According to Osho, in tratak the object is incidental; the act of unwavering, alert gazing stills the mind’s habitual movement. An open sky, a master’s photo, or darkness are merely different anchors: sky/light can aid wakeful expansiveness, darkness invites inwardness but risks sleep, and a master’s image can add love—useful unless it triggers thinking. What matters is total, present awareness.
What you gaze at doesn’t matter—just look without blinking and stay fully awake; sky, a master’s face, or darkness only help in different ways.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?
It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…
Beloved Osho, somewhere in your discourses there is a mention of the sage durvasa as an example of one in whom concentration has turned itself into a state of insanity. But in your tratak meditation, the gazing meditation, concentration seems to be the main process. Please, could you explain the difference between the two?
Just like this is the experiment of my tratak. I am sitting here empty, you are sitting there full up; how can the meeting take place? I am here, eager to flow, but your pot there is kept upside down. I am here, ready to enter you through your every pore, but you have not left a single opening anywhere; you have built up a concrete wall all around you. You are fretting and crying within -- I hear how thirsty you are, I see the trouble you are in. Your search is deeply honest, but you are enclosed within the fences you have created around yourself. And your difficulty is that you have mistaken your prison for your home, and you think your chains are precious ornaments and you seek to protect them, afraid that somebody may rob you. You are so busy guarding them, you have created all…
Osho, in one of your discourses you mentioned the sage Durvasa. You cited him as an example of the deranged state to which concentration can ultimately lead. But in trataka the spirit is also of concentration. What is the difference between the two? Please explain.
The traditional trataka—the conventional understanding of trataka—is indeed concentration. And concentration generates power; siddhis are acquired. But the union with the Divine, the supreme rest we seek, does not happen through it. Concentration is a function and an extension of the ego. You do not dissolve; you become more solid. You do not melt; you freeze like ice. Your power increases, not your bliss. But what I am calling trataka is not the use of concentration; it is only the experiment of seeing—just looking. Understand the difference. Trataka means gathering the entire mind and fixing it on one point—on the sun, on an image, on a mark—on anything. It means narrowing the mind so that it does not run here and there. All the currents of the mind turn in one direction. The mind goes on flowing toward a single point. Not even a single ray of awareness scatters elsewhere.…
9. Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity.
10. LISTEN WHILE THE ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. EYES STILL, WITHOUT BLINKING, AT ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE. 11. AT THE EDGE OF A DEEP WELL LOOK STEADILY INTO ITS DEPTHS UNTIL -- THE WONDROUSNESS. 12. LOOK UPON SOME OBJECT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR SIGHT FROM IT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR THOUGHT FROM IT. THEN. So look into the blue sky and go on looking. The object is infinite, there is no boundary to it. Do not think about it; do not say it is beautiful. Do not say, "How lovely!" Do not appreciate the color; do not start thinking. If you start thinking, you have stopped. Now your eyes are not moving into the blue, the infinite blue. Just move, just look -- do not think. Do not create words; they will become barriers. Not even "blue sky" should be said. Do not verbalize. There should be just a…
SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRATAK MEDITATION. At night when we are doing tratak -- you are staring at me with unblinking eyes, your hands raised, jumping, crying the mantra HOO -- what are we doing basically? What are we doing, what is the inner process? What is going to happen through it? The first thing. When you stare with unblinking eyes, your energy becomes concentrated. Eyes are the doors from which you can move out or in. It is just like breathing. The breathing goes out and then comes in; then it goes out and comes in. You exhale and inhale. In the same way, you exhale and inhale consciousness through the eyes. This has to be deeply understood; it is one of the secrets of yoga. Just like you exhale and inhale breath through the nostrils, you inhale and exhale consciousness through the eyes. It is very subtle.