3 Steps to Awakening

Preface

Waking up or awakening means that the dream is over – whatever was known up to now remains no longer. So it is difficult to say what awakening means, because your language is of sleep. At present, whatever can be told to you or whatever can be understood by you will be in the language of the dream. If I say that you will get happiness, then you will think of the happiness which you have known in the dream. If I say that you will not get misery, then you will think of the same misery which you have known in the dream.

If you think, you will not attain. That is why all the buddhas have kept quiet. Whenever someone asked what will happen after the awakening they just kept quiet. They said, Wake up and see, because this is beyond the language which you know, or this is beyond your understanding which you have through language. Neither your happiness nor your misery is there. Neither your peace nor your restlessness is there. Neither your satisfaction nor your dissatisfaction – whatever you have known up to now is not there. The scriptures you have known up to now are also not there. The images of the divine which were made by you are also not there. Your notions about heaven and hell are also not there. When you are not there, your notions also will not be there.

There is something which cannot be described, which cannot be defined – you can call it brahman, Vishnupad, jinpad or buddhahood, but even by these words nothing can be known. If you wake up, only then can you know. A dumb man cannot describe the taste of sugar, but he can enjoy it.

What will happen after awakening? You will taste the divine, the taste which you have been trying to get all these past lives but could not get – you missed it always. It just cannot be described. If you are bored with the way you have been living, then wake up. But if you have not even a little bit of interest in it yet, then just turn over and go to sleep again.

But you will have to wake up one day. Sleep cannot be eternal, and sleep cannot be the ultimate rest, and darkness cannot be the experience of the ultimate truth. Sooner or later you will have to get up – it all depends on you. But whenever you awaken you will repent for not having woken up earlier – it just meant spreading out your hand – it was so near.

Osho

The Song of Ecstasy

Introduction

It is a hot summer day in the early 1960’s and a group of people interested in meditation have gathered in a secluded retreat in the hills of Rajasthan, India. Few, if any, can imagine they are participating in an event which will prove to be the first seed of a revolutionary experiment in the flowering of human consciousness – one which will eventually transform the lives of millions of people all over the world.

Osho, the man around whom these people have gathered, was at that time a professor of philosophy at Jabalpur University. This first meditation camp in Ranakpur, Rajasthan, became a model for the evolution of his work over the following years.

I want you to become a participant in the bliss I am experiencing as the result of my awakening, says Osho in these talks, which became his first published book. And so I have decided to call you.... Pardon me if my call disturbs your sleep and disperses the fog of your dreams.

In his dream-breaking, Osho carefully guides us through the maze of our own minds, through our process of creating thoughts, toward a zone of silence. His genius is in full flight. And the subject couldn't be more mysterious nor important: one’s own self. He unravels fundamental questions about what meditation is and how one can begin and sustain a life of meditation. He does this with a precision, thoroughness and compassion that can only come from a master – one who knows, and is able to convey what he knows. He points us as far as one can with words toward the inner world of the self, of our being.

Osho, himself, has spoken of this book on several occasions. When the second prime minister of India traveled to Russia, a copy of The Perfect Way was in his hands. And when someone who had been seeking his whole life stumbled upon The Perfect Way at the age of ninety, he commented, All my learning of the scriptures was futile, only this small book is enough.

To be without thoughts is meditation, Osho says. When there are no thoughts, it is then we come to know the one hidden by our thoughts. When there are no clouds, the blue sky is revealed.

This book is page after page of blue sky.

Chapter: 1

Freedom of Consciousness

I am thinking about what subject I should speak to you on. There are so many topics and the world is filled with so many issues that this hesitation is very natural. There are many schools of thought, theologies, and doctrines about truth. I fear that my talks could even increase the burden that is already very heavy on humanity. I feel very hesitant, afraid to say anything because it may stick in your mind. I’m afraid you may cling to what is being said, afraid you may find what I am going to say very appealing, and that it might make a place for itself in your mind.

Man is troubled and in anguish because of thoughts and doctrines. It is because of doctrines that truth is never born in the life of man. Borrowed knowledge and what others say are always within him, and they are a hindrance for the truth. Knowledge is not attained from the outside; whatever is gathered from the outside holds back the truth.

I am also outside of you. Whatever I say will also be from the outside; you should not think of it as knowledge. It is not knowledge; it cannot be knowledge for you. Whatever someone else gives you cannot be your knowledge and there is even a danger that it could cover up your ignorance. Your ignorance can be covered up, hidden, and you may start to feel you know something.

When you hear something about truth, you feel that you have known the truth. After reading about truth, you think that you have known it, and so you become handicapped and incapable of attaining the truth.

First, let me tell you that whatever comes from the outside can never be your knowing. Of course, someone could then ask me why I am speaking. Why am I saying anything? I am outside and I am saying something. The only thing I want to say is, take whatever comes from the outside as being outside of yourself; don’t consider it your knowing. Whether it comes from me or from someone else does not matter.

Knowing is the true self-nature of every human being. And to know that self-nature, we do not need to search outside. If we want to know what is within us, whatever we have learned on the outside has to be unlearned, has to be left aside.

Those who want to know the truth have to put the scriptures aside. Whoever clings to scriptures cannot attain the truth. And all of us are clinging to scriptures; all the trouble in the world is due to clinging to scriptures. Who are the Hindus, the Muslims, the Jainas, the Christians, or the Parsees? What is making them fight against each other? What is separating them from one another?

It is the scriptures that separate them. It is the scriptures that make them fight with each other. The whole of mankind is divided because some people cling to certain books, and others cling to other books. Books have become so valuable that we can kill because of them. In the past three thousand years, we have killed millions of people because books are so valuable. Because books have become worthy of worship, even the godliness that exists inside man can be demeaned, it can even be rejected, it can even be deadened. That is what has happened, and that is happening even today.

The wall between one man and another is made of religious scriptures. Does it ever occur to you to ask how the scriptures, which separate one man from another, could ever join man with existence? How could that which separates man from man become a ladder to connect man to existence? We think that perhaps we will find something in the scriptures. And we do find something in them; we find words. We find words that define the truth, and we memorize those words. They enter our memory and we think that memory is knowledge.

Memory is not knowledge. To learn something and to memorize it is not knowing. The birth of knowing is a very different thing. Knowing revolutionizes your whole life. The training of memory is something else; with the training of memory someone can become a pundit, but it does not awaken wisdom.

I am not going to commit a sin by giving you a lecture. All those who give discourses are violent and commit sin. I am not going to give you a discourse. I am here only to share a few things with you. Not because you should believe them; anyone who says you should believe is your enemy. Anyone who says to have faith, anyone who says to have a belief is fatal to you; he stops your life from growing. Anyone who says to have faith is a hindrance in awakening your intelligence.

We have been believers for a very long time, and our world today is the result of all that believing. Can there be a more rotten world than this? More corrupt? We are people who are believers, and we have been believing for a very long time. Can man be worse than he is today? Can our brains be more rotten than they are today? Can there be more pain and tension and anguish than there is today? We have had beliefs for a long time, and the whole world believes – some people in this temple, some in that mosque, some in that church; some in this book, some in another book; someone in this prophet, someone in that prophet. The whole world believes. In spite of all that believing, our world is the result.

Some people may say that this is due to a lack of belief. I want to say to you, may existence erase all those beliefs completely. If belief were to become total, man would be finished − because his intelligence would be destroyed. Belief is anti-intelligence. Whenever someone says you should believe what he says, what he is actually saying is that you do not need to walk with your own feet. Whenever someone says to have faith, he is saying, Why do you need eyes? I have eyes.

I have read a short story…

There was a man in a village who lost his eyesight. He was an old man. He was a very old man; he was around ninety years old. All the members of his family − and he had eight sons − all eight sons told him to get his eyes treated. They told him the doctors said that his eyes could be cured.

The old man said, Why do I need eyes? I have eight sons, and they have sixteen eyes. They have eight wives who have sixteen eyes. There are thirty-two eyes to see for me; why do I need eyes? For what? I can live like a blind man.

His sons told him again and again but to no avail. The old man did not agree. He said, Why do I need to have eyes? There are thirty-two eyes in my house.

Days went by. One day their house caught fire. The thirty-two eyes went outside, and the old man was left inside. The house was on fire, the old man was left in the house, and the thirty-two eyes ran outside. Then he remembered that only one’s own eyes are of any help; no one else’s eyes can be of any help.

It is only one’s own intelligence that is of any use; beliefs given by others do not help. In life, fire surrounds us, all the time. We are surrounded by the fire of life twenty-four hours a day. It is only our own eyes that can help us, not someone else's – neither Mahavira’s, nor Buddha’s, nor Krishna’s,