The Book of Secrets: 112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra is much older than Osho, and definitely worth 5 stars. To be perfectly honest with you, I could care less about Osho and all the controversy that surrounds him, his life and his followers and the many misguided actions that took place in his name. What I do care about is the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra text itself. A text consisting entirely of meditation techniques written in India 5000 years ago in another language is nearly impossible for an average modern midwestern caucasion with no secondary language skills to decipher. Making sense of these 112 techniques is exactly what Osho has done. He has taken these techniques and explained them in laymens terms. If you can read between the lines and extract the "Osho" out of what he is saying (and there is remarkably little to extract) and simply leave the techniques you are left with an extraordinary amount of information on meditation. Osho reccomends that you take each technique and try it for three days wholeheartedly. If you find that it seems to work for you or you feel better or different then try it for three weeks. One thing I have found is that this book can be hard to read. It is basically a transcription of lectures given in person in 1972-1973 going through the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra one Sutra (passage) at a time. Four or five Sutras are examined and Osho explains the mechanics (so to speak) of each one. This comprises a chapter. Then the next chapter consists of a few questions asked by his audience about the previous Sutras and his answers to those questions. The whole book is aranged according to the general type of meditation technique being described as is the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. I've found that the book can be picked up and opened to any sutra and tons of information about that technique is immediately at ones fingertips. In this sense the book does not have to be read front to back. You can scan through the techniques until you find one that interests you, read about it, and try it for three days. And that is what truly makes the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra text remarkable.

"The Book of the Secrets" has five volumes, and all the five volumes are based on the excellent discourses on Vigyana Bhairava Tantra given by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh between May and July 1973 in Bombay, India. These are great gifts to humankind by the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who delighted in controversies. I value these volumes better than a truckload of the finest diamonds you can find on earth. I am deeply grateful to Claude, the custodian at the First Baptist Family Life Center where I usually do my meditative work-out on the Elliptic Cross-Trainer. I have been prejudiced against Rajneesh because of the bad publicity surrounding him as the "Sex Guru", "The Rolls Royce Guru" etc. I was impressed by Claude by his Zen like attitude towards any work he did, and he suggested that I should read Rajneesh's books knowing that I was born in India, and that I lived there for about thirty years before coming permanently to the United States.The basic priciple of Tantra is acceptance of yourself and any sitiation you get into. You lose the ability to transform yourself if you show resistance. Tantra teaches you to enjoy you existence at every moment. These principles are lucidly explained by Rajneesh. For being enlightened, for being in bliss all the time, you need not renounce anything. Rajneesh exhorts you to throw away any feelings of guilt you may have because of your cultural conditioning and say "yes" to life joyfully and with gusto. What a Joy!Love and best wishes to all of you.

"The Book of Secrets" has five volumes, and all the five volumes are based on the discourses on Vigyana Bahirava Tantra given by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh between May and July 1973 in Bombay, India. These are great gifts to humankind by the late Rajneesh who delighted in controversies. I value them better than a truckload of the finest diamonds you can find on earth. I am deeply grateful to Claude, the custodian at the First Baptist Family Life Center where I usually do my meditative work-out on the Elliptic Cross-Trainer. I have been prejudiced against Rajneesh because of the bad publicity surrounding him as the "Sex Guru", "Rolls Royce Guru" etc. I was impressed by Claude by his Zen like attitude towards any work he did, and he suggested Rjaneesh's books knowing that I was born in India, and thatI lived there for about thirty years before coming permanently to the United States.The basic principle of Tantra is acceptance of yourself and any sitiuation you get into. You lose your ability to transform yourself if you show resitance. Tantra teaches you to enjoy your existence at every moments. These prinicples are lucidly explained by Rajneesh. For being enlightened, for being in bliss all the time, you need not renounce anything. Rajneesh exhorts you to throw away any feelings of guilt you might have accumulated from your cultural conditioning and say "yes" to life joyfully and with gusto. What a joy!Love and best wishes.

The book, one of the ancient texts on Tantra, contains a masterful commentary on 112 techniques of meditation by the enlightened mystic, Osho. He brings into focus the central point that, such as the physical science shows techniques to transform matter, Tantra shows techniques to transform the spirit. Tantra, as Osho explains, does not condemn sex, nor does it ask to indulge into it. Tantra merely shows ways to raise sex energy for experiencing the higher states of consciousness. The book is perhaps the first in acknowledging a woman's status as an independent inquirer. Parvati, the consort of Lord Shiva, asks him some of the most quintessential questions for unraveling the secrets of how meditation can bring about a complete mutation in human consciousness. Sex being the strongest desire there is, Shiva explains how the way of Tantra helps in understanding this desire and transcending it. Osho's insight is: "Tantra says, be aware of the desire; do not create any fight. Move into desire with full consciousness, and when you move into desire with full consciousness you transcend it." Osho has provided an in-depth understanding of the differences between sex and Tantra, Tantra and Yoga, the views about sex in the East and the West, male and female polarity and how both can become mutually nourishing. The core message of this incredible text on meditation is that, sex is essentially a mystery, it is a creative energy manifested in the entire universe. Tantra is helpful in the understanding of this energy and showing how to live a healthy and natural life with love and awareness. Osho's observation is: "...the days of tantra are coming. Sooner or later tantra will explode for the first time in the masses, because for the first time the time is ripe -- ripe to take sex naturally. It is possible that the explosion may come from the West, because Freud, Jung, Reich they have prepared the background. They did not know anything about tantra, but they have made the basic !ground for tantra to evolve."