The Perfect Way

The book you hold in your hand or you are just ordering from an online store is a unique book: It is the first book by the contemporary mystic Osho.

At the beginning of his public life Osho, who is at that time a professor of philosophy at Jabalpur University, introduces people to a new and unique understanding of meditation during experiential meditation camps. He speaks to the participants and responds to questions. This book is the published record of Osho's first meditation camp in Rajasthan, India.

In fifteen small chapters he gives a condensed presentation of his understanding of meditation which he then elaborates in many more talks and publications — but the essential message is already available in this book. Osho speaks to the individual, not to a collective, not the abstract collective of humanity, or a collective defined by religion or nationality or race but to individuals as the core element of existence. We used one of his opening comments as a longer quote on the front cover of the book as it seems so important.

Osho mentions this book on several occasions in his later talks. When the second prime minister of India traveled to Russia, a copy of. The Perfect Way was with him. And when someone in contact with Osho at the age of ninety stumbled upon The Perfect Way, he commented, "AT my learning of the scriptures was futile, only this small book is enough."

In The Perfect. Way the reader meets a human being who knows, but who also knows how to convey what he knows. His genius in full flight, he points us as far as one can with words toward the inner world of the self, toward the zone of silence. What starts on a hot summer day in the early 1960's will prove to be the first seed of a revolutionary experiment in the flowering of human consciousness — one which will eventually transform the lives of millions of people all over the world.

Osho's unique contribution to the understanding of who we are defies categorization. Mystic and scientist, a rebel¬lious 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 21st 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 methodology: the OSHO Talks. Here words become music, the listener discovers who is listening, and the awareness moves from what is being heard to the indi-vidual doing the listening. Magically, as silence arises, what needs to be heard is understood directly, free from the dis¬traction of a mind that can only interrupt and interfere with this delicate process.

Man since Jesus Christ." Sunday Mid-Day (India) has selected Osho as one of ten people — along with Gandhi, Nehru and Buddha — who have changed the des¬tiny of India.

These thousands of talks cover everything from the indi¬vidual 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 these 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 dan¬gerous

About his own work Osho has 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 earthy pleasures of a Zorba the Greek and the silent serenity of a Gautama the 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 con¬temporary 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 an experi¬ence of stillness and thought-free relaxation into daily life.