For years Osho has spoken to a worldwide audience on timeless issues such as meditation, freedom, love, happiness, and enlightenment. Osho states that one of his main reasons for his talks is to give people an experience of meditation and silence. Here Osho shares some of the insights and reasons for his talks: (double-click to view enlarged player on YouTube)
Who is Osho?
Osho is a contemporary mystic who has been transforming the life of millions of people through his unique meditation techniques as well as through his talks which have been transcribed and are already available as books throughout the world in more than 50 languages.
Special Characteristics of OSHO Talks
Osho speaks not to provide information or entertainment — though it can be both informative and entertaining — but rather to provide an opportunity to experience the state of relaxed alertness that lies at the core of meditation.
Osho has made many statements about his talks, and here are a few text excerpts where he addresses how and why he speaks:
About listening to his talks:
“How to give people a taste of meditation was my basic reason to speak, so I can go on speaking eternally — it does not matter what I am saying. All that matters is that I give you a few chances to be silent, which you find difficult on your own in the beginning.”
“These discourses are the foundations of your meditation.”
“I am making you aware of silences without any effort on your part. My speaking is for the first time being used as a strategy to create silence in you.”
“I don't speak to teach something; I speak to create something. These are not lectures; these are simply a device for you to become silent, because if you are told to become silent without making any effort you will find great difficulty.”
“I don't have any doctrine; my talking is really a process of dehypnosis. Just listening to me, slowly, slowly you will be free of all the programs that the society has forced you to believe in.”
“These questions and answers are really just a game to help you to get rid of words, thoughts.
“These are not ordinary discourses or talks. I am not interested in any philosophy or any political ideology. I am interested directly in transforming you.”
Osho about his talks:
I have been a teacher of philosophy for nine years, and finding that there was nothing except words, I entered into the world of mysticism. There I have found what was missing in all the philosophies, in all the logical treatises. But now it is impossible to say it. Still I speak. I have been speaking for thirty years continuously – round and round, hoping that somebody may get caught into the net of words and may be pulled out of the misery in which he is drowning. The words can do that much. They can pull you out of your logical world, your linguistic world, your world of philosophies. That too is great. Half the work is done, the remaining can be done by meditation.
I am speaking with love on the one hand, and on the other hand I am speaking with great bitterness for all those people who have been preventing human evolution towards buddhahood. I cannot forgive them, neither can I forget them.
I repeat again: the music of my voice is not my music, neither is the voice my voice. I am simply available to existence. Whatsoever it wants to say to you, I don’t hinder it, I don’t edit it, I don’t add anything to it. Just as in a mine you find raw gold, raw diamonds – uncut, unpolished: the same way I never polish anything. I never know what I am going to say to you. I simply allow the mine – for you to pick up all the raw diamonds. They belong to existence.
And you say, “I relax more and more and then the gaps….” Those gaps are almost inevitable. You may have heard many orators and many speakers: I am not an orator, I am not a speaker. The orator prepares what he is going to say: it is his own mind. And you will not find the orator leaving gaps; that is against the art of oratory.
I am not a master orator. I have never learned oratory. I just know how to communicate simply, straightforwardly, with human beings. I am simply talking to you. I am not an orator. Orators are politicians; orators are missionaries. I am not a missionary; I am not trying to convince anything; I am not trying to attract voters to me. I am simply talking to you. And I know that if you can talk heart to heart, it reaches to the deepest core of human beings. But I am not an orator.
The real question is not the understanding, but to become silent. Hearing is not the point, becoming silent is the point. So many times what happens is that what you have understood becomes a barrier, and it is good to listen to something that you do not understand at all; then thinking cannot interfere. When something is not understood there is no way for thoughts to move; they simply stop.
About OSHO Talks (1)
These discourses are the foundations of your meditation. Sitting with me in these discourses is nothing but creating more and more meditativeness in you. I don't speak to teach something; I speak to create something. These are not lectures; these are simply a device for you to become silent.
About OSHO Talks (2)
So when I say “listen” I am not saying “be attentive” – because in attention there is tension. The very word is out of “tension” – “attention” means “at tension.” Your mind is narrowed. When I say “listen,” I mean be relaxed, open; become a sponge. Soak it up. Let it sink into you. Listen to me as you listen to the birds singing in the trees or to the sound of running water. There is no meaning in it. Or, listen to me as you listen to music. Music has no intellectual meaning. You listen to it – you simply drink it, you let it in, you allow it into your very innermost core. And you enjoy it. If somebody later on asks if you remember what music you have heard, you will not be able to say anything. You will say, “I enjoyed it, it was beautiful, it was something that thrilled me to the very core. I was refreshed through it. I became more alive through it, I felt a sudden joy bursting in my heart.” But these are the impacts that happen to you: there is nothing to say about the music. Listen to me as you do to music.
So don’t be worried. If you forget, good. I am not saying these things to be remembered. I am not here to make you knowledgeable, professional pundits, no. I am not here to give you a memory training. But an upsurge of understanding can happen. You can respond. To whatsoever I am saying you can respond, you can vibrate with it. And that will be real hearing. That is the first step.
About OSHO Talks (3)
The art of listening is based on silence in the mind, so that the mind does not interfere, it simply allows whatever is coming to you. I am not saying you have to agree with it. Listening does not mean that you have to agree with it, neither does it mean that you have to disagree with it. The art of listening is just pure listening, factual, undistorted. And once you have listened then comes the point whether you agree or not, but the first thing is to listen.
About OSHO Talks (4)
One has to learn very earnestly the art of listening. It is a difficult art, and the greatest difficulty is that everybody thinks he knows it. Just because you can hear, you think you can also listen. And these are two differing things, so different that unless you start listening you will never know the difference.
About OSHO Talks (5)
I am speaking to you and I am fully aware from where these words are coming they are coming from my nothingness. I don't find any other place from where they are coming. Nothingness is not nothing. Nothingness is all. And to recognize nothingness as all, as an experience, is the only way to find your unity with the universe.
About OSHO Talks (6)
I have to start with your language, and slowly slowly, you will start learning my language. I am bilingual and I will make you also bilingual. There are two languages: the language of words and the language of silence. Right now I have to use the language of words to translate the poetry of silence, the music of silence. Later on, when you have developed a little meditativeness, you will be able to understand the poetry of silence.