Osho - By meditation I mean a Relaxed Awareness

Osho - Meditation is the process of achieving immortality. Meditation is the only alchemical secret. It transforms mortal beings into immortal beings. It transforms dust into the divine. Meditation is a bridge between the earth and the heaven.

And by meditation I don't means concentration. That has to be remembered. Concentration is a misunderstanding about meditation. Concentration is of the mind. It is tense, it is a strain. It needs great effort. It is violent, and I am against all violence, even violence against yourself.

By meditation I mean a relaxed awareness, a very restful awareness; no effort, no straining. Meditation does not mean focusing your mind, because whenever you try to focus the mind, tension is bound to arise because the mind naturally wants to flow. It is unnatural for the mind to force it to stay stuck somewhere. It does not want to be dormant, stagnant, it wants to move. It is movement, and nothing is wrong in its movement. Of course it is a little monkey-ish; it moves too much from one branch to another, from one tree to another -- and that is tiring.

But concentration is like when you force a child to sit in the corner of a room and be silent. Tell him to be silent, 'Be quiet, don't move,' and see what happens to him. He will force himself, he will close his eyes, his eyes will be clenched shut and he will be boiling within. He will be restless and he will want to jump out of himself. And that's what happens to people who try to concentrate.

Meditation is a non-focussed awareness. Meditation is more like a mirror: you simply watch whatsoever goes on happening in the mind. A thought comes, a thought arises, stays there for a time being, then moves, goes out, comes in from this door, goes out from another door; even another thought arises. There is a constant procession, a traffic of thoughts, desires, memories, imagination. And you are just a watcher, cool, unconcerned, indifferent.

That watchfulness is meditation. You are neither for any thought nor against any thought. You are not choosing anything, you are just in a state of choicelessness. You cannot be distracted. A man who concentrates can be distracted, will be distracted, by anything. The phone starts ringing and he is distracted; the neighbours put their radio on a higher volume and he is distracted. Everything is distracting.

But a man of awareness, a meditative person, is never distracted because he watches everything. He will watch the phone ringing, he will watch the child crying, he will watch the neighbours and their radio getting louder and louder. He has nothing to do with it. He is cool and calm and open from all sides. So whatsoever happens -- the train whistles, the aeroplane passes by or there is a distant call of the cuckoo -- everything is included.

Concentration means only one thing is included, everything else is excluded. Meditation means all is included, nothing is excluded; you are simply resting within yourself.

It is a knack. If you go on doing it, slowly slowly the knack is learned. And the moment you have learned the knack of meditation you are a new being. It is a new birth, the real birth, because in that very moment you know you are neither the body nor the mind, you are pure consciousness. In that very moment you know that this pure consciousness was before birth and is going to remain after death. It is immortal.

This is the discovery of immortality. And to discover immortality is to discover god, to discover immortality is to discover eternity. Otherwise everything is momentary, everything is passing by. We go on clinging to things but they will go out of our hands and then there is misery. When you know that you are eternal you don't cling to anything. And you understand; a great understanding arises that life is only like acting, playing a role in a drama. And that's what sannyas is all about.

Nothing has to be renounced, everything has to be understood. And the very understanding transforms you, helps you to transcend all that is ugly, miserable, dark.

Source - Osho Book "Fingers Pointing to the Moon"