Prana-Pratishtha

Osho, what is the significance of prana-pratishtha?

Yes, it has great significance. In fact, this is precisely what prana-pratishtha means. It means that we are making a new image, but in accordance with an old covenant. And there should be indications as to whether that old covenant has been fulfilled or not. From our side we repeat the entire old arrangement. We will no longer regard that image as dead; from now on we will regard it as living. From our side we will make all the provisions that are to be made for a living image. And now there should be symbolic signs to show whether that prana-pratishtha has been accepted or not. That is the second part, which has slipped from our awareness. If those signs are not received, then we may have performed the ritual, but prana-pratishtha has not happened. Evidence is needed. Signs were sought for precisely this—only if they appeared could it…

Please explain the significance and meaning of the following with respect to the energy of kundalini: prostrating on the ground in obeisance to a holy person, touching his feet with the head or hands, offering worship at holy places, the blessings of a divine person given by touching the head or back of a seeker, the covering of the head by sikhs and mohammedans on entering the gurudwara or mosque.

But usually temples are not living ones because there are great difficulties in keeping them alive. A temple becoming alive is a great miracle. It is a part of a very profound science. Today, however, there is no one alive who knows this science and who can carry out its various requirements. Nowadays the class of people who run temples as shops has become so large that if there is someone who knows this science he will not be allowed even on the premises of the temple. Temples are now run along business lines, and it is in the interest of the priests that the temple remains dead. Living temples are not beneficial for a purohit, a priest. He wants a dead god in the temple whom he can lock up, and then he wants to keep the key himself. If the temple is connected with higher powers it will…

Osho, temples, pilgrimages, tilak and forehead marks, image-worship, rosaries, mantra–tantra, scriptures and Puranas, fire-offerings and Vedic sacrifices, rites, shraddha, planets and constellations, astrological calculations, omens and portents—these once had meaning, but now seem futile. Please explain them and tell us: were they merely outer instruments of sadhana? Merely external arrangements for remembering, which time’s swift pace uprooted? Or did they also have inner interrelations? Will time consent to take them up again?

In the life of Moses it is said: he went up the mountain and saw a divine fire—a bush aflame, fire all around, yet flowers blooming and leaves green within. Seeking God, Moses rushed forward, and a voice cried from the bush, “Fool, leave your shoes beyond the boundary!” There was no boundary—open wilderness. He looked, “Where is the boundary?” He experienced: “Here it is—up to where Moses is Moses; a step further, and something changes.” He left his shoes and sought forgiveness: “Pardon me; I entered holy ground with shoes.” That is the magnetic field. The temple has a circle—an enchanted domain—with a very living use for the village. And it bore fruit. For thousands of years, the innocence and purity of Indian village life owed less to the villagers than to the charged temple. The poorest village was wretched without a temple. However poor, a temple it must…

Osho, what is prana and what is apana? What does it mean to offer prana into apana, and to offer apana into prana? Please clarify this again.

What is within us is also part of the outside. Right now a breath is inside me. A little while ago it was with you, it was yours. A little earlier it was with a tree, it belonged to the tree. Before that, somewhere else. Now it is within me. Before I can even say it is inside me, it has gone out. If we dedicate what is within us to the outer world of prana, if we know it too as given back to the outside, then nothing remains inside—everything becomes empty. This is one kind of surrender: to offer the inner breath into that vast net of prana spread through the atmosphere, to pour it there as an oblation, to consign it there. Or we can do the reverse. The whole outer pranic cosmos is also but a part of my within, spread outwards. If we dedicate that…