The Hindustan Times: New Delhi
15 February, 2002

MEDITATIONS :
The true art of love: Rise in love
Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Love is in the air, declares every newspaper on this year's Valentine's Day. So let's breathe this air. It does not matter whether it is a Christian occasion or a Hindu one, it is worth celebrating.
Open your wings and fly high in the sky. Love is the greatest meditation a human heart can do. Every sage has only one message of love. And this celebration of love should not remain limited to the teenagers or young generation. Everybody who is capable of expressing love is basically young at heart. And one need not fall in love when one can rise.

So do not fall in love. Rise in love. Our love should uplift us and should become our evolution.

Osho advised one of his disciples in US, "Falling is always easy. You can fall in any ditch. Getting out is difficult. But you will have to get out. Once the love disappears the ditch becomes hell. Rising in love is beautiful and getting out of it is very easy, because that will be falling down. Never fall in love. Try to rise. And rising in love is a totally different matter.

Love should come out of your silence, awareness, meditativeness. It is soft, it is unbinding, because how can love create fetters for the one who is loved?

It is giving freedom to each other, more and more. As the love grows deeper, freedom becomes bigger. As the love grows deeper, you start accepting the person as he is. You stop trying to change the person.

Rising in love, you become aware that the other has his own territorial imperative, and you are not to encroach upon it.

If love becomes freedom, then there is no need to separate. I can say only one thing: you have given each other beautiful moments - be grateful, be thankful. The parting should not be ugly when the meeting was so beautiful.

I teach a different kind of love. It does not end in friendship but begins in friendship. It begins in silence, in awareness. It is a love which is your own creation, which is not blind.

Such a love can last forever, can go on growing deeper and deeper. Such a love is immensely sensitive. In this kind of relationship one starts feeling the need of the other person.

It is grateful that the other receives something when he offers, or she offers. It never feels in any kind of bondage, because there is none.

Next time try not to fall, but try to rise. Don't let biology dominate you. Your consciousness should be the master.

original article on the internet from: www.timesofindia.com

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If you love, you will be surprised again: meditation comes just as a shadow behind it. Love is the heart of meditation; meditation is the heart of love. They are together, two names for the same phenomenon. A few people will find it easy to follow the path of meditation - in fact 50 per cent of people in the world will find it easy to follow the path of meditation: Zen is their way. And 50 per cent will find love closer to their being: Sufism is their way.

original article on the internet from: www.hindustantimes.com

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Trimurti of Maths, Music, Meditation

By Osho

Music comes closest to meditation. Music is a way towards meditation and the most beautiful way. Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence - what the Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. When you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart.
Then you start, for the first time, hearing silence. Silence has a music of its own. It is not dead; it is tremendously alive. In fact, nothing is more alive than silence. Music helps you from the outside to fall in tune with the inner. Music is a device; it was invented by the Buddhas. All that is beautiful in the world, all that is valuable in the world has always been discovered by the Buddhas. Only they can discover because they have travelled the inner country - the inner, immeasurable universe. Whatsoever they have found and experienced in the inner world,
they have tried to make something similar on the outside for those who can only understand that which is objective, who are not yet able to enter the interior of their own being, who are not yet even aware that there is an inner world. Devices can be created on the outside which can help.

Listening to great music you suddenly become silent - with no effort. Falling in tune with the music you lose your ego with no effort. You become relaxed, you fall into a deep rest. You are alert, awake, and yet in a subtle way drunk.

Whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation - it has to end in meditation. If it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong. That's why much of modern art is not art. Much modern music is not music; it simply makes you sexually excited. It is just the opposite of real music. Real music helps you to transcend your biology, your physiology, your psychology. Real music takes you to the world of the beyond - what Buddha calls the farther shore, even beyond the beyond. To me, music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. And without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive. Without meditation, music is simply noise - harmonious, but noise. Without meditation, music is an entertainment. And without music, meditation becomes more and more negative, tends to be
death-oriented. Hence my insistence that music and meditation should go together. That adds
a new dimension - to both. Both are enriched by it. Remember the three Ms just as you remember the three Rs. The first M is mathematics, the purest science. The second M is music, pure art. And the third M is meditation, pure religion. Where all these three meet, you attain the trinity. 

And my approach is artistic, aesthetic. I cannot help you unless this energy field becomes musical. Music is pure art. And if it is joined with mathematics, it becomes a tremendously powerful instrument to penetrate into your interior. Of course, it will not be complete unless meditation is the highest peak, the purest religion. And we are trying to create the ultimate
synthesis. This is my trinity: mathematics, music, meditation. This is my trimurti - three faces of God. You can attain to God through one face, but then your experience of God will not be so rich as it will be when you attain two faces. But it will still lack something unless you attain all the three faces. When you know God as a trinity, when you have come through all
the three dimensions, your experience, your nirvana, your enlightenment, will be the richest.

My effort here is to give you a total religion, which contains all the three Ms in it...The journey is not going to be dull, it is going to be very alive. We are going to move towards God in such a multidimensional way that each moment of the journey is going to be precious.

(Sourced from The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1 chapter 2 and Vol
12 chapter 4, Courtesy: Osho World Foundation).

original article on the internet from: www.indiatimes.com

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News Release

As for Tagore, Osho's Works Must be Copyright Free
New Delhi, 2 Jan 2002

The waiving of restrictive copyright on the works of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore will set them free for the entire world to appreciate the heritage of this mystic poet who is India's only Nobel Laureate in literature. In the same vein, like the message of all Buddhas. Osho's works need to be immediately freed from the clandestinely registered copyrights and patents in the U.S.A. and Switzerland.
In fact, this step was long overdue as the Berne Copyright Convention of 1886 - now over a century old - requires the revision of the grace period from 50 years to ten years due to the development of instant communication in this age of the Internet.
Tagore's sublime and inspirational works have been freed from the shackles of copyright for the benefit of everyone everywhere. The same must be done for Osho's works.
The statement by Ms Bela Banerjee, Joint Secretary, Copyright and Languages, is commendable as it emphasized that this copyright ownership expiry would be a boon to artistes and the printing and publishing of Tagore's works in India and abroad. She saw no reason to fear the substandard production of Tagore's works.
It is encouraging to note that the Indian media in numerous editorials has also welcomed this step in the public interest. In the same spirit, Osho World Foundation is striving to bring the works of the enlightened mystic Osho into free domain for the maximum possible dissemination. Osho has described Tagore as 'the heart of India''. Says Osho,"
"Saa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye..' Whatever liberates you is true knowledge, declare the Upanishads. Osho's insights and meditation techniques fall in this category of leading one to liberation and thus must be free from the fetters of copyright.


Swami Chaitanya Keerti
Osho World Foundation
BG-09, Ansal Plaza
Khelgaon Marg
New Delhi-110049

The beginning of a new year, seriously, is a laughing matter. It is indeed a laughing matter because in the realms of time there's no beginning and no end. Life exists in the timeless dimension of the eternal now. This is something to be meditated upon, laughed about, which is why you should begin the so-called New Year with laughter meditation.

In Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Osho urges us to shed our accumulated misery and engage in laughing meditation. Laughter will unburden us and enlighten us. He wants us to bring the Buddha quality to our laughter. What follow are the words of Osho on the subject of laughter.

“You have to understand the psychology of laughter. You laugh very easily, but your laughter has a different quality than that of the Buddha. You laugh because your life is so miserable that any moment, any incident which looks ridiculous helps you to forget your misery for a moment. All your tensions disappear and there’s laughter. Hence laughter is a great relaxing phenomenon. It is tremendously healthy. Within a second it takes you beyond all your tensions, but only for a moment ... and you’re back again in your dark cave.

“A Buddha laughs without laughing because he has no tension. He doesn’t accumulate the energy in tensions that can explode in laughter. And he knows that life is ridiculous, that people are doing things that are laughable. Laughter is something ingrained in the very cells of his being; it doesn’t come just to his lips. His clarity makes him see things that perhaps you go on missing seeing.

“We are so attached to our suffering that laughing happens, generally, only as a release of tension. Only rarely, very rarely, does laughing happen without cause. We can’t laugh, we cannot be happy, even in our laughing there is pain. But laughing is so beautiful, it’s a deep cleansing, a deep purification.”

Osho has devised a 'laughing technique' to be practised every morning upon waking up. He says: "It will change the whole nature of your day. If you wake up laughing, you will soon begin to feel how absurd life is. Nothing is serious: even your disappointments are laughable, even your pain is laughable, even you are laughable."

When you wake up in the morning, before opening your eyes, stretch like a cat. Stretch every part of your body. Enjoy the stretching; enjoy the feeling of your body becoming awake, alive. After three or four minutes of stretching, with your eyes still closed, laugh. For five minutes, just laugh. At first you will be doing it, but soon, the sound of your very attempt to laugh will cause a genuine laughter. Lose yourself in laughter.

This technique may take several days before you're really able to do it. We are not accustomed to laughing; we have forgotten what has been the easiest thing to do. But keep trying; soon, it will be spontaneous. And then, every morning, enjoy!

original article in the internet from: www.hindustantimes.com

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Osho: A Mystic And Divine Life

Born in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, India on December 11, 1931, Osho says of his parents, "I had chosen this couple for their love, their intimacy, their almost one-ness." Osho was an intuitive and adventurous child who explored life fearlessly and intensely. He insisted on experiencing life for himself rather than acquiring beliefs or knowledge given by others.

When he was seven-years-old, he had first hand experience with death when his maternal grandfather died with his head in Osho's lap. This incidence had a profound effect on his inner life, provoking in him a determination to discover, that which is deathless. "I learned much in that moment of his silence," Osho said later. "I started on a new search, a new pilgrimage."

At the age of twenty-one, Osho became enlightened. "For many lives I had been working on myself, struggling, doing whatsoever can be done - and nothing was happening. The very effort was a barrier... Not that one can reach without seeking. Seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped... And that day the search stopped...it started happening. A new energy arose... It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air - and I was thinking it was very far away. And it was so near..." A full account of his enlightenment can be found in 'The Discipline of Transcendence'.

After his enlightenment on March 21, 1953, Osho graduated from the University of Sagar with first class honours in philosophy. As a student he won the All-India Debating Championship. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Jabalpur for nine years.

Alongside he travelled throughout India giving talks, challenging religious leaders in public debate and meeting people from all walks of life. He read extensively, everything he could find to broaden his understanding of the belief systems and psychology of the contemporary man.

Osho had now begun to develop his unique dynamic meditation techniques. According to him, modern man was so burdened with the outmoded traditions of the past and the anxieties of modern-day living that he must go through a deep cleansing process before he could hope to discover the thoughtless, relaxed state of meditation.

He held meditation camps all over India, giving talks to the participants, and personally conducting sessions of the meditation techniques he had developed.

Osho worked directly with people who came to him, sharing his vision of a "New Man" and inspiring them to experiment with a life based on meditation. Bridging the ancient truths of simpler times with the current reality of man, he created numerous meditation techniques, which give seekers an avenue to experience the ultimate. He also worked closely with many prominent therapists from the West to create new meditation therapies.

On his path of spiritual quest, Osho was praised as well as denounced by the people, however, he responded with characteristic humour and uncompromising honesty, publicly challenging his persecutors and at the same time showering his love unconditionally, giving some of his most intimate talks to disciples who gathered around him wherever he went.

After spending some years abroad, Osho finally returned to Puna, India, giving talks twice a day. Thousands of seekers from around the world came together again to be in the presence of this rare Buddha and mystic, and a new commune grew around him. It was during this time that Osho announced that he did not want to be called Bhagwan again: "Enough is enough! The joke is over."

In these years of his final discourses, Osho gradually began to withdraw from public activities. His fragile health often prevented him from giving discourses, and the periods of his absence grew longer. He introduced a new element into his discourses, guiding his audience into a three-stage meditation at the end of each sitting. Eventually he delivered his last discourse series, answering questions and commenting on Zen sutras.

After his failing health had caused him to stop giving discourses, a message came that the name Rajneesh was also being dropped. Many of his disciples had already collectively decided to call him Osho. He has explained that the word 'Osho' is derived from William James' expression 'oceanic experience' which means dissolving into the ocean. "Oceanic describes the experience," says Osho, "but what about the one who is experiencing? Why do we use the word 'Osho'."

In the following months, whenever his health permitted, he would appear in the evening to sit with his disciples and friends in a meditation of music and silence, after which he would retire to his room while the assembly watched one of his videotaped discourses.

Osho left his body on January 19, 1990. Just a few weeks before that time, he was asked what would happen to his work when he was gone. He said:

"My trust in existence is absolute. If there is any truth in what I am saying, it will survive... The people who remain interested in my work will be simply carrying the torch, but not imposing anything on anyone...

"I will remain a source of inspiration to my people... I want them to grow on their own - qualities like love, around which no church can be created, like awareness, which is nobody's monopoly; like celebration, rejoicing, and remaining fresh, childlike eyes...

"I want my people to know themselves, not to be according to someone else. And the way
is in."

original article in the internet from: spirituality.indiatimes.com

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War Signifies Lust For Power
By Swami Chaitanya Keerti

A disciple asked Osho, ‘‘What is the best government?’’ Osho or Bhagwan Rajneesh replied, ‘‘No government. The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman. Government is a game, the ugliest and the dirtiest game in the world. But there are people in the lowest state of consciousness who enjoy it: these are the politicians’’. The only joy of a politician is to govern, to be in power, to enslave people.

The greatest desire of all those who have reached the peak of consciousness has been the dream that one day we can get rid of all governments. That day will be the greatest in the whole history — past, present, future — of a human being, because getting rid of all governments will mean destroying the ugliest game, the game the politicians have been playing for centuries.

They have made a human being just a chess piece, and they have created so much fear, fear that without government there will be anarchy, disorder and chaos and that everything will be destroyed. And the strangest thing is that we go on believing this nonsense. Governments have not done anything for the people except exploit them, exploit their fear, and set them against each other.

A continuity of war somewhere or the other on earth is almost an absolute necessity for politicians to exist.

Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, has many insights; and he is a man worth understanding because he is the purest politician — I mean, the dirtiest. He said that war is an absolute necessity if you want to remain in power. If you cannot create war people start thinking of you as a nobody. Only in wartime are heroes born.

He was right. If you think of all the ‘heroes’ — Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler himself, they would have been diminutive figures without the ‘wars’ to prop them up. The bigger the war, the bigger the heroes it creates.

Hitler says that if you cannot create war then at least continue to propagate the idea that war is coming. Never leave people in peace, because when they are in peace, you are a nobody. They do not need you; your very purpose is not there. They need you when there is danger. Create danger. If there is no real danger, at least create the climate of a false danger.

Osho says that every country lives in the fear of every other country. And it is nothing but a game of the politicians. People themselves are exactly the same all over the world — they do not want to be killed in wars and they do not want to kill others in wars. But the politician cannot exist without wars. Hence I call it the dirtiest game — because it depends on human blood, the bloodshed of millions of innocent people.

When I say no government is the best government I know perfectly well that perhaps it will not ever be possible. But it is better to have dreams that are impossible but are of a higher consciousness, of beauty and love. Perhaps if the idea goes on existing, some day we may come close to it. We may not be able to achieve it in its totality — hence I say, the closest to no government is one government, which is not impossible. After achieving one government, the next step which then becomes very possible is ‘no government’.

When there are so many presidents in this world and prime ministers and kings and queens, and everyone is trying to prove that he or she is the greatest, then it becomes a game. However, when there is one government then it becomes functional; there is nobody against it.

The whole joy of politics is in ‘‘the enemy’’. When there is no enemy, then you are just working like the Red Cross Society or the organisation of post offices or railways or aeroplanes. We do not know, for example, who runs the railway trains in America as he is just a functional head.

And when there is one government we can make it something like a Rotary Club. We will not need a president for four or five years. A few weeks will be enough and then the post can be rotated. So every part of the world is represented. One government means that nations disappear and every unit becomes a direct democracy which is functional, utilitarian and not based on a lust for a power. This was Osho’s message in his discourse, ‘From darkness to light’. He wanted us to inhabit an enlightened world.

original article in the internet from: spirituality.indiatimes.com

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'Best Poet' at just 21

S NANDAGOPAL
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

BANGALORE: For Mohammed Warris Haquani, a student of physiotherapy, poetry is a hobby and a passion.
Haquani wasn't aware he would shine in the world of literature at such a young age. He is just 21 years.
His joy knew no bounds when the International Society of Poets adjudged him the 'Best Poet of the Year'. He bagged a cash award of Rs 10,000 and a citation at the Online Poetry Contest organised by the society.
These laurels also entitled him to a free entry to 16 international contests as also the subscription of the society's quarterly magazine.
Warris, as he is called, hails from Kashmir. He is a student of physiotherapy at Dr M.V. Shetty College of Physiotherapy.
Poetry, literature and philosophy has been Warris' interest with his first anthology of poems Words of Wisdom published when he was just 10 years. Reading and analysing is what he loves most.
"Since Standard V, I have been inclined towards books of Osho (Rajneesh), Mahabharat, the Holy Bible, Jainism and Quran.''
Mirza Ghalib and Shakespeare have been his great source of inspiration.
Even during his schooling and pre-college days, Warris felt he should devote all his time for poetry and literature. But hard realities would not allow him to do so.
"I had to travel to Mangalore in pursuit of a rewarding career and chose to be a professional in physiotherapy,'' he says with a heavy heart. However, his love for literature and poetry has not faded.
God, love, spirituality, beauty and nature are the themes his poems portray. Warris' first anthology was followed by two more.
Then Allah Enlighten His Life was published after his schooling. Next, he put his thoughts together to publish Discovery of the Unseen.
"I prefer to call it a research poem on the concept of third eye.''
On participating in the online poetry contest on Poetry.com, Warris smiles and gives the credit to a friend who informed him about it.
The award-winning poetry was on 'love'.
Warris also plans to organise an unique exhibition - a fusion of paintings and poetry, for which preparations are on full swing.

original article in the internet from: www.timesofindia.com

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