What factors indicate progress in meditation?

Osho, on the path of meditation many seekers find it difficult to know clearly whether they are making any progress or whether they are just suspended on one plane, simply moving in repetitions. Will you please explain in detail about those factors which indicate the meditator's constant progress?

I do not say that every experience of that type is imagination, but if you are concerned, it is going to be imagination. Forget it completely. Be concerned with meditation, with your changing relationships, with your silence, with your contentment, with your love. Be concerned with these, and suddenly sometimes, there will be an upsurge of energy into your spine. But do not be concerned with it. Note it down and forget it. Suddenly, you will see a particular light: note it and forget. Suddenly a particular chakra will begin to revolve: note it and forget it. Do not be concerned with it. Your concern is harmful. Remain concerned with contentment, peace, silence, love, compassion, meditation. These things will go on happening. Then they are real. When you are not concerned and they happen, then they are real. And they show many things, but you need not know what they…

Their intention is good but what they are telling me is that I have to be basically a politician. On my way to Nepal, in Delhi, friends gathered and said, "Before you leave for Nepal we have to say a few things: one, don't speak against Hinduism there!" I said, "Why?" I was not aware, I may not have spoken about Hinduism at all. They said, "It is a Hindu kingdom and the constitution is based on Hinduism. The constitution declares this is the only Hindu kingdom in the world. So avoid that." I said, "Now it is going to be difficult. If you wanted me to avoid it you should not have mentioned it. You should be more discriminative -- I cannot be!" I have never been diplomatic, I have never been political. I say only that which feels right in the moment to be said.

You ask: I have said that revolution is an explosion, a sudden explosion. And then I speak of the process and practice of meditation—so is there no contradiction between the two? No, there is no contradiction at all. If I say that when water becomes steam there is an explosion—at one hundred degrees water turns into steam—and then I tell someone: heat the water slowly so that it becomes steam. He might say to me, “You say water turns into steam all at once—then why should we practice heating it slowly? Is there no contradiction?” I would say to him: there is no contradiction. When we heat water, at one degree the heated water is still not steam, and at ninety-nine degrees it is still not steam. One degree heated water is water, and ninety-nine-degree heated water is also water. At one hundred degrees, all at once, water becomes steam.

His total perspective about things will be different than the ordinary man is, so you cannot have examinations like you have in other subjects. You will have to create situations and watch: if he still reacts in the old ways, then meditation has not happened. @A160 If he behaves from some new dimensions, something which seems almost impossible.... Your beloved being happy and having pleasure with somebody else and you are rejoicing because she will be so happy -- it is against man's animal nature. It is possible only when man has touched something of the superman. And the same about many things. You will find the man in sickness, in health, the same. In sickness he will not be miserable. The body may be sick, the body may be in pain, but you can see the man is not affected by it.

Beloved Osho, with each new step into the unknown, how can I be sure that I am on the right path?

The indications that you are on the right path are very simple: your tensions will start disappearing, you will become more and more cool, you will become more and more calm, you will find beauty in things in which you have never, ever conceived could be beautiful. The smallest things will start having tremendous significance. The whole world will become more and more mysterious every day; you will become less and less knowledgeable, more and more innocent -- just like a child running after butterflies or collecting seashells on the beach. You will feel life not as a problem but as a gift, as a blessing, as a benediction. These indications will go on growing if you are on the right track. If you are on the wrong track, just the opposite will happen.