Osho on three steps of Awareness
Question: Beloved Master, Is Maturation an ongoing process? How is maturation related to awareness? Please explain.
Osho: Yes. Maturation is an ongoing process. There is no full stop, not even a semicolon anywhere… it goes on and on. The universe is infinite. So is the possibility of your maturing. You can become so huge…. Your consciousness is not confined to your body. It can spread all over existence and all the stars can be within you. And there is no place where you will find a plate that says, ”Here ends the universe.” It is just not possible. It never begins; it never ends.
And you are part of it. You have been here always and you will be here always. Only forms change, and forms don’t matter. What matters is the content. So remember that particularly in America, containers matter more than the content. Who cares about the content? The container has to be beautiful.
Remember, the container is not you. You are the content. Forms change, your being remains the same. And it goes on growing, maturing, goes on becoming more enriched. And you ask, ”What is the relationship between awareness and maturity?” Awareness is the method; maturation is the result. Become more aware and you will have more maturity; hence, I teach you awareness and don’t talk about maturity. It is going to happen if you are aware.
There are three steps of awareness. First, become aware of your body – walking, chopping wood or carrying water from the well. Be watchful, be alert, aware, conscious. Don’t go on doing things like a zombie, like a somnambulist, a sleepwalker. When you have become aware of your body and its actions, then move deeper – to your mind and its activity, thoughts, imagination, projections. When you have become deeply aware of the mind, you will be surprised.
When you become aware of your bodily processes, you will be surprised there too. I can move my hand mechanically, I can move it with full awareness. When I move it with full awareness, there is grace, there is beauty. I can speak without awareness. There are orators, speakers…. I don’t know any oratory; I have never learned the art of speaking, because to me it looks foolish. If I have something to say, that is enough. But I am speaking to you with full awareness, each word, each pause… I am not an orator, not a speaker.
But when you are aware of speaking, it starts becoming art. It takes on the nuances of poetry and music. One man, a Western journalist, wrote a book, the new Mystics. His name is Aubrey Menen. He introduced me to the West. He has covered other mystics, but I was on his front cover. And the things he said, I could not believe myself. He said that he has listened to Adolf Hitler, who was a tremendous orator. He has listened to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, who could hold millions of people while he was speaking.
He mentioned Kennedy – President Kennedy, who was a great speaker. But I was surprised: he said that listening to me, he felt a tremendous difference. ”Certainly this man is not trained in oratory or speaking, but whatever he is saying is reaching directly to people’s hearts. It was not the case with Adolf Hitler, Jawaharlal Nehru or President Kennedy; they were just repeating words like parrots.”
This is bound to happen if you speak with awareness. Then every gesture, every word has a beauty of its own. There is grace. When you become aware of the mind, you are in for a greater surprise. The more you become aware, the less thoughts move on the track. If you have one hundred percent thoughts, there is no awareness. If you have one percent awareness, there are only ninety-nine percent thoughts – in exact proportion. When you have ninety-nine percent awareness, there is only one percent thought, because it is the same energy.
As you become more aware there is no energy available for thoughts; they die out. When you are one hundred percent aware, the mind becomes absolutely silent. That is the time to move still deeper.
The third step: to become aware of feelings, moods, emotions. In other words, first the body – its action; second, the mind – its activity; third, the heart and its functions. When you move to the heart and bring your awareness there, again a new surprise. All that is good grows, and all that is bad starts disappearing. Love grows, hate disappears. Compassion grows, anger disappears. Sharing grows, greed disappears.
When your awareness of the heart is complete, the last surprise, and the greatest surprise: you don’t have to take any step. A quantum leap happens on its own accord. From the heart, you suddenly find yourself in your being, at the very center. There you are aware only of awareness, conscious only of consciousness. There is nothing else to be aware of, or to be conscious of. And this is the ultimate purity. This is what I call enlightenment.
And this is your birthright! If you miss, only you are responsible. You cannot dump the responsibility on anybody else. And it is so simple and natural, that you just have to begin. Only the first step is difficult. The whole journey is simple. There is a saying that the first step is almost the whole journey. Okay?
Source: From Book “From Bondage to Freedom” – Osho
