WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH."

This technique is concerned with focusing on the tongue, in the middle of the tongue. WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN -- as if you are going to speak. Not closed, but slightly open as if you are going to speak; not like when you are speaking, but like when you are just going to speak.

Then keep the mind in the middle of the tongue.

You will have a very strange feeling, because the tongue has a center just in the middle which controls your thoughts. If you suddenly become aware and you focus on that, your thoughts will stop. Focus as if your whole mind has come to the tongue -- just in the middle. Let the mouth be slightly open as if you were going to speak, and then focus the mind as if it is not in the head. Feel it as if it is in the tongue, just in the middle. The tongue has the center of speech, and thought is speech.

What are you doing when you are thinking? Talking within. Can you think anything without talking within? You are alone; you are not talking to anyone, you are thinking. What are you doing while you are thinking? Talking within, talking to yourself. Your tongue is involved.

Next time, while you are thinking, be aware: feel your tongue. It is vibrating as if you are talking to someone else. Then feel it again, and you can feel that the vibrations are centered in the middle. They arise from the middle and then they spread all over the tongue. Thinking is talking within. If you can bring your total consciousness, your mind, to the center of the tongue, thinking stops.

So those who have been practicing silence, they are simply practicing not talking. If you stop talking outwardly, then you will become very deeply aware of talking inside. And if you remain completely silent for one month or two months or one year, not talking, you will feel your tongue vibrating violently. You are not feeling it because you go on talking and the vibrations are released. But even now, if you stop and become conscious while thinking, you will feel your tongue vibrating a little.

Stop your tongue completely and then try to think -- you cannot think.

Stop your tongue completely as if it is frozen; do not allow it to move. You cannot think then. The center is just in the middle, so bring your mind there.

WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH." This is the second technique. It is just similar: OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH."

With the first technique your thinking will stop, you will feel a solidity within -- as if you have become solid. When thoughts are not there you become immovable; thoughts are the inner movement. And when thoughts are not there and you have become immovable, you have become part of the eternal, which only appears to move but which is immovable, which remains unmoved.

In thoughtlessness you become part of the eternal, the unmoved. With thought you are part of the movement, because nature is movement. The world is movement, that is why we have called it the sansar, the wheel -- it is moving and moving and moving. The world is movement and the hidden, the ultimate, is unmoved, unmoving, immovable.

It is just like a wheel that is moving, but a wheel is moving on something which never moves. A wheel can move only because in the center there is something which never moves, which remains unmoved. The world moves and the transcendental remains unmoved.

If your thoughts stop, suddenly you drop from this world to the other. With the movement stopped inside, you become part of the eternal -- that which never changes.

OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH." Open your mouth slightly, as if you are going to speak. Then inhale, and be aware of the sound which is created by inhaling. It is just "HH" -- whether you are exhaling or inhaling. You are not to make the sound, you are just to feel the incoming breath on your tongue. It is very silent. You will feel "HH." It will be very silent, very slightly audible. You have to be very alert to be aware of it. But do not try to create it. If you create it, you have missed the point. Your created sound will be of no help, it is the natural sound that happens when you inhale or exhale.

But the technique says while inhaling, not exhaling -- because while exhaling you will go out, and with the sound YOU will go out, while the effort is to go in. So while inhaling, hear the sound "HH." Go on inhaling and go on feeling the sound "HH." Sooner or later you will feel that the sound is not being created only at the tongue, it is being created in the throat also. But then it is very, very inaudible. With very deep alertness you can become aware of it.

Start from the tongue, then by and by be alert; go on feeling it. You will hear it in the throat, then you will start hearing it in the heart. And when it reaches the heart, you have gone beyond mind. All these techniques are just to give you a bridge from where you can move from thought to no-thought, from mind to no-mind, from the surface to the center.

This article is excerpted from unpublished talks by Osho.

Copyright © Osho International Foundation 1998

Recommended Book:

The Empty Boat: Encounters with Nothingness
by Osho.

Osho speaks about the state of egolessness, or "the empty boat," spontaneity, dreams and wholeness, living life choicelessly, and meeting death with the same equanimity.

Click here for more info or to order this book.

About The Author

Osho is one of the best-known and most provocative spiritual teachers of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1970s he captured the attention of young people from the West who wanted to experience meditation and transformation. Even since his death in 1990, the influence of his teachings continues to expand, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world. For more information, visit https://www.osho.com/