Observation

Osho, is watching the tendencies—observation—also a kind of repression? A form of suppression?

It depends on your inner intention whether the watching of tendencies turns into repression or not. If someone is observing—watching, inspecting, witnessing—the tendencies in order to be free of them, then that very watching will become repression, suppression. If your aspiration in observing is only this: “How can I be free of these tendencies?”—you have already decided beforehand that they are bad; you want to get rid of them; they are hell, you must be liberated from them; they are suffering, you must go beyond them. You go to look at tendencies having already taken sides; you carry condemnation and enmity toward them in your mind. Then even your watching becomes repression. And any watching that becomes repression is not watching. For observation, inspection, witnessing has only one meaning: that a dispassionate seeing can happen. So do not decide in advance that you must be free of tendencies. Do not…

The nightly experiment of unblinking observation—one friend has asked: how will they do it without me?

The question is not about me. Keep gazing at the open sky for forty minutes without blinking. And very wondrous results will follow. As you look at the open sky for forty minutes, you will suddenly find that you have become a part of the sky, the sky has entered within you. Sit by the ocean; gaze unblinkingly at the sea for forty minutes, and you will find that you and the waves have become one. Keep looking at the trees and the same will happen. Anything can be used. And for those in whom an inner connection has been formed by looking at me—as many friends came today and told me that much was revealed to them—if they keep my picture, even then my work will be accomplished.

A friend has asked, Osho, isn’t the night-meditation experiment simply an exercise in concentration? And what will be the results of this experiment, and what are its foundations?

Keeping the eyes open, fixed, without a blink, is first of all an experiment in resolve: not allowing the eyes to close. To not let the eyes close is an experiment in resolve, in will-power. And if you can keep the eyes open for forty minutes, there will be very broad results. Forty minutes is the span of the human mind’s capacity; that is why in school and college we keep a forty-minute period. Whatever can be done for forty minutes can then be carried much further. If you can keep the eyes open for forty minutes—if this small resolve can be fulfilled—it will have many consequences. First, the result of keeping the eyes open for forty minutes will be that if the eyes have remained open and you have continued to keep them open for that long, your mind’s susceptibility to hypnosis will end at once. You will no…

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.…