"We are not aware of ourselves: Gurdjieff used self-remembering as a basic technique in the West. Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. It is very difficult: it looks very easy, but you will go on forgetting. Feel 'I am', not the words 'I am': Don't verbalize. Just feel that you are. This nonverbal feeling, even if for only a single moment, will give you a glimpse - a glimpse that no LSD can give you, a glimpse which is of the real. For a single moment you are thrown back to the center of your being. You are behind the mirror, you have transcended the world of reflections, you are existential. And you can do it at any time." Osho "Meditation, the first and last freedom"

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Osho is a contemporary mystic, born in India. As a young man, he was a university teacher of philosophy. Later, still traveling throughout India, he taught more directly his ideas, he shared his insights and proposed methods of meditation . He became a magnet for seekers of nearly every country.

Around 1975, an international commune was created around him, in Pune (India), that offers an adapted place with ample and cared-for structures for meditation and intentional living; the resort is still alive today, with the name of Osho Resort .

In his later years he visited the United States, and established the commune in Oregon. The American politicians forced him to leave, as Osho's ideas about politics and all vested interests had always been very explicitly stated. There are evidences that he has been poisoned. He left his body a few years later in Pune. His ashes are kept in a beautiful marble meditation hall, under a large 'bed' of marble. Osho likes that we still talk of him in the present tense.

Osho claims to have become enlightened at age 21. Enlightenment seems to be a state of merger with the whole, in absolute bliss. Osho defines meditation as the path to enlightenment. The essence of meditation is witnessing. To make an example, one can be a witness of one's body movements, of one's emotions, of one's thoughts. Osho, besides using traditional techniques of meditation, such as Vipassana, Za Zen or Sufi Turning, has created many innovative techniques which are very often dynamic and active practices, fit to today's man.

Osho has often been speaking, with love and appreciation, of many enlightened mystics, such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma, St. Francis, and many others.

In the rose of his favorites is a certain Mr Gurdjieff ...

 

QUOTES FROM OSHO

"Gurdjieff certainly is a pioneer. With Gurdjieff begins a totally new concept of spiritual life. He actually called his way "the fourth way" -- just as I call my way "the fourth way". He was immensely misunderstood, because he was not interested in imparting knowledge to you, he was not interested in consoling you. He was not interested in giving you beautiful theories, visions, hallucinations. He was not interested in your tears, in your emotions and sentiments. He was not interested in being worshipped by you, he was interested in transforming you.
And to transform a person means you have to take a hammer in your hands, because many chunks of that person's being have to be cut. The person is so topsy-turvy that everything is wrong as it is, and it has to be put right. And he has invested so much in his wrong way of life that he becomes afraid and scared of anybody who wants to change his style of life -- and not only the circumference, but the center too. Only a few courageous people can enter into the world of a man like Gurdjieff. Tremendous courage is needed, a courage to die, because only then one is reborn. "

Osho, The Dhammapada, Vol. 2

"Religion is a journey inwards, and meditation is the way. What meditation actually does is, it takes you, your consciousness, as deep as possible. Even your body becomes something outside. Even your own mind becomes something outside. Even your own heart -- which is very close to the center of your being -- becomes something outside. When your body, mind and heart, all three, are seen as outside, you have come to the very center of your existence.
This coming to the center is a tremendous explosion which transforms everything. You will never be the same man again, because now you know the body is only the outer shell; the mind is a little bit inner, but not really your inner core; the heart is a little bit more inner, but still not the innermost center. You are disidentified with all three.
It is because of this that George Gurdjieff used to call his way "the fourth way" -- because if you can transcend these three, you reach the fourth, beyond which there is no way to go. You have come to the very end. (...)
Meditation is the way to the mastery of your own being. No God is needed, no catechism is needed, no holy book is needed. Nobody is needed to become a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu -- all that is sheer nonsense. All that is needed is to find your center, and meditation is the simplest way to find it. It will make you whole, healthy spiritually, and it will make you so rich that you can destroy all the spiritual poverty of the world. And that is the real poverty."

Osho, From Bondage to Freedom

"Meditation is nothing but coming back home, just to have a little rest inside. It is not the chanting of a mantra, it is not even a prayer, it is just coming back home and having a little rest. Not going anywhere is meditation, just being where you are; there is no other "where" -- just being there where you are, just occupying only that space where you are. (...)
Your seeking creates a smoke around the flame. You go on running around and around, you stir much dust, and you create much smoke, and the flame becomes hidden. Rest a little, let the dust settle back to the earth. And if you are not running very fast, not in a hurry, you will not create smoke. By and by, things settle and the inner light is revealed."

Osho, Tantra: the Supreme Understanding

"The Sufi may be dancing, but while he is dancing, at the center he remains absolutely unmoving -- the center of the cyclone. The dance is the cyclone, his whole body is in movements, fluid, flowing, dynamic, but at the center, the witness is there silently watching, undisturbed, undistracted.
From the outside you can learn the exercise. From the outside you will never become aware of what is happening inside. And the inside is the true story."

Osho, The Perfect Master, Vol.2

"Gurdjieff found a simple way of stopping the mind. In the East people have been trying for centuries to concentrate the mind, to visualize it, to stop it --and Gurdjieff found a way through physiology.
Gurdjieff would shout "Stop!" and everybody would freeze. And when the body suddenly freezes, the mind feels a little weird: what happened? -- because the mind has no association with a frozen body, it is just shocked. They are in cooperation, in a deep harmony, moving together. Now the body is completely frozen, what is the mind supposed to do? Where can it go?
For a moment there is a complete silence; and even a single moment of complete silence is enough to give you the taste of meditation.
Gurdjieff had developed dances, and during those dances suddenly he would say "Stop!" Now, while dancing you never know in what posture you are going to be. People would simply fall on the floor. But even if you fall, the exercise continues. If your hand is in an uncomfortable position under your body, you are not to make it comfortable, because that would mean you have not given a chance for the mind to stop. You are still listening to the mind. The mind says, "It is so uncomfortable, make it comfortable." No, you are not to do anything.
In New York when he was giving his demonstration of the dances, Gurdjieff chose a very strange situation. All the dancers were standing in a line, and at a certain stage in the dance when they came dancing forward and were just standing in a queue with first person just at the edge of the stage, Gurdjieff said "Stop!" The first person fell, the second fell, the third fell -- the whole line fell on each other. But there was dead silence, no movement.
One man in the audience just seeing this got his first experience of meditation. He was not doing it, he was just seeing it. But seeing so many people suddenly stop and then fall, but falling as if frozen, with no effort on their own to change their position or anything .... It was as if suddenly they had all become paralyzed.
The man was just sitting in the front row, and without knowing he just stopped, froze in the position he was in: his eyes stopped blinking, his breath stopped. Seeing this scene -- he had come to see the dance, but what kind of dance was this? -- suddenly he felt a new kind of energy arising within him. And it was so silent and he was so full of awareness, that he became a disciple. That very night he reached Gurdjieff and said, "I can't wait."

Osho, From Personality to Individuality

"All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation. When it comes out of meditation, creativity is sharing the joy, sharing the blissfulness that you have.
Mind has no joy -- it is really a wound, very painful. (...)
Western society lives under an affliction -- their ignorance about meditation; hence, whatever they do is out of the mind.
And mind is not the source of joy.
It can only create agony, but never ecstasy.
Mind is your hell.
So learn to be more meditative, and let your creativity be secondary to your meditativeness. Then you will have a totally different state of being -- that of ecstasy; and out of ecstasy, whatever is created has also some flavor of it.
In the west, perhaps Gurdjieff is the only man who has divided art into two sections: the objective art and the subjective art. Subjective art is from the mind, and is out of anguish. Objective art -- the Taj Mahal, the caves of Ellora and Ajanta, the temples of Khajuraho -- has come from meditative people. Out of their love, out of their silence, they wanted to share; it is their contribution to the world. (...)
Just on a full moon night, sit by the side of the Taj Mahal -- don't do anything, just look at it -- and you will find suddenly a silence descending on you, a peace filling your heart. The mind is stopping its constant chattering.
An objective piece of art like the Taj Mahal is not just to be seen, but to be lived -- and then you will be in a certain way connected with the creators of that beautiful architecture.
One has to meditate on it -- it may be thousand of years have passed between the creator of that piece and you. Suddenly that distance disappears; you become part of that creative joy, of that creative dance.
Creativity is secondary, meditation is basic and fundamental; everything should come out of meditation. Then it will give you a beatitude, it will give your being a new song, and it will help others to experience something of it. t will depend on their meditativeness."

Osho, The Golden Future

"The ultimate joke, the only joke ...

THE OFFICIAL, RIKO, ONCE ASKED NANSEN TO EXPLAIN TO HIM THE OLD PROBLEM OF THE GOOSE IN THE BOTTLE.

"IF A MAN PUTS A GOSLING INTO A BOTTLE," SAID RIKO, "AND FEEDS HIM UNTIL HE IS FULL-GROWN, HOW CAN THE MAN GET THE GOOSE OUT WITOUT KILLING IT OR BREAKING THE BOTTLE?"

NANSEN GAVE A GREAT CLAP WITH HIS HANDS AND SHOUTED, "RIKO!"

"YES MASTER,"SAID THE OFFICIAL WITH A START.

"SEE," SAID NANSEN, "THE GOOSE IS OUT."

This is the only ultimate joke in existence. You are enlightened. You are Buddhas -- pretending not to be, pretending to be somebody else. And my whole work here is to expose you.
See, the goose is out! You will make every effort to put it back in the bottle, because once the goose is out then you don't have any problems. And man knows only how to live in problems, he does not know how to live without problems, so he goes on putting the goose back into the bottle. (...)
Man lives in problems, man lives in misery. To live without problems, to live without misery, needs real courage.
I have lived without any problems for twenty-five years, and I know it is a kind of suicide. I simply go on sitting in my room doing nothing. There is nothing to do! (...)
What I am telling to you is not a teaching. I have to take away from you things which you don't have, and I have to give you things which you already have. You need not be grateful to me at all, because I am not giving you anything new, I am simply helping you to remember.
You have forgotten the language of your being. I have come to recognize it -- I have remembered myself. And since the day I remembered myself I have been in a strange situation: I feel compassion for you, and deep down I also giggle at you, because you are not really in trouble. You don't need compassion, you need hammering, you need to be hit hard on the head. Your suffering is bogus. Ecstasy is your very nature.
You are truth.
You are love.
You are bliss.
You are freedom."

Osho, The Goose is ouy

Osho on Italians

"I love the Italian rootedness into the earth, because from there the work can start.
The body has to be accepted first. Not only accepted but respected too. If you have not explored your body you will not be able to explore your soul. The methodology of exploration is the same, but begin with the body because the body is the visible part of your soul. Start with the visible and then slowly move towards the invisible. Start with the known and then move towards the unknown. Star from the periphery and then go deep towards the centre.(...)
The roots have to go to the very bottom; then only can the branches and the flowers be offered to the feet of God!
By Italian I simply mean a certain symbol . Wherever you find a realistic, pragmatic, practical person he will be an Italian. To me the words don't represent geography, they represent something metaphorical."

Osho, Come, come, yet again come