Osho : Prem Anubuddha, meditation covers a very long pilgrimage. When I say ”meditation is witnessing”, it is the beginning of meditation. And when I say ”meditation is no-mind,” it is the completion of the pilgrimage. Witnessing is the beginning, and no-mind is the fulfillment. witnessing is the method to reach the no-mind. Naturally you will feel witnessing is easier. It is close to you.
But witnessing is only like seeds, and then is the long waiting period. Not only waiting, but trusting that this seed is going to sprout, that it is going to become a bush; that one day the spring will come and the bush will have flowers. No-mind is the last stage of flowering. Sowing the seed is of course very easy; it is within your hands. But bringing the flowers is beyond you. You can prepare the whole ground, but the flowers will come on their own accord; you cannot manage to force them to come.
The spring is beyond your reach – but if your preparation is perfect, spring comes; that is absolutely guaranteed. It is perfectly good, the way you are moving. witnessing is the path and you are starting to feel once in a while a thoughtless moment. These are glimpses of no-mind… but just for a moment. Remember one fundamental law: that which can exist just for a moment can also become eternal.
You are given not two moments together, but always one moment. And if you can transform one moment into a thoughtless state, you are learning the secret. Then there is no hindrance, no reason why you cannot change the second moment, which will also come alone, with the same potential and the same capacity.
If you know the secret, you have the master key which can open every moment into a glimpse of nomind. No-mind is the final stage, when mind disappears forever and the thoughtless gap becomes your intrinsic reality. If these few glimpses are coming, they show you are on the right path and you are using the right method.
But don’t be impatient. Existence needs immense patience. The ultimate mysteries are opened only to those who have immense patience. I am reminded… In old Tibet it was customary, respectful, that every family should contribute to the great experiment of expanding consciousness. So the first child of each family was given to the monasteries to be trained in meditation. Perhaps no country has done such a vast experiment in consciousness.
The destruction of Tibet at the hands of communist China is one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to humanity. It is not only a question of a small country, it is a question of a great experiment that was going on for centuries in Tibet. The first child was given to the monasteries when he was very small, five or at the most six years old.
But Tibet knew that children can learn witnessing better than grown ups. The grown-ups are already utterly spoiled. The child is innocent and yet the slate of his mind is empty; to teach him emptiness is absolutely easy. But the entrance of a child into a monastery was very difficult, particularly for a small child. I am reminded of one incident… I am telling you only one; there would have been hundreds of incidents like it. It is bound to be so.
A small child, six years old, is leaving. His mother is crying, because life in a monastery for a small child is going to be so arduous. The father tells the child, ”Don’t look back. It is a question of our family’s respectability. Not even once has a child in the whole history of our family ever looked back. Whatever is the test to be given for entrance into the monastery – even if your life is at risk, don’t look back. Don’t think of me or your mother and her tears.
”We are sending you for the ultimate experiment in human consciousness with great joy, although the separation is painful. But we know you will pass through all the tests; you are our blood, and of course you will keep the dignity of your family.”
The small child rides on the horse with a servant riding on another horse. A tremendous desire arises in him when the road turns, just to have a look again back to the family house, its garden. The father must be standing there, the mother must be crying… but he remembers that the father has said, ”Don’t look back.”
And he does not look back. With tears in his eyes, he turns with the road. Now he cannot see his house anymore and one never knows how long it will take – perhaps years and years – until he will be able to see his father and mother and his family again. He reaches the monastery. At the gate of the monastery the abbot meets him, receives him gracefully, as if he is a grownup, bows down to him as he bows down to the abbot. And the abbot says, ”Your first test will be to sit outside the gate with closed eyes, unmoving, unless you are called in.”
The small child sits at the gate, outside the gate with closed eyes. Hours pass… and he cannot even move. There are flies sitting in his face, but he cannot remove them. It is a question of the dignity that the abbot has shown to him. He does not think anymore like a child; so respected, he has to fulfill his family’s longing, the abbot’s expectations.
The whole day passes, and even other monks in the monastery start feeling sorry for the child. Hungry, thirsty… he is simply waiting. They start feeling that the child is small, but has great courage and guts. Finally, by the time the sun is setting, the whole day has passed, the abbot comes and takes the child in. He says, ”You have passed the first test, but there are many more peaks ahead. I respect your patience, being such a small child. You remained unmoving, you did not open your eyes. You did not lose courage, you trusted that whenever the time is right you will be called in.”
And then years of training in witnessing. The child was only allowed to see his parents again after perhaps ten years, twenty years had elapsed. But the criterion was that until he experiences nomind, he cannot be allowed to see his parents, his family. Once he achieves no-mind, then he can move back into the world. Now there is no problem.
Once a man is in a state of no-mind, nothing can distract him from his being. There is no power bigger than the power of no-mind. No harm can be done to such a person. No attachment, no greed, no jealousy, no anger, nothing can arise in him. No-mind is absolutely a pure sky without any clouds.
Anubuddha, you say ”How does watching lead to no-mind?”
There is an intrinsic law: thoughts don’t have their own life. They are parasites; they live on your identifying with them. When you say, ”I am angry,” you are pouring life energy into anger, because you are getting identified with anger. But when you say, ”I am watching anger flashing on the screen of the mind within me” you are not anymore giving any life, any juice, any energy to anger. You will be able to see that because you are not identified, the anger is absolutely impotent, has no impact on you, does not change you, does not affect you. It is absolutely hollow and dead. It will pass on and it will leave the sky clean and the screen of the mind empty.
Slowly, slowly you start getting out of your thoughts. That’s the whole process of witnessing and watching. In other words – George Gurdjieff used to call it non-identification – you are no more identifying with your thoughts. You are simply standing aloof and away – indifferent, as if they might be anybody’s thoughts. You have broken your connections with them. Only then can you watch them.
Watching needs a certain distance. If you are identified, there is no distance, they are too close. It is as if you are putting the mirror too close to your eyes: you cannot see your face. A certain distance is needed; only then can you see your face in the mirror. If thoughts are too close to you, you cannot watch. You become impressed and colored by your thoughts: anger makes you angry, greed makes you greedy, lust makes you lustful, because there is no distance at all. They are so close that you are bound to think that you and your thoughts are one.
Watching destroys this oneness and creates a separation. The more you watch, the bigger is the distance. The bigger the distance, the less energy your thoughts are getting from you. And they don’t have any other source of energy. Soon they start dying, disappearing. In these disappearing moments you will have the first glimpses of no-mind.
That is what you are experiencing. You say, ”I am more and more able to watch my body, my thoughts and feelings, and this feels beautiful.” This is just the beginning. Even the beginning is immensely beautiful – just to be on the right path, even without taking a single step, will give you immense joy for no reason at all.
And once you start moving on the right path, your blissfulness, your beautiful experiences are going to become more and more deep, more and more wide, with new nuances, with new flowers, with new fragrances. You say, ”But moments of no thoughts are few and far between.” It is a great achievement, because people don’t know even a single gap. Their thoughts are always in a rush hour, thoughts upon thoughts, bumper-to-bumper, the line continues, whether you are awake or asleep. What you call your dreams are nothing but thoughts in the form of pictures…because the unconscious mind does not know alphabetical languages.
There is no school, no training institute which teaches the unconscious language. The unconscious is very primitive, it is just like a small child. Have you looked at the books of your small children¿ If you want to teach the child, you have to make a big picture first. so you will see, in childrens’ books, pictures, colorful pictures with very little writing. The child is more interested in the pictures. He is primitive, he understands the language of pictures.
Slowly slowly you make the pictures and the language associated – whenever he sees the mango he knows, ”It is a mango.” And he starts learning that underneath the picture of the mango there is a certain word describing it. His interest is in the mango, but the word ’mango’ slowly becomes associated. As the child grows, pictures will become smaller and language will become more. By the time he enters the university, pictures will have disappeared from the book; only language will remain.
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