What is the secret behind the difference in the types of people attracted to different meditation teachings?

A gentleman has asked: “Maharshi Sant Mehilal teaches just one kind of meditation, and you are teaching many kinds. Yet only uneducated people go to him, while only educated elites from all over the world come to you. What is the secret behind this?”

But you don’t even want to do that much. You don’t want to work. You say: “You just tell us!” You’ve fallen into a bad habit. Then go—to Maharshi Saint Mehilal! There are plenty of such maharshis in every village. They’ll tell you one mantra, whisper it in your ear. And what they’ll whisper has no intrinsic value. You’ll just keep repeating it. And let me tell you: start repeating any word and you’ll get the same result. Keep saying “Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,” or “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram”—there’s no difference. Or recite the Namokar—no difference. Everything is made from the same twenty-six letters. The same alphabet, the same ABC, the same ka-kha-ga. From the same letters comes “Coca-Cola.” Choose whatever you fancy; make your own mantra. If you sit and keep repeating even your own name continuously, a trance will descend. Like a mother who sits by her child and sings a lullaby—“Sleep,…

A friend has asked, Osho, is it not possible to develop intelligence and feeling together? Can a healthy person not practice meditation and devotion at the same time? A person is whole—intelligence, feeling, and action—then why should the path of practice be one-sided?

A person is indeed whole—but that person is an ideal. That is not you who are already whole. When a person’s wholeness is revealed, attained, then everything in them becomes complete. Their intelligence is as sharp as their feeling is deep. Their action, their intelligence, their heart, all come together—like a threefold confluence. But that is the final goal. You are not yet like that. You have a journey to make. So you will only be able to travel from the side toward which you lean more, the dimension for which you have greater interest and inclination. Right now you are fragmented, incomplete. One person has abundant feeling but little intelligence. Another is skilled and attached to action, with little intelligence or feeling by comparison. Another has deep intelligence but a barren heart and no bent for action. In this way we are incomplete, each in our own way. Wholeness…

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…

Osho, if there were only one single method of sadhana in your ashram, wouldn’t it be more convenient for seekers?

These are two styles: either you support yourself—and then there is no need of another. Fine; the matter is finished. Support was the whole issue, and you supported yourself. Have you noticed: a mother’s love is strongest for the child who is the weakest. This is exactly the opposite of economics. But economics and the scripture of love are opposite. According to economics, love should be for the strongest, the most intelligent, the most skilled. No—mother knows the strong, the intelligent, the skilled will manage for themselves. They have no need. It is the weak who are less intelligent, who are more likely to stray, who may fall—the mother takes care of them. It often happens that the sick child becomes dearest to the mother—more than the healthy ones. The experience of God comes to those who stagger in helplessness. That is why in the religions of Buddha and Mahavira…

Meditation is the only phenomenon where there is no possibility of meeting anybody, where you have to go alone, totally alone. Hence only very courageous people can enter into the world of meditation. That's why so few people have ever entered, Why so few people have ever become enlightened. Secondly: when you move inwards you move without any maps. Even if you go to the moon you have a certain map, a certain route. There have been people before you, their footprints are there, there are milestones everywhere. Even in the sea you are not totally lost, in the sky you are not totally lost: you can communicate with people, you can give messages -- even from the moon! You can remain in some kind of relationship; it may be just through radio waves, but you can remain connected.