Osho – When I say meditate, I know that through meditation nobody reaches, but through meditation you reach to the point where no meditation becomes possible. Unless you meditate, how will ”no meditation” become possible? One has to go through meditations, and as strongly and as totally as possible. Nothing should be left out.
You should bring your total energy to it. You should knock your head against the wall. Not that the wall will break and the door will open – the door is always open, but knocking your head against it, suddenly you will come out of your sleep. The dreams will break, not the door. The door has always been open.
I will tell you one anecdote. It happened: A man came to Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist mystic, and the greatest alchemist that India has ever produced. The man said, ”I would like to meditate, but I cannot. I try to concentrate on the name of God, but my mind goes on slipping here and there.
I completely forget the name of God, and other things come into the mind. My mind is a crowd, and I cannot manage it in any way. Help me.”
Nagarjuna looked at the man and said, ”Forget about God. Tell me one thing: do you love
somebody?”
The man felt a little awkward, embarrassed. He said, ”You have asked and I cannot be untrue to you. But don’t laugh at me, I am a foolish man. I don’t love anybody; I love only my buffalo. But I really love her, she is a beautiful being.”
Nagarjuna said, ”That will do, because it makes no difference whether you love God or the buffalo. Even a buffalo is a god – a goddess. So that will do. You just go into that cave, and sit inside the cave, and you just continuously think only one thing – that you have become your buffalo.”
The man said, ”This will do, I can do it. In fact, I am wondering how you came to know it, because sometimes I think… I love my buffalo so much that sometimes I think how it will be if I become a buffalo in my next life.”
Nagarjuna said, ”You go, and don’t come out of it until I come and ask you to come out.”
One day passed. The second day passed. The third day passed. On the fourth day, in the morning, Nagarjuna reached the cave and he said to the man, ”Now please come out.” The man tried, tried but he would not come out. Nagarjuna said, ”What is the matter?”
The man said, ”You see? the door is so small… and don’t you see my horns? I cannot get out of it!” Three days, continuously thinking that he is a buffalo, a buffalo, a buffalo…. He autohypnotized himself: he WAS a buffalo! Whatsoever you think, you become. Thinking creates your identity.
The man started weeping. He said, ”Now it seems that I will never in my life be able to get out of this cave. And for three days I have been hungry and thirsty, and now I cannot get out. You help me, please!” And tears started rolling down his face.
Nagarjuna said, ”It is difficult, I can see it is so difficult. Now you have to go back and again become a man. Now think that you are a man and not a buffalo.”
The man had to think for at least three hours that he was a man and not a buffalo – in three hours the buffalo disappeared, the delusion disappeared. He opened his eyes. He came out laughing, and he said to Nagarjuna, ”Whatsoever I needed, I have attained.”
Nagarjuna said, ”Now you know. You can meditate. But through meditation one starts getting new identities. You are a worldly man; you meditate, then you become a spiritual man: a new identity. But to be spiritual is as wrong as to be worldly.
The real thing only happens when there is NO identity. Now this is a new illusion. But it helps. From the world you move to the spiritual. From being a householder you become a sannyasin. From being a materialist you become spiritual. You create a new illusion. To throw the old out, the new is needed.”
But, passing through the old to the new, there is a gap between the two in which you will be nobody, and once that nobodiness is realized, you can follow it. Then no meditation is needed. No methods are needed, no techniques are needed.
I am as much against techniques as Krishnamurti, even more, but I am not talking to myself here. Krishnamurti is in a monologue; it is not a dialogue. He is talking to himself, he is not talking to you, you are just an excuse. He is in a monologue.
I am talking to YOU, otherwise what is the point of talking? And when I am talking to you, I look to your need. And the question is not: What is truth? The question is: If I say something to you, what are you going to do about it? If I say the door is not shut, you will stop knocking. That is the logical conclusion. If I say no methods are needed, you will drop methods, but then you will remain the same as you are.