*[A visitor has been posted by the army from Nepal to Poona. Osho explains how to use even the discipline and uptightness of army life as meditation.]

The basic thing is not the technique of meditation. The basic thing is to do it with awareness. Any method can be of help if one practises it with a watchfulness. The real thing is watchfulness; the meditation is just an excuse for it.

For example, somebody can just go on repeating the name of God. If he is simply repeating it like a parrot it is not going to help. On the contrary, it may even be harmful, because repeating something every day like a parrot makes you more and more like a zombie, a robot. You start losing brilliance, brightness, intelligence; you become more and more sleepy and dreamy. But there are many stupid people who think those dreams are great spiritual vision. They are not. You can even dream of God but it is dream all the same. You can dream of great experiences — light and kundalini arising — but they are all dreams. All experiences are dreams, experience as such is a dream. The real thing is to shift from the experience to the experiencer. The whole gestalt has to change from the objective to the subjective.

So if somebody is chanting a mantra with the full awareness that he is doing it — with each assertion of the mantra he keeps alert and goes on watching and remains a witness — then that mantra will help. And it doesn’t matter whether you repeat ‘Allah’ or ‘Rama’ or ‘Christ’; it doesn’t matter. You can repeat your own name and that will do the same thing. You can repeat any absurd thing and that will do. The thing is: are you repeating it with watchfulness? That watchfulness has to be created. This is just a device to keep yourself watchful. One can walk and walking can become meditation. One can eat and eating can become meditation.

You are in the army: you can go on parade and that parade can become meditation. The whole thing is to be fully alert, conscious, not mechanical. Your army life can become a beautiful growth for you; all that you are doing there can be used as a device.

If one is not watchful then the army can create a zombie of one. In doing the same routine every day, continuously, year in, year out, there is no need to be watchful, there is no need to be alert; one can go on doing those things without being alert. One has become perfectly skilful in doing them. One can do them even while asleep. A perfect army man is one who, if you shout ‘Attention !’ while he is asleep, will jump up and will immediately be at attention. Not that he needs to be awake to do it, even in sleep it will function. It is just a mechanism: it triggers off the response.

I have heard that a general’s wife was very disturbed because whenever her husband slept on his left side he would snore. It was very difficult because if she asked him to turn to the right his sleep would be disturbed; and he was a very angry man. So she asked the army doctor. He said, ‘Don’t do anything — simply say in his ear “Right turn !” And it worked!

So just be watchful in whatsoever you do . You can choose any method from the ‘Book of the Secrets’, but be watchful. And in your army work also, be watchful. Do those same things but not like a routine, not like a dead ritual that you have to do. Keep the light burning inside. Go into each movement, become involved and committed, and slowly slowly see that your army life has become your religious life. Any life, any pattern of life can be turned into a religious life.

[The soldier says: I’d just like to ask what exactly it means to be watchful. As far as my profession’s concerned, when I go about doing my duty, do I watch everything as a separate entity, being aware that I’m not the person doing it?]

Yes, exactly that. You just think of yourself as a watcher, spectator; the body is doing the act.

This hand is moving, mm?

The hand is moving, you are watching it — not only from the outside but from the inside too. You are separate, that witness is separate. It is unidentified with anything that we know of. It is identical only with God but we don’t know anything about God. That witness is God.

When you become a perfect witness you are a god, you are no more a human being. That’s why we have called Buddha a god, Krishna a god, for this reason — not that they have created the world but because in that moment of alertness, watchfulness, they are no more identified with the body, with the mind; they are not identified at all. The mind is separate, the body is separate, the world is separate, and they are only the watcher.

It gives such peace — just the idea that one is a watcher. Somebody hits you on your face. If you are just a watcher then nothing affects you. It is as if somebody else has been hit; you have been just an eye-witness, that’s all. It is none of your business. One can even laugh at the whole ridiculousness of it, one can even enjoy it. Somebody insults you and you can watch. There are millions of opportunities in life, when, if you watch, problems won’t arise. Problems arise when you become identified with the body or with the mind. Then you get disturbed, distracted.

It is exactly that, precisely that: just think that this watcher is sitting on the top of a hill, far away, distant, just looking down in the valley. As other people are moving, you are too. Slowly, slowly you. will be able to hover over your body and you will be able to see that the body is doing things. And the body will be able to do things more perfectly because there will be no distraction: there will be such a silent, peaceful, milieu inside.

— OSHO [Let Go! Chapter 1]

*For more articles by Osho Click Here.
*To read Q&A by Osho Click Here.