---
section: Library
booktitle: "Early Talks"
booktype: "Miscellaneous"
bookcode: "EARLY"
dategiven: "02 October 1970 pm"
place: " in Manali, India"
chapternum: "Chapter #5"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7010025"
shorttitle: "EARLY05"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Early Talks: Chapter #5"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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(Starts with Osho laughing)
LADAK(?) WOMAN: MY QUESTION IS IN THREE STAGES: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TO WITNESS AND TO BE AWARE? AND WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AWARENESS AND CONSCIOUSNESS?
AND THE SECOND QUESTION IS ABOUT THIS MEDITATION TECHNIQUE. IS THE FOURTH STAGE OF YOUR MEDITATION METHOD THE STATE OF AKARMA, THAT IS DUAL AWARENESS?
AND THE THIRD ONE IS VERY PRIVATE; ABOUT MY SADHANA. IN MY MEDITATION KUNDALINI IS RISING WITH SHOOTS OF FIRE AND LIGHT. IF I FEEL THIS MOVEMENT HOW CAN I STILL BE IN AKARMA? I NEED YOUR BLESSING!


A: There is much difference between awareness and witnessing. Witnessing is still an act, you are doing it, the ego is there. So the phenomenon of witnessing is divided between this subject and the object. Witnessing is a relationship between subject and object. Awareness is absolutely devoid of any subjectivity or objectivity. There is no one who is witnessing in awareness, there is no one who is being witnessed. Awareness is a total act, integrated. The subject and the object are not related in it, they are dissolved.


So awareness doesn't mean that anyone is aware, it doesn't mean on the other hand that anything is being attended. Awareness is total, total subjectivity and total objectivity as a single phenomenon. In witnessing duality is present. Awareness is non dual, witnessing is dual, but through witnessing awareness becomes possible. Because witnessing means a conscious act, it is an act but conscious. You can be in an act and unconscious, our ordinary activity, is activity but unconscious. If you become conscious in it then it becomes witnessing.


So from ordinary unconscious activity to awareness there is a gap which can be filled by witnessing. So witnessing becomes a technique, a method towards awareness -- it is not awareness but, as compared to ordinary activity, unconscious activity, it is a higher step. Activity becomes conscious -- something has changed. Unconsciousness has been replaced by consciousness, but something has still to be chased -- that is the activity is to be replaced by  inactivity. That will be the second step.


So it is difficult to jump from ordinary unconscious action into awareness. It is possible, but harduous. So a step in between is helpful, one should begin by witnessing conscious activity and only then the jump becomes easier, the jump into awareness without any conscious object, without any conscious subject, without any conscious activity at all. It doesn't mean that awareness is not consciousness -- but it is pure consciousness, no one is conscious about it.


So when you ask what is the difference between consciousness and awareness there is still difference: consciousness is a quality of your mind -- not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious, but when you transcend your mind then there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness but awareness. Awareness means the total mind has become awareness. It is not that there is mind and it has got a quality of being conscious but awareness has become the totality. Mind itself is now awareness, we cannot say mind is aware, we can say, meaningfully, only , mind is conscious.


Awareness means transcendence of the mind, it is not the mind which is aware, it is only through transcendence of the mind, through no-mind that awareness becomes possible. So consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence. It is not the quality of the mind, it is going beyond the mind. Why? Because mind as such is the media of duality.


So consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and it is always someone who is conscious. So consciousness is part and parcel of the mind and mind as such is the source of all dualities, of all divisions, whether they are between subject and object, activity or inactivity, consciousness or unconsciousness, every type of duality is mental. Awareness is non dual. So awareness means a state of no-mind.


And what it is the relationship between consciousness and witnessing. Witnessing is a state and consciousness is a means towards witnessing. If you begin to be conscious then you achieve witnessing. If you begin to be conscious of your acts, conscious of your day to day happenings, conscious of everything that surrounds you, then you begin to witness -- witnessing comes as a consequence of consciousness.


You cannot practice witnessing, you can only practice consciousness, witnessing comes as a consequence, as a shadow, as a result, as a by-product. The more you become conscious the more you begin witnessing, more you begin to be a witness. So consciousness is a method to achieve witnessing, and on the second step witnessing will become a method to achieve awareness.


So these are three steps: consciousness, witnessing, awareness. And where we exist is the lowest rung, that is unconscious activity. Unconscious activity is the state of our mind, through consciousness you can achieve witnessing and through witnessing you can achieve awareness, and through awareness you can achieve the no-achievment, through awareness you can achieve all that is already achieved.
After awareness there is nothing -- awareness is the end.
SAME WOMAN: NOW HOW ARE WE TO WITNESS (?) (  )


A: Yes, awareness is the end of a spiritual progress, unawareness is the beginning. Unawareness means a state of material existence, so unawareness and uncounsciousness are not both the same. Unawareness means the matter, matter is not unconscious, it is unaware. Animal existence is unconscious existence, human existence is a mixed phenomenon, ninety-nine per cent unconscious, one per cent conscious.


So this one per cent consciousness only means consciousness of ninety-nine per cent unconsciousness. If you become conscious of your consciousness that the one per cent will go on increasing, and the ninety-nine per cent unconsciousness will go on decreasing. If you become hundred per cent conscious than you become a witness, a sakshin?.. If you become a sakshin then you come to thejump-board from where the jump into awareness becomes possible. Into awareness you loose the witnesser and only witnessing remains, you will loose the doer, you loose the subjectivity, you loose the egocentric consciousness. Then consciousness remains without the ego, that means circumference without the center. This circumference without the center is awareness, consciousness without any center, without any source, without any motivation, without any source from which it comes. A no-source consciousness is awareness.


So from the unaware existence, that is matter, (?), towards awareness, that is -- you may call it the divine, the godly, whatsoever one chooses to call it -- from matter to the divine. The difference is always of consciousness.
MAN QUESTIONER: HOW WILL YOU EXPLAIN AWARENESS IN SEVEN BODIES, (?) ?


A: Hmm, don't talk about bodies, (?)
Your second question?
WOMAN QUESTIONER: THE SECOND QUESTION IS VERY SIMPLE: IS THE FOURTH STAGE OF YOUR MEDITATION METHOD JUST AKARMA?


A: Yes. Just akarma, it is no activity. Three stages, first, second, and third are stages of intensive activity. In the first your vital body, your breathing is in intense movement, in extreme activity. By being in extreme activity in your vital body, in your pransarir? , in your breathing, the second step becomes possible -- you become intensely active in your physical body. And in the third by being totally in action as far as your physiological ? is concerned it becomes possibile to be active in the mental body.


So in three bodies, physical, vital and mental you create a climax of activity, a climax of tension, you go on becoming more tense and more tense and more tense. Your whole  existence becomes a whirling, a whirlpool. The more it becomes intense, the more the possibility is created of being relaxed in the fourth stage. The fourth is total relaxation, not as practiced, because no one can practice relaxation.


Relaxation can only come as a byproduct, as a shadow of intensive activity, you cannot practice relaxation -- that is contradiction in terms, every practice is practice of tension. Relaxation means no practice. And you cannot do no practice, you can only come, arrive at no practice. Only by intense activity a situation is created within you, that you go into letgo. In the fourth it is akarma, it is no activity. You are not doing anything. Now you are, you just exist in it and there is nothing which you are doing, if something is going on it is vikarma, if something is going on it is through nature not by you. As far as you are concerned activity has ceased completely and there is no activity. In this no action state, in this akarma state, the cosmic and the individual come near. They become intimate, they loose their identities, they overlap each other: something penetrates in you from the cosmic and something of you penetrates into the cosmic.


The boundaries become flexible and liquid, sometimes there is no boundary and you feel an expanse of consciousness and there are no limits to it, and no end and no beginning. Sometimes boundaries again begin to fossilize around you and this goes on, a flickering. Sometimes you are in it, sometimes you are out of it. But the more relaxation, the more the boundaries will be lost. And the moment comes which can never be predicted, a moment comes, which is a moment of happening, uncaused and  unconditioned. A moment comes, when you have lost the boundaries and never regain them again. Then begins a being without boundaries, a mind without frontiers, a consciousness without any limitations - that is cosmic, that is divine, that is wholeness.
FIRST WOMAN : IT COMES AS A GAP?


A: It begins as a gap, but never ends as a gap, because a gap always begins and ends. A gap has boundaries, a beginning and an end. It begins as a gap and then the gap is everlasting. Then there is no other end to it.
FIRST WOMAN: THEN AT THAT TIME IT IS SAMADHI?


A: Yes, it is samadhi. It is samadhi. If it comes as a gap with a beginning and with no end then it is samadhi. And if it comes with a complete gap with a beginning and an end then it is satori. And that is the difference: if it is just a glimpse, just a gap, and the gap again is lost, something is bracketed and the bracket is complete, you peep into it and come back, you jump into it and come back. Something happens... and it is lost -- then it is satori. It is a glimple. A glimpse of samadhi, but it is not samadhi. Samadhi means something which begins and never ends.


This is to be understood: Ignorance has no beginning, it is beginningless. Ignorance has no beginning, it is beginningless but it has an ending. Knowledge has a beginning but no end. And this is the complete circle. So ignorance and knowledge are not two things because one has only the beginning and one has only the end. So they must be part of one great circle because we don't know when ignorance begins -- it is always. We have been in it, whenever we are... wherever we are we have been in it. We are always in the middle, it has no beginning. And knowledge has no end -- it begins, then we are always in the middle and no end there is to it.


So samadhi means the beginning of knowing without any end. Satori means -- and in India we have no corresponding word for satori..... So sometimes, when the gap is greater, one can misunderstand satori as samadhi. But it is never, it is just a glimpse. You have come to it and looked into it and everything is gone again. Of course you will not be the same, now you will never be the same: something has penetrated into you, something has being added unto you, you can never be the same again. But that which has changed you is not with you, it is just a remembering, a memory.
SECOND WOMAN QUESTIONER: AND IF IT LASTS A NUMBER OF HOURS INSTEAD OF MINUTES OR SECONDS, IS IT STILL ONLY A GLIMPSE?


A: Still, it is only a glimpse. Because if you can remember it and if you can say whether I have known this moment, then it is only a glimpse. Because the moment samadhi has happened you will not be there to remember it. Then you can never say that I have known it. Because with the knowing the knower is lost, only with the glimpse knower remains. So the knower can accumulate this glimpse as a memory, can cherish it, can cherish it and can long for it, can desire for it, again and ever for it. But it is there -- the one who has peeped, one who has looked is there. And it has become a memory, and now this memory will hunt you, will follow you, and will demand the phenomenon again and again.


The moment samadhi has happened you are not, to remember it. Samadhi never becomes a part of memory. Because the one who was is no more.
(second side of the tape)


.... and is no more as the same sen(?) The whole man is no more and the new one has come. And these two have never met. So there is no possibility of becoming a memory. The old has gone and the new has come. And there has been no meeting between the two. Because the new can only come when the old has gone.


Then it is not a memory, then there is no haunting. And there is no hangering after it. Then there is no longing after it. Then as you are, you are at ease. Then there is nothing to desire. It is not that you have killed desire. No, but the one who could desire is no more. So it is desirelessness in the sense that the one who could desire is no more. It is not a state of no desire. It is desirelessness, because the one who could desire is no more. Then there is no longing, then there is no future because the future is created through our longings, it is a production of our desires.


If there is no desire, then there is no future. And if there is no future then there is no need of the past. Because the past is always a background against which, or through which the future is longed for. If there is no future, if you know that this very moment you are to die, then there is no need to remember the past, then there is no need to remember even your name. Because the name has got a meaning if there is future. It may be needed. But if there is no future then you just burn all your bridges of the past, there is no need. The past has become absolutely meaningless, it is only against future or for the future that the past is meaningful.


The moment samadhi has happened future becomes non-existential. It is not. The moment that it is present is the only moment, the only time.


So where you will need the past? Then there is no past even, the past has dropped and the future also and a single momentary existence becomes the total existence. You are in it, not as a different identity, different unit from it, you cannot be. Because you become only different from it because of your past and future. Past and future cristallized around you. It's the only barrier between you and the present that it is passing. If there is no past and no future. then it is not that you are in the present -- you are present. You become the present.


Samadhi is not a glimpse, samadhi is a death. Satori is a glimpse, not a death. So satori is possible through so many ways. An ecstatic experience can be a possible source for satori. Music can be a possible source for satori. Love can be a possible source for satori. Any intense moment in which the past becomes meaningless, not non-existential. Any intense moment in the present -- either of love or of music or of poetic feeling or of any ecstatic phenomenon in which the past does not interfere, in which there is no desire for the future, satori becomes possible. But this is just a glimpse. This glimpse is meaningful, because through satori you feel for the first time what samadhi can mean. The first taste, the first distant perfume of samadhi comes through satori.


So satori is helpful, but everything that is helpful can became an hindrance. Anything that is helpful can became an hindrance. If you cling to it and if you feel that this is everything. And it has a bliss which can befool. It has a bliss of its own and because we have not known samadhi this is the last, the ultimate that comes to us. And we can cling to it, and if you cling to it you have changed that which was helpful, that which was friendly into something that becomes a barrier, and an enemy.


So one must be aware of the possible danger of satori. If you are aware, then it can be helpful, it is helpful. A single momentary glimpse, is something which can never be known by any other means. No one can explain it. No word, no communication can even be a hint to it. Satori is meaningful but just as a glimpse, as a breakthrough, a single moment breakthrough into the existence, into the abyssimal. But you have not known it, even you have not became aware of it -- and the moment is closed. It is just the click of the camera. Click ..and everything is lost.


Hankering will be created. Now you can risk everything for it. But don't long for it, don't desire for it. Let it slip into the memory, don't make a problem out of it. Just forget it. If you can forget it and don't cling to it, the moments will become more and more, and the glimpses will be coming to you more and more. A demanding mind becomes closed, the glimpse becomes impossible. It always comes when you are not aware, when you are not after it, when you are relaxed, you are not even thinking about it, you are not meditating. Even when you are meditating glimpse becomes impossible. When you are not meditating, but you are ..just in a moment of letgo, not doing anything, not waiting even for anything. In that relaxed moment satori happens. It will begin to happen more and more but don't hanker after it, don't long for it, and never misunderstand it for samadhi.
THIRD QUESTIONER: ..WHAT PROPORTION OF THE PEOPLE WHO ACHIEVE SATORI, ACHIEVE SAMADHI? (?)


Q: Satori becomes possible for a great number of people because sometimes it needs no preparation. Sometimes it happens by the way. The situation is created but unknowingly. There are so many people, a great number of them, who have known it. They may have not known it as satori, may not have interpreted as satori, but they have known it. A great search in love can create it. Even through chemical drugs satori is possible. Through mescaline, LSD and marijuana it is possible. Because even through chemical change mind can expand into a glimpse. It is nothing irreligious, because  after all we are chemical bodies -- our body, our mind is a chemical unit. So through chemistry too the glimpse can become possible.


Sometimes a sudden danger can penetrate you so much that the glimpse becomes possible. Sometimes a great shock can make you so still in the moment that the glimpse becomes possible. And for those who have some aesthetic sensibility, who have some poetic heart, who have some feeling attitude towards the reality -- not of the intellectual but the feeling attitude towards reality. For a rational logical intellectual personality the glimpse is impossible.


Sometimes it can happen for an intellectual person only in some intense intellectual tension when suddenly the tension is relaxed. As for Archimedes -- he was in satori when he came out of his bath tub naked in the streets and began to cry: Eureka! -- I have found! It was a sudden release of a constant tension, constantly concentrated with a problem. The problem was solved so the tension that was a standing tension against the problem was released completely and suddenly. So he came out naked in the streets and began to cry Eureka! -- I have found it!


So for an intellectual person, a great puzzle which demands his total mind and touches to the peaks of his intellectual tension, if it is solved then even a rational mind can feel the moment of satori. But for aesthetic minds it is more easier.
OTHER QUESTIONER: IS THIS PARTICIPATION IN INTELLECTUAL DISCUSSION THAT WE ARE HAVING NOW NOT A VERY BIG HINDRANCE?


Q: It can be, it may not be, it depends. If intellectually you become tense in this discussion and if the tension is not towards the extreme then it will be a hindrance. If you become totally tense in this discussion then something understood will become a release and satori can happen. Or, if this discussion is not at all tense but we are just chit-chatting, totally relaxed, totally non-serious then even this discussion can become an aesthetic experience. It is not only that flowers are aesthetic, even words can be. It is not only that tree are aesthetic, human persons can be. It is not only that when you participate with a floating cloud that satori is possible. Even if you participate in a dialogue a satori becomes possible. But a relaxed participation is needed. Eather this or a very tense participation is needed. Both the ways.
QUESTIONER: (INAUDIBLE)


A: Either you are relaxed or realization can come to you if you are tense enough. So a dialogue, a discussion can become a source of satori. Anything can become a source of satori -- it depends on you. It never depends on anything else. You're passing through a street, a child laughing -- and satori can happen.


There is a haiku, something like this: A monk crossing a street and a very ordinary flower, just peeking from a wall; a very ordinary flower, a day-to-day flower, which is everywhere. And he looks into it and for the first time he looks into it, because it is so ordinary, it is so obvious. It is always somewhere, so he has never looked into it. He looks into it and satori happens. An ordinary flower is never looked at, it is so common that you forget it. He has never seen it because it is always around. For the first time in his life he has seen it. And the thing became phenomenal. The first meeting with the flower, the very common flower, becomes very uncommon now. He feels sorry for it -- it has always been there waiting for him. He has never looked to it, he feels sorry for it, asks pardon. And the thing has happened, and the flower is there and the monk is standing there, and dancing. And someone asks: what are you doing? So he says: I have seen something uncommon in a very common flower. The flower was always waiting, I never looked at it and today this meeting has happened. Now the flower is not common now. The monk has penetrated into it and the flower has penetrated into the monk.


Any ordinary thing -- a pebble on the shore can be a source, for a child, it is a source. For us it is not a source because it has become common. So anything uncommon, anything which is rare, anything which has come for the first time in your sight and if you are available, if you are there, if your presence is there, the phenomenon can happen.


Satori happens to almost everyone, it may not be interpreated, you may have not known it as satori, but it happens. And this happening is the cause of all spiritual quest. Otherwise spiritual quest is not possible. How can you be in search of something which you have not even glimpsed?


Something must have come to you, a ray must have come to you, a touch , a breeze. Something must ....

(end of tape)
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>