Osho Confronts the Followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

In 1969 followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi invited Osho to talk to them. This was the first occasion on which Osho addressed a western audience, and the first time he talked publicly at length in English. The discourse has been published in OTI January 1 & 16, 1991; and February 1, 1991.

Osho: Really, there can be no method as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a method. Through technique, through method, you cannot go beyond mind. When you leave all methods, all techniques, you transcend mind. So meditation itself is not a method. Truth cannot be achieved through method.

Method is our own invention. We, who are ignorant, have achieved knowledge through methods constructed, created, projected, in our ignorance. Through method you can achieve a sort of self-hypnosis, a sort of auto-hypnosis. Any method, whatsoever it’s name, can only give you an illusory kind of peace. Through method you cannot go beyond yourself, because the method is yours, and it will strengthen you, your ego, your state of mind. If you leave all methods and all paths, and all ways, and remain in a total vacuum, doing nothing, thinking nothing – only then what we call meditation can be achieved.

But if you are following some method, some path, some guru, then you are going nowhere... 

(many people laugh loudly in disbelief.)

... because it cannot lead you anywhere. It can only lead you into an illusory state of auto-hypnosis.

SINCE THE MATERIAL ASPECT OF LIFE IS GOVERNED BY PHYSICAL APPLICATION OF THE ESSENCE OF LIFE, IT WOULD SEEM THAT WITHOUT ANY METHOD AT ALL THAT THERE WOULD BE NO RESULT SINCE WE MUST GO FROM THE PHYSICAL TO THE NON-PHYSICAL. SO MY QUESTION IS: THERE MUST BE SOME MECHANICAL PROCESS
INVOLVED, THERE MUST BE, EVEN IF IT IS ONLY WORKING ON A LEVEL, YOU KNOW?

Osho: No there cannot be any mechanical process, because through any mechanical process you cannot achieve consciousness. A mechanical process itself leads to unconscious states of mind, because a mechanical process itself is unconscious. If you are thinking in terms of seeking a state of awareness it cannot be achieved through any mechanical process. A mechanical process makes you a machine, not a man. The more you become mechanical, the more technical, the more Like a machine, you lose consciousness. You can achieve some unconscious states of mind, but you cannot achieve awareness. Awareness is not an achievement through mechanical process. 

And you make the distinction between the physical and the spiritual – there is no such distinction. There is nothing like physical and nothing like spiritual. There is one thing: when it is seen it is material, when it is unseen it is spiritual. And there is no going beyond the physical because there are not two things; there is not a gap between the material and the spiritual. The whole is one. So don’t think in terms of material and spiritual. That is the old nonsense, the very old nonsense. People have made a gulf in the human mind, divided the human mind into parts – physical, spiritual, mental. There are no such divisions.

Early Talks of Osho