Osho Quotes on Non Duality

Osho Quotes on Non Duality

1. Awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality. Awareness is non-dual, and mind is dual.
2. If you go outwards you will move into the world of duality. If you go inwards you will move into the world of non-duality; you will become non-polar.
3. Enlightenment is the realization of the non-dual.
4. When there is I, it creates thou. When there is I it creates duality, and all is lost in duality. When there is no I, then there is non-duality. Then you are one with existence, utterly one. Then you are nothing but a pulsation of existence itself, just a ripple in the lake of this infinite consciousness.
5. If you are divided in two, into man and woman, negative/ positive, darkness/light, mind/heart, thought/feeling — if you are divided in two, your energy will be going downward. Division is the way of the downward. When you are undivided, one, you start moving upward. To be one is to move upward, to be two is to move downward. Duality is the way to hell, non-duality is the way to heaven.
6. These are the two planes of humanity: duality, the plane of duality, what Hindus call DWAITA, the plane of two; and non-duality, the plane of one, the plane of the non-dual. When you are divided you are in this world; when you are undivided, you have transcended — you are no longer here, you have penetrated into the Beyond. Then boundaries meet and the boundaries meet in you. So the whole effort is how to become undivided, how to become one.
7. This has to be the criterion whether you have reached the goal or not. If there is still something as its polar opposite, you have not reached; you are still in the duality. One can move from one duality to another duality; it does not make any change. One has to move from duality to non-duality, because non-duality is the ultimate. The ultimate has no opposite to it. It is the final synthesis where all opposites have melted into one, when male and female have melted into one.
8. REMEMBER, when we use the word ‘oneness’, that too is part of duality. If there is no duality how can there be oneness? That’s why Hindus never use ‘oneness’. If you ask Shankara, “What is the nature of existence?” he says, “Non-dual, ADVAITA, not two.” He will never say one, because how can you say one? If there is only one, how can you say one? One needs two to be meaningful. If there is no possibility of the second, of the two, then what is the use of saying that it is one? Shankara says, “At the most, I can say not two, but I cannot say positively one. I can say what the reality is not: it is not two. I cannot say what it is, because meaning, words, all become useless.”
9. Enlightenment simply means you disappear, you become the whole. There is no question of separation or no separation. There is no question of oneness, because even the word `oneness’ hides behind it twoness. What do you mean when you say oneness? — you mean twoness. The mystics have avoided using the word `oneness’, but you cannot. In the very nature of intellectual understanding you can go a little roundabout — and that’s what people like Shankara have done. They talk about non-duality, no-twoness; they don’t talk about oneness. They want to indicate oneness, but they don’t want to use the word `oneness’ because oneness points towards twoness.
10. Enlightenment means the point from where you take a jump into the non-dual. Before that point is duality. Everything is divided.
11. Language creates duality, language exists through duality. It cannot indicate the non-dual. If I say ‘day’, immediately I create night. If I say ‘life’, immediately I create death. If I say ‘good’, immediately bad is created. If I say ‘no’, just by the side of the no, yes is existing. Language can exist only through the opposite. That’s why we see life as always divided — God and devil. Drop language, drop this linguistic pattern. Once language is no more on your mind and you look directly into reality, day IS night. Suddenly you will start laughing at why you missed it so long! Day, every day turns into night; night turns into day every morning again, and you have been missing. Life is always turning into death, death always turns again into life, and you have been missing. They are not two, they are one whole. This is the non-dual, ADWAITA. This is the most essential religion.
12. The first layer is called the objective and the second layer is called the subjective. But beyond both there is a witness which can watch both the body and the mind, the material and the nonmaterial. This witness, this consciousness, this awareness, is beyond both. It is neither material nor non-material, because it is beyond both. And you cannot go beyond it. You cannot witness it. You have come to the very end of the rope, you have come to the very bottom of existence. This awareness is called the transcendental, because it transcends the duality of body-mind. And to be centered in it, you have come home, because there is no way beyond it. Here ends the road.
13. When you don’t have a choice, you are already transcendental. You have transcended. Then the duality doesn’t divide you. You remain undivided. And this is ADWAIT; this is what Shankara means when he says ‘non-dualism’; this is what the Upanishads teach: to be non-dual, to be one. To be one means not to choose, because once you choose your choice divides you. You say,’I would like to be happy, and I don’t want to be unhappy’; you are divided. You simply say,’Whatsoever happens, everything is welcome. My doors are open. Sadness comes; come be my guest. Happiness comes; come be my guest. I will be a host to everything, with no rejection, with no choice, with no like, no dislike.’ Suddenly, nobody can divide you. You have attained to an inner unity, to an inner melody, to an inner music, an inner harmony.
14. All duality is a mind creation, all duality is created by the clinging and attached mind. When there is no attachment there is no duality. When you want something to happen according to you, and it doesn’t happen, duality arises. When you are ready to relax with everything as it happens, where is the duality? Somebody insults you and you say thank you. Your woman leaves you and you go and give her a good send-off. Where is the duality? Richness comes and you enjoy it. And one day you are poor and you enjoy poverty. Where is the duality? If you can enjoy all that happens, if you can enjoy the roses that are always there and you don’t count the thorns, then where is the duality? Then the mind becomes non-dual. Then all fragments disappear, then a great oneness arises in you. But it cannot be called ‘oneness’.
15. Really, any authentic religious mind lives in a non-duality, not in a duality. For really authentic religion there is no duality between consciousness and body, no duality between the divine and the world, no duality between mind and matter; the duality is just a mental construct. Duality exists nowhere, the whole is one. If we take it as two, or if it appears to us as two, it is because of our way of looking, not because it is so. Through senses it appears to us as matter, and through a non-sensuous approach it appears as mind, as consciousness. But it is one! Matter is just a very deeply asleep consciousness; consciousness is just awakened matter. Matter becomes conscious. So a stone by your side is just in a deep sleep, a very deep sleep of a mind. It may take millennia for it to be awake, but it is. Even in a stone, deep down a soul is asleep, a possible consciousness is there, a potential consciousness is there. And even in you, it has come only to an awakening — it is there. Matter and mind are two states of one thing, of one phenomenon: asleep it is matter, awakened it is mind.
16. In ordinary life with the ordinary mind everything is divided into its opposites, and there is a great attraction for meeting with the opposite: the man seeks the woman, the woman seeks the man — the yin-yang circle. In a religious man all search has stopped — the man has found the woman, the woman has found the man. In his innermost core the energy has come to a point where everything has dissolved into oneness, into non-duality, ADVAIT. All opposites become complementaries; all conflicts dissolve and become co-operation. Then you have come home, then there is no need to go anywhere, then there is nothing to be sought, nothing to be desired. This state is the state of God. God is a state, God is not an object. And God is not even a person, because God is neither objective nor subjective. God is transcendental.
17. Being is one, the world is many…and between the two is the divided mind, the dual mind. It is just like a big tree, an ancient oak: the trunk is one, then the tree divides into two main branches, the main bifurcation, from which a thousand and one bifurcations of branches grow. The being is just like the trunk of the tree — one, non-dual — and the mind is the first bifurcation where the tree divides into two, becomes dual, becomes dialectical: thesis and antithesis, man and woman, yin and yang, day and night, God and Devil, yoga and Zen. All the dualities of the world are basically in the duality of the mind — and below the duality is oneness of being. If you slip below, underneath the duality you will find one — call it God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you like. If you go higher through the duality, you come to the many million-fold world. This is one of the most basic insights to be understood — that mind is not one. Hence, whatsoever you see through the mind becomes two. It is just like a white ray entering a prism; it is immediately divided into seven colors and the rainbow is created. Before it entered the prism it was one, through the prism it is divided. and the white color disappears into the seven colors of the rainbow. The world is a rainbow, the mind is a prism, and the being is the white ray.
18. Drop all duality, be non-dual. Drop all division. Just be individual.!f you belong to me then you belong to the transcendental. That is the whole meaning of being initiated by me. I bring you the transcendental, I bring you the ultimate, I bring you that which cannot be seen on the outside, that which cannot be seen on the inside but you can become that because you are already that.
19. The moment mind disappears, you also disappear — because you exist in the struggle. The ego exists in the tension. For the ego, a duality is needed. It cannot exist with a non-dual reality. So just watch: whenever you are fighting, your ego becomes very sharp. Watch twenty-four hours and you will see many peaks and many valleys of your ego, and many times you will feel that it is not there. If you are not fighting with anything, it is not there. It depends on the fight. Hence people go on finding ways and means and excuses to fight, because without the fight they simply start disappearing.
20. God is invisible. If he wants to become man and woman, he will have to become two, he will have to become matter and spirit, he will have to become body and soul, he will have to become this and that. Only the two are visible. The world consists of the ‘two’. The world is dual. And the moment you can manage to make this duality disappear in oneness, you will become invisible. It has great significance, but it is a metaphor. It does not mean that you cannot see Lao Tzu or you cannot see me. You are seeing me already, but still you are not seeing me. That part has become invisible. The polarity has disappeared inside, the duality is no more there. Only the dual can be seen, the non-dual becomes unseen.
21. Your attraction for the woman or for the man keeps you in manifestation. Now you will be able to understand why the great mystics down the ages have been teaching you how to go beyond sex — because unless you go beyond sex, you will not go into God. Unless you go beyond sex, you will never go beyond the two, you will remain tethered to the duality of the world. The ‘world’ means God manifest, and ‘God’ means the world disappearing into unmanifestation again. That too is a duality: manifestation, non-manifestation.
22. Energy going outwards becomes dual; if you bring it backwards it becomes again one — it loses duality, it becomes non-dual. When energy moves back from the two eyes, it starts falling into the original source. If you mix the seven colours of the rainbow into one, it becomes white, it becomes one colour. The method is the same. Energy moving outwards passes through two eyes and the whole existence becomes dual. Energy moving backwards passes through two eyes and moves into one eye, the third eye — which is just exactly in between the two — and suddenly all is one. This is SAMADHI. YOU are one with God.
23. Choice is mind. When you say: I choose this and I don’t choose that, you have already divided the world into two; the duality has entered. Now the non-dual is lost, the one is lost, the unity is no more there. If you don’t choose the duality disappears because it IS because of your choice; you support it by your choice, that’s why it exists. If you don’t support it by your choice it has disappeared. Already there is nothing to choose and no one to choose. Enlightenment is not something that you have to choose. When there is no choice that which remains IS enlightenment.
24. Lao Tzu never uses the name GOD. He consistently remains with indications, he never uses any direct expressions: the flavourless. God has no flavour, because flavour can exist only in duality. If something is sweet, then something has to be bitter. If something is good, then something else has to be bad. If something is divine, then something else has to be evil. Flavourless means the non dual, what Hindus call ADWAIT: not two. Flavourless is a poetic expression, it just gives a hint, not a direct instruction.
25. WHAT IS MEDITATION? Meditation is to be in harmony — within and without. Meditation is to be in harmony. Meditation is to be the harmony. Man has lost himself because he has lost this harmony. He is in conflict; he is pulled apart in different directions simultaneously. He is not one, he is many. To be the many is to be in a non-meditative state; not to be the many and to be just one, is to be in meditation. And when there is really only one, when even one is no longer there…. In the East we have called it the state of non-duality, not the state of oneness. We had to invent this word ‘non-duality’ to describe, to indicate, that it is not dual, that’s all. Two is no longer there, many have disappeared, and of course with the many, one also disappears. The one can exist only amongst the many. Man is ordinarily a crowd, a mob. Man is ordinarily not a self because he has no integration. He is all fragments, he is not together, he is not one piece. Meditation is to be one piece, aud when you are one piece you are in peace.