Encouraging People in Meditation

Osho on Encouraging People in Meditation

Question: Beloved Osho, What is the Best way to Encourage People in Meditation?
Osho: The first thing: for a patient to go to the doctor, you must make him realize that he is sick; otherwise there is no need to go to the doctor. So the people you want to encourage into meditation: first you have to make them aware that they are frustrated, perhaps for so long that they have forgotten that they are sad. They cannot remember when they laughed from their very hearts. They have become robots -- they do things because they have to be done but there is no joy in doing them.

They are living an accidental life. Their birth is accidental, their marriage is accidental, their children are accidental, their job is accidental. Their life has no sense of intrinsic growth and direction. That's why they cannot feel like rejoicing. So first you have to make them aware where they are -- and almost everybody is in the same situation. Death is coming close -- you cannot even rely on your being here tomorrow.

And your life is an absolute desert -- it has not found any oasis, it has not felt any meaning, any significance -- and death may destroy all possibilities in the future. So first you have to make them aware of their meaningless, accidental, frustrated life. They know it, but they try to suppress their knowing in many ways, because to know it continuously is a torture. So they go to the movies to forget it.

They go to parties, they go to picnics, they drink alcoholic beverages; they do everything -- just to somehow not remember the reality of their life, their hollowness, futility. This is the most important part -- to remind them. And once a person remembers all this, then to lead him towards meditation is a very simple thing, because meditation is the only answer to all the questions of man. It may be frustration, it may be depression, it may be sadness, it may be meaninglessness, it may be anguish: The problems may be many but the answer is one.

Meditation is the answer. And the simplest method of meditation is just a way of witnessing. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation, but witnessing is an essential part of all one hundred and twelve methods. So as far as I am concerned, witnessing is the only method. Those one hundred and twelve are different applications of witnessing. The essential core, the spirit of meditation is to learn how to witness.

You are seeing a tree: You are there, the tree is there, but can't you find one thing more? -- that you are seeing the tree, that there is a witness in you which is seeing you seeing the tree. The world is not divided only into the object and the subject. There is also something beyond both, and that beyond is meditation. So in every act... and I don't want people to sit for one hour or half an hour in the morning or in the evening. That kind of meditation is not going to help, because if you meditate for one hour, then for twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite of it.

Meditation can be victorious: witnessing is such a method that it can spread over twenty-four hours of your day. Eating, don't get identified with the eater. The food is there, the eater is there, and you are here, watching. Walking, let the body walk but you simply watch. Slowly, the knack comes. It is a knack, and once you can watch small things.... This crow, crowing... you are listening. These are two -- object and subject. But can't you see a witness who is seeing both? -- The crow, the listener, and still there is someone who is watching both.

It is such a simple phenomenon. Then you can move into deeper layers: you can watch your thoughts; you can watch your emotions, your moods. There is no need to say, "I am sad." The fact is that you are a witness that a cloud of sadness is passing over you. There is anger -- you can simply be a witness. There is no need to say, "I am angry." You are never angry -- there is no way for you to be angry -- you are always a witness. The anger comes and goes; you are just a mirror.

Things come, get reflected, move -- and the mirror remains empty and clean, unscratched by the reflections. Witnessing is finding your inside mirror. And once you have found it, miracles start happening. When you are simply witnessing the thoughts, thoughts disappear. Then there is suddenly a tremendous silence you have never known. When you are watching the moods -- anger, sadness, happiness -- they suddenly disappear and an even greater silence is experienced.

And when there is nothing to watch -- then the revolution. Then the witnessing energy turns upon itself because there is nothing to prevent it; there is no object left. The word "object" is beautiful. It simply means that which prevents you, objects you. When there is no object to your witnessing, it simply comes around back to yourself -- to the source. And this is the point where one becomes enlightened. Meditation is only a path: the end is always buddhahood, enlightenment. And to know this moment is to know all.

Then there is no misery, no frustration, no meaninglessness; then life is no longer an accident. It becomes part of this cosmic whole -- an essential part. And a tremendous bliss arises that this whole existence needs you. Man's greatest need is to be needed. If somebody needs you, you feel gratified. But if the whole existence needs you, then there is no limit to your bliss. And this existence needs even a small blade of grass as much as the biggest star.

There is no question of inequality. Nobody can substitute for you. If you are not there, then existence will be something less and will remain always something less -- it will never be full. That feeling -- that this whole immense existence is in need of you -- takes all miseries away from you. For the first time, you have come home.