One thing has to be remembered about meditation; it is a long journey, and there is no shortcut. Anyone who says there is a shortcut is befooling you.

It is a long journey because the change is very deep and is achieved after many lives – many lives of routine habits, thinking, desiring. And the mind structure; that you have to drop through meditation. It is almost impossible – but it happens.

A man becoming a meditator is the greatest responsibility in the world. It is not easy. It cannot be instant. So from the beginning, never start expecting too much, and then you will never be frustrated. You will always be happy because things will grow very slowly.

Meditation is not a seasonal flower which within six weeks, is there. It is a very, very big tree. It needs time to spread its roots.

Osho meditation has spoken volumes on the subject of meditation. Virtually all his talks include the importance of meditation in everyday life. And even though he says meditation is not a technique, he has invented dozens of them and spoken on dozens more from other traditions.

Ultimately, meditation is an experience that is not easily described, as the taste of cheese or falling in love — you have to try it to find out. Anyone interested in meditation will find something in what Osho has to say about this topic that “clicks” for them, just like a “knack” — including his insistence that he can be helpful to you, but ultimately each individual has to create his path by walking it.

MEDITATION is not concentration. In concentration, there is a self concentrating, and there is an object being focused upon. There is duality. In meditation, there is nobody inside and nothing outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. Then it goes on flowing into the out, and the out goes on flowing into the in. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a no-dual consciousness.

Concentration is a dual consciousness; that’s why concentration creates tiredness; when you concentrate, you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, and you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire; meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four-hour thing – day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself.

Concentration is an act, a willed act. Meditation is a state of no will, a state of inaction. It is relaxation. One has simply dropped into one’s being, and that being is the same as the being of All. In concentration, the mind functions out of a conclusion: you are doing something. Concentration comes out of the past. In meditation, there is no conclusion behind it. You are not doing anything in particular, and you are simply being. It has no past to it, and it is pure of all future. It is what Lao Tzu has called Wei-wu-Wei, action through inaction.

It is what Zen masters have been saying: Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. Remember, ‘by itself – nothing is being done. You are not pulling the grass upwards; the spring comes, and the grass grows by itself—that state – when you allow life to go on its way. When you don’t want to give any control to it, when you are not manipulating when you are not enforcing any discipline on it – that state of pure undisciplined spontaneity is what meditation is.

Meditation is in the present, pure present. Meditation is immediacy. You cannot meditate. You can be in meditation. You cannot be in concentration, but you can concentrate. Concentration is human; meditation is divine.