Pratyahara

Osho, in the meditation experiments you lead, there is a synthesis of yoga and devotion. So, are both necessary for pratyahara?

Life can be of two kinds: one life is built only on what is necessary; and one life is built on excess, on overflow. Watch the peacock dancing. Are those feathers, spread with the colors of the rainbow, necessary? If you cut off the feathers, would the peacock face any difficulty or hindrance in life? He would still live. Feathers are connected neither with the stream of life, nor with food, nor will they obstruct procreation. The feathers are surplus; they are a sign of more-than-needed, not of need. These birds are singing—stitch their beaks shut; will anything be lost? What difference would it make? The birds would still live. The songs would cease, because songs were never necessary—they were a flood, an exuberance. You dance—don’t dance; run your shop, come home. You sing—don’t sing. Will there be any obstacle? You love—don’t love; doing business is enough. If you don’t…

Beloved Osho, this pratyahar looks like an impossible experiment. Is it possible for the ganges to return to gangotri and is it possible for the tree to again become a seedling and a seed? And shankara and you are both asking us to do this.

The return of the Ganges to its source, to Gangotri, and the tree becoming a seed looks impossible to you, but this is what is happening every day. The tree is becoming a seed again daily. Just look at the seeds hanging on that gulmohar tree: the whole tree has become seeds. And every day the Ganges returns to Gangotri through the dark clouds; it rains on the Himalayas and the Ganges returns to Gangotri. This is happening every day. You ask what has to be done. Really, this is happening unconsciously; you just have to see this happening in wakefulness. Many times you return home but you are not conscious. You have become so used to staying in guesthouses that even when you return to your own home you think it to be a guesthouse. A friend of mine has to travel day and night in connection with his…

Osho, I feel that in the journey of life I have wandered very far from my true nature. Will the journey of returning—of retracing—back to my nature be just as long? Or is some shortcut possible?

But we manage to extract futility out of everything. So there are people “remembering God,” chanting “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram.” They have turned their shawl into a “Ram shawl,” covered with Ram-Ram. Remembrance of the Lord means that what is hidden within me becomes evident to me. By repeating Ram-Ram awareness will not arise. Let my eyes, which have been wandering outward, turn within; let my ears, which listen outside, begin to listen within; let my mind, which thinks about the external, turn inward—let its lamp, its light, fall inside. This very moment you can be established in your nature, because in truth you already are. No one has ever been able to dislodge you from there, nor ever will. That is why, even after wandering for thousands of births, you never truly wander away. Your capacity to reclaim it is, at every instant, exactly what it has always been; not the…

Osho, just as the sage Shandilya calls knowledge (jnana) and yoga the helpers of devotion (bhakti), do the exponents of knowledge and yoga likewise regard devotion as their helper, or not?

The devotee’s vision is more generous than the vision of the knower and the yogi. Because the source of devotion is the heart. The heart is vast; it can include even what is opposed to it. The heart does not worry about coherence; the heart cares about music. Jnana and yoga are not the ways of the heart; they are the ways of the intellect. The intellect is very narrow. The intellect chooses. Then the intellect worries about coherence, not about music—there must be logical consistency. So in Mahavira’s utterances there can be no room for devotion. His is the path of pure thought: samyak jnana, right knowledge. There only what exactly suits knowledge will be accepted. Knowledge selects, sifts; it is orderly; it has a blueprint. The devotee is not so narrow. He does not get flustered by a little inconsistency. The logician, the philosopher, is consistent—but the poet…