Awareness: The Key to Living in Balance (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living)

by Osho

you are awake. That is the greatest illusion man lives in. And once you accept that you are already awake,

Silence is the space in which one awakens, and the noisy mind is the space in which one remains asleep.

Hence, the whole work that has to be done is to become consciousness again and lose the mind. You have to throw out of your system all that you have gathered as knowledge. It is knowledge that keeps you asleep; hence, the more knowledgeable a person is, the more asleep.

You are alive only in the proportion that you are aware.

except for the awakened ones, nobody is really alive. You are corpses—walking, talking, doing things—you are robots.

Life is the goal and awareness is the methodology, the technique to attain it.

The only thing that has to be learned is watchfulness.

Eat slowly, watchfully; each bite has to be chewed, tasted.

Remember one thing: when you remember that you have forgotten watching, don’t become sorry, don’t repent; otherwise, again you are wasting time.

The first step in awareness is to be watchful of your body. Slowly, slowly one becomes alert about each gesture, each movement. And as you become aware, a miracle starts happening: many things that you used to do before simply disappear.

Then start becoming aware of your thoughts—the same has to be done with the thoughts. They are more subtle than the body and of course more dangerous too.

third step—that is, becoming aware of your feelings, emotions, moods. That is the subtlest layer and the most difficult,

The body knows pleasure, the mind knows happiness, the heart knows joy, the fourth knows bliss. Bliss is the goal, and awareness is the path toward it.

Awareness means that whatsoever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness;

If you are present when anger is happening, anger cannot happen. It can happen only when you are fast asleep.

Love is beautiful when you rise through it, and love becomes dirty and ugly when you fall through it. And sooner or later you will find that it proves poisonous, it becomes a bondage. You have been caught in it, your freedom has been crushed. Your wings have been cut; now you are free no more. Falling in love you become a possession: you possess and you allow somebody to possess you. You become a thing, and you try to convert the other person you have fallen in love with into a thing.

It is said that once Satan, the devil, was sitting under a tree, very sad. A saint was passing; he looked at Satan and said, “We have heard that you never rest, you are always doing some mischief or other somewhere or other. What are you doing here sitting under the tree?” Satan was really depressed. He said, “It seems my work has been taken over by the priests, and I cannot do anything—I am completely unemployed. Sometimes I have the idea of committing suicide because these priests are doing so well.”

The existence has its own plans, it is wiser than you

Says Lao Tzu, “If the majority doesn’t laugh at you, be aware that you must be saying something wrong. If the majority laughs, only then are you saying something true.

It is said in old Tibetan scriptures that God comes many times to you but he never finds you there, where you are. He knocks at your door, but the host is not there—he is always somewhere else.

Eyes are just windows; they can’t see unless you see through them. How can a window see? You have to stand at the window, only then can you see.

in awareness, anger never arises. They cannot exist together; there is no coexistence for them. In awareness, jealousy never arises. In awareness, many things simply disappear—all the things that are negative.

If you are trying to escape from death, remember, you will be escaping from life also.

Ego is a false sense of self. Without having any self you go on believing that you have a self—that is ego.

Man’s mind has always been trying to do two impossible things. One is to reform the past—which cannot be done.

And the second impossible idea that has always dominated the human mind is to establish the future—which again, cannot be done.

Future is pure potentiality; unless it happens, you cannot be certain about it. Past is pure actuality; it has happened. Now nothing can be done about it.

The whole Eastern methodology can be reduced to one word: witnessing. And the whole Western methodology can be reduced to one thing: analyzing. Analyzing, you go round and round. Witnessing, you simply get out of the circle.

In the sense of experience of the inner world, America is the most childish place on the earth.

if you want to start with relaxation, first you have to go through a cathartic process—Dynamic Meditation, Kundalini Meditation, or gibberish.

The mind is without thought in two states—either in deep sleep or in meditation. If you are aware and thoughts disappear, it is meditation. If thoughts disappear and you become unaware, it is deep sleep.

the whole art of surfing—moving with the waves, not against them.

No-mind does not arise by stopping thinking. When the thinking is no more, no-mind is.

Meditation is not an effort against the mind, it is a way of understanding the mind. It is a loving way of witnessing the mind

Bodies are separate, minds overlapping, and souls are one.

The mastery of one’s self comes when one realizes, “I am absolutely responsible for whatsoever happens to me. Whatsoever happens, unconditionally—I am absolutely responsible.”

If you go on throwing responsibility on the other, remember that you will always remain a slave because nobody can change the other.

The knowledgeable man is the most blind man in the world. Because he functions out of his knowledge, he does not see what the case is.

all the buddhas down the ages have been teaching only one thing— awareness. They don’t teach you character—character is taught by priests, politicians, but not by the buddhas. Buddhas teach you consciousness not conscience.

The Jain master Mahavira is the first man in history who has actually worked out that if a man can remember, can be aware, for forty-eight minutes continuously, that’s enough—he will become enlightened, nobody can prevent him.

There are four points to be watched. Sitting silently, just start seeing the breath, feeling the breath. The breath going in is the first point. Then for a moment when the breath is in, it stops—a small moment it is, for a split second it stops; that is the second point to watch. Then the breath turns and goes out; this is the third point to watch. Then again, when the breath is completely out, for a split second it stops. That is the fourth point to watch. Then the breath starts coming in again … this is the circle of breath.