Concentration

Osho, yesterday you spoke of the great value of concentration, yet in your meditation experiments you emphasize witnessing rather than concentration. What is the reason?

Concentration is a method to attain power. Witnessing is a method to attain peace. From power, peace does not necessarily follow; from peace, power inevitably follows. Those who are in search of power will have a taste for concentration. When the sun’s rays are converged, fire is created; when the mind’s scattered thoughts are gathered, power is born. Try a little and you will understand. Whenever the mind becomes unified, your life-energy begins to flow in one direction. The narrower the channel, the more powerful the current. The more scattered the thoughts, the more your energy runs down many pathways; then only a paltry power remains in your hands. Whatever thought you become concentrated upon quickly turns into reality; a thought toward which the mind wavers has little chance of becoming real. Even the worldly person seeks concentration. If the worldly person attains success anywhere, it is because of concentration.…

Osho, in one of your discourses you mentioned the sage Durvasa. You cited him as an example of the deranged state to which concentration can ultimately lead. But in trataka the spirit is also of concentration. What is the difference between the two? Please explain.

The traditional trataka—the conventional understanding of trataka—is indeed concentration. And concentration generates power; siddhis are acquired. But the union with the Divine, the supreme rest we seek, does not happen through it. Concentration is a function and an extension of the ego. You do not dissolve; you become more solid. You do not melt; you freeze like ice. Your power increases, not your bliss. But what I am calling trataka is not the use of concentration; it is only the experiment of seeing—just looking. Understand the difference. Trataka means gathering the entire mind and fixing it on one point—on the sun, on an image, on a mark—on anything. It means narrowing the mind so that it does not run here and there. All the currents of the mind turn in one direction. The mind goes on flowing toward a single point. Not even a single ray of awareness scatters elsewhere.…

Beloved Osho, somewhere in your discourses there is a mention of the sage durvasa as an example of one in whom concentration has turned itself into a state of insanity. But in your tratak meditation, the gazing meditation, concentration seems to be the main process. Please, could you explain the difference between the two?

Just like this is the experiment of my tratak. I am sitting here empty, you are sitting there full up; how can the meeting take place? I am here, eager to flow, but your pot there is kept upside down. I am here, ready to enter you through your every pore, but you have not left a single opening anywhere; you have built up a concrete wall all around you. You are fretting and crying within -- I hear how thirsty you are, I see the trouble you are in. Your search is deeply honest, but you are enclosed within the fences you have created around yourself. And your difficulty is that you have mistaken your prison for your home, and you think your chains are precious ornaments and you seek to protect them, afraid that somebody may rob you. You are so busy guarding them, you have created all…

People who read a page of any book and remember it instantly. Or there’s a mathematical question, and they just write and give the answer at once—like Tulsiji’s four disciples did. So is this concentration, or openness of the mind?

Neither openness nor concentration. It is all tricks. It is just a matter of tricks.