Samadhi Ke Sapat Dwar #14
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
A friend has asked: when he meditates—this active meditation—for a while his sexual desire completely disappears. That has frightened him. He asks: the sex drive vanishes and yet he feels a great surge of power. Even if he tries, for some time he cannot enter into the sexual act. So he panicked that perhaps he might become impotent. He feels more energy than ever before, but he cannot engage in sex.
You are fortunate. Do not be afraid. This is exactly what should happen: to feel more power and yet not be able to descend into the sexual act. It means the energy is rushing upward; therefore the sex-center is not receiving energy. And the whole purpose of this process is precisely that the sperm-cells remain stored below while the seminal energy is released, set free, and begins to move upward. When energy is moving upward, when it is going higher, you cannot use the sex-center; then the sex-center is, in fact, in an impotent state. But this is auspicious. This is a blessing. This is a blessing.
Among the monks who follow Jesus there is a sect that calls themselves “the eunuchs of Jesus”—a very sweet phrase. Do you know that we keep Brahman in the neuter gender? We cannot place Brahman in the masculine or the feminine. Either it is both, or it is neither. Therefore, in this land we have deliberately kept Brahman in the neuter.
There are two kinds of impotence. One is when you have no seminal power at all—this is the lowest state. The other is when power is vast within you, but it has become free of the sex-center and has set out on the upward journey. Such “impotence” is blessed, because that is brahmacharya. That is brahmacharya: your energy is full, but lust does not arise. The energy is immense, but the urge to flow downward does not appear. With active meditation, this will happen.
Among the monks who follow Jesus there is a sect that calls themselves “the eunuchs of Jesus”—a very sweet phrase. Do you know that we keep Brahman in the neuter gender? We cannot place Brahman in the masculine or the feminine. Either it is both, or it is neither. Therefore, in this land we have deliberately kept Brahman in the neuter.
There are two kinds of impotence. One is when you have no seminal power at all—this is the lowest state. The other is when power is vast within you, but it has become free of the sex-center and has set out on the upward journey. Such “impotence” is blessed, because that is brahmacharya. That is brahmacharya: your energy is full, but lust does not arise. The energy is immense, but the urge to flow downward does not appear. With active meditation, this will happen.
That friend has also asked:
Osho, it isn’t clear how the sound “Hoo” could strike the sex center. He asks: since the breath goes only as far as the navel and not below, then how does the resonance of “Hoo” in this breathing reach further down?
Osho, it isn’t clear how the sound “Hoo” could strike the sex center. He asks: since the breath goes only as far as the navel and not below, then how does the resonance of “Hoo” in this breathing reach further down?
There are many points.
First, you do not breathe only through the nose; you breathe through the whole body. Every pore is breathing. If your nose were left open but your entire body were painted so that all the pores were blocked, then no matter how much you breathed through the nose, you wouldn’t survive for more than three hours. Because you are breathing everywhere—and it is necessary to breathe everywhere. Every pore of you is alive; the whole body is breathing. There isn’t a single piece in your body that is without breath.
So when you utter the roar of “Hoo,” that roar does not resound only in the heart or at the navel, where your breath typically reaches; gradually it reverberates wherever the breath enters, to every pore.
And just as breath is hidden in every pore, so too is sexuality. It is concentrated at the sex center, yes, but it is spread throughout. The body does not have only one sex center; there are erotic zones, organs that can become suffused with sexual excitation. Breasts, for instance, can fill with erotic energy. Sex may be most concentrated at the sex center, but it is diffused through the entire body. As breath is spread, so is sexual desire spread. When you strike with the roar of “Hoo,” that sonic blow expands wherever the breath goes. Wherever there is air within you, there this sound echoes and expands.
That is why I insist you do it with great force—so that not even a single part is deprived of the sound, and the blow falls upon the sex-energy throughout your whole body. At many points that energy begins to be freed by this blow. This is hammering: like a hammer we are cracking the inner seed, so the seed remains where it is but its energy is released. And the law of energy is that, the moment freed, it runs upward—just as a flame runs upward. All energies move upward; matter falls downward. Gravity acts on matter; gravity has no effect on energy.
And when it starts happening that your sexual desire seems no longer to arise—then give thanks to the Divine. Do not become anxious; do not stop meditating out of fear of this change. Very soon samadhi will happen within. Only then will you realize that the very power by which samadhi could be attained had been getting wasted in sex. But until samadhi is known, sex appears to be samadhi. Only when That happens can any comparison be made.
So if Buddha and Mahavira are filled with immense compassion toward you, the greatest reason is this: you are squandering diamonds and getting almost nothing in return. With these very diamonds you could purchase That which can never be lost. The greatest pilgrimage of human life is from sex to samadhi. Until we reach samadhi from sex, the destination has not been found; we are still wandering.
Now let us take this sutra:
“The sixth gate is the gate of meditation, like a marble urn—white and transparent. Within it burns a golden flame: the flame of prajna, which springs from the soul.”
When virya—the seed-energy—is freed from the sex center, meditation begins. As we rise higher, we become more and more meditative. There is meditation even in sex; perhaps that is why the craving for sex is so strong in our minds—it is a search for meditation. But knowing nothing else, we take the first gate to be the whole. Sex is the first incident of meditation, the lowest rung—but still of meditation.
As the virya-energy rises from one center to the next, meditation grows deeper. At the third center, deeper still; at the fourth, deeper yet. From the fifth center the flame of meditation becomes very clear. The fifth center is the ajna chakra, which I call the third eye. Rub there—that is the fifth center. When the sex-energy reaches there, a great luminous meditation begins. Full radiance arrives at the seventh gate.
“The gate of meditation is like a marble urn—white and transparent. Within it burns a golden flame: the flame of prajna, which springs from the soul.”
Knowledge is not in scriptures, not in words; true knowing is in the urn of meditation hidden within you. Its name is prajna—the flame burning inside the urn of meditation. Meditation itself is a transparent urn, white marble. Its rays are visible even outside. Hence, in the words, the voice, the very bearing of one who attains meditation, the glimmer of prajna begins to appear. That which is hidden within starts flowing without.
“You are that urn.”
You are the urn of meditation.
“Now you have severed yourself from the objects of the senses; you have traveled the path of seeing and the path of hearing, and now you stand in the light of knowledge. You have attained the state of titiksha.”
After the fifth gate of virya these events happen of themselves. As a result, one becomes severed from the senses. Our connection with the senses exists because of the craving for sex. Sex-desire is the link between us and the senses. When sex-desire is freed, our relationship with the senses is severed.
What is my relationship with the hand?
There are two kinds. One is such that, if a bone fractures, a doctor knows what to do; he will set the bone. That is a body-to-body, mechanical relationship. The other is the real relationship, which no doctor can set or sever: the craving for touch. It is through this that I am connected with the hand.
So the hand has two relations—one is mechanical, bones joined to bones. The other is the craving to touch. Truly, because of that craving I am linked to the hand. The day the craving for touch ends completely, that day I no longer am linked to the hand; the hand may be linked to me, but I am not to it. What is true of the hand is true of all the senses.
You are linked to the genitals by skin, by bone—that is another matter. The deeper link is your sex-desire. Have you noticed? The moment a thought of sex arises in the mind, the genitals are immediately affected. Before the thought has even fully formed, the genitals respond. So there is an inner linkage of thought, of craving. As soon as the energy begins to move upward, that craving-link starts breaking. Then the hand remains, but the desire to touch does not. You can still pick up things, touch things, but the urge to touch has vanished. Things will be touched, but there is no fascination, no frenzy for touching. You will be able to use the senses, but now the senses are your servants, not your masters. This can happen only in this way.
If someone tries to do it in reverse, trouble begins. Someone says: because there is craving to touch in the hand, cut off the hand; because there is craving to see beauty in the eyes, gouge out the eyes. People have done this—this is madness. Even if you gouge out the eyes, the craving to see does not vanish; it will stand even in blind eyes. You may close the eyes—so what? You will dream. What you saw outside, you will begin to see inside. The whole world will enter within. If there was a craving to see a beautiful woman, and you gouged out the eyes thinking, “no eyes—no flute,” it is not so easy to silence the flute. The flute does not play because of the bamboo. It plays because of an inner raga. If there is no bamboo, it will play elsewhere, in some other way—but play it will. If there is no bamboo, it won’t appear outside; it will keep playing within. If the flute played only because of the bamboo, it would be simple: break the bamboo and the music would stop. We pick up the bamboo and make a flute precisely because the music is already playing within and wants to be expressed.
The senses are hollow reeds of bamboo; the real thing is the inner flow of raga, of craving. Do not waste yourself breaking the bamboo; the unwise do that. Free the inner flow. The flute may still lie on the lips, but the music will have ceased if the inner craving is freed.
So lead virya upward; free it from the lower centers. Your relationship with the senses will automatically begin to sever.
The sutra says: “Having reached this far—having reached the path of virya—you have traveled the paths of seeing and hearing.”
Whatever was to be seen has been seen; whatever was to be heard has been heard. This concerns the inner. One who has reached the gate of virya has seen all that is to be seen in the inner world, and heard all that is to be heard.
“And now you stand in the light of knowledge.”
Now you neither hear nor see—you are immersed in the light itself. There isn’t even the distance of hearing or seeing. You yourself are becoming the knowing, dissolving into it.
“You stand in the light. Now you have attained the state of titiksha.”
Titiksha means: pleasure and pain are now the same to you. There is no difference for you between pleasure and pain. This does not mean you won’t notice pleasure or pain. If you prick a thorn into Buddha’s foot, he will feel pain—perhaps even more than you—because his sensitivity is supreme. He will notice it. The thorn will prick, and the sensation will be there; but it will not become suffering—that is another matter. If you place a delicate flower on Buddha’s hand, its delicacy, its softness, its fragrance, its beauty—he will sense it all. Everything will be perceived and experienced, but it will not produce pleasure.
What does it mean that a thorn will not cause suffering? The thorn will prick; there will be discomfort, but no suffering.
Discomfort is an outer, bodily event; suffering is its interpretation. When a thorn pricks the foot, there will be discomfort—that means a perception. The foot will report it; the nerves will immediately send a message to the brain: a thorn has pricked. But the brain will not interpret. It will not say, “This should not have happened,” nor “May it never happen again,” nor “I will complain to God—why this thorn?” The brain will accept: it is so.
A flower in the hand, the message comes; but the brain will not interpret, “May this flower be in my hand every day; if tomorrow it isn’t, I will be miserable; my life was meaningless until now—now it has meaning.” No such commentary.
Pleasure and pain are interpretations.
Discomforts and comforts are facts.
Facts will continue to be noticed; interpretation will dissolve.
Pleasure and pain are our desires; comforts and discomforts are external facts of life.
Titiksha means: only the outer events are noticed now; inwardly no event is constructed in their wake—no insistence, no expectation. A thorn pricks—fine. A flower is in the hand—fine. As Buddha was within before the thorn, so he remains when it pricks. As he was within before the flower, so he remains with the flower. In that inner realm nothing is altered by outer events. The same inner state remains, whatever happens outside. This sameness is called titiksha.
“O Narjol, now you are safe.”
The sutra says: O siddha—“Narjol” is the Tibetan word for siddha—
“O Narjol, now you are safe.”
When virya begins to move upward, there is no longer insecurity. Until then there was fear. When the journey of virya becomes meditation, fear ends; you are safe.
“Victor over sins…”
Now sins are conquered.
“…once a srotapanna has crossed the seventh path, all of nature fills with joyous astonishment and feels defeated.”
Now the sutra gives a glimpse of what lies ahead.
The sixth gate is meditation. Only the seventh remains; the goal is very near. One more step and the urn of meditation too will shatter, and only pure prajna will remain. For now there is a glimpse. Like a lantern: no matter how clear and pure the glass, even if it seems invisible, there is still a slight distance, a wall of glass, with the flame within.
Meditation is the glass wall; samadhi is the breaking of that wall.
But a glass wall is still a wall—a little distance remains. And purity itself, if it stands in between, is also an obstruction. That too will break. At the seventh, all obstructions fall; only prajna, only awakening, awareness, consciousness—what we have called sat-chit-anand—remains.
When the event of the seventh gate happens—when one enters the stream and is carried by the current:
“Srotapanna or Sovani”—a Tibetan Buddhist term. Sovani means the one who entered the stream at the first gate and, on crossing the seventh gate, causes all of nature to fill with joyous astonishment and to feel defeated.
Understand this a little—it is very precious, very deep—and it may not occur to you, because you do not know what is happening within you.
When you become angry, nature wins and you lose. When you fill with lust, nature wins and you lose. The forces of earth triumph; the upward-flying energy is jolted and falls downward. After sex, the sadness, melancholy, and repentance that grip everyone—this is because of defeat by nature. Even the most irascible man, after anger, feels it was wrong; better if it had not happened. Why? He is harsh, even cruel; he may relish hurting others—he does not repent for hurting them. He repents because he was conquered. Whenever anger seizes him, some greater power seems to grab his neck and drag him; he is no longer master of himself—that is the regret.
The regret after sex is not that there was suffering; there is a moment of pleasure in sex. The repentance is that some vast power gripped me and made me do it, and I could do nothing. The repentance is of defeat.
We call sin that which leaves you with the feeling of defeat.
We call virtue that which leaves you with the feeling of victory.
That act through which you feel inner dignity—“I am free; no overpowering force drags me; I have become strong”—the feeling that accompanies it is called virtue.
The feeling called sin is when you sense, “Another made me do this; I was not my own master.”
The sense of slavery is sin; the sense of mastery is virtue.
That is why we call a sannyasin “Swami”—master. Simply because he is moving toward mastery, and is slowly uprooting the elements of servitude within, destroying them—and at every opportunity he establishes his own sovereignty.
Birth after birth we lose, we are defeated, and nature assumes we cannot win. Think for yourself—leave other lives aside; even in this life, how many times have you resolved not to be angry—and yet again and again you were. Not even once could you win.
The energy of anger in you, the earth’s pull within you, the force that drags you downward—these are convinced that your words, your vows, your oaths have no value. You prattle in vain, because whenever it comes to it, only what nature wants happens—what you want does not. Nature is sure of you: however many temples you visit, prayers you say, oaths you swear, or gurus you wander after—nature knows you are merely wasting time; in the end you come back to her. The morning’s stray returns home by evening; it does not take long. Nature is not disturbed by your words.
Therefore, the very first time someone reaches the state of Narjol, of siddha—when sex-energy touches the higher centers—then all of nature fills with joyous astonishment and feels defeated.
“Fills with joyous astonishment and feels defeated.”
These are opposite words. It feels defeated, because it was always the victor and you the vanquished. For the first time you have won and nature has lost. So it feels defeated. But it does not feel sad; it feels joyous.
Why?
There is a secret: whoever you enslave, you become enslaved to him in turn. Enslaving another is not easy; in enslaving, you too must be enslaved.
I have heard: A man was leading a cow tied with a rope. On the road he met the Sufi fakir, Farid. Farid told his disciples, “Surround this man; I will give you some insight.” They gathered round, and the cowherd was trapped amid them. Farid had a way of teaching like this. He asked, “Tell me, who is the slave here—the man or the cow?”
The disciples said, “Is that even a question? The cow is the slave; the man is the master.”
Farid said, “If that is true, then if the relationship between them is cut, will the cow seek the man or will the man seek the cow?”
The disciples said, “The man will seek the cow.”
“Then who is the slave?”
Whom we bind, we are bound to. A very subtle slavery is born; the master too is a slave, subtly. The only perfect master is one who enslaves no one.
Nature has kept you enslaved. But the day you become free, she too is filled with joy—because she too is freed from you. The earth is rid of your nuisance. You are no little nuisance—not only to yourself; you are a nuisance to the whole earth. You are a source of disturbance; you have to be kept bound. The day you are free, the need to bind you ends.
“All of nature fills with joyous astonishment.”
There is joy, and there is surprise: you too could do this! Little hope was placed in you; you were not reliable. And yet you did it! Even after so many births, you could win; you could break the habit of defeat that had lasted lifetimes. Naturally, a deep astonishment arises.
“The silver star”—such sweet words—
“the silver star now with burning signals tells the tuberose this news; the stream, in its babbling voice, tells this tale to the pebbles; the sea’s dark waves roar the same tidings to the foaming cliffs; the fragrant winds sing this song in the valleys’ ears; and the majestic pines hum it in a most mysterious way: a Buddha has arisen—the Buddha of today.”
This may seem difficult; you may think it is poetry, the imagination of a poet. If you think so, you have missed the point; you have not understood what is being said. Those who write such sutras do not indulge in poetry; those who know do not play with imagination. These are facts. The expression is poetic because the fact itself is poetic.
The day a Buddha is born—when someone attains buddhahood—a trembling spreads through all of nature. It is no small event. When a volcano erupts, the whole earth trembles. This too is an eruption, not of matter but of consciousness. Its ripples touch all of nature; nothing remains untouched. The event of a Buddha is an explosion. Every particle of consciousness is affected and suffused by it.
And this whole cosmos is made of consciousness. The stone too has a soul. We do not see it because our eyes are stony. The waterfall has a soul; the ocean has a soul. Whatever is here on all sides is ensouled. When buddhahood happens—when one goes beyond all bondage, attains supreme freedom, becomes free of all ego and all disease, when all fetters fall from one—then this poetry becomes factual.
“The silver star, with burning signals, tells the tuberose this news...”
At night the tuberose blooms; the stars tell it: a Buddha is born!
“The stream, in its babbling voice, tells the tale to stones and pebbles; the sea’s dark waves, roaring, tell the foamy cliffs the same; the fragrance-laden valleys hum this song; the majestic pines murmur in a mysterious way: a Buddha has arisen—the Buddha of today.”
“Now he stands in the West like a radiant stupa, and upon his face the rising sun of the Eternal pours its first, supremely glorious rays. His mind, like a calm and boundless ocean, spreads into the shoreless ether. And he holds life and death in his strong hands.”
Such a newborn Buddha stands in the West, his face turned to the East, and the sun of buddhahood—the newborn sun, the sun of prajna—casts its first rays upon him.
“Now he stands in the West like a radiant stupa, and upon his face the rising sun of the Eternal pours its first, supremely glorious rays. His mind, like a calm and boundless ocean, spreads into the shoreless ether.”
With the rising of this sun, his consciousness expands. As this sun spreads, as the warp and weft of its rays extend, so his consciousness spreads—because this sun is not an outer sun; it is the sun of his own consciousness. His soul will become endless space, without boundaries. It is a matter of moments. The person who was will disappear. The island will disappear; only the ocean will remain. What was bound in limits will not be; only the limitless will remain.
Buddha said, after enlightenment: the walls of the house in which I had dwelt for lives upon lives have fallen. Only the inner empty sky remains.
What we take to be our being is due to our walls. One day the walls will fall. After the sixth gate, the last wall falls—the glass wall, transparent. Even meditation will vanish; only consciousness will remain. And consciousness is infinite; it has no boundaries.
“…he holds life and death in his strong hands.”
Now he has gone beyond both life and death. Life and death are in his hands. He is neither life nor death.
As long as we are bound to life, we are bound to death. As long as we desire life, we will have death. Where there is birth, there will be death. Now, in this Buddha’s hands are both life and death. He is other than both, apart from both. He is the Third—nameless. We call it the deathless, only for the language of this earth—so that those filled with longing for life can understand. Otherwise, it is neither life nor death; it is the eternal beyond both. After the sixth gate, the leap into that Eternity occurs. The finite becomes the Infinite; the drop becomes the ocean.
From virya the gate of meditation opens; from meditation, samadhi.
First, you do not breathe only through the nose; you breathe through the whole body. Every pore is breathing. If your nose were left open but your entire body were painted so that all the pores were blocked, then no matter how much you breathed through the nose, you wouldn’t survive for more than three hours. Because you are breathing everywhere—and it is necessary to breathe everywhere. Every pore of you is alive; the whole body is breathing. There isn’t a single piece in your body that is without breath.
So when you utter the roar of “Hoo,” that roar does not resound only in the heart or at the navel, where your breath typically reaches; gradually it reverberates wherever the breath enters, to every pore.
And just as breath is hidden in every pore, so too is sexuality. It is concentrated at the sex center, yes, but it is spread throughout. The body does not have only one sex center; there are erotic zones, organs that can become suffused with sexual excitation. Breasts, for instance, can fill with erotic energy. Sex may be most concentrated at the sex center, but it is diffused through the entire body. As breath is spread, so is sexual desire spread. When you strike with the roar of “Hoo,” that sonic blow expands wherever the breath goes. Wherever there is air within you, there this sound echoes and expands.
That is why I insist you do it with great force—so that not even a single part is deprived of the sound, and the blow falls upon the sex-energy throughout your whole body. At many points that energy begins to be freed by this blow. This is hammering: like a hammer we are cracking the inner seed, so the seed remains where it is but its energy is released. And the law of energy is that, the moment freed, it runs upward—just as a flame runs upward. All energies move upward; matter falls downward. Gravity acts on matter; gravity has no effect on energy.
And when it starts happening that your sexual desire seems no longer to arise—then give thanks to the Divine. Do not become anxious; do not stop meditating out of fear of this change. Very soon samadhi will happen within. Only then will you realize that the very power by which samadhi could be attained had been getting wasted in sex. But until samadhi is known, sex appears to be samadhi. Only when That happens can any comparison be made.
So if Buddha and Mahavira are filled with immense compassion toward you, the greatest reason is this: you are squandering diamonds and getting almost nothing in return. With these very diamonds you could purchase That which can never be lost. The greatest pilgrimage of human life is from sex to samadhi. Until we reach samadhi from sex, the destination has not been found; we are still wandering.
Now let us take this sutra:
“The sixth gate is the gate of meditation, like a marble urn—white and transparent. Within it burns a golden flame: the flame of prajna, which springs from the soul.”
When virya—the seed-energy—is freed from the sex center, meditation begins. As we rise higher, we become more and more meditative. There is meditation even in sex; perhaps that is why the craving for sex is so strong in our minds—it is a search for meditation. But knowing nothing else, we take the first gate to be the whole. Sex is the first incident of meditation, the lowest rung—but still of meditation.
As the virya-energy rises from one center to the next, meditation grows deeper. At the third center, deeper still; at the fourth, deeper yet. From the fifth center the flame of meditation becomes very clear. The fifth center is the ajna chakra, which I call the third eye. Rub there—that is the fifth center. When the sex-energy reaches there, a great luminous meditation begins. Full radiance arrives at the seventh gate.
“The gate of meditation is like a marble urn—white and transparent. Within it burns a golden flame: the flame of prajna, which springs from the soul.”
Knowledge is not in scriptures, not in words; true knowing is in the urn of meditation hidden within you. Its name is prajna—the flame burning inside the urn of meditation. Meditation itself is a transparent urn, white marble. Its rays are visible even outside. Hence, in the words, the voice, the very bearing of one who attains meditation, the glimmer of prajna begins to appear. That which is hidden within starts flowing without.
“You are that urn.”
You are the urn of meditation.
“Now you have severed yourself from the objects of the senses; you have traveled the path of seeing and the path of hearing, and now you stand in the light of knowledge. You have attained the state of titiksha.”
After the fifth gate of virya these events happen of themselves. As a result, one becomes severed from the senses. Our connection with the senses exists because of the craving for sex. Sex-desire is the link between us and the senses. When sex-desire is freed, our relationship with the senses is severed.
What is my relationship with the hand?
There are two kinds. One is such that, if a bone fractures, a doctor knows what to do; he will set the bone. That is a body-to-body, mechanical relationship. The other is the real relationship, which no doctor can set or sever: the craving for touch. It is through this that I am connected with the hand.
So the hand has two relations—one is mechanical, bones joined to bones. The other is the craving to touch. Truly, because of that craving I am linked to the hand. The day the craving for touch ends completely, that day I no longer am linked to the hand; the hand may be linked to me, but I am not to it. What is true of the hand is true of all the senses.
You are linked to the genitals by skin, by bone—that is another matter. The deeper link is your sex-desire. Have you noticed? The moment a thought of sex arises in the mind, the genitals are immediately affected. Before the thought has even fully formed, the genitals respond. So there is an inner linkage of thought, of craving. As soon as the energy begins to move upward, that craving-link starts breaking. Then the hand remains, but the desire to touch does not. You can still pick up things, touch things, but the urge to touch has vanished. Things will be touched, but there is no fascination, no frenzy for touching. You will be able to use the senses, but now the senses are your servants, not your masters. This can happen only in this way.
If someone tries to do it in reverse, trouble begins. Someone says: because there is craving to touch in the hand, cut off the hand; because there is craving to see beauty in the eyes, gouge out the eyes. People have done this—this is madness. Even if you gouge out the eyes, the craving to see does not vanish; it will stand even in blind eyes. You may close the eyes—so what? You will dream. What you saw outside, you will begin to see inside. The whole world will enter within. If there was a craving to see a beautiful woman, and you gouged out the eyes thinking, “no eyes—no flute,” it is not so easy to silence the flute. The flute does not play because of the bamboo. It plays because of an inner raga. If there is no bamboo, it will play elsewhere, in some other way—but play it will. If there is no bamboo, it won’t appear outside; it will keep playing within. If the flute played only because of the bamboo, it would be simple: break the bamboo and the music would stop. We pick up the bamboo and make a flute precisely because the music is already playing within and wants to be expressed.
The senses are hollow reeds of bamboo; the real thing is the inner flow of raga, of craving. Do not waste yourself breaking the bamboo; the unwise do that. Free the inner flow. The flute may still lie on the lips, but the music will have ceased if the inner craving is freed.
So lead virya upward; free it from the lower centers. Your relationship with the senses will automatically begin to sever.
The sutra says: “Having reached this far—having reached the path of virya—you have traveled the paths of seeing and hearing.”
Whatever was to be seen has been seen; whatever was to be heard has been heard. This concerns the inner. One who has reached the gate of virya has seen all that is to be seen in the inner world, and heard all that is to be heard.
“And now you stand in the light of knowledge.”
Now you neither hear nor see—you are immersed in the light itself. There isn’t even the distance of hearing or seeing. You yourself are becoming the knowing, dissolving into it.
“You stand in the light. Now you have attained the state of titiksha.”
Titiksha means: pleasure and pain are now the same to you. There is no difference for you between pleasure and pain. This does not mean you won’t notice pleasure or pain. If you prick a thorn into Buddha’s foot, he will feel pain—perhaps even more than you—because his sensitivity is supreme. He will notice it. The thorn will prick, and the sensation will be there; but it will not become suffering—that is another matter. If you place a delicate flower on Buddha’s hand, its delicacy, its softness, its fragrance, its beauty—he will sense it all. Everything will be perceived and experienced, but it will not produce pleasure.
What does it mean that a thorn will not cause suffering? The thorn will prick; there will be discomfort, but no suffering.
Discomfort is an outer, bodily event; suffering is its interpretation. When a thorn pricks the foot, there will be discomfort—that means a perception. The foot will report it; the nerves will immediately send a message to the brain: a thorn has pricked. But the brain will not interpret. It will not say, “This should not have happened,” nor “May it never happen again,” nor “I will complain to God—why this thorn?” The brain will accept: it is so.
A flower in the hand, the message comes; but the brain will not interpret, “May this flower be in my hand every day; if tomorrow it isn’t, I will be miserable; my life was meaningless until now—now it has meaning.” No such commentary.
Pleasure and pain are interpretations.
Discomforts and comforts are facts.
Facts will continue to be noticed; interpretation will dissolve.
Pleasure and pain are our desires; comforts and discomforts are external facts of life.
Titiksha means: only the outer events are noticed now; inwardly no event is constructed in their wake—no insistence, no expectation. A thorn pricks—fine. A flower is in the hand—fine. As Buddha was within before the thorn, so he remains when it pricks. As he was within before the flower, so he remains with the flower. In that inner realm nothing is altered by outer events. The same inner state remains, whatever happens outside. This sameness is called titiksha.
“O Narjol, now you are safe.”
The sutra says: O siddha—“Narjol” is the Tibetan word for siddha—
“O Narjol, now you are safe.”
When virya begins to move upward, there is no longer insecurity. Until then there was fear. When the journey of virya becomes meditation, fear ends; you are safe.
“Victor over sins…”
Now sins are conquered.
“…once a srotapanna has crossed the seventh path, all of nature fills with joyous astonishment and feels defeated.”
Now the sutra gives a glimpse of what lies ahead.
The sixth gate is meditation. Only the seventh remains; the goal is very near. One more step and the urn of meditation too will shatter, and only pure prajna will remain. For now there is a glimpse. Like a lantern: no matter how clear and pure the glass, even if it seems invisible, there is still a slight distance, a wall of glass, with the flame within.
Meditation is the glass wall; samadhi is the breaking of that wall.
But a glass wall is still a wall—a little distance remains. And purity itself, if it stands in between, is also an obstruction. That too will break. At the seventh, all obstructions fall; only prajna, only awakening, awareness, consciousness—what we have called sat-chit-anand—remains.
When the event of the seventh gate happens—when one enters the stream and is carried by the current:
“Srotapanna or Sovani”—a Tibetan Buddhist term. Sovani means the one who entered the stream at the first gate and, on crossing the seventh gate, causes all of nature to fill with joyous astonishment and to feel defeated.
Understand this a little—it is very precious, very deep—and it may not occur to you, because you do not know what is happening within you.
When you become angry, nature wins and you lose. When you fill with lust, nature wins and you lose. The forces of earth triumph; the upward-flying energy is jolted and falls downward. After sex, the sadness, melancholy, and repentance that grip everyone—this is because of defeat by nature. Even the most irascible man, after anger, feels it was wrong; better if it had not happened. Why? He is harsh, even cruel; he may relish hurting others—he does not repent for hurting them. He repents because he was conquered. Whenever anger seizes him, some greater power seems to grab his neck and drag him; he is no longer master of himself—that is the regret.
The regret after sex is not that there was suffering; there is a moment of pleasure in sex. The repentance is that some vast power gripped me and made me do it, and I could do nothing. The repentance is of defeat.
We call sin that which leaves you with the feeling of defeat.
We call virtue that which leaves you with the feeling of victory.
That act through which you feel inner dignity—“I am free; no overpowering force drags me; I have become strong”—the feeling that accompanies it is called virtue.
The feeling called sin is when you sense, “Another made me do this; I was not my own master.”
The sense of slavery is sin; the sense of mastery is virtue.
That is why we call a sannyasin “Swami”—master. Simply because he is moving toward mastery, and is slowly uprooting the elements of servitude within, destroying them—and at every opportunity he establishes his own sovereignty.
Birth after birth we lose, we are defeated, and nature assumes we cannot win. Think for yourself—leave other lives aside; even in this life, how many times have you resolved not to be angry—and yet again and again you were. Not even once could you win.
The energy of anger in you, the earth’s pull within you, the force that drags you downward—these are convinced that your words, your vows, your oaths have no value. You prattle in vain, because whenever it comes to it, only what nature wants happens—what you want does not. Nature is sure of you: however many temples you visit, prayers you say, oaths you swear, or gurus you wander after—nature knows you are merely wasting time; in the end you come back to her. The morning’s stray returns home by evening; it does not take long. Nature is not disturbed by your words.
Therefore, the very first time someone reaches the state of Narjol, of siddha—when sex-energy touches the higher centers—then all of nature fills with joyous astonishment and feels defeated.
“Fills with joyous astonishment and feels defeated.”
These are opposite words. It feels defeated, because it was always the victor and you the vanquished. For the first time you have won and nature has lost. So it feels defeated. But it does not feel sad; it feels joyous.
Why?
There is a secret: whoever you enslave, you become enslaved to him in turn. Enslaving another is not easy; in enslaving, you too must be enslaved.
I have heard: A man was leading a cow tied with a rope. On the road he met the Sufi fakir, Farid. Farid told his disciples, “Surround this man; I will give you some insight.” They gathered round, and the cowherd was trapped amid them. Farid had a way of teaching like this. He asked, “Tell me, who is the slave here—the man or the cow?”
The disciples said, “Is that even a question? The cow is the slave; the man is the master.”
Farid said, “If that is true, then if the relationship between them is cut, will the cow seek the man or will the man seek the cow?”
The disciples said, “The man will seek the cow.”
“Then who is the slave?”
Whom we bind, we are bound to. A very subtle slavery is born; the master too is a slave, subtly. The only perfect master is one who enslaves no one.
Nature has kept you enslaved. But the day you become free, she too is filled with joy—because she too is freed from you. The earth is rid of your nuisance. You are no little nuisance—not only to yourself; you are a nuisance to the whole earth. You are a source of disturbance; you have to be kept bound. The day you are free, the need to bind you ends.
“All of nature fills with joyous astonishment.”
There is joy, and there is surprise: you too could do this! Little hope was placed in you; you were not reliable. And yet you did it! Even after so many births, you could win; you could break the habit of defeat that had lasted lifetimes. Naturally, a deep astonishment arises.
“The silver star”—such sweet words—
“the silver star now with burning signals tells the tuberose this news; the stream, in its babbling voice, tells this tale to the pebbles; the sea’s dark waves roar the same tidings to the foaming cliffs; the fragrant winds sing this song in the valleys’ ears; and the majestic pines hum it in a most mysterious way: a Buddha has arisen—the Buddha of today.”
This may seem difficult; you may think it is poetry, the imagination of a poet. If you think so, you have missed the point; you have not understood what is being said. Those who write such sutras do not indulge in poetry; those who know do not play with imagination. These are facts. The expression is poetic because the fact itself is poetic.
The day a Buddha is born—when someone attains buddhahood—a trembling spreads through all of nature. It is no small event. When a volcano erupts, the whole earth trembles. This too is an eruption, not of matter but of consciousness. Its ripples touch all of nature; nothing remains untouched. The event of a Buddha is an explosion. Every particle of consciousness is affected and suffused by it.
And this whole cosmos is made of consciousness. The stone too has a soul. We do not see it because our eyes are stony. The waterfall has a soul; the ocean has a soul. Whatever is here on all sides is ensouled. When buddhahood happens—when one goes beyond all bondage, attains supreme freedom, becomes free of all ego and all disease, when all fetters fall from one—then this poetry becomes factual.
“The silver star, with burning signals, tells the tuberose this news...”
At night the tuberose blooms; the stars tell it: a Buddha is born!
“The stream, in its babbling voice, tells the tale to stones and pebbles; the sea’s dark waves, roaring, tell the foamy cliffs the same; the fragrance-laden valleys hum this song; the majestic pines murmur in a mysterious way: a Buddha has arisen—the Buddha of today.”
“Now he stands in the West like a radiant stupa, and upon his face the rising sun of the Eternal pours its first, supremely glorious rays. His mind, like a calm and boundless ocean, spreads into the shoreless ether. And he holds life and death in his strong hands.”
Such a newborn Buddha stands in the West, his face turned to the East, and the sun of buddhahood—the newborn sun, the sun of prajna—casts its first rays upon him.
“Now he stands in the West like a radiant stupa, and upon his face the rising sun of the Eternal pours its first, supremely glorious rays. His mind, like a calm and boundless ocean, spreads into the shoreless ether.”
With the rising of this sun, his consciousness expands. As this sun spreads, as the warp and weft of its rays extend, so his consciousness spreads—because this sun is not an outer sun; it is the sun of his own consciousness. His soul will become endless space, without boundaries. It is a matter of moments. The person who was will disappear. The island will disappear; only the ocean will remain. What was bound in limits will not be; only the limitless will remain.
Buddha said, after enlightenment: the walls of the house in which I had dwelt for lives upon lives have fallen. Only the inner empty sky remains.
What we take to be our being is due to our walls. One day the walls will fall. After the sixth gate, the last wall falls—the glass wall, transparent. Even meditation will vanish; only consciousness will remain. And consciousness is infinite; it has no boundaries.
“…he holds life and death in his strong hands.”
Now he has gone beyond both life and death. Life and death are in his hands. He is neither life nor death.
As long as we are bound to life, we are bound to death. As long as we desire life, we will have death. Where there is birth, there will be death. Now, in this Buddha’s hands are both life and death. He is other than both, apart from both. He is the Third—nameless. We call it the deathless, only for the language of this earth—so that those filled with longing for life can understand. Otherwise, it is neither life nor death; it is the eternal beyond both. After the sixth gate, the leap into that Eternity occurs. The finite becomes the Infinite; the drop becomes the ocean.
From virya the gate of meditation opens; from meditation, samadhi.
Osho's Commentary
You are that urn.
Now you have severed yourself from the objects of the senses; you have journeyed the path of seeing and the path of hearing, and now you stand in the light of knowing. You have attained the state of titiksha.
O Narjol (the Siddha), you are safe.
O conqueror of sins, once a Sovani, that is, a Srotapanna, has crossed the seventh path, the whole of nature is filled with joyous astonishment and feels humbled. The silver star now, with burning hints, carries the news to the rajnigandha; the waterfall, in its babbling voice, tells this tale to the pebbles; the sea’s dark waves, with their roar, tell the same to the foaming rocks; fragrance-laden winds sing this very song into the ears of the valleys, and the majestic pine trees hum it in a deeply mysterious way: the Buddha has arisen—the Buddha of today.
Now he stands in the West like a radiant stupa, upon whose face the rising sun of the Eternal pours its first, supremely glorious rays. His mind spreads like a silent and shoreless ocean into boundless space. And he holds life and death in his strong hands.
The fifth gate of Samadhi is virya. Let a few things be understood about this; then we shall proceed to the sixth gate.
First, know that virya has two aspects. One is the body of virya, and one is the soul of virya—energy. In all the processes of yoga, in the disciplines of tantra, in the many forms of religion born upon the earth, the ascent of virya, the rising of virya upward, its journey from the sex center to the Sahasrar, has been declared essential. This creates great confusion. The scientific mind is thrown into difficulty. Those who understand physiology cannot trust such a statement, for it seems impossible.
The semen gathered in the sex center has neither a path nor a means to reach the Sahasrar. In the body there is no pathway by which semen could move upward. From the standpoint of physiology, semen can only fall; it cannot rise—because there is only a downward passage, not an upward one. Thus, from the viewpoint of physiology and all modern findings, the notions of tantra, yoga, religion, all become mistaken. When there is no pathway, there can be no ascent, no upward movement of semen. Those who strive for it seem engaged in a futile effort. Quite naturally, for those who study modern physiology, trust in tantra and yoga vanishes at once. There truly is no arrangement of nadis in the body whereby semen could go upward.
This is correct, and as far as science goes, it is entirely reasonable: it cannot be. But there is something else that escapes science. Until that is understood, today’s mind cannot comprehend the ascent of virya. For example, you have a body. Science accepts the body, not your soul. Yet the life within you, though manifesting through the body, is not the body. As this is true of the body, so it is true of each single semen-cell as well.
One semen-cell is made of two things. That is why your entire body can also be made of two things—there is the visible body of the semen-cell and there is the soul of the semen-cell, energy, which is invisible. In sexual intercourse, as soon as the semen-cells enter the woman’s vagina, they live for two hours. If within these two hours they reach and attain the woman’s ovum, then the semen-cell that comes close and enters the ovum—birth happens, a new individuality is conceived. But it is a long journey for the semen-cells.
The semen-cells are very small, invisible to the naked eye. Their life is two hours. If within those two hours they do not reach the woman’s ovum, they will die. Therefore they rush swiftly. Yet they are so tiny that, however swiftly they move, the path of travel is long for them and the time very short. Competition begins right there. The competition you see spread across the whole world is only its expansion. For in a single intercourse, millions of semen-cells are released, and only one may arrive; millions are destroyed along the way. A fierce struggle, a great competition. And even one does not always reach—only sometimes. The rest of the time all perish. In two hours the semen-cell dies.
Understand this a little carefully.
It means the semen-cell can be living or dead. Then what is the difference between a living semen-cell and a dead semen-cell? There must be some difference—something that renders a particle alive and then, at some moment, leaves it dead. From the standpoint of tantra and yoga, that difference is decisive.
Virya has two aspects. So long as virya is alive, two things are present in it—its body and its energy, its soul. Within two hours the energy is released; the semen-cell remains as a corpse. If, while this energy is still present, union with the woman’s ovum occurs, only then does life begin. If union happens after the energy has departed, life does not begin. Thus the semen-cell is only a body, a vehicle. That energy which makes it alive—that alone is the real virya. The body of the semen-cell cannot attain ascent; it can only fall, because it belongs to the earth, it is matter. Matter has no ascent; matter always falls downward. The body of the semen-cell is being pulled down by the earth; but the life-energy within that tiny, invisible semen-cell is running upward. For it, no physical pathway is needed. It is invisible. If this very life-energy unites with the woman’s ovum, a new person is born. If this energy is freed from the semen-cell through the methods of yoga and tantra, it can reach your Sahasrar. And when this virya-energy reaches the Sahasrar, a new world is born for you. You too become new. Your rebirth happens.
For this virya-energy to move, no gross, physical route is necessary. It travels without a material pathway. Therefore the chakras of which we speak, the seven chakras, are not in the physical body. These seven chakras are not visible. Hence no examination, no scientific analysis will ever find them. The chakras are on an invisible way, and through those chakras this energy rises upward. The name of this energy is virya. What you ordinarily call virya is only matter, only the vehicle.
Understand it thus: there is a seed. If you break a seed, there is no obvious existence of a plant within. However much you probe the broken seed, there is no way to discover the hidden tree. Yet the tree is surely hidden—because if you place the seed in the soil, it sprouts, and the tree begins to emerge. The tree was in the seed, but it was invisible. The seed was visible, it was the body. The capacity to become a tree, the energy, the shakti, was invisible.
Shakti is always invisible; only the body is seen.
Even when the plant appears, what you see is still only the body. Those green leaves and branches you see are not the plant. Within the leaves and branches there is a life-breath rising toward the sky, moving away from the earth, going upward—that you do not see. You see only the vehicle. The prana that journeys within, you do not see. Even if you cut the tree down, you will not discover it. But seeing the tree grow, you say, it is alive. A tree withers and growth ceases—you say, it has died.
What is the mark of life?
The mark of life is growth; the sign of life is expansion. Therefore we have called life Brahman. Brahman means: that which goes on expanding, becoming greater and greater, endlessly greater. What is seen is its body; what is unseen is its support. When a tree has withered, what has withered in it? The branches are the same, everything is the same, the roots are the same; but some bird of life has flown away. Growth no longer happens. Things are now at a standstill.
It is not only the tree that grows; mountains also grow. Our Himalaya is still growing, still young. Some mountains have become old, like the Satpura, the Vindhya—they have grown old, they grow no more. Some mountains have died; only their body remains. The Himalaya is still rising, still growing; it is still alive.
This land’s reverence for the Himalaya is not because of its height but because of its life. If we have made the Himalaya the abode of Mahadeva, of Shiva, it is precisely because it is a symbol of life’s growth upon this earth—a vast symbol—ever growing. Still young, its growth not yet stilled. Yet what meets the eyes are stones. Within those stones there must be some energy hidden that rises, that presses upward toward the sky.
This is true of all of life. And what I have said of the seed is equally true of virya. For virya is a seed—just as there is a seed for plants, so it is the seed of man. Break that seed and the inner energy cannot be detected, for the very act of breaking releases it into the sky. There are two ways to come to know that energy.
One way is that the semen-cell, the male cell, meets the woman’s cell, the female cell—then life manifests, a child is born. Because the male and female cells are each incomplete, half and half, life cannot be born from one alone. Life needs wholeness. As soon as the woman’s and the man’s cell meet, a whole is formed, a tiny unit is created—no longer half—and now it can grow. So one way to free the life hidden in the semen-cell is to unite it with the opposite, the female cell.
There is another way to make this semen-cell manifest. Then not the two bodies—the body of the semen-cell and the body of the female cell—come together, but the energies of the semen-cell and the female cell unite—only energy.
Modern psychology now accepts that no man is only male, and no woman only female. Both are present within both. It must be so, for your birth occurs through the union of man and woman. Therefore you can be neither purely man nor purely woman. You will be half and half. In the first unit from which you are made, there is half woman and half man. Then, whether now you are a woman or a man makes no difference. In your basic foundation there is half the gift of woman and half the gift of man. And this gift can never be destroyed; whatever you become, there will be half woman and half man within you. Two energies have met within you, two bodies have met; and the conjunction of these two bodies and two energies has made you a person.
Your semen-cell holds two kinds of longing. One longing is to meet the outer woman and produce the wholeness of a new life. The other, deeper longing—which we call spirituality—is to meet the hidden woman within oneself, or the hidden man within oneself. If the meeting is with the outer woman, sexual union happens; that too is pleasant, for a moment. If the meeting is with the inner woman, Samadhi happens; that is the great bliss, and forever. For how long can one remain united with the outer woman? That union slips away in a moment. Even to meet for a moment is not easy. Only the bodies can meet; the minds do not. Even if the minds meet, the souls do not. And even if all this meets, the union can be only for a moment. The meeting with the inner woman can be eternal. From that eternal meeting Samadhi flowers.
If the meeting is with the outer woman, it must be through the body of the semen-cell, for the body can meet only through the body. If the meeting is with the inner woman, the body is not needed. The body of the semen-cell remains at its own center, the sex center; the energy of the semen-cell is set free. That very energy meets the inner woman. The ultimate event of this meeting occurs in the Sahasrar, for the Sahasrar is the supreme center of energy, and the sex center is the supreme center of the body.
Sex is the lowest center; the Sahasrar is the highest. Reaching the Sahasrar, energy becomes pure; there remains only energy, pure energy. In the Sahasrar your woman waits for you. And if you are a woman, then in the Sahasrar your man is waiting. This is the inner union. We have called this meeting Ardhanarishvara.
We have made the image of Shankar—half man and half woman. One half is the form of man, one half the form of woman. This is the indication of that profound union. And this union of Ardhanarishvara happens upon Kailash, upon Gaurishankar. On that highest peak of your inner Himalaya—the Sahasrar, Kailash, Gaurishankar, whatever name you give—there this meeting occurs.
The lowest plane is that of the sex center; there even animals can meet, there the union of coitus happens. The highest center of meeting is that of Samadhi; there, sometimes a Buddha, sometimes a Mahavira, finds the inner woman or the inner man. And the day this event happens, perfect brahmacharya is attained; before that it cannot be. When the inner woman is found, then the outer woman no longer concerns you. When the inner man is found, then the search for the outer man ceases. And until this union happens, the search goes on. The gate of virya is the gate to this process.
How are we to free the life-energy hidden in our semen-cell, and how are we to unite it with its opposite pole concealed in the Sahasrar