Smell can be made an object of meditation

Only one enlightened person, Mohammed, has used perfume as an object of meditation. Islam has made it an object of meditation. It is beautiful.

And why smell has disappeared from man? There are many complex things involved in it, but I would like to tell you just by the way so you can remember them. And if you cross those barriers, suddenly your smell capacity will be back. It is suppressed.

You must be knowing that smell is deeply concerned with sex. Sex suppression has become the suppression of smell. Animals first smell the body before they make love. In fact they smell the sex center before they make love. If the sex center is giving them signals, that ”Yes, you are accepted, allowed” – only then they make love, otherwise not.

The human body also gives smells – of invitation, of repulsion, attraction. The body has its own language and symbols, but in a society it will be very difficult if you can smell. If you are talking to a friend and his wife starts smelling and gives you invitation of sex, what you will do? – it will be dangerous. So the only way civilization can cope with it is to destroy smell completely, because it is a sex-related phenomenon. You are passing by the road and a woman passes by: she may not be interested consciously in you, but she gives the smell, the invitation smell. What to do? You want to make love to your wife. She is your wife, so of course when you want to make love she has to make love, but her body gives you the signal of no love, no invitation, repulsion – what you will do? And bodies are uncontrollable; you cannot control them just by mind. Smell became dangerous; it became sexual. It is sexual.

That’s why on perfume the names are all sexual. Go to a store and look at the labels of perfumes – all are sexual. Perfume is sexual, and the nose is completely closed. Because Islam doesn’t suppress sex, accepts it, and Islam doesn’t deny sex, accepts it, and Islam is not for renouncing the world of sex, that’s why Islam could give a little freedom to the sensibility of smell. No other religion in the world could do that.

But smell can become very, very beautiful if you make it an object of meditation. And it is a very subtle phenomenon, and, by and by, you can go to the subtlest.

Hindus have also used certain types of perfumes, particularly incense in the temples, but their incense is different. Just as there are sexual smells, there are spiritual, and both are related together. After a very long search Hindus discovered particular smells which are not sexual. Rather on the contrary, the energy moves upwards not downwards. Incense became very, very significant. In the temple they have been using it; it helps, just as there are musics which can make you sexual, and there are musics which can make you spiritual. Particularly modern music is very sexual; classical music is very spiritual. The same exists about all senses: there are paintings which can be spiritual, sexual; sounds, smells, which can be sexual, spiritual. Each sense has two possibilities: if the energy falls through it, downwards, then it is sexual; if the energy rises upwards, then it is spiritual.

You can do it with incense. Burn incense, meditate on it, feel it, smell it, be filled with it, and then move backwards, away from it. And go on, go on meditating on it; let it become more and more subtle. A moment comes when you can feel the absence of a certain thing. Then you have come to a very deep awareness.

Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3, Ch 7

Quote published in The Book: An Introduction to the Teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Index Osho A-Z

Featured image by Petr Sidorov on Unsplash