(Meditation is as easy as pie, as Osho tells a new sannyasin, who has been riding a unicycle around the ashram.)
Osho – It is slipping out of your mind like a snake slips out of its old skin. It is not a science, it is an art or, to be even more precise, it is just a knack. It is easy to teach science, very easy, because it consists of something observable; it relates to the objective world. The student can see what is happening with his own eyes. He can see water evaporating at one hundred degrees. There is not much of a trouble in teaching science; just a very average intelligence is needed.
To teach art is a little more difficult because tremendous intelligence is needed. If a person wants to be a painter he will have to learn two things, not one. In science he has to learn only one thing: he has to become informed. If he wants to be a painter he has to learn the technique of painting and the art of painting — which are two totally different things. For a technician painting is only a question of arranging colours in a certain pattern, with a certain geometry, certain proportions; it is almost science. But then it cannot be a great piece of art. It may be perfect technically, but something will be missing in it. It will not be original, it will be a repeat, because for originality not only technique is needed, for originality immense intelligence is needed.
Zen monks have been painting for thousands of years and they say that to learn real painting one has to learn the technique for twelve years and then for twelve years one has to stop painting completely and forget all about it. And then after those twenty-four years one has to start painting again, so the technique is forgotten, so the technique does not come in between you and the painting. Now you can start painting as if you don’t know painting, you don’t know the technique of painting, so you can be original.
The second stage of twelve years is far more important than the first. The technique has to be learned, certainly — without knowing about colours and canvases you cannot paint — but that is only a preliminary process. Then you have to forget all about it so you don’t become addicted to the technique. The technique goes deep into your blood and bones, but you are not at all self-conscious about it. It functions, but you are now free from technique; it does not hinder you.
Art — music, poetry, painting — is far more difficult to teach, a longer process. And a knack is the most difficult thing to teach because it needs three things; it needs a certain technique, it needs tremendous intelligence and also it needs some intuitiveness. Intuitiveness is the highest peak of intelligence. The very word ‘intuition’ is significant. Education is tuition — somebody teaches you. Intuition is something that happens to you; it cannot be brought in from the outside.
The master can create a certain atmosphere, a certain energy field; it is a very indirect process. It is just as a gardener prepares the ground and then sows the seed and then waits; there is nothing else he can do about it. Now everything depends on the seeds. They will find their way in their own time. It will be something like intuition. You cannot persuade the seeds to grow faster, you cannot tell them “This is the time — go ahead.” You cannot order them; you have simply to wait. Prepare the ground, remove all the barriers, rocks, weeds, etcetera, give them a beautiful bed, watering, sun, and then wait, then wait for their own intuition to unfold. You cannot do more than that.
That’s the function of the master; to create a certain energy field in which your intuition one day suddenly becomes aflame. It cannot be caused, it cannot be forced. It can only be helped, and that too in a very soft way. That’s the whole purpose of sannyas: to create an energy field, to create a communion of people, to create a loving, invisible force, a have of love, so that the wave can take you, can possess you.
Meditation is only a method: it helps to remove the barriers. It is spade-work. Weeds are removed, thoughts are removed, mind is removed. It is just a removing — it is a negative process: rejecting, rejecting everything that is inside so one day there is nothing to reject. All that can be thrown out has been thrown out and you have a pure space, just space. And that space is the right preparation. In that space your intuition, the seed of intuition which you have been carrying all along, suddenly bursts forth unpredictably. One cannot say when it will happen, but one thing is certain — it does happen. That much can be said; the time cannot be predicted, but it happens. If the space is ready it happens sooner or later — and it is always sooner rather than later.
And your name Jack is very beautiful; it means god’s gracious gift. The gift is already with you, but you have not opened the treasure, the doors of the treasure. The parcel has remained with you unopened, and it has remained for so long with you unopened that you may have completely forgotten about it.
My work is to help you to find where you have put it and to find how to open it. And then life becomes a splendour, a grandeur of inconceivable dimensions. Then for the first time you know what depth means, what height means; then you are no more flat. Ordinarily people are just flat: they don’t have any depth, they don’t have any height — just flat ground. They don’t know the depths of the Pacific, they don’t know the heights of the Himalayas. They are missing something.
The real adventure begins only when you start moving deeper into your being and also higher into your consciousness, and the processes are two sides of the same coin. If you go deeper you go higher, if you go higher you go deeper. It is one dimension, the vertical dimension. People who are living a flat life are living horizontally, and of course, their life is just like a flat tyre, utterly punctured! And you must know about tyres — you are a unicyclist!
Become something vertical. Sannyas is a change from being horizontal to vertical. And then life is really bliss, a gift of god. One cannot repay god, there is no way. One can only be thankful, tremendously thankful. That’s what prayer is, that’s what religion is: a deep gratitude to existence for what it has done for us.
Source – Osho Book “Just the Tip of the Iceberg”