Osho - A course in meditation: a 21-day workout for your consciousness

If you want to live a more fulfilled life, first you will want to know your potential, who you really are. Meditation is the route to that knowing. It is the methodology of the science of awareness. The beauty of this inner science is that it enables whoever wants to explore and to experiment within, to do so alone. This eliminates dependence on an outer authority, the need to be affiliated with any organization, and the obligation to accept a certain ideology. Once you understand the steps, you walk the walk in your own, individual way.

Many meditative techniques require one to sit still and be silentwhich, for most of us with accumulated stress in the body and mind, can be difficult.

But what is meditation exactly? And how can you get started?

This 21-day experiential course is designed to give you a taste of meditation as it is taught by the contemporary mystic Osho. You might already know him from his books, translated and published in more than sixty languages. Osho is a mystic and a scientist, a rebellious spirit whose unique contribution to the understanding of who we are defies categorization. His only interest is to alert humanity to the urgent need to discover a new way of living. Oshos understanding is that only by changing ourselvesone individual at a timecan the outcome of all our selvesour societies, our cultures, our beliefs, our worldalso change. The doorway to that change is meditation.

For beginning meditators, this is a step-by-step guide to learn meditation, being mindful and still. For experienced meditators, it is the key to taking your practice to a new level. As part of this 21-day program, each day you will be introduced to a different aspect of meditative living, reading (or listening to, through the audiobook) excerpts from Oshos talks as an experience of meditation. Then you will be introduced to simple, practical meditation and awareness exercises related to the subject of the day, as tools to experiment with.

In the suggested reading section at the back of the book, for each day and topic we suggest a book by Osho that goes more deeply into the subject matter addressed in the days program.

Just as science investigates the outer world, Osho uses a scientific approach to the inner world of meditation and self-discovery. He has experimented with all the meditation techniques developed in the past and has examined their effects on the modern human being. He has seen how difficult it is for the hyperactive 21st-century mind to just sit silently, for example, and watch the breath. Or how easy it is for an ancient sacred mantra to be used just as a replacement for a modern-day sleeping pill. Out of this understanding, he has created new meditations for the people of today. He suggests starting with the bodyto become aware of what we can observe in the thoughts and sensations of the body-mind complex. Many of the Osho meditations begin with physical activity to first release the tensions and stress of body and mind. Then, it is easier to relax into an experience of still and silent watchfulness, awareness.

Osho also transformed the art of listening into a doorway to meditation. Speaking each day to the people gathered around himpeople of all ages, nationalities, and cultural backgroundshis talks respond to their questions and concerns and lay out his proposal for a saner and more inner-directed way of living. Those talks have been published in the many Osho books now available in the market. Osho emphasized again and again that the talks are not lectures to convey information. He says, My speaking is not oratory; it is not a doctrine that I am preaching to you. It is simply an arbitrary device to give you a taste of what silence is.

In other words, the Osho talks are, in themselves, a meditation. Here, words become music, the listener discovers who is listening, and the awareness moves from what is being heard to the individual doing the hearing.

An audio edition of this guide is also available if you would like to experience Oshos talks as a listening meditation. Each day you will have the opportunity to hear an original recording, excerpted from an Osho talk that is related to the program of the day. Following the excerpt, you can then also choose to listen to a facilitator who will guide you through each days meditation technique. Whenever you like, you can come back to the printed text and use the provided pages to create a journal of your experiences.

Today we start with a basic question: What is meditation?

Oshos response suggests that meditation is a quality we are born with, and that our task is simply to remember and reconnect with that quality we had as a child.

After each Insight section there will be a meditation and awareness exercise by Osho.

You can experiment with it in your own time, perhaps before you go to sleep tonight.

OSHOS INSIGHT

Meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content. Ordinarily, your consciousness is too much 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 movingit 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.