मांडूक्य उपनिषद: Philosophia Ultima (Talks on The Mandukya Upanishad)

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there is no way to go beyond the Mandukya Upanishad, its message is eternal and represents the ultimate in human consciousness. While science dissects and divides, the Upanishad is a holistic, individual approach, a unifying vision. "That's the message of the Upanishadic philosophy, of the Mandukya Upanishad: wholeness," says Osho as he uses its twelve verses, and one from the Ishavasya Upanishad, to illuminate the meaning of "om" and show the four stages on the path to enlightenment.

Exploring each verse with deep understanding, using humor and jokes rather than academic commentary, and responding to questions on many aspects of modern life. Osho encourages the reader to an awakening based on their own experience.

Osho's unique contribution to the understanding of who we are defies categorization. Mystic and scientist, a rebellious spirit whose sole interest is to alert humanity to the urgent need to discover a new way of living. To continue as before is to invite threats to our very survival on this unique and beautiful planet.

His essential point is that only by changing ourselves, one individual at a time, can the outcome of all our "selves" - our societies, our cultures, our beliefs, our world - also change. The doorway to that change is meditation. Osho the scientist has experimented and scrutinized all the approaches of the past and examined their effects on the modern human being and responded to their shortcomings by creating a new starting point for the hyperactive 21" Century mind: OSHO Active Meditations.

Once the agitation of a modern lifetime has started to settle, "activity" can melt into "passivity," a key starting point of real meditation. To support this next step, Osho has transformed the ancient "art of listening" into a subtle contemporary method- ology: the OSHO Talks. Here words become music, the listener discovers who is listening, and the awareness moves from what is being heard to the individual doing the listening. Magically, as silence arises, what needs to be heard is understood directly, free from the distraction of a mind that can only interrupt and interfere with this delicate process.

The first thing I would like to say to you is that I have not chosen this Upanishad to comment upon it. Commentaries are already too many and they have not helped anyone. They may have harmed many, they may have become hindrances to many, but they have not helped anyone. Commentaries cannot help because commentaries are second rate. I am not going to comment on this Upanishad; rather, on the contrary, I am going to respond to it. I will just echo and re-echo.

Really, whatsoever I say will belong basically to me. The Upanishad is just an excuse. Through it I will explain myself- remember this. Whatever I have felt, whatever I have known and lived, I would like to talk about it. I feel the same has been the case with the seers of the Upanishads. They have known, they have lived, they have experienced the same truth. Their ways of expression may be different - their language is very ancient; it has to be decoded again so that it becomes available to you, to the contemporary mind. But whatever they have said, they have said the basic thing.

Whenever someone comes to be a void, whenever someone comes to be a nobody, this happens - that which has happened to the seers of the Upanishads. Whenever you are not, the divine becomes present; whenever you are, the divine is absent.

Your presence is the problem, your absence is the door. These sages have become total nobodies. We do not even know their names; we do not know who wrote these Upanishads, who communicated them. They have not signed them. No photograph of them exists, no knowledge about their lives. They have simply become absent. They have said whatsoever is true, but just as a vehicle. They have not been in any way involved in the expression. They have made themselves completely absent so the message becomes totally present.

These Upanishads are eternal. They do not belong to this country, they do not belong to any religion. They do not belong, they cannot belong, to anybody. They belong only to those who are ready to take a jump into nothingness.

I have chosen to talk about the Upanishads because to me they represent one of the purest expressions of the ultimate that is possible, if it is possible at all.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages