Whom should one remember in meditation?

The question is: “Then tell us, whom should one remember in meditation?”

Again the scripture intrudes: Whom to remember? The very meaning of meditation is that the mind becomes empty. If you ask “whom to remember,” it means the mind will be filled again—filled with something or other. In one person’s mind a film song is crammed: “Lare Lappa”—and someone else sits doing Hari-bhajan; it is no different from “Lare Lappa.” All words are alike. No difference. When you sit and keep repeating—Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram—what are you doing? You are simply declaring that you cannot sit empty. You are simply saying you cannot give the mind even a brief pause, a little rest. Either you will think of money or of the marketplace. If you resolve not to think of money and the market, then you will think of something else—but the thinking will continue. Meditation means thinking does not continue; thinking drops. In meditation one is not to remember anyone. It…

Another friend has asked: Osho, what is the relationship between the method of meditation and jati-smaran (recollection of past lives)?

But the one who becomes skilled in this—who can fully awaken any day’s memory up to the age of five—will find that the memories begin to awaken completely. And you should test it. As today passes, note down some events and lock them up. After two years, try to recall today. Most of it will have been forgotten. Then remember—and after remembering, break the lock and compare whether what you recalled matches what you had written. You will be amazed—astonished—that besides what you wrote, many more details have come back which you did not even note at the time. They will all be there in memory. Buddha called this alaya-vijnana. There is a corner of the human mind he called the storehouse of consciousness. Like a junk room in the house where we keep all the odds and ends, there is a storehouse that collects memories—where everything from birth after…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, GIVE ME SOME SUTRAS TO MEDITATE ON. No philosopher has reached to any conclusion that solves the ultimate question of life, Who am I? But you are not to think about it... what will you think about it? There are many people who have followed Maharishi Raman. His teaching was very simple -- he was a simple man, uneducated, not learned. He had escaped from his home when he was only seventeen. He escaped because his father died. When the whole family was weeping and crying, and the neighbors were preparing to take the dead body to the funeral pyre, nobody noticed that Raman had disappeared. The experience of the death of his father became a tremendous revolution in Raman's mind. He was only seventeen, the only son of a poor family, and he escaped to the mountains.

For example, it brings you the experience that not the body, so clearly, so solidly, so categorically, that even if the whole world denies it, it cannot make any difference: you know from your innermost core you are not the body. It brings you the experience that you are not the mind either. And the moment you know you are neither the body nor the mind, suddenly a door opens. You have never been born and you are never going to die because only that which is born can die. The body was born, the mind was born -- they will die -- but you were before your birth and you will be after your death. Once this reality is revealed to you all fears and all miseries disappear. You become part of eternity. Only one thing remains and that is pure consciousness. And pure consciousness is nothing but godliness.

Thus, by meditation, they achieve the ultimate reality , which is unthinkable, unmanifest; the one of endless forms, the ever-auspicious, the peaceful, the immortal, the origin of the creator, the one without a beginning, a middle and an end; the only one, the non-dual, the all-pervading, the consciousness, the bliss, the formless, the wonderful.

To use a name as a repetition has its own difficulties. It is easy to throw out all else, but then it is difficult to throw out itself. If you have used "Rama" to throw out all other thoughts, it will become rooted in you, and then you cannot throw it out. It will be very difficult and very painful. Then something else will be needed to throw it out. As far as I am concerned, I never suggest this method. It is better to begin with no word. Then how to begin? Take the total energy of your body and mind as the beginning. Let you total body-mind energy be involved in it. Make it so active -- let your body energy, your mind energy becomes so active, so active at the peak -- that thoughts dissolve, because thoughts cannot exist at the peak. When your energy is moving…