What is awareness?

Beloved Osho, what is awareness? Why is it lost, and how can it be regained? Are there any steps for the same?

Awareness is never lost. It simply becomes entangled with the other, with objects. So the first thing to be remembered: it is never lost, it is your nature, but you can focus it on anything you want. When you get tired of focusing it on money, on power, on prestige, and that great moment comes in your life when you want to close your eyes and focus your awareness on its own source, on where it is coming from, on the roots -- in a split second your life is transformed. And don't ask what are the steps; there is only one step. The process is very simple. The step is only one: that is turning in. In Judaism there is a rebellious school of mystery called Hassidism. Its founder, Baal Shem, was a rare being. In the middle of the night he was coming from the river -- that…

Beloved Osho, I have no idea about what `right awareness' is. How to judge that I am going in the right direction?

There is no right awareness because there is no possibility of wrong awareness. Awareness is right. So first, drop the wrong question. Once you are asking a wrong question to yourself you cannot get the right answer. Don't ask what is right awareness. Simply ask what is awareness. Your question gives the fallacious impression that you know what awareness is, that the only thing that you don't know is, what is right awareness and what is not right awareness. Erase that fallacy completely from your mind. Awareness is simple, very innocent. Everyone has it, so it is not a question of achievement. One wrong question leads to another wrong question: first you ask what right awareness is, then you ask how to achieve it. You already have it. When you see the sunset, are you not aware? When you see a roseflower, are you not aware? You are aware of…

I am not saying to do anything. Meditation is not a doing at all, it is pure awareness. But a miracle happens, the greatest miracle in life. If you go on watching, tremendous and incredible things start happening. Your body becomes graceful, your body is no more restless, tense; your body starts becoming light, unburdened; you can see great weights, mountainous weights, falling from your body. Your body starts becoming pure of all kinds of toxins and poisons. You will see your mind is no more as active as before; its activity starts becoming less and less and gaps arise, gaps in which there are no thoughts. Those gaps are the most beautiful experiences because through those gaps you start seeing things as they are without any interference of the mind. Slowly slowly your moods start disappearing. You are no more very joyous and no more very sad.

Osho: To think is the nature of the mind. And if you don't think then there is no mind. A state of no-mind comes, then you know. That is nature, this too is nature; that is not against this nature which creates ignorance, creates unknowing, creates conflict. We have not known the total mind, we have known only the mind which thinks. If you transcend it then you know the total mind -- which knows. Thinking is one thing, knowing is quite another. QUESTION: THE NATURE OF THE MIND IS TO THINK, AND THEN IT CEASES TO THINK. WHAT DO YOU DO IN ORDER TO CAUSE IT NOT TO THINK? DOES IT NATURALLY NOT THINK? Osho: If you become aware of your thinking process, then the process by and by is dissolved.

Osho, please say something about this news item: the indian express of 18th august reports that the rajneesh film won't reflect the real image of india. The union information minister, l.k. Advani said in the parliament, 'foreign television and film units have been refused permission to document the activities of the rajneesh ashram, as it is felt that a film on the activities of the ashram would not reflect favourably on india's image abroad.'

If this country is going to be destroyed one day, the reason will be these people who are in power today. India cannot have one language. And if it can have one language, that language has to be neutral; either it will be English or Esperanto, but not Hindi, not Gujarati, not Marathi, not Bengali, not Tamil. It will have to be a neutral language. English is neutral; it is nobody's mother tongue in India. And English is international too, so it is perfectly good. I support a two-language formula: English as the national language, because it is also international and as the second language, the mother tongue. Each child should be taught two languages. Forget all about Hindi, and forget all about creating one monolith in this country of variety, of multiplicity. And they are trying to do the same thing with religion too, in the same way. They…