The Book of Secrets: 112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within

by Osho

Nietzsche says, live dangerously. Why? Because in danger you are thrown back to the hara. You cannot think; you cannot work things out with the mind. You have to act immediately.

You are driving a car faster and faster and faster, and suddenly a moment comes when every moment is dangerous. Any moment and there will be no life. In that moment of suspense, when death and life are just as near to each other as possible, two points just near and you in between, the mind stops: you are thrown to the hara. That is why there is so much fascination with cars, driving – fast driving, mad driving.

danger your day-to-day, ordinary consciousness cannot function. Danger goes deep. Your mind is not needed; you become a no-mind. You are! You are conscious, but there is no thinking. That moment becomes meditative. Really, in gambling, gamblers are seeking a meditative state of mind. In danger – in a fight, in a duel, in wars – man has always been seeking meditative states.

Ordinarily we say that if you become desireless, you will know yourself. The contrary is more true: if you know yourself, you will become desireless.

Desire means you are not fulfilled within, you are missing something so you hanker after it.

If you go in search of a desireless state of bliss through desires, you will never reach. But if you try something else – methods of self-actualization, methods of realizing your inner potentiality, of making them actual – then the more you will become actual the less and less desires will be felt,

When you are not empty within, desiring ceases.

What is a total man? What is meant by being a whole man, a total man? It means, firstly, be centered; do not exist without a center.

Really, you are not centered; you are only momentarily centered. Each moment has its own center, so you go on shifting. When mind is functioning you feel that the head is the center. When you are in love, you feel it is the heart.

total man is centered. Whatsoever he is doing, he remains in the center. If his mind is functioning, he is thinking, thinking goes on in the head but he remains centered in the navel.

Thinking becomes contemplation when it moves not through association, but is directed. You are working on a particular problem – then you bracket out all associations. You move on that problem only, you direct your mind. The mind will try to escape to any by-path, to any side route, to some association. You cut off all the side routes; on only one road you direct your mind.

A scientist working on a problem is in contemplation. A logician working on a problem, a mathematician working on a problem is in contemplation. A poet contemplates a flower. Then the whole world is bracketed out, and only that flower and the poet remains, and he moves with the flower. Many things from side routes will attract, but he does not allow his mind to move anywhere. Mind moves in one line, directed. This is contemplation.

Science is based on contemplation. Any logical thinking is contemplation: thought is directed, thinking guided. Ordinary thinking is absu...

In ordinary thinking, mind is allowed to move anywhere; in contemplation, it is allowed only in one direction, all other directions are cut off. In concentration, it is not allowed to move even in one direction; it is allowed only to concentrate on one point. And in meditation, mind is not allowed at all. Meditation is no-mind.

In ordinary thinking, all directions are open. In contemplation, only one direction is open. In concentration, only one point is open – no direction. In meditation, even that point is not open: mind is not allowed to be.

If consciousness goes out, then whatsoever you know is matter; if consciousness goes in, then whatsoever you know is non-matter.

Thoughts are like clouds. They have come to you, but they do not belong to you. Every thought comes from the outside, from without. You cannot produce a single thought inside, within. Every thought comes from the outside; there is no possibility of creating a thought within. Thoughts are like clouds coming to you. So whenever you are thinking, you are not in – remember.

In love the other is important; in lust you are important. In lust you are thinking how to make the other your instrument; in love you are thinking how to become an instrument yourself. In lust you are going to sacrifice the other; in love you are going to sacrifice yourself. Love means giving; lust means getting. Love is a surrender; lust is an aggression.

When you are against something, or someone, you cannot face

In laziness no grace can be received – only in helplessness.

you will say, “Then what is the mastery? How am I a master when no one is a slave to me?” But I say only then are you a master. Then no one is a slave to you and no one will try to make a slave out of you.

Whatsoever you desire, you become that. So be conscious of what you are desiring because you are becoming that.

Freedom from the mind is the only freedom. Mind is the bondage, the slavery, the servitude.

“When my master laughed, suddenly I recognized that the whole world is just a joke.

The whole world is just a joke, just a drama.

You can become a martyr in a single moment. To die for someone, for something, is the easiest thing in the world; to live for something is the most arduous and difficult thing.

If you move within from words to feelings, and from feelings to being, you are moving away from the world. And once you know this inner abyss of

It is just like in the military where they use numbers. One soldier is number 101: he can become identified with “101.” And if someone says something derogatory against the number 101, he will feel insulted, he will start fighting. And “101” is just a number, but he has become identified with it. Your name is just a number, just an index number. Things will be difficult otherwise, so we have labeled you. That is just a label; any other label can do the same work. But it is not just a label for you, it has gone deep; your name has become the center of your ego.

Tantra will say, understand sex, do not try to channel it. If you do not understand it, every effort is bound to be a failure, and harmful. So do not do anything. First understand it, and through understanding the path will be revealed. You are not to force your energies on that path. Through understanding you come to know the law, just like in science. What are you doing in science? You come to understand a law; a natural mystery is revealed. Once the natural mystery is revealed, you can use the energy creatively.

Existence cannot be forced to go according to you; it flows in its own way. If you can flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the whole cosmos around you will turn negative.

You can make everything positive only by making yourself positive toward life. But we are not positive toward life. Why? Why are we not positive toward life? Why are we negative? Why this constant struggle? Why can we not have a total let-go with life? What is the fear?

you are afraid of life – very much afraid of life. It may sound odd to say that you are afraid of life, because ordinarily you feel that you are afraid of death, not of life. This is the usual observation, that everyone is afraid of death. But I tell you, you are afraid of death only because you are afraid of life. One who is not afraid of life will not be afraid of death.

Why are we afraid of life? Three reasons. Firstly, your ego can exist only if it goes upstream. Floating downstream, your ego cannot exist. Your ego can exist only when it fights, when it says no! If it says yes, always yes, it canno...

The mind is always afraid of the unknown, the unknown will disturb the mind, so the mind is closed for the unknown. It lives in its routine, it lives in a pattern. It moves in particular grooves, known grooves. It goes on moving, moving, just like a gramophone record. It is afraid to move into the unknown.

This understanding will help you to be positive; then you will be able to accept everything. By positive I mean that you accept everything because you know that you cannot divide existence.

If you do not have any love for anything else, use your own name. But it is very difficult because you are so condemning toward yourself that you do not have any feeling, you do not have any respect toward yourself. Others may be respectful toward you, but

So exhaling is accepted as a necessary evil, but basically we are not interested in exhaling. And this is not only about breath, this is our whole attitude toward life. We cling to everything that comes to us; we will not leave it. This is the miserliness of the mind.

The friend said, “Remember three things: always talk about food, family and philosophy.”

Even when you say that you feel, you only think that you feel. The feeling has become dead, and this has happened for certain reasons.

Be selfish; only then can you be altruistic.

We live in a neurotic society where everyone is sad. When you are sad, everyone is happy because everyone can sympathize with you.

Tantra says be real, be authentic to yourself. Your happiness is not bad; it is good. It is not sin! Only sadness is sin, only to be miserable is sin. To be happy is virtue because a happy person will not create unhappiness for others. Only a happy person can be a ground for others’ happiness.

With this mind, nothing is wrong with the world. With your mind, nothing can be right. With a negative mind, everything is wrong – not that it is wrong; it is wrong because a negative mind can see only what is wrong.

All these techniques are different ways, but with every technique a deep understanding is needed: remember that. These techniques are not mechanical because they are to uncover consciousness. They are not mechanical things. You can use these techniques mechanically, and if you use them as mechanical techniques you may gain a certain stillness of mind, but that won’t be the original purity. You may gain a certain silence, but that silence will he cultivated.

Don’t use them mechanically. A deep understanding is needed, and with understanding they can be helpful to uncover your being.

Wealth can he renounced, it is easy. Family can be renounced, it is not difficult. The whole world can be renounced because everything is outer and outer and outer. The last thing is meditation, the innermost wealth. And when you renounce it, you have renounced yourself.

Really, a coward is not a person who is afraid; a coward is a person who is asleep, and a brave man is a person who can bring his alertness to the moments of fear. So fear disappears.

One man was a disciple to Rinzai. He was a great archer himself, he never missed his aim, and then he came to Rinzai to learn, so someone said, “To whom are you going to learn? He is not a master; he is not even a disciple. He is a failure, and you are a great master and you are going to Rinzai to learn?” So that archer said, “Yes, because I have succeeded technically. But as far as my consciousness is concerned, I am a failure. He is technically a failure, but as far as his consciousness is concerned he is the archer and the master – because when the arrow leaves he is alert, and that is the point.”

It can be used for badminton. Be alert whil leaving cork in bat. Dont concern about points

When you feel anxious, much anxiety-ridden, try it. What is one to do? What do you ordinarily do when anxiety is there? What do you do? You try to solve it. You try alternatives, and you get more and more into it. You will create a bigger mess because anxiety cannot be solved through thinking. It cannot be dissolved through thinking because thinking itself is a sort of anxiety. So you help it to grow more. Through thinking, you cannot come out of it; you will go deeper into it. This technique says don’t do anything with anxiety. Just be alert. Just be alert!

“Bokuju” or any name, but your name – and then reply to it, “Yes sir, I am here,”

Try this. Call ansar loudly . Reply yes sir i am here and alert