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meditation methods are positive hindrances.)
All methods of concentration are against meditativeness. All that is known as contemplation is not meditation at all.
These three words (Osho marked them off on his fingers) have to be understood well: concentration, contemplation and meditation.
Concentration means focussing the mind on one subject, on one object, not allowing the mind to roam here and there, forcing it, excluding everything else except the object on which you want to concentrate.
Of course many distractions will arise and many times you will go on missing the thread because you are doing something unnatural.
Mind's very nature is movement and you are trying to force it to remain still, at one point. It cannot do it, and if you manage to do it after long, long practice, then it will be very tiring and exhausting. It won't make you blissful, it will make you very mad. It will give you a long saintlike face. It will make you a saint but not a meditator; it will make you dead but not alive.
Going against nature never helps. One can be victorious only with nature and through nature. There is no victory against nature; maybe there are momentary victories, but one should not rejoice in those momentary victories. They are insignificant and the price that we have to pay for them is immense. Time is wasted, energy is wasted and the ultimate result is zero.
Contemplation is a little more liquid, a little more fluid than concentration. In concentration you have to remain fixed on one word or one object -- for example, the word "love". In concentration you have to remain fixed on these four letters of love; in contemplation you can roam around, going into many meanings of love, you can go deep or high, you can bring in many other ideas concerning love. Of course there is a limit but you have a longer rope than in concentration.
So in contemplation one feels a little bit more free but one is still tethered. You cannot go out of the subject of love. Everything else is excluded. You cannot think about freedom or truth, you cannot think about anything else except love. But one can think much about love, one can
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