OSHO’S THOUGHTS
ON YOGA
Here are some beautiful thoughts and explanations
on Yoga – from OSHO – as extracted from his Book, Alpha & Omega, Chapter.1.
Vol.1. The clarity you will find in OSHO’s thoughts is really impressive and unmatchable :
1. Yoga is a method to come to a non-dreaming mind.
2. Yoga is the science to be in the here and now.
3. Yoga means now you are ready not to move into the future.
4. Yoga means to encounter the reality as it is.
5. One can enter yoga only when he is totally frustrated with his own
mind as it is.
6. Yoga means that now there is no hope, now there is no future, now
there are no desires. One is ready to know what is. One is not interested in
what can be, what should be, what ought to be.
7. You can go on doing asanas, postures; that is not yoga. Yoga is an
inward turning. It is a total about-turn. When you are not moving into the
future, not moving toward the past, then you start moving within yourself –
because your being is here and now, it is not in the future.
8. Yoga is not a religion. Yoga is a pure science just like mathematics,
physics or chemistry. it is just an accident that Hindus discovered it. It is
not Hindu. It is a pure mathematics of the inner being.
9. Yoga doesn’t say to believe in anything. Yoga says, experience. Experiment and experience
are both the same, their directions are different. Experiment means something
you can do outside; experience means something you can do inside. Experience is
an inside experiment.
10. Science says: Don’t believe, doubt as much as you can. But also,
don’t disbelieve, because disbelief is again a sort of belief.
11. Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is
required, no faith is needed – only courage to experience.
12. Yoga is not belief....it is difficult, arduous, and sometimes it
seems impossible. It is an existential approach. You will come to the truth,
but not through belief, but through your own experience, through your own realization.
13. Yoga is both a death and a new life. As you are, you will have to
die, and unless you die the new cannot be born. Unless you are ready to die,
you cannot be reborn.
14. Yoga is not a philosophy. ... It is not something you can think
about. It is something you will have to be.
15. Yoga is concerned with your total being, with your roots.
16. With Patanjali we will be trying to know the ultimate laws of
being: the laws of its transformation, the laws of how to die and how to be
reborn again, the laws of a new order of being.
17. Simply do what he(Patanjali) says and the result will happen. The result is
bound to happen;
18. Yoga is not a shastra; it is not a scripture. It is a discipline. ..It
is not curiosity; it is not philosophic speculation. .. It is a question of
life and death.
19. Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos. As
you are, you are totally disorderly.
20. Gurdjieff says that you are not one, you are a crowd, not even
when you say ”I”,...There are many ”I’s” in you, many egos. In the morning, one
”I”; in the afternoon, another ”I”; in the evening, a third ”I”, but you never
become aware of this mess because who will become aware of it? There is not a
center who can become aware.
21. As you are, you are a crowd and a crowd has many phenomena. One
is, you cannot believe a crowd. Gurdjieff used to say that man cannot promise.
Who will promise? You are not there. If you promise, who will fulfill the
promise? Next morning the one who promised is no more. And you are a Rotary
Club: the chairman goes on changing. Every member becomes a rotary chairman.
Rotation is there. Every moment someone else is the master. Up until now you
have lived as a chaos, a crowd.
22. A crowd cannot be blissful, a crowd has got no self. .. Bliss means absolute silence, and silence is
possible only when there is harmony-when all the discordant fragments have
become one, when there is no crowd, but one... Right now everybody else is in
your house, you are not there. Only guests are there, the host is always
absent. And only the host can be blissful.
23. Discipline means the capacity to be, the capacity to know, the
capacity to learn. ...All the yoga postures are not really concerned with the
body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. Patanjali says if you can sit
silently without moving your body for few hours, you are growing in the
capacity to be. ..the body will become a slave; it will follow you. ..... if
the body is not moving your mind cannot move, because mind and body are not two
things.... You are not body and mind, you are body-mind...The mind is the most
subtle part of the body. Or you can say the reverse, that body is the most
gross part of the mind.
24. Whatsoever happens in the body happens in the mind, and the vice
versa.... In a nonmoving body, the mind cannot move; it needs a moving body...If
the body is non-moving, the mind is non-moving, you are centered.
25. Only through discipline you
will become a disciple. Only through being centered you will become humble, you
will become receptive, you will become empty, and the guru, the Master, can
pour himself into you.
26. A disciple means one who is centered, humble, receptive, open,
ready, alert, waiting, prayerful. In yoga, the Master is very, very important,
absolutely important, because only when you are in a close proximity of a being
who is centered your own centering will happen.
27. Satsang means in close proximity of the truth...it means near a
Master who has become one with the truth – just being near him, open, receptive
and waiting. If your waiting has become deep, intense, a deep communion will
happen. The Master ...is simply there, available. If you are open, he will flow
within you. This flowing is called SATSANG....
28. A disciple means one who is ready to receive, who has become a womb...Discourse
may be there, but discourse is just an excuse. ... if you are a disciple, if
you are a disciplined being, your mind is engaged in listening to me, your
being can be in SATSANG. Then your head is occupied, your heart is open.
29. Then on a deeper level, a meeting happens. That meeting is
satsang, and everything else is just an excuse, just to find ways to be close
to the Master. Closeness is all, but only a disciple can be close.
30. Closeness means a loving trust. Why we are not close? Because
there is fear. ...A disciple can be close for two reasons. One: he is a
centered one; he is trying to be centered...A person who is trying even to be
centered becomes unafraid; he becomes fearless. He has something which cannot
be killed. You don’t have anything, hence the fear. You are a crowd. The crowd
can disperse any moment. You don’t have something like a rock which will be
there whatsoever happens.
31. You may have wives and husbands and so-called lovers, but there is
no love, because love needs closeness, love needs trust. You may have gurus,
Masters, but there is no disciplehood because you cannot allow yourself to be
totally given to somebody’s being, nearness to his being, closeness to his
being, so that he can overpower you, overflood you.
32. A disciple means a seeker who is not a crowd, who is trying to be
centered and crystallized, at least trying, making efforts, sincere efforts to
become individual, to feel his being, to become his own master. All discipline
of yoga is an effort to make you a master of yourself. As you are, you are just
a slave of many, many desires. Many, many masters are there, and you are just a
slave – and pulled in many directions.
33. NOW THE DISCIPLINE OF YOGA. Yoga is discipline. It is an effort on
your part to change yourself. ... Yoga is not a therapy. ..a therapy is needed
if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if
you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really,
when you are healthy only, a discipline can help then. It is not for
pathological cases. Yoga is for those who are completely healthy as far as
medical science is concerned, normal.... Yoga is for a higher order of health,..
a different type of being and wholeness....but the society itself is ill!...So
sometimes it happens that in an ill society a healthy person is thought to be
ill..yoga is not trying in any way to make you adjusted to the society.... but
it is adjustment with existence itself. It is adjustment with the divine!... it
may happen that a perfect yogi may appear mad to you...because now he is in
touch with the greater, with a higher mind, higher order of things...with the
universal mind.
34. NOW THE DISCIPLINE OF YOGA. If your mind has come to realize that
whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare
at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best then the path of discipline opens
before you.
35. The basic definition is, YOGA IS THE CESSATION OF MIND –
36. Yoga is the state of no-mind. The word ”mind” covers all – your
egos, your desires, your hopes, your philosophies, your religions, your
scriptures. ”Mind” covers all. Whatsoever you can think is mind...Cessation of
the mind means cessation of the known, cessation of the knowable....Yoga is a
jump into the unknown.
37. When there is no mind, you are in yoga; when there is mind you are
not in yoga. So you may do all the postures, but if the mind goes on
functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in yoga. Yoga is the state of
no-mind. Because the basic thing to be understood is: when the activity of
thinking is not there, you are there;
38. In the West now, there is much appeal for Zen – a Japanese method
of yoga. The word ”zen” comes from dhyana. Bodhidharma introduced this word
dhyana in China. In China the word dhyana became jhan and then chan and then
the word traveled to Japan and became zen.
39. When Patanjali says, no-mind, cessation of mind, he means complete
cessation. He will not allow you to make a japa, ”Ram-Ram-Ram.” He will say
that this is not cessation; you are using the mind. He will say, ”Simply stop!”
but you will ask, ”How? How to simply stop?” The mind continues.
40. When you can simply look without being identified with the mind,
without judging, without appreciating, condemning, without choosing – you
simply look and the mind flows, a time comes when by itself, of itself, the
mind stops.
41. When there is no mind, you are established in your witnessing.
Then you have become a witness – just a seer-a drashta, a sakchhi. Then you are
not a doer, then you are not a thinker. Then you are simply being pure being,
purest of being. Then the witness is established in itself.
42. Patanjali will never say that, ”I am hungry.”He will say ”The body
is hungry”; he will say, ”My stomach is feeling hungry”; he will say, ”There is
hunger. I am a witness. I have come to witness this thought, which has been
flashed by the belly in the brain, that ’I am hungry.’” The belly is hungry;
Patanjali will remain a witness. You become identified, you become one with the
thought.
43. When mind ceases, you are established in your witnessing self. In
other states, except this, there are identifications. ..If you are in the identifications,
you are in the world, in the misery. If you have transcended the
identifications, you are liberated. ...You have transcended this world of misery
and entered the world of bliss.
***To Be Continued.......
