The first thing is to know what meditation is. Everything else follows. I cannot say to you that you should do meditation, I can only explain to you what it is. If you understand me, you will be in meditation; there is no should to it. If you dont understand me, you will not be in meditation.
WHAT IS MEDITATION
MEDITATION is a state of no-mind. Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust. The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are moving, memories are moving, ambitions are moving – it is a constant traffic! Day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the mind is functioning, it is dreaming. It is still thinking; it is still in worries and anxieties. It is preparing for the next day; an underground preparation is going on.
This is the state of no meditation. Just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thoughts move, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent – that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise. Meditation is a state of no-mind.
And you cannot find meditation through the mind, because mind will perpetuate itself. You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind; by seeing the mind pass, but not getting identified with it, not thinking that I am it.
Meditation is the awareness that I am not the mind. When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive - moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still. In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know the mystery of this existence.
A day comes, a day of great blessings, when meditation becomes your natural state.
Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state – which we have lost. It is a paradise lost, but the paradise can be regained. Look into the childs eyes, look and you will see tremendous silence, innocence. Each child comes with a meditative state, but he has to be initiated into the ways of the society – he has to be taught how to think, how to calculate, how to reason, how to argue; he has to be taught words, language, concepts. And, slowly slowly, he loses contact with his own innocence. He becomes contaminated, polluted by the society. He becomes an efficient mechanism; he is no more a man.
All that is needed is to regain that space once more. You have known it before, so when for the first time you know meditation, you will be surprised – because a great feeling will arise in you as if you have known it before. And that feeling is true: you have known it before. You have forgotten. The diamond is lost in piles of rubbish. But if you can uncover it, you will find the diamond again – it is yours.
It cannot really be lost: it can only be forgotten. We are born as meditators, then we learn the ways of the mind. But our real nature remains hidden somewhere deep down like an undercurrent. Any day, a little digging, and you will find the source still flowing, the source of fresh waters. And the greatest joy in life is to find it.
MEDITATION IS NOT CONCENTRATION
MEDITATION is not concentration. In concentration there is a self concentrating and there is an object being concentrated upon. There is duality. In meditation there is nobody inside and nothing outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. The in goes on flowing into the out, the out goes on flowing into the in. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a non-dual consciousness.
Concentration is a dual consciousness: thats why concentration creates tiredness; thats why when you concentrate you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire, meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four hour thing – day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself.
Concentration is an act, a willed act. Meditation is a state of no will, a state of inaction. It is relaxation. One has simply dropped into ones own being, and that being is the same as the being of All. In concentration the mind functions out of a conclusion: you are doing something. Concentration comes out of the past. In meditation there is no conclusion behind it. You are not doing anything in particular, you are simply being. It has no past to it, it is uncontaminated by the past. It has no future to it, it is pure of all future. It is what Lao Tzu has called wei-wu-wei, action through inaction. It is what Zen masters have been saying: Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Remember, by itself' – nothing is being done. You are not pulling the grass upwards; the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That state – when you allow life to go on its own way, when you don't want to direct it, when you dont want to give any control to it, when you are not manipulating, when you are not enforcing any discipline on it – that state of pure undisciplined spontaneity, is what meditation is.
Meditation is in the present, pure present. Meditation is immediacy. You cannot meditate, you can be in meditation. You cannot be in concentration, but you can concentrate. Concentration is human, meditation is divine.
CHOOSING A MEDITATION
FROM the very beginning find something which appeals to you. Meditation should not be a forced effort. If it is forced, it is doomed from the very beginning. A forced thing will never make you natural. There is no need to create unnecessary conflict. This is to be understood because mind has a natural capacity to meditate if you give it objects which are appealing to it.
If you are body oriented, there are ways you can reach towards God through the body because the body also belongs to God. If you feel you are heart oriented, then prayer. If you feel you are intellect oriented, then meditation.
But my meditations are different in a way. I have tried to devise methods which can be used by all three types. Much of the body is used in them, much of the heart and much of the intelligence. All the three are joined together and they work on different people in a different way.
Body heart mind – all my meditations move in the same way. They start from the body, they move through the heart, they reach to the mind and then they go beyond.
Always remember, whatsoever you enjoy can go deep in you; only that can go deep in you. Enjoying it simply means it fits with you. The rhythm of it falls in tune with you: there is a subtle harmony between you and the method. Once you enjoy a method then dont become greedy; go into that method as much as you can. You can do it once or, if possible, twice a day. The more you do it, the more you will enjoy it. Only drop a method when the joy has disappeared; then its work is finished. Search for another method. No method can lead you to the very end. On the journey you will have to change trains many times. A certain method takes you to a certain state. Beyond that it is of no more use, it is spent.
So two things have to be remembered: when you are enjoying a method go into it as deeply as possible, but never become addicted to it because one day you will have to drop it too. If you become too much addicted to it then it is like a drug; you cannot leave it. You no more enjoy it – it is not giving you anything – but it has become a habit. Then one can continue it, but one is moving in circles; it cannot lead beyond that.
So let joy be the criterion. If joy is there, continue, to the last bit of joy go on. It has to be squeezed totally. No juice should be left behind ... not even a single drop. And then be capable of dropping it. Choose some other method that again brings the joy. Many times a person has to change. It varies with different people but it is very rare that one method will do the whole journey.
There is no need to do many meditations because you can do confusing things, contradictory things, and then pain will arise.
Choose two meditations and stick to them. In fact I would like you to choose one; that would be the best. It is better to repeat one that suits you, many times. Then it will go deeper and deeper. You try many things – one day one thing, another day another thing. And you invent your own, so you can create many confusions. In the book of Tantra there are one hundred and twelve meditations. You can go crazy. You are already crazy!
Meditations are not fun. They can sometimes be dangerous. You are playing with a subtle, a very subtle mechanism of the mind. Sometimes a small thing that you were not aware you were doing can become dangerous. So never try to invent, and dont make your own hotch-potch meditation. Choose two and just try them for a few weeks.
When I say meditate, I know that through meditation nobody reaches; but through meditation you reach to the point where no meditation becomes possible.
CREATING A SPACE FOR MEDITATION
IF you can create a special place – a small temple or a corner in the home where you can meditate every day – then dont use that corner for any other purpose, because every purpose has its own vibration. Use that corner only for meditation and nothing else. Then the corner will become charged and it will wait for you every day. The corner will be helpful to you, the milieu will create a particular vibration, a particular atmosphere in which you can go deeper and deeper more easily. Thats the reason why temples, churches and mosques were created – just to have a place that existed only for prayer and meditation.
If you can choose a regular hour to meditate, thats also very helpful because your body, your mind, is a mechanism. If you take lunch at a particular hour every day, your body starts crying for food at that time. Sometimes you can even play tricks on it. If you take your lunch at one oclock and the clock says that it is now one oclock, you will be hungry – even if the clock is not right and it is only eleven or twelve. You look at the clock, it says one oclock, and suddenly you feel hunger within. Your body is a mechanism.
Your mind is also a mechanism. Meditate every day in the same place, at the same time, and you will create a hunger for meditation within your body and mind. Every day at that particular time your body and mind will ask you to go into meditation. It will be helpful. A space is created in you which will become a hunger, a thirst.
In the beginning it is very good. Unless you come to the point where meditation has become natural and you can meditate anywhere, in any place, at any time – up to that moment, use these mechanical resources of the body and the mind as a help.
It gives you a climate: you put off the light, you have a certain incense burning in the room, you have certain clothes, a certain height, a certain softness, you have a certain type of rug, you have a certain posture. This all helps but this does not cause it. If somebody else follows it, this may become a hindrance. One has to find ones own ritual. A ritual is simply to help you to be at ease and wait. And when you are at ease and waiting, the thing happens; just like sleep, God comes to you. Just like love, God comes to you. You cannot will it, you cannot force it.
Meditation is a key to unlock the door of the mystery of existence.
BE LOOSE AND NATURAL
ONE can be obsessed with meditation. And obsession is the problem: you were obsessed with money and now you are obsessed with meditation. Money is not the problem, obsession is the problem. You were obsessed with the market, now you are obsessed with God. The market is not the problem but obsession. One should be loose and natural and not obsessed with anything, neither mind nor meditation. Only then, unoccupied, unobsessed, when you are simply flowing, the ultimate happens to you.
All meditations are subtle ways to make you drunk – to make you drunkards of the divine.
Source : Osho, The Orange Book.