What is meditation?
Now this is strange. It reminds me of a story.
A cricket fan took his girlfriend for a date – it was a full moon night, and the beach was silent, and they were sitting on the beach, and it was beautiful. They were holding hands and hugging each other. And the cricket fan continued to talk about cricket for three hours. Then, suddenly he became aware that he must be boring the girl. Three hours is too long! So he said, “Sorry, forgive me. I have been talking for three hours about my hobby. I am a fan; I am mad about cricket. I must have bored you utterly?”
The girl said, “Not at all, not at all. But do tell me what is cricket?”
Now you ask, “What is meditation?” and my whole life I have been talking about meditation. But still, I understand why the question arises. You listen, but you can’t get it. You understand intellectually what meditation is, but still, it remains elusive. You cannot catch hold of it. And you cannot catch hold of it!
It is not that something is wrong with you. Meditation cannot be caught hold of, you have to allow it to happen so that it can catch hold of you. Meditation is not something that you have to do; meditation is something for which you have to wait! It is something that comes and comes on its own. It is like a breeze. It is not that you can pull it in, that you can manage and order it. You cannot order anything that is valuable. Ordered things are ordered things.
You cannot order God. So meditation, satori, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana, God – they cannot be ordered. The very idea is silly. You cannot order. You can receive. Certainly, you can receive. You can invite, you can wait in patience. So whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling joyous, whenever you are feeling harmonious, in tune, then just sit silently. Wait for it. Just wait for it! Nothing else is needed to be done.
Meditation is not an action. You just wait. Relax and wait. Lie down or sit or stand – as you feel good – and wait for it. Wait, alert, and soon you will hear the whisperings, the silent steps of something which is coming closer to you. Soon you will see something is entering into your heart, into your being. You cannot see it, but it is there. You can feel it. It is like a fragrance that fills your nostrils. It is like light. Keep the window open. That’s all you need to do; just keep the window open, so when the light arises and the clouds are not there and the sun is high, the rays can enter in you. About meditation you can do only negative things. Keep the door open, keep the eyes open, keep yourself alert, and it comes. It certainly comes. It immediately starts flowing in you. It is a benediction. You cannot pull; you cannot manipulate it. A manipulated meditation will not be of any value. That’s what people are doing. Somebody is doing TM, somebody is doing something else – trying to manipulate.
Here, when you are doing the Chaotic [Dynamic] Meditation or the Kundalini or the Nadabrahma, these are not really meditations, you are just getting in tune. If you have seen them, it is like Indian classical musicians playing. For half an hour, or sometimes even more, they simply go on fixing their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will make the strings tight or loose, and the drum player will go on checking his drum – whether it is perfect or not. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music; this is just preparation.
Kundalini is not really meditation; it is just preparation. You are preparing your instrument. When it is ready, then you stand in silence. Then meditation starts. Then you are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting – these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.
Waiting is meditation – waiting with full awareness. And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you, it transforms you.
-Osho
From I Say Unto You, V.2, Discourse #6, Q8
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