Stay in the middle between two polarities

What the Method Is

The core instruction for this method is: “Oh beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these.” This sutra guides one to remain in the middle of all polarities.

How It Is Done

To practice “Stay in the middle between two polarities,” the guidance involves:

  • Observe the Mind’s Natural Tendency: Recognise that the mind habitually moves from one polarity to another, never truly remaining in between. We often haven’t experienced moments of being neither happy nor unhappy, healthy nor sick, or any other “in-between” state. The mind moves immediately from one pole to its opposite (e.g., from happiness to unhappiness).
  • Intervene with Awareness (Witnessing): The technique aims to change this natural law of the mind.
    • When pain is present: Do not try to escape from it. Instead, remain with it. Close your eyes and meditate on the pain, just being a witness to it without trying to flee. Do not try to go to the opposite state of happiness or joy.
    • When happiness is present: Do not cling to it. Close your eyes and remain a witness to it all.
  • Embrace Acceptance: Accept the fact as it is. For instance, if you have a headache, accept it as a fact, just as a tree, a house, or the night exists. Do not try to escape from it. Similarly, accept happiness without clinging, and allow unhappiness to come if it does.
  • Become a Watcher on the Hill: Cultivate the attitude of a watcher on the hill, simply observing phenomena as they come and go, like morning and evening, sunrises and sunsets. This practice ensures that one is neither attracted nor repulsed by experiences.
  • Cultivate Witnessing: Clinging or escaping are identified as natural behaviours for the “dust-covered mind”. By remaining a witness, one will “sooner or later…fall in between” the polarities. Losing this witnessing leads to becoming either attached or repulsed.
Commentaries and Insights

Osho’s commentaries offer deep insights into the philosophical and practical aspects of this method:

  • Mind’s Dualistic Nature: The mind inherently divides everything into two, even though existence itself is indivisible. This dualistic thinking creates confusion and a “nightmare” of reality. Life and death, for example, are actually the same phenomenon, with one being alive and dying simultaneously.
  • The “Middle Way” (Majjhim Nikai): Buddha’s entire philosophy, known as majjhim nikai, or “the middle way,” is based on this very technique. It is about remaining in the middle always, regardless of the polarity experienced.
  • Achieving Inner Clarity: Only a mind that is unmoving – one that has ceased its pendulum-like swing between polarities – can truly know what the truth is. This stillness allows for focused consciousness.
  • Purpose of Effort: All spiritual effort is primarily negative, aiming to destroy inner barriers rather than to directly attain enlightenment. Just as medicine destroys diseases to allow health to manifest, meditation aims to remove the “spiritual disease” of the mind. This method removes the tension created by the mind’s struggle between opposites.
  • Experience of an Enlightened Being: When one achieves a “buddha-like consciousness” where love and hate, or other polarities, both dissolve, a unique state emerges. An enlightened person is without moods; hate, love, anger, and even their opposites (non-greed, non-anger) have disappeared. Around such a being, one might feel a “love without hate” – a dispersed phenomenon that is a “glow” rather than a burning flame, distinct from ordinary love. This subtle experience requires a deeply meditative and sensitive mind to perceive. An enlightened being is simply a “simple presence”.
  • Choicelessness and Suffering: The “middle” path is intrinsically linked to being choiceless. Choosing one extreme over another (e.g., life over death, virtue over vice) inevitably leads to misery because the other pole, though suppressed, still exists and creates internal conflict. True liberation comes when one ceases to choose, accepting “whatsoever is the case”. Acceptance leads to transcendence, as the act of accepting means one has gone beyond the need to reject, thereby dissolving inner divisions and reaching one’s center.
  • The Nature of Reality: Existence is undivided. All distinctions like good/bad, pure/impure, moral/immoral are man-created concepts or “attitudes of man”. Tantra advocates for withdrawing these conceptions and looking at existence “without labeling”. This non-condemnatory stance fosters inner unity, allowing for peace and silence that cannot exist when one is fighting with oneself or external polarities.
  • Impact on the Individual: When one becomes centered, they are never at any extreme, always in the middle, and experience unconditional ease. This state allows one to be undisturbed by life’s flux.
  • Psychological Transformation: When one truly commits to remaining a witness without clinging or escaping, the inner distinction between the unchanging center and the changing periphery becomes clear. This awareness is sufficient for liberation. The technique also helps to transform one’s response to external events; for instance, a Buddha who is insulted does not react with anger, demonstrating inner detachment rather than suppression.
  • Simplicity vs. Ego’s Desire for Difficulty: These “simple” techniques often lack appeal to the ego because the ego seeks difficult challenges to feel fulfilled. However, Osho stresses that true spiritual growth comes from embracing what seems simple, as these methods touch fundamental realities. The mind, being “tricky,” will find excuses to avoid doing simple practices, often rationalising them as “too simple” to be effective.