It’s like being the quiet middle of a spinning top: everything outside whirls, but inside you stay still and calm.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, four years ago where I was living there was in the outhouse a poster. On it was a beautiful picture of the ocean and these words which have remained with me: 'I am moving and not moving at all. I am like the moon beneath the waves that ever go rolling.' during discourse yesterday,for the first time, I saw where that unmoving place is in me. Will you speak about it more?
YOGA DIVYA, IT IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE SPOKEN ABOUT. And don't think about it -- just feel it. If you start thinking about it you will lose track again. It is a feeling space within you; it has nothing to do with thought. Thought will be a disturbance. Feel it! Sit silently, feel it, rejoice in it, laugh with it, cry and weep with it, but don't think about it. The moment you think about it you have gone farthest from it, the farthest possible. Because thinking always takes you away from things. A rose flower is there and you start thinking about it... then miles and miles of distance between you and the rose flower. Thinking is a kind of distance. Thinking creates distance. If you really want to be with the rose flower, forget thinking. Be with the rose flower! Cry with it, sing with it, dance…
Osho, last night you explained inner stillness through the dimension of inner silence. Please explain inner stillness from some other dimension.
Jesus says that we are just dead -- not alive! One day, he was passing by a fisherman just as the morning sun was going to rise. The fisherman had thrown his net into the lake, and Jesus put his hand on the fisherman's shoulder and said, "Are you going to destroy your whole life just catching fish? I can show you something better to catch. I can make you a fisherman of life." The fisherman looked at Jesus as if some magnet was working on him. Then he threw away his net and followed Jesus. When they were just going out of the village, someone came running and told the fisherman, "Your father is dead. He has just died, so come home. Where are you going?" The fisherman asked permission. He said to Jesus, "Allow me to go home. Soon I will come back. I have to bury my…
Beloved Osho, in days past, sufis had to whirl in order to become aware of their unmoving center. In this rapidly changing world, can the modern man simply stand still and achieve exactly the same effect?
No, it won't do, because you cannot stand still. You don't know how to be still. It is not just a matter of standing. The world is moving, but that movement is invisible. The earth is moving, but you don't feel its movement because you are also moving with it. The earth is making a double movement: first, on its own axis -- it is moving round and round; and second, it is going around the sun. So a double movement is there, but you are not aware of either. You can stand still, but the earth goes on moving and you are moving with it. In twenty-four hours it makes one round of itself, and in three hundred and sixty-five days it makes another round of the sun. You will be moving. You cannot stand still. There is no place where you can stand still. Everything is movement. Stillness…
Beloved Osho, during the awareness walk in the vipassana group today, I observed that my speed was slowing down and had stopped. There seemed to be no need for moving. To where, for what? There was simply no goal anymore. Osho, would you talk about the secret of being in a body and what keeps it moving?
This long, long friendship -- and suddenly you stop; the mind tries in every way to push you, to nag you into some new project. Old projects are no longer working; it is a great salesman. I have heard ... A man was complaining to a real estate agency, "Where is that old fellow who sold me land?" The owner of the agency asked, "What is the problem?" He said, "What is the problem? I am going to shoot him. He has sold me land which is at least twelve feet deep below the road. In the rainy season it will become a lake. And I have purchased it to make a house for myself. My house will be drowned. Just tell me where that old fellow is!" The owner said, "Right now, he is not in the office. But when he comes back I will talk to him and…
The man of tao acts without impediment, harms no other being by his actions, yet he does not know himself to be kind and gentle.
HE DOES NOT STRUGGLE TO MAKE MONEY, AND HE DOES NOT MAKE A VIRTUE OF POVERTY. HE GOES HIS WAY WITHOUT RELYING ON OTHERS, AND DOES NOT PRIDE HIMSELF ON WALKING ALONE. THE MAN OF TAO REMAINS UNKNOWN. PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING. NO SELF IS TRUE SELF. AND THE GREATEST MAN IS NOBODY. To reach the moon is absolutely nonessential. If we were a little wiser we would not even think about it. It is absolutely foolish wasting as much money as could feed the whole earth. Wars are nonessential, but humanity is mad, and it needs wars more than food. It needs to go to the moon more than food, more than clothes, more than the essential, because the essential is not enough. And now science has created the greatest horror, and that horror is that now the essential can be fulfilled very easily. Within ten years, all humanity's…