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LISTEN TO OSHO SPEAK ON
THIS MEDITATION
SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING
DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION,
TRANSCEND.
You can do it in an actual situation or
you can imagine a situation. For example: lie down, relax, and feel as
if your body is going to die. Close your eyes; start feeling that you
are dying. Soon you will feel that your body is becoming heavy.
Imagine: "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." If the
feeling is authentic, the body will start becoming heavy; you will
feel as if your body has become like lead. You want to move your hand,
but you cannot move; it has become so heavy and dead. Go on feeling
that you are dying, dying, dying, dying, dying, and when you feel that
now the moment has come -- just a jump and you will be dead -- then
suddenly forget your body and transcend.
SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING
DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION,
TRANSCEND.
When you feel that the body is dead, what is meant now by
transcending? Look at the body. Up to now you were feeling that you
are dying; now the body has become a dead weight. Look at the body.
Forget that you are dying and now be the observer. The body is lying
dead and you are looking at it. There will be a transcendence. You
will be out of your mind, because a dead body needs no mind. A dead
body relaxes so much that the very process of the mind stops. You are
there and the body is there, but the mind is absent. Remember, mind is
needed for life, not for death.
If suddenly you come to know that
within an hour you will die, what will you do in that hour? One hour
left, and it is certain that you are going to die after one hour -
exactly after one hour. What will you do? Your thinking will drop
completely because the whole of thinking is concerned with either the
past or the future.
You were planning to purchase a house
or to purchase a car, or you were planning to marry someone or divorce
someone. You were thinking many things, and they were constantly on
your mind. Now, with only one hour more, there is no meaning in
marriage and no meaning in divorce. Now you can leave all the planning
to others, who are going to live. With death planning ceases, with
death worrying ceases, because every worry is life-oriented.
You have to live tomorrow; that is why
there is worry. So all those who have been teaching meditation to the
world have always been saying: do not think of tomorrow. Jesus says to
his disciples, "Do not think of the tomorrow," because if
you think of the tomorrow you cannot go into meditation. Then you move
into worries. But we are so fond of worries that not only do we think
of the tomorrow, we think of the other life. So we plan not only for
this life, we plan for the other life, beyond death, also.
One day I was passing through a street
and someone gave me a pamphlet. A very beautiful house was painted on
the cover and a very beautiful garden. It was lovely - divinely
lovely. And in very big capital letters was the question: "Do you
want such a beautiful house and such a beautiful garden? And without
any price, without any cost -- for free?" I turned it over. The
house was not of this earth. It was a Christian pamphlet, and it read,
"If you want such a beautiful house and such a beautiful garden,
believe in Jesus. Those who believe in him will get such houses free
of cost in the kingdom of God."
The mind goes on not only thinking of
tomorrow, but thinking of beyond death, arranging and making
reservations for the afterlife. Such a mind cannot be a religious
mind. A religious mind cannot think of tomorrow. So those who think of
the afterlife are constantly worried about whether God will behave
rightly with them or not.
Churchill was dying and someone asked
him, "Are you ready to meet the Father there in heaven?"
Churchill said, "That is not my worry. I am constantly worried
whether the divine Father is ready to meet me."
But either way one goes on worrying
about the future. Buddha said, "There is no heaven and no
afterlife." And he said, "There is no soul, and your death
will be total and complete; nothing will survive." People thought
he was an atheist. He was not, he was just trying to create a
situation in which you can forget the tomorrow and can remain in this
very moment, here and now. Then meditation follows very easily.
So if you are thinking of death -- not
the death which will come, or is to come later -- fall down on the
ground and lie dead. Relax and feel, "I am dying, I am dying, I
am dying." And not only think it, feel it in every limb of the
body, in every fib of the body. Let death creep in. It is one of the
most beautiful meditations. When you feel that the body is a dead
weight and you cannot move your hand, you cannot move your head and
everything has become dead, suddenly look at your own body.
Mind will not be there. You can look!
You will be there; consciousness will be there. Look at your body --
it will not look like yours, it will be just a body. The gap between
you and the body will be clear - crystal clear. There will be no
bridge. The body is lying dead and you are there standing as a
witness, not in it -- NOT in it!
Remember, the feeling that you are in
the body is because of the mind. This feeling that you are in the body
is because of the MIND! If the mind is not there, if it is absent, you
will not say you are in the body or out of the body. You will simply
be there, no in or out. "In" and "out" are both
relative terms associated with the mind. Simply, you will be there
witnessing. This is transcendence. You can do it in many ways.
Sometimes it is possible in actual
situations... You are ill and you are feeling that there is no hope,
you are going to die. This is a very useful situation. Use it for
meditation. You can try it in other ways also. Suppose you are
gradually being deprived of strength. Lie down and feel as if the
whole existence is sucking your strength out. You are being sucked
from everywhere -- your strength is being sucked. Soon you will be
impotent, completely devoid of strength. Your energy is flowing out,
being taken out. Soon nothing will be left inside. That is how life
is: you are being sucked out, everything that is around you is sucking
you out. One day you will be just a dead cell; everything will have
been sucked out. The life will have flown out of you, and only the
dead body will remain there.
Even this very moment you can do it.
Imagine this: lie down and feel that the energy is being sucked out.
Within a few days you will have the knack of how energy goes out. And
when you feel that everything has moved out, nothing is now left
within you, TRANSCEND: AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. When
the last quantum of energy is leaving you, transcend. Be an onlooker;
just become a witness. Then this universe and this body, both, are not
you. You are looking at the phenomenon.
This transcendence will bring you out
of the mind. This is the key. And you can do it in many ways,
whatsoever is your liking. For example, we were talking about a run
around. Exhaust yourself; go on running and running and running. Do
not stop by yourself, let the body fall. When every fib is exhausted,
you will fall down. When you are falling down, become aware. Just look
and see that the body is falling down. Sometimes a very miraculous
happening happens. You remain standing and the body has fallen down,
and you can look at it. You can look, as only the body has fallen down
and you are still standing. Do not fall with the body. Roam around,
run, dance, exhaust the body -- but remember, you are not to lie down.
Then the inner consciousness also moves with the body and lies down.
You are not to lie down, you just go on
doing it until the body falls by itself. Then it falls like a dead
weight. Immediately, you feel the body is falling and you cannot do
anything. Open your eyes, be alert, do not miss the point. Be alert
and see what is happening. You may be still standing, and the body has
fallen down. And once you know it, you can never forget that you are
different from the body.
This "standing out" is the
real meaning of the English word ecstasy. Ecstasy means to stand out.
And once you can feel you are out of the body, there is no mind in
that moment, because mind is the bridge that gives you the feeling
that you are in the body. If you are out of the body for a single
moment, there will be no mind in that moment. This is transcendence.
Then you can move in the body, then you can move in the mind, but now
you cannot forget the experience . That experience has become part and
parcel of your being; it will be there always. Go on doing it every
day, and many things happen through such a simple process.
The West is always worried about how to
tackle mind, and it tries to find many ways. But still, nothing works
or seems to work. Everything becomes a fashion and then dies. Now
psychoanalysis is a dead movement. New movements are there - encounter
groups, group psychology, action psychology and many other things -
but just like a fashion they come and go. Why? Because within mind, at
the most you can only make arrangements. They will be disturbed again
and again. Making arrangements with the mind is making a house on
sand, or making a house of playing cards. It is always wavering, and
the fear is always there that now it is going. At any moment it may
not be there.
Going beyond the mind is the only way
to be inwardly happy and healthy, to be whole. Then you can move in
the mind and use the mind, but the mind becomes the instrument and you
are not identified with it. So two things. Either you are identified
with the mind -- this is illness for tantra -- or you are not
identified with the mind. Then you use it as an instrument, and then
you are healthy and whole.
The fifth technique is very simple in one sense and the most difficult
in another, and it is only of two words.
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