Can music be used for meditation?

Osho, can music also be used for meditation?

It can be, but there are dangers too. If you use music for meditation, do not get absorbed in the music; otherwise you will slip into unconsciousness rather than into meditation. It can be used. Listen to the music—do not be absorbed; be a witness. When a sitar is playing, our ordinary tendency is to get absorbed, to start swaying with the sitar. If you become absorbed, there will be no benefit for meditation. You will get rest, you will get relaxation, but do not become absorbed. The sitar is playing—just remain a witness. Do not start swaying. Simply be aware that it is playing. The sound is coming; keep watching. Do not become identified with these sounds; do not become one with them. Then there will be benefit. And if you get absorbed, there can be harm. That is why Muslims prohibited music, because in it the possibility of…

And music helps people to abandon themselves, to forget themselves. So there are two types of meditative techniques. One is to forget yourself -- then music is perfectly good. That's what prayer is -- so in prayer you can use music. But in awareness you cannot use music, because that is self-remembering; you have to remember yourself -- that you are, where you are. You have to remain there, continuously rooted in your being; not going here and there. So for T'ai Chi, centring, awareness, self-remembering, are the right words to understand. For prayer, for sufi dancing, for whirling, it is totally different -- just the diametrically opposite. You have to forget yourself. It is a self-forgetfulness. You have to drown yourself and you have to become drunk. And music is wine -- nothing like it. Nothing makes a person more drunk than music.

But it can be used as a meditation if one understands how to use it. It is a tremendously powerful method. The whole art consists in this: if you can play music yourself then get lost in playing. Don't remain separate from the music: dissolve into it, be possessed by it, and it becomes meditation. Or, if you are just a listener, then get lost in listening, become music again. Don't be there as a spectator, don't be critical, don't question whether it is good or bad. Don't bring in your likes and dislikes: be choicelessly lost. Let it overpower you, let it surround you... first without and then within, slowly slowly. Then you will be just a part, a throbbing part of the melody, and immediately music will open a door to meditation. Whenever the ego is lost, meditation arises.

Beloved master, I am a musician and I have come across many music teachers over the years. But now it seems that I have not only found a master but also the ultimate music teacher. Is it perhaps the same thing? And could you please say something to us about music and meditation?

The musician started playing, and he was such a master! After only a few minutes, a few heads started moving in tune with the master's music. The king was very much afraid. He saw heads moving, swaying -- people were getting drunk. He himself was afraid for his own head! But a tremendous desire arose in him too, he could not resist it. He himself started moving his head, he forgot all about it. What to say about the audience? The people who were standing with naked swords, many of them started moving their heads and their swords were swaying! The queen was very much worried. She saw that there were going to be hundreds of people unnecessarily murdered. But sooner or later almost everybody was drunk with his music. When he finished in the middle of the night, the people who had to report, they reported that "Not a…

Some friends come to me and say, Osho, we keep hearing all sorts of sounds. When will this stop?

It is never going to stop. You are not to become unconscious so that you don’t hear sounds. No—meditation will not come by the stopping of sounds. Sounds are there, and within you no reaction, no response arises—meditation is concerned only with this much. A man is shouting next door; nothing happens to you: you hear, and nothing happens. A sister came to me today and said that in the last fifteen minutes of the afternoon silence her heartbeat increased a lot. So many sounds became audible that she got frightened; she felt like getting up and running away. Not hearing sounds would be a swoon. Hearing sounds and reacting by running away—that is the ordinary state. Hearing sounds and simply listening, remaining only the witness, the watcher—that is meditation. You are not to become stupefied. Whatever is happening, you will know it all—but it will become dreamlike. As long…