Learning to Silence the Mind Book Review
Learning to Silence the Mind is an amazing book to understand your Mind and Meditation.
No matter what controversies Osho created in life, his thinking was very clear.
One such gem:
Whatsoever is taken as real, becomes real.
Whatsoever is taken as unreal, becomes unreal.
You are the creator of your whole world around you.
Must read for those who want to understand and silence your chatterbox mind and understand Meditation.
Learning to Silence the Mind Book Summary
What Is Meditation?
Understanding has its own way of growing. If just a little bit of understanding falls in the right place, in the heart, it starts growing of its own accord.
Concentration is mind focused on one point.
Consciousness has the same quality: Concentrate it, and you can penetrate deeper into the mysteries of objects.
Concentration is always the narrowing of your consciousness. The narrower it becomes, the more powerful it is.
When your mind is so focused on one thing, everything else falls out of its focus and you are unaware of it. It is not a state of awareness, it is a state of narrowed consciousness.
Concentration is one-pointed; contemplation has a wider field.
Contemplation is a wider concentration – not one-pointed, but confined to one subject.
Science uses concentration as its method; philosophy uses contemplation as its method.
Common sense is a common quality of common people.
Contemplation is a kind of logical dreaming.
Religiousness cannot use concentration; religiousness cannot use contemplation either, because it is not concerned with any object.
Religious concern is with the one who concentrates, with the one who contemplates.
There is no possibility of dividing your consciousness into two parts.
Man can directly connect with existence, it need not be through an agent.
There are a few things which you have to do yourself.
- A servant cannot sleep for you, a servant cannot eat for you.
- How is a priest, who is nothing but a servant, going to mediate between you and existence, or God, or nature, or truth?
- You have to contact God through a properly initiated Catholic priest; everything should go through proper channels. There is a certain hierarchy, a bureaucracy.
The priesthood can exist only if it makes itself absolutely necessary. It is absolutely unnecessary, but it has to force itself upon you as something unavoidable.
The truth is that it is your birthright to inquire into existence, into life, what it is all about.
Religiousness is not contemplation. It is not concentration. It is meditation.
Dhyana means “I am in meditation” – not even meditating. If you come even closer, then “I am meditation” – that is the meaning of dhyana.
Religion has to use the ordinary, common language, so that the priesthood can be simply dropped; there is no need for it.
The priest is needed because he uses a different language that ordinary people cannot use.
I don’t have any friends in the world, and I don’t have any enemies in the world – because they both come together.
Meditation is not some activity. One does not meditate, one is meditation. Sitting and doing nothing – not with your body, not with your mind.
When you are not doing anything at all – bodily, mentally, on no level – when all activity has ceased and you simply are, just being, that’s what meditation is. You cannot do it, you cannot practice it; you have only to understand it.
Whenever you can find time for just being, drop all doing. Thinking is also doing, concentration is also doing, contemplation is also doing.
Even if for a single moment you are not doing anything and you are just at your center, utterly relaxed – that is meditation.
Meditation is not against action. It is not that you have to escape from life. It simply teaches you a new way of life.
You are not the doer, you are the watcher. That’s the whole secret of meditation – that you become the watcher. Doing continues on its own level.
Meditation is a very simple phenomenon. Concentration is very complicated, because you have to force yourself; it is tiring. Contemplation is a little better because you have a little more space to move.
Mind is a vagabond.
In concentration, mind is almost imprisoned.
Meditation, according to me, has all the space, the whole of existence available.
You need not sit in the lotus posture. In my approach to meditation, you need not torture yourself in any way. The whole of India sits in the lotus posture – nobody has gained anything. It is just their natural way of sitting. [ 🙂 ]
There are people who think there are special times. No, not for meditation; any time is the right time – you just have to be relaxed and playful.
You just go on giving a chance to meditation, and when the right moment comes and you are really relaxed and open, it jumps upon you. And once meditation jumps upon you it never leaves. There is no way.
Meditation is Your Nature
All that the mind can do cannot be meditation – it is something beyond the mind, the mind is absolutely helpless there. The mind cannot penetrate meditation; where mind ends, meditation begins.
In our life, whatsoever we do, we do through the mind. Then, when we turn inward, we again start thinking in terms of techniques, methods, doings, because the whole of life’s experience shows us that everything can be done by the mind.
Everything is done by the mind, except meditation.
Meditation is not an achievement – it is already the case, it is your nature.
Meditation is your intrinsic nature – it is you, it is your being, it has nothing to do with your doings.
You cannot have it, you cannot not have it; it cannot be possessed.
It is not a thing.
It is you.
It is your being.
Meditation is a state of clarity, not a state of mind. Mind is confusion. Mind is never clear. It cannot be.
Thoughts create clouds around you – they are subtle clouds. A mist is created by them, and the clarity is lost.
When thoughts disappear, when there are no more clouds around you, when you are in your simple beingness, clarity happens. Then you can see far away; then you can see to the very end of existence – to the very core of being.
Thoughts settle on their own accord; you need not jump amongst them, you need not try to put them right.
It is as if a stream has become muddy. What do you do? Do you jump into it and start helping the stream to become clear? You wait.
Whenever a desire passes through your mind, the stream becomes muddy. So just sit. Don’t try to do anything.
The treasure has been with you, but you were occupied somewhere else: in thoughts, in desires, in a thousand and one things.
The first thing about the mind is that it is a constant chattering. Whether you are talking or not, it goes on doing some inner talk.
If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment, you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That’s what meditation is all about.
Mind has a limited capacity to know – it cannot know the contradictory. That’s why it cannot know godliness – godliness is contradictory; that’s why it cannot know the innermost core of your being.
The mind can see only one thing at a time, and the opposite is not possible at the same time.
Meditation has taken on a wrong connotation. It looks very serious, looks gloomy,
A really meditative person is playful: Life is fun for him, life is a leela, a play. He enjoys it tremendously. He is not serious. He is relaxed.
Sit silently, relaxed, loose, and just allow your attention to flow toward the gaps.
Before the age of four you were almost empty; words started collecting in your memory after the age of four.
Memory can function only where words function, emptiness leaves no trace on you. Emptiness is your self.
Mind is nothing but all the words that you have accumulated; silence is that which has always been with you, it is not an accumulation. That is the meaning of self.
Mind means words; self means silence.
The self is silence.
On the background of silence you go on accumulating words, and the words in total are known as the mind.
Silence is meditation.
From each word you can slip into silence. That is the use of a mantra. Mantra means repeating a single word again and again and again.
When you repeat a single word again and again and again, you get bored with that word because the novelty is lost. Boredom helps. It helps you to get rid of the word – now you can slip more easily into silence.
The use of a mantra to create such boredom that you want to get rid of it, is beautiful, because then there is no other way than to slip into silence.
If you can see that the mind is simply repeating the same thing again and again and again, either you fall asleep or you jump into silence – these two are the possibilities.
Many chanters of mantras fall asleep – hence the use of Transcendental Meditation for people who suffer from sleeplessness.
You will find religious people almost stupid, although you may not see it because of your ideas about them.
Many people who go on long fasts think they have attained meditation. It is not meditation, it is just low energy, paralysis, insensitivity. They are moving like dead corpses. They are not alive.
The violence that you do on your own self is respected by people because they have an idea that to be an ascetic is to be religious. That is sheer nonsense.
Meditation will bring you more and more intelligence, infinite intelligence, a radiant intelligence.
God is a constant search for more and more happiness, joy, ecstasy.
Mind is very cunning. It can rationalize paralysis as meditation; it can rationalize dullness as transcendence; it can rationalize deadness as renunciation.
Have a very penetrating eye inside your mind – see what its motivations are. When you do something, immediately look for the motivation.
The mind goes on bullying you and bossing you because you are not capable of seeing its real motivations.
The mind is a mechanism. It has no intelligence. The mind is a biocomputer.
Mind is a robot; it works well but don’t listen to it too much because then you will lose your inner intelligence. Then it is as if you are asking a machine to guide you, lead you.
Not a single thought in the mind is ever original, it is always a repetition. Watch.
Try to do something new and the mind will have less a grip on you.
Each moment you are new, reborn, the consciousness is never old.
Mind is your past constantly trying to control your present and your future. It is the dead past which goes on controlling the alive present. Just become alert about it.
Remember, whenever you have two things, two alternatives, choose the new one, choose the harder, choose the one in which more awareness will be needed.
At the cost of efficiency always choose awareness, and you will create the situation in which meditation will become possible.
Be less efficient but more creative.
Let that be the motive.
Don’t be bothered too much about utilitarian ends.
Rather, constantly remember that you are not here in life to become a commodity; you are not here to become a utility.
You are not here just to become more and more efficient – you are here to become more and more alive; you are here to become more and more intelligent; you are here to become more and more happy, ecstatically happy.
But that is totally different from the ways of the mind.
If you are after cues on how to control others, you will be in the control of the mind always.
A politician cannot meditate. Impossible!
The ambitious mind cannot meditate because the basic foundation of meditation is to be nonambitious.
Ambition means the effort to control others.
The mind is never for the new, it is always for the old.
The mind lives in a sort of sleep; it lives in a sort of unconscious state. You become conscious only very rarely. If your life is in tremendous danger you become conscious; otherwise you are not conscious.
Somnambulism is the ordinary state of the mind (for some).
Don’t allow yourself to run all over the world. Be here, now.
If the mind is here it is no longer needed; right in the present there is no need for the mind – consciousness is enough.
The mind is needed only there, somewhere else in the future, in the past, but never here.
People are living almost asleep, and they have learned the trick of how to do things without disturbing their sleep.
Meditation and the Failure of Success
The West has succeeded materially in becoming rich, and now it is too weary, too tired. The journey has taken all its soul.
A great imbalance has happened. Richness is there, but man is not feeling rich at all; man is feeling, on the contrary, very impoverished, very poor.
When you are outwardly poor you never become aware of your inner poverty, because there is no contrast.
When you are outwardly rich only then do you become aware of your inner poverty, in contrast.
All is attained that we had thought about – all imagination and fantasies fulfilled – and nothing has happened out of it, no contentment, no bliss.
I am not against richness and I don’t think that poverty has any spirituality in it.
Whenever a country becomes poor outwardly, it becomes unaware of the inner poverty.
The inner is poor, the outer is poor. The inner and the outer are in perfect harmony – both are poor. That’s why you see a kind of contentment on Indian faces that is not true contentment.
Poverty is not spirituality; poverty is the cause of the disappearance of spirituality.
The more people are affluent, the more they will become spiritual.
When you can create inner richness and there comes a moment when again a harmony happens – outer richness meeting inner richness – then there is real contentment.
When outer poverty meets inner poverty, then there is false contentment.
When the East was rich the West was poor.
Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, all the three non-Indian religions, were born in poverty. They could not develop meditation techniques, there was no need.
The Western religions were born in poverty; they have nothing to give to the rich man.
The Eastern religions were born in richness; that’s why the Western mind is becoming more and more interested in Eastern religions.
The West is in the same state as Buddha was when he became interested in meditation. It was a rich man’s search.
Three great Indian religions were born out of affluence, hence the West is bound to be attracted to these Eastern religions.
Science has developed the technology to make you outwardly rich.
Religion has developed the technology to make you inwardly rich: That is Yoga, Tantra, Taoism, Sufism, Hassidism – these are the technologies of the inner.
Healing the Split Between Body and Soul
There is only one reality: Matter is its visible form and spirit its invisible form.
The whole split of the past has been a heavy burden on the human heart – the split between body and soul.
Man is a miniature universe; if you divide the universe the man is divided, if you divide the man the universe is divided.
The doctor need not be ill to help the patient; the doctor has to be healthy to help the patient.
The Charvakas in India, Epicurus in Greece, Karl Marx and others, they are materialists. They say only matter is true and consciousness is only an epiphenomenon, a by-product; it has no reality of its own.
People like Shankara, Nagarjuna say – the soul is real and the body is unreal, maya, illusion, an epiphenomenon, a by-product; it has no reality of its own.
Spiritual means the center of your being and the material means the circumference of your being.
Meditation is Life, not Livelihood
Meditation is life, not livelihood. It has nothing to do with what you do; it has everything to do with what you are.
A calculating person is a cowardly person: He thinks too much, he cannot take any jumps. Meditation is a jump: from the head to the heart, and ultimately from the heart to the being.
People who are not intelligent learn how to be clever. People who are intelligent need not be clever; they are innocent, they need not be cunning. They function out of a state of not-knowing.
Cleverness is not true intelligence either; cleverness is a poor substitute for intelligence.
Business should be just an outside thing, just one of the ways of livelihood. When you close your shop, forget all about your business. When you come home, don’t carry the shop in your head.
Doing is a superficial thing.
[ Religions and their intermediaries ] will tell you that you can remain a businessman and still can open a bank account in paradise. Be charitable, give some charity:
- Donate to the poor; donate to the temple, or the church, or the synagogue; to the hospital; to the school.
- Donate to the poor; donate to the temple, or the church; to the school – and you will be rewarded in your afterlife.
- Just do virtuous things, which you can afford.
- If you exploit people, you can always give a portion back to them.
There is no place like heaven anywhere; it is something inside you.
You can leave the world, but you cannot leave your mind here. The mind will go with you; it is inside you. And wherever you are, your same mind will create the same kind of world around you.
You can leave the world. You will be the same. You will again create the same world, because you carry the blueprint in your mind.
It is not a question of leaving the world, it is a question of changing the mind, renouncing the mind. That’s what meditation is.
Bliss is the Goal, Meditation is the Means
Bliss is the goal of life; Meditation is the means, the way to it.
Pleasure is physiological, chemical; it has no depth and it is very momentary.
Nature wants to reproduce the species and nature has devised clever means. The cleverest is the pleasure that you attain for a moment. It is for that pleasure that you are ready to reproduce.
It is because of that pleasure, that one is ready to go on doing any kind of stupid thing. But it is just a chemical phenomenon, hormonal, physiological.
Bliss is not even happiness. What we call happiness is psychological. Whenever you find a certain moment of elation your ego is fulfilled, you feel happy.
Only successful people know how tiring success is. They have wasted their whole lives accumulating wealth and now they say that it is stupid.
It needs courage to recognize the fact, “This was all stupid and we have been living a stupid life up to now.“
Whenever ego is fulfilled, you feel happy.
Bliss is not happiness. It is not pleasure because it is not physiological. It is not happiness because there is no ego fulfillment. On the contrary, it is dissolution of the ego, it is dissolving your separate entity into the whole.
When you can put aside your ego, your personality, your body-mind complex, and you are just a watcher, a witness, a consciousness, you know the first taste of meditation. And with that, immediately great bliss comes.
Everybody is a born Mystic
The egoist has to create the ordinary – that is the only way the ego can exist, persist.
Not a single human being is ordinary because each human being is so unique.
Each individual is so unique that he is never repeated.
You say, “Surely meditation is for mystics.” It is for mystics, surely, but everybody is a born mystic – because everybody carries a great mystery within him which has to be realized.
A mystic is one who is trying to realize the mystery of life, who is moving into the unknown, who is going into the uncharted, whose life is a life of adventure, exploration.
Every child starts that way – with awe, with wonder, with great inquiry in his heart. Every child is a mystic.
You have imprisoned them. The chains are very subtle, they are not very visible. The chains are of thought – Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan.
Mind is a Chatterbox
The mind is simply a bio-computer.
When the child is born he has no mind; there is no chattering going on in him.
It (mind) needs information to be fed into it; that’s why if you try to remember your life backward, you will get stuck somewhere at the age of four if you are a man, or at the age of three if you are a woman.
You must have seen little children, when for the first time they start speaking, they will repeat the same word many times. The joy! – a new mechanism has started functioning in them.
In this society, silence does not pay; words pay, and the more articulate you are, the more you will be paid.
Our whole society is dominated by verbally articulate people. They may not know anything. They may not be wise. They may not even be intelligent. But one thing is certain: They know how to play with words.
You can turn any computer on or off – but you cannot turn the mind off.
What is known in the world as charisma is simply a mind that knows how to relax and let energy collect, so when it speaks it is poetry, when it speaks, it need not give any evidence or any logic – just its own energy is enough to influence people.
A mind that is working day and night is bound to become weak, dull, unimpressive, somehow dragging.
If this is possible – and this is possible – to put the mind to silence and only use it when it is needed, then it comes with a rushing force.
Meditation is the essential religion, the only religion. Nothing else is needed. Everything else is nonessential ritual.
There are many kinds of richness, and the man who is rich because of money is the lowest as far as the categories of richness are concerned.
Everybody is born with a certain talent and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be.
Mind is a Social Phenomenon
Mind can exist only in the society; mind is a social phenomenon.
When mind cannot function it becomes anxious, worried. It needs functioning, it needs someone to communicate to.
In the ancient world – particularly in the East – there was no time consciousness.
- In the East it has been believed always that life goes on forever and ever. It is eternal.
- Even if you have to go in a hurry, go slowly.
With the idea of one life, and with another idea of linear time, Christianity has created anxiety in the mind; and now Christianity has become a global influence.
- Christianity says that time is not moving in a circle, it is moving in a straight line.
- Nothing is going to be repeated again, so everything is unique.
The Eastern concept is nearer to truth than the Western, because every movement is in a circle. The linear concept of time is absolutely wrong.
In the East we were never interested in history. We have been interested in myth, but never in history. The West introduced history into the world.
There is no need to be concerned with facts, because facts are repetitive. It is better to be concerned with the theme, not with the facts.
The East lives in myth; myth means a repetitive theme, the essential is always there.
In the West myth is meaningless. If you can prove that something is a myth it becomes meaningless. You have to prove that it is history, it has happened in time; you have to be exact about it.
Linear concept of non-repetitive life creates anxiety, so when you go into silence, alone, you become worried.
In the West being is not very valuable, doing is valuable. In the West if you are not working you are a vagabond, a bum.
Hippies are a recent phenomenon, but the East has always been hippie oriented. We have created the greatest hippies of the world! – a Buddha, a Mahavira, not doing anything, just sitting and meditating, enjoying their being, just being blissful.
Only a person who has nothing is the highest, because he doesn’t desire.
Speech becomes valuable only when you have attained silence, otherwise it is futile.
Those who walk slowly reach, those who are in a hurry always manage to stumble somewhere or other.
Mind has always been creating problems and loneliness.
Mind and Meditation cannot coexist.
Mind Thinks – Meditation Knows
Mind thinks. Meditation knows.
Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind.
You want to become somebody. Meditation can only make you a nobody.
People sacrifice their whole life to become somebody.
Only people who suffer from inferiority pretend to be great; the greater the inferiority the more they start projecting themselves higher, bigger, vaster.
This is the reason why man is not meditative: The whole society forces him to be in a state of mind, not in a state of meditation.
If you are running to get something outside yourself, you have to be subservient to the mind.
The Psychology of the Buddhas
Sigmund Freud introduced psychoanalysis into the world. It is rooted in analyzing the mind. It is confined to the mind. It does not step out of the mind, not even an inch.
The goal of Freudian psychoanalysis is not very great. The goal is to keep people normal. But normality is not enough. Just to be normal is not of any significance.
The psychology of the buddhas is neither analysis nor synthesis; it is transcendence, it is going beyond the mind.
When you are standing out of the mind all the problems of the mind disappear, because mind itself disappears; it loses its grip over you.
Psychoanalysis is like pruning leaves of the tree, but new leaves will be coming up. It is not cutting off the roots.
Psychosynthesis is sticking the fallen leaves back onto the tree again – gluing them back to the tree. That is not going to give them life.
The psychology of the buddhas cuts the very roots of the tree which create all kinds of neuroses, psychoses, which create the fragmentary man, the mechanical man, the robotlike man.
It is you who goes on feeding the mind. If you are identified you feed the mind; if you are not identified you stop feeding it.
Be more aware of your mind. And in being aware of your mind, you will become aware of the fact that you are not the mind, and that is the beginning of the revolution.
Healing comes when you are no longer attached to the mind.
Self-Awareness, Not Self-Consciousness
Self-consciousness is a disease. Self-awareness is health.
In self-consciousness the emphasis is on the self. In self-awareness the emphasis is on the awareness.
Self-consciousness is disease because you are continuously conscious of the self –
- How are people feeling about me?
- How are they judging me?
- What is their opinion?
If from self the focus goes to consciousness, now you are not worried whether people reject you or accept you. What their opinion is, that doesn’t matter. Now you want to be aware in every situation.
Ego is the greatest disease there is.
Somebody comes, bows down to you, he believes you are a saint: You don’t bother about what he says, what he believes. You simply remain alert, you remain aware so that he cannot drag you into unawareness, that’s all.
In appreciation or condemnation, in failure or success, you remain the same. Through your awareness you attain to a tranquility, which cannot be disturbed in either way.
A political person is self-conscious – emphasis on self, always worried about the opinion of the people. He depends on people’s opinions, their votes.
A religious man is a master of his own self; nobody can decide for him. He does not depend on your votes or on your opinions.
People who are self-conscious – emphasis on the self – have no self. That’s why they are so self-conscious, afraid – anybody can take their self away.
All those who in any way are dependent on others are political. They don’t have any self; inside is empty. They are always afraid of their emptiness.
A man who is religious, self-conscious – emphasis on consciousness – has a self, an authentic self. You cannot take that self away from him.
All those who are poor deep inside are always in search of a position, in search of people’s votes, opinions.
People who try to become superior are suffering from an inferiority complex, and people who are really superior – they don’t bother a bit.
People who are inferior always try to prove their superiority by their possessions.
People who don’t have a being try to gain a being through having things – posts, names, fame.
All politicians are murderers, because they are not worried about you. They are worried about their feeling: They should be somebody.
People need to remain always in fever; only then they help politicians. If people are satisfied, content, happy, who bothers about capitals?
People who don’t have their selfs go on supporting other selfs, because that is the only way they can get others’ support for their own selfs.
Dynamic methods of meditation which have catharsis as their foundation allow all chaos within you to be thrown out. That’s the beauty of these techniques.
People who work with their hands have less anxiety, less tension, they sleep better. When you work with the hands, the energy is flowing from the head into the hands and being released.
People who are working with their hands don’t need catharsis.
People who work with their heads need much catharsis because they accumulate much energy and there is no way, no opening for it to go out through the body. It goes on and on inside the mind; the mind goes mad.
In our culture and society – in the office, in the factory, in the market – people who work with heads are known as heads: head clerk, or head superintendent, and people who work with hands are known as hands, condemnatory.
Out of unhappiness, unhappiness is born; out of happiness, happiness is born.
Whatsoever is taken as real, becomes real. Whatsoever is taken as unreal, becomes unreal. You are the creator of your whole world around you.
Energy has to be creative. If you don’t use it for happiness, the same energy will be used for unhappiness.
Your time is created within you. Your time is not my time. There exist as many times parallel as there are minds. There is not one time.
There are few people who exist without time – those who have attained to no-mind. They have no time because they don’t think about the past; it is gone, so only fools think about it.
When something is gone, it is gone.
Responses to Questions from Meditators
Is it possible to meditate without any technique?
Meditation, as such, needs no technique at all.
- But techniques are needed to remove the obstacles in the way of meditation.
- Meditation itself needs no techniques, it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness.
No technique is needed at all – as far as meditation is concerned. But what are you going to do with your mind?
Your mind will create a thousand and one difficulties. Those techniques are needed to remove the mind from the way.
No technique is needed at all – as far as meditation is concerned. Techniques are needed to remove the mind from the way, to create a space in which the mind becomes quiet, silent, almost absent. Then meditation happens on its own accord.
Why did you have to create new meditation techniques?
It is the tradition that creates the mind.
The cathartic methods are simply to throw all your impatience, your speediness, your hurry, your repressions.
Before Buddha and Mahavira the East was never repressive of sexuality. It was with Buddha and Mahavira that for the first time celibacy became spiritual.
Do real problems exist? Are all problems just mind games? Does awareness make problems disappear?
Unawareness creates problems, is the only problem really. So when you become alert, aware, problems disappear.
If you repress, you will be afraid of becoming aware. That’s why millions of people are afraid of becoming aware.
Awareness will release all that is repressed.
When you are unconscious, you create problems.
“Are all problems just mind games?”
Yes. They are all mind games.
And “mind” is nothing but another name for unconsciousness.
Your consciousness has not to be out of willpower. It has to be out of understanding. It has to be relaxed. It has to be a kind of let-go. Not enforced.
Never bring awareness through willpower. Anything brought by willpower is going to be wrong – let that be the criterion.
Western psychologists say that meditation is a subjective phenomenon and therefore not much psychological research is possible. Do you agree?
Man can experience his subjectivity on his own, but he cannot invite a researcher to go into him and to find out who he is. This is, by nature, impossible.
The method of objective study is for things, matter.
J. Krishnamurti says that all yoga practices, all meditation techniques, are just like drugs
All experiences are through chemical change – all, without any exception. Whether you take LSD or you fast, in both ways the body goes through chemical change.
All experiences are chemical – without any exception. When you breathe deeply you create very much oxygen inside the body; the quantity of nitrogen falls. More oxygen changes inner chemistry.
If you take chemicals from the outside into the body, you will remain with them.
If you move through yoga, through the inner changes in the chemistry of the body, you will never be dependent, and you will be able to go beyond.
The reality is your consciousness.
An experience can become an experience to you only when you attain to it. Nobody can give it to you; it cannot be borrowed.
Always choose a higher thing. Whenever there is a possibility, and you want to choose, choose a higher thing.
Yesterday while sitting in zazen I felt myself get hit with a stick on my head. But at that time nobody had hit me.
On the path of meditation, imagination is a barrier; on the path of love, imagination is a help.
Imagination simply means that you visualize a certain thing but you put so much energy into it that it almost becomes real.
Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, “Unless you can remember in a dream that it is a dream, you will never awaken.”
You may be creating something, but if others start believing it you will start believing it. This is your imagination.
There is no Satan, no Mara, no devil – the real devil is in your mind, the imagination.
You need somebody to love you because only when somebody else loves you, will you be able to love yourself, not before it.
When somebody else feels happy with you; you will start feeling happy with yourself, not before it.
Each relationship is a mirror. It reflects you.
It seems I used to be able to meditate—I think.
All the things that are really valuable in life only happen; you cannot make them happen, you cannot do them.
The mind is the doer, but your being is not a doer. Your being is just an opening, and a deep acceptance of whatever happens.
A man who can be grateful when everything is going wrong is really grateful; he knows the beauty of gratefulness.
Remember, we are not the doers as far as things beyond mind are concerned; we are only receivers.
Always remain innocent as far as things beyond mind are concerned. Always remain amateur, never become an expert.
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” Even if for a single moment you are not doing anything and you are just at your center, utterly relaxed – that is meditation.”!
FABULOUS 👌👌🏽👍👏🙌
Thanks for well scripted Book – Summary. It has encouraged me to go for the book to get to know more of Meditation.
Thanks once again.🙏🙏🙏❤️