Osho - The Secret of Meditation

Osho,
What is meditation?

It is the most important question as far as my religion isconcerned. Meditation is the very center of my whole effort. It is the verywomb out of which the new religion is going to be born.

But it is very difficult to verbalize it. To say something aboutmeditation is a contradiction in terms. It is something which you can have,which you can be, but by its very nature you cannot say what it is. Still,efforts have been made to convey it in some way. Even if only a fragmentary,partial understanding arises out of it, that is more than one can expect.

But even that partial understanding of meditation can become aseed. Much depends on how you listen. If you only hear, then even a fragmentcannot be conveyed to you, but if you listen Try to understand the differencebetween the two.

Hearing is mechanical. You have ears, you can hear. If you aregetting deaf, then a mechanical aid can help you to hear. Your ears are nothingbut a certain mechanism to receive sounds. Hearing is very simple animalshear, anybody who has ears is capable of hearing but listening is a farhigher stage.

Listening means that when you are hearing, you are onlyhearing and not doing anything else no other thoughts are in your mind, noclouds pass in your inner sky. So whatever is being said reaches as it is beingsaid. It is not interfered with by your mind; not interpreted by you, by yourprejudices; not clouded by anything that, right now, is passing within you because all those are distortions.

Ordinarily it is not difficult: you manage just by hearingbecause the things that you are hearing are common objects. If I say somethingabout the house, the door, the tree, the bird, there is no problem. These arecommon objects; there is no need of listening. But when we are talking aboutsomething like meditation which is not an object at all, it is a subjectivestate; we can only indicate it you have to be very attentive and alert, andthen there is a possibility that some meaning reaches you.

If even a little understanding arises in you, it is more thanenough because understanding has its own way of growing. If just a little bitof understanding falls in the right place, in the heart, it starts growing ofits own accord.

First try to understand the word meditation. It is not theright word for the state about which any authentic seeker is bound to beconcerned. So I would like to tell you something about a few words. InSanskrit, we have a special word for meditation, the word is dhyana. Inno other language does a parallel word exist; the word is untranslatable. Ithas been recognized for two thousand years that this word is untranslatable forthe simple reason that in no other language have people tried it or experiencedthe state that it denotes. So those languages dont have that word.

A word is needed only when there is something to say, somethingto designate. In English there are three words: the first is concentration.I have seen many books written by very well-meaning people, but they are notpeople who have experienced meditation. They go on using the word concentrationfor dhyanadhyana is not concentration. Concentrationsimply means your mind is focused on one point; it is a state of mind.Ordinarily the mind is continuously moving, but if it moves continuously, youcannot work with the mind on a particular subject.

For example, in science, concentration is needed; withoutconcentration there is no possibility of science. It is not strange thatscience has not evolved in the East I see these deep inner connections because concentration was never valued. For religion something else is needed,not concentration.

Concentration is the mind focused on one point, which has itsutility because then you can go deeper and deeper into a certain object. Thatswhat science goes on doing: finding out more and more about the objectiveworld. A man with a mind which is continuously roaming around cannot be ascientist. The whole art of the scientist is that he is capable of forgettingthe whole world and putting his whole consciousness onto one thing. And whenthe whole consciousness is poured into one thing, it is almost likeconcentrating sun rays through a lens: you can create fire.

Those rays themselves cannot create fire because they arediffused; they are going farther away from each other. Their movement is justthe opposite of concentration. Concentration means rays coming together,meeting on one point; and when so many rays meet on one point, they have enoughenergy to create fire. Consciousness has the same quality: concentrate it andyou can penetrate deeper into the mysteries of objects.

I am reminded of Thomas Alva Edison one of the great scientistsof this country. He was working on something with such concentration that whenhis wife came with his breakfast, she saw that he was so involved that he hadnot even heard her coming. He had not even looked at her, he was not aware thatshe was there, and she knew that this was not the right time to disturb him.Of course the breakfast will get cold but he will be really angry if I disturbhim one never knows where he is.

So she simply put the breakfast at his side, so that whenever hecame back from his journey of concentration he would see the breakfast and takeit. But what happened? In the meantime a friend dropped by he also saw him soconcentrated. He looked at the breakfast getting cold and said, Better let himdo his work. I should finish the breakfast, it is getting cold. He ate thebreakfast and Edison was not even aware that this friend was there and hadeaten his breakfast.

When he returned from his concentration, he looked around, sawthe friend and saw the empty plates. He told the friend, Please forgive me.You came a little late and I have already taken my breakfast. Obviously,because the plates were finished somebody had eaten, and who else could haveeaten it? He must have! The poor friend could not understand what to do. He wasthinking to give him a surprise but this man had given him a bigger surprise:he had said, You came a little late

But his wife was watching the whole thing. She came in and said,He has not come late, you have come late! He has finished yourbreakfast. I was watching, but I saw that it was getting cold. Anyway, at leastsomebody ate it. You are some scientist! I cannot understand how you manageyour science. You dont even know who has eaten your breakfast and you areapologizing to him: You came a little late, I am sorry

Concentration is always the narrowing of your consciousness. Thenarrower it becomes, the more powerful it is. It is like a sword that cuts intoany secret of nature: you have to become oblivious of everything. But this isnot religion. Many people have misunderstood not only in the West, but in theEast too. They think that concentration is religion. It gives you tremendouspowers, but those powers are of the mind.