Catch yourself red-handed!

                                             Courtesy Osho International Foundation

Gurdjieff was a great Russian mystic who was very down to earth. And a strange man too. He was extremely good at giving shock treatments to his disciples. His basic premise was that everybody is dreaming all the time; whether they are awake or asleep, doesn't matter. He used to take his disciples right in the buzz of the market and ask them to experiment with their meditation. He asked them to watch people walking on the street. Just stand by the side and look at people with passing by. When the disciples started watching alertly they found that  that  the people were sleepwalkers. They were walking like somnambulists. They looked awake because their eyes were open but they were walking in  trance. Their feet followed the road mechanically because they have trodden it many times. They were walking but their consciousness was not present in their walk. Their lips were moving as if they were talking to somebody, and there was nobody around! They were even found making gestures to somebody who was not present. Their faces had an invisible cloud of daydreaming, a dullness, a dark shadow, as if somehow they are forcing themselves to be awake, ready to fall any moment into dreaming, into sleep.  

Gurdjieff would say to his  disciples, "Unless you realize in your dreams that they are dreams, you will not be able to awake during the day." A tough criterion indeed. In the first place watching oneself during the day is so difficult, how can one watch in the dream?

Osho gives a clue, he says, "catch  yourself red-handed."  Start in the daytime.The moment you feel you are daydreaming, shake yourself and take note of it. You can even make a code word for waking yourself up. Like, ' not again!' or ' wake up!" or anything that suits you. It is a delightful game. You will start enjoying yourself like a child, every moment will be a new moment. You may even giggle or clap or dance. Bring more liveliness to it.

When you start becoming alert and awake you will find the activities and people all around are also part of a dream, they stop being real. If you can deepen this experience during the daytime this awareness will sink into your dream.

Osho says: " The dream has power only because you impart power to it. The more you become alert about your dreams, the more you will see gaps arising in your consciousness. But we have great investments in our dreams. We may be afraid of nightmares, but we are not yet fed-up of dreaming. We still go on cherishing sweet dreams."

So the only alternative is, catch yourself read handed while daydreaming.

Sadhana

Osho International Foundation felicitated for 'enlightening lives' across the globe

                              The trophy awarded to Osho International Foundation

In an event called " Public Service Week" organized by the Lions Club International Mumbai a gorgeous trophy was awarded to OSHO International Foundation recognizing their contribution to awakening many souls by sharing Osho meditations and his words internationally.

Amrit Sadhana, one of the trustees of Osho International Foundation received the award on behalf of the foundation.

In a letter to the trustees of Osho International Foundation, the district governer Lion Dinesh Shah wrote," We are very happy to know that your foundation is  spreading and imparting education in Yoga, meditation and various other forms to participants without any restrictions of cast, creed or special status for the full development of mind, body and soul and make them conscious human beings. The foundation is also imparting formal training in the field of art, science and humanities to make complete self development of human beings as  ideal citizens of the world."

Business the Osho way

While addressing the students of University of Pune a few weeks back, Wipro chief Aziz Premji shared some secrets of his success. He said that for him life is an eight-lane expressway — if you use these lanes intelligently, you are bound to zoom ahead.

One of Mr Premji’s commandments was “respond, don’t act”. It was significant to note that a top-notch businessman like him advised students to be aware of their emotions and to manage them. But you cannot learn this lesson in any of the management schools; one has to learn this from life. It can be learnt if you are watchful and observe the difference between people who react impulsively and those who disengage themselves from their emotions and respond objectively. By reacting emotionally, you are letting the other person control your behavior and by using your will and reason you are looking at the issue directly.

Most people are afraid of taking a decision because they want to avoid making mistakes. This thought is an obstruction to both personal and professional growth because making mistakes is an essential ingredient of learning. Osho says, “Don’t be afraid of making a mistake, but don’t make the same mistake again. Make a new mistake!” What people forget is that making a decision is an intuitive flash, it is a gift of the heart. Intuition is to be in tune with oneself. And out of that tuning, solutions arise. It is not a logical conclusion, it is a leap of consciousness. Once your intuition has started functioning, you need not go and ask a guide for any advice.

When the brain works in sync with the heart you arrive at the right decision. But that also means living dangerously.

Heed Osho’s suggestion: “Whenever you have alternatives to choose, always choose the unknown, because the known you have already lived. The known is known, so you will simply be repeating it. Never miss the unknown. Always choose the unknown and go headlong. Even if you suffer, it is worth it, it always pays off.”

The more decisive you become, the more integrated you become. Of course there are possibilities of going astray, but the risk is worth taking.

By going astray you will become richer. You will be happy that you went astray, because there are many things that can be learnt from the new experience. From all this struggle you will emerge a winner.

But playing to win does not mean winning all the time; it means putting all your energy with maximum intensity. Then whatever happens, you will not be a loser.

Express satisfaction

Tantra says:  Whenever satisfaction is found in whatever act, actualize it.

 Satisfaction is the juice your heart extracts from each moment, each sensation, provided you know the art of squeezing it. Just look, there are so many tiny moments of gratification every day: you feel thirsty and you drink a cool glass of water, can anything match the satisfaction that is felt after the thirst is quenched? But you don't pay attention to it because you are not present in the act of drinking water. You do it mechanically, unconsciously.

Tantra says, this small act can be turned into meditation. How? Forget the thirst, forget the water, remain with the deep satisfaction you feel after drinking it. Be filled with it, like the sky is filled with warm sunshine in the morning. Let your inner sky be filled with the warmth of this feeling.

Pick up myriads of moments you come across during the day. Have you noticed the "Ah!" that slips out of your heart when you have your first hot tea or coffee after waking up? Sipping the beverage, feel the vibrations of contentment spread all over your body. It is a state of meditation.

Do you steel feel that life is misery? Look closely, misery is your interpretation, it is not real. It is a projection of the mind clouded by negative emotions. The mind basically is negative, it pounces on a negative thought and archives it in the warehouse of the unconscious.

The Osho approach is completely attuned to Tantra. He says: "This technique gives you a positive approach, a total reversal to the ordinary mind and its process. Wherever satisfaction is found, feel it, become one with it. Don't take it as a passing phase. The satisfaction can become a glimpse of a greater positive experience. Everything is just a window. If you are identified with pain, you are looking from a window; and the window of pain, of suffering opens only towards hell. If you are one with a satisfactory moment, a blissful moment, you are opening another window. The existence is the same but your windows are different."

Satisfaction is like having a bouquet of fragrant flowers in the room. Its perfume permeates all around and within.

Don't call problem a "problem"

  

If you look at the world today you will find problems and problems everywhere. You will be terrified and will  shut your eyes, or feel bogged down and try to drown the problems in drinks or in drugs. These are merely escape routes.

Osho has come up with a novel suggestion: he says, do no call problem a "problem" , call it a situation. Immediately  your attitude towards the situation will change. The mind lives in labels, and the moment we label something as negative, the mind doesn't want to look at it. The brain enters a deadlock, it is blocked by fear and worry  and our thinking capacity goes in a negative mode.  

  Simple things like a leaking water tap  or a fused light bulb, or an un ironed dress seem to be big problems for people. Life will become  very stressful if we look at these day to day incidents as problems.

Can the life stop being a hurdle race and become a dance of joy and music? Yes, if you can look upon a problem as a new situation or even a challenging situation.  Jump and say "Yahoo!" because these situations activate that unconscious part of the brain which normally we do not use. Unless we encounter difficulties and are pushed to the wall we do not not tap our hidden resources. Usually the brain  becomes trapped into thinking along the same old lines and appear to be  incapable of breaking free. 

What we require on such occasions is to press a "pause" button of our conscious  brain and to allow our deep unconscious to come up with answers. It has a great creative energy  so it is exciting to deliberately engage different parts of the brain in the problem-solving process. This is an essential part of creative thinking. Maybe the situation will not change but your attitude towards it will definitely change.  This changed attitude will open you up to look into the situation.

The mystery of existence is such that the answer lies within the question. It is like diving into a whirlpool: if you fight the current you will be drowned, but if you let go and whirl with the circular motion the current itself will throw you on the surface.

Osho says, "Look at the question deeply, and if the look is clear and total , the question disappears. No question is ever answered, it simply disappears; and  it disappears without a trace. All that you have to do is put the analytical mind away. When the unconscious finds the solution there is a leap of understanding which seems to come out of the blue. "

Courtesy OSHO International Foundation 

Can you listen to the birds?

I have heard Osho say that if you listen to the birds in the morning you will be able to listen to people throughout the day. Why listening has become so important these days?  Because everybody exclaims,  "Nobody listens to me!" Whether it is a child or a parent; a teacher or student, everyone feels they are not heard. It is so frustrating that you cannot share yourself with others. 

Listening is never easy but it is crucial in relationships.  It involves overcoming the habitual tendency of the mind to block itself. People have stopped listening because they have stopped conneting from the heart. Everyone loves to hear the sound of their own voice but not that of the other's. It is interesting to know why people avoid listening to others. To listen deeply means to be vulnerable, to expose yourself to the other, to change your ideas and values.

 " It requires a certain maturity,  an openness to understand values and points of view very different from our own. When we really listen, our own ideas and values are sometimes altered .  Listening is intensely demanding and therefore should not be entered into lightly.”   -Robert Bolton, People Skills.

Osho says: " Once you know how to listen, in deep receptivity, sensitivity, you are not there. The listener is not there, only listening. And when the listener is not there, there is no ego: there is no one who listens, only listening. And then it penetrates to the very core of your being.

"If you listen to me with mind, you will miss. If you listen to the waterfall without mind, you will get. It is not a question of listening to me; it is a question somewhere concerned with you, with the listener. What I am saying is irrelevant; who is saying it is irrelevant. The whole thing is: are you surrounded by a deep silence? Have you become non-existent in that moment? Do you find suddenly that you are not, that you are a deep emptiness, throbbing with life, full, but empty, a tremendous silence, with not a single ripple of thought? Only then do you attain to a plane where truth can penetrate you.

So try to be a listener. Just hearing is not enough. Hear, you can; listening will need great discipline. It is the greatest discipline there is. If you listen, you are already delivered; because in that listening, suddenly you find yourself.

And listening to sounds will be very helpful. Not to any sound in particular, because that becomes a concentration. this noise of the train... the traffic, some dog starts barking... an airplane passes by; all have to be accepted. Not that you have to concentrate on any sound – listen to all sounds from everywhere. You have just to be alert, listening, with no choice. That will help you immensely and that will become your meditation."

Come Follow To You, Vol 3/OSHO International Foundation/www.osho.com

If sex follows love, sex becomes beautiful

Every one is thirsty for love but no one knows how to love, for love is not part of any education system, it is not taught like maths, science or literature. People don't realize that love needs a long training of the heart and meditation alone can help the love grow. If people start loving in the true sense the problems of today's world like violence, corruption, destruction of environment will disappear. Because a loving heart cannot hurt anybody.

Osho is the only mystic who has talked about human love in great detail. In the following piece he explains how love can become compassion and evolve the lower into the higher.

"Passion has to be transformed into compassion, only then will you move from the sex center to the heart center. Now even your heart has to follow your sex center, which is the higher following the lower. Then your sex center will follow the love center, the heart center -- the lower following the higher. And this should be the order of your being -- always the lower following the higher. Then the lower becomes totally different, the quality changes.

"When sex follows love, sex becomes beautiful, a grace, a blessing. When love follows sex, love becomes ugly, a destructive force; you destroy each other through your love. All the courts of the world are filled with persons who have been in love and now are destructive to each other. Fifty percent of marriages break down completely, and the other fifty percent are continued somehow, not for love, but for other reasons -- for children, for society, for family, for prestige, for money, for other reasons, but not for love. Fifty percent break down completely.

"Love has become so destructive because it is following a lower center. Remember, this should be the law within you: always remember that the lower should follow the higher, then everything is beautiful and a blessing. Nothing is to be denied, there is no need to deny anything; only let the higher lead, because following the higher the lower changes its quality. And if the higher has to follow the lower everything becomes ugly."

Vedanta : Seven steps of Samadhi/Courtesy Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com