According to Osho, ajapa-japa is not mechanical repetition but the continuous flow of witnessing—awareness that needs no effort or special setting. Practice it in the marketplace of life, amid praise and blame, gain and loss, simply remaining unmoved and watchful. Here the means and the end are one: stay present, let life provoke you, and keep witnessing.
Just keep calmly watching everything that happens inside and around you while living your day, without forcing anything or running away.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Then take the heart as a lotus—only a symbol to help you understand. Move your entire awareness into the heart where the throb is; where breath touches and sets the heart beating; where the thread of breath is hitched. You have seen the breath; now step behind breath—deeper; slip into the throb of the heart. See the heart as a lotus. As in the lotus, at the core a small space exists where sometimes the bee is trapped—sit in that empty space. Place your awareness—your surati—there. Placing surati upon the lotus of the heart, if one enters ajapa… This is what Nanak called ajapa-japa. Now there is no chanting and no chanter; only then does true chanting happen—ajapa. Now, for the first time, you hear the sound of existence itself. This is Omkar—the Om resounding. It is heard—not done.
Question: KATHA JAPAH. DANAMATMAGYANAM. YOAVIPASTHO OYAHETUSHCHA. SVASHAKTI PASCHAYOASYA VISHVAM. STHITILAYAU. WHATEVER HE UTTERS IS JAPA. SELF-KNOWLEDGE ITSELF IS HIS GIFT. HE IS THE MASTER OF THE INNER POWERS AND THE SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE. THE CONSTANT ENJOYMENT OF SELF-ENERGIES IS HIS UNIVERSE. LIFE AND DEATH ARE UNDER HIS WILL. Be aware of this distinction. You make meditation one more act to add to your daily activities. There are a thousand involvements in your life already, and you add God as just one more, but you will miss God, for God cannot be at the periphery. God has nothing to do with the market and the shops. He is the very core of your being -- where you actually are. Where all work becomes rest, where you simply exist, where there is no doer, where only the witness is -- this where He lives. God does not occupy a part of you.
Osho, in the world of sadhana there is much mention of yajnas and rituals. There are many methods of yajna; people speak of homa-type yajnas. But in the Gita, japa-yajna and jnana-yajna are given special importance. And while speaking on japa you also spoke of ajapa-japa. So please shed light on the Gita’s japa-yajna, jnana-yajna, and on ajapa-japa as well.
Third: we see the flames of fire rising; we can only see them a little way, then they vanish. Fire is visible only a short distance; beyond that it becomes invisible. Knowledge too is visible only a little—or say: for a short distance its relation remains with the visible; beyond that its relation is with the invisible. Then the visible is lost; only the invisible remains. For all these reasons fire became a potent symbol of knowledge, and Krishna could use the word jnana-yajna. If these symbols are in our awareness, jnana-yajna will continue forever. The other rituals and yajnas built around fire will disappear, because they arise from circumstances; but jnana-yajna will continue. Thus Krishna, for the first time, freed yajna from circumstance and gave it an eternal meaning. The yajna of the Vedas was bound to particular conditions, tied to an event. Krishna freed it from that event…
Their cessation is brought about by persistent inner effort and non-attachment. Of these two, abhyasa the inner practice is the effort for being firmly established in oneself.
IT BECOMES FIRMLY GROUNDED ON BEING CONTINUED FOR A LONG TIME, WITHOUT INTERRUPTION AND WITH REVERENT DEVOTION. Your whole being feels filled, vibrates with it, it becomes your deeper breath. You cannot live without it. And by and by it creates an inner harmony, a music. Your whole being starts falling into harmony. An ecstasy is born, a humming sensation, a sweetness surrounds you. By and by this sweetness becomes your nature. Then whatsoever you say, it becomes the name of Allah; whatsoever you say, it becomes the remembrance of the divine. Any practice WITHOUT INTERRUPTION AND WITH REVERENT DEVOTION... for the western mind it is very difficult. They can understand practice; they cannot understand REVERENT DEVOTION. They have completely forgotten that language, and without that language practice is just Western seekers come to me and they say, "Whatsoever you say we will do," and they follow it exactly as…
Osho, “By continual practice the dull-witted become wise. As the rope goes to and fro, it carves marks in the stone.” Does one also need some practice to attain the divine? Please clarify.
Some people, when they have to think, start scratching their heads. Hold their hand and don’t let them scratch, and they’re in trouble—they can’t think. “Let go of my hand, or my thinking is ruined!” It’s a mechanical habit. Someone must light a cigarette to think; as the smoke begins, thinking becomes easier. Snatch the cigarette and he’s disoriented—“What do I do now?” Another person must ring the temple bell every morning, wave the plate of offerings. Keep him from entering the temple for a day and he is upset all day. You think there is a difference between scratching the head, ringing the bell, smoking a cigarette? There is none. Dr. Hari Singh Gaur had a habit—he told me this story himself—that whenever he argued a deep point before the Privy Council, he would twirl the button of his coat. If his fingers found that button, his brain worked…