Introduction to the Series Osho: Aspects of Meditation
Osho is known worldwide for developing meditation methods that are uniquely suited to our fast-paced and often stressful modern world. These methods have been developed over years of experimentation and observation. In addition to being offered regularly by OSHO meditation centers, they have been used to great benefit in prisons, schools, and drug rehabilitation programs. Hence, it may be surprising to hear him say, “Meditation itself needs no techniques; it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness.”
This series of small books serves to explain what Osho means by that statement. In its pages, both new and experienced meditators will discover the profound insights into the human mind that underlie all the OSHO Meditations and better understand how they work.
“On the way to being alert,” says Osho, “there are so many obstacles. Man has been gathering those obstacles for centuries—they need to be removed. So the work of the techniques is just to prepare the ground, is just to prepare the way, the passage to create a space in which the mind becomes quiet, silent, almost absent. Then meditation happens of its own accord.”
MEDITATION: A JUMPING BOARD TO YOUR BEING
What Is Meditation?
It is the most important question, as far as I am concerned.
Meditation is the very center of my whole effort.
But it is very difficult to verbalize it. To say something about meditation is a contradiction in terms. It is something that you can have, that you can be, but by its very nature you cannot say what it is. Still, efforts have been made to convey it in some way. Even if only a fragmentary, partial understanding arises out of it, that is more than one can expect.
But even that partial understanding of meditation can become a seed. Much depends on how you listen. If you only hear, then even a fragment cannot be conveyed to you, but if you listen … Try to understand the difference between the two.
Hearing is mechanical. You have ears, you can hear. If you are getting deaf, then a mechanical aid can help you to hear. Your ears are nothing but a certain mechanism to receive sounds. Hearing is very simple: animals hear, anybody who has ears is capable of hearing—but listening is a far higher stage.
Listening means: when you are hearing you are only hearing and not doing anything else—no other thoughts in your mind, no clouds passing in your inner sky—so whatever is being said reaches you as it is being said. It is not interfered with by your mind, not interpreted by you, by your prejudices, not clouded by anything that, right now, is passing within you—because all these are distortions.
Ordinarily it is not difficult; you go on managing just by hearing, because what you are hearing are common things. If I say something about the house, the door, the tree, the bird, there is no problem. These are common objects; there is no need of listening. But there is a need to listen when we are talking about something like meditation, which is not an object at all; it is a subjective state. We can only indicate it; you have to be very attentive and alert—then there is a possibility that some meaning reaches you.
Even if a little understanding arises in you, it is more than enough, because understanding has its own way of growing. If just a little bit of understanding falls in the right place, in the heart, it starts growing of its own accord.
First try to understand the word “meditation.” It is not the right word for the state about which any authentic seeker is bound to be concerned, so I would like to tell you something about a few words. In Sanskrit we have a special word for meditation: the word is dhyana. In no other language does a parallel word exist; that word is untranslatable. It has been recognized for two thousand years that this word is untranslatable, for the simple reason that in no other language have people tried it or experienced the state that it denotes; so those languages don’t have that word.
A word is needed only when there is something to say, something to designate. In English there are three words: the first is “concentration.” I have seen many books written by very well-meaning people, but not people who have experienced meditation. They go on using the word “concentration” for dhyana—dhyana is not concentration. Concentration simply means your mind is focused on one point; it is a state of mind. Ordinarily the mind is continuously moving, but if it continuously moves, you cannot work with the mind on a certain subject.
For example, in science, concentration is needed; without concentration there is no possibility of science. It is not strange that science has not evolved in the East—I see these deep inner connections—because concentration was never valued. For religion, something else is needed, not concentration.
Concentration is mind focused on one point. It has its utility, because then you can go deeper and deeper into a certain object.
That’s what science goes on doing: finding more and more about the objective world. A man with a mind that is continuously roaming around cannot be a scientist. The whole art of the scientist is that he is capable of forgetting the whole world and putting his whole consciousness on one thing. And when the whole consciousness is poured into one thing, then it is almost like concentrating sun rays through a lens: then you can create fire.
Those rays themselves cannot create fire because they are diffused; they are going farther away from each other. Their movement is just the opposite of concentration. Concentration means rays coming together, meeting on one point; and when so many rays meet on one point, they have enough energy to create fire. Consciousness has the same quality: concentrate it and you can penetrate deeper into the mysteries of objects.
I am reminded of Thomas Alva Edison—one of the great scientists of the United States. He was working on something so concentratedly that when his wife came with his breakfast, she saw that he was so much involved that he had not even heard her coming. He had not even looked at her—he was not aware that she was there—and she knew that this was not the right time to disturb him. “Of course the breakfast will get cold, but he will be really angry if I disturb him; one never knows where he is.”
So she simply put the breakfast by his side so that whenever he came back from his journey of concentration he would see the breakfast and take it. But what happened? In the meantime a friend dropped by; he also saw him so concentrated. He looked at the breakfast getting cold and said, “Better let him do his work. I should finish the breakfast first; it is getting cold.” He ate the breakfast, and Edison was not even aware that this friend was there and had eaten his breakfast.
When Edison returned from his concentration, he looked around, saw the friend, and saw the empty plates. He told the friend, “Please forgive me. You came a little late and I have already taken my breakfast.” Obviously, because the plates were finished, somebody had eaten, and who else could have eaten it? He must have! The poor friend could not understand what to do. He was thinking to give him a surprise, but this man had given him a bigger surprise: he said, “You came a little late.…”
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