Almost every month I receive the sad news of the death of some friend or of people whom I have known for a long time.

It comes as a definite reminder that we all have to die sooner or later; that we cannot escape death. What I am saying is often said by millions of people around the world.
For some moments, everybody — friends, relatives and all — take note of death and then soon after immerse themselves in their respective routines. A few nice things are said, such as “only the body dies, the soul is immortal”. We console others and ourselves with profound philosophy just to forget the shock and continue with our mind-games. The stark reminder that we are also in the queue is quickly forgotten. The poets also console us. One Urdu poet wrote:
Kaun kehta hai ke maut aayi to mar jaunga
Main to dariya hun samandar mein utar jaunga
(Who says I will die when death comes/I am a river which will merge with the ocean).

There are many more such beautiful poems to make us forget the shock that we get when someone dies. When we see death, we think about it for some moments, avoiding to look at it or into it.
Osho asks: “Have you ever consciously looked at death? Have you ever gone to the cemetery and sat there and thought about the people who are lying in their graves? No… you will go only one time and one way — you will not come back. Why are graveyards and cemeteries and funeral grounds made outside the city, out of the way? — so that you don’t have to come across them. In fact, the graveyards should be made exactly in the middle of the city, so you have to come across them many times every day, knowing perfectly well that the people who are sleeping in those graves were also one day living just like you, and one day you also will be lying in the same kind of grave.”
The other common way of ignoring death is to keep quoting Bhagwad Gita and other holy scriptures.
Dehino’smin yathaa dehe kaumaaram yauvanam jaraa;
Tathaa dehaantara praaptir dheeras tatra na muhyati.
(Just as in this body the embodied (soul) passes into childhood, youth and old age, so also does he pass into another body; the firm man does not grieve). Krishna is trying to explain that he shouldn’t worry about the death of his stepbrothers, cousins, and teachers, because their soul never dies, it’s only their body that changes form.

Just as a man casts off worn out clothes and puts on new ones, the soul does the same. Such beautiful words are uttered to console ourselves so that we forget death. Just by listening to such words we do not become free from the fear of death. The fear haunts us. The shadow of death continues to follow us and needs our attention.
We do need to meditate on it, not just think or contemplate about it.
Death is a mystery and remains a mystery. Osho explains that the religious man, the mystic, tries to explore the mystery of death. In exploring the mystery of death, he inevitably comes to know what life is, what love is. Those are not his goals. His goal is to penetrate death, because there seems to be nothing more mysterious than death. Love has some mystery because of death, and life also has some mystery because of death. If death disappears there will be no mystery in life. That’s why a dead thing has no mystery in it, a corpse has no mystery in it, because it cannot die anymore. You think it has no mystery because life has disappeared? No, it has no mystery because now it cannot die anymore. Death has disappeared, and with death automatically life disappears. Life is only one of the ways of death’s expressions.
Such a realisation of death is possible only through meditation. And only meditation makes us free from the fear of death. He suggests: “Start meditating on death. And whenever you feel death close by, go into it through the door of love, through the door of meditation, through the door of a man dying. And if you can receive death in joy and benediction, you will attain to the greatest peak, because death is the crescendo of life.”

— The  Article written by Swami Chaitanya Keerti was published in The Asian Age and the Deccan Chronicle during summer 2014….

For thousands of years, scientists have been trying to solve the mysteries of life, which the Yogis of the East have comprehended through meditation. Scientists have been foolishly employing methods that are not useful to discover the inner realm of consciousness. No scientific tool can fathom the depths of our inner selves.

Yogis have worked hard on their bodies, minds, hearts and souls. They have employed various methods of pranayam, mantra and tantra to attain inner harmony, culminating in super-consciousness. Most of the meditators use the sound of Aum, as some Tibetan yogis used their mool mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. The powerful chants of mantras, if done correctly, such as Aum, can create certain vibrations which help restore inner health, enhance the energy and expand consciousness. This has always been a mystery to the scientific minds of the Western world.

Many may have tried to understand this, but such experiments cannot be performed in scientific laboratories. For such an experiment, the human body itself is a laboratory. The science of the inner being is totally opposite to the science of the outer being.

Scientists have perhaps realised this and are now trying to bridge the gulf between the inner and the outer selves. There has to be a connecting device. What physicists call energy and electricity, the mystics call Naad, the sound within. This whole cosmos responds to that sound.

Recently there was news that some scientists have used sound to “talk” to an artificial atom, demonstrating a curious phenomenon in quantum physics that sees sound waves take on the role of light. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have succeeded in making acoustic waves couple to an artificial atom.

This research will certainly bridge the gulf between the inner and the outer selves. The mystics say that the divine resides in the inner and outer selves: Kan Kan Mein Bhagwan there is godliness in each particle of existence. The divine permeates every particle.

Researchers say that an artificial atom is an example of such a quantum electrical circuit. Just like a regular atom, it can be charged with energy which it subsequently emits in the form of a particle.

Osho explains that the sound is the basic element of existence. Just as physicists say that electricity is the basic element, yogis say that sound is the basic element. They agree with each other in a subtle way. Physicists say that sound is nothing but a modification of electricity and yogis say that electricity is nothing but a modification of sound. Then both are true. Sound and electricity are two forms of one phenomenon… For the yogi, electricity is not relevant. He is working in the inner lab of being. There, sound is more relevant, because through sound he can change many phenomena inside and through sound he can change the inner electricity also. Yogis call it prana — the inner bio-energy or bio-electricity. Through sound that can be changed immediately.

That’s why, when listening to classical music, you feel a certain silence surrounding you: your inner body energy is changed. Listen to a madman and you will feel you are also going crazy: because the madman is in a chaos of body electricity and his words and sounds carry that electricity to you. Sit with an enlightened person and suddenly you feel everything within you is falling in a rhythm. Suddenly you feel a different quality of energy arising in you.

Now look at the word atom. It is a very significant word, even more if you divide into two: At Om. Om is intrinsic to all that exists in the universe whether individually or collectively, and its sound waves create the fabric of whole cosmos. The Rig Veda also says, “First the absolute, the brahman, then waak, the sound, the vibrating energy which becomes the universe.” The Bible also says the same thing, but has missed the point in translation. It says: In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word and the God were one.

Osho concludes: Now scientists, physicists particularly, have discovered that existence consists only of vibrations. They call it “vibrations of electricity”. It does not matter what name you give, what jargon you use, but vibration means sound. That is the meaning of Aum. Aum is the unstruck sound; there is no instrument. When you become absolutely silent, suddenly it is there. Zen people have the right expression for it; they call it “the sound of one hand clapping”. If two hands are there, of course, the clapping is easy, but one hand clapping and the sound of one hand clapping seems to be absurd — but they are truly expressing the reality. When you go inside and you are absolutely silent you hear for the first time the inner music.

— The  Article written by Swami Chaitanya Keerti was published in The Asian Age and the Deccan Chronicle during summer 2014….

Meditation purifies and enriches our life. It takes away from life all that is burdensome. It creates space for love and love is the ultimate nourishment for the human heart and soul.

Osho offers a simple method of meditation to allow love to fill the atmosphere. He says: “Create vibrations of love energy around you. And you will start feeling immediately that something is happening, something in your aura is changing, something around your body is changing; a warmth is arising around your body… a warmth like deep orgasm. You are becoming more alive. Something like sleep is disappearing. Something like awareness is arising.”

A journalist asked Osho: “How can people turn falling in love into meditation?”

Osho replied: “It is the easiest way. In human life, love is the closest phenomenon to meditation. The moment you fall in love with someone, what transpires between those two who have fallen in love? They drop their egos at least for each other. They drop their hypocrisies, their masks. That’s love. And this is a beautiful moment to change it into meditation. It’s just that nobody has ever told them this.”

Osho has often been condemned for teaching love. But it is his love for life and truth that matters most. He wants to liberate human beings from all falsities and hypocrisies and support people to live a life of love and meditation, fearlessly and courageously. He accepts and embraces love at all levels of existence from the mundane and the physical to the metaphysical and the transcendental and turn this vital force into meditation.

Osho concludes that love helps you relax, which is a part of meditation. Love helps you to be joyous, which is a part of meditation. Love helps you, for a few moments at least, to be silent, which is an essential part of meditation. And finally, making love, if you attain an orgasmic experience, gives you a glimpse of what meditation is, but it is millions of times more than this. So to me, love is a basic experience which can help you become meditators. The old religions have been preventing it, and they have been preventing it for a reason. If people can transform their love into meditation, then the priests and the churches and the synagogues are no more needed, then people are totally free.

Kabir, the mystic of saint of love, sings a song:
The flute of the infinite is played without ceasing
and its sound is love
When love renounces all limits,
it reaches truth.
How widely the fragrance spreads!
It has no end, nothing stands in its way.
The form of this melody is bright
like a million suns: incomparably sounds the veena, the vina of the notes of truth.

— The  Article written by Swami Chaitanya Keerti was published in The Asian Age and the Deccan Chronicle during summer 2014….