What happens when meditation does not yield clear results?

I have been trying to meditate for a long time, but I am not getting any clear results. What's wrong with me?

There can be many reasons. It may be that the medita-tion method you are using is wrong or that the way in which you are practicing it is wrong. Or it may be that neither the method nor the way you are practicing it is wrong, but the unconscious longing behind the method is wrong. Then the unconscious must be changed. If you have been using a method for many years and only getting shallow results, change the method. There are so many methods of meditation that one should not cling to only one method. There may be nothing wrong with the method, but as far as you are concerned it may be wrong. So change the method. Change is always helpful. If one becomes accustomed to a method, the experiences one has through it will be shallow. And when nothing new is happening but you go on repeating the…

In 1969 followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi invited Osho to talk to them. This was the first occasion on which Osho addressed a western audience, and the first time he talked publicly at length in English. The discourse has been published in OTI January 1 & 16, 1991; and February 1, 1991. Osho: Really, there can be no method as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a method. Through technique, through method, you cannot go beyond mind. When you leave all methods, all techniques, you transcend mind. So meditation itself is not a method. Truth cannot be achieved through method. Method is our own invention. We, who are ignorant, have achieved knowledge through methods constructed, created, projected, in our ignorance. Through method you can achieve a sort of self-hypnosis, a sort of auto-hypnosis. Any method, whatsoever it's name, can only give you an illusory kind of peace.

Osho, if I speak for myself, the deep experiences of meditation happened before I had even heard the names of Krishnamurti or you. This self-experience happened without practicing any method. Therefore when Krishnamurti says, “Do not practice any method; it happens naturally,” that feels natural to me. After all, Krishnamurti does emphasize continuous awareness and learning from life without a center, as a result of which meditation can happen. If I am not mistaken, you do not agree with this tenet of Krishnamurti. This surprises me. I hope to understand your viewpoint.

That night all ambition dropped. That night there was no feeling, no thought, no future. He slept. He lay under a banyan; it was a full-moon night. In that moonlight, the emaciated body, utterly thin—he must have looked unearthly, like a ghost! A woman had vowed that on a full-moon night, if she became pregnant, she would offer sweet rice pudding to that banyan deity. She had become pregnant; the full moon had come; so Sujata came with a platter of kheer and sweets, delicious food, to offer to the banyan on the bank of the Niranjana. In the moonlight she saw—as if the banyan deity had himself appeared! She was overwhelmed, touched his feet, and said, “O deity of the banyan! I had never imagined you would appear! But I am blessed—accept my offering.” On any other day Buddha would not have eaten at night—night eating was a sin.…

Why are most meditation methods not more fruitful in helping people?

There are many meditation methods and each method is meaningful to a particular type of mind. Then, too, there are certain methods that are meaningful in a particular age. All of our traditional methods are basically silent ones. My method of Dynamic Meditation ends in silence but begins in catharsis because in our age our minds need a deep catharsis first; only then can they become silent. This method is needed only because the modern mind -- whether Christian or nonChristian, Hindu or nonHindu -- is a byproduct of a very suppressive attitude toward desires, thoughts, instincts... everything. We have lived for centuries with a very repressive attitude toward life. That repression has to be thrown out first, only then can you enter your center. So my method is new in a way -- not in its results but only in the methodology. First you must throw your madness out;…

Osho, before beginning practice we read in books that a seeker has such-and-such experiences, that this or that will happen, may happen. So when I prepare to practice on my own and I try to see where these colors show up—white, green, blue—and I sit right at the start to imagine them, even before a thought-free state arrives, don’t all these imaginations that we are taught become an obstacle to entering meditation?

In truth, for me there is no wrong and right. There are two paths and two kinds of people. And in each person both kinds of aspects exist. The complexity is great. Therefore for the masculine mind—not man, the masculine psyche—the positive path becomes easier, immediately easier, because there is aggression, a drive to conquer, to achieve, to grasp. The feminine mind is negativity, receptivity—let it come. It is not an attack but a waiting. So in those centuries where the masculine predominated—as in the past centuries, where woman had no influence—those were centuries of means, of methods. In the coming days woman is slowly becoming influential, and in the West, where woman has become very influential, a Krishnamurti-like view can have influence, because negativity has increased. But this is such a wavering matter—it wavers daily. Whatever of the two seems right to you, each person should decide within. If…