Osho Rajneesh Book "The Perfect Way"

The Perfect Way

The First Morning
4 June 1964 am

It is a delight to see you. In this solitary place you have come together to realize God, to find the

truth, to know your own selves. But may I ask you a question? Is what you are seeking separate

from you¿ You can search for someone who is away but how can you seek that which is your own

self¿ Your own self cannot be sought in the sense in which everything else is sought because in this

case there is no difference between the one who is seeking and the one who is being sought. You

can seek out the world but you cannot seek your self. He who goes out in search of his self goes

farther away from his self. It is important to understand this fact fully. Only then the search may be

possible. If you want the material things of the world you have to look outside yourself, but if you

want to find your self you have to be composed, unruffled, and to abandon all seeking. What you

really are can only be seen in perfect calm and emptiness.

Remember that a search is also an excitement, a tension, that it is a desire and a passion as well.

But the soul cannot be realized through passion. This is the difficulty. Passion indicates that one

desires to become something or to attain something, while the soul is already there within one. The

soul is what I, myself, am. Passion and the soul lie in the opposite directions. They are opposite

dimensions.

Therefore understand fully that the soul can be realized but it cannot be the object of desire. There

cannot be any desire as such for the soul. All desire is worldly; no-desire is spiritual. It is desire

and passion that make up the world. Whether this passion or desire is for money or for religion, for

authority or for the realization of God, for worldly pleasures or for the liberation of moksha, it makes

no difference. All passion is ignorance and bondage.

I do not ask you to desire the soul. I only ask you to comprehend the nature of desire. The

understanding of passion frees one from passion because it reveals its painful character. The

knowledge of pain is freedom from pain. Nobody, having known pain, can want it. And when

there is no desire, when the mind is neither disturbed by passion nor searching for anything, then at

that very moment, at that calm and tranquil moment you experience your real authentic being. The

soul declares itself when passion disappears.

Therefore my friends, I ask you not to hanker after the soul but to understand desire itself and to rid

yourselves of it. Then you will know and will realize the atman, the soul.

What is religion? Religion, dharma, has nothing to do with thoughts or with thinking. It has to do

with no-thinking. Thinking is philosophy. It gives you results or conclusions but does not bring you

satisfaction. Dharma is contentment. The process of logic is the doorway to thought while samadhi

is the gateway to contentment.

Samadhi is the result of shunya and chaitanya, of emptiness and consciousness. The mind must be

empty but watchful, and in that state of tranquility the door to truth opens. Truth is realized only out

of emptiness and one’s whole life is subsequently transformed.

We reach the stage of samadhi through meditation, but what is generally understood as meditation

is not true meditation. It too is thinking. Possibly the thoughts relate to the soul or to God but they

are still thoughts. To what the thoughts relate makes no difference. In reality all thoughts pertain to

another, to an outsider. They relate to what is not the self, to the material. There cannot be thought

about the self because for thought to exist, two are needed. Therefore thought cannot take you

beyond duality. If one is to realize this unity, to live in the self and to know it, then meditation, not

thinking, is the way.

Thought and meditation are in diametrically opposite directions. The former moves outward; the

latter, inward. Thought is the way to know the other; meditation, the way to know the self. But

thought is generally taken for meditation. This is a very serious and widespread mistake and I want

to caution you against this fundamental error. Meditation means becoming actionless. Meditation is

not action but a state of being. It is being steady in one’s own self.

In action we come into contact with the outside world; in inaction, with ourselves. When we are

not doing anything we become aware of what we are, but we are constantly involved in different

activities and do not know ourselves. We do not even remember that we exist. We are deeply

preoccupied. At least the body rests but the mind does not rest at all. Awake, we think;p asleep, we

dream. Engrossed in these constant preoccupations and activities, we simply forget ourselves. In

the press of our own affairs we lose ourselves. How strange this is! But it is a fact. We have become

lost, not in the crowds of other people, but in our own thoughts, in our own dreams, in our own

preoccupations and activities. We have become lost in ourselves. Meditation is the way to extricate

ourselves from this self-created crowd, from this mental wanderlust.

By its nature meditation cannot involve any action. It is no-action. It is a term for an unoccupied

mind. This is what I teach. It may look rather odd to say that I teach no-action and to say that we

have gathered here to practice no-action but the language of man is very poor and very limited.

Designed to express action only, it is never able to express the soul. How can what is fashioned for

speech express silence? The world ”meditation” suggests that it is some sort of action but it is by no

means action of any kind. It would be wrong of me to say I was ”practicing” meditation; it would be

correct to say I was ”in” meditation. It is just like love. I am in love, but love cannot be manufactured.

Hence I say meditation is a state of mind. It is of prime importance to be clear about this at the

outset.

We have not gathered here to do anything but have come to experience that state where we simply

are, where no action takes place, where there is no smoke to suggest action and only the burning

flame of being remains, where only the self remains, where even the thought that ”I am” no longer

remains, where simply ”being” remains. This is shunya, emptiness. This is the point where we see

not the world, but truth. It is in this void, in this emptiness that the wall that keeps you from knowing

your self topples, that the curtains of thought rise and wisdom dawns. At this point you do not think,

you know. Then there is vision; then there is realization.

But the words ”vision” and ”realization” are not quite appropriate because here there is no difference

between the knower and the known, no difference between the subject and the object. Here there

is neither the known nor the knower, simply knowing. In this context no word is suitable. ”No-word”

is the only appropriate word. If anyone asks me about this state I remain silent – or you might say I

convey my answer through my silence.

Meditation is no-action. Action is something we may or may not do according to our wishes. But

there is a difference between one’s nature and one’s actions. One’s nature is not action, it is neither

doing nor non-doing. For example, understanding and sight are parts of our nature, parts of our

being. Even if we do nothing they will still be there. Nature is constantly present in us and only that

which is constant and continuous can be called natural. Nature is not something of our making, it

is our foundation. It is ourselves. We do not create it, it is an intrinsic cohesion. We call it dharma.

Dharma means our nature; it means pure existence.

This constant and continuous nature of ours is suppressed by the scattered direction of our actions.

Just as the sea is covered by waves and the sun by clouds, we are covered by our own actions.

The layer of activities on the surface hides that which is deep inside. Insignificant waves hide from

our view the unfathomable depths of the ocean. How strange it is that the mighty is suppressed by

the trivial, that a speck in the eye renders mountains invisible! But the sea does not cease to exist

because of the waves. It is the soul of the waves and is present in them as well. Those who know

even recognize it in the waves, but those who do not know must wait until the waves subside. They

can only look at the ocean after the waves disperse.

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