Flight of the Alone to the Alone

Osho

Description

The ancient Kaivalya Upanishad is a search for ultimate freedom. It begins with a prayer to strengthen the senses. It takes great individual effort to become free, says Osho, but before making that effort, a greater, existential power has to be invoked: 'the first effort'. Embracing the senses is not a sign of weakness or indiscipline. The senses are, on the contrary, the door to experiencing the divine, a means to freedom. Often people misunderstand this, calling that which comes within the grasp of our sense organs 'the world' and that which doesn't, 'the divine'. According to this Upanishad and to Osho, both are divine. That is why Osho continually emphasizes the importance of love, celebration, creativity and humour on the path of awareness. Flight of the Alone to the Alone brings together a series of talks given by Osho on the Kaivalya Upanishad. It explores the nature of existence and tackles some of life's most fundamental challenges: achievement, loneliness, the eternal quest for happiness, and freedom.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 02 août 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351184430
• Langue: English

Extrait

OSHO

Flight of the Alone to the Alone
Talks on the Kaivalya Upanishad
Contents
About the Author
Preface
1. Oneness of Matter and Spirit
2. Knowing Existence
3. Deep within the Cave of the Heart
4. Eyes and Legs for the Journey
5. The Essence of Devotion
6. What is Found in Meditation
7. God Is the Power of Witnessing
8. The Lover and the Beloved Become One
9. The Fire of Knowing
10. Maya: The Hypnosis of the World
11. Beyond the Three Bodies
12. Thou Art That
13. The Watcher of Every Experience
14. The Infinitesimal and the Cosmic
15. To Melt Is to Know
16. There Is Only the One
17. Awareness and Effort
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Copyright
PENGUIN ANANDA FLIGHT OF THE ALONE TO THE ALONE
Osho defies categorization. His thousands of talks cover everything from the individual quest for meaning to the most urgent social and political issues facing society today. Osho s books are not written but are transcribed from audio and video recordings of his extemporaneous talks to international audiences. As he puts it, So remember: whatever I am saying is not just for you ... I am talking also for the future generations.
Osho has been described by the Sunday Times in London as one of the 1000 Makers of the 20th Century and by American author Tom Robbins as the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ . Sunday Mid-Day (India) has selected Osho as one of the ten people-along with Gandhi, Nehru and Buddha-who have changed the destiny of India. About his own work Osho said that he is helping to create the conditions for the birth of a new kind of human being. He often characterizes this new human being as Zorba the Buddha -capable both of enjoying the earthly pleasures of Zorba the Greek and the silent serenity of Gautama Buddha. Running like a thread through all aspects of Osho s talks and meditations is a vision that encompasses both the timeless wisdom of all ages past and the highest potential of today s (and tomorrow s) science and technology. Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life. His unique OSHO Active Meditations are designed to first release the accumulated stresses of body and mind, so that it is then easier to take the experience of stillness and thought-free relaxation into daily life.
Two autobiographical works by the author are available:
Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic, St Martin s Press, USA.
Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, OSHO Media International, Pune, India.
Preface
W hatever is given to you by existence cannot be without a hidden purpose. You have reason: reason has eyes, the capacity to think, to find out the right part. You have the heart and all its passions, but the heart knows how to sing, how to dance, how to love. The heart cannot create science and technology, neither can reason create love, peace, silence-all the qualities that make you transcend ordinary humanity.
The heart can give you the wings for transcendence and the flight of the alone to the alone. The heart is the door to where godliness can be found. Reason is absolutely incapable. It can create money, it can create thousands of other objective things, but it has no capacity to enter into your inner world.
There is no need for any conflict. Reason functions in the objective world, and the heart functions in the subjective world. And if you are alert, meditative, you can easily manage a balance between the two.
I have called your heart the Zorba, and the flight of your intelligence-which is nothing but refined energy of reason-Gautama the Buddha. Until now, Zorba and Buddha have been fighting. Both are losers, because the Buddha does not allow total freedom for the Zorba; neither does the Zorba allow the Buddha any life of his own.
So there have been Zorbas in the world-all their smiles and all of their joy are without any depth; they are not even skin deep. And there have been buddhas whose joy is profound, deep-but there is a constant disturbance from the Zorba because the Zorba does not want to starve. There is no difficulty in bringing them closer, to create a friendship between the two and finally a deep oneness.
Osho Reflections on Kahlil Gibran s The Prophet
Oneness of Matter and Spirit

Om.
May all the limbs of my body grow strong.
May my speech be nourished and strengthened.
May my nose, my eyes, my ears and my other sense organs be nourished and strengthened.
All upanishads are a likeness of the brahman, the ultimate reality.
May I never forget the brahman,
may the brahman never forget me,
may I never be forgotten.
Absorbed in the brahman, may I realize the dharma, the natural and eternal law of the universe described in the upanishads.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti.
K aivalya Upanishad . . .
The Kaivalya Upanishad is a longing for ultimate freedom. Kaivalya means the moment in your consciousness when you are utterly alone, but you do not feel lonely. You are totally solitary, and yet you do not feel the absence of the other. You are alone, but so whole that there is no trace of the need for another to fulfil you. Kaivalya means you remain utterly alone, but in such a state that the whole is contained in your being. Your very being becomes the whole. This is the longing of man that is hidden in his deepest, innermost core.
All misery is the misery of having boundaries. All misery is the misery of being limited. All misery is that I am not whole , that I am incomplete, and so many things are needed for me to be fulfilled. And even if all the requirements are met and all things are attained, I still remain unfulfilled and my incompleteness continues. Even if everything is achieved, I am still incomplete.
Out of this, the inquiry which we call religion arose in man: Could it be that if I am not complete even after acquiring everything I want, then this journeying in the dimension of acquiring is in itself wrong, pointless? Then I should look in some other direction, where I am not dependent on outer things to become complete, but where I am already complete in myself. Then nothing else will be needed for your wholeness.
Hence, those who have searched deeply have felt that man will not know bliss as long as any of his needs are dependent on others. As long as the other is needed, misery will remain. As long as my happiness depends on the other, I am bound to be miserable. As long as I am dependent on the other for anything, I am dependent, and there cannot be any bliss in dependence. If you were to distil the essence of all your miseries, what you would find in your hands would be dependence. And the ultimate essence of all bliss is freedom.
This ultimate freedom has been called moksha, this ultimate freedom has been called nirvana, this same ultimate freedom has been called kaivalya. There are three different reasons for this.
The ultimate freedom has been called moksha because, in that state, there are no limitations. The ultimate freedom has been called nirvana because there, the I does not exist; there, one s individual existence disappears and only existence remains. When I say I am , I have to use two words, I and am. We call it nirvana because in that moment the I disappears and only the am , the amness remains. There is no sense of I there, there is only isness. And we also call it kaivalya because, in this moment, only I am. Only I am means that everything, all, is contained in me. The whole sky is within me, the moon and the stars all move within me. Worlds are created and dissolved within me. This I has expanded and become one with the cosmos. This I has become the brahman, the ultimate reality. Hence, it is called kaivalya.
This Kaivalya Upanishad is a search for this ultimate freedom, an inquiry and an exploration into the path of this inquiry.
It begins with a prayer. It will be good to understand this too, because generally, any journey should begin with effort, not with prayer, with endeavour, not with prayer. But this upanishad begins with a prayer, and it is very meaningful.
The first thing is that what we are searching for will not be found through your effort. But this does not mean that it will be found without your effort, either. This is where there is a small difficulty, and this is the knot, the complexity of all religion, of all spiritual discipline: what you are searching for will not be found only through your effort, and it will also not be found without your effort. It will not be found through your effort because what you are searching for is too vast for you.
It is as if a man who is imprisoned in a jail decides to search for freedom; as if a prisoner, dependent and chained, tries to search for the open sky. What he is searching for is too big, too vast, and his capacity is too limited. If his capacity were not limited he would not be a prisoner in the first place; he would not be in jail at all. If his capacity were not limited, who would have been able to put chains on his hands? Who would have been able to shackle him? Who would have been able to create a prison around him? He is limited, weak; that s why he is in a prison. He is in prison is a statement about his limitations. Hence, nothing will be possible through his own efforts alone. If it were possible only through his efforts, he would not be in prison in the first place.
But this does not mean that freedom will happen without his efforts, either. Because if a prisoner just accepts his chains and goes to sleep, then no power in the world can free him. He cannot get free alone, on his own, and even the greatest power can t free him without his cooperation. So let us understand this most complex and profound problem of religion from the very beginning.
Man can become free, but he will also have to make efforts. But even before he makes any effort, he will have to invoke t