The cosmic ocean

The natural world outside can be a mirror for what’s happening inside us.

As waves come with water and flames with fire, so the universal waves with us.

Try to understand what a wave is, and then you can feel how this consciousness of waves can help you to enter into meditation. You see waves in the ocean.

They appear; they are in a sense, and still in a deeper sense they are not. This is the first thing to be understood about a wave. The wave appears; it is there in a sense, but still it is not there in a deeper sense.

In a deeper sense only the ocean is. You cannot have a wave without the ocean, and even while the wave is there, only the ocean is. The wave is just a form, not a substance. The ocean is substantial; the wave is just a form.

Because of language many problems are created. Because we say wave, it looks as if a wave is some thing. It would be better if we use not wave, but waving. There is no wave, just waving—just an activity, not a thing; just a movement, not a substance; just a process, not matter. The matter is the ocean; the wave is just a form. The ocean can be silent. The waves will disappear, but the ocean will be there.

Secondly, waves appear as individuals. Each wave has its own personality—unique, different from any other. No two waves are similar. One wave may rise, another may die. While one is rising, another is dying. Both cannot be the same because one is rising, another is dying. Still, the reality behind both is the same. They look different, they look separate, they look individual, but the look is fallacious.

We are just waves in a cosmic ocean. Meditate on it, allow this feeling to go deep down within you. Start feeling your breathing as just the rising of a wave. You breathe in, you breathe out, and the breath that is entering you was someone else’s breath just a moment before, and the breath that is leaving you will become someone else’s breath the next moment. Breathing is just waving in the ocean of life. You are not separate—just waves. We are one deep down. We have a togetherness; individuality is false and illusory. Hence, the ego is the only barrier. Individuality is false. It appears to be, but it is not real.

The real is the non-individual, the oceanic, the togetherness.

You can use this technique in many ways. While breathing, feel that the ocean is breathing in you. The ocean comes to you, goes out, comes in, goes out. With every breath, feel a wave rising, with every exhalation feel a wave dying. And between the two, who are you? Just a nothingness, a void. With that feeling of the void you will be transformed. With that feeling of nothingness, all your misery will disappear, because misery needs a centre—and a false centre at that. The void is your real centre. With it there is no misery; you are in a deep ease. Because you are not, who can be tense? You are bliss-filled. It is not that you are bliss-filled, but because you are not, only bliss is. Without you, can you create misery?

This meditation can help; it can bring a metamorphosis for you, it can become a mutation. But allow it to spread all through your life. While breathing, think; while eating, think; while walking, think. Think two things—that the form is always the wave and the formless is always the ocean. The formless is deathless; the form is mortal.

So think of yourself as a wave, or as a continuum of waves rising and falling, and just be a witness to this.

You cannot do anything. These waves will disappear. That which has appeared will have to disappear; nothing can be done about it. Every effort is absolutely useless. Only one thing can be done, and that is to be a witness of this wave form. Once you become a witness, suddenly you will become aware of something which is beyond the wave, which transcends the wave, which is in the wave also and out of the wave also, which forms the wave and still goes beyond, which is the ocean.

The universal waves with us. You are not, the universal is—and it is waving through you. Feel it, contemplate over it, meditate on it. Allow it to happen to you in many, many ways. Meditation is the way, and this harmony of oneness, this feeling of oneness with all is the end, is the goal. Try it! Remember the ocean and forget the wave. And whenever you remember the wave and start behaving as the wave, remember, you are doing something wrong and you will create misery because of it.

Excerpted from The Book of Secrets by Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com.

This was first published in the March 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.