The Secret of the Golden Flower
On Chinese Alchemy
This book, The Secret Of The Golden Flower,
is one of the most
esoteric treatises in the world. It will show you the way to become
more than the body. It will show you the way to go beyond death. It
will show you the way to bloom - how not to remain a seed but to
become a Golden Flower. What in India we have called the
one-thousand-petalled lotus, in China they call the Golden Flower.
It is a symbol.
The flower represents perfection, totality. The flower represents
the uttermost expression of the potential, the actualization of the
potential. The flower represents the beauty, the grandeur, the
splendour of being. And unless you have become a thousand-petalled
lotus or a Golden Flower...
Remember you have to go far. Remember that you have to get out of
the traps that the society has put around you. Remember that you
have not yet done the work for which you have come to the earth.
Remember you are just a seed, not yet a soul.
This treatise, The Secret Of The Golden Flower, is very ancient -
possibly one of the most ancient treatises in the world certainly
twenty-five centuries old, and the possibility is that it is older
than that. But twenty-five centuries can be traced back very easily.
And this treatise is also a great synthesis of all the great
religions. That is rare, unique.
The Bible belongs to the Christians, the Talmud belongs to the Jews,
the Vedas belong to the Hindus, the Dhammapada to the Buddhists, the
Tao Te Ching to the Taoists. But this small book, The Secret Of The
Golden Flower, belongs to no one in particular, or, it belong to
all.
It is deeply based in Taoist teachings. It is a flowering of the
Taoist approach to life and existence. But it is not only that -
Zarathustra has played a role. Zarathustra's teachings have been
incorporated in it. Buddhist teachings have also been incorporated in
it. And a certain esoteric school of Christians, the Nestorians,
they have also played their part. So Christianity and Judaism also
have become part of it.
It is one of the most synthetical approaches. It combines all that
is beautiful in all the traditions of the world.
Meditation is turning back towards the innermost core from where
all has arisen – the body has arisen, the desires have arisen, the
thoughts have arisen, the mind has arisen. You have to go back to
the source. Religion is a return to the source – and to know the
source is to know God. To know the source is to know the goal,
because they are both one. To come back to your innermost core, from
where you had started, means you have come to the ultimate where you
wanted to reach. The circle is full.
There is a moment where the alpha becomes the omega, and then there
is fulfillment. When the circle is complete there is fulfillment.
And that is the whole teaching of The Secret Of The Golden Flower of
Master Lu-tsu. He’s trying to make the path clear to you: how the
circle can be complete, how the light can circulate, how you can
move inwards, how you can also have a little bit of sky, a little
bit of heaven. And then you can be happy anywhere – even in hell you
will be happy.
Right now, as you are, you would be unhappy anywhere, even in
heaven. You will find ways and means of being unhappy there too,
because you will carry all your jealousies, all your anger, all your
greed, all your possessiveness. You will carry all your rage, all
your sexuality, all your repressions; you will carry this whole
luggage. The moment you reach heaven, you will create hell around
yourself there too, because you will be carrying the seeds of hell.
It is said that if you are pure, if you are silent, you reach
heaven. The truth is just the opposite: if you are pure, if you are
silent, heaven reaches you. One never goes anywhere, one is always
here, but once the inside becomes full of light the whole world
outside is transformed. Buddha moves in the same world in which you
move, Buddha passes through the same streets as you pass, but Buddha
lives in a totally different world – Buddha lives in paradise and
you live in hell.
The Secret of the Golden Flower Meditation
Osho suggests that the best time to do this meditation is just on waking in the morning, before getting out of bed and just before falling asleep in the evening. He describes the meditation as follows:
Simply lie down, as you are lying down in your bed, on your back.
Keep your eyes closed. When you breathe in, just visualize great
light entering from your head into your body, as if a sun has just
risen close to your head - golden light pouring into your head. You
are just hollow and the golden light is pouring into your head, and
going, going, going, deep, deep, and going out through your toes.
And when you breathe out, visualize another thing: darkness entering
through your toes, a great dark river entering through your toes,
coming up, and going out through the head. Do slow, deep breathing,
so you can visualize. Go very slowly.
Let me repeat: Breathing in, let golden light come into you through
your head, because it is there that the golden light is waiting. The
golden light will help. It will cleanse your whole body and will
make it absolutely full of creativity. This is male energy. Then
when you exhale, let darkness, the darkest you can conceive, like a
dark night, riverlike, come from your toes upwards - this is
feminine energy, it will sooth you, it will make you receptive, it
will calm you, it will give you rest - and let it go out of the
head. Then inhale again, and golden light enters in. Do it for
twenty minutes early in the morning.
And the second best time is when you are going back to sleep, in the
night. Lie down on the bed, relax for a few minutes. When you start
feeling that now you are wavering between sleep and waking, just in
that middle, start the process again and continue for twenty
minutes. If you fall asleep doing it, it is best, because the impact
will remain in the subconscious and will go on working. And after a
three month period you will be surprised: the energy that was
constantly gathering at the muladhar, at the lowest, the sex center,
is no longer gathering there. It is going upwards.
Notes:
- The Secret of the Golden Flower Translated by Richard Wilhelm. Osho's book The Secret Of Secrets is based on this translation.
- The Secret of the Golden Flower Translated by Walter Picca.
- Thomas Cleary has also translated, and commented upon, the treatise
of Master Lu-Tzu; the result is to be found in
his book carrying the same title. In it Cleary states that the
flowering of the Golden Flower is a matter of intensified awareness:
Using neither idea nor image, it [the alchemical praxis - jrĉdan] is a process of getting right to the root source of awareness itself. The aim of this exercise is to free the mind from arbitrary and unnecessary limitations imposed upon it by habitual fixation on its own contents. With this liberation, the conscious individual becomes a 'partner of creation' rather than a 'prisoner of creation'. The experience of the blossoming of the golden flower is likened to light in the sky [gold within blue - jrĉdan], a sky of awareness vaster than images, thoughts, and feelings, an unimpeded space containing everything without being filled. Thus it opens up an avenue to an endless source of intuition, creativity, and inspiration. Once this power of mental awakening has been developed, it can be renewed and deepened without limit. - Buy the meditation CD and Osho's The Secret of Secrets (two volumes in one) at Viha.
- It was reading The Secret of the Golden Flower, which Richard Wilhelm forwarded to Carl Jung in 1928, that interested Jung in how his own experiences during his "dark night of the soul" belonged to the ancient tradition of alchemy. At that point Jung began his study of alchemical texts.