Why are active meditations necessary if we are to let the waters settle on their own?

We are to stand and let the waters settle on their own, why all the active meditations?

If you can sit, there is no need for meditations. In Japan, for meditation they have the word "zazen". It means just sitting, doing nothing. If you can sit, not doing anything, this is the ultimate in meditations. There is no need for any other thing. But can you sit? There is the crux of the whole problem. Can you sit? Can you just sit doing nothing? If that is possible -- just sit, do nothing -- everything settles by itself, everything simply flows by itself. You are not needed to do anything. But the problem is -- can you sit? It happened on a small hillock near a village, a man was standing. Just it was morning and the sun has arisen, and three persons had gone just for a morning walk and they looked at the man. And, as minds go, they started talking about what this man…

So to me, meditation has two steps: first, the active, which is not really meditation at all, and second, the completely nonactive, the passive awareness that is really meditation. Awareness is always passive, and the moment you become active you lose your awareness. It is possible to be active and aware only when awareness has come to such a point that now there is no need of meditation to achieve it, or to know it, or to feel it. When meditation has become useless, you simply throw meditation. Now you are aware. Only then can you be both aware and active, otherwise not. As long as meditation is still needed, you will not be able to be aware during activity. But when even meditation is not needed.... If you have become meditation, you will no longer need it.

Osho, in the final stage of active meditation a quietness comes, yet a kind of sadness surrounds me. You say to celebrate—how can one celebrate in this sadness, and how to dance?

The day a society forgets how to dance, that day the society becomes sick. The indigenous people in the forests dance—and their health is of another order! They dance late into the night, under the stars, beneath the open sky. They dance like the stars themselves. They fall asleep tired—but in that tiredness there is no heaviness; there is a lightness in it. Then in the morning, when such a person wakes, his awakening is different from yours. You hardly sleep at all. Even in sleep you go on dreaming; even in sleep you keep the whole business of waking life going. You continue the same nightmares you saw while awake—same market, same friends, same enemies, the same hocus-pocus. You keep tossing and turning; even your sleep is not a peaceful event. Ask the forest-dwellers, “Did you dream?” You will rarely find one who says, “Yes, once in my life…

THE HUMAN MIND IS EFFORT-ORIENTED, action-oriented, obsessed with activity -- because the more active you are, the more your ego can be fulfilled, the more you can say 'I'. All activity is basically food for your egoistic personality. Meditation is not an effort, it is not an activity. Rather, it is a deep surrender. It is to be in nonactivity. Basically, just to be is meditation -- not doing anything, not desiring anything, not hankering to go somewhere; just being here and now, simply being here and now. That's what I call meditation. But it is very difficult to conceive. Even to contemplate it is difficult. The mind cannot conceive of anything that is not an effort. The very language of the mind, the very framework, the very structure, is based on effort: to do something, to achieve something, to go somewhere.

Osho, you say that if there is awareness, then how are the two to be brought into harmony?

That is precisely the practice of active meditation: awareness. Awareness is the very means of going into emptiness in relation to all actions, to the movements of the mind as well. For example, if you lie there for half an hour—what will you do? In that half hour, whatever thoughts are moving in your mind, you are to be simply aware of them. Simply a witness—what else will you do? Just become a witness. Keep silently watching; let them move. But obstacles arise in our seeing. We become absorbed. We fail to remain a witness. We don’t even notice when we have become one with those very thoughts. That sense of awareness fades; a kind of stupor, a moorchha, comes in. A thought comes, a memory arises, and we stop being the watcher. We become part of that thought and of its flow. That is moorchha. And the opposite is…