Meditation: The Science of Awareness – Osho
This simple methodology of watching the mind, that you have nothing to do with it…. Most of its thoughts are not yours but from your parents, your teachers, your friends, the books, the movies, the television, the newspapers. Just count how many thoughts are your own, and you will be surprised that not a single thought is your own. All are from other sources, all are borrowed – either dumped by others on you, or foolishly dumped by yourself upon yourself, but nothing is yours.
The mind is there, functioning like a computer; literally it is a bio-computer. You will not get identified with a computer. If the computer gets hot, you won’t get hot. If the computer gets angry and starts giving signals in four letter words, you will not be worried. You will see what is wrong, where something is wrong. But you remain detached.
Just a small knack… I cannot even call it a method because that makes it heavy; I call it a knack. Just by doing it, one day suddenly you are able to do it. Many times you will fail; it’s nothing to be worried about… no loss, it is natural. But just doing it, one day it happens.
Once it has happened, once you have even for a single moment become the watcher, you know now how to become the watcher – the watcher on the hills, far away. And the whole mind is there deep down in the dark valley, and you are not to do anything about it.
The most strange thing about the mind is, if you become a watcher it starts disappearing. Just like the light disperses darkness, watchfulness disperses the mind, its thoughts, it’s whole paraphernalia. So meditation is simply watchfulness, awareness. And that reveals – it is nothing to do with inventing. It invents nothing; it simply discovers that which is there.
And what is there? You enter and you find infinite emptiness, so tremendously beautiful, so silent, so full of light, so fragrant, that you have entered into the kingdom of God.
In my words, you have entered into godliness. And once you have been in this space, you come out and you are a totally new person, a new man. Now you have your original face. All masks have disappeared. You will live in the same world, but not in the same way. You will be among the same people but not with the same attitude, and the same approach. You will live like a lotus in water: in the water, but absolutely untouched by water. Religion is the discovery of this lotus flower within.
-Osho
Osho – In India, we have called philosophy, ’darshan’. It means the capacity to see. We don’t call it a love of thinking, as the word ’philosophy’ means. We call it: the capacity to see. Philosophy is not a right translation of darshan. The right translation of darshan would be PHILOSIa – ’a love to see’. Philosophy means love of thinking. SOPHIA means thinking and PHILO means love.
The Indian philosophy is not philosophy; it is PHILOSIA. SIA means to see. The whole emphasis is not on the object; the emphasis is on the subject. Subjectivity is religion. Objectivity is science. To pay attention to the object is to be scientific. To pay attention to the subject is to be religious.
You look at a flower. If you pay attention to the flower, then it is scientific. If you pay attention to the witness of the flower, it becomes religious. A scientist and a religious man may be standing side by side, looking at the same flower – but they are not looking in the same way. The scientist is looking at the flower and has forgotten himself completely. The religious man is witnessing the flower, and remembering himself. It is a change of gestalt. Try it sometimes. Look at a flower – then suddenly change the gestalt. Now look at the seer of the flower.
You are listening to me right now. You can pay attention to what I am saying – then it is a scientific listening. Or you can be aware of the one who is listening to me within you – then it becomes religious. The difference is very delicate and subtle. Try it right now. Listen to me. Forget yourself. Then it is scientific.
A scientist while working is absolutely concentrated. Science is concentration. Religion is meditation. And that is the difference between concentration and meditation. Concentration is not meditation. Meditation is not concentration. Concentration is focusing your eyes on the object; meditation is focusing yourself on your self. Meditation has no object in it; it is pure subjectivity.
Listen to me. Concentrate. Then you forget yourself. Then you don’t know who you are: You are simply a listener. Then change the focus. It is a knack. It cannot be taught how to change it. You simply change it. You just become aware that you are listening. Awareness becomes more important then what you are listening to. Immediately, a deep change has happened in your being. In that moment you become religious.
If you go on paying too much attention to the object you may come to know many secrets of nature, but you will never come across God on any of the paths that you will travel. It will never be a pilgrimage, a TEERTHYATRA. You will wander and wander into the wilderness of the world and matter. That’s why science cannot think that God is – it is impossible.
God is not an object. Your very approach is such that God is excluded from it. God is not an object! God is your withinness. It is not in the object of concentration. It is in the subjectivity of meditation. He is you.
I have heard one beautiful story. There was a man, a great devotee of Buddha. He had a beautiful statue of Buddha, a wooden statue, a piece of art – an antique, very valuable. He carried it like a great treasure.
One night it happened: he was staying in a cold hut. And the winter was really ice-cold and he was shivering. It seemed that he was going to die. There was no wood for his fire. At midnight, when he was shivering, it is said that Buddha appeared and said: ’Why don’t you burn me?’ The wooden statue was there. The man became afraid. This must be a devil. He said: ’What are you saying? Burn the statue of Buddha? – never!’
Buddha laughed and said: ’If you see me in the statue you will miss me. I am in you, not in the statue. I am not in the worshipped, the object; I am in the worshipper. And I am shivering within you! Burn this statue!’
God is your subjectivity. He is there within. When you focus outside, there are objects. When you become unfocused and look within, without any focus, He is there – absolutely alive, throbbing, ticking.
Source : from Osho Book “The True Sage”
