OSHO>>>>WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY YOGA, YOGI AND MEDITATION?

DR. GUINEBERT: ACHARYAJI, WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY YOGA, YOGI AND MEDITATION?

Osho: The first thing about meditation is that it is not something which can be done. In the whole
world we have a notion that meditation means ’doing something’. It is not a doing. It is not an act. It is some thing which happens. It is something that comes to you. It comes to you. It penetrates you. It destroys you in a way and recreates you. It is something so vital and something so infinite that it cannot be a part of your doing. To me meditation is something which happens, which cannot be done.

So, what is to be done? You can create the situation in which it comes about. All that we can do is just to be open, vulnerable, open towards the happening. We can be in a situation in which we are not closed but as a windowless, doorless existence–like the Lebanese Minaret. We are imprisoned without any opening, closed from all sides, closed in ourselves. There is no opening. In a way we are dead in our caskets, closed. One can say we have become ’life-proof’ as life cannot come to us.

We have created our own barriers and hindrances against life, because life can be dangerous, can be uncontrollable, which again is something not in our hands. So, we have created barriers and a closed existence. The more closed we are, the less we live, and the more open we are, we live more.

Meditation to me is an open existence, open towards all dimensions. open towards everything. Of course to be open to everything is dangerous To be open to everything unconditionally is to be insecure. To be open to everything cannot be the comfortable because it does not depend. on us and anything can happen.

So, a mind which longs for security, which longs for comfort, which longs for certainty, cannot be
a meditative mind. A mind which is open to anything that life gives, ever welcoming even death,
can create a situation in which meditation takes place. It is to be totally receptive, not towards a
particular happening, but towards anything that may come about.

So meditation in a way is not a particular dimension it is a dimensionless existence. Existence
is open to each and every dimension–without any condition, without any longing, without any
expectation. If there is any expectation then the opening cannot be total.

There must not be something unopened and if you are not totally open then that vital, vigorous,
infinite happening cannot be received by you. It cannot become the guest and you cannot become the host to it. So meditation, as far as we are concerned is just creating the situation, a receptive situation.


The last type of ignorant people are those who are not aware of their ignorance. This type of mind will automatically conceive itself as knowing. So this is ignorant knowledge. The other type who is aware of his ignorance, this is knowing ignorance, an ignorance which is completely knowing itself. And the moment you become aware of your ignorance you come on the verge from where knowledge begins.

And the moment you become aware of your knowledge you imprison yourself more solidly. So a
pandit. h person who thinks he knows, is a person who cannot he religious. A pandit can never
be a religious man. A person who thinks that he knows is bound to be non- religious. Because the knowing ego is the most subtle thing.

The moment you know your ignorance there is no ego. So the greatest attack on the ego is through becoming aware of your ignorance, while the greatest strengthening of it is through your claim of knowledge. The second thing which I would like to note about meditation is, your mind must be totally aware of its ignorance.

And you can only become aware of your ignorance when the acquired knowledge is known as noknowledge. Ii is simply information. Information is not knowledge. But information can appear as knowledge. Even a person who knows is not dogmatic about his knowledge, but a person who thinks that he knows is dogmatic, assertive. One must become aware that what he has not known cannot be knowledge to him. We cannot borrow knowledge.

So there is a difference between a theological mind and a religious mind. Theology is one of the
most irreligious things in the human world And theologians are the most irreligious people. Because the borrowed has been claimed by them as the known, and the known itself never claims, because it is its intrinsic point that the moment you know, your ’I’ is lost. The moment you know, the ego is not there. The knowledge comes when the ego is not. So the ego cannot lay claim to it. But the ego can collect information. It can quote scriptures. To go into meditation is to transcend your accumulated something which is a must. It is something which is absolutely purposeless. There is something which is intrinsically the End in itself.

There is nothing to be achieved by it or through it. It cannot be made a means. But, as I see it,
persons why become interested in meditation are not really interested. They may be interested in silence, non-tense states of mind, they may be interested in anything, and so they cannot be open to meditation.

The Divine comes, rather it would be better to say that everything becomes divine, everything
becomes blissful, but it is not longed for. It is a by-product. It comes indirectly. It comes as a
shadow of meditation.

This is one of the mysteries of life–all that is beautiful, all that is true, all that is lovely–always comes indirectly, you cannot put your finger directly on it–if you do, you will lose it.

Happiness comes, but as a direct goal. You cannot endeavour for it. It comes when you are
completely unaware of it. It comes and overwhelms you. It comes like a mystery.

So seriousness is a barrier to it. And this seems impossible to some persons, to be religious without being serious. All religious persons are serious. So all religious persons of this type are in a way diseased They are not like children playing. A temple must be a play-house where everyone becomes a child and plays with existence. Meditation is a play regained.

The childhood has gone, but you have regained the playful mood. So you can play with coloured stones, with flowers, you can play with anything. You can be just relaxed in a playful mood, not playing at all. In this relaxed moment the situation is created. The ecstasy is created, and there, is the happening. But meditation should not be taken as an act, and the person who is meditative is a yogi.

OSHO

CHAPTER 11. MAN AMP; MAN
EARLY TALKS 1969