Breath, the Bridge – Osho

Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why YOU are not required to breathe, because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, and then nothing could be done.

So, really, YOU are not breathing, because YOU are not needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. YOU are not required; breathing is something which goes on in spite of you.

It is one of the constant factors in your personality – that is the first thing. It is something which is very essential and basic to life – that is the second thing. You cannot be alive without breath.

So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it PRANA. We have given one word for both – PRANA means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath.

Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you.

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe – every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath, therefore, becomes very significant – the most significant thing. So the first nine techniques are concerned with breath. If you can do something with the breath, you will suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it.

Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe. We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the “no-body,” from the “no-body” to the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, transplanted into a different dimension.

http://o-meditation.com/2010/11/03/breath-is-the-bridge-osho/

Osho No-Mind Meditations

These are 30 minute no-mind meditations compiled from the no-minds which were done in Osho’s presence. The gibberish stage has been lengthened and silent spaces have been added within Osho’s guided meditations. The links to the meditations are at the bottom of this page. http://o-meditation.com

For those of you who are not familiar with no-mind meditation here are the instructions:

No-Mind Meditation

First Stage: Gibberish or conscious craziness

Standing or sitting, close your eyes and begin to say nonsense sounds – gibberish. Make any sounds you like, but do not speak in a language, or use words that you know. Allow yourself to express whatever needs to be expressed within you. Throw everything out, go totally mad. Go consciously crazy. The mind thinks in terms of words. Gibberish helps to break up this pattern of continuous verbalization. Without suppressing your thoughts, you can throw them out in this gibberish. Everything is allowed: sing, cry, shout, scream, mumble talk. Let your body do whatever it wants: jump, lie down, pace, sit, kick and so on. Do not let empty spaces happen. If you cannot find sounds to gibber with, just say la, la, la, la, but don’t remain silent.

If you do this meditation with other people, do not relate or interfere with them in any way. Just stay with what is happening to you, and don’t bother about what others are doing.

Second Stage: Witnessing

After the gibberish, sit absolutely still, silent and relaxed, gathering your energy inwards, letting your thoughts drift further and further away from you, allowing yourself to fall into the deep silence and peacefulness that is at your center. You may sit on the floor or use a chair. Your head and back should be straight, your body relaxed, your eyes closed and your breathing natural.

Be aware, be totally in the present moment. Become like a watcher on the hills, witnessing whatever passes by. Your thoughts will try to race to the future or back to the past. Just watch them from a distance – don’t judge them, don’t get caught up in them. Just stay in the present watching. It is the process of watching which is the meditation, what you are watching is not important. Remember not to become identified with or lost in whatever comes by: thoughts, feelings, body sensations, judgments.

Third Stage: Let-Go

Gibberish is to get rid of the active mind, silence is to get rid of the inactive mind, and Let-Go is to enter into the transcendental.

After the witnessing, allow your body to fall back to the ground without any effort or control. Lying back, continue witnessing, being aware that you are not the body nor the mind, that you are something separate from both.

As you travel deeper and deeper inside, you will eventually come to your center. – Osho

No-Mind – Buddha-Emptiness of the Heart #1

No-Mind – Buddha-Emptiness of the Heart #7

No-Mind – God is Dead #4

No-Mind – God is Dead #7

No-Mind – Isan #1

No-Mind – Isan #2

No-Mind – Language of Existence #5

No-Mind – Language of Existence #6

No-Mind – Language of Existence #7

No-Mind – Language of Existence #9

No-Mind – Zen Manifesto #10

No-Mind – Zen Manifesto #11

Battle royal taking place in meditation

DHYANA IS THE MAIN PRACTICE

A little later Sri Bhagavan continued: Dhyana means fight. As soon as you begin meditation other thoughts will crowd together, gather force and try to sink the single thought to which you try to hold. The good thought must gradually gain strength by repeated practice. After it has grown strong the other thoughts will be put to flight.

This is the battle royal always taking place in meditation.

One wants to rid oneself of misery. It requires peace of mind, which means absence of perturbation owing to all kinds of thoughts.

Peace of mind is brought about by dhyana alone.
Talks 371


Effort is necessary so long as thoughts are promiscuous. Because you are with other thoughts, you call the continuity of a single thought, meditation or dhyana. If that dhyana becomes effortless it will be found to be your real nature. Talks 328

Child of a Barren Woman

Maharaj is extremely alert to ensure that, in response to his invitation to ask questions, the visitors do not start a discussion amongst themselves and thus get entangled into an intricate web of their respective concepts, to the exclusion of the subject which he had been expounding. When there are signs of this happening, he is so very amused , that he is wont to remark: “Ah, now we are discussing details of the wedding ceremony of the child of a barren woman !”

Maharaj uses this simile of ‘the child of a barren woman’ fairly frequently. One morning, a visitor, who had perhaps heard it for the first time, was quite intrigued and. requested him to illustrate it by an example. For a while, Maharaj remained silent with his eyes closed, without the least movement, his breathing as shallow as could be, and we thought he would go into a Samadhi. But then he started talking in a low voice: Look, understand what time is. Unless you know the nature of time, you will not understand the nature of phenomena. What happens is that one takes time for granted and then proceeds to build all kinds of concepts. If you are going to build, should you not see what your foundation is like?

Time and space go together. Why are you able to cognize things? Because you see them. Would you have been able to see things if they had no form? You see things because they have form, volume, because they are extended into space. Let us go a step further: If things were seen in space for a split-second only, would you be able to perceive them? You perceive things, only because they are extended into space for a certain duration (time), and the forms remain long enough before you to enable you to perceive them.

If there were no concepts of time and space (time and space themselves are obviously not objects), ‘things’ would not be perceptible and things would not be ‘things’. If there were no space-time (no past, present, and future), how could there have been any phenomena, any events? Please try to understand that both phenomena and time are merely concepts and have no existence of their own: Whatever things are seen, or thought of, are merely images conceived in consciousness, the supposed actuality of which is as ‘real’ as a dream or a mirage. Now do you .understand what I mean when I say that all phenomenality is the child of a barren woman?

This point about space-time, said Maharaj, is so difficult to grasp that even highly intelligent people are baffled and confounded at its complexity and are unable to comprehend its true significance. At this stage he addressed a question to the visitors generally: “Have the scientists ever gone deeply into the problem of the nature of space-time?”

There were various comments, but the consensus was that no scientists had really made a deep study of this problem, but that some of the topmost among them, including Einstein, had come to the conclusion that the entire universe is ‘of the nature of thought', and they held that the nature of space-time is really incomprehensible since it crosses the borders of the mind and all human knowledge acquired so far.
Maharaj laughed and said: How can the scientists do it with their puny minds? They may conceive ‘unlimited space’ and ‘unlimited time', but can they conceive the very absence of space and time? It is impossible because that which conceives, in its conception, cannot conceive the conceiving. Would it be possible for the eye to see its own seeing? Can the fire burn itself? Can water understand thirst?

If you can grasp the significance of what l have said, you will cease looking at ‘things’ against the fixed background of time; you will cease searching for truth through the medium of your proud intellect. Indeed, you will realize that the very effort of searching is an obstruction because the instrument with which you will be searching is a divided mind a conceptual subject seeking a conceptual object. When you realize this, you will stop searching and let the impersonal consciousness take over. And then, when the impersonal consciousness lets you in on the mystery of its own source, you will know that there is no ‘you’ or ‘me’, but only ‘I’, the essential subjectivity; that ‘things’ have no substance and, therefore, a phenomenon is the child of a barren woman; and, finally, that ‘I’ am intemporality, infinity !

TO GET RID OF THE IDEA OF INDIVIDUALITY

Swami Shantananda Puri Maharaj

If there are no individuals.. What are we expected to do?

In order to get out of your false idea of individuality which has resulted in enmities and sufferings we have to come into contact with our origin that is the source from which we have sprung. All of our suffering are because we are considering each one of us a separate individual having forgotten the universal totality. Whether it knows or not, every bulb in my house is directly or indirectly in constant contact with it's origin, namely the generator. But they have forgotten it. The same is the case with us all. As we have forgotten the infinite inheritance which is our right and considering ourselves only as limited desires and thus sufferings arise. After all, while coming to the origin we must have been in contact with it and were definitely aware of it. It is after assuming the various forms we identified ourselves with the roles in the dream drama and forgot our origin.

How do we remember a thing whose name we have forgotten? It is only by continuously trying to remember it back and it comes as a flash after hours. Similarly, constant remembrance of the supreme reality (we may call it by any name as Brahman, Self or Atman or Shiva, Rama, Krishana or God etc) will again bring us into contact with that infinite reality.

This is called `Satata smaranam`, continued remembrance of Lord. This is only one of the numerous methods to end the dream of the Lord and also our individuality.

Thus there is never a creation of the world or its individuals nor is there any dissolution. The entire thing was an imagination as a dream drama. When that is the case, the question of anybody being bound by maya or trying to do sadhana to get out of it does not arise. Obviously there is no liberation or mukti nor anybody longing to have it.

When the same thought of the Lord subsides and again arises assuming different forms of individuals it is called rebirth. When a particular thought subsides for good in the thinker and never more arises it is called Moksha or Liberation. Obviously the various theories of Moksha in the various systems of philosophy say, living in the same colony as the Lord, to be by the side of the lord, to have the identical features as the Lord, to sitting in a stone descended from nowhere and be on perpetual motion forever (Jain Philosophy) are all meant perhaps to impel the lower rung of people to believe in a higher reality.

What all is given above is scientific, logical, sensible and rational. They are all based on the Upanishadic texts and the text on Advaita by Adi Shankaracharya (Known as Shankara).

Sri Ramana Maharshi had devised a direct path for renewing the contact with the supreme reality by contemplating on `Who am I ? which also will be very useful. Even though it looks simple, a lot of courage is required in order to persistently and perseveringly pursue the quest of who we are and to establish contact.

- Swami Shantananda Puri Maharaj

LIVING BY THE WORDS OF BHAGAVAN - ANNAMALAI SWAMI

ANNAMALAI SWAMI ABOUT SUMMA IRU AND VASANAS IN THE BODY OF A JNANI

Q: Bhagavan often told devotees to 'Be still'. Did he mean 'Be mentally still'?

AS: Bhagavan's famous instruction 'summa iru' [be still] is often misunderstood. It does not mean that you should be physically still; it means that you should always abide in the Self.

if there is too much physical stillness, tamoguna [a state of mental torpor] arises and predominates. In that state you will feel very sleepy and mentally dull. Rajoguna [a state of excessive mental activity], on the other hand, produces emotions and a mind which is restless.

In sattva guna [a state of mental quietness and clarity] there is stillness and harmony. If mental activity is necessary while one is in sattva guna it takes place. But for the rest of the time there is stillness. When tamoguna and rajoguna predominate, the Self cannot be felt. If sattva guna predominates one experiences peace, bliss, clarity and an absence of wandering thoughts. That is the stillness that Bhagavan was prescribing.

Q: Bhagavan, in Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, speaks of bhoga vasanas [vasanas which are for enjoyment] and bandha vasanas [vasanas which produce bondage]. He says that for th^e jnani there are bhoga vasanas but no bandha vasanas. Would Swamiji please clarify the difference.

AS: Nothing can cause bondage for the jnani because his mind is dead. In the absence of a mind he knows himself only as consciousness. Because the mind is dead, he is no longer able to identify himself with the body. But even though he knows that he is not the body, it is a fact that the body is still alive. That body will continue to live, and the jnani will continue to be aware of it, until its own karma is exhausted. Because the jnani is still aware of the body, he will also be aware of the thoughts and vasanas that arise in that body.

None of these vasanas has the power to cause bondage for him because he never identifies with them, but they do have the power to make the body behave in certain ways. The body of the jnani enjoys and experiences these vasanas although the jnani himself is not affected by them. That is why lt ls sometimes said that for the jnani there are bhoga vasanas but no bandha vdsanas.

LIVING BY THE WORDS OF BHAGAVAN