THE SHIVA SUTRA: MEDITATION IS THE SEED.''OSHO''

BELOVED BHAGWAN OSHO,COULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK ON SHIVA SUTRA:MEDITATION IS THE SEED.

This sutra of Shiva says: MEDITATION IS THE SEED.

Therefore we have to start with meditation. Right now, in sleeping and in wakefulness, in consciousness and unconsciousness, the mind has you in its grip. Thoughts invade you in the day and dreams in the night. All the twenty-four hours the mind argues and debates and the most amazing thing is: it all leads to nothing. What have you attained by all your reasoning and thinking? Where has it taken you? What goals have you reached?

The great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was returning home one evening when a small boy stopped him on the road and said, "Good evening, uncle. I have just been to your house. Tomorrow a few boys are going for a picnic, and I came to borrow your camera. You were out so I asked your servant. He refused me flatly. Is it right, uncle, that a servant should say no like that?" The child was boiling with anger. Kant said, "The servant was certainly not right. Who is he to refuse when I am here? Come along with me." The child was pleased. They reached Kant's home. The servant was called and reprimanded before the child. Then Kant turned to the child and said, "Now I shall tell you. The fact is, I don't own a camera." All the joy, the thrill, the hope that the child was nourishing of getting the camera, all vanished into thin air when he learned that his uncle didn't even own one.

This is the state of your mind. All your life you toil, you slave, you groan with the load that you carry because you still hope. In the end the mind will admit that it does not possess what you seek. This has always been the story. It does not have what you are actually seeking, but it keeps hoping: "Maybe today, or tomorrow... tomorrow." No one can give you such seductive sweet-talk as the mind. And you are a fool. If the mind had anything to give, it would have given it by now. The very fact is that it keeps putting you off again and again and you still believe it. How many times have you believed the mind? Every day it says, "Tomorrow", and when tomorrow comes the mind again says, "Tomorrow". Now it has become your unconscious habit, and the habit is so deep-seated that you hardly think about it. Even in your sleep the mind beguiles you with fresh assurances about the future.

Mulla Nasruddin was in bed with a very high fever. I went to see him. I asked his wife how long he had been in that condition. The wife said, "For an hour he has been running a fever of 105 degrees." The Mulla was unconscious. I put a thermometer in his mouth to see what the temperature was. At once he spoke, "A match, please!" He was a chain-smoker and the habit was so deep-rooted that even in that unconscious state the thermometer reminded him of a cigarette.

And when you die your condition will be exactly like the Mulla's. "A match, please!" Your mind keeps weaving its webs even in your unconsciousness. At the moment of death you will be filled with the mind. Whether you perform worship or pray or go to the temple or to the holy places... the mind is with you and whenever the mind is with you, you cannot establish contact with religion.

There lived a Moslem fakir by the name of Haji Mohammed. He was a sadhu. One night he dreamed that he had died and was standing at the crossroads between heaven and hell. One road led to the world and the other to moksha. An angel stood at the crossroads, guiding and directing people according to their actions. Haji Mohammed had nothing to fear. All his life he had been a good and pious man. He offered his prayer five times a day, and he had been on the holy pilgrimage, the Haj, sixty times. In fact, that is how he came to be known as 'Haji' Mohammed. When his turn came he stood with his chest out before the angel. "Haji Mohammed!" the angel called. "Yes," said Haji. "This is the way to hell." said the angel, pointing at a road. "There is surely some mistake," said Haji. "Perhaps your ledgers are mixed up. I have been to Haj sixty times during my life on earth." "That has all gone to waste," said the angel, "for you made it a matter of prestige and began calling yourself 'haji'. You have reaped the benefits of your Haj already. What else did you do?" Now the Haji was not so sure of himself. When sixty pilgrimages counted as nothing, what else had he to show? Yet he persisted, "I have said my prayers religiously five times a day." "That too was fruitless," said the angel, "for you; you prayed louder and longer when people were around and made a short job of it when there was no one around. Your attention was on people, not on God. You wanted to be known as a religious man, a pious man. Have you anything else to show?" The Haji was now so terrified that he woke up! This dream changed his life. He became plain Mohammed from Haji Mohammed; he also began to pray in secret so that no one would know. Word went around the village that the Haji was no longer religious. Why, he had even stopped his prayers! So he reached his dotage. The Haji never refuted what people said. His prayers began to be meaningful and sincere. It is said that he had no trouble reaching heaven.

If your mind prays it will not allow prayer to happen. It will make prayer yet another way of filling its ego. Don't talk about your meditation. Hide your meditation as you would hide your precious jewels. You always protect your valuables from the gaze of others: do the same with meditation. Don't talk about it, don't fill your ego with it, or the creeper of the mind will reach there also and suck it away. Whenever the mind reaches, religion is not. Where the mind is not, religion is. The mind is always outgoing, extraverted; its attention is on the other, and not on itself. Meditation is in-going. It is introverted. Meditation means: the focus is on one's own self and not on the other. Mind means the focus is on the other. Observe yourself: when you give a two paise coin to a beggar you look around to see if people are looking at you or not. When you build a temple you take care to inscribe your name in bold letters on a marble slab right at the entrance. You give to charity, but you see to it that it is mentioned in the newspapers. Everything you do is in vain. You cannot reach by becoming 'Haji' Mohammed. Don't keep an account of your fasts and austerities. God's realm is not a place of business. God is not impressed by your balance sheet. Now look at the Jain munis. Every year they announce in writing how many vows they have undertaken, how many fasts they have observed in the rainy season. They keep a ledger of all of this." They are shopkeepers who just happen to be occupying our temples; they are still not rid of the habit of keeping accounts. All their fasts and meditations go to waste; they are becoming 'Haji' Mohammeds. Don't worry about the outside world; don't worry whether people know you are religious or not. What others say is of no consequence and not worth giving a thought to, for it is your mind that relates to other people, not you. The day the mind is no more, you shall become disassociated from every one. It is the mind that binds you together. As long as the mind ties you to the world, you will remain torn away from God. The day you are divorced from your mind, the mind annihilated, you will be united with God. You disassociate on one side, while you begin to associate on the other. You break relations here, you establish relations there. Once the eyes close here they open there. MEDITATION IS THE SEED, and meditation means: the thoughtless consciousnes