but as soon as you start to fight... you are so insignificantly small, and the universe is so vast! You do not have a single chance to defeat it.
Only disappointment awaits you, followed by misfortunes, torments, and suffering.

 
Be like a cloud traveling across the sky without any desire to achieve something. There is no need to desire anything more; everything is already here. What else could one want? And if the wind blows south, the cloud flies south. Every moment of its flight there, high in the heavens, is such an ecstasy that what difference does it make where to fly — south, north, west or east? And if suddenly the wind changes direction and begins to blow north, the cloud will not complain; it will not say that this is illogical, that "we were flying so nicely south, and suddenly, for no reason, you started blowing north." The cloud simply begins to move north without any resistance. There is no conflict between the cloud and the wind.

This is what the correct path to truth should be based on: absence of conflict with nature, absence of conflict with existence. And then all your misfortunes, all tension, all your suffering and torments will disappear on their own, because you create them yourself. Of course, you are not fully responsible for them; in many ways they are the legacy of a long, disgusting, unnatural past.
What situation are you trying to change? Love grows in your heart, but society says that love is blind, beware of it. Society convinces you that love intoxicates, that love is slavery, and you will regret falling in love a hundred times over, and therefore it is better to nip such moods in the bud. Your head is stuffed with various ideas about what is moral and what is not. And so you begin to fight with your own heart.

The head and the heart are disconnected — that is the problem. Your head is filled with all sorts of nonsense, and all this rubbish does not belong to you. You acquired it in childhood; that is how your parents, society, teachers, professors, priests, and politicians taught you. Your head is simply overflowing with all kinds of shit, and it tries to control the heart, but no head has ever succeeded in poisoning or spoiling the heart.

Man's last hope is to listen to the heart and act as it commands. Then your life will turn into a blessed spiritual journey. All the meditations I teach you... in short, all of them are aimed at helping you live not by the head, but by the heart, to move from logic to love, from ego to a state in which there is no ego, from a sense of own separateness to a deep merging with the whole, to dissolving within it.

The whole knows better what you need. It knows nothing of ideals, of morale, of what is good and what is bad. But the miracle consists in this: at the moment you merge with the whole, everything suddenly turns out to be good, everything goes right, and everything becomes incredibly beautiful.
Osho

I feel as if I'm in a trap. The disappointment of boredom only intensifies when I think that all that is within my power is but a meaningless fever. What exactly is boredom?

Boredom is one of the most important things in human life. Only humans are capable of boredom; no other animal can experience boredom. Boredom exists only when the mind begins to come closer and closer to enlightenment. Boredom is merely the polar opposite of enlightenment. Animals cannot become enlightened, and therefore they cannot experience boredom either.

Boredom simply shows that you are beginning to realize the futility of life, its constantly repeating wheel. You have done all these things before — nothing comes of it. You have already embarked on all these journeys — they led nowhere. Boredom is the first indicator that a great understanding of the futility, the meaninglessness of life and its ways is arising in you.

You can respond to boredom in two ways. The first is what ordinary people do — run away from it, not look it in the eye, not confront it. Keep away from it, flee; avoid it by occupying yourself with things that can distract you, that can become obsessions; that take you so far from the realities of life that you never again see that boredom arises.

That is why people invented alcohol, drugs. They are ways of escaping boredom. But running is not so easy; you can only run for a while. Again and again boredom will return, and each time its voice will grow louder and louder. You can run into sex, into overeating, into music — into a thousand and one kinds of things. But again and again boredom will arise. It is not something to be avoided; it is part of human growth. It must be faced head-on.

The other response is to face it, to meditate on it, to be with it, to be it. This is what Buddha did under the bodhi tree, this is what all Zen people have done for centuries.
What exactly is meditation? Facing boredom. What does the meditator continuously do? Sitting in silence, staring at his navel or watching his breath... — do you think these things entertain him? He is unimaginably bored! That is why the Zen master walks with a stick in his hand — because these people will inevitably fall asleep. There are no other outcomes, and only one remains: at least they can sleep. They cannot run away. They have voluntarily taken on Zen training and discipline — they cannot run. But one way of escape is always available: you can fall asleep, and then you forget everything. That is why everyone wants to sleep in meditation.

Herein lies the entire effort of meditation: to plunge into boredom, but not to run from it; and to remain alert, because if you fall asleep, you have run away. Stay alert! Observe it, witness it. If boredom is there, then it is there. You must look into it — to its very core.
If you continue to look deep into boredom, without trying to escape, one day an explosion comes. One day, suddenly, looking deeply into boredom, you penetrate your own nothingness. Boredom was merely a covering, a container holding your inner nothingness. If you run from boredom, you run from your own nothingness. If you do not run from boredom, if you begin to live with it, begin to accept it, welcome it… This is the whole of meditation: to welcome boredom, to enter into it of your own free will; not to wait for it to come, but to go in search of it.

Sitting for hours in a yoga posture, simply watching your breath, one arrives at utter boredom. And the whole training of meditation is such that it helps boredom along. In a Zen monastery, you must get up in the morning at the same time every day — every day, year after year. It doesn't matter if it's summer or winter. You must get up early, at three o'clock, and take a bath. You must drink tea and sit... The same postures follow again and again. And the whole day is also filled with an established routine: you eat breakfast at a certain time, then meditate again, then eat again at a certain time — and the food is always the same! Everything helps boredom.

The same clothes, the same monastery, and the same master walks around with his stick every day. Every evening you come to the master's session. And the questions given for meditation are so boring: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Just think about it — it would drive you crazy! What is the sound of one hand clapping? There is no answer, and you know it; everyone knows there is no answer. And the master keeps insisting, "Keep repeating it, keep meditating on it."
And everything is well organized. Boredom must be created — immense, unimaginable. And this boredom must be allowed as totally as possible, helped along, supported in every way. The same evening, the same work, the same chanting of the mantra. At the same time you fall asleep again... and it continues endlessly, like a wheel. After a few days, you arrive at utter boredom, and you cannot run from it. There is no way to escape. You cannot go to the cinema, you cannot watch television; you cannot get anything that might help you avoid it. You are thrown back into it again and again.

To face it requires immense courage. It is almost like death; in fact, it is much harder than death, because death comes when you lose consciousness. But here you are stirring up all possible kinds of boredom. What happens? This is the secret of all meditations: if you keep observing, observing, observing, boredom becomes greater and greater, more and more intense, and then — the culmination. Nothing can last forever — a moment comes when the wheel turns. If you can go to this very extreme, to the very culmination, then a change occurs, a transformation — enlightenment, satori, or call it whatever you like. One day comes when suddenly the boredom is too much. It is choking you, it is almost killing you. You are surrounded by an ocean of boredom. It floods you, and there seems to be no way to escape it. This very intensity and totality... — and the wheel turns. Suddenly boredom disappears, and satori, samadhi, arrives. You have entered your nothingness.

Now there will be no more boredom. You have seen the very nature of the nothingness of life. You have disappeared — who is there to be bored? What could cause it? You no longer exist. You are annihilated.
You ask: "What exactly is boredom?" A great spiritual phenomenon. That is why buffaloes do not experience boredom; they look perfectly happy and joyful. Only humans experience boredom. And even among humans — only those who are very talented and intelligent. Stupid people do not experience boredom. They are quite content with their work, earning money, building a bank account, content with raising children, reproducing, eating, sitting in a cinema, going to restaurants, participating in this or that. They enjoy themselves! They do not experience boredom. This is the lowest type of human development; they essentially belong to the world of buffaloes. They are not yet human beings.

A human becomes human when he begins to experience boredom. You can see it: the most intelligent child will also be the most bored — because nothing holds his interest for long. Sooner or later he comes up against this fact and asks: "And now what? What next? This is finished. I have seen this toy, I have looked into it, I have opened it, I have analyzed it, now it's done — what next?" By the time he becomes a young man, he is already bored.

Buddha experienced unimaginable boredom. He left his kingdom when he was only twenty-nine, at the peak of his youth. He was incredibly bored — women, wine, wealth, the kingdom, everything bored him. He saw everything, and saw it clearly and through and through. He was bored. He renounced the world not because the world was wrong, remember. Tradition says he renounced the world because the world was bad — this is absolute nonsense. He renounced the world because he was bored with it.

It is not bad, nor is it good. If you are intelligent, it is boring. If you are stupid, you can go on. Then the merry-go-round spins; you move from one sensation to another. You are interested in trivialities, and you keep repeating yourself, and you are not conscious enough to see this repetition — you cannot see that you already did it yesterday, and today as well, and you intend to do the same tomorrow. You must be truly intelligent. How can intelligence avoid boredom? It is impossible. Intelligence means: seeing things as they are…

Buddha left the world out of boredom; having arrived at ultimate boredom, he fled the world. And what did he do all those six years, sitting in all those forests? He arrived at greater and greater boredom. What else can one do sitting under a tree? — watching the breath, staring at one's navel, day after day, year after year... He created boredom and brought it to its very culmination, and one day it disappeared. It disappears on its own.

If you reach this culmination... the Turn comes. It comes! And with this turning point, light enters your being — you disappear, only light remains. And with light comes bliss. You are full of Joy — although you are not there, you are full of joy, utterly causeless joy. Joy simply sparkles and bubbles in your being.
An ordinary person experiences joy for some reason — he falls in love with a new woman or a new man, and he or she is joyful. Their joy is fleeting. Tomorrow they will be bored with this woman or man, and they will start looking for others. An ordinary person rejoices because he has a new car; tomorrow he will have to look for a new car. And so it continues endlessly... and he never sees the essence of it: that in the end he always gets bored. Do whatever you like — in the end you will get bored, every action brings boredom. An intelligent person sees this. The sooner you see it, the more intelligence you show.

What remains then? Then only boredom remains, and one should meditate on it. There is no way to run from it. So, enter into it, see where it leads. And if you can continue to do this, it will lead you to enlightenment.
Only humans are capable of boredom, and only humans are capable of enlightenment.
osho

1. And the same is true of Jung. Jung came to India to meet someone... because in the East, people have been working on the mind for thousands of years. But they never developed anything like psychoanalysis; they developed meditation – a completely different approach. What is the point of analyzing the garbage of the mind? – dissecting it... it takes many years. Some people have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years, but they haven't achieved anything. They changed psychoanalysts, hoping that maybe someone else would help, but they still didn't achieve anything.

And that's impossible, because all that a psychoanalyst does – of any school, Adler's, Jung's, or Freud's – is dissect the garbage of your mind, interpreting it according to his own mind. And what is the point of all this? In the East, we didn't develop psychoanalysis; we developed meditation. Meditation simply takes you away from the garbage, beyond the garbage – and you don't need to worry about it. If you want to deal with it, you can do it for many lifetimes. You will never reach the end. But if you simply remain a witness to your mind, doing nothing with the mind – simply remaining detached, simply seeing it, as if thoughts are moving on a screen, and simply observing them without any judgment, good or bad, – a strange experience comes...

What does exposing the unconscious, as in psychoanalysis, bring to humanity – according to you? Almost nothing. Psychoanalysis is a useless exercise because it doesn't change anything: it doesn't create a new person, it doesn't bring peace. In fact, even the founders of psychoanalysis, such as Sigmund Freud, were so afraid of death that it is unbelievable. No normal being is so afraid of death. The founder of psychoanalysis was so afraid that even the word "death" was forbidden to be uttered in his presence – it was a taboo. It couldn't be talked about. Three times it happened that someone mentioned death, and Sigmund Freud fainted, he had a seizure, he lost consciousness. He was so afraid of death that he avoided visiting cemeteries, he didn't come when someone was dying, even if it was a friend or a student. When something related to death happened, he fell into a complete panic – and this man teaches psychoanalysis! His problems were not solved.

He gets angry, like any other. He is jealous, more jealous than anyone else. He is greedy. He wants to have a monopoly, he wants to command people. He almost creates an empire of psychoanalysts all over the world, but each of them must repeat, like a parrot, everything that he himself says. Anyone who says something different is immediately ostracized. It seems that this is not a science, but a political party or a fanatical religion – but not a scientific study. And the same is true of Jung. Jung came to India to meet someone... because in the East, people have been working on the mind for thousands of years. But they never developed anything like psychoanalysis; they developed meditation – a completely different approach.

What is the point of analyzing the garbage of the mind? – dissecting it... it takes many years. Some people have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years, but they haven't achieved anything. They changed psychoanalysts, hoping that maybe someone else would help, but they still didn't achieve anything. And that's impossible, because all that a psychoanalyst does – of any school, Adler's, Jung's, or Freud's – is dissect the garbage of your mind, interpreting it according to his own mind. And what is the point of all this? In the East, we didn't develop psychoanalysis; we developed meditation.

Meditation simply takes you away from the garbage, beyond the garbage – and you don't need to worry about it. If you want to deal with it, you can do it for many lifetimes. You will never reach the end. But if you simply remain a witness to your mind, doing nothing with the mind – simply remaining detached, simply seeing it, as if thoughts are moving on a screen, and simply observing them without any judgment, good or bad, – a strange experience comes: little by little, thoughts begin to disappear. Soon, a moment comes when there is only an empty screen – there are no thoughts. And when there is no object, when there is no thought in your consciousness, it turns to itself, because nothing interferes with it; this is exactly the meaning of the word "object" – something that interferes, obstructs. When there is no object, consciousness... just as everything in existence moves in a circle, consciousness also moves in a circle. It returns to its own source. And the meeting of consciousness with its source is an explosion of light, the greatest celebration that a person is capable of, the greatest orgasmic experience. And this is not something that happens and ends. No, once it has happened, it continues. It remains with you. It becomes almost like your breath. You live in it twenty-four hours a day.

Jung came to India in search of someone who would help him understand what the East did to create so many people like the Buddha – not one, but hundreds of those who went beyond the mind and all its troubles and problems, worries, and anxieties. What is the secret? He went to universities, met with psychoanalysts, and everywhere he was told: – You are wasting your time. These people are not the ones you need. These people studied psychoanalysis in the West and teach psychoanalysis in universities. You came to find someone who is absolutely untouched by the West. And such a person exists. And such a person was – Sri Ramana Maharshi. Wherever Jung went – and he was in India for three months – everywhere he was given the same name. – Go to Arunachala in South India and meet this man, who is uneducated, who knows nothing about psychoanalysis; this is the man that the East was able to create. Just go and sit with him, talk to him, listen to him. If you have any questions, ask him. But you will be surprised: Jung never went to him. And later, feeling that he would be criticized, Jung wrote: "I deliberately did not go to Ramana Maharshi, because the East has its own path, the West has its own, and they should not be mixed" – just to protect himself from criticism. Then why did he even go to India?

Again and again, he was told to visit a person, which was a rare opportunity, but he did not do it, although he reached Madras, from where it was only a two-hour drive to Arunachala! Jung did not come to this person, in one meeting with whom he would see what a clear person is, what a person is who has completely cleansed his mind – his eyes, his gestures, his words, his authority. He does not quote scriptures; he knows himself. Jung did not come to him and felt guilty himself. To protect himself, he began to write that the East and the West have different paths. This is nonsense, because a person – in the West or in the East – is the same. And it is strange that he taught Eastern students Western psychology. He should have refused them, because that would mean mixing the West and the East. If he were truly honest, he would have suggested that they return to the East.

He taught Eastern students Western psychology, but he was not ready to come to an Eastern meditator, just to meet him. Why was he afraid? Because he was just an ordinary person – just knowledgeable. He gathered a lot from books, but he did not have his own authentic experience. Western psychoanalysis is just a business. It is a deception of people. It is simply an exploitation of people without providing them with any help, and people go for it only because there is no other alternative. The psychoanalysts themselves go to other psychoanalysts. And psychoanalysts go crazy more often than people of any other profession! They commit more suicides; they are more perverted in every sense. This is a very strange phenomenon. It is not a science at all; it is just a fiction. But it has become a popular profession...
Osho

2. Do I need to understand the roots of my former character in order to get rid of it, or is awareness enough?

____ This is the dividing line between Western psychology and Eastern mysticism.


Western psychology is an attempt to understand the roots of your former character, but it helps no one get rid of them. You become more sober, you become more normal, your mind is no longer in such a mess. The situation has changed somewhat for the better, but every problem remains exactly the same—it simply continues to be dormant. You may understand your jealousy, you may understand your anger, your greed, your ambitions, but all this understanding will remain intellectual. Thus, the greatest psychologists of the West have fallen far behind the Eastern mystics. Awareness takes you beyond the mind. It is not interested in understanding the problems of the mind or their roots; it simply leaves the mind aside, simply exits from it. This is why psychology did not develop in the East.

It is strange that for at least ten thousand years, the East has worked persistently and focusedly in the field of human consciousness, yet it developed neither psychology, nor psychoanalysis, nor psychosynthesis. It is extremely surprising that for ten thousand years no one touched upon this subject. Instead of understanding the mind, the East developed a completely different approach, and this approach consisted of non-identification with the mind: "I am not the mind." When the awareness of this crystallizes within you, the mind becomes p
owerless.

All the power of the mind comes from the fact that you identify yourself with it. And therefore, it was recognized as pointless to dig for roots, find the causes behind the causes, unravel dreams, analyze dreams, interpret dreams. And every psychologist finds a different root, finds a different interpretation, finds a different cause. Psychology is not yet a science; it is still fictitious. If you go to Sigmund Freud, your dream will be interpreted from the point of view of sex. His mind is obsessed with sex. Come with anything—and he will immediately give a sexual interpretation. Go to Alfred Adler—the man who founded another school of psychology, analytical psychology—he is obsessed with a different idea: the thirst for power. So, whatever dream you have, it will be interpreted according to this idea—it is a thirst for power. Go to Carl

Gustav Jung; he interprets every dream as a distant echo of your past lives. His interpretation is mythological. There are many other schools. Great work was done by Assagioli—psychosynthesis—an attempt to unite all schools into one, but his psychosynthesis is absolutely useless. At least in psychoanalysis there is some truth, in analytical psychology there is some truth, but psychosynthesis is just a hodgepodge. He takes one part from one school, another part from another and joins them together. Assagioli is a great intellectual; he was able to put the pieces of the puzzle picture in the right places. But what was significant for Sigmund Freud—was significant in a certain context, but that context no longer exists. He took only what seems significant, but outside of context it loses all meaning. And therefore Assagioli worked his whole life toward a certain synthesis, but failed to create anything significant. And all these schools labored hard.

But the East simply bypassed the mind. Instead of finding causes, roots, and arguments, they discovered one thing: where does the mind draw its strength from? Where does the energy that feeds it come from? The energy that feeds the mind comes from your identification: "I am this." They broke the bridge. This is what awareness consists of—realizing that "I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am not even the heart—I am simply pure consciousness." When this consciousness becomes deeper, becomes crystallized, then the mind gradually begins to live in the shadow. Its influence on you loses all its power. And when consciousness is established one hundred percent, the mind simply evaporates. Western psychology still needs to understand why it is not succeeding. Thousands of people go through psychoanalysis and other therapeutic methods, but none of them, not even the founder of these schools, can be called enlightened; it cannot be said of him that he has no problems, that he has no anxieties, sufferings, fear, paranoia. Everything exists in them just as it exists in you. Sigmund Freud's students asked him many times: "You perform psychoanalysis on all of us, we tell our dreams, and you interpret them. It would be a magnificent experiment if you allowed us to analyze you. Tell us about your dreams, and we will try to analyze and understand what they mean, where they come from and what they signify." But Sigmund Freud never agreed to this. This indicates the enormous weakness of the entire structure of psychoanalysis. He was afraid that in his dreams they would discover the same things he found in their dreams. Then his superiority as a founder, as a master, would be lost...

He knew nothing of people like Gautama Buddha, Mahavira or Nagarjuna. Since these people dream of nothing, there is nothing to analyze. These people have moved so far away from the mind that all connections were severed. They live by consciousness, not by intellect. They react with consciousness, not with the mind or its memories. And they suppress nothing, therefore there is no need for dreams. Dreams are a byproduct of suppression. There are aboriginal tribes in which people dream of nothing or dream very rarely. They would be surprised to learn that civilized people dream for almost the entire night. Out of eight hours of sleep, six are spent dreaming. But aboriginals simply sleep eight hours in silence without any interference. Sigmund Freud knew only the sick people of the West; he was not acquainted with people of consciousness, otherwise the entire history of Western psychology would have been different.

I do not suggest that you make efforts to understand the origins of your mind and its character; this is simply a waste of time. Awareness alone is enough, more than enough. When you begin to be aware, you are freed from the grip of the mind and the mind will become simply a dead fossil. There is no need to seek where greed comes from; the real question is how to get rid of it. The question is not where the ego appears from—these are intellectual questions that are not significant for the seeker. And then there will be many philosophical points of view: where does greed come from, where does the ego come from, where your jealousy comes from, where hatred comes from, where your cruelty appeared—the search for the beginning of all this. And the mind is a huge complex; in fact, a whole lifetime would not be enough to understand all the problems of the mind and their causes. The causes could span thousands of lives. Gradually Western psychology is getting closer to this, for example, "primary therapy."

Janov realized that until we discover the origins of the problems—and for him as a Christian believing in only one life, this means the roots must be sought in childhood. And therefore he began working on reminding you of your childhood, but then he stumbled upon a new fact—in deep hypnosis people remember not only childhood, they remember their birth. They also remember nine months in the mother's womb, and some, the most sensitive people, remember their previous life. And he himself began to fear that he had entered a tunnel that apparently has no end. You enter a past life, and he again leads you down a long corridor into another life. Your mind has already experienced many lives, and therefore you will not be able to discover its roots in the present.

Perhaps you would have to travel back thousands of lives, and that is not so simple. And then, even if you understand where greed comes from, it will change nothing. You will then have to find out how to get rid of it. And there are so many problems that if you get rid of each one individually, you would need millions of lives to completely finish with the mind. And while you are calculating this one problem, other problems will grow, accumulate more energy, more strength, influence. This is a very foolish game. In the East, no person in all past times—in China, India, Japan, Arabia—ever paid attention to this. This is a struggle with a shadow. They worked in another direction and achieved incredible success. They simply brought consciousness out of the mind. They became outside the mind, as witnesses, and they discovered that a miracle happened: when they became witnesses, the mind became powerless, lost all its authority over them. And there was no need to understand anything. The higher consciousness becomes, the lower the mind becomes, in equal proportions. If consciousness is fifty percent, then the mind decreases by fifty percent. If consciousness is seventy percent, only thirty percent of the mind remains. On the day when consciousness is one hundred percent, no mind will remain at all….......
Osho

Consequently, the entire Eastern approach consists of finding a state of no-mind — this silence, purity, serenity. And the mind with its problems, and their roots, is no longer there; it has simply evaporated, just as dew drops evaporate in the morning sun, leaving no trace. And therefore I tell you — awareness is not just enough, it is more than enough. You need nothing else. Western psychology still has no place for meditation, and therefore it continues to go in circles without finding a solution. There are people who were treated with psychoanalysis for fifteen years. They spent fortunes on it because psychoanalysis is a very expensive branch of medicine. To be treated by psychoanalysis for fifteen years — this only led to them becoming addicted to psychoanalysis. Now they can no longer do without it.

Instead of solving some problem, a new problem appeared. Now it almost resembles drug addiction. And when they grow tired of one psychoanalyst, they move on to another. If they stop attending psychoanalysis sessions, they feel that something is missing. But psychoanalysis helped no one. Even they admit that there is not a single person in the entire West who has been completely analyzed. But such is the blindness of people that they cannot see the simple fact that there is not a single person — and this despite thousands of psychoanalysts analyzing people — who has been fully analyzed and risen above their mind.

Analysis cannot lift you above the mind. The way up is awareness; the path to the state "above the mind" is meditation. This is a simple path, and it led to the emergence of thousands of enlightened people in the East. And they did nothing with the mind; they did something else: they simply became aware, vigilant, conscious. They used the mind only as an object. Just as you see a tree, just as you see columns, just as you see other people — they tried to see the mind also as something separate, and they succeeded. And the moment they managed to see the mind as something separate became the death of the mind. In its place grows clarity; intellect disappears, speed of understanding increases. A person no longer reacts; a person responds. Reaction is always based on your past experience, but a response is like a mirror: you approach it — and it responds, it shows your face.

It has no memory. The moment you step away, it becomes clean again, there are no reflections in it. A meditating person eventually becomes a mirror. Any situation is reflected in them — and they respond in that moment, in accordance with the present. Therefore, every response of theirs contains novelty, freshness, clarity, beauty, elegance. They do not repeat some old thought. Here one must understand that there is no situation completely identical to a situation you have encountered before. And therefore, if you react according to the past, you are unable to resolve the situation; you are lagging behind. This is the reason for your failure. You do not see the situation; you are more interested in your response — you do not take the situation into account. A meditating person is simply open, their eyes are at the disposal of the situation, and they allow the situation to evoke a response within them. They do not have a prepared answer.

Awareness leads you to the place from which you can see with your own eyes the ultimate reality of yourself and the Universe... And it is a wonderful experience that you and the Universe are not separate from each other, that you are part of the whole. For me, this is the only meaning of holiness. You were taught analysis, understanding, intellectual gymnastics. These things help no one; they have helped no one. This is why the West lacks one most important dimension — the dimension of enlightenment, of awakening. All riches are worth nothing compared to the wealth that comes from enlightenment, from achieving the state of "no-mind." Therefore, do not get entangled with the mind; it is better to become an observer at the edge of the road and let the mind walk down the road. Soon the road will be empty. The mind lives like a parasite. You are identified with it; that is its life. Your awareness cuts this connection, and that becomes its death. Ancient Eastern scriptures claim that the Master is death — a very strange saying, possessing the deepest meaning. The Master is death because meditation is the death of the mind, meditation is the death of the ego. Meditation is the death of your personality and the birth and resurrection of your basic essence. And to know this basic essence means to know everything. "Becky Goldberg called the hotel manager: 'I am in room five hundred ten,' she shouted angrily, 'and I want you to know that there is an absolutely naked man walking opposite and his blinds are up.' 'I'll come in now,' said the manager. He entered Becky's room, looked carefully out the window and said: __ 'You are right, madam, the man is apparently naked. But the windowsill covers him from below to the waist, regardless of which part of the room he is in.' 'Well yes,' Becky shrieked. 'Just stand on the bed, just stand on the bed!'__

The mind is a strange fellow. Where there are no problems, it creates problems. Why should you stand on the bed? Only to discover that someone in their room is naked? A person must be aware of all these follies of the mind. I do not agree with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, but I feel a certain respect for this theory because, in historical terms, it may not be true that an ape became a human, but psychologically it is absolutely accurate, because the human mind very much resembles an ape...

Stupid in every sense. There is no point in digging deeper into the garbage of the mind. This is not your essence, this is not you; it is simply dust that has gathered around you over many, many lives. These are functions of the mind — it is a great discoverer. An old definition by a philosopher says that he is a blind man on a dark night, in a dark house where there is no light, searching for a black cat that isn't there. But that's not all: he finds it! And he writes huge treatises, theses, invents systems, logically justifies the existence of the black cat. Be careful with the mind: it is blind. It never knew anything, but it is a great pretender. It pretends that it knows everything. Socrates divided humanity into two categories. One category he calls "knowing ignoramuses": people who think they know, while they are mostly ignorant — this is the work of the mind. And the second category he calls ignorant connoisseurs: people who think: "We do not know." Upon them, the humble and naive, knowledge descends. Thus, there are people who pretend to know — this is a function of the mind, and there are humble people who say: "We do not know." In their naivety there is knowledge, and this is the work of meditation and consciousness.
Osho

Thanks to Freud, Adler, Jung, and Wilhelm Reich, psychoanalysts in the West are solving many problems related to the human mind. These feelings of dissatisfaction, conflicts, schizophrenia, madness. Could You explain the role of the system of psychoanalysis in solving human problems related to the mind, describe its limitations and shortcomings, and also compare this system with your meditation techniques?

The main thing that must be understood is that no problem related to the mind can be solved until you go beyond it. You can bring your state back to normal, you can postpone the solution to a problem, you can dampen its intensity, but you cannot solve it. Psychoanalysis can make a person a "normal member of society," but it is unable to solve the problem. And when the solution to a problem is postponed, when it is shifted, a new problem arises. It simply moves elsewhere, but it doesn't go anywhere. Sooner or later, a new attack will occur, and each time it happens, it will become harder and harder to hide it or postpone the solution. Psychoanalysis is a temporary relief, for this method offers nothing that goes beyond the boundaries of the mind. And a problem can only be solved when you manage to go beyond its limits. If you cannot do this, then the problem is in you. And then who will solve it? How can it even be solved? The problem is in you; it is not something separate from you.

All meditation techniques are based on completely different principles. They say that problems are here, around you, but they are not you, not your personality. You can rise above them; you can look at them as an observer looks down from a high hill upon a valley. Such witnessing of one's "I" can solve the problem. In fact, simple awareness of the problem already solves it halfway, for if you manage to see the problem detachedly, to observe it impartially when you are not involved in it—then you can stand aside and simply Watch. The clarity that arises during such witnessing is what brings you the solution, gives you the secret key. And almost all problems exist only because there is no such clarity through which they could be understood.
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When there is a correct understanding of the problem, it is solved, for the problem is created by the unconscious mind. You create a problem because you do not understand. So the most important thing is not to solve the problem; the main thing is to rise to a higher level of understanding. And when there is understanding, clarity, then one can look at the problem impartially, from the point of view of a witness; as if it were not your problem at all, but someone else's. A problem can only be solved when you manage to create some distance between yourself and it. Meditation creates such a distance; it gives you perspective. You rise above the problem. The level of perception changes. In psychoanalysis, you remain on the same level. And this level never changes; you are tied to it. Neither your level of awareness, nor your consciousness, nor your capacity for contemplation change. In meditation, you rise higher and higher. You can look down upon your problems from above.

Now they are somewhere there, in the valley, and you have climbed the hill. From this point, from this height, all problems look different. And the greater the distance, the more your ability to look at them from the side grows, as if they were not yours at all. Remember one thing: if a problem is not yours, you can always give good advice on how to resolve it. If it is someone else's problem, if someone else is in trouble, you will always find a bit of wisdom; you will give sound advice. But if the problem is yours, then you simply do not know what to do. What happened? The problem is the same, but now it concerns you. When this problem belonged to another, you were at a distance from which you looked at it impartially. Any person can be a good advisor to others, but when it comes to themselves, all their wisdom disappears somewhere because that very distance vanishes.

For instance, someone dies in the family, and all the relatives are inconsolable: we can give good advice. You can say that the soul is immortal, that nothing in this world dies, and life is eternal. But when a person you loved dies, who meant something to you, who was close to you, then you sob and groan. You will no longer be able to tell yourself the same thing—that life is eternal and no one ever dies. All this looks somewhat strange. So remember: when giving advice to others, you may look foolish. If you tell someone whose loved one has died that life is eternal, they will think you are an idiot. You are talking nonsense. They know what it's like to lose a loved person. No philosophy can help here. And they know why you are saying all this—because this problem does not concern you. You can afford to be wise, but they cannot. Thanks to meditation, you rise above your ordinary existence. A new state is born within you, a point from which you can look at everything happening with a new gaze. Distance appears. Problems do not go anywhere, but now they are very far away, as if all this is not happening to you. Now you can give yourself advice, but it is no longer needed. The distance itself will make you wise. The entire technique of meditation consists in creating distance between the problems and you. Right now, you are so entangled in your problems that you are unable to think or reflect; you cannot go beyond the boundaries of the problems, you cannot look at them from the side.

Psychoanalysis only helps to modify the situation. This is not transformation; this is one problem. And the second consists in the fact that psychoanalysis makes you dependent. You need an expert who will do everything. This will take three or four years, and if the problem is serious—then all five years. You simply fall into dependency, and you do not develop. Rather the opposite, you will become more and more dependent. Every day—well, or two to three times a week—you will feel the need for this psychoanalyst. If you miss an appointment, you will feel uneasy. If you stop going to the psychoanalyst, you will feel lost. This becomes similar to alcohol dependency. You fall into dependency on someone who is a specialist. You can tell this person about your problem, and they will solve it. You will discuss everything, find the causes of the problem in your subconscious. But another person will do this; someone else will solve the problem. Remember, if a problem is not solved by you, this solution will not add maturity to you. If another person solved the problem, then this solution may add maturity to them, but not to you. You may become even more immature; and later, when new problems arise, you will need the advice of a specialist, a professional. True, I do not think that psychoanalysts themselves develop in any way by solving your problems, since they go for psychoanalysis to other psychoanalysts. They have their own problems. They solve your problems and cannot solve their own. Here again is the question of distance.

Every psychoanalyst goes to another with their problems. It is like in medicine. If a doctor falls ill, he cannot diagnose himself. It is all so close that it's frightening; he would rather go to another doctor. If you are a surgeon, you cannot operate on yourself, can you? There is no distance. It is very difficult to operate on oneself. And when your wife falls ill and needs a serious operation—that will also be hard, you won't be able to operate on her: your hands will shake. She is a close person to you, and you will be afraid: you cannot be a good surgeon. You will have to call another surgeon to operate on your wife. What is happening? You are a surgeon and have already performed many operations. But you cannot operate on your own child or wife; the distance is insufficient—it's almost non-existent, and without it, you cannot be impartial. Therefore, a psychoanalyst can help others, but when he himself finds himself in trouble, he needs the advice of an outsider; he needs another specialist to conduct the psychoanalysis. And how strange it is that even a person like Wilhelm Reich eventually went mad. It is impossible to imagine Gautama Buddha going mad—can you imagine it?
If Buddha could go mad, then there is no way out of these sufferings. It is simply incredible that Buddha would go mad. Look at the life of Sigmund Freud. He is the father and founder of psychoanalysis; he penetrated very deeply into the essence of problems. But as far as himself was concerned, not a single problem was solved. Not one! Fear was as much a problem for him as it was for any other person. He was full of fears and anxieties. He had such fits of rage that he could lose consciousness. This man knew so much about the human mind, but when it came to himself, it seems all this knowledge was absolutely useless.

Jung also lost consciousness when experiencing deep anxiety; he had seizures. Where does the problem lie? Again, in the presence of distance. They reflected on problems, but their consciousness did not expand. They thought rationally, logically, meticulously, and came to some conclusions. And perhaps they were right in some things, but that is not the point. Their consciousness did not expand; they did not step beyond the limits. And without this, you cannot solve a problem; you can only modify it. In the last days of his life, Freud said that man is incurableable. True, man is capable of adapting, but that is the most we can hope for; there is no other hope. And that's all! Freud says that man cannot be happy. We can make him not so unhappy, but no more than that. That's how it is.

Well, and what solution can come from such an approach? And this after forty years of working with people! He concludes that man cannot be helped, that suffering is embedded in our very nature and we are doomed to suffer...
Osho

And the proponents of meditation say that it is not the human who is incurable; it is our tiny consciousness that creates problems. Let consciousness grow, expand, and the problems will diminish. There is a correlation: if the level of consciousness is minimal, then the problems are countless; if consciousness is at its highest level, there are almost no problems. When consciousness becomes absolute, problems simply vanish, like dew drops in the rays of the rising sun. With absolute consciousness, problems do not exist; they simply cannot appear. The most psychoanalysis can do is treat an old problem, but new ones will arise in its place; and it will fail to prevent them. Meditation goes into the very depths. It will change you so much that problems simply cannot appear. Psychoanalysis deals with problems. Meditation is addressed directly to you; it is not interested in problems at all. That is why the greatest psychologists of the East — Buddha, Mahavira, or Lao Tzu — do not speak of problems. Therefore, the Western psychological school thinks that psychology is a new phenomenon. But this is not so!

Only in the first half of the 20th century was Freud able to scientifically prove the existence of such a phenomenon as the unconscious. Buddha spoke of it twenty-five centuries ago. But Buddha never engaged in solving problems, because, as he said, problems are infinite. If you start dealing with every problem, you will never resolve them. Deal with the human, forget about the problems. Deal with the personality itself and help it grow. When it grows, when its consciousness expands, the problems will gradually leave; you will not need to worry about them. For example, a person suffers from schizophrenia, their personality is divided, split. Psychoanalysis will deal with this Schism, it will try to bring it under control, try to change the person so that they are capable of action, so that they can exist peacefully in society.

Psychoanalysis will deal with the problem, schizophrenia. If this person comes to Buddha, then Buddha will not reason about schizophrenia. He will say: "Meditate, so that your inner essence may reunite. When this happens, the Schism at its edges will disappear." The Schism exists, but it is not the cause; it is the consequence. Somewhere deep inside you feel duality, and it created this external Schism. You can cement the Schism, but the internal division will remain. Then the Schism will appear in another place. Your cement will crack; and somewhere a division will appear again. Therefore, when you cure one psychological problem, another immediately arises; you treat it, but a third appears. This is not bad at all from the point of view of professionals, after all, that is how they make their living. But there is no use in this — none. It will be necessary to go beyond psychoanalysis, and until we come to methods of consciousness growth, internal human development, expansion of consciousness, no psychoanalysis will help.

And in our time this is already happening; psychoanalysis has become obsolete. The most outstanding minds in the West are reflecting on how to expand consciousness, not how to solve problems, on how to awaken mindfulness and awareness in people. Now the time has come; the seeds have sprouted. It is necessary to remember the most important thing. I do not deal with your problems. There are millions of them, and it is completely useless to try to solve them, because you create the problems yourself and this solution will not affect you. I solve one problem, and you will create ten more. One cannot keep up with you, for the creator of all problems remains in the shadow. And the further I go in solving them, the more of my energy will be spent in vain. I simply set your problems aside and deal with you. The creator must be changed. And as soon as we change the creator of problems, the superficial problems will also disappear. Now no one is fussing over them, no one is helping to create them, no one enjoys them.

The word "enjoy" may seem strange to you, but remember well that you enjoy your problems; that is why you create them. There are many reasons why you enjoy them. All of humanity is ill. There are serious reasons and grounds for this, which we will talk about later. When a child is sick, they receive attention, but when they are healthy, no one cares about them. When a child is sick, parents love them — or at least pretend to love them. But when everything is fine with the child, little care is given to them. It wouldn't even occur to anyone to kiss or hug them. The child understands all this. Love is a basic need, and attention is the main food. For a child, attention is even more necessary than milk. Without attention, something inside them dies. You have probably heard of research in laboratories where experiments were conducted with plants. Even plants grow faster if you pay attention to them, if you look at them with love. Two plants were taken for the experiment. One plant was given attention, it was cared for with love and a smile.

And the other plant was given no attention. They had everything else — water, fertilizer, light; all these plants received equally — everything except attention. The second plant was deprived of attention; when people passed by, they didn't even look at it. Scientists noticed that one plant grows faster, its flowers are larger, while the growth of the second plant is slowed and it blooms with small flowers. Attention is energy. When someone looks at you with love, they give you food — and of a very subtle plane. Thus, every child needs attention, but receives it only when sick, when there is some problem. Therefore, if a child wants to receive attention, they create a problem; they become a creator of problems. Love is the main need. Your body grows thanks to food, and the soul grows in the rays of love. But you can receive love only when you are sick, when you have problems; otherwise, no one will give you any love. The child learns this lesson and begins to create problems. When a person is sick or has some problems, they receive attention. You have probably noticed this too. Your children play quietly and calmly at home. If guests arrive, they start making noise. This is because your attention shifts to the guests and the children very much want to get it back. They need everyone to look at them: both you and your guests. They will do something, commit some mischief. This is all unconscious, but then such behavior becomes a stereotype. And when you grow up, you continue to act exactly the same way.

A psychoanalyst pays attention to you because that is his job.

For a whole hour he looks at you attentively. He will listen to everything you say. Any nonsense he will listen to as if he were attending to the reading of Holy Scripture. In order to pull out everything that sits in your head, he will convince you to speak more and more, to tell about everything that has and does not have any relation to the matter. And you will feel so good

Until your deep essence changes, it will be impossible to solve problems. Within you lies an infinite potential for creating your new personality. Meditation is an attempt, first of all, to make you independent, and secondly, to change the type and quality of your consciousness. With a new quality of consciousness, old problems cannot exist; they simply disappear. You were a small child; you had certain problems. When you became older, they simply disappeared. Where did they go? You never solved them; they just ceased to be.

You won't even be able to remember what problems you had in childhood. You grew up, and the problems went away on their own. Then you got a bit older, other problems appeared; when you grow old, they will no longer be there. This does not mean that you can solve them — no one is capable of that — you can only outgrow them. When you become older, you will laugh at the problems you had before. And they were so acute, so serious, that many times you thought about whether to commit suicide. And now, when you have grown up, it's simply funny. But where did all those problems go? Did you solve them? No, you simply grew up. These problems existed only at a certain stage of development. The same thing happens when your consciousness grows. Then the problems also disappear. A moment comes when your level of awareness is so high that problems simply do not appear. Meditation is not analysis. Meditation is growth. It has nothing to do with problems — it deals with the essence of the human being.
Osho

Osho

He looks like Snoop Dogg.