Osho on Mantra Chanting – Osho on using Mantras, Chanting –
- Many chanters of mantras fall asleep — hence the use of Transcendental Meditation for people who suffer from sleeplessness, hence its appeal in America. Insomnia has become a normal thing. The more insomnia is there, the more will be the appeal of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, because people need some tranquilizers. A mantra is a prefect tranquilizer, but that is not its real use. There is nothing wrong in it — if it gives you good sleep, good, but that is not its real use.It is as if you are using an airplane like a bullock-cart. You can use it. You can put the airplane behind bullocks, and use it as a bullock-cart — nothing wrong in it, it will serve a little purpose, but that is not its use. You could soar very high with it.A mantra has to be used with full awareness that this is to create boredom, and you are to remember not to fall asleep. Otherwise, you miss. Don’t fall asleep. Go on repeating the mantra and don’t allow yourself to fall into sleep. So it is better if you repeat the mantra standing, or repeat it walking, so that you don’t fall asleep.
- If you can focus the mind through a lens, the mantra is a lens, and you go on repeating Ram, Ram, Ram, or Om, Om, Om, or anything, just one word — if you go repeating and repeating and repeating it, and the mind’s whole energy is centered in that one word — it becomes a lens. Now all the rays are passing through that lens. Narrowed to one point it becomes powerful, you can do miracles. Just by thinking you can do miracles.But remember, those miracles are not spiritual.Power is never spiritual. Powerlessness, helplessness, to be nothing, is spiritual;.power is never spiritual. This is the difference between magic and religion; magic is after power, religion is after nothingness.A mantra is a part of magic not of religion at all, but everything is a big mess, mixed up. People who are doing miracles are magicians, not spiritual in any way. They are even anti-spiritual because they are spreading magic in the name of religion, which is very dangerous.Through a mantra the mind is narrowed; it is more narrowed, more powerful, and then anything can be done. There is only one thing you will miss — you will miss yourself. All miracles will be possible, the ultimate miracle you will miss. You will miss yourself because through narrowing down you can achieve an object. The more the mind is narrowed, the more it becomes fixed to an object; it becomes objective. You are hidden behind and the object is outside.So if you are a man of mantras you can say to this tree, “Die,” and the tree will die; you can say to a man, “Be healthy,” and the disease will disappear, or, “Be unhealthy,” and the disease will enter — many things you can do. You can become somebody, and people will recognize you as a man of power but never a man of God.
- When thinking disappears, these are the two alternatives left: either you move into satori — a fully alert, no-thought state; or a fully asleep, no-thought state — sleep. And sleep is more natural, because you have practised it long. If you live sixty years, twenty years you have been asleep. It is the greatest activity that you have been doing; one third of your life is spent in sleep. In no other exercise do you spend so much time and so much energy.So if you are doing TM-type meditations, repeating a mantra, by the time the mantra helps you to become non-thinking, immediately sleep will possess you. Hence, I call TM a sort of tranquillizer. And that is the appeal in America for Maharishi and his method, because America is the only country which is suffering from sleeplessness so tremendously. Insomnia has become almost common.
- So what to do? Repeating a mantra, doing transcendental meditation, is not going to help. Transcendental meditation has become very important in America because of the objective approach, because of the scientific mind. Now it is the only meditation on which scientific work can be done. It is exactly concentration and not meditation, so it is comprehensible for the scientific mind. In the universities, in the science laboratories, in psychological research work, much is being done about TM, because it is not meditation.It is concentration, a method of concentration; it falls under the same category as scientific concentration; there is a link between the two. But it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is so vast, so tremendously infinite, that no scientific research is possible. Only compassion will show whether the man has achieved or not. Alpha waves won’t be of much help because they are still of the mind and meditation is not of the mind — it is something beyond.
So, let me tell you a few basic things. One, meditation is not concentration but relaxation — one simply relaxes into oneself. The more you relax, the more you feel yourself open, vulnerable, the more you are less rigid, you are more flexible — and suddenly existence starts penetrating you. You are no longer like a rock, you have openings. Relaxation means allowing yourself to fall into a state where you are not doing anything, because if you are doing something, tension will continue.It is a state of non-doing. You simply relax and you enjoy the feeling of relaxation. Relax into yourself, just close your eyes, and listen to all that is happening all around. No need to feel anything as distraction. The moment you feel it is a distraction, you are denying God. This moment God has come to you as a bird.Don’t deny. He has knocked at your door as a bird. The next moment he has come as a dog — barking, or as a child crying and weeping, or as a madman laughing. Don’t deny; don’t reject; accept — because if you deny you will become tense. All denials create tension. Accept. If you want to relax, acceptance is the way. Accept whatsoever is happening all around; let it become an organic whole. It is — you may know it or you may not know it.
Everything is inter-related. These birds, these trees, this sky, this sun, this earth, you, me — all are related. It is an organic unity. If the sun disappears, the trees will disappear; if the trees disappear, the birds will disappear; if the birds and trees disappear, you cannot be here, you will disappear. It is an ecology. Everything is deeply related with each other. So don’t deny anything, because the moment you deny, you are denying something in you. If you deny these singing birds then something in you is denied.
It is unfortunate that before dismissing transcendental meditation, Master Osho apparently did not have the time personally to meet with his countryman, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and to become better apprised of what actually transcendental meditators experience.
Master Osho may have had some ill-informed advisors; whatever the cause of his dismissal, his consequent incorrect information skewed his assessment of transcendental meditation toward the ridiculous.
In fact, transcendental meditation brings the direct experience of Samadhi. It is not a tranquilizer that aids sleep– on the contrary, its regular practise is well-documented and shown to deliver to anyone the highest states of consciousness.
Had he had the time properly to meet personally with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and had he had accurate information and understanding of the experience created by transcendental meditation, there is no doubt that Master Osho would have been a supporter instead of a dismisser.
I am a lover of Osho who was previously trained by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I concur with Ihsiraham.
Maharishi was always keen on emphasizing the proper use of a mantra, and that in TM concentration was not the proper use. Specifically, when we were aware our attention was not with the mantra, then we were instructed to come back to it in a very innocent natural easy manner. Maharishi spoke of the mantra as “the skateboard we ride to the transcendent”, or pure consciousness, or Osho’s “no-mind”. Once in that silence, it is not needed, unless we become aware that we are thinking, even subtly, and then we were encouraged to gently come back to the mantra, aware that it’s pronunciation may change at more subtle levels of awareness and to allow that.
I am so grateful for each of these great teachers. Although one can find places where they directly contradict each other (and on occasion even contradict themselves), taken in the broader context of their respective teachings, each are precious.
May truth and love prevail…
Namasté
Beloved, Ihsiraham and Bhaktidev.
Osho did meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi early in his years as “Acharya Rajneesh”. Osho was not a big name then, and he met with the Maharishi and his devotees in Kashmir. This meeting is documented and Osho did not spare the Maharishi. He told Maharaishi and his devotees what he later told his sannyasins.
This being said, Osho later in a discourse on the Shiva Sutras, explained how one can use mantrajapa (silent chanting) as a meditation technique. But again, Osho points out that mantrajapa is a technique preparing the mind for meditation, it is not meditation in itself.
I think according to Osho, when he talks about meditation he talks about a state of being. In a discourse I once heard he said that witnessing is the beginning of meditation and no-mind is the fulfillment of meditation.