The first thing to be understood is that you have senses but you have lost sensitivity.
     Your senses are dull, almost dead.
They are there hanging with you, but energy is not flowing in them; they are not alive limbs of your being. Something has deadened within you, has become cold, blocked. It has happened to the whole of humanity because of thousands of years of repression. And thousands of years of conditioning and ideologies that are against the body have crippled you. You live only in name's sake.
     So the first thing to be done is: your senses should become really alive and sensitive. Only then can they be mastered.
     You see but you don't see deeply. You see only the surface of things. You touch but your touch has no warmth; nothing flows in and out from your touch. You hear also. The birds go on singing and you hear and you can say, "Yes, I hear," and you are not wrong – you are hearing it but it never reaches to the very core of your being. It does not go dancing within you; it doesn't help a flowering, an unfolding within you.
     These senses have to be rejuvenated.

     You are in the body, and the body is so beautiful an organism, so complex and so subtle, so mysterious, and so many dimensions open through it. And those senses are the only doors and windows through which you will reach the divine – so don't deaden them. Make them more alive.
     Let them vibrate, pulsate, and, what Stanley Keleman has said, let them stream.
     That is exactly the right word: let them flow like a stream, rushing. You can have the sensation. If your hand is rushing like a stream of energy you will feel a tingling sensation. You will feel something inside the hand is flowing and wants to make contact, wants to be connected.
     When you love a woman or a man and you take her hand in your hand, if your hand is not streaming, this love is not going to be of any use. If your hand is not jumping and throbbing with energy and pouring energy into your woman or into your man, then this love is almost dead from the very beginning. Then this child is not born alive. Then sooner or later you will be finished; you are already finished. It will take a little time to recognize it because your mind is also dull; otherwise you would not have entered into it, because it is already dead. For what are you entering? You take time to recognize things because your sensitivity, brilliance, intelligence, is so clouded and confused.
     Only a streaming love can become a source of blissfulness, of joy, of delight. But for that you will need senses streaming.

     Sometimes you have that glimpse also; and everybody had it when he was a child. Watch a child running after a butterfly. He is streaming, as if any moment he can jump out of his body. Watch a child when he is looking at a rose flower. See his eyes, the brilliance, the light that comes to his eyes. He is streaming. His eyes are almost dancing on the petals of the flower. This is the way to be: be river like. And only then is it possible to master these senses.
     In fact people have had a very wrong attitude. They think that if you want to master your senses you have to make them almost dead. But then what is the point of mastering? You can kill, and you are the master. You can sit on the corpse. But what is the point of being a master? But this looked easier: first to kill them, and then you can master. If the body feels too strong, fast. Make it weak, and then you start feeling that you are the master. But you have killed the body.
     Remember, life has to be mastered, not dead things. They will not be of any use.
     But this has been found to be a shortcut, so all the religions of the world have been using it. Destroy your body by and by. Disconnect yourself from the body. Don't be in contact. Remove yourself. Become indifferent. When your body is almost a dead tree no longer do leaves come to it, no longer does it flower, no longer do birds come to rest. It is just a dead stump. Of course you can master it, but now what are you going to gain from this mastery?
     Right now when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes?

     So the first thing I would like you to do is when you see, really see, become the eyes. Forget everything. Let your whole energy flow through the eyes. And your eyes will be cleaned, bathed in an inner shower, and you will be able to see that these trees are no longer the same, the greenery is no longer the same. It has become greener, as if dust has disappeared from it. The dust was not on the trees. It was on your eyes. And you will see for the first time and you will hear for the first time.
     When you really feel the nature of your senses, you will feel it is divine.
     It is the divine that has moved through your hand. It is the hand of the divine…all hands are of the divine. It is the divine that has loved through you. All love affairs are of the divine. How can it be otherwise? Hindus call it leela: the divine play. It is the divine that is calling you through the cuckoo, and it is the divine that is listening through you. It is the divine and it alone spread all over.
     Everywhere, behind your senses there is a pool of energy – unused. Once you know it, you can pour that energy into your eyes, and then you will see visions which only sometimes poets see, painters see. Then you will hear sounds which only sometimes musicians hear, poets hear. And then you will touch things which only sometimes in rare moments lovers know how to touch.
     You will become alive, streaming.
     Now you know about how you have destroyed your senses and you know also how to revive them. Do something. Unblock yourself! Start flowing again. Start connecting again with your being. Start connecting with your senses again.
     You are like a disconnected telephone-line. Everything looks perfectly okay, the telephone is there, but the line is disconnected. Your eyes are there, your hands are there, your ears are there, but the line is disconnected. Reconnect it. If it can be disconnected, it can be reconnected. Others have disconnected it because they were also taught in the same way, but you can reconnect it.
     All my meditations are to give you a streaming energy. That's why I call them dynamic methods. Old meditations were just to sit silently, not to do anything. I give you active methods because when you are streaming with energy you can sit silently, that will do, but right now first you have to become alive.

Osho Yoga: The Alpha and Omega

...Back for more articles