Life as a Movie

“Take this whole life as a myth, as a story. It is one, but once you take it this way you will not be unhappy. Unhappiness comes out of too much seriousness. Try for seven days; for seven days remember only one thing — that the whole world is just a drama — and you will not be the same again. Just for seven days! You are not going to lose much because you don’t have anything to lose.

“You can try it. For seven days take everything as a drama, just as a show.

“These seven days will give you many glimpses of your buddha nature, of your inner purity. And once you have the glimpse you cannot be the same again. You will be happy, and you cannot conceive of what type of happiness can happen to you because you have not known any happiness. You have known only degrees of unhappiness: sometimes you were more unhappy, sometimes less unhappy, and when you were less unhappy you called it happiness.

“You don’t know what happiness is because you cannot know. When you have a concept of the world in which you are taking it very seriously, you cannot know what happiness is. Happiness happens only when you are grounded in this attitude, that the world is just a play.

“So try this, and do everything in a very festive way, celebrating, doing an ‘act’ — not a real thing. If you are a husband, play, be a play husband; if you are a wife, be a play wife. Make it just a game. And there are rules, of course; any game to be played needs rules. Marriage is a rule and divorce is a rule, but don’t be serious about them. They are rules, and one rule begets another. Divorce is bad; because marriage is bad: one rule begets another! But don’t take them seriously, and then look how the quality of your life immediately changes.

“Behave with your wife or husband or your children as if you are doing a part in a drama, and see the beauty of it. If you are playing a part you will try to be efficient, but you will not get disturbed. There is no need. You will do the part and go to sleep. But remember, it is a part, and for seven days continuously follow this attitude.

“Then happiness can happen to you, and once you know what happiness is you need not move into unhappiness, because it is your choice. You are unhappy because you have chosen a wrong attitude towards life. You can be happy if you choose a right attitude. Buddha pays so much attention to ‘right attitude.’ He makes it a base, a foundation — right attitude. What is right attitude? What is the criterion? To me this is the criterion: the attitude that makes you happy is the right attitude, and there is no objective criterion. The attitude that makes you unhappy and miserable is the wrong attitude. The criterion is subjective; your happiness is the criterion.”

Osho, The Book of Secrets

There is a beginning of the mind and there is an end of the mind, there is a beginning of the ego and there is an end of the ego, but there is no beginning to you and no end to you. And there is no beginning to the mystery of existence and no end to you. It is an ongoing process. Mysteries upon mysteries are waiting for you, hence the thrill and the ecstasy.

OSHO

*photo taken at: Kanlog, Shimla_India_September 2013

To know that all has failed is the beginning of a new journey. To know that "All that I have achieved is lost" is the beginning of a new search for something that cannot be lost. When one is utterly disillusioned with the world and all its successes, only then one becomes spiritual.

Osho

Once you touch your source of permanence, your eternity, you have touched the eternity of life also. Parallel to you, things happen. If you are the center, you are capable of looking into the very center of life. If you are on the periphery, you are capable of only looking at the periphery of life. The periphery goes on changing.

Osho_ Bauls: The Mystics of celebration

To come to know that nothing is good, nothing is bad, is a turning point; it is a conversion. You start looking in; the outside reality loses meaning. The social reality is a fiction, a beautiful drama; you can participate in it, but then you don't take it seriously. It is just a role to be played; play it as beautifully, as efficiently, as possible. But don't take it seriously, it has nothing of the ultimate in it.

Osho

Nothing is good, nothing is bad. When this dawns in your consciousness, suddenly you are together, all fragments have disappeared into one unity. You are crystallized, you are centered. This is one of the greatest contributions of Eastern consciousness to the world.

Osho

Meditation is looking into your emptiness, welcoming it, enjoying it, being one with it, with no desire to fill it; there is no need, because it is already full. It looks empty because you don´t have the right way of seeing it. You see it through the mind; that is the wrong way. If you put the mind aside and look into your emptiness, it has tremendous beauty, it is divine, it is overflowing with joy. Nothing else is needed.

Osho

Forget all about figuring it out what it is. Rather, live it; rather, enjoy it! Don't analyze, celebrate it.

Osho

Protection of Joy

Step 1: Preparation

“For the first seven days, the first step: Lying down on the bed, or sitting, put the light off, be in darkness. 

Step 2: Remember a Beautiful Moment

“Just remember any beautiful moment that you have experienced in the past. Any beautiful moment — just choose the best. It may be very ordinary…because sometimes extraordinary things happen in very ordinary grounds.

“You are just sitting still, doing nothing, and the rain is falling on the roof…the smell, the sound...you are surrounded, and something clicks. You are in a sacred moment. Or one day walking along the road, suddenly the sunlight falls on you from behind the trees...and click! something opens. For a moment you are transported into another world.

“Once you have chosen it, continue it for seven days. Just close your eyes and relive it. Go into the details. The rain is falling on the roof...the drip drip — the sound...the smell...the very texture of the moment...a bird is singing, a dog is barking...a plate has fallen, and the sound….

“Go into all the details, from all sides; multi-dimensionally, from all the senses. Every night you will find that you are moving into deeper details — things that you may even have missed in the real moment, but that your mind has recorded. Whether you miss the moment or not, the mind goes on recording.

“You will come to feel subtle nuances which you were not aware that you had experienced. When your consciousness is focused on that moment, the moment will be there again. You will start feeling new things. You will suddenly come to recognize that they were there but you had missed them at that moment. But the mind records it all. It is a very very reliable servant, tremendously capable.

“By the seventh day you will be able to see it so clearly that you will feel that you have never seen any real moment as clearly as this one.

Step 3: Week 2: The Climate of Joy

“After seven days do the same thing but add one more thing. On the eighth day, feel the space around you; feel the climate is surrounding you from all sides…up to three feet. Just feel an aura surrounding you of that moment. By the fourteenth day you will almost be able to be in a totally different world, although conscious that beyond that three feet a totally different time and a totally different dimension is present. 

Step 4: Week 3: Live the Moment

“Then the third week, something more has to be added. Live the moment, be surrounded by it, and now, create imaginary anti-space. For example you are feeling very good; for three feet you are surrounded by that goodness, that divinity. Now think of a situation — somebody insults you but the insult comes only up to the limit. There is a fence, and the insult cannot enter you. It comes like an arrow...and falls there. Or remember some sad moment: you are hurt but that hurt comes to the glass wall that is surrounding you, and falls there. It never reaches you. You will be able to see — if the first two weeks have gone right — by the third week, that everything comes up to that three-foot limit, and nothing penetrates you.

Step 5: Week 4: Carry the Aura Everywhere

“Then from the fourth week continue to keep that aura with you; going to the market, talking to people, continuously have it in the mind.

“You will be tremendously thrilled. You will move in the world having your own world, a private world, continuously with you. 

“That will make you capable of living in the present, because, in fact, you are continuously bombarded by thousands and thousands of things, and they catch your attention. If you don’t have a protective aura around you, you are vulnerable. A dog barks: suddenly the mind has been pulled in that direction. The dog comes into the memory. Now you have many dogs in the memory from the past. Your friend has a dog: now from the dog you go to your friend. Then to the friend’s sister with whom you had fallen in love. Now the whole nonsense starts. The barking of this dog was in the present, but it led you somewhere else into the past. It may lead you into the future — there is no way of saying. Anything can lead to anything; it is very complicated.

“So one needs a surrounding, a protective aura. The dog goes on barking, but you remain in yourself — settled, calm, quiet and centered. 

Step 6: Dropping the Aura

“Carry that aura for a few days or a few months. When you see that now it is not needed, you can drop it. Once you know how to be herenow, once you have enjoyed the beauty of it, the tremendous bliss of it, you can drop the aura of it.” 

Osho, Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle

Feel Your Body as Empty

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin…but inside, everything empty. This is one of the most beautiful techniques. Just sit in a meditative posture, relaxed, alone, your backbone straight and the whole body relaxed ― as if the whole body is hanging on the backbone. Then close your eyes. For a few moments go on feeling relaxed, more relaxed, becoming calmer and calmer and calmer. Do this for a few moments, just to be in tune. And then suddenly start feeling your body is just walls of skin and there is nothing inside, there is no one inside, the house is vacant. Sometimes you will feel thoughts passing, clouds of thoughts moving, but don't think that they belong to you. You are not. Just think that they are roaming in a vacant sky ― they don't belong to anyone, they don't have any roots. 

Really this is the case: thoughts are just like clouds moving in the sky. They don't have any roots and they don't belong to the sky, they simply roam in the sky. They come and they go and the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced. Feel that your body is just walls of skin and there is no one inside. Thoughts will still continue ― because of old habit, old momentum, old cooperation, thoughts will go on coming. But just think that they are rootless clouds moving in space ― they don't belong to you, they don't belong to anybody else. There is no one to whom they can belong ― you are empty. It will be difficult, but because of the old habits, nothing else. Your mind would like to catch some thought, be identified with it, move with it, enjoy it, indulge in it. Resist! Just say there is no one to indulge, there is no one to fight, there is no one to do anything with this thought. 

Within a few days, a few weeks, thoughts will slow down, they will become less and less. The clouds will start disappearing, or, even if they come, there will be great gaps of cloudless sky when there will be no thought. One thought will pass. Then another will not come for a period. Then another will come and then there will again be an interval. In those intervals you will know for the first time what emptiness is. And the very glimpse of it will fill you with such deep bliss you cannot imagine. 

Osho, The Book of Secrets

Every child brings wondering eyes into existence. Soon we enforce dust into his eyes; we cover his pure mirror with dust. Sooner or later, he becomes knowledgeable and the sooner he becomes, the more we are happy. Our happiness is really poisoning the child.

Osho

The real opposite of hate is not love, the real opposite of love is not hate it is so apparent, who can be deceived by it? The real opposite of love is pseudo-love: love that pretends to be love, and is not.

Osho