mercoledì 29 giugno 2016

Osho: Nobody Cares About the Greater Humanity


Life is a discontentment because we are living it in a very wrong way.
We have been taught some ugly things, we have been taught those ugly things because they help the establishment, the vested interests, the people who are in power. Nobody cares about the individuals, nobody cares about the greater humanity; everybody is concerned with his own power, his investment – and they go on poisoning people.
Osho Darshan speaking
For example, the politicians don’t want intelligence to grow in people because intelligence is always rebellious. But without intelligence life cannot find the source of contentment. A mediocre person remains superficial, shallow, but the politician is helped: he wants everybody to be mediocre. He can only remain the leader if people are mediocre, unintelligent, stupid. And the situation is the same with the priests. They have been in power for centuries and they know the strategy to remain in power: don’t allow people in any way to attain insight into things, don’t allow them to be wise, give them beliefs instead. Beliefs are pseudo, like plastic flowers, lollipops. So people can go on sucking on lollipops, playing with toys; they can go on playing with those toys so they don’t turn towards the real thing.
And the priests and the politicians are in deep conspiracy. They have made an unsigned contract that the politician will rule people in worldly affairs and the priest will rule people in other-worldly affairs and they will support each other because both have to depend on the same strategy: force people to remain slaves, believers, not seekers – not intelligent, not rebellious. Reduce their freedom, cut their wings, paralyse them, because then they can be manipulated and used as means.
My work here is to undo all this that has been done to you, to everybody. Only when your intelligence rises to the optimum is there contentment, because that’s when you start flowering, that’s when spring comes to your life.
Your love has to be allowed absolute freedom, only then are your juices flowing. You are not sad, dry, desert-like, you become an oasis.
My sannyasins have to become gardens with birds singing and flowers spreading their fragrance. That’s exactly the meaning of the word ‘paradise’; paradise literally means a walled garden. It comes from the Persian, firdaus. I would like each of my sannyasins to be a paradise unto himself or herself.
Osho, Going All the Way, Ch 23 (excerpt, unpublished)

martedì 28 giugno 2016

Native American Proverbs that Touch the Soul


21 proverbs from various native Indian tribes selected by Alexa Erickson of Collective Evolution; published on May 20, 2016 on SOTT.
collective evolution CE

Thinking of the past and all that transpired can prove disheartening, especially when it comes to Native Americans. Pondering what would have been, what could have been if these peaceful tribes had never been raided, their land and lives never taken, is a weighty task, because we know we cannot change history. We can only reflect on how it has shaped us, and how we can use that knowledge to move forward positively.
Native American
And yet, living in a world where many people find themselves attached to the idea of owning expensive homes, clothes, cars, and various other devices, and living on a planet constantly fighting to overcome the unnatural side of man-made production, it is hard not to wonder what life would be like if Native Americans had never been so wrongfully removed.
Would we be more in touch with nature? More able to connect with animals? Understand the stars? It seems so far away from our modern reality for many of us, but perhaps reading the following wisdoms these indigenous people shared will help us to shift our perspective and imprint in a cosmic, earthly, and universal way.
Bird 11. “Don’t be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts.” – Hopi
2. “It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.” – Apache
3. “All plants are our brothers and sisters. They talk to us and if we listen, we can hear them.” – Arapaho
4. “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand.” – Tribe Unknown
5. “When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect for us.” – Arapaho
6. “Those that lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.” – Blackfoot
Bird 27. “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” – Blackfoot
8. “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” – Cherokee
9. “Those who have one foot in the canoe, and one foot in the boat, are going to fall into the river.” – Tuscarora
10. “Our first teacher is our own heart.” – Cheyenne
11. “Remember that your children are not your own, but are lent to you by the Creator.” – Mohawk
12. “Man’s law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit remain always the same.” – Crow
13. “There is no death, only a change of worlds.” – Duwamish
Bird 314. “You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” – Navajo
15. “All dreams spin out from the same web.” – Hopi
16. “When a man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard.” – Lakota
17. “Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.” – Tribe Unknown
18. “Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant.” – Kiowa
19. “Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, Wisdom is of the future.” – Lumbee
20. “If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” – Minquass
21. “The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.” – Sioux

http://www.oshonews.com/2016/06/28/native-american-proverbs-that-touch-the-soul/ 

lunedì 27 giugno 2016

Money as a Spiritual Practice




Mayuri is interviewed by Alex Howard on consciousness2 about her journey from worldly accomplishments in accounting to her spiritual journey, and developing her teachings in money and consciousness.
“We are driving a new money machine on the planet, a global machine that is not bound by countries but has grown into a whole world economy that is being run by basically corporations because there hasn’t been a political process, a matching one to go with globalisation, and so – kind of contradictorily – it feels like we are left with ourselves.
“So we need to take back our power around money and look at our issues and see how we can be more conscious in our money decisions – and if we all were more conscious in our money decisions, we would be voting in a way with our money and that would make a huge difference in the world.”
Watch on YouTube
“The very nature of ego, the very nature of personality is that it is deficient, because it is not our beingness. And when we are moving from personality, we always feel that there is scarcity, that there is something wrong with us, that we don’t have enough. So we move and try to fill that and try to fill that with more money, with more stuff. As long as there was enough ecology in the world the growth model of money worked fine with that, hand in hand. But we’ve seen with climate change and the ending of ecology that that growth model doesn’t work. So we have to reassess, and one of the ways to reassess is recognise we don’t need to go from that deficiency, that scarcity that is at the bottom of our ego structures.
“We need to recognise that we are in our deepest nature a being, that we are boundless, beautiful, joyful beings and that the nature of the universe is benevolent.”
conscious2.com
Mayuri TNMayuri is a trained professional accountant and worked for 28 years in various accounting capacities. She took sannyas in Rajneeshpuram in 1985, and subsequently plied her trade in the accounting department in Pune. Through her international Logos of Money workshops she help people shift their perceptions and attitudes about money so that it can become a source of support rather than a stumbling block. She lives in Marin County, CA, USA. logosofmoney.com

http://www.oshonews.com/2016/05/24/money-as-a-spiritual-practice/ 

domenica 26 giugno 2016

Osho, Total Laughter: A Rare Phenomenon



Osho on Laughter Total laughter is a rare phenomenon. When each cell of your body laughs, when each fibre of your being pulsates with joy, then it brings a great relaxation. There are a few activities which are immensely valuable; laughter is one of those activities. Singing and dancing, are also of the same quality, but laughter is the quickest. Dancing you will have to learn; it may take years. Singing is a talent; it may not be possible for you. […]
woman laughing
Dancing, singing, laughing — of these three, laughter is the most simple, the most natural and the most spontaneous phenomenon. You don’t want to learn, you don’t need to learn — it is a natural gift. Everybody can laugh. And what happens when you laugh totally? What happens when you dance totally? The dancer disappears in a total dance. That’s my definition of the total dance: the dancer disappears, dissolves; only the dancing remains. When there is only dancing and no dancer, this is the ultimate of meditation — the taste of nectar, bliss, God, truth, ecstasy, freedom, freedom from the ego, freedom from the doer. And when there is no ego, no doer, and the dance is going on and there is no dancer, a great witnessing arises, a great awareness like a cloud of light surrounding you. You are watching it, you can see it happen. You are not the doer; it is happening on its own. God has taken possession of you. That’s exactly the meaning of possession: when the ego is no longer there, God immediately enters and takes possession of you. You become a vehicle, a passage, a medium, a hollow bamboo, and on the lips of the whole the hollow bamboo becomes a flute.
In laughter it happens more easily because it needs no talent, no learning, no discipline — unless you are a born donkey, and that’s another matter. Laughter is simple — but let it be total. It has been crippled. Society has stopped you from going totally into it. If you go into a total laughter people think it is hysterical. It is not, it is historical!
Osho, Come, Come, Yet Again Come, Ch 10
http://www.oshonews.com/2015/09/19/total-laughter-a-rare-phenomenon/

giovedì 23 giugno 2016

Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language # 6 Q 2



 Risultati immagini per Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language
Osho,
Is it not harmful to an individual and also to society to live without the barriers of norms? If so, then why do you preach that your sannyasins should live as they like? Mind always goes the wrong way if not restricted.
And who is going to restrict the mind? The mind of the society? Who is going to restrict the mind? The-mind of the dead people, the dead moralists, the dead priests? Who is going to restrict the mind? You? Who are you, except the mind?
The first thing to be understood: up to now humanity has lived under a curse, and the curse is that we have never been allowed to trust our nature. We have always been told, “Trust your nature and you will go wrong.” Mistrust, restrict, control - don’t go according to your feelings. We have been told that human nature is somehow basically evil. This is stupid, this is foolish and poisonous. Human nature is not evil. Human nature is divine. And if the evil has arisen, it has arisen because of restrictions. Now let me explain it to you.
You never see animals going to war. Of course there are fights sometimes, but they are individual fights - not world wars with all the crows of the East fighting with all the crows of the West, or all the dogs of India fighting all the dogs of Pakistan. Even dogs are not so foolish, neither are crows! Yes, sometimes they fight, and there is nothing wrong in it. If their freedom is violated, they fight, but the fight is individual. It is not a world war.
Now what have you done? You have repressed humanity and you have not allowed individuals to be angry sometimes - which is natural. The ultimate total result is that everybody goes on gathering his anger, goes on repressing the anger - then one day everybody is so full of poison that it explodes in a world war. Every ten years a world war is needed. And who is responsible for these wars? - your so-called saints and moralists, do-gooders, the people who have never allowed you to be natural.
7
Have you ever seen any dog killing another dog? Yes, they fight sometimes - but just fight. Never has a dog killed another dog. Man is the only animal who kills another man. No crow has ever killed any other crow, no lion has ever killed another lion. Man is the only species of animal who kills its own kind. What has happened to man? Has he fallen lower than the animals? Then who is responsible? Only one thing is missing from the animals: they don’t have saints, moralists. Priests - Christian and Hindu and Mohammedan and Jaina - they don’t have. They don’t have temples, mosques, Bibles and Vedas, that’s all. That is the only difference.
There are still a few primitive societies where, down through the ages, murder has never happened, because nobody has poisoned their mind for morality, nobody has trained them to be moral. They are natural people. When you are natural you function harmoniously. Sometimes you become angry, but that is natural - and it is momentary.
A person who never becomes angry and goes on controlling his anger is very dangerous. Beware of him, he can kill you! If your husband never becomes angry, report him to the police. A husband who sometimes becomes angry is just a natural human being, there is no fear about it. A husband who never becomes angry will one day suddenly jump and suffocate you. And he will do it as if he is possessed by something. Murderers have been telling the courts down through the ages, “We committed the crime, but we were possessed.” Who possessed them? Their own unconscious - repressed unconscious - exploded.
Have you watched a simple fact? If you have a picture of a beautiful bitch and bring it to a dog, he will not be interested at all. Dogs are not playboys. Not that they don’t love bitches, they love them tremendously, but they will not be interested in a picture, in pornography - because to create pornography you need saints. First repress the sexual instinct, the natural instinct, and tell people that it is wrong and evil. When they repress their sexual instinct, the repressed instinct finds outlets. Now it is difficult to go and watch a beautiful woman passing by on the road. Then what to do? Lock your room and look at the Playboy magazine. That is safer, nobody comes to know. You can hide your Playboy magazine in the Bible and you can pretend you are reading the Bible. Only man is pornographic. No other animal is pornographic. These are simple facts.
Who has made man pornographic? Primitives are not - still are not. Women are naked and move naked - and without any fear. And what type of civilization do you say you are living in? A woman cannot pass through the roads without being pinched on the bottom, without being treated inhumanely. A woman cannot walk in the night alone - and this is civilization! And people are just obsessed with sex twenty-four hours a day.

Who has given this obsession to man? Animals are sexual but not obsessed; they are natural. When sex becomes an obsession, it takes perverted forms; and these perverted forms are rooted in the moralizers and their teachings.
8
The so-called religious people have never trusted human nature. They talk about trust, but they have never trusted existence. They trust rules, laws; they never trust love. They talk about God, but the talk is just empty talk. They trust in the police, in the courts. They trust in hellfire. They trust in creating fear and in creating greed. If you are saintly and good and moral, you will have heaven and all the pleasures of paradise, firdaus. Or, if you are not moral, then you will suffer hellfire - and eternally, remember, forever and forever.
These are fear and greed. They have been manipulating the human mind through fear and greed. And they want you to become free of fear and greed - and their whole teaching is rooted in it. They don’t trust.
I trust you and I trust your nature. I trust animal nature. If nature is allowed its own course, yes, there will be a little anger sometimes and there will be a little flaring up too, but nothing is wrong in it. It is human and it is beautiful. But there will be no war.
Psychologists say all your weapons are phallic. Because you could not penetrate a woman’s body, you penetrate somebody’s body with a sword. The sword is a phallic symbol. It is beautiful to love a woman, but to penetrate somebody’s body with a sword is ugly. But this is how things have been.
You ask me: “Is it not harmful to an individual and also to society to live without the barriers of norms?” You have lived with barriers and with norms. What has happened? Look at the state of humanity today: it is a neurotic earth, a great madhouse. This is what has happened because of your norms, idealism, perfectionism, morality; this has happened because of all your commandments. The whole earth has turned into a neurotic camp, a big madhouse. And still you are afraid, and still you go on. This is a vicious circle.
It is as if you make a person fast and when he fasts of course he becomes hungry, and he starts looking obsessively for food. Then, thinking and seeing that he has become obsessed with food, you put him in chains, because otherwise he will break into somebody’s kitchen. Now you put him in chains because you say that if he is not put in chains, he is dangerous - he can break into somebody’s kitchen, he cannot be relied upon. Then you put him in chains and you continue forcing him to fast. And then you become more and more afraid because he is going mad. This is a vicious circle. In the first place, why has he become so obsessed with food? Your disciplining him too much with fasting has created this illness. Fasting is not natural.
Yes, sometimes it happens in animals, but they don’t believe in fasting, they don’t have a philosophy of fasting. Sometimes it happens. One day the dog feels sick and he will not eat. This is natural. He simply does not eat because he does not feel like eating. He moves with his feeling, it is not a rule. Nobody has taught him to fast. In fact he will go and eat grass and vomit; the grass functions and helps him to vomit. He will vomit. Nobody has taught him. And he will not eat unless the desire to eat arises again. He moves with nature. When he feels like eating, he eats; when he does not feel like eating, he does not eat. This is what I would call real life.
9
Sometimes when you feel like not eating, don’t eat. I am not against fasting. I am against the philosophy of fasting. Don’t make a rule that every Sunday you have to fast. That is foolish, because how can you decide that every Sunday you will not feel like eating? Sometimes it may be Friday when you don’t feel like eating. Then what will you do? You will force yourself to eat because it is Friday. When you feel like eating, eat. When you don’t feel like eating, don’t eat. Move with your feeling, and by and by you will be in tune with your nature.
To me, to be in tune with nature is to be religious. My definition of religion is to be in tune with nature. And that is the meaning of the Indian word dharma; it means nature, intrinsic nature. Trust nature and don’t violate it.
But you have been taught to violate it, so when people who have lived starved lives come here, to this place - which is a totally different phenomenon, they have never seen a place like this, no ashram like this has ever existed - they are very surprised. They come here to see sad people, dead people - dragging themselves around somehow, chanting mantras, reading books - and when they see people dancing, men and women dancing together, holding hands; people hugging each other, people so full of love and joy, they say, “What type of religion is this? Religion has to be of the cemetery, it cannot be of life. Religion has to be negative. Men and women holding hands? This is dangerous. We cannot trust men, we cannot trust women. This is dangerous; this is playing with fire. Create restrictions, make Great Walls of China!”
No, I trust nature. I don’t trust your laws. Your laws have corrupted the whole of humanity. Enough is enough! The time has come. Now all the old, rotten religions have to be burned completely and a totally new concept of religion has to arise - life-affirmative, a religion of love and not of law, a religion of nature and not of discipline, a religion of totality and not of perfection, a religion of feeling and not of thinking. The heart should become the master, and then things settle on their own.
If you can trust nature, by and by you become quiet, silent, happy, joyful, celebrating - because nature is celebrating. Nature is a celebration. Look all around. Can you see any flower which looks like your saints? Can you see any rainbow which looks like your saints - or any cloud, or any bird singing, or the light reflecting in the river, or the stars? The world is celebrating. The world is not sad. The world is a song, an utterly beautiful song, and the dance continues. Become part of this dance and trust your nature.
If you trust your nature, by and by you will come closer to the cosmic nature. That is the only way. You are part of the cosmic. When you trust yourself, you have trusted the cosmic in you - through that goes the way. From that small thread, you can reach to the very goal. Trusting yourself, you have trusted existence which has made you. Not trusting yourself, you have distrusted existence which has made you.
Who has given you sex? Of course existence has given you sex. And who has taught you brahmacharya and celibacy? Your so-called saints. Your saints are against existence. Who has given you hunger? Existence. And who has taught you fasting? Your saints.
10
I am for life and against your saints because your saints are against existence. I teach you to be natural, to be spontaneous. And I don’t teach you repression, restriction. I teach you freedom. If you restrict yourself too much and repress yourself too much, you will die before your death, and then you will live a stale life.
Let me tell you one beautiful story:
They tell about a wise old rabbi in the heart of Russia whose advice was slavishly followed by the members of his synagogue. One morning he was cornered by a troubled follower who explained, “I invested all my savings in two hundred chickens. When I went out to the coop this morning, a hundred of them had died. What should I do?”
“It is the voice of the Lord,” quoth the rabbi. “Say a prayer. Then double the sales price of the chickens you have left and you will not have lost a single kopek.”
But the next morning the villager was back to report, “Another fifty of my chickens perished last night.”
“The ways of the Lord are sometimes mysterious,” said the rabbi. “The fifty chickens that have survived are obviously the finest and the most valuable of the flock. Say another prayer of thanks and again double the sales price and you will not have lost a single kopek.”
Alas! The next morning the last fifty chickens had bitten the dust. “Now what should I do?” wailed the villager.
“My son,” quoth the rabbi, “I have lots more invaluable advice I could give you, but what use would that be to you? You have no more chickens.”
When I look at your so-called religious people, I see they have no more life. No advice can be of any help to them. They are dead people. They should really be in their graves. They are walking illegally. They are ghosts; they are living a posthumous existence. They have committed suicide and are still walking and moving. I feel sorry for them, but these people are dangerous too because they go on doing the same to others that has been done to them by others. They go on teaching the same nonsense to other people. They go on crippling small children, paralyzing new life springs, poisoning new wells. That’s what they can do. That’s all that they know. They have been unable to live; they make others unable to live.
Watch. Never get into the trap of a man who is dead. It is better to be irreligious. It is better not to believe in God and not to go to the church and the mosque and the temple, but be alive - because life is the real church of God. Forget all about God and nothing is lost, but start destroying life and everything is lost - because life is God.
I teach you life, love, because that’s how I see God is.
And these bondages that have been created by religion are just your idea. If you become aware, you can drop them immediately, instantly.
11
“How come,” the hostess of a kid’s birthday party asked a little girl in attendance, “that your younger brother is so shy? He has not moved from that corner all afternoon.”
“He is not shy at all,” answered the little girl. “He has never had on a necktie before - and he thinks he is tied to something.”
All your religions are just neckties. You are not tied to anything. It is just your idea that you are tied.
Drop all discipline and all ties and start moving - and let God live through you, and let God live through you in freedom. Trust freedom and trust God, and you will never be a loser.
I am not saying there will always be flowers and more flowers in your life. No, there are thorns, but they too are good. And I am not saying that your life will always be sweet. Many times it will be very, very bitter, but that’s how life grows - through dialectics. I am not saying you will always be good. Sometimes you will be very bad, but one thing will be certain about you: when you are bad you will be authentically bad, when you are good you will be authentically good. One can trust, one can rely upon you. When you are angry, one can rely on it that your anger is not false, not cold; it is hot and alive. And when you love, one can rely upon you that it is hot and warm.
Remember, a person who cannot be angry cannot be loving. The roses grow only with the thorns. If you cannot be hotly angry in some moment, you cannot be hotly in love. Because you cannot be hot, you cannot be warm; you remain frozen. And if you have repressed anger too much, you are always afraid to move in love, because who knows?
A man came to me and he said he could not move into deep orgasm while making love - a perfectly healthy young man. What has gone wrong with him? He cannot move into orgasm, or at the most the orgasm remains only local, it does not spread all over his body - and a local orgasm is not of much significance. When the orgasm is total and every fiber of your being throbs with new life - you are refreshed, rejuvenated - for one moment you become part of existence, part of the tremendous creativity that surrounds you. You lose yourself. You are no longer an ego, you melt. You don’t have any boundaries then.

12
I inquired about his anger. He said, “But why are you asking about anger, because my question is about love? I cannot love deeply.” I said, “Forget about love because first we have to think about anger. Because if you cannot love deeply, that means you cannot be angry deeply.” He was surprised, but that’s how it turned out to be. From his very childhood, he had been brought up in a very religious family and he had always been told not to be angry, to control anger. He has learned to control. He has become so efficient that he does not know that he controls. He has really become a controller. Now the control has become unconscious. He is a very controlled person. Everybody respects him; he will succeed everywhere in society. He is a success, but in his inner life he is a failure - he cannot even love.
I told him, “Start by being angry, because my understanding is that when you are coming to a peak in your orgasm, you cannot allow it, because if you allow it, you are afraid that with it, maybe the anger - the repressed anger - may also be allowed.”
He said, “What are you saying? I always dream that I have killed my woman. And I always dream that I kill her, suffocate her, while making love to her. And I am afraid that if I lose control I will not be able to resist the temptation to suffocate and kill her.”
Now the anger has become a great force inside him. He is so afraid to uncontrol, how can he love? It is impossible. And if you miss love, you will miss prayerfulness and you will miss godliness too.
This repressive society, this repressive civilization has failed utterly. Yet you are not aware.
I have heard a beautiful story:
In the days when Khrushchev - and somehow we miss him - was Mr. Big in the Soviet Union, he often admitted that Stalin occasionally treated him like a court jester or clown, and ordered him, “Dance the gopak!” “And,” Khrushchev would add, “I danced.”
Somebody in the crowd would always cry out, “Why did you let him make a fool of you?” and Khrushchev would demand sternly, “Who asked that question? Stand up!”
Inevitably, nobody answered, and after the appropriate pause, Khrushchev would conclude, “That, comrades, is why I danced.”
Just out of fear: Stalin can kill, Stalin is death. And your priests have been death - representatives of death, not of God.
I represent life. Your priests have been in conspiracy with death and they have crippled life. Your priests talk about God, but it seems they are partners with the Devil. A great conspiracy.
And they have destroyed the whole human mind. They have uprooted you from your feeling part; they have made you hung up in your head. Now you don’t know how you feel; that’s why you cannot trust your feelings and you always have to look to somebody to tell you what to do.
13
In childhood the parents go on telling you, “Do this” and “Don’t do that.” Then in the school, you have the teacher; then in the university, the professor; then in society, the boss, the politician, the leader. Everywhere you are being told what to do and what not to do. And you are always seeking somebody to dominate you so that you can become dependent - because you don’t know how to get commandments from your own heart, from your own being. You always depend on some authority outside. This is ugly, this is miserable, this should not be.
I am not an authority here, at the most a midwife, but not an authority. I can help you to be reborn, but I cannot dominate you, I cannot dictate things to you. You hanker for it. People come to me and they say, “Osho, tell us exactly what we have to do.” But why can’t you listen to your own heart? You have life bubbling inside you. The spring is there, the source is there. Go in. I can tell you how to go in, I can teach you the devices for going in, but take your commandments from there. There is a Bible inside you - the real book, the Veda, the real knowledge.
Get your instructions from there, and once you start getting your instructions from your innermost core, you will be a free man and a happy man. A free man is happy; an unfree man is never happy. You are not meant to be slaves. You are meant to be masters. That’s why I call my sannyasins “swami.” Swami means a master, one who has taken his reins in his own hands.


Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language



mercoledì 22 giugno 2016

Osho: Riorientare l'energia sessuale



 Siedi con la schiena diritta, su una sedia o per terra:
tieni diritta la spina dorsale, senza irrigidirla e
senza che ci siano tensioni.
 Inspira lentamente e profondamente. Non avere
fretta; continua a inspirare molto lentamente. Come
prima cosa la pancia si solleverà, tu continua a inspirare;
a quel punto si solleverà il torace e alla fine
potrai sentire che l'aria ti ha riempito fino al collo.
Per qualche istante trattieni semplicemente il respiro,
fallo finché ci riesci senza sforzarti, poi espira.
Anche l'espirazione dev'essere molto lenta, ma con
un moto opposto: dal collo al torace, dal torace alla
pancia. Quando la pancia si sarà svuotata, tirala in
dentro, così che tutta l'aria venga espulsa. Questo
esercizio dev'essere ripetuto solo per sette volte.
 A quel punto siedi in silenzio e inizia a ripetere:
"Om... om... om". E mentre lo ripeti, mantieniti concentrato
sul terzo occhio, il punto tra le due sopracciglia.
Dimentica completamente la respirazione e
continua a ripetere come una sonnolenta cantilena:
"Om... om... om", nello stesso modo in cui una madre
canta una ninnananna per far addormentare il
figlio.
 La bocca dev'essere chiusa, così da permettere alla
lingua di toccare il palato superiore, mentre tutta
la tua concentrazione è fissa sul terzo occhio.
 Esegui questa parte dell'esercizio per due o tre
minuti, e sentirai che tutta la testa si sta rilassando, e
quando quel rilassamento prende piede, subito sentirai
che dentro di te ogni rigidità è scomparsa, la
tensione sta scomparendo.
 A quel punto, porta la tua concentrazione alla gola,
continuando a ripetere: "Om... om... om", ma
adesso focalizzati sulla gola. Vedrai che le tue spalle,
la gola e il volto si stanno rilassando e che la tensione
cade, simile a un peso che viene abbandonato;
stai diventando leggero, come se fossi privo di peso.
 Adesso scendi ancora più in basso: sposta la tua
concentrazione sull'ombelico, e continua a ripetere:
"Om... om... om". Stai scendendo in profondità, a
una profondità maggiore, e poi ancora più a fondo.
Infine, passa al centro sessuale: l'intero esercizio
richiederà al massimo dieci o quindici minuti, per cui
procedi con lentezza; non c'è alcuna fretta.
 Quando avrai raggiunto il centro sessuale, tutto il
corpo sarà rilassato e tu percepirai un bagliore, come
se un'aura o una luce ti circondasse.
 Ti sentirai pieno di energia, ma sarà come un serbatoio;
quell'energia ti riempie, senza che ci siano
fuoriuscite; pertanto potrai stare seduto in quella dimensione,
quanto vorrai.
 La meditazione è conclusa; adesso goditi semplicemente
quella dimensione. Smetti di ripetere: "Om...
om... om", e sta' semplicemente seduto. Se ti senti di
farlo, puoi sdraiarti; ma ricorda che, cambiando posizione,
quello stato dell'essere svanirà molto presto;
resta dunque seduto per un po', e goditelo.
 Quando il tuo corpo diventa troppo teso, per
qualsivoglia motivo, puoi semplicemente praticare
questo metodo: ti darà un rilassamento totale.
 Osho.

martedì 21 giugno 2016

Lingam, Pillar of Light



Tantra teacher Sarita talks on reclaiming the power, joy, wildness and dignity of the male genitals.

“Behold the Shiva Lingam, beautiful as molten gold, firm as the Himalayan Mountain, tender as a folded leaf, life-giving like the solar orb, behold the charm of his sparkling jewels!”
From ‘Linga Purana’, translated by Nik Douglas
Meaning and Symbolism of the Lingam
We need to make friends with the Lingam and all it represents. This is the only path that can finally bring healing to each man and woman and to this divided world.
tantra loversIn Sanskrit, the word Lingam has a couple of meanings, which are deeply symbolic: ‘Sign’ is one meaning, represented by the fact that an erect penis is the sign that god is ready to create new life. Another meaning is ‘Pillar of Light’, or ‘Wand of Light.’ A phallus becomes a ‘pillar of light’ when a man has become conscious of his godliness. The way he becomes conscious of his godliness is part of what Tantra is all about. Tantra offers methods to help both men and women attain supreme consciousness while in the act of love union. This is achieved by bringing the potent and animalistic energy of sex into alignment with spirit. When instinctual drive and energy merge with spiritual power and energy a metamorphosis happens and it is in this metamorphosis that man is reborn as god, a co-creator with the whole.
For millennia phallus worship was practised all over the world, and even today vestiges of this worship are still in evidence, particularly in India and Japan. In India, a wonderfully balanced quality is evident in Lingam (phallus) worship as the carved Lingam is always placed within a delicately carved Yoni, (the Sanskrit term for female genitals, meaning sacred place). This ensures that the worship of the lingam and male principle is balanced with female qualities (as happens throughout nature).
It is very unfortunate that, in the West in particular, phallic symbols such as the giant obelisks present in many cities have no Yoni surrounding them. Because of this, they give out a vibration of the masculine testosterone fuelled energy of competition and territorialness, without any balancing love or nurturing offered by the feminine principle of the Yoni.
At this time in our society, many men are not aware of the enormous potential for spiritual awakening contained in their Lingam. Instead, they have become addicted to pornography, which has been proven to lead to impotence. Mentalising sexual energy is very different than bringing it into alignment with spirit. When we bring a meditative awareness to our animal nature, we experience the divine hidden within the density of sexual desire. This does not lead to a loss of pleasure as some people might imagine. Rather, pleasure is enhanced thousand fold, becoming limitless. A man has the potential to experience universal consciousness through his lingam and all it represents.
Every orgasm, every pleasure is a divine experience. The entire universe springs forth from enjoyment. Pleasure is the origin of all that exists. But the perfect love is that whose object is limitless. It is that love which is pure love, the love of love itself, the love of the transcendental being of sensual pleasure.”
From Karpatri, ‘Lingopasana Rahasya’
Discovering a Balanced Masculinity
Crete Snake GoddessI have been working with men for many years and having grown up with five brothers, I feel an innate love and respect for the masculine. Many times, it is sad for me to realise that men do not understand themselves in the positive way that I see and experience them. Many forms of conditioning have corrupted the sheer beauty and grandeur of the masculine experience.
Men are being condemned very heavily since the advent of the women’s liberation movement. And yes, it is true that there has been a strong abuse of power in men’s actions for the past two thousand years or so. I like to look at the bigger picture.
Before the advent of patriarchy, a dominant matriarchy ruled the world. During those times, in many places in the world, women abused their power over men. Men were offered in human sacrifice on a yearly basis. To become devotees of the great mother, men castrated themselves and proudly wore the castration knife on their belt. The goddess was benevolent but also cruel. She ruled the mysteries of birth and therefore considered herself to be superior. Naturally, when men discovered that they could develop their mind and might to outwit the feminine, they chose to turn the tables and take revenge. Since then, the world has lived in a miserable situation of wars and more wars, rape and more rape. Man’s divorce from the feminine is escalating to a point of insanity. Man’s desire to dominate nature instead of protecting her is threatening to kill all life on the planet.
This is a simplistic picture of something in the human psyche gone wrong or warped. It is only in Tantra that we see harmony between the sexes wherein male and female attributes are both honoured equally.
A Tantra scripture, Lingopasana Rahasya says:
The symbol of the cosmic man Purusha, the archetype, the universal plan present in all things, is the male emblem, the phallus. The symbol of energy, which is the world’s substance; the generator of all that exists is the female organ, the Yoni.”
Integrated Male and Female, The Tree of Life
Couple feeding each otherI like to think of male and female together as a vast tree of life. The tree grows from a single seed and then at six weeks in the womb, there is a differentiation and the embryo either remains feminine (XX chromosomes) or becomes masculine (XY chromosomes). If the embryo remains feminine, the parts of the brain devoted to intuition, love and artistic tendencies grow bigger, while the areas devoted to power, competition, territorialness, and logic grow bigger in the male brain. To imagine how this links up, imagine a rose bush. The magnificent rose, so soft and vulnerable has a thorny stem, offering protection. In the same way, the feminine who is asked by nature to nurture the child for a long time, needs her masculine partner to protect her and take care that she can be secure while tending to the task of childbirth and rearing of children.
The problem arises when the masculine separates himself from the feminine and instead of being in service of feminine qualities of love and nurturing, he becomes like the thorns without the rose, going on a tangent of expressing his territorialness and competition in a frenzy of destructiveness, serving only destructiveness itself.
As men and women come to realize that we are simply two aspects of the same tree of life, and search for ways to blend our energies through meditation and love, we will find that the song of life is sweet indeed, with pleasure and celebration being our natural condition.
One of the puzzles that men face is how to manage being with a woman, holding her in her contradictory, emotional nature. This puzzle is easily solved when men open to their potential as a pillar of light and consciousness. When women are bitchy, they are in fact only testing the man to find out if he is able to hold them in all that they are. If the man passes the test, she will surrender herself completely into his arms, that her Shakti may be held at last by a worthy Shiva.
Healing the Wounded Masculine
Shiva and ParvatiPart of the warped scenario has been fuelled by ideologies, which harm the masculine very profoundly. To teach a man that sex is bad, i.e. sin, is to kill his spirit by cutting him off from his joy. A man is naturally deeply centred in and around his sexual organs. He needs to be worshipped there, rather than condemned. Just imagine the fact that in one ejaculation, a man releases enough sperm to populate half the planet! This is a tremendous power and energy! If he is told from an early age that this energy is bad, you are literally telling him that he is bad, that his very essence as a man should not exist. Naturally, as he shuts down from himself and his reason for being, he will be quite pissed off inside. He can then easily be manipulated into becoming a soldier and going to kill others and himself. Life is not worth living if you have been cut off from all joy and pleasure.
Reclaiming the power, joy, wildness and dignity of the male genitals is one of the most important healing works we have to do during these changing times.
People speak a lot about female genital mutilation, which is of course a horrendous practice. However, I find it bizarre that under our very noses, millions of boys are being forced to have genital mutilation and no one says anything about it! If you don’t believe that the act of circumcising is a travesty and a crime, watch the film Birth As We Know It and see the truth for yourself! The foreskin is delicate tissue, anatomically similar to the hood of the clitoris, which holds many nerve endings devoted to pleasure. To have this mutilated gives a message that pleasure is being sacrificed to pain, very early in life, making it almost undoubtedly a lifelong wound carried deep in the subconscious body memory. (Those that like conspiracy theories can have a field day with this!)
Another aspect of the male genitals that needs healing is that of civilisation vs animality. The first chakra, i.e. genital area, is naturally instinctual and animalistic. The instinctual search is for procreation and security. If a boy is told over and over that he has to drop being animalistic, and be civilised, he will be a sad shadow of who he could become. The animal nature needs to be celebrated, not repressed! People carry a deep ancestral fear of the animal, due to the fact that we had to fight to survive in a seemingly hostile world where one may be devoured at any moment by some wild animal. This has been translated into a fear of our own inner animal. People tend to think that if we allow the animal some space within, we will turn into raving beasts who have uncontrollable appetites for sex.
In fact, in the animal kingdom, sexual expression is very tame. Animals operate according to fixed natural laws that govern their bodies and sexual needs. Humans on the other hand can be taken over by lust as often as they desire.
Lingam Whispering and the Art of Sex
Rites of passageWe need to learn sexuality as an art form, playing with our desire and mastering it as one would tame a horse in the wild. Beating a horse is not the right way to tame it. The true masters of horse training are those who understand the language of horses, the horse whisperers. A whole new science is waiting to be born, that of ‘Lingam whispering’.
When a man reclaims his animal nature, he breathes a big sigh of relief and immediately discovers undreamed of sources of power and energy. When a man is honoured as a God in his genitals, his joy springs forth, like a bubbling stream. Within no time, his heart opens and he discovers the ecstasy of offering his strength in service to the feminine qualities of love and nurturing. In this way, he finds wholeness and reintegration with the tree of life.
Men are not born rough and destructive. Men are warped by the society in such a way that they no longer find how to live their natural joy. To reclaim this joy, Tantra and work with the sacred masculine is very important. Men need good role models, seeing himself mirrored in his own gender. He needs a rite of passage, where his entry into manhood is honoured with love and respect. If he is denied that, he will seek a rite of passage through drugs, fast cars, pornography and alcohol.
He also needs initiation into the art of being a Master Lover, so that all the days of his life he can enjoy maximum benefits of sexual love.
For the Lingam to find a balanced expression of sexual energy, it has to be celebrated as important and beautiful. Instead of cutting himself into bits, with mind and body being separated from each other, he needs to discover that he has a brain in his head, in his stomach and in his genitals. There is no such thing as mind and body. There is only bodymind as one whole interconnected unit. The man’s primary centres of power and energy reside in his genitals, his solar plexus and his throat. When he is able to live these energy centres in their fullness he will be a true man, in divine remembrance of his purpose in life.
Many men would love to discover Tantric secrets such as how to last longer in sex, how to please a woman, and how to have full body orgasm without ejaculation. These are all easy to learn and apply when the man meditates, moves his body as in sport or martial arts, learns to let go into laughter and tears and learns to express himself through poetry, singing, dance or some other art form. The healed and balanced expression of masculinity is a synthesis of power and vulnerability, spirituality and sexuality.
The Art of Self-Pleasuring
Wild man
Learning the art of self-pleasuring is a tremendous help for men to understand the movement and pathways of their own energy. Sexual energy can move down and out as in procreation, or in and up as in spiritual rebirth. The energy moving in and up is what leads to full body orgasm without ejaculation. To learn this art, it is necessary to begin with loving and honouring your genitals, and once aroused, to then move this energy through the whole body, snaking the spine and breathing deeply.
Touching the crown of the head and the perineum at the same time is also very helpful. If the man finds himself moving from warm to hot to red hot, he needs to let go of genital stimulation and move the energy upwards through the body before his sexual energy becomes volcanic.
He needs to let go of an intensely focused goal, and instead, open the possibility that he can become orgasmic in every cell. Relaxing beneath the orgasm reflex, and snaking the spine will create an invitation for the sexually aroused energy to begin its ascent towards the crown chakra.
He can also allow his aroused energy to melt into the valley, experiencing the deeply resting quality of yin. Sex is not about performance, it is actually about riding the waves of yin and yang for hours. In sex, we learn the art of surfing the waves, leading to ultimate fulfilment for the man and the woman.
The universe is the issue of the relationship between a masculine and a feminine principle. Everything, as a result, carries the signature of the Lingam and the Yoni. It is the deity, who in the form of the individual phallus, penetrates each womb and procreates all beings.”

From ‘Karpatri’, translated by Alain Daniélou
Anatomy of the Lingam
Tantra couple
Anatomically, the Lingam is an elegantly designed mechanism, which is both practical and pleasurable. The prostate supplies one part of what we know of as semen in the form of prostatic fluid, giving a milky appearance to the semen. The seminal vesicle supplies seminal fluid. And the third ingredient is the sperm, carrying the potential for new life. Sperm come to maturity in the testes, in 20 feet of coiled tubes called Ductus Epididymis. The testicles are amazing in their capacity to shrink close to the body if it is cold, or hang down lower and away from the body if it is too hot, thus maintaining an optimum temperature for the sperm. When a man is in erection and ready for ejaculation, the three ingredients blend. As he ejaculates, pleasurable spasms allow this precious nectar of life to be expelled out of the tip of his Lingam, propelling the sperm, surrounded by protective and nurturing elements, on their long pilgrimage to find a female egg to blend with. An enormous amount of vital energy is used in order for this task to be accomplished. This is why it is advised in Tantric texts for men to enjoy making love often but to conserve their ejaculation, offering it only on special occasions.
Testosterone, the principal male hormone, decreases progressively during a man’s life. If he ejaculates more than his body has allotted him to do, he will find himself without a bank balance of vital energy the older he gets. It is very important for men to learn Tantric arts of sexuality, discovering the sublime mastery that happens when he is able to conserve and circulate his energy. If he does this, he will be able to make love in an ecstatic Tantric circle of fulfilment, all the days of his life. The short term high of many successive and quick ejaculations is like cocaine, a destructive habit leading to impotence and depression.
Some men simply cannot imagine how it could be pleasurable to let go of frequent ejaculation in favour of frequent sex with ejaculation happening only sometimes. It is only by moving into the world of Tantra and understanding and experiencing the inner connectedness of sex, love and spirit that conservation of semen practice begins to make sense. And once a man has had the experience of whole body orgasm without ejaculation, he feels so vitally alive, so empowered and ecstatic that he would love to continue this practice and discover new levels of sexual mastery.
Addiction vs Mastery
Pan
The sexual organs are directly linked to the glandular system of the brain. Delgado, a behavioural scientist did an experiment on rats to find out how the sexual response in the brain functions. The rat had electrodes attached to the sex centre in the brain. By pushing a button, he could bring on the sensation of orgasm in the brain. The poor rat became addicted to the button and refusing both food and sleep, went on pushing the button till he died. It is an unfortunate fact that more and more men are taking a similar route through their addiction to pornography.
Sexuality involves all that we are, and if we isolate it in the mind and brain, we are sacrificing ourselves on the altar of greed. The society tends to encourage this behaviour, because it brings in a lot of financial rewards for those invested in such business. As long as the society is based on greed rather than love and nurturing, we will find ourselves hurtling towards the self-destructive tendency demonstrated by Delgado’s rat.
Tantra offers men and women both the opportunity to come back home to all that we are as sexual, loving, celebrative and spiritual beings. In fact, there is no other alternative for humanity today. We either choose a downward spiralling death oriented future or ecstatic wholeness based on life affirmation and inner mastery.
In Alain Alain Daniélou’s book The Phallus, he writes: “One century after the birth of Jesus, Plutarch reported the mysterious voice, heard by a sailor, announced the death of the great God ‘Pan’. This news froze the Greco-Roman world with horror. The Phallic God, the father of all the Gods risked dragging the civilized world with him in his fall, leaving men without protection. A new era opened up, full of dangers and conflicts, which little by little would lead to the extinction of the
human race.”
The Hero’s Journey
Shiva statue
If there is one thing I would like to affirm to men it is this: you are meant to be Masters of yourself, and protector custodians of the resources of this planet. When you learn to master your own internal eco system, balancing sexuality with spirituality, then you will naturally wish to balance the eco system of the planet and of society. It is a bit like living in a thriller at this time on the planet. Will men wake up in time to save the day? Will each man find his way to go on his own personal hero’s journey, discovering his true power and mastery? Will the God Pan once more be enthroned within each man, awakening his joyous potency and zest for life?
I am doing my best to initiate and inform men of their potential. And it is a big job. If anyone is called to help in this shifting of consciousness, I will be most happy to be of service in training as many people as possible. We need to bring about a global awareness of the immense gifts lying dormant within male sexuality and the male psyche.
Men, you are born to be co-creators with the divine. Nothing else will satisfy you because it is your innate nature to be an expression of godliness. The first step in claiming your power and your destiny is to reclaim your right to joy and to explore conscious sexuality. Once you get the knack, it is easy and natural to do so.
Steps for empowering the Masculine
  • Reclaim your balls and Lingam from repressive attitudes that have hijacked your sovereignty and joy.
  • Learn Tantra practices which will help you to become a Master of sexual energy, learning to surf the waves of yang and yin.
  • Go through sexual initiation with wise Tantric women, or in the workshop Master Lover.
  • Move into initiation through ‘Integrated Masculine’ men’s groups.
  • Practise self-pleasuring, which helps you to experience full body orgasmic states (see the book Divine Sexuality).
  • Activate your body in constructive ways, such as hiking, swimming, martial arts, dance, sports or Yoga.
  • Learn massage, as this skill will bring you untold pleasure and joy, for life.
  • Turn all your amazing creative energy and power towards being the protector and nurturer of the feminine qualities of love and beauty. This role of protector also includes protecting the eco system of the planet.
  • Meditate, learning to become a witnessing consciousness, a pillar of light. This energy and awareness begins with your sex centre and spreads to include your whole body.
  • A man is both powerful, as is the phallus in its erect state, and vulnerable, as is the phallus in its soft, resting state. Laugh often, enjoying the cosmic joke. A sense of humour is the bridge between power and vulnerability.
Article by Sarita, previously published in her blog – www.tantra-essence.com
Related discourse by Osho
Shiva Went On Making Love
Related articles by Sarita on Osho News
Yoni Revolution
Woman and Man’s Sexual Fulfilment
Women’s Sexual Fulfilment

 Sarita
 Sarita met Osho in Mumbai in 1973 and shortly afterwards received sannyas. She spent the next 26 years in his communes where she worked cleaning Osho’s house, as a medium in energy darshan, in the PR department and as a holistic healer. Osho gave her the title ‘Mahasatvaa’ meaning ‘keeper of esoteric wisdom’. Since 1997 she has been teaching Tantra, holistic healing and meditation across the world. She lives in England and France. www.tantra-essence.com

http://www.oshonews.com/2014/07/27/sarita-lingam-pillar-of-light/