Prayer is a passive welcome

Ordinarily, energy flows downwards. That’s what Bauls call lust. When they call it lust they are not denouncing it, condemning it. It is just a fact, just as water flows downwards. It is natural for water to flow downwards, down the hill. But water can rise upwards; just a little heat is needed. The water has to be heated; it can evaporate. At a certain degree of heat, a hundred degrees, it starts rising towards the heavens. The same water that was always going downhill starts going uphill. A conversion has happened; just heat was needed. In the East this heat is known as tap. The word tap means heat; the word tap means “heating yourself.” […]

Whenever you feel sex desire arising, there are three possibilities: one, indulge in it – ordinary, everybody is doing that; second: repress it, force it down so it goes beyond your consciousness into the darkness of the unconscious. Throw it into the basement of your life. That’s what your so-called extraordinary people are doing – mahatmas, saints, monks. But both are against nature. Both are against the inner science of transformation. The third – a very rare minority ever tries it – is, when the sex desire arises… close your eyes.

It is a very valuable moment: desire arising is energy arising. It is like the sun rising in the morning. Close your eyes; this is the moment to be meditative. Move downwards to the sex center where you are feeling the thrill, the vibration, the kick. Move there and just be a silent onlooker. Witness it, don’t condemn it. The moment you condemn you have gone far away from it. And don’t enjoy it, because the moment you enjoy you are unconscious. Just be alert, watchful, like a lamp burning in a dark night. You just take your consciousness there, unflickering, unwavering. You see what is happening at the sex center. What is this energy?

Don’t call it names because all words have become contaminated. Even if you say it is sex, immediately you have started condemning it. The very word has become condemnatory. Or, if you belong to the new generation, then the very word has become something sacred. But the word is always loaded with emotion.

Any word which is loaded with emotion becomes a barrier on the path of awareness. You just don’t call it anything. Just watch the fact that an energy is arising near the sex center. There is a thrill – watch it. And watching it, you will feel a totally new quality of energy. Watching it, you will see it is rising upwards. It is finding a path inside you. And the moment it starts rising upwards you will feel a coolness falling on you, a silence surrounding you, a grace, a beatitude, a benediction, a blessing all around you. It is no longer like a thorn, painful. It no longer hurts; it is very soothing, like a balm. And the more you remain aware, the higher it will go. If it can come up to the heart, which is not very difficult – difficult, but not very difficult…. If you remain alert you will see it has come to the heart. When it comes to the heart you will know for the first time what love is.

Up to now you have been carrying a counterfeit in the name of love. When the energy comes to the heart chakra, then it is transformed into love. Once it is transformed into love, once you have felt it, once it has penetrated you, your whole being will feel purified. You will feel virgin, you will feel so pure, so holy, that you cannot think that heaven is anywhere else. You will know it is within you, within your heart. And heaven will become a truth; it will not be theology then, it will become almost a geography. You will know exactly where it is, and God will no longer be a hypothesis. In that purity, in that silence, in that fulfillment of love you will see, God is – not as a theory, but as a self-evident truth; not as an argument, not as a proof, not as a conclusion, not as a syllogism, but simply it is there. There is no way to deny it. It is there so much that you can deny yourself, but you cannot deny God. You yourself look so faint before the reality of God that you can say, “I may not be, but he is.”

That will be the first glimpse. Energy can rise still higher. When it comes to the center of the throat, it becomes prayer. People have been doing prayer, but they don’t know what prayer is – because prayer is the most subtle and refined form of love. If you have not moved through the heart center you cannot go to prayer; there is no way. One has to go via the heart. Because of the throat center, because it exists at the throat center and happens at the throat center, people have started doing rituals. People have made prayers: they assert, they say something. But just by using the throat center and saying something to God you are not praying, although prayer is concerned with the throat center. But not as verbalization, it is an experience at that center. […]

Prayer is not something that you do with God; prayer is something that you allow God to do with you. Prayer is receptive. It is not an action on your part, it is a passive welcome. Prayer is not saying something to God; on the contrary, it is listening to God. It is being ready to receive his gift. It is very difficult to receive his gift because you have your own ideas, you have your own plans. You go on telling him, showing him the right path: “Do this, then I will be happy.” […]

A real prayer has nothing to suggest to God except a deep gratitude, thankfulness. It simply accepts whatsoever God is pouring. Prayer is receiving the gift. But it happens at the throat center. It is the highest form of love. And when you go still higher, then at the seventh center, sahasrar, happens samadhi, the ultimate ecstasy, where the seeker is lost in the sought – where you are no more yourself, where God and you lose boundaries and become one.

Osho, The Beloved, Vol 2, Ch 7 (excerpt)