Behind a Thousand Names

by OSHO

Please Note: This title is being reprinted at present and is currently not available to order. You can browse similar titles or contact us for a personalised recommendation.

Notify me when it's available:

In these talks on one of the ancient Hindu Upanishad scriptures, the Nirvana Upanishad, the enlightened mystic Osho explores the essential nature of spiritual longing, the moving force behind every seeker’s quest for truth - truth beyond the many names we call it and claim to know it by.

Speaking at a mediation camp in Mount Abu, Rajasthan, in India, Osho elucidates the enduring wisdom of this ancient teaching: the true meaning of initiation, or sannyas; the qualities needed by the seeker that will allow him to flower to his full potential; the dangers and pitfalls along the way; the harmonious dance between devotion, the path of love, and discipline, the path of meditation. Through the medium of this Upanishad, Osho shares with us the very fragrance of self-realization, the vision of nirvana.

Osho says: "The sutra that we are exploring is so revolutionary that perhaps this is why no commentaries have ever been written on the Nirvana Upanishad. It is one of the neglected ones. ...This one is really revolutionary."

Table of Contents:

Chapter   1: The Seed’s Prayer
Chapter   2: Paramhansa: The Supreme Swan
Chapter   3: Only Knowing Remains
Chapter   4: The Light of Twelve Suns
Chapter   5: Awareness Is His Protection
Chapter   6: Longing For Beyond the Beyond
Chapter   7: Meditation Is the Way
Chapter   8: Behind a Thousand Names
Chapter   9: Shunya: The Divine Source
Chapter 10: Only For Bliss
Chapter 11: The Right Use of Power
Chapter 12: The Attitude of the Sky
Chapter 13: Turiya: The Fourth
Chapter 14: He Shatters All Illusions
Chapter 15: The Vision of Nirvana

Excerpt from Behind a Thousand Names

Chapter 1

"The aim is to know the truth. Only by knowing that which is can one be free of misery and unhappiness; only then can all anxieties and all pain end. Only by knowing that which is can one be really free. Only by knowing that which is can truth be experienced and with it, immortality. To know that which is is to know the deathless.

But that which is has many names. It is bound to be so, because without giving everything a name you are not comfortable. That is why the sage says that the aim is to know that which is behind a thousand names. Some call it Brahma, some call it Vishnu, some call it Rama, some call it Rahim and some call it God. To know that truth which is beyond the thousands of names is the aim.

Actually, truth has no name, and that is why it can be given thousands of names.
Remember, if it had one name it could not be called by thousands of names. Because it has no name, it can be called by any name. But human beings, in different languages, in different times and through different experiences, have given it many, many names. They all point to the same thing, though the words are different."