What happens if everyone engages in passive meditation?

A friend has asked: If, as you say, everyone were to enter passive meditation, wouldn’t the work of the world come to a halt? Wouldn’t all activity stop and create great inconvenience?

So when I say, “Enter the inaction of meditation,” it does not mean you will die or lose your capacity for action. No—the ego of the doer will be lost. And the deeper you go into meditation, the deeper will be your action in the world. As deeply as the breath goes in, that deeply it goes out. Inner depth and outer depth always remain in proportion. One who can go into inaction can be equally active. Look at trees. As high as they rise above the ground, that deep their roots descend below. The tree that reaches up to the sky has had to reach down into the depths of the earth. You may say, “Below and above are opposite dimensions—if you go down, how will you go up?” Were the tree to say, “If I send my roots downward, how will I rise upward? I want to go…

Osho, if everyone moves toward inner peace, won’t industriousness be lost?

The suffering in the world—if everyone were to attain inner peace, the problem would dissolve, and action would only become better. A peaceful mind can act far better than an agitated or deranged one. Peace is not opposed to action; restlessness is opposed to action. Whatever a restless person does will be unskillful, because restlessness obstructs action. Whatever a peaceful person does becomes skillful, because peace supports action. So in my view, if peaceful people increase in the world, the world’s efficiency will increase. Take Kabir—he kept weaving cloth. It is said no weaver ever made such cloth. When he brought his fabric to market, people would rush to it as if mad. To purchase Kabir’s cloth was itself a joy. People would say, “No one has ever woven cloth like this,” and Kabir would reply, “No one has woven, with such peace and for God, as I do. What…

Osho, you say that if there is awareness, then how are the two to be brought into harmony?

That is precisely the practice of active meditation: awareness. Awareness is the very means of going into emptiness in relation to all actions, to the movements of the mind as well. For example, if you lie there for half an hour—what will you do? In that half hour, whatever thoughts are moving in your mind, you are to be simply aware of them. Simply a witness—what else will you do? Just become a witness. Keep silently watching; let them move. But obstacles arise in our seeing. We become absorbed. We fail to remain a witness. We don’t even notice when we have become one with those very thoughts. That sense of awareness fades; a kind of stupor, a moorchha, comes in. A thought comes, a memory arises, and we stop being the watcher. We become part of that thought and of its flow. That is moorchha. And the opposite is…

Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin -- empty.

GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. SWEET HEARTED ONE, MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING, EXISTING AND NOT-EXISTING. THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY BE. ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL. In siddhasana, the gravitational pull is at its minimum. The body is inactive and passive, closed inside, it has become a world unto itself. Nothing is moving out, nothing is coming in .Eyes are closed, hands are locked, feet are locked -- energy moves in a circle. And whenever energy moves in a circle, it creates an inner rhythm, an inner music. The more you hear that music, the more you feel relaxed. SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM -- just like an empty room -- WITH WALLS OF SKIN -- EMPTY. Go on dropping into that emptiness. A moment will come sometime when you feel everything has disappeared;…

Meditation is always passive; the very essence of it is passive. It cannot be active because the very nature of it is non-doing. If you are doing something, your very doing disturbs the whole thing; your very doing, your very "activeness," creates the disturbance. Non-doing is meditation, but when I say non-doing is meditation I do not mean that you need not do anything. Even to achieve this non-doing, one has to do much. But this doing is not meditation. It is only a stepping stone, only a jumping board. All "doing" is just a jumping board, not meditation. You are just on the door, on the steps.... The door is non-doing, but to reach the non-doing state of mind one has to do much. But one should not confuse this doing with meditation. Life energy works in contradictions. Life exists as a dialectic: it is not a simple movement.