But because it comes absolutely suddenly

The way I talk is a little strange. No speaker in the world talks like me. Technically it is wrong; it takes almost double the time! But those speakers have a different purpose – my purpose is absolutely different from theirs. They speak because they are prepared for it; they are simply repeating something that they have rehearsed. Secondly, they are speaking to impose a certain ideology, a certain idea on you. Thirdly, to them speaking is an art; they go on refining it.

As far as I am concerned, I am not what they call a speaker or an orator. It is not an art to me or a technique; technically I go on becoming worse every day! But our purposes are totally different. I don´t want to impress you in order to manipulate you. I don´t speak for any goal to be achieved through convincing you. I don´t speak to convert you into a Christian, into a Hindu or a Mohammedan, into a theist or an atheist. These are not my concerns.

My speaking is really one of my devices for meditation. Speaking has never been used this way: I speak not to give you a message, but to stop your mind functioning.

I speak nothing prepared. I don´t know myself what is going to be the next word; hence I never make any mistake. One makes a mistake if one is prepared. I never forget anything, because one forgets if one has been remembering it. So I speak with a freedom that perhaps nobody has ever spoken with.

I am not concerned whether I am consistent, because that is not the purpose. A man who wants to convince you and manipulate you through his speaking has to be consistent, has to be logical, has to be rational, to overpower your reason. He wants to dominate through words.

My purpose is so unique: I am using words just to create silent gaps. The words are not important so I can say anything contradictory, anything absurd, anything unrelated, because my purpose is just to create gaps. The words are secondary; the silences between those words are primary. This is simply a device to give you a glimpse of meditation. And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being.

Most of the people in the world don´t think that it is possible for mind to be silent. Because they don´t think it is possible, they don´t try. How to give people a taste of meditation was my basic reason to speak, so I can go on speaking eternally; it does not matter what I am saying. All that matters is that I give you a few chances to be silent, which you find difficult on your own in the beginning.

I cannot force you to be silent, but I can create a device in which spontaneously you are bound to be silent. I am speaking, and in the middle of a sentence, when you were expecting another word to follow, nothing follows but a silent gap. Your mind was looking to listen, and waiting for something to follow, and does not want to miss it – naturally it becomes silent. What can the poor mind do? If it was well known at what points I will be silent, if it was declared to you that on such and such points I will be silent, then you could manage to think; you would not be silent. Then you know: ‘This is the point where he is going to be silent; now I can have a little chit-chat with myself.’ But because it comes absolutely suddenly.... I don´t know myself why at certain points I stop.

Anything like this, in any orator in the world, will be condemned, because an orator stopping again and again means he is not well prepared, he has not done the homework. It means that his memory is not reliable, that he cannot find, sometimes, what word to use. But because it is not oratory, I am not concerned about the people who will be condemning me – I am concerned with you.

It is not only here, but far away...anywhere in the world where people will be listening to the video or to the audio, they will come to the same silence. My success is not to convince you, my success is to give you a real taste so that you can become confident that meditation is not a fiction, that the state of no-mind is not just a philosophical idea, that it is a reality; that you are capable of it, and that it does not need any special qualifications.

With me, to be silent is easier because of one other reason. I am silent; even while I am speaking I am silent. My innermost being is not involved at all. What I am saying to you is not a disturbance or a burden or a tension to me; I am as relaxed as one can be. Speaking or not speaking does not make any difference to me.

Naturally, this kind of state is infectious.

Because I cannot go on speaking the whole day to keep you in meditative moments, I want you to become responsible. Accepting that you are capable of being silent will help you when you are meditating alone. Knowing your capacity...and one comes to know one´s capacity only when one experiences it. There is no other way.

Don´t make me wholly responsible for your silence, because that will create a difficulty for you. Alone, what are you going to do? Then it becomes a kind of addiction, and I don´t want you to be addicted to me. I don´t want to be a drug to you.

I want you to be independent and confident that you can attain these precious moments on your own.

If you can attain them with me, there is no reason why you cannot attain them without me, because I am not the cause. You have to understand what is happening: listening to me, you put your mind aside.

Listening to the ocean, or listening to the thundering of the clouds, or listening to the rain falling heavily, just put your ego aside, because there is no need... The ocean is not going to attack you, the rain is not going to attack you, the trees are not going to attack you – there is no need of any defense. To be vulnerable to life as such, to existence as such, you will be getting these moments continuously. Soon it will become your very life.

Wherever you are – at home, at work, or on the way between the two – you can use the presence of any sound, any noise, as an opportunity to move inside to a space of inner silence and stillness.

Osho

Meditation is the answer

And the simplest method of meditation is just a way of witnessing. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation, but witnessing is an essential part of all one hundred and twelve methods. So as far as I am concerned, witnessing is the only method. Those one hundred and twelve are different applications of witnessing.



The essential core, the spirit of meditation is to learn how to witness. You are seeing a tree: You are there, the tree is there, but can't you find one thing more? - that you are seeing the tree, that there is a witness in you which is seeing you seeing the tree. The world is not divided only into the object and the subject. There is also something beyond both, and that beyond is meditation.



So in every act... and I don't want people to sit for one hour or half an hour in the morning or in the evening. That kind of meditation is not going to help, because if you meditate for one hour, then for twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite of it. Meditation can be victorious: witnessing is such a method that it can spread over twenty-four hours of your day.



Eating, don't get identified with the eater. The food is there, the eater is there, and you are here, watching. Walking, let the body walk but you simply watch. Slowly, the knack comes. It is a knack, and once you can watch small things.... This crow, crowing... you are listening. These are two - object and subject. But can't you see a witness who is seeing both? - The crow, the listener, and still there is someone who is watching both.



It is such a simple phenomenon. Then you can move into deeper layers: you can watch your thoughts; you can watch your emotions, your moods. There is no need to say, "I am sad." The fact is that you are a witness that a cloud of sadness is passing over you. There is anger - you can simply be a witness. There is no need to say, "I am angry." You are never angry - there is no way for you to be angry - you are always a witness. The anger comes and goes; you are just a mirror. Things come, get reflected, move - and the mirror remains empty and clean, unscratched by the reflections.



Witnessing is finding your inside mirror.And once you have found it, miracles start happening. When you are simply witnessing the thoughts, thoughts disappear. Then there is suddenly a tremendous silence you have never known. When you are watching the moods - anger, sadness, happiness - they suddenly disappear and an even greater silence is experienced. And when there is nothing to watch - then the revolution.



Then the witnessing energy turns upon itself because there is nothing to prevent it; there is no object left. The word "object" is beautiful. It simply means that which prevents you, objects you. When there is no object to your witnessing, it simply comes around back to yourself - to the source. And this is the point where one becomes enlightened.



Meditation is only a path: the end is always buddhahood, enlightenment. And to know this moment is to know all. Then there is no misery, no frustration, no meaninglessness; then life is no longer an accident. It becomes part of this cosmic whole - an essential part. And a tremendous bliss arises that this whole existence needs you.



Man's greatest need is to be needed. If somebody needs you, you feel gratified. But if the whole existence needs you, then there is no limit to your bliss. And this existence needs even a small blade of grass as much as the biggest star. There is no question of inequality. Nobody can substitute for you. If you are not there, then existence will be something less and will remain always something less - it will never be full. That feeling - that this whole immense existence is in need of you - takes all miseries away from you. For the first time, you have come home.



Osho -"Light on the Path" #1

Let your senses stream

The first thing to be understood is that you have senses but you have lost sensitivity.

Your senses are dull, almost dead.

They are there hanging with you, but energy is not flowing in them; they are not alive limbs of your being. Something has deadened within you, has become cold, blocked. It has happened to the whole of humanity because of thousands of years of repression. And thousands of years of conditioning and ideologies that are against the body have crippled you. You live only in name's sake.

So the first thing to be done is: your senses should become really alive and sensitive. Only then can they be mastered.

You see but you don't see deeply. You see only the surface of things. You touch but your touch has no warmth; nothing flows in and out from your touch. You hear also. The birds go on singing and you hear and you can say, "Yes, I hear," and you are not wrong – you are hearing it but it never reaches to the very core of your being. It does not go dancing within you; it doesn't help a flowering, an unfolding within you.

These senses have to be rejuvenated.

You are in the body, and the body is so beautiful an organism, so complex and so subtle, so mysterious, and so many dimensions open through it. And those senses are the only doors and windows through which you will reach the divine – so don't deaden them. Make them more alive.

Let them vibrate, pulsate, and, what Stanley Keleman has said, let them stream.

That is exactly the right word: let them flow like a stream, rushing. You can have the sensation. If your hand is rushing like a stream of energy you will feel a tingling sensation. You will feel something inside the hand is flowing and wants to make contact, wants to be connected.

When you love a woman or a man and you take her hand in your hand, if your hand is not streaming, this love is not going to be of any use. If your hand is not jumping and throbbing with energy and pouring energy into your woman or into your man, then this love is almost dead from the very beginning. Then this child is not born alive. Then sooner or later you will be finished; you are already finished. It will take a little time to recognize it because your mind is also dull; otherwise you would not have entered into it, because it is already dead. For what are you entering? You take time to recognize things because your sensitivity, brilliance, intelligence, is so clouded and confused.

Only a streaming love can become a source of blissfulness, of joy, of delight. But for that you will need senses streaming.

Sometimes you have that glimpse also; and everybody had it when he was a child. Watch a child running after a butterfly. He is streaming, as if any moment he can jump out of his body. Watch a child when he is looking at a rose flower. See his eyes, the brilliance, the light that comes to his eyes. He is streaming. His eyes are almost dancing on the petals of the flower. This is the way to be: be river like. And only then is it possible to master these senses.

In fact people have had a very wrong attitude. They think that if you want to master your senses you have to make them almost dead. But then what is the point of mastering? You can kill, and you are the master. You can sit on the corpse. But what is the point of being a master? But this looked easier: first to kill them, and then you can master. If the body feels too strong, fast. Make it weak, and then you start feeling that you are the master. But you have killed the body.

Remember, life has to be mastered, not dead things. They will not be of any use.

But this has been found to be a shortcut, so all the religions of the world have been using it. Destroy your body by and by. Disconnect yourself from the body. Don't be in contact. Remove yourself. Become indifferent. When your body is almost a dead tree no longer do leaves come to it, no longer does it flower, no longer do birds come to rest. It is just a dead stump. Of course you can master it, but now what are you going to gain from this mastery?

Right now when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes?

So the first thing I would like you to do is when you see, really see, become the eyes. Forget everything. Let your whole energy flow through the eyes. And your eyes will be cleaned, bathed in an inner shower, and you will be able to see that these trees are no longer the same, the greenery is no longer the same. It has become greener, as if dust has disappeared from it. The dust was not on the trees. It was on your eyes. And you will see for the first time and you will hear for the first time.

When you really feel the nature of your senses, you will feel it is divine.

It is the divine that has moved through your hand. It is the hand of the divine…all hands are of the divine. It is the divine that has loved through you. All love affairs are of the divine. How can it be otherwise? Hindus call it leela: the divine play. It is the divine that is calling you through the cuckoo, and it is the divine that is listening through you. It is the divine and it alone spread all over.

Everywhere, behind your senses there is a pool of energy – unused. Once you know it, you can pour that energy into your eyes, and then you will see visions which only sometimes poets see, painters see. Then you will hear sounds which only sometimes musicians hear, poets hear. And then you will touch things which only sometimes in rare moments lovers know how to touch.

You will become alive, streaming.

Now you know about how you have destroyed your senses and you know also how to revive them. Do something. Unblock yourself! Start flowing again. Start connecting again with your being. Start connecting with your senses again.

You are like a disconnected telephone-line. Everything looks perfectly okay, the telephone is there, but the line is disconnected. Your eyes are there, your hands are there, your ears are there, but the line is disconnected. Reconnect it. If it can be disconnected, it can be reconnected. Others have disconnected it because they were also taught in the same way, but you can reconnect it.

All my meditations are to give you a streaming energy. That's why I call them dynamic methods. Old meditations were just to sit silently, not to do anything. I give you active methods because when you are streaming with energy you can sit silently, that will do, but right now first you have to become alive.

- Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and Omega

The Power of Now

Can you describe to us your own experience of spiritual awakening (and of course, can you define spiritual awakening as well)?

Was there a singular event that occurred or has it been a gradual process?

Eckhart Tolle: Since ancient times the term awakening has been used as a kind of metaphor that points to the transformation of human consciousness.

There are parables in the New Testament that speak of the importance of being awake, of not falling back to sleep.

The word Buddha comes from the Sanskrit word Budh, meaning, "to be awake." So Buddha is not a name and ultimately not a person, but a state of consciousness. All this implies that humans are potentially capable of living in a state of consciousness compared to which normal wakefulness is like sleeping or dreaming.

This is why some spiritual teachings use terms like "shared hallucination" or "universal hypnotism" to describe normal human existence. Pick up any history book, and I suggest you begin with studying the 20th century, and you will find that a large part of the history of our species has all the characteristics we would normally associate with a nightmare or an insane hallucination.

The nature of spiritual awakening is frequently misunderstood. The adoption of spiritual beliefs, seeing visions of God or celestial beings, the ability to channel, to heal, to foretell the future, or other paranormal powers all such phenomena are of value and are not to be dismissed, but none of them is in itself indicative of spiritual awakening in a person who experiences them. They may occur in a person who has not awakened spiritually and they may or may not accompany the awakened state.

Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state. So what is it that we awaken from when spiritual awakening occurs? We awaken from identification with our thoughts. Everybody who is not awake spiritually is totally identified with and run by their thinking mind, the incessant voice in the head. Thinking is compulsive: you can’t stop, or so it seems.

It is also addictive: you don’t even want to stop, at least not until the suffering generated by the continuous mental noise becomes unbearable. In the unawakened state you don’t use thought, but thought uses you. You are, one could almost say, possessed by thought, which is the collective conditioning of the human mind that goes back many thousands of years. You don’t see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns. Your sense of identity, of self, is reduced to a story you keep telling yourself in your head. "Me and my story": this what your life is reduced to in the unawakened state. And when your life is thus reduced, you can never be happy for long, because you are not yourself.

Does that mean you don’t think anymore when you awaken spiritually? No, of course not. In fact, you can use thought much more effectively than before, but you realize there is a depth to your Being, a vibrantly alive stillness that is much vaster than thought. It is consciousness itself, of which the thinking mind is only a tiny aspect.

For many people, the first indication of a spiritual awakening is that they suddenly become aware of their thoughts. They become a witness to their thoughts, so to speak. They are not completely identified with their mind anymore and so they begin to sense that there is a depth to them that they had never known before.

For most people, spiritual awakening is a gradual process. Rarely does it happen all at once. When it does, though, it is usually brought about by intense suffering. That was certainly true in my case.

For years my life alternated between depression and acute anxiety. One night I woke up in a state of dread and intense fear, more intense than I had ever experienced before. Life seemed meaningless, barren, hostile. It became so unbearable that suddenly the thought came into my mind, "I cannot live with myself any longer." The thought kept repeating itself several times. Suddenly, I stepped back from the thought, and looked at it, as it were, and I became aware of the strangeness of that thought: "If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me - the I and the self that I cannot live with."

And the question arose, "Who is the ‘I’ and who is the self that I cannot live with?" There was no answer to that question, and all thinking stopped. For a moment, there was complete inner silence. Suddenly I felt myself drawn into a whirlpool or a vortex of energy. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake.

I heard the words, "Resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. Suddenly, all fear disappeared, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.

The next morning I awoke as if I had just been born into this world. Everything seemed fresh and pristine and intensely alive. A vibrant stillness filled my entire being. As I walked around the city that day, the world looked as if it had just come into existence, completely devoid of the past. I was in a state of amazement at the peace I felt within and the beauty I saw without, even in the midst of the traffic.

I was no longer labeling and interpreting my sense perceptions, an almost complete absence of mental commentary. To this day, I perceive and interact with the world in this way: through stillness, not through mental noise. The peace that I felt that day, more than 20 years ago, has never left me, although it has varying degrees of intensity.

At the time, I had no conceptual framework to help me understand what had happened to me. Years later, I realized that the acute suffering I felt that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from identification with the unhappy self, the suffering "little me," which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that the suffering self collapsed as if the plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left was my true nature as the ever present "I AM": consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form. You may also call it pure awareness or presence.

In your own life story there seems to have been a relationship between intense personal suffering and a breakthrough spiritual experience. Do you believe that for all people there is some connection between personal suffering and the intensity that is needed for a spiritual breakthrough?

Eckhart Tolle: Yes, that seems to be true in most cases. When you are trapped in a nightmare, your motivation to awaken will be so much greater than that of someone caught up in a relatively pleasant dream. On all levels, evolution occurs in response to a crisis situation, not infrequently a life-threatening one, when the old structures, inner or outer, are breaking down or are not working anymore.

On a personal level, this often means the experience of loss of one kind or another: the death of a loved one, the end of a close relationship, loss of possessions, your home, status, or a breakdown of the external structures of your life that provided a sense of security. For many people, illness, loss of health represents the crisis situation that triggers an awakening. With serious illness comes awareness of your own mortality, the greatest loss of all.

For many people alive at this time, loss is experienced as loss of meaning. In other words, life seems to lack purpose and doesn’t make sense anymore. Loss of meaning is often part of the suffering that comes with physical loss, but it can also happen to people who have gained everything the world has to offer, who have "made it" in the eyes of the world and suddenly find that their success or possessions are empty and unfulfilling.

What the world and the surrounding culture tells them is important and of value turns out to be empty and this leaves a kind of painful inner void, often accompanied by great mental confusion.

Now the question arises: What exactly is the connection between suffering and spiritual awakening? How does one lead to the other? When you look closely at the nature of human suffering you will find that an essential ingredient in most kinds of suffering is a diminishment of one’s sense of self.

Take illness, for example. Illness makes you feel smaller, no longer in control, helpless. You seem to loose your autonomy, perhaps become dependent on others. You become reduced in size, figuratively speaking. Any major loss has a similar effect: some form that was an important part of your sense of who you are - a person, a possession, a social role, dissolves or leaves you and you suffer because you had become identified with it and it seems you are losing yourself or a part of yourself.

In reality, of course, what feels like a diminishment or loss of your sense of self is the crumbling of an image of who you are held in the mind. What dissolves is identification with thought forms that had given you your sense of self. But that sense of self is ultimately false, is ultimately a mental fiction. It is the egoic mind or the "little me" as I sometimes call it.

To be identified with a mental image of who you are is to be unconscious, to be unawakened spiritually. This unawakened state creates suffering, but suffering creates the possibility of awakening. When you no longer resist the diminishment of self that comes with suffering, all role-playing, which is normal in the unawakened state, comes to an end. You become humble, simple, real.

And, paradoxically, when you say ‘yes’ to that death, because that’s what it is, you realize that the mind-made sense of self had obscured the truth of who you are - not as defined by your past, but timelessly. And when who you think you are dissolves, you connect with a vast power which is the essence of your very being. Jesus called it: "eternal life." In Buddhism, it is sometimes called the "deathless realm."

Now, does this mean that if you haven’t experienced intense suffering in your life, there is no possibility of awakening? Firstly, the fact that you are drawn to a spiritual teaching or teacher means you must have had your share of suffering already, and the awakening process has probably already begun.

A teacher or teaching is not even essential for spiritual awakening, but they save time. Secondly, humanity as a whole has already gone through unimaginable suffering, mostly self-inflicted, the culmination of which was the 20th century with its unspeakable horrors. This collective suffering has brought upon a readiness in many human beings for the evolutionary leap that is spiritual awakening.

For many individuals alive now, this means: they have suffered enough. No further suffering is necessary. The end of suffering: that is also the essence of every true spiritual teaching. Be grateful that your suffering has taken you to this realization: I don’t need to suffer anymore.

Your teaching about "the power of now" seems so simple. Is that really our primary spiritual task to fully engage the present moment?

Eckhart Tolle:Identification with thoughts and the emotions that go with those thoughts creates a false mind-made sense of self, conditioned by the past: the "little me" and its story. This false self is never happy or fulfilled for long. Its normal state is one of unease, fear, insufficiency, and nonfulfillment. It says it looks for happiness, and yet it continuously creates conflict and unhappiness.

In fact, it needs conflict and "enemies" to sustain the sense of separateness that ensures its continued survival. Look at all the conflict between tribes, nations, and religions. They need their enemies, because they provide the sense of separateness on which their collective egoic identity depends.

The false self lives mainly through memory and anticipation. Past and future are its main preoccupation. The present moment, at best, is a means to an end, a stepping stone to the future, because the future promises fulfillment, the future promises salvation in one form or another.

The only problem is the future never comes. Life is always now. Whatever happens, whatever you experience, feel, think, do – it’s always now. It’s all there is. And if you continuously miss the now - resist it, dislike it, try to get away from it, reduce it to a means to an end, then you miss the essence of your life, and you are stuck in a dream world of images, concepts, labels, interpretations, judgments the conditioned content of your mind that you take to be "yourself."

And so you are disconnected from the fullness of life that is the ‘suchness’ of this moment. When you are out of alignment with what is, you are out of alignment with life.

You are struggling to reach a point in the future where there is greater security, aliveness, abundance, love, joy ... unaware that those things make up the essence of who you are already. All that is required of you to have access to that essence is to make the present moment into your friend. And you may realize that most of your life you made the present moment into an enemy. You didn’t say yes to it, didn’t embrace it. You were out of alignment with the now, and so life became a struggle.

It seemed so normal, because everyone around you lived in the same way. The amazing thing is: Life, the great intelligence that pervades the entire cosmos, becomes supportive when you say yes to it. Where is life? Here. Now. The isness of this moment. The now seems so small at first, a little segment between past and future, and yet all of life’s power is concealed within it.

When there is spiritual awakening, you awaken into the fullness, the aliveness, and also the sacredness of now.

You were absent, asleep, and now you are present, awake. The secret of awakening is to unconditionally accept this moment as it is. Some people do it because they can no longer stand the suffering that comes with nonacceptance of the isness of this moment. They are almost forced into awakening.

Others have suffered enough and are ready to voluntarily embrace the now. When you become present in this way, the judgments, labels, and concepts of your mind are no longer all that important, as a greater intelligence is now operating in and through you. And yet the mind can then be used very effectively and creatively when needed.

Now the question may arise: Would there be anything left to strive for when you are so present in the now? Wouldn’t you become passive in that state? Many meaningless activities may fall away, but the state of presence is the only state in which creative energy is available to you.

When your fulfillment and sense of self are no longer dependent on the future outcome, joy flows into whatever you do. You do what you do because the action itself is fulfilling. Whatever you do or create in that state is of high quality. This is because it is not a means to and end, and so a loving care flows into your doing.

Being "in the present" sounds so obvious, and yet is quite hard to sustain. Do you have any practical tips for people for maintaining awareness of the present moment?

Eckhart Tolle:Although the old consciousness or rather unconsciousness still has considerable momentum and to a large extent still runs this world, the new awakened consciousness presence has already began to emerge in many human beings. In my book The Power of Now, I mention ways in which you can maintain present moment awareness, but the main thing is to allow this new state of consciousness to emerge rather then believe that you have to try hard to make it happen.

How do you allow it to emerge? Simply by allowing this moment to be as it is. This means to relinquish inner resistance to what is - the suchness of now. This allows life to unfold beautifully. There is no greater spiritual practice than this.

On your video The Flowering of Human Consciousness, you talk about a "new" consciousness that is emerging in our time. What do you mean? Hasn’t the present moment always been available to genuine seekers? What’s new about our current time in history? Are you pointing to a certain evolutionary process - an acceleration in human spiritual development?

Eckhart Tolle:Yes, the present moment has always been available to spiritual seekers, but as long as you are seeking you are not available to the present moment. "Seeking" implies that you are looking to the future for some answer, or for some achievement, spiritual or otherwise. Everybody is in the seeking mode, seeking to add something to who they are, whether it be money, relationships, possessions, knowledge, status or spiritual attainment.

"Seeking" means you need more time, more future, more of this or that. And there is nothing wrong with it. All that has its place in this world. To make money, to gather knowledge, to learn a new skill, to explore new territory, even to get from A to B for all these things you need time.

For almost everything you need time, except for one thing: to embrace the present moment. You need no time to open yourself to the power of now and so awaken to who you are beyond name and form and realize that in the depth of your being, you are already complete, whole, one with the timeless essence of all life.

For that you not only need no time, but time is the obstacle to that realization, seeking is the obstacle, needing to add something to who you are is the obstacle. The story of your life, how it all unfolds, whether you succeed or fail in this world...Yes, it matters, yes, it’ important relatively, not absolutely.

Only one thing is of absolute importance and this is it. If you miss it, you miss the deeper purpose of your life, which I call the flowering of human consciousness. And ultimately nothing else will satisfy you.

Some of the first human beings in whom the new consciousness emerged fully became the great teachers of humanity, such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, or Jesus, although their teachings were greatly misunderstood, especially when they turned into organized religion.

They were the first manifestations of the flowering of human consciousness. Later others appeared, some of whom became famous and respected teachers, whereas others probably remained relatively unknown or perhaps even completely unrecognized.

On the periphery of the established religions, from time to time certain movements appeared through which the new consciousness manifested. This enabled a number of individuals within those movements to awaken spiritually. Such movements, in Christianity, were Gnosticism and medieval mysticism; in Buddhism, Zen; in Islam, the Sufi movement; in Hinduism, the teachings called Advaita Vedanta.

But those men and women who awakened fully were always few and far between rare flowerings of consciousness. Until fairly recently, there was not yet a need for large numbers of human beings to awaken. For the first time in human history, a large-scale transformation of consciousness has now become a necessity if humanity is to survive.

Science and technology have amplified the effects of the dysfunction of the human mind in its unawakened state to such a degree that humanity, and probably the planet, would not survive for another hundred years if human consciousness remains unchanged. As I said earlier, evolution usually occurs in response to a crisis situation, and we now are faced with such a crisis situation. This is why there is indeed an enormous acceleration in the awakening process of our species.

This new large-scale spiritual awakening is occurring primarily not within the confines of the established religions, but outside of those structures. Some of it, however, is also happening within the existing churches and religious institutions wherever the members of those congregations do not identify with rigid and exclusive belief systems whose unconscious purpose is to foster a sense of separation on which the egoic mind structures depend for their survival.

How much time and effort is required to realize "the power of now?" Can this really occur in an instant or is this the work of a lifetime?

Eckhart Tolle:The power of now can only be realized now. It requires no time and effort. Effort means you’re trying hard to get somewhere, and so you are not present, welcoming this moment as it is.

Whereas it requires no time to awaken - you can only awaken now, it does take time before you can stay awake in all situations. Often you may find yourself being pulled back into old conditioned reactive patterns, particularly when faced with the challenges of daily living and of relationships. You lose the witnessing presence and become identified again with the "voice in the head," the continuous stream of thoughts, with its labels, judgments and opinions.

You no longer know that they are only labels, judgments, and mental positions (opinions) but completely believe in them. And so you create conflict. And then you suffer. And that suffering wakes you up again. Until presence becomes your predominant state, you may find yourself moving back and forth for a while between the old consciousness and the new, between mind identification and presence. "How long is it going to take?" is not a good question to ask. It makes you lose the now.

How would you recommend that people listen and watch "The Power of Now" teaching series in order to get the most out of the teachings? In your opinion, why are audio and video teaching tapes such a powerful way for people to learn?

Eckhart Tolle:If at all possible, you should not be engaged in other activity while you are listening or watching so that you can give your complete attention not only to the words but also to the silent spaces between the words. You will most likely learn many helpful facts about the emerging state of presence as well as the obstacles you are most likely to encounter. But this is only the secondary function of these tapes.

Their primary purpose is not to convey information, but to help you access the state of presence as you listen. As in all true spiritual teachings, the significance of the words that are being spoken goes far beyond their informational content. Words that arise spontaneously out of the state of presence are charged with spiritual power: the power to awaken. All that is required of you is to be in a state of attentive listening. Don’t just listen with the head. Listen with your entire body, so to speak. Feel the aliveness, the animating presence, throughout the body as you listen.

I recommend that you listen and/or watch these tapes over and over. Each time you listen, it will feel as if you were listening for the first time. Each time you listen, you will grow in presence. But do not listen compulsively. Allow a gap of at least two or three days, and ideally more, before you listen to the same tape again. Each time after you finish listening, just sit in silence for a few minutes.

Enjoy the greatest adventure a human being can be engaged in: to be part of the emergence of a new consciousness.

Interview with Eckhart Tolle
Source: Sounds True Publishing Company

There will come a time..

Is it any use reading books for those who long for release?

Ramana: All the texts say that in order to gain release one should render the mind quiescent; therefore their conclusive teaching is that the mind should be rendered quiescent; once this has been understood there is no need for endless reading.

In order to quieten the mind one has only to inquire within oneself what one's Self is; how could this search be done in books?

One should know one's Self with one's own eye of wisdom. The Self is within the five sheaths; but books are outside them.

Since the Self has to be inquired into by discarding the five sheaths, it is futile to search for it in books. There will come a time when one will have to forget all that one has learned.

Is it necessary for one who longs for release to inquire into the nature of categories?

Just as one who wants to throw away garbage has no need to analyse it and see what it is, so one who wants to know the Self has no need to count the number of categories or inquire into their characteristics; what he has to do is to reject altogether the categories that hide the Self. The world should be considered like a dream.

Is there no difference between waking and dream?

Waking is long and a dream short; other than this there is no difference. Just as waking happenings seem real while awake. so do those in a dream while dreaming. In dream the mind takes on another body. In both waking and dream states thoughts. names and forms occur simultaneously.

What is the path of inquiry for understanding the nature of the mind?

That which rises as 'I' in this body is the mind. If one inquires as to where in the body the thought 'I' rises first, one would discover that it rises in the heart. That is the place of the mind's origin. Even if one thinks constantly 'I' 'I', one will be led to that place.

Of all the thoughts that arise in the mind, the 'I' thought is the first. It is only after the rise of this that the other thoughts arise. It is after the appearance of the first personal pronoun that the second and third personal pronouns appear; without the first personal pronoun there will not be the second and third.

How will the mind become quiescent?

By the inquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.

What is the means for constantly holding on to the thought 'Who am I?'

When other thoughts arise, one should not pursue them, but should inquire: 'To whom do they arise?' It does not matter how many thoughts arise. As each thought arises, one should inquire with diligence, "To whom has this thought arisen?". The answer that would emerge would be "To me".

Thereupon if one inquires "Who am I?", the mind will go back to its source; and the thought that arose will become quiescent.

With repeated practice in this manner, the mind will develop the skill to stay in its source. When the mind that is subtle goes out through the brain and the sense-organs, the gross names and forms appear; when it stays in the heart, the names and forms disappear.

Not letting the mind go out, but retaining it in the Heart is what is called "inwardness".

Letting the mind go out of the Heart is known as "externalisation". Thus, when the mind stays in the Heart, the 'I' which is the source of all thoughts will go, and the Self which ever exists will shine. Whatever one does, one should do without the egoity "I". If one acts in that way, all will appear as of the nature of Consciousness.

Who Am I?
Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharishi

Accept Life, Thank Life

Junnaid, a Sufi mystic thanked existence everyday for its compassion, its love, its care.

Once, Junnaid was traveling. For three days, he and his disciples went from village to village, but people everywhere were every antagonistic and turning against Junnaid. They thought his teachings were not exactly the teaching of Mohammed. His teachings seemed to be his own. They said, “He is corrupting the people.” So from three villages, they got no food, not even water.

On the third day, they were in really bad shape. His disciples thought, “Now let us see what happens in the prayer. How can he now say to existence, ‘You are compassionate to us. You love us. You care about us. We are grateful to you’?” But when prayer time came, Junnaid prayer a usual. After the prayer, his followers said, “This is too much. For three days, we have suffered hunger and thirst. We are tried, we have not slept and still you are thanking existence and telling it that it takes so much care of us that we are grateful to it!”

Junnaid said, “My prayer does not depend on any condition. Those things are ordinary. Whether I get food, I don’t want to bother existence about it. Such a small thing in such a big universe. If I don’t get water, even if I die, it does not matter. My prayer will remain the same. Because to this vast universe, it makesno difference whether Junnaid is alive or dead.”

This is what I mean when I say, don’t take anything seriously, not even yourself. And then you will see that anger simply has not happened. There is no possibility of anger. Anger is certainly one of the great leakages of your spiritual energy. If you can manage to be playful about your desires, and still be the same whether you succeed or you fail, you will be happy.

Start thinking about yourself at ease – nothing special, not that you are meant to be victorious, not that you have to succeed always in every situation. This is a big world and we are small people. Once this settles into your being, then everything is acceptable. Anger disappears, and the disappearance brings a new surprise, because when anger disappears it leaves behind tremendous energy of compassion, love and friendship.

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence

Every creative soul -- it does not matter what he creates -- should be respected and honored, so that creativity is honored. But even politicians get Nobel Prizes -- who are nothing but clever criminals.

It does not matter whether you paint, sculpt, or make shoes; whether you are a gardener, a farmer, a fisherman, a carpenter -- it does not matter. What matters is, are you putting your very soul into what you are creating? Then your creative products have something of the quality of divine.
Except creativity, there is nothing divine.

If you want to create, you have to get rid of all conditioning otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as a part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; it lives a life of drag, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical.

Of course, there are a few things you will get from the society only if you are mechanical: respectability you will get, honors you will get. Universities will confer D.Litts on you, countries will give you gold medals, you may finally become a Nobel laureate, but this whole thing is ugly.

A real man of genius will discard all this nonsense, because this is bribery. Giving the Nobel prize to a person simply means that your services to the establishment are respected, that you are honored because you have been a good slave, obedient, that you have not gone astray, that you have followed the well-trodden path.

The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path, he has to search out his own way, he has to inquire in the jungles of life, he has to go alone, he has to be a dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world; even the so-called idiots are a little more superior than the collective idiocy.

But the collectivity has its own bribes: it respects people, honors people, if they go on insisting that the way of the collective mind is the only right way. It was out of sheer necessity that in the past, creators of all kinds -- the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the poets, the sculptors -- had to renounce respectability. They had to live a kind of bohemian life, the life of a vagabond; that was the only possibility for them to be creative. This need not be so in the future. If you understand me, if you feel what I am saying has truth in it, then in the future everybody should live individually and there will be no need for a bohemian life. The bohemian life is the by-product of a fixed, orthodox, conventional, respectable life.

My effort is to destroy the collective mind and to make each individual free to be himself or herself.

Then there is no problem; then you can live as you want to live.

In fact, humanity will really only be born the day the individual is respected in his rebellion. Humanity has still not been born; it is still in the womb. What you see as humanity is only a very hocus-pocus phenomenon. Unless we give individual freedom to each person, absolute freedom to each person to be himself, to exist in his own way.... And, of course, he has not to interfere with anybody -- that is part of freedom. Nobody should interfere with anybody.

But in the past everybody has been poking his nose into everybody else's affairs -- even into things which are absolutely private, which have nothing to do with the society.

For example, you fall in love with a woman -- what has that got to do with the society? It is purely a personal phenomenon, it is not of the marketplace. If two persons are agreeing to commune in love, the society should not come into it, but the society comes into it with all its paraphernalia, in direct ways, in indirect ways.

The policeman will stand between the lovers; the magistrate will stand between the lovers; and if that is not enough then the societies have created a super-policeman, God, who will take care of you.
The idea of God is that of a peeping Tom who does not even allow you privacy in your bathroom, who goes on looking through the keyhole, watching what you are doing. This is ugly. All the religions of the world say God continuously watches you -- this is ugly. What kind of God is this? Has he got no other business but to watch everybody, follow everybody? Seems to be the supreme-most detective!

Humanity needs a new soil -- the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

Silence is all that is needed

Silence is all that is needed.
All things bloom in their own time.
Fighting to make things happen, denying true sensations, whether good or bad,
we are drawn away from our true selves.
How to be authentic when one knows how it may effect others?
friends, lovers, family, community...
all are effected.
so, do i simply move forward without worrying about how they are affected,
or do i only move in a way in which all are blessed?
are these things even compatible?
what to do, what to do....



silence

go inward

Silence

Relax, flow, breathe.

it will all come about as it should.

all it takes is nurturing the inner, the seed.

The seed is internal, buried in the mud, the organic ooze which births life.
When it is in its natural surroundings, it's "zone of evolution", it does not need any intended nurturing.
Rain naturally falls, the sun naturally shines and warms the soil, then the foliage, and life comes into being, and there can be a blooming.

Too many seeds, too many beings have been removed or relocated from their origin of being.
These need to be nurtured, to maybe have some extra water showered on them,
to be carefully placed in the right spot in the garden so that the variation in light comes at least close to mimicking its natural environment.
only then do these transplanted, "internationalized" seeds germinate and grow, only with much nurturing does the growth become noticeable on the outside. Otherwise, the growth is easily retarded. it becomes easy for little carelessness to lead to withering away.
So we must take care & nurture ourselves & all around us in this increasingly virtual world.
Only then will a new flowering occur.
Only then are people drawn to the fragrance, which only comes with the opening of the flower.
How to relate to all of those noses getting so close?

With love & compassion, and the hope that they understand that the flower is not just for them, but to be shared by all.

- Osho

On Sleep

The modification of the mind which is based on the absence of any content in it is sleep.

This is the definition of sleep, the fourth modification of the mind: when there is no content. Mind is always with content, except sleep. Something or other is there. Some thought is moving, some passion is moving, some desire is moving, some memory, some future imagination, some word, something is moving. Something continues continuously.

Only when you are fast asleep, deep asleep, contents stop. Mind disappears, and you are in yourself without any content.

This has to be remembered because this is going to be the state of samadhi also, with only one difference: you will be aware. In sleep, you are unaware, mind goes completely to non-existence. You are alone, left alone -- no thought, just your being. But you are not aware. Mind is not there to disturb you, but you are not aware.

Otherwise sleep can become enlightenment. Contentless consciousness is there, but the consciousness is not alert. It is hidden -- just in a seed. In samadhi, the seed is broken; the consciousness becomes alert. And when consciousness is alert and there is no content, this is the goal. Sleep with awareness is the goal.

This is the fourth modification of the mind-sleep. But that goal, sleep with awareness, is not a modification of the mind, it is beyond mind. Awareness is beyond mind. If you can join sleep and awareness together, you have become enlightened. But it is difficult because even when we are awake in the day we are not alert.

Even when we are awake, we are not awake. The word is false. When we sleep how can we be awake? When we are awake we are not awake.

So one has to start from the day when you are awake. You have to be more awake, more and more intensely awake. And then you have to try with dreams: in dream you have to be alert. Only if you succeed with the waking state, then with the dreaming state, then you will be able to succeed with the third state of sleep.

Try first walking on the street. Try to be awake. Just don't go on walking automatically, mechanically. Be alert of every movement, of every breath that you take. Exhale, inhale -- be alert. Of every eye movement you are doing, of every person you look at, be alert. What you are doing, be alert and do it with alertness.

And then in the night, while you are falling asleep, try to remain alert. The last phase of the day will be passing; memories will be floating. Remain alert, and try to fall asleep with alertness. It will be difficult, but if you try, within a few weeks, you will have a glimpse: you are asleep and alert. Even for a single moment, and it is so beautiful, it is so bliss-filled, that you will never be the same again.

And then you will not say that sleep is just wasting time. It can become the most precious sadhana, because when the waking state goes and the sleeping starts there is a change, a change of gears inside. It is just like change of gears in a car. When you change gears from one gear to another, for a single moment, between these two, there is a neutral gear, there is no gear. That moment of neutrality is very significant.

The same happens in the mind. When from waking you move to the sleep, there is a moment when you are neither awake nor asleep. In that moment there is no gear, mechanism is not functioning. Your automatic personality is nullified in that moment. In that moment your old habits will not force you in a certain pattern. In that moment you can escape and become alert.

This moment in India has been called sandhya, the moment in between. There are two sandhyas, two in-between moments: one in the night when you go from the waking to sleep, and another in the morning when you again move from sleep to waking. And these two Hindus have called the moments of prayer, sandhyaka! -- the period in between because then your personality is not there for a single moment. In that single moment you are pure, innocent. If in that moment you can become alert, your whole life will have changed. You have put a base for transformation.

And then try, in the dream state, to be alert. There are methods how to be alert in a dream state. Do one thing, if you want to try... First try in the waking. When you succeed in the waking, then you will be able to succeed in the dreaming. Because dreaming is deeper, more effort will be needed. And difficult also, because what to do in a dream and how to do?

For the dreaming, Gurdjieff developed a beautiful method. It is one of the old Tibetan methods, and Tibetan seekers have worked very deeply into the dreamworld. The method is, just falling into sleep, you try to remember one thing, any one thing, just a rose flower. Just visualize a rose flower.

And just go on thinking that you will see it in the dream. Visualize it and go on thinking that in the dream, whatsoever the dream, this rose flower must be there. Visualize its color, its scent -- everything. Feel it so it will become alive inside you. And with that rose flower, fall into sleep.

Within few days you will be able to bring that flower into your dream. This is a great success because now you have created at least a part of the dream. Now you are the master. At least one part of the dream, the flower, has come. And the moment you see the flower, you will immediately remember this is a dream.

There is no other need. The flower and "This is a dream" have become associated because you have created the flower in the dream. And you were thinking continuously for this flower to appear in the dream, and the flower has appeared. Immediately you will recognize this is a dream, and the whole quality of the dream will change, the flower-dream and everything around the dream. You have become alert.

And then you can enjoy the dream in a new way, just like a film, and then if you want to stop the dream you can simply stop, put off. But that will take a little more time and more practice. And then you can create your own dreams. There is no need to be a victim of dreams. You can create your own dreams; you can live your own dreams.

You can have a theme just before you fall into sleep; you can direct your dreams just like a film director. And you can create a theme out of it.

Tibetans have used dream creations, because through dream creation you can change your total mind, the structure. And when you succeed in dreams, then you can succeed in sleep. But there is no technique for sleep because there is no content. A technique can work only with a content. Because there is no content, no technique can help.

But through dream you will learn to be aware, and that awareness can be carried on into the sleep.
- Osho, Yoga Alpha And Omega
Commentaries on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras