Beloved Osho, can you please speak on discipline and meditation?

Niten, it is a very strange question because every day, morning and evening, I am speaking on discipline and meditation. If anybody reads your question, he will think that for the first time I have to speak on discipline and meditation! Where have you been for so long?
You remind me of two old friends; they meet on a street in Leningrad...

"How is life treating you," asks one.
"Just great," replies the other.
The first one looks at him dubiously and says, "Have you been reading the papers?"
"Of course," replies the other, "how else would I know!"

People know about their own lives by reading newspapers, and I have been telling you every day about meditation and nothing else, and you are asking...!
Okay...

A little old Jewish lady sits down on a plane next to a big Norwegian. She keeps staring and staring at him. Finally she turns to him and says, "Pardon me, are you Jewish?"
"No," he replies. A few minutes go by and she looks at him again and says, "You can tell me -- you are Jewish, aren't you?"
He answers, "Definitely not."
She keeps studying him, and says again, "I can tell you are Jewish!"
In order to get her to stop annoying him, the gentleman says, "Okay, I am Jewish."
She looks at him and shakes her head back and forth and says, "Really, you don't look it!"

I am wondering from where to begin! Niten, meditation is the only contribution the East has made to humanity. The West has made many contributions, thousands of scientific inventions, immense progress in medicine, unbelievable discoveries in all the dimensions in life. But still, a single contribution of the East is far more valuable than all the contributions of the West.

The West has become rich; it has all the technology to be rich. The East has become poor, immensely poor, because it has not looked for anything else except for one thing, and that is one's own inner being. Its richness is something which cannot be seen, but it has known the highest peaks of bliss, the greatest depths of silence. It has known the eternity of life; it has known the most beautiful flowering of love, compassion, joy. Its whole genius has been devoted to a single search -- you can call it ecstasy.

Meditation is only a technique to reach to the ecstatic state, to the state of divine intoxication. It is a simple technique, but the mind makes it very complex. Mind has to make it very complex and difficult, because both cannot exist together.

Meditation is the death of the mind.

Naturally, mind resists every effort for meditation. And if you go on without listening to the mind... It is clever and cunning enough to give you false directions and call them meditation.

Just today I was informed about one of the people who has been for many years a disciple of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He is now here meditating, but he continues his master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's meditation too.

What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls transcendental meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation. It is a mind trick. Just one thing is missing in it -- I have been telling you about the monkey -- and the person who is here should remember it! Transcendental meditation works only if you don't remember the monkey. So from tomorrow morning, be careful! The slightest remembrance of the monkey, and transcendental meditation is meaningless.

In fact, after eighteen years being with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and doing his transcendental meditation, what is the need to come here? But mind is so cunning that he is consoling himself that perhaps it is his master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who has sent him here. But why should he send you here? I don't consider that he knows anything at all about meditation. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is teaching in the name of meditation has been known for centuries in the East by almost everybody that it is a psychological trick. It is not harmful. On the contrary, it can give you a little rest; it can give you a good feeling as if you have taken a shower. But it is not meditation, because it cannot take you beyond the mind.

Any effort made by the mind cannot take you beyond the mind. This is a very fundamental rule to remember. The so-called transcendental meditation is just an example. There are many of the same kind prevalent all over the East, but they don't bring enlightenment. They don't bring awakened consciousness and that is the only criterion to decide whether they are right or not. A tree is known by its fruits, and a technique is known by what it achieves.

Transcendental meditation is representative of all the meditations which mind has suggested to you; it is a cunning way to take you astray. Mind remains safe, not only safe, but becomes stronger. All these techniques are of concentration. You concentrate on some word, holy word -- the name of God, or any mantra -- and you repeat it as fast as you can, just inside your mind. The faster you can do it the better; the speed helps two things. The mantra or the name of God -- even your own name will do; it has nothing to do with God -- any meaningless word will do because the technique depends on something else. It depends on fast repetition, so fast that there are no gaps left in between. Because there are no gaps, thoughts cannot arise; thoughts need a little space.

This is one thing: that you go on repeating a word faster and faster, and as you go on doing it for years, you really become an expert. So one thing it does is that it does not give a chance for any idea to enter into your mind. The second, more fundamental thing it does is that it creates tremendous boredom. Obviously, anything continuously repeated is going to create boredom, and boredom is the basis of auto-hypnosis.

When you become bored, you start falling into a sleep, which is not exactly sleep because it is deliberately created; hence it has a different name -- hypnosis. Hypnosis means sleep, with a difference, that it is deliberate.

Sleep comes naturally -- on its own, spontaneously. Hypnosis is deliberate sleep -- you create a situation in which it is bound to happen. This deliberate sleep is immensely healthy, and even ten or fifteen minutes in a hypnotic state gives you a good relaxation which hours of ordinary sleep cannot give. And when you come out of it, you will feel very fresh.

I absolutely agree that if you are doing it only for this purpose -- relaxation, a freshness comes, but it never takes you beyond the mind. How can it take you beyond the mind, because mind itself is repeating? By repetition, it does not need to think; repetition itself becomes a substitute for thoughts. And by repetition it falls into a deep sleep -- dreamless sleep, which gives you immense freshness, rejuvenation.

Naturally, you can be deceived that this is meditation -- you can go on doing it your whole life. It is healthy, it is good, it is nourishing, but it is not meditation.

Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain, you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain, you are not the flower, you are the watcher.

Watching is the key of meditation:

Watch your mind.

Don't do anything -- no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of God -- just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don't disturb it, don't prevent it, don't repress it; don't do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.

As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes a flame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing -- without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.

From: Osho, The Invitation
and as selected Mediation Talk on audio: The Alchemy of Meditation