The Book of Secrets by Osho: Complete Guide to All 112 Meditation Techniques

What Is The Book of Secrets?

The Book of Secrets is Osho's extended commentary on the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, an ancient Sanskrit scripture belonging to the Kashmir Shaivism tradition. Delivered as a series of discourses in Bombay between 1972 and 1973, the talks were transcribed and published initially as five separate volumes before being compiled into the complete one-volume edition that most readers encounter today.

The central text Osho works from contains 112 dharanas - concentration or meditation methods - revealed by the Hindu deity Shiva to the goddess Devi in response to her question about the nature of ultimate reality. Each technique represents a distinct entry point into meditative awareness. Some use the breath. Some use sound. Some use the body's sensations, the awareness of space, the experience of falling asleep, the moment of orgasm, or the sensation of extreme cold.

What makes the Book of Secrets extraordinary is that Osho does not simply explain these techniques - he contextualizes them within a philosophical framework accessible to modern readers, drawing connections to Zen Buddhism, Sufi mysticism, Christian contemplative practice, Taoism, and Western psychology. A reader from any background can find techniques here that fit their temperament, worldview, and available time.

The complete one-volume edition published by St. Martin's Griffin is the standard reference. For practitioners, it functions less as a book to read and more as a working library - a resource to return to as practice deepens and different techniques become relevant at different stages.

The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra: Source Text

The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra - also transliterated as Vijnanabhairava Tantra or Vijnana Bhairava - is a short Sanskrit text, approximately 163 verses, that belongs to the Shaiva Agama literature of Kashmir. Its full title translates roughly as "the Tantra of the divine consciousness that transcends ordinary awareness."

The text opens with the goddess Devi (also identified with Shakti or Parvati) addressing the god Shiva with a series of penetrating questions. She asks: What is the nature of Bhairava? How does one realize the Supreme? What is the difference between ordinary awareness and divine consciousness? Shiva's answer is the 112 dharanas that form the body of the text.

Scholars date the text to approximately the 7th-10th century CE in its written form, though the tradition holds that the practices themselves are far older. The Kashmir Shaivism tradition, which preserved and commented upon this text, flourished from roughly the 8th to 12th centuries CE with teachers like Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja producing extensive philosophical commentaries.

Paul Reps included a translation of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra in his classic compilation Zen Flesh, Zen Bones under the title "Centering" - and this translation, made by Jaideva Singh, introduced many Western readers to the text before Osho's discourses brought it wider attention. Singh also produced an important scholarly commentary edition that remains valuable for those who want to study the Sanskrit in depth.

Kashmir Shaivism: The Philosophical Foundation

To appreciate the Book of Secrets fully, some understanding of Kashmir Shaivism helps enormously. This philosophical tradition, also called Trika Shaivism, represents one of the most sophisticated non-dualistic systems ever developed. Its central insight is direct and radical: consciousness itself is the ultimate reality, and everything that exists is a vibration or expression of that single consciousness.

Unlike Advaita Vedanta, which tends to dismiss the world of experience as illusion (maya), Kashmir Shaivism embraces the world as a real and joyful expression of divine consciousness. The goddess Shakti is not illusion but the creative power of Shiva - the dance of consciousness expressing itself in infinite forms. Liberation, in this view, is not escape from the world but recognition of what was always true: you are that consciousness, and the world is its play.

Abhinavagupta (circa 950-1020 CE), the greatest systematizer of Kashmir Shaivism, wrote the massive Tantraloka and the commentary Paratrishika Vivarana. His student Kshemaraja wrote the shorter Shiva Sutras Vimarshini. Both are essential for advanced scholars, though Osho's discourses provide a more accessible entry for practitioners without Sanskrit background.

The non-dual recognition that Kashmir Shaivism teaches is called pratyabhijna - "re-cognition," or the sudden remembering of what was always known. The 112 techniques in the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra are designed to trigger this recognition - to dissolve the habitual sense of being a separate self and reveal the spacious, luminous consciousness that was always the ground beneath ordinary experience.

The 112 Meditation Techniques Explained

Osho organized his discourses chapter by chapter, covering typically four to five techniques per discourse, with subsequent chapters addressing questions from his audience about the previous techniques. This structure means the Book of Secrets is not a linear manual but a discursive exploration - Osho circles around each technique from multiple angles, tells illustrative stories, and situates each method within the larger context of the Tantric worldview.

A useful way to approach the 112 techniques is by primary category, as different types of meditation suit different psychological types:

No hierarchy exists between these categories. Osho was consistent on this point: the technique that works is the right technique for you at this time. The person who finds stillness through breath watching is not at a lower or higher level than the person who finds it through sound or visualization. Different locks require different keys.

Breath and Awareness Techniques

The first technique in the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra is perhaps the most famous: "Radiant one, this experience may dawn between two breaths. After your breath comes in (down) and just before it turns up (out) - the beneficence."

This technique directs attention to the kumbhaka - the natural pause after inhalation, the moment before the breath reverses direction. In this pause, there is a gap in the usual stream of mental activity. Osho describes it as a moment of natural satori - a brief window where the conceptual mind is temporarily suspended and consciousness can recognize itself without the interference of thought.

The practice is deceptively simple and extraordinarily subtle. You are not controlling the breath. You are not doing pranayama. You are simply noticing what already happens - the brief cessation between inhalation and exhalation - and using that noticing as an entry point. Osho describes how even a few moments of this awareness, practiced consistently, begins to create a different relationship to one's own consciousness.

Several related breath techniques in the early chapters develop this attention in different directions: awareness of the entire arc of the breath as energy movement, attention to the sensation of air entering the nostrils, the feeling of the chest expanding and contracting, and awareness of the breath as a bridge between the voluntary and involuntary aspects of the nervous system.

Sound and Mantra Techniques

The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra contains several techniques that work with sound as the primary meditative object. These are among the most unusual in the corpus and have interesting parallels with practices from Nada Yoga, Sufi music practices, and Tibetan Buddhist sound meditation.

Technique 14 instructs: "Bathe in the center of sound, as in the continuous sound of a waterfall. Or, by putting the fingers in the ears, hear the sound of sounds." This second method - plugging the ears and attending to the internal sound that emerges - is called Nada Brahma practice. The practitioner listens to the subtle internal hum that becomes audible when external sound is blocked.

Osho connects this to the Sufi music practices of the Mevlevi order and to the yogic teaching about the anahata nada - the unstruck sound that arises without any physical cause. He describes how sustained attention to this inner sound can dissolve the boundary between the listener and the listened-to, creating a meditative absorption that bypasses conceptual thinking entirely.

Visualization and Light Techniques

A substantial portion of the 112 techniques involves inner visualization - practices that use the imagination as a meditative vehicle rather than something to be suppressed. This represents a significant difference from many meditation traditions that treat visualization as inferior to "pure" formless awareness.

Technique 36 reads: "Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw your thought from it. Then." The three-stage withdrawal - from external object, to mental image, to the awareness that was looking at the image - mirrors the pratyahara and dharana stages of Patanjali's yoga but arrives at a Tantric rather than yogic understanding of what is ultimately found at the end of the withdrawal.

The light techniques are particularly striking. Several instruct the meditator to visualize light filling the body, light filling all of space, or the sense that their own consciousness is the source of light rather than a receiver of it. Osho connects these techniques to St. John's Gospel ("I am the Light of the world"), to Sufi teachings about the Nur (divine light), and to descriptions of samadhi across multiple traditions.

Body Sensation and Feeling Techniques

The body-based techniques in the Book of Secrets are among the most immediately accessible and also the most underestimated. Western meditation culture has often portrayed the body as something to transcend or temporarily ignore during meditation. The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra treats the body as one of the most direct available entries into meditative consciousness.

Technique 50 states: "At the start of sexual union, keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and, so continuing, avoid the embers in the end." This is one of several techniques in the text that work with sexual energy - not in the crude sense of using intercourse as a ritual, but in directing the intense aliveness and presence that sexual arousal creates toward expanded awareness rather than discharge.

Osho was notable for treating these techniques without embarrassment or reduction. He spoke about them as practical meditative tools, neither glorifying nor avoiding the sexual dimension. He made the philosophical point that the problem with ordinary sexual experience is not that it contains too much energy but too little consciousness - the goal of these techniques is to bring the quality of meditative awareness into the body's most intense experiences.

Other body techniques work with the heartbeat as a meditation object, the sensation of falling (used during the transitional state of falling asleep), extreme cold or heat applied to different body areas, and the felt sense of the body as primarily space rather than matter. These last practices have interesting parallels with body-scanning approaches in modern mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).

How to Choose Your Technique

Given 112 available techniques, the practical question of where to start is real. Osho addressed this directly in multiple discourses. His guidance was consistent: begin with techniques that feel natural, not with those that seem most impressive or advanced.

For most beginners, breath-based techniques offer the easiest entry. The breath is always present, requires no special equipment or environment, and provides immediate feedback. Starting with the gap-between-breaths technique (Technique 1) for a week before exploring others is Osho's standard recommendation for those who are completely new to meditation.

For people who find breath-watching creates anxiety or excessive mental activity, Osho recommended the sound techniques as a second option - particularly the nada practice of plugging the ears and listening to internal sound. This tends to naturally reduce mental chatter because the mind becomes absorbed in listening.

The three-day rule Osho repeatedly emphasized is worth taking seriously. Many practitioners give up on a technique after one session if it does not produce an immediate experience of stillness. But the first day is often disorienting - the technique is new, the mind is busy, the body is unfamiliar with the position. The second day is often harder. By the third day, something often shifts. The technique begins to feel familiar, resistance softens, and the quality of attention deepens. Evaluating after one session is like judging a food from a single bite.

Osho: Teacher and Controversy

Osho (born Chandra Mohan Jain in 1931, known for much of his teaching career as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) was one of the most controversial and widely read spiritual teachers of the 20th century. His commune in Pune, India, and later in Oregon, attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. He died in 1990.

His reputation is complicated. He was celebrated by many as one of the most synthesizing and intellectually brilliant teachers of his time, capable of drawing connections across traditions that few others could make. He was also criticized for the cult-like dynamics of his community, the criminal activities of some of his senior disciples during the Oregon period (including bioterrorism and assassination plots), and his famously contradictory statements on various topics.

The Book of Secrets predates the Oregon period and most of the controversies. It represents Osho at his teaching best - focused on a classical text, drawing out its practical dimensions with genuine insight and intellectual clarity. Readers who find Osho's persona or later history problematic can still engage with this work by focusing on the source material and the quality of the commentary on the techniques themselves.

How to Read and Use This Book

The Book of Secrets does not reward linear reading for most practitioners. Approaching it as a novel or a course - starting at page one and working through to the end - tends to produce a sense of overwhelming quantity before a sense of practical guidance. A more productive approach uses the book as a working reference.

One approach is to read Osho's introductory discourses on the nature of Tantra and the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra's context (the first two or three chapters), then skip to a category of techniques that feels resonant - breath, sound, visualization, or body sensation - and spend a week or two with those specific techniques before exploring others.

Another approach follows the classical Tantric advice: find a teacher or practitioner community that works within this tradition and use the book to deepen your understanding of techniques you have already encountered in practice. The Osho International Foundation maintains centres worldwide where the active meditations and some of the Vigyan Bhairav techniques are still taught in group settings.

Paired reading can enrich the Book of Secrets considerably. Paul Reps' translation in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones offers the same 112 techniques in a much shorter, more poetic form - a useful comparison. Jaideva Singh's scholarly commentary edition (Vijnanabhairava or Divine Consciousness) provides Sanskrit analysis and traditional Shaivite commentary alongside the text. And Abhinavagupta's broader works, though demanding, give the full philosophical context within which these practices were originally understood.