Osho about the Chakras and

a Map of the Mind:

From NO-mind to NO-mind

Songs of KABIR: The Divine Melody

Discourse 3: The bee has received its invitation

3 January 1977 in Buddha Hall, Poona, India

Man is a rainbow, all the seven colors together. That is his beauty and that is his problem too. Man is multi-faceted, multi-dimensional. His being is not simple, it is a great complexity. And out of that complexity is born the harmony we call God: the divine melody.

So the first thing to be understood about man is that man is not yet. Man is only a possibility, a potentiality. Man can be, man is a promise. The dog is, the rock is, the sun is... man can be. Hence the anxiety and anguish --one can miss too; there is no certainty. You may flower, you may not flower. Hence the shivering, the shaking, the trembling inside: "Who knows whether I will be able to do it or not?"

Man is a bridge between the animal and the divine. The animals are tremendously happy --of course not aware, not consciously happy, but tremendously happy, unworried, non-neurotic. God is tremendously happy and conscious. Man is just in between the two, in limbo, always wavering --to be or not to be?

Man is a rainbow, I say, because a rainbow will give you the total perspective in which man can be understood --from the lowest to the highest. The rainbow has seven colors, man has seven centers of his being. The allegory of the seven is very ancient. In India, the allegory has taken the form of seven chakras: the lowest is MULADHAR and the highest is SAHASRAR and between these two are five steps, five more chakras. And man has to pass through all these seven chakras --seven steps towards the divine.

Ordinarily, we are stuck at the lowest. The first three --MULADHAR, SVADHISTHAN and MANIPURA --are animal chakras. If you live in the first three you are no more different than the animals --and then you are committing a crime. Not that you are actually committing a crime --you are committing a crime because you will not be able to be what you were meant to be; you will miss the possibility. If a seed does not grow to be a flower, it has committed a crime --against nobody; against himself. And the sin that one commits against oneself is the greatest. In fact, we commit sins towards others only when we have committed the first, fundamental sin against ourselves.

The first three chakras are concerned with food, money, power, domination, sex. Food is the lowest, sex is the highest, in the lowest three chakras. This has to be understood. Food is the lowest --a food-obsessed person is in the lowest category of animals. He simply wants to survive. He has no purpose, he just wants to survive to survive. If you ask him for what, he has no answer to give to you.

This way it goes, just a vicious circle in which you never come out: you eat to live, you live to eat. This is the lowest possibility. The lowest form of life is the amoeba. The amoeba simply eats, that's all. An amoeba has no sex life, an amoeba goes on eating whatsoever is available --the amoeba is exactly the symbol of the lowest man. The amoeba has no other organs, only the mouth; his whole body functions as a mouth. He goes on digesting whatsoever comes close by; whatsoever comes close, he simply digests it. From the whole body he absorbs it; his whole body is a mouth. He becomes more and more, bigger and bigger; then comes a point where he is too big and he cannot manage --then he splits in two. Then there are two amoebas instead of one; then they start doing the same thing. The amoeba simply eats and lives, and lives to eat more.

A few people live at this lowest level. Beware of it --life has something more to give to you. It is not just survival, it is survival for something significant. Survival is necessary but is not the end unto itself; it is just a means.

The second type, a little higher than the food-obsessed, is the power-maniac, the politician. He wants to dominate people. For what? He feels very very inferior deep inside: he wants to show to the world that "I am somebody; I can dominate, I can put you in your right place. He has not put himself in his right place and he tries to put the whole world in its place. He is the ego-obsessed person. He can move in any direction: if he moves into money, he will go on hoarding money --money becomes the power symbol. If he moves into politics, he cannot contain himself until he has reached to the very end --and there is nothing.

The real man tries to conquer himself, not others. He wants to know himself. He does not want to fulfill some inner gap by dominating somebody else. The real man loves freedom for himself and for others too.

Then third is sex --and I say it is better than food, than politics, because it has a little higher quality: it shares. It has something higher. In food, you simply absorb; you don't share. In domination, you destroy; you don't create. Sex is the highest possibility on the lower plane --you share, you share your energy, and you become creative. As far as animal existence is concerned, sex is the highest value. And people are stuck somewhere with these three.

The fourth is ANAHATA chakra. The first three are animal, the last three are divine, and in between these two is the fourth, ANAHATA --the heart chakra, the lotus of the heart, the chakra of love. And that is the bridge. Love is the bridge between the animal and the divine. Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because that is the whole message of Kabir --the message of love. Below the heart, a man is animal; above the heart, he becomes divine. Only in the heart is a man human. That's why a man who can feel, who can love, who can pray, who can cry, who can laugh, who can share, who can have compassion, is the really human being. Humanity has dawned in him, the first rays of the sun have entered in him.

Then fifth is VISUDDHI, sixth is AJNA, and seventh is SAHASRAR. With the fifth, love becomes more and more meditative, more and more prayerful. With the sixth, love is no more a relationship. It is not even a prayer --it has become a state of being. It is not that you love somebody, no. Now it is something like you are love. It is not a question of loving --your very energy is love. You cannot do otherwise. Now love is the natural flow --just as you breathe, so you love; it is an unconditional state. And with the seventh is samadhi, SAHASRAR: you have arrived home.

In Christian theology you can find the same allegory in the story that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Those six days are six chakras --the six centers of being. The seventh is rest: one has arrived home, one rests. That allegory has not been understood well. Christians, and particularly Christian theologians, never go very deep. Their understanding remains superficial --at the most, logical, theoretical, but never touches the real point. God created the world: first he created matter, and last he created man. For five days he was creating everything else in the world --matter, animals, birds --then on the sixth day he created man. And in the last moment of the sixth day he created woman. Now this is very symbolic: woman is the last creation --even man is not the last. And the allegory is still more beautiful because it says he created woman out of man. That means woman is a refinement of man, a more purified form.

First: a woman means intuition, poetry, imagination. Man means will, prose, logic, reason. These are symbols: man means an aggressive quality, woman means receptivity. Receptivity is highest. Man means logic, reasoning. analysis, philosophy; woman means religion, poetry, imagination --more fluid, more flexible. Man is fighting with God. Science is purely a male by-product -man fighting, struggling, trying to conquer. Woman never fights; she simply welcomes, she waits, she surrenders.

And the Christian allegory says God created man first. Man is the highest in the animal kingdom --but as far as humanity is concerned, woman is higher. Christian theologians have interpreted it in an absolutely wrong way --they have interpreted in a male chauvinist way. They think man is more important, so God created man first. Then animals must be even more important! The logic is false. They think man is the real thing, woman is just an appendix. At the last moment, God felt that something was missing so he took one bone out of man and created the woman. Woman is not to be thought very significant -just a helpmate, just so that man feels good, otherwise he will be alone. The story is analyzed in such a way that it seems that woman is less important than man --just a toy for man to play with, otherwise he will be alone. God loved man so much that he thought he would be sad and lonely.... No, this is not true.

Imagination comes only when will is surrendered. The same energy that is will becomes imagination, and the same energy that becomes aggression becomes reception, and the same energy that fights becomes cooperation. The same energy that is anger becomes compassion. Compassion comes out of anger; it is a refinement of anger, it is a higher symphony out of anger. Love arises out of sex; it is a higher reach, more purified.

God created woman after he created man, because woman can be created only afterwards. First you have to create the crude energy and then you can refine it. Refinement cannot come first. And in this allegory there is a message --that every man has to become feminine before he reaches to the seventh. This is at the sixth center. In yoga, the sixth center is called AJNA chakra --it means the center of will. AJNA means `order, commandment'. It is the most powerful center, the sixth, and many become stuck there. Then they go on playing with spiritual energies and go on doing foolish things. At the sixth center, man has to turn into a woman and his whole will has to be used for only one thing --and that is, he has to will surrender. To will surrender is the greatest thing in the world; and this can be done only if you have willpower -not ordinary, extraordinary willpower.

Ordinarily, you think people who surrender are weaklings --you are wrong. Only very strong people can surrender, surrender needs strength, great strength. If you surrender out of weakness, your surrender is meaningless, impotent. If you surrender out of strength, then your surrender has meaning, significance. At the sixth center, when will comes to its ultimate focusing, surrender is possible. Out of will is created surrender: out of man, God created woman.

At the sixth center... now if you ask the brain surgeons they will also agree with me --they say the brain is divided into two hemispheres: man and woman, the left and the right. The left brain is male and the right brain is female. The right brain is connected with the left hand; that's why the left hand is not appreciated --even condemned. The right hand is associated with the left brain --hence, right seems to be right and left seems to be wrong. It is a man-oriented world, male-dominated world. Right hand is the symbol of male, left hand is the symbol of female. And your head is divided into two hemispheres.

A poet functions from a different part of his head than a logician. A poet is more feminine. It is not just a coincidence that if you look at great poets you will find great femininity, grace, beauty, a charm, a tremendous attraction, a charisma, feminine charisma. If you look at painters you will find them a little effeminate; their dress, their long hair, their way of walking, is more feminine.

Have you ever heard of a bodhisattva the Chinese called Kuan-Yin? In India, there was a very compassionate bodhisattva or Buddhist saint. But when Buddhism reached China, it seemed strange to the Chinese that a man should be so compassionate. So they thought that the saint must be a woman! And so they depicted the saint as a woman and worshipped him as a woman, down the centuries.

The story is of tremendous import. Buddha looks more like a woman than like a man --his face, his grace. The sixth center has been surrendered. Logic has been surrendered to love, argument has been surrendered to feeling; aggression has become reception. conflict has turned into cooperation. Now there is no struggle between the part and the whole; the part is flowing with the whole, the part is in a let-go --the whole has possessed it.

That is the meaning of the Christian allegory that God created man first, and then woman out of man. This is to pay tremendous respect to feminine qualities: they are higher than man, they come out of man, they flower out of man. And then, on the seventh day, God rested. What else can you do when you have come home? SAHASRAR is the center of rest, absolute rest --you have arrived; now there is nowhere to go.

The lowest --MULADHAR --is the center of unrest, the highest is the center of rest, and between these two there are seven divisions. You can call them seven colors --yes, man is a rainbow. Or, you can call them seven notes of music. Eastern music divides sound into seven notes: SA, RE, GA, MA, PA, DHA, NI --these are the seven basic notes. And out of these seven basic notes all music is created --all symphony, all melody, all song, all dance.

Remember, seven is a very significant number.

And one thing more, before we enter into the sutras. To be more modern and contemporary, I would like to divide these seven centers in this way. The first I call NO-MIND. `No-mind' means mind is fast asleep --MULADHAR. It is there, but so fast asleep that you cannot even detect it. In the rock, God is fast asleep. In the man he has become a little alert --just a little alert, not very much. In the rock he is fast asleep, snoring. If you listen closely you will hear the snoring... God snoring. That's why rocks are so beautiful --so deeply silent, no turmoil, no anxiety, nowhere to go. This I call no-mind. I don't mean by `no-mind' that they have NO mind; I simply mean the mind has not manifested yet. The mind is waiting in seed, the mind is getting ready to awake, the mind is preparing, the mind is resting. Sooner or later there will be the morning and the rock will become a bird and will start flying, or will become a tree and will start blossoming.

The second state I call UNCONSCIOUS MIND. In the trees, the mind is there --not like the rock, God has become a little different from the rock. Not conscious, UNconscious. Trees feel --they cannot feel that they feel, but they feel. Listen to the difference. If you hit a tree she feels it, but she cannot feel that she feels it. That much awareness has not happened. Feeling has come in, the tree is sensitive. And now there are modern experiments proving it, that trees are tremendously sensitive.

This I call unconscious mind. Mind is there... almost like one is asleep. In the morning one remembers that it was a beautiful night and "I slept deeply, the sleep was very profound." But you remember in the morning, not when the actual sleep is happening; you remember later on, retrospectively. Mind was there in sleep, but was not functioning at that moment; it only functions retrospectively, later on. In the morning you remember --a beautiful night, such a soothing and satiny night, such deep silence and such happiness --but you recognize it in the morning.

The third state is SUBCONSCIOUS MIND. Subconscious mind is in the birds, animals. It is like dreaming. In a dream you become a little more conscious than you become conscious in your sleep. Let us say the rocks are in a coma; in the morning they will not even be able to remember how profound was the sleep --it is a coma. The trees are in a sleep; when they awake, they will remember. The birds and the animals are dreaming --they are very close to humanity. I call this subconscious mind.

The fourth I call CONSCIOUS MIND. That's where man is. Not very conscious; just a flicker, just a small wave of consciousness --and that too happens only when you are in tremendous danger, otherwise not. If somebody suddenly comes and is ready to kill you with a dagger, you will become conscious. In that moment there will be tremendous awareness, intelligence, radiance. Thinking will stop. You will become a flame. Only in rare moments do you really become conscious; otherwise, you move almost like a somnambulist.

Your whole life is almost that of a drunkard. You go on stumbling here and there, missing one step here, another step there. Your whole life is nothing but misery upon misery, stumbling, bumping into each other. You may call it love, but what it comes to is just bumping into each other. It creates misery.

Only consciousness can give ecstasy. Ecstasy is the shadow of consciousness. This is the fourth stage in which ordinarily human beings live and die. This is a sheer wastage. Rocks can be forgiven and trees can be forgiven and birds can be forgiven, but not man --because you have the first glimpse: now it is your responsibility to grow it, to make it more solid, to make it stronger. You cannot say to a rock: "You missed," but you can say to a man: "You missed."

Man is the only responsible animal --he can be asked, he will have to answer: that is the meaning of responsibility. One day or other, he will have to answer to God or to the center of this existence or to existence itself: "How did you miss? You were given the rudimentary beginning, you could have grown it. You were given the seed, you could have blossomed. Why did you miss?"

That's the anxiety of man, the agony, the trembling, the anguish --because man is the only animal in this world who can become ecstatic, who can achieve to conscious blissfulness, who can become satchitanand: who can become truth, consciousness, being, who can become bliss, who can come to the ultimate.

The fifth I call SUBSUPERCONSCIOUS MIND. At the fourth stage --the conscious mind --your consciousness is just a very flickering thing, very momentary, with no stability, comes and goes, and is beyond your power; you cannot recall it when it is needed. All religions exist between conscious mind and superconscious mind. All techniques of yoga, all techniques as such, are nothing but to transform your consciousness into superconsciousness. Gurdjieff calls it self-remembering. Kabir calls it surati yoga --`surati' also means remembering. Jesus says again and again: Be aware! Be awake! Watch! Buddha says: Be alert. Krishnamurti goes on talking about awareness; for forty years he has been talking about only one thing, and that is awareness. One word is the whole message: that word is the bridge between conscious mind and superconscious mind.

When your consciousness has become a stable factor in you, an integrated factor in you, a crystallized factor in you, and you can depend on it.... Right now, you cannot depend on it. You are going along, very conscious, and somebody hits you --immediately the consciousness is gone; it is not dependable. Somebody says a simple word, somebody says to you, "Are you an idiot?" --and consciousness is gone. Just the word "idiot" and your eyes are bloodshot, and you are ready to be killed or to kill.

Even people who seem to be very very alert and aware may be just alert and aware because they have escaped the situations. Their alertness is not real. You can go to the Himalayas, you can sit in a cave --nobody will come to call you an idiot. Who will take such a bother to come to the Himalayan cave to call you an idiot? Of course you will not get angry. Your state of awareness in a Himalayan cave is not worth much, because there is no test for it, no possibility to destroy it. Hence, Kabir says: Be in the world. Don't be of the world, but be in the world, live in the world. Live in the ordinary situations where everything provokes you to be unconscious and everybody helps you to be conscious.

If you understand it, the world is a great device of God to make you more conscious. Your enemy is your friend, and the curses are blessings, and the misfortunes can be turned into fortunes. It depends only on one thing: if you know the key of awareness. Then you can turn everything into gold. When somebody insults, that is the moment to keep alert. When your wife looks at somebody else and you feel hurt, that is the moment to keep alert. When you are feeling sad, gloomy, depressed, when you feel the whole world is against you, that is the moment to be alert. When you are surrounded by a dark night, that is the moment to keep your light burning. And all these situations will prove helpful --they are meant for it.

From conscious mind to superconscious mind is all yoga, meditation, prayer, awareness. Subsuperconscious mind is an integrated phenomenon, but you will still lose it sometimes. Not ordinarily when you are wakeful, but when you go to sleep you may lose it. Subsuperconscious mind will help you while you are wakeful, and sometimes even in dreams you may remember --but not in deep sleep. When Krishna says in the Gita, "The yogi is awake even when the whole world sleeps," he is indicating towards a higher state which I call the sixth --SUPERCONSCIOUS MIND. Then one remains alert even while asleep; deep asleep, but awareness remains there. This is the sixth. And out of this sixth, the seventh grows spontaneously --you have not to do anything for it.

That seventh I again call NO-MIND, to make the circle complete. The first is the no-mind of a rock and the last is the no-mind of a god. To show this unity, we have sculptured gods in stone. To show this unity, this circle complete, we have made stone statues of God to show that stone is the first and God is the last and both meet somewhere. Again, no-mind --call it soul, God, enlightenment, nirvana, salvation, or whatsoever you choose to call it.

These are the seven stages. And this is the rainbow a man is. One thing more, then we enter into the sutras, and that is: not a single color has to be denied. All the colors have to be absorbed in the rainbow, and all the notes of music, all the seven notes of music, have to become part of the melody, and all these seven chakras from MULADHAR to SAHASRAR, they have to become a unity. It is not that you have to deny some chakras, because that denied chakra will not allow you ever to become whole --and one who is not whole can never be holy. They all have to form a hierarchy, a unity; they all have to belong to one center.

A real man of religion lives the whole rainbow, from the rock to God -from no-mind on this end to the no-mind on the other end. He is the whole spectrum. He lives life totally. Nothing is denied, everything is used. Nothing is denied at all; if something feels like a jarring note, that simply means you have not yet been able to utilize it. It can be used, the poison can become medicinal --you have to know how to transform it. And sometimes the nectar can be poisonous if you don't know how to use it.

If you know how to use anger, you will see anger gives you a sharpness of being --just as if somebody has sharpened a sword. Anger rightly used gives you a sharpness, a radiance, a tremendous vitality. Sex rightly used makes you so full of love that you can go on sharing with all and sundry and it is never exhausted. Sex rightly used gives a rebirth to yourself. Ordinarily, it reproduces children; extraordinarily, it reproduces your innermost being. Everything that you have has to fall into a unity.

Let me tell you that whatsoever you have, all has to be used --nothing is useless. Never throw anything away, otherwise you will repent one day. All has to be used. Just become more insightful, more mindful, become more aware, and start looking into things of your inner being and how to bring them to a higher harmony --that's all. Right now you are a crowd. Right now you are not an individual. You are not a rainbow --all the colors are falling in separate dimensions, moving away from each other; they don't have a center. Right now you are a noise, not music --but remember, in the noise all the notes are present. Rearranged, arranged in a better, aesthetic, artistic way, they will become beautiful music. All that is needed is a deep aesthetic look into your being.

Here you can read the original discourse (in pdf)