Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 Traditional Techniques

A flower that has never known the sun and a flower that has encountered the sun are not the same.

They cannot be. A flower that has never known the sunrise has never known the sun to rise within itself. It is dead; it is just a potentiality. It has never known its own spirit. But a flower that has seen the sun rise has also seen something arise within itself. It has known its own soul. Now the flower is not just a flower; it has known a deep, stirring innerness.

Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 The Manifestations of Prana in the Seven Bodies

Question:

WHAT IS PRANA AND HOW IS IT MANIFESTED IN EACH OF THE SEVEN BODIES?

Prana is energy - the living energy in us, the life in us. This life manifests itself, as far as the physical body is concerned, as the incoming and the outgoing breath. These are two opposite things. We take them as one. We say "breathing" - but breathing has two polarities: the incoming breath and the outgoing breath. Every energy has polarities, every energy exists in two opposite poles. It cannot exist otherwise. The opposite poles, with their tension and harmony, create energy - just like magnetic poles.

Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 Sexual Energy and the Awakening of the Kundalini

Question 1:

HOW DOES ONE OVERCOME THE PULL TOWARD SEX SO THAT THE KUNDALINI CAN GO UPWARD?

Energy has been going downward through the sex center continuously for many births, so when any energy is created it will first try to move downward. That is why meditation sometimes will create more sexuality in you than you have ever felt before. You will feel more sexual because you have generated more energy than you previously had. When you have conserved something, the old, habitual passage is ready to release it. The mechanism is ready, the old passage is ready. Your mind only knows one passage - the lower one, the sexual passage - so when you are meditating the first movement of your life energy will be downward. Just be aware of it.

Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 The Difference between Satori and Samadhi

Question:

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN EXPERIENCE BETWEEN SATORI - IN ZEN, A GLIMPSE OF ENLIGHTENMENT - AND SAMADHI, COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS?

Samadhi begins as a gap, but it never ends. A gap always begins and ends - it has boundaries: a beginning and an end - but samadhi begins as a gap and then is everlasting. There is no end to it.

Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 Consciousness, Witnessing and Awareness

Question:

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AWARENESS AND WITNESSING?

There is much difference between awareness and witnessing. Witnessing is still an act; you are doing it, the ego is there. So the phenomenon of witnessing is divided between the subject and the object.

Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 Intuition: A Non-Explanation

Question:

CAN INTUITION BE EXPLAINED SCIENTIFICALLY? IS IT A PHENOMENON OF THE MIND?

Intuition cannot be explained scientifically because the very phenomenon is unscientific and irrational. The very phenomenon of intuition is irrational. In language it looks okay to ask, "Can intuition be explained?" It means: can intuition be reduced to intellect? But intuition means something beyond the intellect, something not of the intellect, something coming from someplace where intellect is totally unaware. So intellect can feel it, but it cannot explain it.

Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 LSD and Meditation

Question:

CAN LSD BE USED AS A HELP IN MEDITATION?

LSD can be used as a help, but the help is very dangerous; it is not so easy. If you use a mantra, even that can become difficult to throw, but if you use acid, LSD it will be even more difficult to throw.

The moment you are on an LSD trip you are not in control. Chemistry takes control and you are not the master, and once you are not the master it is difficult to regain that position. The chemical is not the slave now, you are the slave. Now how to control it is not going to be your choice. Once you take LSD as a help you are making a slave of the master and your whole body chemistry will be affected by it.

Osho - Meditation The Art of Ecstasy

 What is the Soul?

Question: 1

WHAT IS IT THAT YOU CALL ATMAN, SOUL? IS THIS SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF OR IS IT SOMETHING INDIVIDUAL?

Really, no matter what we call it, we will miss it. Any conceptualization is going to miss the real - any conceptualization - so whatever has been known as the self, the soul, the atman, is not the real thing. It cannot be. All those who have defined it, have defined it with a condition: that they are trying something that is absurd. That which cannot be said they are saying; that which cannot be defined they are defining; that which cannot be known they are making a theory about.

There have been three attitudes about it.