Three Steps to Awakening

Many people today are stressed and anxious, feeling unfulfilled by their work and relationships. In Three Steps to Awakening. Osho describes with immense clarity how to bring transforming meaningfulness into day-to-day life. With three simple steps, he show the way to awaken and expand consciousness to the full, and live of gratefulness and bliss.

"There are only three steps: freedom of consciousness, simplicity of mind, and emptiness of mind. One who sharpens his freedom, simplicity, and emptiness, will attain enlightenment."

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 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 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 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 individual doing 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.

These 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 recording 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 dangerous 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 destiny of India.

About his own 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 thread through all aspects of Osho's talks and meditation 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 acknowledge 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 an experience of stillness and though-free relax-ation into daily life.

Waking up or awakening means that the dream is over – whatever was known up to now remains no longer. So it is difficult to say what awakening means, because your language is sleep. At present, whatever can be told to you or whatever can be understood by will be in the language of the dream. If say that you will get happiness then you will think of the happiness which you have known in the dream. If I say that you will not get misery, then you will think of the same misery which you have known in the dream.

If You think, you will not attain. That is why all the buddhas have kept quiet. Whenever someone asked what will happen after the awaking they just kept quiet. They said. "Wake up and see," because this is beyond the language which you know, or this is beyond your understanding which you have through language. Neither your happiness nor your misery is there. Neither your peace nor your restlessness is there. Neither your satisfaction nor your dissatisfaction _ whatever you have known up to now is no there. The scriptures you have knows up to now are also not there. The images of the divine which were made by you are also not there. Your notions about heaven and hell are also not there. When you are not there, your notions also will not be there.

There is something which cannot be described, which cannot to defined – you can call it Brahman, Vishnupad, jinpad or buddhahood, but even by these words nothing can be known. If you wake up, only then can you know. A dumb man cannot describe the taste of sugar, but he can enjoy it.

What will happen after awakening? You will taste the divine, the taste which you have been trying to get all these past lives but could not get – you missed it always. It just cannot be described. If you are bored with the way you have been living, then wake up. But if you have not even a little bit of interest in it yet, then just turn over and go to sleep again.

But you will have to wake up one day. Sleep cannot be eternal, and sleep cannot be the ultimate rest, and darkness cannot be the experience of the ultimate truth sooner or later you will have to get up – it all depends on you. But whenever you awaken you will repent for not having woken up earlier – it just meant spreading out your hand – it was so near.