Why has the attraction toward meditation been declining despite its historical significance?

Osho, in this land meditation rose to the heights of Gauri Shankar. Unmatched beings like Shiva, Patanjali, Mahavira, Buddha, and Gorakh took form. Even so, why did the attraction toward meditation keep declining?

The conch had no legs, yet he still clasped it as if catching its feet, put his head on it, and said, “In any way—get me to the mahatma.” It said, “We’ll get you to two.” This is the limit. “To four.” The same babble. In two or four days the conch drove the man mad. The conch would nag him: “Ask for something!” The man would look around, afraid to say a word: “If I speak, this wretch will trap me again; then it’ll keep hounding me—‘Will you take thirty-two? Sixty-four?’” There was never any giving. Such is the relationship between meditation and the ego. The ego is the great conch. However much you get, you want more. The number keeps increasing. The race quickens. And man never reaches a place where he can say, “The goal is here.” The goal remains a mirage—always at a distance. Much journeying;…

Why is the west becoming more and more interested in meditation? And also, why is the east losing interest in its own spiritual treasures?

After a time, penniless but still submissive to the decrees from one high, he landed in the county poorhouse. One day the overseer sent him out to plow a potato field. A thunderstrom came up but was passing over when, without warning, a bolt of lightning descended from the sky. It melted the plowshare, stripped most of his clothing from him, singed off his beard, branded his naked back with the initials of a neighbouring cowman, and hurled him through a barbed wire fence. When he recovered consciousness he got slowly to his knees, clasped his hands and raised his eyes towards heaven. Then, for the first time, he asserted himself: "Lord," he said, "this is getting to be plumb ridiculous!" This is the situation of the East: "This is getting to be plumb ridiculous!" But the East goes on thanking God, goes on feeling grateful. There is nothing to…

So there are worldly people -- that is one extreme; then there are other-worldly people -- that is another extreme. There are people who are after money and there are people who have renounced money. These are extremes, the ways of the ego. A few people live in the market, their whole life is devoted to the marketplace, and a few escape to the monasteries. They are the same people, apparently looking very opposite but they are not opposite people. They belong to the same spectrum, the same mind; the same ego moving from one extreme to the other. My sannyas means being exactly in the middle. And that is the whole art of attaining to divine glory, because in the middle is transcendence from all problems.

Beloved Osho, why can a man not become meditative? How can a movement for meditation be created?

Meditation is a danger, it is a risk. It is a danger to all the vested interests, and it is a risk to the mind. Mind and meditation cannot co-exist. There is no question of having both of them. Either you can have mind or you can have meditation, because mind is thinking and meditation is silence. Mind is groping in the dark for the door. Meditation is seeing. There is no question of groping, it knows the door. Mind thinks. Meditation knows. This is a very fundamental reason why man cannot become meditative -- or why very few men have dared to become meditative. Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind. You can become president of a country, prime minister, not by being meditative but by cultivating a very cunning mind. The whole…

Beloved Osho, why is the ultimate experience hard to attain? It seems to me that it is part of nature's intention to make it very difficult and to require man to go through ages of development before he reaches it. Isn't there a divine purpose why it takes him so long to reach?

A person who loves will not love money because a person who loves will not be afraid of death. And if a person is not afraid of death, there cannot be any clinging, attachment, mad obsession with money. It is impossible. If you can love, then you will accept death very easily. It will be a deep relaxation, a long sleep, a beautiful dissolution into the existence. And if you can be receptive to death, then meditation can be as easy as anything. The problem arises because love is not there. When death has become a fear, then meditation will be difficult because it is both love plus death. It is death as far as your ego is concerned; it is love as far as the divine existence is concerned. I define meditation in a mathematical formula: meditation is equal to love plus death -- love to the existence, to…