Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi talks on the Akshya Upanishad The mystical Upanishadic wisdom of the Indian rishis of five thousand years ago explained in the context of the twentieth century. This book also can also be called ‘A seeker’s guide to enlightenment’ as Osho breathes new life into the 5000 year old Aksyupanishad, explaining its seven steps to samadhi & its mystical wisdom in the con-text of mankind’s search in the twenty-first century. ‘The first three stages belong to the part of your mind which is called will. … Osho, Vedanta Seven Steps to Samadhi, HC. 430 pages / euro 19.50 - order here

The first three stages belong to the part of your mind which is called will. The first three belong to the realm of effort. You have to do them, they will not happen on their own; and unless you have done them the other states will not follow.
After the third stage everything becomes spontaneous. There is a sequence: one after another things will happen, but you will not be doing them. The only thing to remember for the other stages after the third is to allow them to happen. The first three you have to force to happen, they will not happen by themselves. After the third you have to allow them to happen, if you don't allow they will not happen.
So the first three belong to the positive effort and the remaining belong to the negative effort. Let it be understood well what I mean by positive effort and negative effort. By positive effort is meant: you have to do something, only then will something happen. By negative effort is meant: you are only to allow, you have to remain passive, not doing anything, open, receptive, that's all, and things will happen. For example, the sun is rising outside. You can close your doors. If the doors are closed you can leave them closed. The sun will be outside, the sunrays will be outside, but you will remain in darkness. Negative effort means let your doors be open, that's all. But you have to open the doors, that is positive effort in the beginning. Open the doors, then you have not to do anything else. The sun will rise, the light will enter. And as the sun rises more and more, more and more light will come to your room. The darkness will disappear.
You cannot bring the sunrays inside, you cannot put them in a bucket and bring them inside. You cannot force the sunrays to come in. No positive effort is needed, only to open the doors you have to be positive, that's all. Then the sun by itself will fill the room. If you are open, passive, receptive like a womb, nothing can then prevent the light from entering. Or in other words, the first three steps are male, and the remaining steps are female. In the first three steps you have to be aggressive, masculine; in the remaining steps you have to be female, feminine, passive, receptive. That's why I say that in the negative steps you have to be just a womb to receive.

The first steps are male, the last steps are female. Then there are a few things implied. The first three steps will be difficult for women, they will have to make more effort for them. The first three steps will be easy for men. The last steps will be easy for women and they will be difficult for men. This will be the difference in sadhana. The first three steps will come easily to a man. There is no problem because they suit his nature, he can be aggressive easily. The first three steps will be difficult for a woman; she will have to exert force, she will get tired easily. But if she can wait for the fourth then the whole wheel turns. The last steps will be very easy for a woman -- she can wait, she can be receptive. Negative effort just suits her nature.
Nobody is at any advantage and nobody is at any disadvantage. The whole -- half is male, half is female. So remember this: if you are a woman the first three steps are going to be a little difficult. Knowing it well, make all efforts. If you are a man then remember that after the third difficulty will arise for you, because it is difficult for a man to be in a letgo. He can do something, that's easy. But to not do anything, to just remain waiting, is difficult. But if the first three steps have been done well that difficulty will not be so difficult, it will dissolve by and by.
Now the sutra. Before we enter it one thing more: that after the third the fourth will follow, you are not to drag it. After the fourth the fifth will follow, after the fifth the sixth will follow, after the sixth the seventh will follow. They will come automatically. Once your life energy starts moving things will happen automatically.
That's why it is said that samadhi, the last, the seventh step, happens by the grace of God. That's true in a way, because you will not be making any effort for it. Suddenly one day you will feel yourself filled with grace -- suddenly, not knowing any visible cause. So sometimes samadhi has happened in such moments that one was not even aware, one could not even imagine that samadhi would happen in such a state.

The first stage, to which contentment and bliss impart sweetness,
springs from the innermost recesses of the seeker's heart.

As I said to you, the first is the feeling, the first is the heart. The first stage belongs to the heart and only the heart can know contentment and bliss. If you are in contact with your heart you will know contentment and bliss, just like sweet springs flowing towards you, filling you, over flooding you. But we don't have the contact with the heart. The heart is beating, but we don't have the contact.
You will have to understand it, because just by having a heart, don't go on thinking that you are in contact with it. You are not in contact with many things in your body, you are just carrying your body. Contact means a deep sensitivity. You may not even feel your body. It happens that only when you are ill do you feel your body. There is a headache, then you feel the head; without the headache there is no contact with the head. There is pain in the leg, you become aware of the leg. You become aware only when something goes wrong.
If everything is okay you remain completely unaware, and really, that is the moment when contact can be made - when everything is okay - because when something goes wrong then that contact is made with illness, with something that has gone wrong and the well-being is no more there. You have the head right now, then the headache comes and you make the contact. The contact is made not with the head but with the headache. With the head contact is possible only when there is no headache and the head is filled with a well-being. But we have almost lost the capacity. We don't have any contact when we are okay. So our contact is just an emergency measure. There is a headache: some repair is needed, some medicine is needed, something has to be done, so you make the contact and do something.

Try to make contact with your body when everything is good. Just lie down on the grass, close the eyes, and feel the sensation that is going on within, the well-being that is bubbling. Lie down in a river. The water is touching the body and every cell is being cooled. Feel inside how that coolness enters cell by cell, goes deep into the body. The body is a great phenomenon, one of the miracles of nature.

Sit in the sun. Let the sunrays penetrate the body. Feel the warmth as it moves within, as it goes deeper, as it touches your blood cells and reaches to the very bones. And sun is life, the very source. So with closed eyes just feel what is happening. Remain alert, watch and enjoy. By and by you will become aware of a very subtle harmony, a very beautiful music continuously going on inside. Then you have the contact with the body; otherwise you carry a dead body.

It is just like this: a person who loves his car has a different type of contact and relationship with the car than a person who doesn't. A person who doesn't love his car goes on driving it and he treats it as a mechanism, but a person who loves his car will become aware of even the smallest change in the mood of the car, the finest change of sound. Something is changing in the car and suddenly he will become aware of it. No one else has heard it; the passengers are sitting there, they have not heard it. But a slight change in the sound of the engine, any clicking, any change, and the person who loves his car will become aware of it. He has a deep contact. He is not only driving, the car is not just a mechanism; rather he has spread himself into the car and he has allowed the car to enter him.

Your body can be used as a mechanism, then you need not be very sensitive about it. And the body goes on saying many things you never hear because you don't have any contact.
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So first try to be more and more sensitive about your body. Listen to it; it goes on saying many things, and you are so head-oriented you never listen to it. Whenever there is a conflict between your mind and body, your body is almost always going to be right more than your mind, because the body is natural, your mind is societal; the body belongs to this vast nature, and your mind belongs to your society, your particular society, age, time. Body has deep roots in existence, mind is just wavering on the surface. But you always listen to the mind, you never listen to the body. Because of this long habit contact is lost.
You have the heart, and heart is the root, but you don't have any contact. First start having contact with the body. Soon you will become aware that the whole body vibrates around the center of the heart just as the whole solar system moves around the sun. Hindus have called the heart the sun of the body. The whole body is a solar system and moves around the heart. You became alive when the heart started beating, you will die when the heart stops beating. The heart remains the solar center of your body. Become alert to it. But you can become alert, by and by, only if you become alert to the whole body.

While hungry, why not meditate a little? - there is no hurry. While hungry just close your eyes and meditate on the hunger, on how the body is feeling. You may have lost contact, because our hunger is less bodily, more mental. You eat every day at one o'clock. You look at the watch; it is one - so then you feel hunger. And the clock may not be right. If somebody says, "That clock has stopped at midnight. It is not functioning. It is only eleven o'clock," the hunger disappears. This hunger is false, this hunger is just habitual, because the mind creates it, not the body. Mind says, "One o'clock - you are hungry." You have to be hungry. You have always been hungry at one o'clock, so you are hungry.
Our hunger is almost ninety-nine percent habitual. Go on a fast for a few days to feel real hunger, and you will be surprised. For the first three or four days you will feel very hungry. On the fourth or fifth day you will not feel so hungry. This is illogical, because as the fast grows you should feel more and more hungry. But after the third day you will feel less hungry, and after the seventh day you may completely forget hunger. After the eleventh day almost everybody forgets hunger completely and the body feels absolutely okay. Why? And if you continue the fast.... Those who have done much work on fasting say that only after the twenty-first day will real hunger happen again.
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Lawrence of Arabia has written in his memoirs: "For the first time in my life, when I was once lost in the desert, I became aware of what thirst is - because before that there was no need. Whenever my mind said, 'Now you are thirsty,' I took water. In the desert, lost, no water with me and no way to find an oasis, for the first time I became thirsty. And that thirst was something wonderful - the whole of the body, every cell, asking for water. It became a phenomenon." If you take water in that type of thirst, it will give you a contentment that you cannot know just by drinking through habit.
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First one has to become deeply aware of this phenomenon of the body. A revival of the body, a resurrection, is needed - you are carrying a dead body. Then only will you feel, by and by, that the whole body with all its desires, thirsts and hungers, is revolving around the heart. Then the beating heart is not only a mechanism, it is the beating life, it is the very pulsation of life. That pulsation gives contentment and bliss.

Why do we cling to our dream life, even though it has become a misery for us?