TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE,
REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE.
ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS.
THINKING NO THING
WILL LIMITED-SELF UNLIMIT.
-Vijnana Bhairava (Vigyan Bhairav Tantra)
Don’t deceive yourself
There is a deep attachment to the body – bound to be, it is natural. You have been living in the body for many, many lives. There have been certain times when you were not embodied, but then you were not conscious. When you die from one body, you die in unconsciousness and then you remain unconscious. Then you are born again in a new body, but then too you are unconscious. The gap between one death and another birth is unconscious, so you don’t know how you will feel when not embodied. You don’t know who you are when you are not in a body. You know only one phenomenon, and that is of embodiment; you have always known yourself in the body. This has been so long, so continuous, that you have forgotten that you are different from it. This is a forgetfulness – natural, bound to happen in the circumstances – hence the attachment.
You feel you are the body – this is the attachment. You feel that you are not anything other than the body, not anything more than the body. You may not agree with me at this point, because many times you think that you are not the body, you are the soul, the Self. But this is not your knowing; this is simply what you have heard, what you have read, and what you have believed without knowing. Don’t deceive yourself, because deception will not help. If you think that you already know that you are not the body, then you cannot toss aside the attachment, because really for you there is no attachment, you already know.
So remember well and realize that you don’t know yourself as anything other than the body. This is the first basic realization. This realization is not there. Your mind is befogged by whatsoever you have heard; your mind is conditioned by the knowledge of others – it is borrowed, it is not real. Not that it is false – those who have said it, they have known it – but for you it is false, unless it becomes your own experience. You have heard; this is part of an inheritance – that you are not the body – but it is not real for you. First toss aside this unreal for you knowledge. Face the fact that you know yourself only as the body. You go on believing that you are not the body and you go on living as the body, so you are divided, and your whole being becomes non-authentic, pseudo. Really this is a paranoid condition. You live and behave as the body and you think and talk as the soul – then there is a struggle and a conflict and then you are constantly in an inner turmoil, a deep unease which cannot be bridged. So first encounter the fact you don’t know anything about the soul, the Self – all that you know is about the body. This will release an uneasy condition in you. All that is hidden will come up to the surface, you will literally start perspiring. In realizing this fact you will feel strange, but that feeling has to be gone through; only then can you know what attachment to the body means.
Teachers go on saying that you should not be attached to your body, but the basic thing – what the attachment to the body is – is unknown to you. Attachment to the body is a deep identification with the body, but first you have to realize what this identification is. Realize that you know only one thing, and that is the body. How does this create and how does this release hidden turmoil and a hidden hell within you? The moment you realize you are the body, for the first time you realize the attachment. For the first time you grip the fact in your consciousness that this body which is born, and this body which is going to die, is you. For the first time you realize the fact that this sex, this anger – this is you. So all the false images fall. You become real.
The reality is painful, very painful – that’s why we go on hiding it. It is a deep trick. You go on thinking about yourself as the Self, and everything that you don’t like, you throw on the body. So you say sex belongs to the body, love belongs to you. Then you say greed and anger, they belong to the body; compassion belongs to you. Compassion belongs to the Self, and cruelty belongs to the body. Forgiveness belongs to the self, and anger belongs to the body. So whatsoever you feel is wrong, ugly, you throw to the body, and whatsoever you feel is beautiful, you go on being identified with. You create a division. This division will not allow you to know what attachment is, and unless you know what attachment is and unless you suffer the misery of it and the hell of it, you cannot put it aside. How can you put it aside? You can put something aside only when it proves a disease, when it proves a heavy burden, when it proves a hell; only then can you put it aside. Your attachment has not proved a hell yet. Whatsoever Buddha says and Mahavir says is irrelevant. They may go on saying that attachment is hell, but this is not your feeling. That’s why you again and again ask how to be detached, how to be not attached, how to go beyond attachment. You go on asking this ‘how’ only because you don’t know what attachment is. If you know what attachment is, you will simply jump out of it. You will not ask ‘how’.
If your house is on fire you will not ask anyone, you will not go seeking a master to ask how to come out of it. If the house is on fire you will simply get out of it. You will not lose a single moment. You will
not search for the teacher, you will not consult the scriptures. And you will not try to choose in what ways one has to come out, what means have to be adopted, and which door is the right door. These
things are irrelevant when the house is on fire. When you know what attachment is, the house is on fire. You can put it aside.
To enter in this technique, first you have to throw the false knowledge of the Self so that attachment with the body is revealed in its totality. It is arduous, but once you face it, you can put it aside.
It’s not the body that is limiting you, it’s your attachment to it
And the moment you toss aside the attachment, you will realize you are everywhere. Because of this attachment you feel you are limited by the body. It is not the body which is limiting you; it is your attachment to it. It is not the body which is making a barrier between you and the reality; it is your attachment to it. Once you know that the attachment is not there, there is no body to you. Rather, the whole existence becomes your body; your body becomes a part of the total existence. Then it is not separate. Really, your body is the nearest existence to you, that’s all – and then it goes on spreading. Your body is just the nearest corner of it, and then the whole existence is there – it goes on spreading. Once your attachment is not there, there is no body to you; or, the whole existence has become your body. You are everywhere. In the body you are somewhere; without the body you are everywhere. In the body you are confined to a particular space; without the body you have no confinement. That’s why those who have known, they say the body is the imprisonment. Not that the body is the imprisonment; really, the attachment to it is the imprisonment. Once your eyes are not focused on the body, you are everywhere.
To the mind this looks absurd, – how can one be everywhere? To a Buddha, whatsoever we say – that ‘I am here’ – really looks like madness. How can you be somewhere? Consciousness is not a space concept. That’s why if you close your eyes and try to find out where in your body you are, you will be at a loss. You cannot say. And you can forget the body completely, but your feeling that you are, remains. There have been many religions and many sects which have preached that you are in the navel. Some say that you are in the heart, some say that you are in the head, some say that you are in this center and that center, but Shiva says you are everywhere.
You are, but there is no ‘where’ to you. Simply you are.
In deep sleep you are not aware of the body. You are. In the morning you will say that the sleep was very deep, very blissful. You were aware of a deep bliss running throughout, but you were not aware of the body. In deep sleep where are you? When you die, where do you go? Continuously people ask, ‘When someone dies, where does he go?’ But the question is absurd, foolish. It is related to our embodied consciousness – because we think that we are somewhere, so then when we die, where do we go? – nowhere. When you die, you are not somewhere, that’s all. You are not confined to a space, that’s all.
But if you have a desire to be confined, you will be confined again. Your desire leads you to new confinements. But when you are not in the body, you are nowhere, or, everywhere – this depends on which word appeals to you. If you ask Buddha, he will say you are nowhere. That’s why he chooses the word ‘nirvana’. Nirvana means you are nowhere. Just like a flame which has gone out – how can you say where the flame is then? He will say it is nowhere. Buddha uses a negative term-nowhere. That’s what nirvana means. When you are not attached to the body you are in nirvana, you are nowhere. Shiva chooses a positive term – he says everywhere – but both the terms mean the same. If you are everywhere, you cannot be somewhere. If you are everywhere, it is saying almost the same thing as saying that you are nowhere. But in the body we are attached, and we feel that we are confined. This confinement is a mental act; it is your own doing. And you can confine yourself to anything.
Wherever you get attached, it becomes a new imprisonment. And whatsoever we are doing in life is this: we go on creating more and more imprisonments, bigger and bigger jails to live in. Then we
go on decorating those jails so that they look like home, and then we forget completely that they are jails.
This sutra says, that if you toss aside the attachment with the body, realization happens that I AM EVERYWHERE. You have an oceanic feeling, your consciousness exists without any location. Your consciousness exists without being tethered anywhere. You become just like a sky, enveloping all; everything is in you. Your consciousness has expanded to the infinite possibility.
One who is Everywhere is Joyous
Then the sutra says: one who is everywhere is joyous. Confined to a place you will be in misery, because you are always bigger than where you are confined. This is the misery – as if you are forcing yourself into a small bowl; the ocean is being forced into a small pot. This is the misery, and whenever this misery has been felt, arises the search for the Brahma. Brahma means the infinite one. The search for moksha means the search for freedom. In a limited body you cannot be free; somewhere you will be a slave. Nowhere or everywhere, you can be free.
The inner struggle cannot cease unless you begin to feel and know that you are everywhere. The moment you feel you are everywhere, freedom is attained. This is existential. This freedom is total. That’s why we have called it moksha, total freedom. And then only, can you be joyous. Joy or bliss is possible only when you are totally free. Really, to be totally free means joy. The joy is not a consequence, it is the very happening. When you are totally free you are joyous, you are blissful. This bliss is not happening as an effect. Freedom is bliss, slavery is misery. The moment you feel limited, you are miserable; wherever you feel limited you feel miserable. When you feel unlimited, misery disappears.
Whenever you feel this freedom, joy happens to you. Even now, whenever you feel a certain freedom, even if it is not total, joy comes to you. You fall in love with somebody: a certain joy, a certain bliss happens to you. Why does it happen? Really, whenever you are in love with somebody, you have tossed aside your own attachment to the body. In a deep sense, now the other’s body has also become your body. You are not confined to your own body now; somebody else’s body has also become your body, it has also become your home, it has also become your abode. Now you can move into the other and the other can move into you. In a limited way, a barrier has fallen. You are more than before. When you love someone you are more than you ever were; your being has increased, expanded. Your consciousness is not limited like it was before; it has reached a new realm. You feel a certain freedom in love. It is not total, and sooner or later you will feel again confined. You feel extended, but still finite. So those who really love, are sooner or later bound to fall into prayer.
Prayer means a greater love. Prayer means a love with the whole existence. You now know the secret. You know a key, a secret key – that you loved a person, and the moment you loved, the doors opened and the barriers dissolved, and at least for one person more your being was expanded, increased. Now you know the secret key.
If you can fall in love with the whole existence, you will not be the body.
In love, joy comes to you. It is not pleasure. Remember, joy is not pleasure. Pleasure comes to you through the senses; joy come to you through being non-sensuous. Pleasures comes to you through the body; joy comes to you when you are not the body. When for a moment the body has disappeared and you are simply consciousness, then joy comes to you. When you identify yourself with the body pleasure can happen to you. It is always through the body. Pain is possible, pleasure is possible through the body. Joy is possible only when you are not the body.
It happens ordinarily also, accidentally also. You are listening to music and suddenly gravitation is lost. You are so absorbed in it, you have forgotten your body. You are filled with music and you have
become one with music. There is not a listener to it: the listener and the listened have become one. Only music exists; you are no more. You have expanded. Now you are flowing with musical notes, now there is no limit to you. The notes are dissolving into silence, and you are also dissolving into silence with them. The body is forgotten. Whenever the body is forgotten, it is tossed aside unknowingly, unconsciously and joy happens to you. Through Tantra and Yoga you can do it methodologically. Then it is not an accident; then you are the master of it.
Through this technique, you know that one who is everywhere cannot be miserable; he is joyous, he is joy. So the more you become confined, the more miserable. Expand, push your boundaries away, and whenever you can, leave the body aside. You look in the sky and clouds are floating: move with the clouds, leave the body here on the earth. And the moon is there: move with the moon. Whenever you can forget the body, don’t miss the opportunity – go on a journey. And then you will become accustomed to what it means to be out of the body. And this is only a question of attention. Attachment is a question of attention. If you pay attention to the body, you are attached. If the attention has moved away, you are not attached. Look, for example: you are playing on the sports-grounds; you are playing hockey or volley-ball or sth else. When you are deep in play, your attention is not on the body. Someone has hit your feet and the blood is flowing – you are not aware. The pain is there, but you are not there. The blood is flowing, but you are out of the body. Your consciousness, your attention, may be flying with the ball, may be running with the ball. Your attention is somewhere else. The game finishes: suddenly you come back to the body, and the blood is there and the pain. And you wonder how it happened – when it happened and how it happened and how you were not aware of it. To be in the body, your attention is needed to be there. So remember it – wherever your attention is, you are there. If your attention is in the clouds, you are there. If your attention is in the flower, you are there. If your attention is in money, you are there. Your attention is your being. And if your attention is nowhere, you are everywhere. So the whole process of meditation is to be in such a state of consciousness where your attention is nowhere, there is no object to it. When there is no object to it, there is no body to you. Your attention creates the body. Your attention is your body. And when attention is nowhere, you are everywhere, joy happens to you.
The second technique:
Thinking no thing will limited-Self unlimit
If you are not thinking, you are unlimited. Thinking gives you a limit, and there are many types of limits. You are a Hindu – it gives a limit. Hindu, to be a Hindu, is to be attached to a thought, to a system, to a pattern. You are a Christian – then again you are limited. A religious man cannot be a Hindu or a Christian. And if someone is a Hindu or a Christian, he is not religious – impossible– because these are thoughts. A religious man means not thinking thoughts; not limited by any
thought, by any system, by any pattern; not limited by the mind, living in the unlimited. When you have a certain thought, that thought becomes your barrier. It may be a beautiful thought – still it is a barrier. A beautiful prison is still a prison. It may be a golden thought but it makes no difference, it imprisons you all the same. And whenever you have a thought and you are attached to it, you are always against someone, because barriers cannot exist if you are not against someone.
A thought is always a prejudice; it is always for and against.
The Christian cannot conceive that the non-Christian can reach the kingdom of God. A Hindu or a Jain cannot conceive, that others can enter into that realm of bliss – impossible. Thought creates a limitation, a barrier, a boundary, and all those who are not for, are taken to be against. Thought is bound to be somewhere against – against someone or something. It cannot be total. Remember: thought cannot be total; only no-thought can be total. Secondly, thought is always from the mind, it is always a by-product of the mind. It is your attitude, your speculation, your prejudice; it is your reaction, your formulation, your concept, your philosophy, but it is not existence itself. It is something about the existence; it is not existence itself.
The body is not the only body – a deeper body is the mind. Body consists of matter; mind also consists of matter – subtle, more refined. Body is the outer layer, mind is the inner layer. The mind is the inner layer of the body. Mind and body are not two: the outer layer of your body is the body and the inner layer is the mind. In death the outer dissolves, but the inner is carried. It is a very subtle material thing. Really, just vibrations of energy, thought vibrations. You carry them, and according to your thought pattern that you carry, you enter a new body. According to the thought pattern, the desire pattern, the mind,
you again create a new body for yourself. The blue-print is in the mind, and the outer layer is again accumulated.
Put aside the mind
The first sutra is to put aside the body. The second sutra is to put aside the mind, the inner body. And only in meditation can disidentification happen. That’s why meditation is a greater death, it is a deeper surgery – deeper than death itself. That’s why so much fear. People go on talking about meditation but they do not meditate. They will talk, they can write about it, they can preach about it, but they never practice. Those who do practice, they come one day or another to the point where they are scared, thrown back. They come to me and they say, ‘Now we cannot enter more. It is impossible.’ A point comes where one feels that one is dying. And that point is of a deeper death than any death, because now the innermost being is distinct; the most inner identity is being shattered. One feels one is dying; one feels now one is moving into non-existence. A deep abyss opens, infinite emptiness opens. One is scared, runs back to cling to the body so that one is not thrown, because the earth beneath is moving, is being removed. A valley is opening, a nothingness…So people, even if they try, they always try superficially; they play with meditation. They are unconsciously aware that if they move deep they will be no more. And that’s right, – you will not be yourself again. Once you have known that abyss, that shoonya, the void, you will not be the same again. You come back, but you are resurrected, a new man. The old has disappeared. You cannot find even a trace of it, of where it has gone. The old was the identity with the mind. Now you cannot be identified with the mind. Now you can use the mind, you can use the body, but they have become, what they already are, instruments; you are above them. And this gives freedom. But this can happen only when THINKING NO THING.
This is very paradoxical – THINKING NO THING. You can think about things. How can you think about no thing? What does this ‘no thing’ mean? And how can you think about it? Whenever you think about something it becomes a thing, it becomes an object, it becomes a thought, and thoughts are things. How can you think no-thing? You cannot, but in the very effort – the effort to
think no thing – thinking will be lost, thinking will be dissolved.
In this state of no-mind, the limited-self unlimits. The limits are dissolved. Suddenly you are everywhere, suddenly you are everyone. Suddenly you are in the tree and in the stone and in the sky and in the friend and in the stranger – suddenly you are everywhere. The whole existence has become just a mirror – you are everywhere, mirrored. This state is the state of bliss. Now nothing can disturb you, because nothing exists, except you. Now nothing can destroy you; nothing exists except you. Now there is no death, because even in death, you are. Now nothing is opposed to you. Alone, you exist. This aloneness Mahavir has called KAIVALYA, total aloneness. Why alone? – because everything is absorbed, has become you. You can express this state in two ways. You can say, ‘Only -I am Aham – Brahmasmi – I am Brahma, the divine, the total. Everything has come unto me; all the rivers have dissolved into my ocean. Alone I exist. Nothing else exists.’ A Sufi says, ‘ ‘I am the God.’ This is a positive way of saying that now, no separation is there. Buddha uses a negative way. He says, ‘I am no more. Nothing exists.’ Both are true, because when everything is included in me, there is no sense in calling myself.
The I is always opposed to the YOU; I is always opposed to THOU. In relation to YOU it is meaningful. When there is no YOU, I becomes meaningless.
So Buddha says there is no I, nothing exists. Either everything has become you, or you have become a non-being and you dissolve into everything. Both the expressions are true. Of course, no expression can be totally true, that’s why the opposite expression is always also true. Every expression is partial, part; that’s why the opposite expression is also true – that too is part of it. Remember this. Whatsoever you express may be true and the opposite also may be true – the very opposite. And there are two types of expression: you can choose the positive or you can choose the negative. If you choose the positive, the negative seems to be untrue. It is not; it is complementary. It is not really opposed to it. So whether you say Brahma – the total – or you say Nirvana – the nothingnes– it is the same. Both connote the same experience, and the experience is this – thinking no thing, you come to know it.
How do you relate?
Thinking no thing… thinking, you are separated from existence. Thinking is not a relation, it is not a bridge, it is not a communication – it is a barrier. Non-thinking you are related, bridged; you are in communion. When you are talking to someone, you are not related. The very talk becomes a barrier. The more you talk, the further away you move. If you are with someone in silence, you are related. If the silence is really deep and there are no thoughts in your mind and both the minds are totally silent, you are one.
When you are silent with existence, you are one with it. This technique says, be silent with existence and then you will know what God is. There is only one dialogue with existence and that is in silence. If you talk with existence, you miss. Then you are enveloped in your own thoughts.
God, existence, cannot understand your language. Existence understands only one language – that is of silence. And silence is neither Sanskrit nor Arabic nor English nor Hindi. Silence is universal; it doesn’t belong to anyone. Really only through silence is one related.
And if you know the language of silence, then you can be related to anything, because rocks are silent, trees are silent, the sky is silent – it is existential. It is not only human, it is existential. Everything knows what silence is; everything exists in silence. Meditation means silence: not thinking about anything. Not thinking at all, just being – open, ready, eager to meet, welcoming, receptive, loving, but not thinking at all. Then infinite love will happen to you, and you will never say that no one loves you.
Even lovers go on asking each other, ‘Do you love me?’ In so many ways they go on enquiring continuously. Everyone is afraid, uncertain, insecure. In many ways they try to find out whether really the lover loves them. And they can never be certain, because the lover can say, ‘Yes, I love you,’ but it will not give any guarantee. How can you be at ease? How can you know whether he is deceiving you or not? He can argue, he can convince you. He can convince you intellectually, but
the heart will not be convinced. So lovers are always in agony. They cannot be convinced of the fact that the other loves. How can you be convinced? Really there is no way to convince through language. And you are asking through language, and while the lover is there you are chattering in the mind, questioning, arguing. You will never be convinced, and you will always feel that you have not been loved, and this becomes the deepest misery. And this is happening not because someone is not loving you. This is happening because you are closed in a wall. You are closed within your thoughts; nothing can penetrate. The thoughts cannot be penetrated unless you drop them. If you drop them the whole existence penetrates you.
This sutra says:
THINKING NO THING
WILL LIMITED SELF UNLIMIT
You will become unlimited. You will become whole. You will become universal. You will be everywhere. And then you are joy.
-Osho (28 June 1973 in Bombay, India)