The Book of Secrets
Now all in one volume for the first time! Osho?s contemporary interpretation of the secret teachings of the 4000-year-old Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, is now collected all in one impressive volume, published by St. Martin?s Press and available from literal bookshops throughout North America and from virtual bookshops on line. Osho goes line by line through each of the mysterious teachings that were first made known in the West by Paul Reps in the last chapter of his book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. In the process, we learn that these verses are, in fact, highly condensed, telegraphic instructions for 112 different meditation techniques. Osho describes each technique in detail, and explains how we can experiment to find out if it is the right technique for us. The Book of Secrets was originally delivered as a series of talks, so Osho also answers questions from his audience about the techniques, and about their experiences in meditation.
Chapter Titles
The World of Tantra
2 - The Path of Yoga & The Path of Tantra
3 - Breath - A Bridge to the Universe
4 - Overcoming the Deceptions of the Mind
5 - Five Techniques of Attentiveness
6 - Devices to Transcend Dreaming
7 - Techniques to Put You at Ease
8 - Total Acceptance and Non-division: The Meaning of Tantric Purity
9 - Techniques for Centering
10 - Self-Actualization: The Basic Need
11 - Techniques to Penetrate the Inner
12 - Beyond Mind to the Source
13 - Inner Centering
14 - Changing the Direction of Energy
15 - Seeing the Past as a Dream
16 - Beyond the Sin of Unconsciousness
17 - Several "Stop" Techniques
18 - Remaining with the Facts
19 - A Technique for the Intellectual & a Technique for the Feeling Type
20 - Ordinary Love and the Love of a Buddha
21 - Three Looking Techniques
22 - Unblocking the Third Eye
23 - Several More Looking Methods
24 - Doubt or Faith, Life or Death: The Bases of Different Paths
25 - From Words to Pure Words to Being
26 - Acceptance of the Peaks and the Valleys
27 - Soundlessness, Soundfulness and Total Awareness
28 - Meditation: An Unburdening of Repressions
29 - Methods for the Dropping of Mind
30 - Surrendering in Sex and Surrendering to a Master
31 - From Sound to Inner Silence
32 - "No-fight" is the Central Teaching
33 - The Spirituality of the Tantric Sex Act
34 - Cosmic Orgasm through Tantra
35 - Turning Inward toward the Real
36 - From Maya (illusion) to Reality
37 - Techniques to Witness the Fluxlike Film of Life
38 - Toward the Authentic Being
39 - From the Wave to the Cosmic Ocean
40 - Sudden Enlightenment and its Obstacles
41 - Tantric Methods for Awareness and Nonjudment
42 - Alertness Through Tantra
43 - Finding the Changeless through the Changing
44 - Secrets of Love and Liberation
45 - Remaining with the Real
46 - The Tantric Way to Freedom from Desires
47 - Tantric Meditation Using Light
48 - The Potentiality of the Seed
49 - Conscious Doing
50 - Moving to the Roots
51 - Coming Back to Existence
52 - Entering This Moment
53 - From Death to Deathlessness
54 - The Fire of Awareness
55 - Only the Unreal Dissolves
56 - Discovering Emptiness
57 - You Are Everywhere
58 - Go Beyond Karma
59 - Watch from the Hill
60 - Liberate Yourself -- From Yourself
61 - Techniques to Become One with the Whole
62 - Right Now is the Goal
63 - Start Creating Yourself
64 - Choicelessness Is Bliss
65 - Destroy the Limits
66 - A Buddha is a Nobody
67 - Go Beyond Mind and Matter
68 - Energy Enjoys Itself Playing
69 - You Are Unknown to Yourself
70 - Suffer the Pain of Aloneness
71 - Forget the Periphery
72 - Start Living in Insecurity
73 - Fear of Transformation Goes Deep
74 - Sensitivity is Awareness
75 - Seek the Rhythm of Opposites
76 - Life is Sex Energy
77 - Become Each Being
78 - The Inner Guide
79 - The Philosophy of Emptiness
80 - All and Nothing Mean the Same
List of Meditations
Excerpt from The Book of Secrets
ABOUT TANTRA: (from Chapter 1, The Book of Secrets)
"Tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. This is the basic note -- total acceptance. And only through total acceptance can you grow. Then use every energy you have.
How can you use them? Accept them, then find out what these energies are -- what is sex, what is this phenomenon. We are not acquainted with it. We know many things about sex, taught by others. We may have passed through the sex act, but with a guilty mind, with a suppressive attitude, in haste, in a hurry. Something has to be done in order to become unburdened. The sex act is not a loving act. You are not happy in it, but you cannot leave it. The more you try to leave it, the more attractive it becomes. The more you want to negate it, the more you feel invited. You cannot negate it, but this attitude to negate, to destroy, destroys the very mind, the very awareness, the very sensitivity which can understand it. So sex goes on with no sensitivity into it. Then you cannot understand it.
Only a deep sensitivity can understand anything; only a deep feeling, a deep moving into it, can understand anything. You can understand sex only if you move in it as a poet moves amidst flowers -- only then! If you feel guilty about flowers, you may pass through the garden, but you will pass with closed eyes. And you will be in a hurry, in a deep, mad haste. Somehow you have to go out of the garden. Then how can you be aware?
So tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. You are a great mystery of many multidimensional energies. Accept it, and move with every energy with deep sensitivity, with awareness, with love, with understanding. Move with it! Then every desire becomes a vehicle to go beyond it. Then every energy becomes a help. And then this very world is nirvana, this very body is a temple -- a holy temple, a holy place.
Question: WHAT ARE THE INDICATIONS TO KNOW THAT A PARTICULAR TECHNIQUE WILL WORK FOR ME? (from Chapter 2, The Book of Secrets)
There are indications. One, you begin to feel a different identity within you. You are no more the same. If the technique fits you, immediately you are a different person. If you are a husband, you are no more the same husband. If you are a shopkeeper, you are never again the same shopkeeper. Whatsoever you are, if the technique fits you, you are a different person; that is the first indication.
So if you begin to feel strange about yourself, know that something is happening to you. If you remain the same and do not feel any strangeness, nothing is happening. This is the first indication of whether a technique fits you. If it fits, immediately you are transported, transformed into a different person. Suddenly this happens: you look at the world in a different way. The eyes are the same, but the looker behind them is different.
Secondly, all that creates tensions, conflicts, starts dropping. It is not that when you have practiced the method for years, then your conflicts, anxieties, tensions will drop -- no! If the method fits you, immediately they start dropping. You can feel an aliveness coming to you; you are being unburdened. You will begin to feel, if the technique fits you, that gravity has become reversed. Now the earth is not pulling you down. Rather, the sky is pulling you up.
How do you feel when an airplane takes off? Everything is disturbed. Suddenly there is a jerk, and gravity becomes meaningless. Now the earth is not pulling you, you are going away from gravity. The same jerk happens if a meditative technique fits you. Suddenly you take off. Suddenly you feel the earth has become meaningless; there is no gravity. It is not pulling you down, you are being pulled up.
In religious terminology, this is called "grace." There are two forces -- gravity and grace. Grace means you are being pulled upwards; gravity means you are being pulled downwards. That is why in meditation many people suddenly feel they have no weight. That is why many people feel an inner levitation. So many have reported this to me when the technique fits them: "This is strange! We close our eyes and we feel that we are a little bit above the earth -- one foot, two feet, even four feet above the earth. When we open our eyes we are just on the ground; when we close our eyes we have levitated. So what is this? When we open our eyes we are just on the ground! We never levitated." The body remains on the ground, but you levitate. This levitation is really a pull from the above.
If the technique fits you have been pulled, because the working of the technique is to make available for you the upward pull. This is what the technique means: to make you available for the force which can pull you up. So if it fits, you know -- you have become weightless.
Thirdly, whatsoever you will now do --whatsoever, howsoever trivial, -- will be different. You will walk in a different way, you will sit in a different way, you will eat in a different way. Everything will be different. This difference you will feel everywhere. Sometimes this strange experience of being different creates fear. One wants again to go back and be the same, because one was so attuned with the old. It was a routine world, even boring, but you were efficient in it. Now everywhere you will feel a gap. You will feel that your efficiency is lost. You will feel that your utility is reduced. You will feel that everywhere you are an outsider.
One has to pass through this period. You will become attuned again. You have changed, not the world, so you will not fit. So remember the third thing: When the technique fits you, you will not fit into the world. You will become unfit. Everywhere something is loose, some bolt is missing. Everywhere you will feel that there has been an earthquake. And everything has remained the same; only you, you have become different. But you will be attuned again on a different plane, on a higher plane.
The disturbance is felt just like when a child grows and becomes sexually mature. At the age of fourteen or fifteen every boy feels that he has become strange. A new force has entered -- sex. It was not there before, or it was, but it was hidden. Now for the first time he has become available for a new kind of force. That is why boys are very awkward; girls, boys, when they become sexually mature they are very awkward. They are nowhere. They are no longer children and they are not yet men, so they are in between, fitting nowhere. If they play with small children they feel awkward -- they have become men. If they start making friendships with men they feel awkward -- they are still children. They fit with no one.
The same phenomenon happens when a technique fits you. A new energy source becomes available that is greater than sex. You are again in a transitory period. Now you cannot fit in this world of worldly men. You are not a child, and you cannot yet fit in the world of saints; and in between one feels awkward. If a technique fits you these three things will come up.
You may not have expected that I would say these things. You may have expected that I would say you will become more silent, more quiet, and I am saying quite the contrary: you will become more disturbed. When the technique fits you will become more disturbed, not more silent. Silence will come later on. And if silence comes and not disturbance, know well that this is not a technique; this is just getting adjusted to the old pattern. That is why more people go for a prayer than for meditation because prayer gives you a consolation. It fits you, adjusts to you, to your world.
Prayer was doing virtually the same thing that psychoanalysts are now doing. If you are disturbed they will make you less disturbed, adjusted to the pattern, to the society, to the family. So by going to a psychoanalyst for one, two or three years you will not get better, but you will be more adjusted. Prayer does the same thing, and priests do the same thing -- they make you more adjusted. Your child has died and you are disturbed, and you go to a priest. He says, "Do not be disturbed. Only those children die early whom God loves more. He calls them up." You feel satisfied. Your child has been "called up." God loves him more. Or the priest says something else: "Do not be worried, the soul never dies. Your child is in heaven." These prayers, they make you adjusted to the pattern... you feel better.
Meditation is a science. It is not going to help you in adjustment, it is going to help you in transformation.
That is why I say these three signs will be there as indications. Silence will come, but not as an adjustment. Silence will come as an inner flowering. Then silence will not be an adjustment with the society, with the family, the world, the business -- no! Then silence will be a real harmony with the universe. Then a deep harmony flowers between you and the totality, then there is silence -- but that will come later. First you will get disturbed, first you will become mad. If a technique fits, it will make you aware of everything that you are. Your anarchy, your mind, your madness, everything will come to light. You are just a dark mess. When a technique fits, it is as if suddenly there is light and the whole mess becomes apparent. For the first time you will encounter yourself as you are. You would like to put the light off and go to sleep again -- it is fearful.
This is the point where the master becomes helpful. He says, "Do not be afraid. This is just the beginning. And do not escape from it." At first this light shows you what you are, and if you can go on and on, it transforms you toward what you can be.
TRY THIS TECHNIQUE: (from The Book of Secrets, Chapter 49)
IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER SUCH CLARITY.
Mind is confusion; there is no clarity. And mind is always crowded, always cloudy -- never the open sky, cloudless, empty; mind cannot be that. You cannot make your mind clear; it is not the nature of the mind to be so. Mind will remain unclear.
If you can leave the mind behind, if you can suddenly transcend the mind and come out of it, clarity will happen to you. You can be clear, but not the mind. There is not such a thing as a clear mind; never has been and never will be. Mind means the unclarity, the confusion.
Try to understand the structure of the mind, and then this technique will be clear to you. What is mind? A continuous process of thought, a continuous procession of thoughts -- associated, non-associated, relevant, irrelevant -- many, multi-dimensional impressions gathered from everywhere. The whole of life is a gathering, a gathering of the dust. And this goes on and on.
A child is born. A child is clear because the mind is not there. The moment mind appears, the unclarity, the confusion enters. A child is clear, a clarity, but he will have to gather knowledge, information, culture, religion, conditionings -- necessary, useful. He will have to gather many things from everywhere, from many sources -- opposite, contradictory sources. From thousands and thousands of sources he will gather. Then the mind will become a marketplace, a crowd, and because of so many sources, confusion is bound to be there. And whatsoever you gather, nothing is certain, because knowledge is always a growing affair.
I remember, someone related an anecdote to me. He was a great searcher, and he told me this about his professor who taught him for five years in a medical college. The professor was a great scholar of his subject. The last thing he did was to gather his students and tell them, "One thing more I have to teach you. Whatsoever I have taught you is only fifty percent correct, and the remaining fifty percent is absolutely wrong. But the trouble, is, I don?t know which fifty percent is correct and which fifty percent is incorrect -- I don?t know."
The whole edifice of knowledge is such. Nothing is certain, no one knows, everyone is groping. Through groping we create systems, and there are thousands and thousands of systems. Hindus say something, Christians say something else, Mohammedans still something else -- all contradictory, all contradicting each other; no agreement, no certainty -- and all these sources are the sources for your mind. You collect: your mind becomes a junkyard; confusion is bound to be there.
Only a person who doesn?t know much can be certain. The more you know, the more uncertain you will become. People, primitive people, were more certain and appeared to be more clear. There was no clarity -- simply unawareness of facts that could contradict them. If the modern mind is more confused, the reason is that the modern mind knows more. If you know more you will be more confused, because now you have more knowledge, and the more you know, the more uncertain you become. Only idiots can be certain, only idiots can be dogmatic, only idiots will never hesitate. The more you know, the more the earth is taken away from your feet, the more hesitant you become.
What I mean to say is, the more the mind grows, the more you will know the nature of the mind is confusion. When I say only idiots can be certain, I don?t mean that a Buddha is an idiot -- because he is not uncertain. Remember the difference. He is not certain, he is not uncertain -- he is simply clear. With the mind, uncertainty; with the idiotic mind, certainty. With no mind both certainty and uncertainty disappear.
Buddha is a clarity, a space, open space. He is not certain -- there is nothing to be certain. He is not uncertain, because there is nothing to be uncertain. Only one who is seeking certainty can be uncertain. Mind is always uncertain and always seeking certainty; always confused and always seeking clarity. A Buddha is one who has dropped the mind; and with the mind all confusion, all certainty, all uncertainty, everything is dropped.
Look at it in this way: your consciousness is just like the sky and your mind is just like the clouds. The sky remains untouched by the clouds. They come and go; no scar is left behind. The sky remains virgin: no record, no footprints, nothing of the clouds, no memory. They come and they go; the sky remains undisturbed.
This is the case within you also: the consciousness remains undisturbed. Thoughts come and go, minds evolve and disappear.
And don?t think that you have one mind; you have many minds, it is a crowd. Your minds go on changing. You are a communist, so you have a certain type of mind. You can leave it and you can become anti-communist. Then you have a different mind; not only different, quite the opposite. You can go on changing your minds just like your dress. And you go on changing -- you may not be aware of it -- these clouds come and go.
Clarity can be achieved if you become aware of the sky; if your focus changes. You are focused on the clouds if you are unfocused on the sky. Unfocus on the clouds and focus on the sky.
This technique says: IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER SUCH CLARITY.
Meditate on the sky; a summer sky with no clouds, endlessly empty and clear, nothing moving in it, in its total virginity. Contemplate on it, meditate on it, and enter this clarity. Become this clarity, this space-like clarity.
If you meditate on open unclouded sky, suddenly you will feel that the mind is disappearing, the mind is dropping away. There will be gaps. Suddenly you will become aware that it is as if the clear sky has entered in you also. There will be intervals. For a time, thoughts will cease -- as if the traffic has ceased and there is no one moving.
In the beginning it will be only for moments, but even those moments are transforming. By and by the mind will slow down, bigger gaps will appear. For minutes together there will be no thought, no cloud. And when there is no thought, no cloud, the outer sky and the inner become one -- because only the thought is the barrier, only the thought creates the wall; only because of the thought the outer is outer and the inner is inner.
When the thought is not there, the outer and the inner lose their boundaries, they become one. Really, boundaries never existed there. They appeared only because of the thought, the barrier.
To meditate on the sky is beautiful. Just lie down so you forget the earth; just lie down on your back on any lonely beach, on any ground, and just look at the sky. But a clear sky will be helpful -- unclouded, endless. And just looking, staring at the sky, feel the clarity of it -- the uncloudedness, the boundless expanse -- and then enter that clarity, become one with it. Feel as if you have become the sky, the space.
In the beginning, if you only meditate on the open sky, not doing anything else, intervals will start appearing, because whatsoever you see enters you. Whatsoever you see stirs you within; whatsoever you see is pictured, reflected. You see a building. You cannot simply see it; something immediately starts happening within you. You see a man, a woman; you see a car -- you see anything. It is not just outside, something has started within, the reflection, and you have started reacting to it. So everything you see moulds you, makes you, modifies you, creates you. The without is constantly related with the within.
To look into the open sky is good. Just the expanse is beautiful, with no boundaries there. Your own boundaries will disappear, because the no-boundary sky will reflect within you. And if you can stare without blinking your eyes it will be good. If you stare without blinking your eyes... because if you blink your eyes your thought-process will continue. Stare without blinking the eyes. Stare in the emptiness, move into that emptiness, feel that you have become one with it, and any moment the sky will enter within you. First you enter into the sky and then the sky enters you. And there is a meeting: the inner sky meeting the outer sky.
In that meeting is realization. In that meeting there is no mind, because the meeting can happen only when the mind is not there. In that meeting you are for the first time not your mind. There is no confusion. Confusion cannot exist without the mind. There is no misery, because misery also cannot exist without the mind.
Have you observed this fact anytime or not -- that misery cannot exist without your mind? You cannot be miserable without your mind. The very source is not there. Who will supply you with this misery? Who will make you miserable? And the same is true from the opposite direction also: you cannot be miserable without your mind and you cannot be blissful with your mind. The mind can never be the source of bliss.
So if the inner and outer sky meet and mind disappears, even for a moment, you will be filled with a new life. The quality of that life is absolutely different. It is life eternal, uncontaminated by death, uncontaminated by any fear. In that meeting you will be here and now, in the present -- because past belongs to thoughts, future belongs to thoughts.
Past and future are part of your mind. Present is existence -- it is not part of your mind. This moment doesn?t belong to your mind. The moment that has gone belongs to your mind; the moment that has yet to come belongs to your mind. This moment never belongs to you. Rather, you belong to this moment. You exist here, right now here. Your mind exists somewhere else, always somewhere else.
Unload yourself. I was reading one Sufi mystic. He was traveling on a lonely path, the way was deserted, and he saw a farmer with his bullock cart. The cart was stuck in mud. The road was rough. The farmer was carrying a big load of apples in his bullock cart, but somewhere on the rough road the tailboard of the wagon became unfastened and the apples were scattered. But he was not aware of it; the farmer was not aware of it. When the cart got stuck in the mud, first he tried to bring it out somehow, but all efforts were in vain, so he thought, "Now I must unload my cart, then maybe I can pull it out." He looked back. Hardly a dozen apples were left -- the load was already unloaded! You can feel his misery. The Sufi reports in his memoirs that that exasperated farmer made a remark. He said, "Stuck, by heck! Stuck! -- and not a damn thing to unload!" The only possibility was that if he could unload the cart it could come out; but now -- nothing to unload!
Fortunately you are not stuck in such a way. You can unload -- your cart is too much loaded. You can unload the mind, and the moment the mind is not there, you fly; you become capable of flying.
This technique -- to look into the clarity of the sky and to become one with it -- is one of the most practiced. Many traditions have used this. And particularly for the modern mind it will be very useful, because on earth nothing is left. On earth nothing is left to meditate on -- only the sky. If you look all around, everything is man-made, everything is limited, with a boundary, a limitation. Only the sky is still, fortunately, open to meditate on.
Try this technique, it will be helpful, but remember three things. One: don?t blink -- stare. Even if your eyes start to feel pain and tears come down, don?t be worried. Even those tears will be a part of unloading; they will be helpful. Those tears will make your eyes more innocent and fresh -- bathed. You just go on staring.
The second point: don?t think about the sky, remember. You can start thinking about the sky. You can remember many poems, beautiful poems about the sky -- then you will miss the point. You are not to think "about" it -- you are to enter it, you are to be one with it -- because if you start thinking about it, again a barrier is created. You are missing the sky again, and you are again enclosed in your own mind. Don?t think about the sky. Be the sky. Just stare and move into the sky, and allow the sky to move in you. If you move into the sky, the sky will move into you immediately.
How can you do it? How will you do it -- this moving into the sky? Just go on staring farther away and farther away. Go on staring -- as if you are trying to find the boundary. Move deep. Move as much as you can. That very movement will break the barrier. And this method should be practiced for at least forty minutes; less than that will not do, will not be of much help. When you really feel that you have become one, then you can close the eyes. When the sky has entered in you, you can close the eyes. You will be able to see it within also. Then there is no need. So only after forty minutes, when you feel that the oneness has happened and there is a communion and you have become part of it and the mind is no more, close the eyes and remain in the sky within.
The clarity will help the third point: ENTER SUCH CLARITY. The clarity will help -- the uncontaminated, unclouded sky. Just be aware of the clarity that is all around you. Don?t think about it; just be aware of the clarity, the purity, the innocence. These words are not to be repeated. You have to feel them rather than think. And once you stare into the sky the feeling will come, because it is not on your part to imagine these things -- they are there. If you stare they will start happening to you.
The sky is pure, the purest thing in existence. Nothing makes it impure. Worlds come and go, earths are there and then disappear, and the sky remains pure. The purity is there. You need not project it, you are simply to feel it -- to be vulnerable to it so you can feel it -- and the clarity is there. Allow the sky to happen to you. You cannot force it; you can only allow it to happen.
All meditations are really allowing something to happen. Never think in terms of aggression, never think in terms of forcing something. You cannot force anything. Really, because you have been trying to force, you have created all kinds of misery. Nothing can be forced, but you can allow things to happen. Be feminine. Allow things to happen. Be passive. The sky is absolutely passive: not doing anything at all, just remaining there. Just be passive and remain under the sky -- vulnerable, open, feminine, with no aggression on your part -- and then the sky will penetrate you.
IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER SUCH CLARITY.
But if it is not summer what will you do? If the sky is clouded, not clear, then close your eyes and just enter the inner sky. Just close your eyes, and if you see some thoughts, just see them as if they are floating clouds in the sky. Be aware of the background, the sky, and be indifferent to thoughts.
We are too much concerned with thoughts and never aware of the gaps. One thought passes, and before another enters there is a gap -- in that gap the sky is there. Then, whenever there is no thought, what is there? The emptiness is there. So if the sky is clouded -- it is not summertime and the sky is not clear -- close your eyes, focus your mind on the background, the inner sky in which thoughts come and go.
Don?t pay much attention to thoughts; pay attention to the space in which they move. For example, we are sitting in this room. I can look at this room in two ways. Either I can look at you, so that I am indifferent to the space you are in, the roominess, the room you are in -- I look at you, I focus my mind on you who are here, and not on the room in which you are -- or, I can change my focus: I can look into the room, and I become indifferent to you. You are there, but my emphasis, my focus, is on the room. Then the total perspective changes.
Just do this in the inner world. Look at the space. Thoughts are moving in it: be indifferent to them, don?t pay any attention to them. They are there; note it down that they are there, moving. The traffic is moving in the street. Look at the street and be indifferent to the traffic. Don?t look to see who is passing; just know that something is passing and be aware of the space in which it is passing.
Then the summer sky happens within."
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