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Months ago, we began the module Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation with the first three of Shiva’s 112 meditation techniques, Between Two Breaths, As Breath Turns from Down to Up, and Whenever In-Breath and Out-Breath Fuse, all three of these meditation techniques focused on the breath. We moved on to the third eye with Attention Between Eyebrows and self-remembering with Be Aware You Are.
With the technique Wherever Your Mind is Wandering, we began to get a glimpse of witnessing. With Consider Your Essence as Light Rays Rising, we explored the chakras. We tossed attachment for body aside with You are Everywhere and dropped thinking with Thinking No Thing.
And then we moved on to the more subtle techniques, including Contemplate Something Beyond Perception, and the sublime Put Mindstuff in Such Inexpressible Fineness. In our last Tantra program, we entered shunyam, emptiness with Suppose Your Passive Form to be an Empty Room.
In today’s program, we will come to the end of Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation with this the twentieth program. This program is based on the last of the meditation techniques from The Book of Secrets, number 112 of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra and is called Enter Space, Supportless, Eternal, Still.
Yesterday in our dialogue the topic of blending techniques and whether Osho’s Witnessing Meditation is a technique and not to be blended with the 112 techniques.
Yes, we are instructed not to blend the techniques. But Osho’s Witnessing is not a technique. What is it? It is “seeing what is, without interfering.” We watch the activities of the body (what is), we watch the activities of the mind (what is), we watch the activities of the heart (what is), all without interfering. It is simply witnessing. Witnessing is not a technique. It is Zazen Meditation. It is sitting silently, doing nothing.
Because we are already doing much, in order to come to doing nothing, something has to change. What has to change is that we have to stop the doing. How do we stop the doing, i.e., thinking, dreaming, etc.? We stop thinking by watching our thinking without interacting.
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It also seems to me with almost every one of the 112 techniques witnessing comes into play.
For example:
Attention Between Eyebrows, Let Mind Be Before Thought. How do we “let mind be before thought”? By watching mind with indifference.
Eyes Closed See your Inner Being in Detail. How do we “see our inner being in detail”? By not going out and interacting with mind.
When Singing, Seeing, Tasting, Be Aware You Are. How do we become aware we are? By not being in thinking. By watching the body in singing, etc. with a double pointed arrow. The double pointed arrow means, “remember you are.”
Wherever Your Mind is Wandering. We watch our mind wandering but without grasping, rejecting, analyzing, judging.
Before Desire and Before Knowing. Ditto.
Thinking No Thing. Witnessing.
Suppose You Contemplate Something Beyond Perception. Ditto.
Perceive One Being as Knower and Known. The double pointed arrow of the witness.
Put Mindstuff in Such Inexpressible Fineness. How do we “put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness”? By watching, by witnessing.
And all the rest even up to the last technique, Enter Space, Supportless, Eternal, Still. How to enter that space? We enter by sitting silently, doing nothing, just remaining a witness until there is nothing left to witness. Just supportless, eternal, still.
So yes, we are instructed not to blend the techniques, but witnessing is not a technique and is at the very core of each of these techniques. And it is through watching, witnessing, that we enter these techniques, and it is by watching, witnessing, that we arrive at the space which these techniques are pointing.
So, why do I refer to Osho’s Witnessing Meditation (O-Meditation) as the “bee’s knees?” Because it is the way and the goal, the first step is the last step.
-purushottama