Sudhindra means god of remembrance, god of awareness, god of mindfulness. The most important thing in your life will be awareness. Pour your whole energy into that dimension: become more alert, more attentive, more mindful. Whatsoever you are doing, make it a point that you should do it with awareness… small things: washing your clothes, do it with full awareness. You can do it mechanically, you can think of a thousand other things and you can go on washing the clothes. That does not need awareness: you know how to do it, your body has learned the trick of it, it goes on doing it. You are not needed; you can think, you can fantasise, you can dream and the body will do the work. The body is functioning like a robot: it is programmed, so it will do its acts.

Bringing awareness in means dissolving the body robot, its mechanicalness, creating awareness deep in the body. And when awareness penetrates the body it becomes luminous. When awareness penetrates the body there is no separation between the soul and the body; they are one unity, functioning in unison. And that’s a great blessing. It is what blissfulness is all about: when the body and the soul are functioning as one, when they are coupled together in deep loving embrace, when all boundaries dissolve.

But from our very childhood we have been taught one thing, that we are separate from the body. Control the body; we are the master and the body is the slave – manipulate the body. Because of these teachings, every human being on the earth is a victim; no human being finds a harmony between his body and soul. With that harmony missing you can’t feel god; god can be felt only in a harmonious being.

Each child has been forced to become a kind of schizophrenic, a duality, a division: the mind and the body. And between the two a gap has been created; that gap is ugly, that gap is a calamity. Man has lost all joy because of that gap and man has lost contact with nature because of that gap. We are connected to nature through the body but we are disconnected from the body so we have become ghosts in a machine. the body is being used as a machine, as a robot.

Awareness means dissolving the robot, awareness means unlearning the nonsense that has been taught by the society, bringing the mind closer and closer to the body, penetrating the body with awareness. and when it happens, a great thrill passes through the whole body mechanism, and then it is no more a mechanism at all: it becomes an organic unity with the soul. Then the body vibrates in unison. You don’t have the division, you don’t possess the body; you are the body – there is no possessor, no possessed. That’s where sanity and health and wholeness arise; otherwise everybody remains schizophrenic.

So that is going to be your work here: become more and more alert in small things. In drinking water, drink it with absolute alertness, as if everything depends on it. In that moment don’t do anything else. Taste the water, feel its coolness going down your throat. Feel the quenching of the thirst, feel the entry of the water in the body. In that moment only be that. Eating, do the same. In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot. It is not a machine, you are not the manipulator. It is you; it is your visible being, you are its invisible source. But you are not two, you are two aspects of one energy. Matter and mind are not two but two states of the same energy; matter is more condensed, the mind is more abstract.

OSHO♥

REBELLION

Meditation brings rebellion in life — rebellion against all traditions, conventions, dogmas, creeds, rebellion against the whole past, because unless you are completely clean of the past you cannot be totally herenow. And unless you are totally herenow you will never know what the truth is.

Truth is never in the past, never in the future; truth is always here and now. Truth means that which is. You cannot use the word ‘was’ for truth or ‘will be’ for truth; truth is always ‘is’, isness is truth. Our mind goes on moving from the past to the future. It is like a pendulum moving from one extreme to another extreme. It never stays in the middle, and the middle is the truth. From the past to the future, from the future to the past, we go on shuttling like a goods train. We never stay in the now, and the now is the nature of existence. Existence knows only one tense, the present tense.

That is the greatest rebellion in life, to drop all the traditions and all conventions — Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, the Koran, the Bible, the Gita — to drop them all in toto. It needs guts, needs courage, it needs a man, not a child, It needs some integrity, some growth. And my whole work here is to help you to become more mature so that you can pass through this rebellion.

Once you have passed through this rebellion Christ is born in you, Buddha is born in you; they are different names for the same experience. But all this happens through meditation, hence sannyas revolves around the idea of meditation. I don’t give you any other thing, no character, no ordinary life style. I just tell you a simple and single thing: be meditative. In meditation is my whole philosophy of life. Out of it thousands of flowers bloom and blossom. Out of it everything that is needed comes by itself — you need not search for it.

Mind is an identification with the body. One feels ‘I am the body’; this is the state of mind. Meditation is a disidentification with the body. One starts feeling ‘I am in the body but I am not the body. The body is just like a house and I am residing in it. I have resided in many bodies, many houses — there is no need to cling to this particular house. This house is going to collapse as all houses always collapse sooner or later. But my being is eternal, it cannot collapse. It is not made of collapsible material, it is not made of material at al]; it is just pure consciousness.

As you move into meditation this feeling starts becoming stronger every day. That does not mean that you start neglecting the body, on the contrary, you start caring about the body more carefully because it is a beautiful house, a gift of god. You have to keep it clean and beautiful and young and vital, energetic, alive, because you have to live in it for many many years. There is no need to make it ugly, poor, starved. Make it a palace, make it a marble palace, make it a temple, but remember “I am not it,” so when it dies you are not dying. The body is born, the body dies; you are never born and you never die.

And the method of meditation is very simple: just watching. Three things have to be watched. The first is the body and its actions. Walking, watch it; sitting, lying down, watch it, and as you watch you will be able to understand “I am the watcher and the body is the watched. It is separate from me.” Then there is a deeper watchfulness, the second step. Watch your mind and its activities: thoughts, desires, memories, dreams. If you have succeeded in the first you are bound to succeed in the second too. And then suddenly you become aware “I am not the mind either.” Then the subtlest watching begins, the third step. Watch your feelings, sentiments, emotions, moods — which are very vague and subtle — watch your heart.

Once a person has become able to watch all three he transcends them, he becomes aware of the fourth, his true being. That is the moment when the soul is born, really born. Before that you were only so-so alive, lukewarm, but not intensely alive, not passionately alive, not totally alive. I believe in totality, intensity.

OSHO♥