I DON'T FEEL LIKE HAVING SEX

Beloved Osho, I never have sex and I don't feel like having sex. I don't think that I am beyond sex, but I love meditation and dancing much more, although it is difficult to accept this. Sex is not happening, and i like that it is not happening. Osho, does it mean that in order to be a sannyasin, I must have sex? I don't like it if it is not a natural happening, if it is only a sex and mind meeting, and not meditation. I enjoy being alone. I see myself in conflict a lot with this, but I can also accept the way I am. Then it all disappears from the mind, and my heart opens again. Osho, is something wrong with me?

Anand Dolano, nothing is wrong with you. Repression of sex is evil, but if sex is not a natural desire in you, to force it will be a repression. There are people who are forcing their natural desire for sex in trying to be celibate; they are going against their nature. And if you don't have any inclination towards sex, forcing it will be going against your nature; it will be the same kind of crime.

A sannyasin needs to be natural. You have to listen to your own body, your own instincts, your own intuition, and follow it. You are not to do anything against your nature. If you like to be alone, and enjoy meditating... that's what everybody else is trying, but first they are trying to get finished with sex so that they can enjoy being alone. You are in a better position, you don't have to pass through the hell. You have already passed through it somehow; perhaps in your past life. You are out of the hell; now don't try to get into the dark tunnel again.

Even the people to whom I say, "Don't repress sex," are not being told to remain always sexual. In fact repression of sex keeps you always sexual. Once you have lived it totally, you are finished with it. And the sooner you are finished the better, because then you can sit silently without being bothered by the need of anybody else as a companion. You are enough unto yourself, and that is the most important thing for a meditator -- the enoughness of aloneness.

But I can understand your problem. Here you must be seeing everybody bringing problems about sex, about their fights. Somebody is completely satisfied; that is his boredom. Somebody is not satisfied, he wants more satisfaction; that is his problem. Somebody is not feeling boredom; that is his problem. Listening to all these problems, naturally anybody will get worried: what is my problem? If you don't have any problem, it certainly means something is wrong with you!

Nothing is wrong with you. Just enjoy being yourself, your meditation, your silence, and let these people pass through their darkness. One day they will all come out of the tunnel; then you can greet them. But just seeing that everybody is in the tunnel, fighting, shouting.... Sitting outside the tunnel in the light, in silence, don't be worried that "Something seems to be wrong with me. Everybody is in the tunnel; what am I doing here? All the meditators are in the tunnel. Nobody is meditating... but they have all come here to meditate; only I am meditating."

"My wife is a typical Jew," complained the man to his companion. "She only makes love doggy-style."
"Doggy-style?" said his companion, "I don't believe it!"

"It is true. I sit up and beg, and she rolls over and plays dead."

Let them play whatever style they want; you simply don't get distracted from your meditation. You are perfectly right. And all these people are trying to reach to your position. You don't have to descend into their troubles, into their problems.

You are blessed. It rarely happens, what is happening to you. It happens only because of your past life; there is no other explanation. In your past life you must have been meditating; you must have been with a master; you must have come to a point where sex became meaningless, where the need of the other dropped, when you became enough unto yourself and your loneliness changed into aloneness; hence in this life you are carrying all that you have achieved in your past life.

It is because of such experiences that all three Eastern religions accepted the idea of reincarnation. The three other religions, which were born outside of India, have no explanation for such an experience. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism -- all three religions cannot explain your situation. But Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, have a very logical scientific explanation: that you are carrying a quality that you achieved in your past life. Nothing is lost. Once you have achieved it, it goes on with your consciousness into new lives, into new bodies.

OSHO♥

DIRTY OLD MAN

Why is there such an expression as "the dirty old man"? I am Getting on and I suspect people are beginning to think about me in Exactly those words.

It is because of a long, long repressive society that the dirty old man exists. It is because of your saints, your priests, your puritans, that the old dirty man exists. If people are allowed to live their sexual life joyously, by the time they are nearing forty-two -- remember, I am saying forty-two, not eighty-four -- just when they are nearing forty-two, sex will start losing its grip on them. Just as sex arises and becomes very powerful by the time one is fourteen, in exactly the same way by the time one is forty-two it starts disappearing. It is a natural course.

And when sex disappears, the old man has a love, has compassion, of a totally different kind. There is no lust in his love, no desire, he wants to get nothing out of it. His love has a purity, an innocence; his love is a joy. Sex gives you pleasure. And sex gives you pleasure only when you have gone into sex; then pleasure is the end result. If sex has become irrelevant -- not repressed, but because you experienced it so deeply that it is no more of any value.... You have known it, and knowledge always brings freedom.

You have known it totally, and because you have known it, the mystery is finished, there is nothing more to explore. In that knowing, the whole energy, the sexual energy, is transmuted into love, compassion. One gives out of joy. Then the old man is the most beautiful man in the world, the cleanest man in the world. There is no expression in any language as the clean old man. I have never heard it. But this expression, the dirty old man, exists in almost all languages.

The reason is that the body becomes old, the body becomes tired, the body wants to get rid of all sexuality -- but the mind, because of repressed desires, still hankers. When the body is not capable, and the mind continuously haunts you for something which the body is incapable of doing, really the old man is in a mess. His eyes are sexual, lusty; his body dead and dull. And his mind goes on goading him. He starts having a dirty look, a dirty face; he starts having something ugly in him.

It reminds me of the story of the man who overheard his wife and her sister discussing his frequent out-of-town business trips. The sister kept suggesting that the wife should worry about her husband being unchaperoned at those posh resort convention hotels with so many attractive, unattached career women around. "Me worry?" said the wife. "Why, he'd never cheat on me. He's too loyal, too decent... too old."

The body sooner or later becomes old; it is bound to become old. But if you have not lived your desires they will clamor around you, they are bound to create something ugly in you. Either the old man becomes the most beautiful man in the world, because he attains to an innocence the same as the innocence of a child, or even far deeper than the innocence of a child -- he becomes a sage. But if desires are still there, running like an undercurrent, then he is caught in a turmoil.

A very old man was arrested while attempting to sexually molest a young woman. Seeing such an old man, eighty-four, in court, the magistrate reduced the charge from rape to assault with a dead weapon. If you are becoming old, remember that old age is the climax of life. Remember that old age can be the most beautiful experience -- because the child has hopes for the future, he lives in the future, he has great desires to do this, to do that.

Every child thinks that he is going to be somebody special -- Alexander the Great, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong -- he lives in desires and in the future. The young man is too much possessed by the instincts, all instincts, exploding in him. Sex is there. Modern research says that every man thinks once at least about sex every three seconds. Women are a little better, they think of sex every six seconds. It is a great difference, almost double; that may be the cause of many rifts between husbands and wives.

Once every three seconds sex somehow flashes in the mind. The young man is possessed by such great natural forces that he cannot be free. Ambition is there, and time is running fast, and he has to do something and he has to be something. All those hopes and desires and fantasies of childhood have to be fulfilled; he is in a great rush, in a hurry. The old man knows that those childish desires were really childish. The old man knows that all those days of youth and turmoil are gone.

The old man is in the same state as when the storm has gone and silence prevails. That silence can be of tremendous beauty, depth, richness. If the old man is really mature, which is very rarely the case, then he will be beautiful. But people only grow in age, they don't grow up. Hence the problem. Grow up, become more mature, become more alert and aware. And old age is the last opportunity given to you: before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more meditative.

If some lurking desires are still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those desires, don't be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be transmuted. But before death comes, be free of all desires. When I say be free of all desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires. Then there is a pure longing. That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination -- just pure energy, a pool of energy, going nowhere. That's what buddhahood is.

OSHO♥

CRIPPLED

[At a previous darshan a sannyasin, who was crippled by polio four years ago, said he disliked the constant attention his disability received. Osho suggested he wear a sign ’I am crippled. Please don’t ask me about my leg. Thank you!’ Tonight he said it helped him to accept his situation, but he still feels frustrated; he wants to dance totally.]

Be a total cripple! – that’s what totality should mean to you. Just accept it and enjoy it.

[The sannyasin asks: Will it become better?]

Yes, it will. If you can accept it and enjoy it, it will start changing. The rejection of anything is always a barrier to change; you create a division between you and your leg. Somehow you are ashamed of it, somehow you don’t like it the way it is, you don’t respect it, and it is only respect that will change the situation.

Feel grateful: at least you have the leg; there are people who don’t have legs! Nothing is wrong in it, there is nothing to be worried about; it is just comparison. Just think of a world where all are crippled and one man is born who is not crippled. He will be in the same position as you are, because then dancing with all the crippled people, he will think, ’I am not dancing as totally as they are. I am not totally in my crippledness because I am not crippled.’ It is just comparison.

One can transform any situation by looking at it positively. So simply accept it; this is the way god wants you to be. Now why not be a perfect cripple? Do you think that if you were not crippled problems wouldn’t be there? Then why are there so many people here not crippled but still having problems?

It is good that you only have a crippled leg; people have crippled minds, crippled hearts. You have a very small problem. Don’t fuss about it too much, mm? – just forget about it; accept and forget. Do whatsoever you can do, and within your limits be total. You can’t have somebody else as your criterion. Somebody is a fast runner and you cannot run; even if you are not crippled, you are not an Olympic runner. But nobody bothers about it; why should one bother? Whatsoever the given situation, make the most out of it, and you will be surprised that if you can make the most out of it, everything that can happen to a man, will happen.

Simply forget about it. But respectfully forget about it, mm? – not that you keep it at the back just to avoid it, you keep yourself occupied with something else. That is not respect. Respectfully, mm? – be loving to the leg: massage it, play with it. Just give some enthusiasm to the leg and say to it, ’Don’t be worried. I am not worried – why are you worried? Everything is perfectly okay!’ Things will start changing, energy will start moving more.

OSHO♥

NON - GRAVITATIONAL FOOD

Now, we have to go into an enquiry about the bodies. Man is not one body, man has many bodies – layers of bodies. The body we know is only the outermost; inside it there is another, and inside that, another. Rishis have divided these layers into five.

The first is known as the food body, the physical body. Ordinarily, we remain attached to this body. We are in a deep illusion and are identified with the physical one. This attachment to the physical body will not allow you to move inside. But why this attachment? – because we don’t know that there is another; we have never become aware that inside this body there is another. This body is so solid, so non-transparent, you cannot have any glimpse within. This solidity of the body means that we have been using foods which make it solid. This body can be made transparent also – just like a glass body in which you can have a glimpse inside.

The change of food is bound to change the qualities of your physical body. Food is not just energy, it is also a qualitative thing. Food is not just a fuel, it contributes more than fuel – it gives you either transparency, or non-transparency. The insight into this phenomenon can mutate, and you can have altogether a different type of body. And it is not so difficult to change this body, because the body is a flux, every moment changing itself; it is a process, it is not a static thing. The moment you came here, you had another body; now the body has changed. It is changing constantly, every moment; it is riverlike, moving and changing – it is not a static thing.

If you change direction, the body takes a jump; only the direction has to be changed. One should become aware, that whatsoever one is eating must be such that it doesn’t make one’s body heavy. This heaviness is not concerned with weight: sometimes you feel that you are weightless, as if you can fly. So the food that can give you the feeling of weightlessness is the right food. The food that gives you the feeling of being burdened is not the right food. All non-vegetarian foods make you more rooted in the earth; you cannot fly. Vegetarian foods give you wings; you have an inner feeling that you can just levitate, you can just go out of gravitation.

Food is right if it is non-gravitational. If you can feel non-physical in it, it is good. Really, the body is felt only when it is heavy; when you have the feeling of heaviness inside, only then you feel the body. When the body is not heavy with wrong foods, you are bodiless. That’s why when the body is diseased, when the body is ill, you feel it; when it is healthy, you don’t feel it. You feel your head only when there is a headache; when there is no headache, there is no head.

So to define health positively, there is only one way: A person who is not feeling his body, is healthy. The more you feel your body, the more ill you are, because when the body is really healthy, there is no need to feel it. Only pain is felt. And if you even feel pleasure, it must be a sort of pain. Pleasure is never felt, because only a disturbance is felt. Silence is never felt really, only noise is felt. And if you begin to feel silence….

Real, authentic silence is not felt. Really, when you are not feeling any noise, it is silence. When you are not feeling your body, it means you are not feeling any disturbances; you are healthy. So the feeling of bodilessness is healthy. Any food that gives you a feeling of bodilessness is good, is right food. So be discriminative; be consciously discriminative. Don’t eat anything which makes you more embodied, which makes you more of a body. Go on eliminating all that gives you a bodiness, and then you will begin to transform your body towards a transparency.

This may look paradoxical, but this is true. When you are really healthy, you are desireless – illness and unhealthiness create desires. This is one of the basic distinctions between Eastern and Western thinking. They say, in the West, that to be filled with desire means you are healthy. But their understanding is very superficial, because desire is a disturbance. Something is still incomplete, that’s why the desire. Something is incomplete, so there is the urge to fulfill it. But when you are really healthy you are so fulfilled, you are so complete – the circle is so complete – that there is no desire.

Desire means you are incomplete. Somewhere, something is still lacking; somewhere, something is absent; somewhere, you are feeling a vacuum. This is what illness means: a vacuum. Health means: so much fulfilled, so much filled there is no more space. When there is no inner space, there is no desire; so a really healthy person is desireless, and a really healthy person is bodiless. These both are associated: To be a body is to
be in desire; to be in desire is to be heavy with the body.

Make the body as if it is not. The more absent, the better; the more present, the more you are falling downwards. You can just become a stone, and many are that – just stones. They only feel awake when the body demands something; otherwise, they are asleep. When the body demands, they feel awake; then the demand is fulfilled – they again fall deep into sleep.

One should create a body which has needs but not demands. Needs are natural; demands become crazy and obsessions. Demands mean you are addicted; the body is the master. All the austerities were not meant as suicidal methods, they were not masochist – they were really an inner transformation, they were really a change of power.

When a buddha is fasting, it is not to destroy the body; it is to destroy the demands. Understand it very clearly: when a buddha is fasting, he is not destroying his body, but he is changing the seat of power, who the master is. The body must not be the master; otherwise, you cannot go inwards. The master is outside. How can you go inwards? You are just a slave, and you have to be around the master. The power seat must be transformed; the body must become a slave. A slave has needs, but no demands; a slave has needs, but no commandments. The commanding must remain with the master, and the master must be inside, not outside. The deeper the master, the more is your freedom.

So when a buddha is on a fast, it is to change the seat of power. He is saying to his body, ”Now I will fulfill your needs, but not your demands.” The body will struggle – no one can lose the power, the master, the sovereignty, so easily. And you have lived with the body as the master for millennia. The body was never challenged, so the mastery has become natural; it has become such an old habit that the body even cannot conceive it, ”What nonsense are you talking? You are the master? You have always been the slave. Always! Have you gone crazy? The orders have already been issued by ME! – you have always followed.”

Austerity means, TAPASCHARYA means, TAPAS means, that now you are not ready to continue this status quo, this state of affairs. The body will struggle: the fight is really not from the inside, the fight is from the outside. But the body is a very subtle and miraculous mechanism; it adjusts to anything if you have the will – the greater the will, the sooner the body is adjusted again. it begins to feel, ”Now the mastery is lost.” And really, when the mastery is lost, the body becomes more healthy, because now it is natural.

The mastery of the body is really unnatural; it is not healthful – even to the body – because the body has no consciousness, and goes on demanding; the body has no discrimination and goes on demanding.It goes on doing things which are not even good for it. Consciousness becomes the slave; and the material desires, the mechanical ones, becomes the master.

This is the deepest accident, the deepest misery that has happened to humankind. But in a way, it had to, because we have developed from an animal existence. We have developed from animal existence. There is no need for a Darwin to prove this – we have know it always. Because an animal has no consciousness, the body has to be the master. There is no one other to claim the mastery – the body has to be the master. But when consciousness grows inside, the body goes on, mm? – Just as a old habit.

You have to change it. Now you are not in the animal world; now you are not animals. Austerity means that now we declare we have passed the state of animalhood. The suffering that one goes through in austerity is just a birth pain – nothing else. And that suffering is good and healthy, because out of that suffering is transformation.

But it should not be done as a masochist – that’s altogether a different matter, a very diseased thing. You can make your body suffer and enjoy it. If you are enjoying it, then you are suicidal: then it is not austerity. Then it is not austerity; then you are really a very impotent, violent mind. You cannot do violence to others, so you are doing violence to yourself. So you can fast as a masochist, as a person who enjoys suffering. This is not austerity; this is very abnormal, this is really a mental case.

Out of one hundred, ninety-nine percent of the people who go on austerities are masochists, but they can deceive; they can deceive others and themselves also. To deceive others is irrelevant, but to deceive oneself is very dangerous. You can deceive yourself. The point to understand is that one must not enjoy suffering; one must take it as a necessary measure – that’s another thing. One must go through it as a cleansing; one must go through it as a purity, as a catharsis, as a change, as a mutation. One must accept it, but not ENJOY it! That is the thing: If you are enjoying it, then this is not austerity at all; this is madness.

This is the point to be remembered: never enjoy suffering because that is abnormal. To suffer suffering is normal, but to accept it as a necessity, as an inevitability, is another thing. Accept it, go through it; don’t enjoy it. You have to do it, because as you have an animal heritage, one day you have to assert your humanity. Against the animal heritage you have to assert yourself. You have to make your body know exactly, NOW, that the body is not the master. And once the body has know it, the body is adjusted. And really the body is freed from a responsibility it cannot carry. It CANNOT be the master because it has no consciousness; it has no awareness. It is an automata, it is a mechanical device.

The body is an automatic device, so it goes on working. If you make it the master it goes on demanding without any consciousness, without any discrimination, without any intelligence. It has a mechanical intelligence just like a computer: it goes on demanding… it goes on demanding. It has a built-in process of how to demand, but without any consciousness: without any consciousness it tells you when you are hungry, it tells you what to eat, it tells you what to do. But this whole arrangement is just mechanical – it goes on repeating.

That’s why a person who lives with the body feels life as a boredom, because the body can only repeat; it can only repeat continuously. So we are just repeating every day the same thing. It is a circle, a closed circle: the same things, the same demands, the same desires, the same lusts – the body goes on repeating and repeating, and in the end one feels just bored, but still one cannot do anything. Even if you feel bored, again the second day, the body will demand the same thing; and you will have to supply, because you have never been in command.

This physical layer is the first, is the primary layer – the outermost. If you can be aware that you are unnecessarily the slave and need not be, then change your body habits consciously. By and by, change. Change the seat of power; be more in control. And give to the body all that is needed by it, but never fulfill any addictions. It will be painful in the beginning, but it is a bliss when you have reached beyond the body and have become the master. And when you are on the throne, it is one of the deepest blisses possible. Matter and energy are not two things. Matter is just energy, energy is just matter – Two states of one thing.

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♥

Asanas, pranayama — there are so many methods through which energies can be made to flow inward. When they flow inward they become one, because at the center there cannot be more than one. So the more energy goes inward, the more harmony there is. Conflicts drop. In the center there is no conflict. There is an organic unity of the whole. That is why bliss is felt.

Another thing: asanas and pranayama are bodily helps. They are important, but they are only physical helps. If your mind is in conflict then they will not be of much help, because body and mind are not two things really. They are two parts of one thing. You are not body and mind; you are body/mind. You are psycho/somatic or somato/psychic. We talk about the body as one thing and the mind as something different, but body and mind are two poles of one energy. The body is gross and the mind is subtle, but the energy is the same.

One has to work from both polarities. For the body there is hatha yoga: asanas, pranayama, etcetera; and for the mind there is raga yoga and other yogas that are basically concerned with your mental attitudes.

Body and mind are one energy. For example, if you can control your breath when you are angry, the anger will die. If you can go on breathing rhythmically, anger cannot overpower you. In the same way, if you go on breathing rhythmically, sexual passion cannot overpower you. It will be there, but it will not become manifest. No one will know it is there. Not even you will be able to know it. So sex can be suppressed; anger can be suppressed. Through rhythmic breathing you can suppress them so much that you yourself will not even be aware of it. But the anger or sex will still be there. The body has suppressed it, but it remains inside, untouched.

One has to work with both the body and the mind. The body should be trained through yogic methodology, and the mind through awareness. You will require more awareness if you practice yoga because things will become more subtle. If you are angry, you can ordinarily become aware of it because it is so gross. But if you practice pranayama, you will need more awareness, more acute sensitivity to be aware of anger, because now the anger will become more subtle. The body is not cooperating with it so there will be no physical expression of it at all.

If people practice awareness techniques and simultaneously practice yogic methods, they will know deeper realms of awareness. Otherwise they will be aware only of the gross. If you change the gross but do not change the subtle, you will be in a dilemma. Now conflict will assert itself in a new way.

Yoga is helpful, but it is only one part. The other part is what Buddha calls mindfulness. Practice yoga so that the body becomes rhythmic and cooperative with your inner movements, and simultaneously practice mindfulness.

Be mindful of breathing. In yoga, you have to change the breathing process. In mindfulness, you have to be aware of the breathing as it is. Just be aware of it. If you can become aware of your breathing, then you can become aware of your thought process; otherwise not.

Those who try to become aware of their thought process directly, will not be able to do it. It will be very arduous, tedious. Breathing is the door to the mind. If you stop your breathing for a single moment, your thoughts will also stop. When breathing stops, the thought process stops. If your thinking is chaotic, your breathing will be chaotic. Breathing will simultaneously reflect your thought process.

Buddha talks about anapanasati: the yoga of awareness of the incoming and outgoing breath. He says, “Begin from here.” And that is the correct beginning. One should begin from breathing and never from the thought process itself. When you can feel the subtle movements of breath, only then will you be able to feel the subtle movements of thought.

Awareness of the thought process will change the quality of the mind; asanas and pranayama will change the quality of the body. Then the moment comes when your body and mind are one, without any conflict at all. When they are synchronized, you are neither body nor mind. For the first time, you know yourself as the Self. You transcend.

You can transcend only when there is no conflict. In this harmonious moment when body and mind are one, with no conflict, you transcend both. You are neither. Now you are nothing in a sense: no-thing. You are simple consciousness. Not conscious of something, but just awareness itself.

This awareness without being aware of anything, this consciousness without being conscious of anything, is the moment of explosion. Your potential becomes actual. You explode into a new realm: the ultimate. This ultimate is the concern of all religions.

OSHO♥