[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]
[Meditation is getting out of the mind by knowing you are not it; bliss is simply knowing it. Osho talked about the two tonight.]
Man is disconnected from God because of his misery, because misery has a speciality of its own. It closes you, it closes all the doors, all the windows, all possibilities. It makes you encapsulated, it makes you an island, and one starts suffocating within oneself. One needs the wind, the rain, the sun. And just as the body needs all these things, the soul also needs God.
God is a nourishment for the soul. In bliss you become open, and the moment you are open, you are bridged. But this has been a calamity -- that religions have been teaching people to be sad, serious. To be a saint means to become incapable of laughter.
Christians say Jesus never laughed in his life -- now that is sheer stupidity! We have a better understanding about Christ than the Christians. Far more significant is the story of Zarathustra....
It is said that the first thing he did when he was born was to laugh. That's how a man of great consciousness starts his life: with laughter, with joy, with celebration. But the whole past has been dominated by sad people. Sad people very much enjoy dominating others; they have no other joy. Their only joy is in crushing other people and their freedom. Their only joy is in making more and more people joyless. They are very jealous and angry with people who are happy, who can sing and dance and rejoice.
These sad people have destroyed so much that it is almost inestimable. Nobody has done so much harm to humanity as these people -- and these are the popes, the shankaracharyas, the ayatollahs, the imams. The whole priesthood of all the religions has been against humanity.
My effort here is to create a new man, and a new man can be created only with a new vision. Only with a new vision of religiousness is the new man possible.
I teach a religion of love, laughter, celebration. This is my own experience - that you are bridged with God when you are blissful. So I teach only bliss and bliss and nothing else. Be blissed out and you are a sannyasin!
[Then Osho went on to point out the curious fact that it takes courage to be joyful.]
Misery is the way of the world. It needs no courage, it needs no rebellion, no intelligence. Simply follow the crowd and you will be miserable, simply listen to all kinds of advice that is given to you by all kinds of fools and you will be miserable. Listen to your parents and listen to your preachers and your priests and your politicians and your saints and you will be miserable. There is no doubt about it, it is guaranteed; it has never failed. Millions of people have experimented with it and inevitably misery follows. In fact you can see your own parents, they are miserable, your teachers, they are miserable, your saints, they are miserable, your politicians, they are miserable -- maybe in different ways, in different degrees, but they are all miserable.
The difference is only of quantity, not of quality. It is very rare to find a person who is not miserable because it is rare to find a person who has the guts to rebel against the traditional, the conventional, the social, because all the forces are in support of the conventional.
When you are rebelling against something you are alone, fighting against the whole world. But it is a tremendously beautiful adventure. Going to the moon is nothing compared to it, going to Everest is nothing compared to it. To rebel against all that is dead, unintelligent, is the greatest adventure, the greatest revolution. And it gives you a sharpness of the soul, of intelligence. In fact it creates an integrated individual in you and only in that integration do flowers of bliss blossom, bloom; you start growing. Otherwise people remain almost retarded.
The average psychological age of human beings, only twelve years. We are living in a retarded world. Even people who are eighty or ninety years old are only physically old, they have aged but psychologically they are somewhere near about twelve. Hence you can see that sometimes they forget their age and start behaving in a childish way. Give them a little more whiskey than they are accustomed to and immediately you will see they have started behaving like a stupid child. Whiskey cannot create stupidity, it has no chemical ingredients to create it. If it is already there it can expose it, that is true. It can only expose your reality, it cannot add anything to you, it cannot delete anything. It can simply help you to turn off your control, your repression.
Just insult somebody and within seconds he is no more eighty, he is twelve, and he goes through a tantrum. He forgets all about his wisdom and experience. He may repent later on, he may even ask for your forgiveness because now he comes to recapitulate the whole scene and he can see the disparity in his age, wisdom, education, and the way he behaved. That's why in all languages there is this expression 'in spite of myself'. Now I cannot see how it can happen -- how can you do anything in spite of yourself? Either you do it or you don't do it -- how can you do something which you never wanted to do? But people do and the expression is significant.
It says "For a moment I forgot my physical age, for a moment I slipped back into my psychological age. Later on recapitulating I thought it was not right for me to do it -- I did it in spite of myself." That is a way of saving your face.
My sannyasins have to be courageous, courageous in a passionate way, intense way, totally courageous, risking all, because unless you risk all you will not be able to know the hidden splendour of your life. When you risk all, your life for the first time opens up to its ultimate maximum.
People live at the minimum. My sannyasins have to live at the maximum. They have to live at the highest peaks of life, consciousness, love, joy.
[Happiness is the hum of being in harmony was the gist of his talk to the next sannyasin.] Man has three sources of energy in him.
One is the body, the other is the mind, the third is the heart. Where all these three rivers meet, merge, become one, the fourth arises. You cannot call the fourth the body, neither the mind nor the heart; hence it is simply called turiya, the fourth. It has not been given any name. And the arising of the fourth is the beginning of the sacred, the transformation, the beginning of a real life, of authentic life, of life eternal, of divine life.
These three rivers exist in everybody but they rarely meet. In fact, they oppose each other, they go in different directions. The mind pulls to one side, the heart to another, the body has its own way. They never agree.
If you watch your inner workings you will be surprised, they never agree. The body says "Stop. Don't eat any more, I am feeling too full," but the mind says, "The ice cream is so delicious -- just a little bit more..." The heart says, "This is beautiful," the mind says, "You are just stupid, you are a fool, you are mad." Whenever the heart falls in love, the mind says, "It is all blindness," and whenever the heart calculates, moves in any direction, the mind always finds faults with it. They have different worlds.
The heart's calculations are not logical, they are intuitive; it jumps from one point to another. And the mind goes through a detailed process, step by step. The mind thinks the heart is a fool and the people who live through the heart are thought by the mind to be fools. Jesus was called a fool in his life. Saint Francis was called a fool in his life, so much so that he started calling himself a fool! -- why bother others?
The heart always feels the mind is nothing but a Jew: always calculating, arithmetical, mathematical, calculating, cunning, clever; it knows nothing of simplicity, innocence, love; it is always counting money, always thinking in terms which are absolutely worldly. The heart has a deep condemnation for the mind; it looks at mind as mundane. And the mind has a deep condemnation for the heart; it looks at the heart as mad, insane, foolish, childish.
And the body has its own way, it consists on its own way. The mind thinks celibacy is good, it can prolong your life, it is religious. And the body laughs deep down, "Go on thinking that and I will show you when the time arises. I will see how long you can remain celibate. I will create so much trouble." It does create trouble and the mind has to bow down to the body. And this conflict continues, this is a triangle in which everybody is caught.
The whole process of meditation is to help all these conflicting forces meet, merge, become harmonious with each other. Then you are so full of energy, because all that energy that was wasted in unnecessary conflict becomes available to you. And it is that energy which becomes wings and takes you to the beyond.
[Then to Sarah, from Germany:]
Meditation is a jump out of the mind. It is leaving the mind behind, it is transcending the mind. And mind is all that we know. Mind is our identity; it is our ego, it is our past, our memories, it is our experiences, it is our future, our hopes, our desires, it is our religion, it is our politics. It is all that we are made of. To jump out of it is in fact to jump out of yourself.
In the beginning it almost looks impossible but it is not impossible. One can slip out of the mind just like a snake slips out of the old skin because mind is not in reality our identity. We have falsely become identified with the mind. If it were our identity then there would be no way to get out of it but it is not our identity. This is the experience of all the Buddhas, of all the awakened ones, of all those who have known, that it is just a false notion. It is as if we are doing a mathematical problem and we are saying two plus two is five. Now this single, simple mistake will make the whole thing go wrong.
Once you know that two plus two is not five but four... Even when you were not aware, they made four; it was just that you were adding it wrongly. The identity with the mind is just like that, a mathematical error, a mistake. I don't call it a sin. You will not be punished for it in hell but you are already punished by the mistake; because of that mistake your whole life goes on going wrong. Everything goes wrong because somewhere in the foundation a mistake has been committed.
The whole purpose of sannyas is to put that fundamental mistake right: you are not the mind, you can slip out of it. And the way to slip out of it is awareness. Just watch the mind, desires, thoughts, memories, passing on the screen of the mind. It is just like a TV screen. You are an observer, a witness; you are not part of it, you are not a participant.
Keep aloof, detached. Just go on looking at it, don't get involved and slowly slowly you will be surprised that a distance is created between you and your own mind. And the mind goes on and on farther and farther away from you. One day suddenly it is not there; you are surrounded by infinite silence.
That is the moment of meditation, for the first time you have tasted meditation. And from that moment everything becomes golden, everything is a miracle. From that moment life takes on a totally new altitude. You become weightless, you become full of light, full of bliss, enriched in thousands of ways.
That is the meaning of Sarah -- a princess, and not only that but a god's princess.
It is through meditation that one achieves the kingdom of god, one becomes a prince or a princess. This treasure is inexhaustible and this treasure is such that nobody can take it away, not even death.
[Meditation is a mother; through it you are reborn. And that is the meaning of her original name, Renate, Osho told the next person.]
Meditation is synonymous with awareness. The English word 'meditation' gives a slightly wrong idea. The eastern word for it is "dhyana". Out of dhyana in China it became chana and in Japan it became Zen, but the root is dhyana. In English there is no real equivalent; the word that comes closest to it is meditation -- but something is missing in it because whenever you say meditation it gives you the idea of meditating on something. One immediately asks "On what to meditate?" Now that question cannot be asked about dhyana.
"Dhyana simply means a state of mind where there is nothing to meditate upon, a state of consciousness without content, a contentless consciousness. There is nothing to meditate on, nothing to contemplate, nothing to concentrate on; one simply is. One is alert, aware, but not alert and aware of something; aware of awareness, that's all, alert about alertness, that's all, alert about being. A very silent awareness -- that is the meaning of meditation. And through that silence one is reborn. That's the meaning of Renate. "Renate" is a beautiful word.
Jesus says "Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of god." That's exactly the meaning of Renate: born anew, reborn.
The only process needed to be reborn is awareness. Man lives in unconsciousness, that is his ordinary life. If he becomes conscious his life starts changing. When he becomes fully conscious he is no more the same person, he is reborn; he is a now person. And that's the whole purpose of sannyas, to help you to be born anew, so totally anew that there is no continuity with the past at all, a discontinuity happens.
The past disappears as if it never beloved to you or you had seen it in a dream or in a movie or you had heard somebody else telling his story to you. But you cannot relate it to yourself at all.
That moment is a moment of great freedom, of tremendous release. The past finished you are fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops in the early morning sun, as fresh as the newly-opening roses, as fresh as a child And that freshness remains forever; it never becomes old and stale because awareness goes on giving birth every moment. It is not that you are born once and then the process is finished; awareness is a continuous process of rebirth. Each moment you die to the past then you are born anew, so each moment you remain fresh, young, alive, full of juice, full of dance, full of song.
{Society is afraid that when you drop into yourself you'll drop out of its grasp; that's why it is against meditation,,Osho explained in conclusion tonight.]
In this vast world, out of millions of people only very rarely does somebody become interested in meditation. It is not an ordinary pursuit, it is extraordinary. That it happens at all is a miracle because in fact all the vested interests are against it. Society does not want you to meditate because a meditator starts falling out of society. Because a meditator becomes capable of seeing all the stupidities of the society, all the superstitions of the society, he cannot be any more part of its nonsense.
All the religions are against meditation. Christ is not against it but Christ is not synonymous with Christianity, remember. Buddha is not against it. How can Buddha be against meditation? -- he is nothing but meditation. But Buddha is not synonymous with Buddhists. And the same is the case with all the religions. Mohammed is a meditator but not the Mohammedans. The priest will not like you to meditate; he will distract you because once a person meditates he becomes free of all priesthood. Now he has a direct line with god; he need not go after the mediators, he has no need of any mediator. He does not need the pope, he can address god directly. His letters need not go via the Vatican. And remember, any letters sent via the Vatican never reach god. No priest is capable of becoming a bridge between man and god.
Hence the real master is never a mediator between you and god. He simply shares his experience with you. At the most he is a friend. He makes you aware of what has happened to him, and then you can learn something out of it, but he is not a mediator. Hence the famous saying of Buddha to his disciples, "If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately because I should be the last person to stand between you and the truth. So if you come across me, kill me immediately, remove me immediately so that you can face the truth directly."
But a priest cannot say that, the priest has no guts to say that. He lives by his mediation; hence all mediators will be against meditation because meditation is enough. No priest is needed, no ritual is needed. Governments, states, politicians, all are against meditation because meditation makes you aware of a single humanity. Then there are no Indians, no Germans, no English, no Italians -- and the whole politics wants humanity to remain divided. That is the ancientmost rule of the politician: divide and rule.
The meditator knows no distinction between black and white. All that seems to be so childish; deciding by the colour of the skin is so foolish. An intelligent person cannot do that. Hence politicians will be against meditation, the state will be against meditation because a meditator becomes very strong in his soul; it is impossible to enslave him. He becomes an individual and he asserts his individuality. He is ready to sacrifice his life but he is never ready to compromise. No vested interest will like it.
That's why I say meditation is certainly a gift of god because the whole world is against it, yet once in a while a person becomes interested in meditation. There must be the hidden hand of god behind it. It has to be so because only god is in favour of meditation. And people who are in favour of meditation are people of god.
Osho's Commentary
[Meditation is getting out of the mind by knowing you are not it; bliss is simply knowing it. Osho talked about the two tonight.]
Man is disconnected from God because of his misery, because misery has a speciality of its own. It closes you, it closes all the doors, all the windows, all possibilities. It makes you encapsulated, it makes you an island, and one starts suffocating within oneself. One needs the wind, the rain, the sun. And just as the body needs all these things, the soul also needs God.
God is a nourishment for the soul. In bliss you become open, and the moment you are open, you are bridged. But this has been a calamity -- that religions have been teaching people to be sad, serious. To be a saint means to become incapable of laughter.
Christians say Jesus never laughed in his life -- now that is sheer stupidity! We have a better understanding about Christ than the Christians. Far more significant is the story of Zarathustra....
It is said that the first thing he did when he was born was to laugh. That's how a man of great consciousness starts his life: with laughter, with joy, with celebration. But the whole past has been dominated by sad people. Sad people very much enjoy dominating others; they have no other joy. Their only joy is in crushing other people and their freedom. Their only joy is in making more and more people joyless. They are very jealous and angry with people who are happy, who can sing and dance and rejoice.
These sad people have destroyed so much that it is almost inestimable. Nobody has done so much harm to humanity as these people -- and these are the popes, the shankaracharyas, the ayatollahs, the imams. The whole priesthood of all the religions has been against humanity.
My effort here is to create a new man, and a new man can be created only with a new vision. Only with a new vision of religiousness is the new man possible.
I teach a religion of love, laughter, celebration. This is my own experience - that you are bridged with God when you are blissful.
So I teach only bliss and bliss and nothing else.
Be blissed out and you are a sannyasin!
[Then Osho went on to point out the curious fact that it takes courage to be joyful.]
Misery is the way of the world. It needs no courage, it needs no rebellion, no intelligence. Simply follow the crowd and you will be miserable, simply listen to all kinds of advice that is given to you by all kinds of fools and you will be miserable. Listen to your parents and listen to your preachers and your priests and your politicians and your saints and you will be miserable. There is no doubt about it, it is guaranteed; it has never failed. Millions of people have experimented with it and inevitably misery follows. In fact you can see your own parents, they are miserable, your teachers, they are miserable, your saints, they are miserable, your politicians, they are miserable -- maybe in different ways, in different degrees, but they are all miserable.
The difference is only of quantity, not of quality. It is very rare to find a person who is not miserable because it is rare to find a person who has the guts to rebel against the traditional, the conventional, the social, because all the forces are in support of the conventional.
When you are rebelling against something you are alone, fighting against the whole world. But it is a tremendously beautiful adventure. Going to the moon is nothing compared to it, going to Everest is nothing compared to it. To rebel against all that is dead, unintelligent, is the greatest adventure, the greatest revolution. And it gives you a sharpness of the soul, of intelligence. In fact it creates an integrated individual in you and only in that integration do flowers of bliss blossom, bloom; you start growing. Otherwise people remain almost retarded.
The average psychological age of human beings, only twelve years. We are living in a retarded world. Even people who are eighty or ninety years old are only physically old, they have aged but psychologically they are somewhere near about twelve. Hence you can see that sometimes they forget their age and start behaving in a childish way. Give them a little more whiskey than they are accustomed to and immediately you will see they have started behaving like a stupid child. Whiskey cannot create stupidity, it has no chemical ingredients to create it. If it is already there it can expose it, that is true. It can only expose your reality, it cannot add anything to you, it cannot delete anything. It can simply help you to turn off your control, your repression.
Just insult somebody and within seconds he is no more eighty, he is twelve, and he goes through a tantrum. He forgets all about his wisdom and experience. He may repent later on, he may even ask for your forgiveness because now he comes to recapitulate the whole scene and he can see the disparity in his age, wisdom, education, and the way he behaved. That's why in all languages there is this expression 'in spite of myself'. Now I cannot see how it can happen -- how can you do anything in spite of yourself? Either you do it or you don't do it -- how can you do something which you never wanted to do? But people do and the expression is significant.
It says "For a moment I forgot my physical age, for a moment I slipped back into my psychological age. Later on recapitulating I thought it was not right for me to do it -- I did it in spite of myself." That is a way of saving your face.
My sannyasins have to be courageous, courageous in a passionate way, intense way, totally courageous, risking all, because unless you risk all you will not be able to know the hidden splendour of your life. When you risk all, your life for the first time opens up to its ultimate maximum.
People live at the minimum. My sannyasins have to live at the maximum. They have to live at the highest peaks of life, consciousness, love, joy.
[Happiness is the hum of being in harmony was the gist of his talk to the next sannyasin.]
Man has three sources of energy in him.
One is the body, the other is the mind, the third is the heart. Where all these three rivers meet, merge, become one, the fourth arises. You cannot call the fourth the body, neither the mind nor the heart; hence it is simply called turiya, the fourth. It has not been given any name. And the arising of the fourth is the beginning of the sacred, the transformation, the beginning of a real life, of authentic life, of life eternal, of divine life.
These three rivers exist in everybody but they rarely meet. In fact, they oppose each other, they go in different directions. The mind pulls to one side, the heart to another, the body has its own way. They never agree.
If you watch your inner workings you will be surprised, they never agree. The body says "Stop. Don't eat any more, I am feeling too full," but the mind says, "The ice cream is so delicious -- just a little bit more..." The heart says, "This is beautiful," the mind says, "You are just stupid, you are a fool, you are mad." Whenever the heart falls in love, the mind says, "It is all blindness," and whenever the heart calculates, moves in any direction, the mind always finds faults with it. They have different worlds.
The heart's calculations are not logical, they are intuitive; it jumps from one point to another. And the mind goes through a detailed process, step by step. The mind thinks the heart is a fool and the people who live through the heart are thought by the mind to be fools. Jesus was called a fool in his life. Saint Francis was called a fool in his life, so much so that he started calling himself a fool! -- why bother others?
The heart always feels the mind is nothing but a Jew: always calculating, arithmetical, mathematical, calculating, cunning, clever; it knows nothing of simplicity, innocence, love; it is always counting money, always thinking in terms which are absolutely worldly. The heart has a deep condemnation for the mind; it looks at mind as mundane. And the mind has a deep condemnation for the heart; it looks at the heart as mad, insane, foolish, childish.
And the body has its own way, it consists on its own way. The mind thinks celibacy is good, it can prolong your life, it is religious. And the body laughs deep down, "Go on thinking that and I will show you when the time arises. I will see how long you can remain celibate. I will create so much trouble." It does create trouble and the mind has to bow down to the body. And this conflict continues, this is a triangle in which everybody is caught.
The whole process of meditation is to help all these conflicting forces meet, merge, become harmonious with each other. Then you are so full of energy, because all that energy that was wasted in unnecessary conflict becomes available to you. And it is that energy which becomes wings and takes you to the beyond.
[Then to Sarah, from Germany:]
Meditation is a jump out of the mind. It is leaving the mind behind, it is transcending the mind. And mind is all that we know. Mind is our identity; it is our ego, it is our past, our memories, it is our experiences, it is our future, our hopes, our desires, it is our religion, it is our politics. It is all that we are made of. To jump out of it is in fact to jump out of yourself.
In the beginning it almost looks impossible but it is not impossible. One can slip out of the mind just like a snake slips out of the old skin because mind is not in reality our identity. We have falsely become identified with the mind. If it were our identity then there would be no way to get out of it but it is not our identity. This is the experience of all the Buddhas, of all the awakened ones, of all those who have known, that it is just a false notion. It is as if we are doing a mathematical problem and we are saying two plus two is five. Now this single, simple mistake will make the whole thing go wrong.
Once you know that two plus two is not five but four... Even when you were not aware, they made four; it was just that you were adding it wrongly. The identity with the mind is just like that, a mathematical error, a mistake. I don't call it a sin. You will not be punished for it in hell but you are already punished by the mistake; because of that mistake your whole life goes on going wrong. Everything goes wrong because somewhere in the foundation a mistake has been committed.
The whole purpose of sannyas is to put that fundamental mistake right: you are not the mind, you can slip out of it. And the way to slip out of it is awareness. Just watch the mind, desires, thoughts, memories, passing on the screen of the mind. It is just like a TV screen. You are an observer, a witness; you are not part of it, you are not a participant.
Keep aloof, detached. Just go on looking at it, don't get involved and slowly slowly you will be surprised that a distance is created between you and your own mind. And the mind goes on and on farther and farther away from you. One day suddenly it is not there; you are surrounded by infinite silence.
That is the moment of meditation, for the first time you have tasted meditation. And from that moment everything becomes golden, everything is a miracle. From that moment life takes on a totally new altitude. You become weightless, you become full of light, full of bliss, enriched in thousands of ways.
That is the meaning of Sarah -- a princess, and not only that but a god's princess.
It is through meditation that one achieves the kingdom of god, one becomes a prince or a princess. This treasure is inexhaustible and this treasure is such that nobody can take it away, not even death.
[Meditation is a mother; through it you are reborn. And that is the meaning of her original name, Renate, Osho told the next person.]
Meditation is synonymous with awareness. The English word 'meditation' gives a slightly wrong idea. The eastern word for it is "dhyana". Out of dhyana in China it became chana and in Japan it became Zen, but the root is dhyana. In English there is no real equivalent; the word that comes closest to it is meditation -- but something is missing in it because whenever you say meditation it gives you the idea of meditating on something. One immediately asks "On what to meditate?" Now that question cannot be asked about dhyana.
"Dhyana simply means a state of mind where there is nothing to meditate upon, a state of consciousness without content, a contentless consciousness. There is nothing to meditate on, nothing to contemplate, nothing to concentrate on; one simply is. One is alert, aware, but not alert and aware of something; aware of awareness, that's all, alert about alertness, that's all, alert about being. A very silent awareness -- that is the meaning of meditation. And through that silence one is reborn. That's the meaning of Renate.
"Renate" is a beautiful word.
Jesus says "Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of god." That's exactly the meaning of Renate: born anew, reborn.
The only process needed to be reborn is awareness. Man lives in unconsciousness, that is his ordinary life. If he becomes conscious his life starts changing. When he becomes fully conscious he is no more the same person, he is reborn; he is a now person. And that's the whole purpose of sannyas, to help you to be born anew, so totally anew that there is no continuity with the past at all, a discontinuity happens.
The past disappears as if it never beloved to you or you had seen it in a dream or in a movie or you had heard somebody else telling his story to you. But you cannot relate it to yourself at all.
That moment is a moment of great freedom, of tremendous release. The past finished you are fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops in the early morning sun, as fresh as the newly-opening roses, as fresh as a child And that freshness remains forever; it never becomes old and stale because awareness goes on giving birth every moment. It is not that you are born once and then the process is finished; awareness is a continuous process of rebirth. Each moment you die to the past then you are born anew, so each moment you remain fresh, young, alive, full of juice, full of dance, full of song.
{Society is afraid that when you drop into yourself you'll drop out of its grasp; that's why it is against meditation,,Osho explained in conclusion tonight.]
In this vast world, out of millions of people only very rarely does somebody become interested in meditation. It is not an ordinary pursuit, it is extraordinary. That it happens at all is a miracle because in fact all the vested interests are against it. Society does not want you to meditate because a meditator starts falling out of society. Because a meditator becomes capable of seeing all the stupidities of the society, all the superstitions of the society, he cannot be any more part of its nonsense.
All the religions are against meditation. Christ is not against it but Christ is not synonymous with Christianity, remember. Buddha is not against it. How can Buddha be against meditation? -- he is nothing but meditation. But Buddha is not synonymous with Buddhists. And the same is the case with all the religions. Mohammed is a meditator but not the Mohammedans. The priest will not like you to meditate; he will distract you because once a person meditates he becomes free of all priesthood. Now he has a direct line with god; he need not go after the mediators, he has no need of any mediator. He does not need the pope, he can address god directly. His letters need not go via the Vatican. And remember, any letters sent via the Vatican never reach god. No priest is capable of becoming a bridge between man and god.
Hence the real master is never a mediator between you and god. He simply shares his experience with you. At the most he is a friend. He makes you aware of what has happened to him, and then you can learn something out of it, but he is not a mediator. Hence the famous saying of Buddha to his disciples, "If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately because I should be the last person to stand between you and the truth. So if you come across me, kill me immediately, remove me immediately so that you can face the truth directly."
But a priest cannot say that, the priest has no guts to say that. He lives by his mediation; hence all mediators will be against meditation because meditation is enough. No priest is needed, no ritual is needed. Governments, states, politicians, all are against meditation because meditation makes you aware of a single humanity. Then there are no Indians, no Germans, no English, no Italians -- and the whole politics wants humanity to remain divided. That is the ancientmost rule of the politician: divide and rule.
The meditator knows no distinction between black and white. All that seems to be so childish; deciding by the colour of the skin is so foolish. An intelligent person cannot do that. Hence politicians will be against meditation, the state will be against meditation because a meditator becomes very strong in his soul; it is impossible to enslave him. He becomes an individual and he asserts his individuality. He is ready to sacrifice his life but he is never ready to compromise. No vested interest will like it.
That's why I say meditation is certainly a gift of god because the whole world is against it, yet once in a while a person becomes interested in meditation. There must be the hidden hand of god behind it. It has to be so because only god is in favour of meditation. And people who are in favour of meditation are people of god.