WESTERN MYSTICS
The New Alchemy 01
First Discourse from the series of 34 discourses - The New Alchemy by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
I have called you here; you heard my call, and you have come. But this coming, this outward coming, is not enough. Now, I will call you again, on a different journey: the inner one. And if you cooperate, if you are ready to move inward, that will also happen.
The most important thing to remember is that the inner journey requires deep courage. It is an adventure into the unknown. The sea is uncharted; it needs courage to take a plunge. What is this courage? – the courage is to leave your past and to take a jump.
If you are not courageous, you go on continuing with your past. You go on repeating the past again and again. You move in a wheel, in a circle. Then your whole life becomes just a repetition. Courage means the courage to come out of this vicious circle, to break the continuum – to be discontinuous with the past, to be new, to be reborn.
This meditation camp is going to be a happening for a rebirth. There will be much pain, much suffering, because every birth is a painful phenomenon. If you are ready then even that pain will become happiness, because when the morning is the darkest, when the night has become darkest, the sunrise is just nearby. When your suffering comes to a climax, you are just near the boundary from where the dimension of happiness and bliss starts. You will have to pass through suffering. Be ready for it because unless you pass through it you will never go beyond it. Don’t suppress suffering. Rather, move through it.
The meditation experiments that will be done here will bring your suffering to the surface. These experiments will bring your suffering from the unconscious to the conscious; and once suffering becomes conscious, it can evaporate.
From the unconscious, nothing evaporates. You go on pushing and forcing away your pain, anguish, anger, violence. You go on pushing and forcing everything inside you into the unconscious. Your unconscious has become a wound, it has become a hell. It has to be brought out. If you really want to enter a heavenly dimension, you will have to pass through the hell. Courage will be needed: courage to move through the hell, courage to be reborn.
When I say it is a rebirth, I mean it. You will pass through a death and then you will be reborn. Meditation is a death: dying to the past, dying completely as an ego.
What to do? How to die so that a new life is born unto you? How to die so that you can be resurrected again?
Jesus says that unless a seed dies it cannot become a tree, it cannot grow. You are like seeds, seeds of a divine flower, and unless you die as seeds the flowering will never happen. You have been carrying your seed for lives and lives, for millions and millions of years. Every moment is the right moment. If you are ready, the seed can die and a new life resurrect, a new life arise out of it.
If you have come, if you have heard my call, now be courageous. Don’t withhold yourself! Whatsoever I say, move into it as totally as possible. If you are ready to be courageous I can do much. Much is possible if you cooperate with me. If you just cooperate and become open, I can enter you. I can change you: I can make new adjustments, a tuning.
And once you are tuned, the whole of existence becomes different, because now you can listen to the cosmic harmony, the cosmic music. Once tuned to the infinite, you will never be the same again. If you are tuned for even a single moment, you will not be the same again.
Through all these experiments, my effort will be to tune you. But your cooperation will be needed. You can create barriers, you can create hindrances, you can resist me. If you resist, nothing will happen. Then you will say that nothing has happened – and you will be responsible, because that means you didn’t allow, you were not in a let-go.
Remember these words for this whole camp: let-go. Remember not only the words, but the feeling. Remain in a surrendered attitude, ready for whatsoever happens, and for whatsoever I do: allowing, vulnerable, open. Even if death occurs, be ready. Only then will life happen to you.
If you can trust me, only then is something possible. And trust always means… Ultimately it means that you are leaving everything in my hands. Even if death occurs, you will not complain. If your preparation is this much, then you will not return from this camp the same man. You will go back a new man, totally new. And the whole world becomes new when the insight into the infinite has happened.
Throughout this camp, feel a deep surrender. The first words to remember: let-go, surrender.
The second word to remember continuously is: now. N-O-W, now. Don’t move to the past, and don’t move to the future. Remain with the moment. Whenever you feel that your mind is going back again – thinking about the past, moving into memories – bring it back to the now. Or, if you feel your mind is moving, projecting into the future, bring it back to the now. If you are eating, then eat – don’t do anything else. If you are walking, then walk – don’t do anything else. If you are listening, then listen – don’t do anything else. If you are meditating, then meditate – don’t do anything else. Remain with the moment, here and now. It should be a constant effort. In the beginning you will feel it as a strain, just because of your old habits, but as you move deeply into it the strain will disappear. For the first time you will feel totally non-tense, because in the now no tension is possible. Just this moment is existential; everything else is either memory or projection. The past exists not, the future exists not – only the present.
The second thing to remember: remain with the now. Don’t go here and there, just remain with the present moment. It is difficult, but once you have the feeling of it, it becomes very easy, simple, natural.
And the third thing: in the techniques, in the meditation techniques bring your total energy. Halfhearted efforts won’t do. You will simply be wasting time and energy. A certain peak is needed, only then are you transformed into another dimension. Only after a peak… Just as when you heat water, at 100 degrees it evaporates. Even at 90 degrees it is just hot water, and if you leave it at that it will again cool down. The heat has been wasted; nothing has happened.
So bring your total energy to every technique that we are going to practice here. Only then will a certain degree be achieved, where you are no longer the old one. The old one will have disappeared, evaporated, and a new phenomenon will have come into being. So don’t withhold, don’t divide. Move totally. Bring your whole mind and body into it; don’t leave anything behind. And then I promise you that you will not leave here as you came. You will be a new man, resurrected. The unknown will have happened to you. It is certain, it is scientific – but you have to fulfill the conditions.
Tomorrow morning we will start the first meditation technique. It will be of four stages…
The first ten minutes: fast, chaotic breathing – forgetting yourself completely, as if you have become just the breathing process.
Second: for ten minutes, catharsis, acting out your emotions. Whatsoever is hidden and suppressed has to be brought out, thrown out – screaming, weeping, crying. Whatsoever happens, allow it to come out, help it to come out. Act it out completely, it is an unburdening.
In the third ten-minute step we will be using a mantra, hoo. You have to use this mantra hoo as forcibly, as strongly, for as long as possible. This is going to hammer your inner energy.
The energy lies just near the sex center. This hoo penetrates to the very sex center, hammers the energy, and the energy starts moving upward; when it starts moving upward it is called kundalini. When the energy moves downward it becomes sexual. The same energy, when it moves upward, becomes spiritual. The energy is the same, only the dimension is different.
After these three steps the fourth will be of total silence.
The most important thing to remember is that the inner journey requires deep courage. It is an adventure into the unknown. The sea is uncharted; it needs courage to take a plunge. What is this courage? – the courage is to leave your past and to take a jump.
If you are not courageous, you go on continuing with your past. You go on repeating the past again and again. You move in a wheel, in a circle. Then your whole life becomes just a repetition. Courage means the courage to come out of this vicious circle, to break the continuum – to be discontinuous with the past, to be new, to be reborn.
This meditation camp is going to be a happening for a rebirth. There will be much pain, much suffering, because every birth is a painful phenomenon. If you are ready then even that pain will become happiness, because when the morning is the darkest, when the night has become darkest, the sunrise is just nearby. When your suffering comes to a climax, you are just near the boundary from where the dimension of happiness and bliss starts. You will have to pass through suffering. Be ready for it because unless you pass through it you will never go beyond it. Don’t suppress suffering. Rather, move through it.
The meditation experiments that will be done here will bring your suffering to the surface. These experiments will bring your suffering from the unconscious to the conscious; and once suffering becomes conscious, it can evaporate.
From the unconscious, nothing evaporates. You go on pushing and forcing away your pain, anguish, anger, violence. You go on pushing and forcing everything inside you into the unconscious. Your unconscious has become a wound, it has become a hell. It has to be brought out. If you really want to enter a heavenly dimension, you will have to pass through the hell. Courage will be needed: courage to move through the hell, courage to be reborn.
When I say it is a rebirth, I mean it. You will pass through a death and then you will be reborn. Meditation is a death: dying to the past, dying completely as an ego.
What to do? How to die so that a new life is born unto you? How to die so that you can be resurrected again?
Jesus says that unless a seed dies it cannot become a tree, it cannot grow. You are like seeds, seeds of a divine flower, and unless you die as seeds the flowering will never happen. You have been carrying your seed for lives and lives, for millions and millions of years. Every moment is the right moment. If you are ready, the seed can die and a new life resurrect, a new life arise out of it.
If you have come, if you have heard my call, now be courageous. Don’t withhold yourself! Whatsoever I say, move into it as totally as possible. If you are ready to be courageous I can do much. Much is possible if you cooperate with me. If you just cooperate and become open, I can enter you. I can change you: I can make new adjustments, a tuning.
And once you are tuned, the whole of existence becomes different, because now you can listen to the cosmic harmony, the cosmic music. Once tuned to the infinite, you will never be the same again. If you are tuned for even a single moment, you will not be the same again.
Through all these experiments, my effort will be to tune you. But your cooperation will be needed. You can create barriers, you can create hindrances, you can resist me. If you resist, nothing will happen. Then you will say that nothing has happened – and you will be responsible, because that means you didn’t allow, you were not in a let-go.
Remember these words for this whole camp: let-go. Remember not only the words, but the feeling. Remain in a surrendered attitude, ready for whatsoever happens, and for whatsoever I do: allowing, vulnerable, open. Even if death occurs, be ready. Only then will life happen to you.
If you can trust me, only then is something possible. And trust always means… Ultimately it means that you are leaving everything in my hands. Even if death occurs, you will not complain. If your preparation is this much, then you will not return from this camp the same man. You will go back a new man, totally new. And the whole world becomes new when the insight into the infinite has happened.
Throughout this camp, feel a deep surrender. The first words to remember: let-go, surrender.
The second word to remember continuously is: now. N-O-W, now. Don’t move to the past, and don’t move to the future. Remain with the moment. Whenever you feel that your mind is going back again – thinking about the past, moving into memories – bring it back to the now. Or, if you feel your mind is moving, projecting into the future, bring it back to the now. If you are eating, then eat – don’t do anything else. If you are walking, then walk – don’t do anything else. If you are listening, then listen – don’t do anything else. If you are meditating, then meditate – don’t do anything else. Remain with the moment, here and now. It should be a constant effort. In the beginning you will feel it as a strain, just because of your old habits, but as you move deeply into it the strain will disappear. For the first time you will feel totally non-tense, because in the now no tension is possible. Just this moment is existential; everything else is either memory or projection. The past exists not, the future exists not – only the present.
The second thing to remember: remain with the now. Don’t go here and there, just remain with the present moment. It is difficult, but once you have the feeling of it, it becomes very easy, simple, natural.
And the third thing: in the techniques, in the meditation techniques bring your total energy. Halfhearted efforts won’t do. You will simply be wasting time and energy. A certain peak is needed, only then are you transformed into another dimension. Only after a peak… Just as when you heat water, at 100 degrees it evaporates. Even at 90 degrees it is just hot water, and if you leave it at that it will again cool down. The heat has been wasted; nothing has happened.
So bring your total energy to every technique that we are going to practice here. Only then will a certain degree be achieved, where you are no longer the old one. The old one will have disappeared, evaporated, and a new phenomenon will have come into being. So don’t withhold, don’t divide. Move totally. Bring your whole mind and body into it; don’t leave anything behind. And then I promise you that you will not leave here as you came. You will be a new man, resurrected. The unknown will have happened to you. It is certain, it is scientific – but you have to fulfill the conditions.
Tomorrow morning we will start the first meditation technique. It will be of four stages…
The first ten minutes: fast, chaotic breathing – forgetting yourself completely, as if you have become just the breathing process.
Second: for ten minutes, catharsis, acting out your emotions. Whatsoever is hidden and suppressed has to be brought out, thrown out – screaming, weeping, crying. Whatsoever happens, allow it to come out, help it to come out. Act it out completely, it is an unburdening.
In the third ten-minute step we will be using a mantra, hoo. You have to use this mantra hoo as forcibly, as strongly, for as long as possible. This is going to hammer your inner energy.
The energy lies just near the sex center. This hoo penetrates to the very sex center, hammers the energy, and the energy starts moving upward; when it starts moving upward it is called kundalini. When the energy moves downward it becomes sexual. The same energy, when it moves upward, becomes spiritual. The energy is the same, only the dimension is different.
After these three steps the fourth will be of total silence.