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The Mother Of All Spiritual Threads
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Mumukshu
Started Topics :
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373
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 08:13
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Sex and death, male and female, yin and yang… the paradoxical world not only of Hinduism but all major spiritual traditions of the East.
And meditation -- which resolves all paradoxes into mysteries. And springs the trap of the mind so that its owner is finally free to leave the shores of contradiction and enter the river of self-discovery.
Osho says this about it:
Death always occurs in the present. Death, love, meditation – they all occur in the present. So if you are afraid of death, you cannot love. If you are afraid of love, you cannot meditate. If you are afraid of meditation, your life will be useless. Useless not in the sense of any purpose, but useless in the sense that you will never be able to feel any bliss in it. It will be futile.
It may seem strange to connect these three: love, meditation, death. It is not! They are similar experiences. So if you can enter in one, you can enter in the remaining two.
One more thing to understand: Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu all are manifestations of some Ultimate even higher than themselves, some “beyond” which is outside the comprehension even of the gods. Of the three, Shiva is the one who is the most human. Brahma has done his work of creation and is more or less in retirement until some faraway time in the future, after the destruction of this world, when his services might be needed again. Vishnu takes care of the everyday cause-and-effect of things, in a sense the mere household chores, with all the dispassionate accuracy of an accountant. But Shiva, in all his fearsomeness and throbbing life, is the one who longs for a reunion with his original source, who is drunk with some half-remembered vision of his ultimate home. Shiva’s sutras are a map that shows the thirsty how to reach the well.  "If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." |
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Mumukshu
Started Topics :
6
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373
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 08:14
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This Book of Secrets is a contemporary mystic’s commentary on Shiva’s 5000-year-old Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – literally translated, “techniques for going beyond consciousness.” The fact that the word “tantra” means simply “technique” or “method” will be a surprise to many. Tantra in the modern age – predictably, perhaps – is associated almost entirely with sex. In fact, of the 112 meditation techniques described in The Book of Secrets, less than a half-dozen are directly concerned with the sexual act. The point of tantra, we discover in the following pages, is not simply to provide people with better sex lives – rather, it is to use countless situations and encounter in the ordinary life of human beings, including sex, as doorways to the experience of meditation. As Osho says, in the first chapter:
These sutras of Shiva are the oldest, most ancient techniques. But you can call them the latest also because nothing can be added to them. They have taken in all the possibilities, all the ways of cleaning the mind, transcending the mind. Not a single method could be added to Shiva’s one hundred and twelve methods. It is the most ancient and yet the latest, yet the newest. Old like old hills – the methods seem eternal – and they are new like a dewdrop before the sun, because they are so fresh.
These one hundred and twelve methods of meditation constitute the whole science of transforming mind.
Note Osho’s use of the word “science”. He emphasizes again and again, not only in The Book of Secrets but in nearly all his recorded discourses, that meditation is not a belief system, a doctrine, an “answer” to the question, for example, of what happens when we die. Meditation is an inner state where, in fact, all belief systems, doctrines, and ready made answers have disappeared – leaving only the pure, thought-free awareness that alone is able to perceive reality directly, as it is. But the techniques of meditation are not meditation, either – so don’t make that mistake. The techniques are just maps, like scientific formulae. The point is not to study them for their own sake, but to use them, to experiment with them in the laboratory of one’s own inner space. Meditation is what can happen as the result of the experiment.
"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." |
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Mumukshu
Started Topics :
6
Posts :
373
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 08:15
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But wait – what does all this have to do with great sex? People who have been able to bring meditation into their lovemaking might tell you to throw away all your “how-to” manuals and learn instead to bring your attention to the here and now. After that, everything will take care of itself.
And what happens when we die? People who have tasted meditation may not be able to give you a precise answer, but they can tell you that they have known and experienced the immortal within themselves, and have come away from the experience knowing that death is just a dream.
Sex, death, and meditation – who better to tie them all together than Shiva, destroyer and lover, the god with the most human of aspirations – to reach higher than himself and unlock the secrets of all that is unknown. And who better to bring the secrets of Shiva’s sutras to the present day than Osho, whose insistence is that all of life, from sex to super consciousness, from spirituality to science, must be reclaimed from all our dark notions good and evil, of higher and lower, and restored to the luminous wholeness that is our birthright as human beings.
Osho gives quite detailed guidelines in the introductory chapter for using The Book of Secrets. A few of them bear emphasizing here, and a few other things about the context in which this book was created will be helpful to the reader in using the book as it was intended.
"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." |
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Mumukshu
Started Topics :
6
Posts :
373
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 08:16
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Each chapter of the book was originally delivered as an extemporaneous talk, addressed to a small gathering of friends and disciples. Osho always speaks without notes or other special preparation, except (in this case, for example) a copy of the sutras he is commenting on, or (elsewhere) a few jokes or anecdotes gathered beforehand that he might use to illustrate a point in the course of this talk.
For those who are accustomed to reading “how-to” and “self-help” books this context might be disconcerting at first. You won’t find a lecture here, with points one, two and three to be taken down and repeated back later. There are no footnotes, subtitles, charts, or handy illustrations. To approach the text with those kinds of expectations is to meet frustration in very short order. It will be better to read as you would a story, or poetry, or the lyrics of a song. In an attitude of patience and receptivity, with the assurance that all will be revealed in time.
In the beginning of this Book of Secrets, Osho urges his audience to experiment with each of the meditation techniques he talks about, as they go along – “just play with it for three days,” he suggests. And he emphasizes the word “play” – not to be serious, not to make “strenuous efforts” or “discipline yourself,” but “play”. And when you try a technique and find that it really “clicks” with you, a technique that you enjoy and seems to bring something new and fresh into your life, then you can explore it more deeply. In that sense, you as reader are in a better position than the original audience – you can give as much time as needed to each chapter, to play with each of the techniques given, before moving on to the next.
"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." |
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Mumukshu
Started Topics :
6
Posts :
373
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 08:17
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Of course you can also move straight into the book at any point, should a particular technique really grab your attention and demand that you try it right away.
Do be aware that each of the “sutra chapter” is followed by a chapter containing Osho’s responses to questions from his audience. In nearly all cases, the questions relate to the techniques given in the previous chapter. So as you start to experiment, it will be helpful to look into the chapter immediately following the techniques you are playing with. You will very likely find there some extra hint, some greater depth of understanding, some “problem” dissolved.
And finally, remember not to mistake the map for the destination. The Book of Secrets is not a series of answers, it’s a set of keys. Osho promises at the very beginning that this set of keys is complete, not missing even one pattern for even a single door. The key to your own door is in here somewhere. All you have to do is try the keys, one after the other, until you find one that fits. Then open the door and see for yourself what lies within.
"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." |
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mk47
Inactive User
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118
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4444
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 10:27
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bom shiva baba mahakala ..truly u are enlightened .. boom !
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day_tripper
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
28
Posts :
1120
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 11:11
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To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy. -- Someone said
To explain the unknown by the unknown is called organised/pop religion/Spirituality -- I said 
"It's not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden stop at the end." - Douglas Adams |
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psy-junky
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
11
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2151
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 11:25
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Definitely a good read.
Thanks for sharing.
Keep it coming, enlighten us all.
Jai Bholenath |
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day_tripper
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
28
Posts :
1120
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 11:56
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dhamma walker
Moderator
Started Topics :
51
Posts :
620
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 20:48
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Hello Everybody ... Please share all your spiritual thoughts and ideas within this thread only.
thank you for your understanding.
Love n Light
Foot Stompin Records
www.footstompinrecords.com |
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Allegoric - Psynce
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
61
Posts :
1453
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 20:59
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*neon nymph*
Moderator
Started Topics :
13
Posts :
870
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 21:09
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Quote:
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On 2008-01-08 20:48, dhamma walker wrote:
Hello Everybody ... Please share all your spiritual thoughts and ideas within this thread only.
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whewww!!!!! ; )
I can only please one person per day. Today's not your day. Tomorrrow isn't looking good either. |
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dE.Tonatik
Detonatik
Started Topics :
83
Posts :
2374
Posted : Jan 8, 2008 22:48
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Mad Purple State
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
39
Posts :
1468
Posted : Jan 9, 2008 01:08
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lol... it had to come to this...
but a smart move... must admit. 
Mad.
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness... |
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jabba
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
662
Posted : Jan 9, 2008 12:25
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Us HUMANS always have been drawn towards stories about others to guide us, but for that other person or entity or the whole clan whose stories are told may not be real but a fantasy beyond his/her/their own imaginations which now becomes unreal ................................BUT on belief of the storyteller the audience manifests the same and makes it so real in its present that to defy or falsify "it" becomes and remains impossible AND the only choice left for the universe is to accept it in its NOW/HERE true nature "the NOW manifested reality based on partial truth ."
my own so dont look for grammeticals and sense 
To focus sometimes you need to spin hard on your soul's axis..... just don't ask how and what it means ;) |
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