Osho on Watching Mind, How Watching lead to No Mind

Question : Beloved Osho, How does watching lead to no-mind? I am more and more able to watch my Body, my thoughts and feelings and this feels beautiful. But moments of No thoughts are few and far between. When i hear you saying ”meditation is Witnessing,” I feel I understand. But when you talk about no-mind, it doesn’t Sound easy at all. Would you please comment?
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.

Osho – Anything absolute is a death for the mind

Question : Osho, the vision “neither this nor that” feels so negative. How can i be accepting or even creative with this? I feel totally confused.
Osho : Prem Helmut, MIND LIVES IN THE DUALITY of the positive and the negative. It lives like a pendulum, moving from yes to no, from no to yes. It cannot live in the absolute yes, it cannot live in the absolute no. Absolute yes means now there is no possibility for the pendulum to move anywhere. Absolute no also means the same: no space for the mind to play games. Anything absolute is a death for the mind.
There are two possibilities of killing the mind, of transcending the mind: either absolute yes or absolute no. The Upanishads have used the first possibility, absolute yes, and Buddha has used the second possibility, absolute no. But look deeply and you will find they are not different, they are bridged by the same phenomenon – absoluteness. Anything absolute becomes the grave of the mind; it needs duality to exist.
That’s why you are so afraid of the absolute negative, because in the absolute you start disappearing. You are your mind. Of course, there is something more in you than your mind, but you are not aware of it. And as you start disappearing, fear arises, confusion arises; one is scared, one wants to cling to whatsoever is available to cling to.
It is because of this miracle of the absolute that God has been synonymous with the absolute. God means the absolute. Either say absolute yes and your mind disappears, or say absolute no and your mind disappears.
Why has Buddha chosen to say absolute no, why not absolute yes? For a certain reason: with the absolute yes there is one danger. The danger is that you may not understand the absoluteness of the yes; you may still go on thinking that it is your old positivity. With the absolute no that danger is not possible. With the absolute no, death seems so clear that you cannot miss it – hence the confusion.
This confusion is good. Don’t try to escape from it, go deeper into it. Soon it will become a chaos – not just confusion but chaos. When all that you have known about yourself is shattered, when all that you have believed in has evaporated, when all that you were identified with has slipped out of your hands – the very earth beneath you is no longer available, you are falling and falling into a bottomless abyss – that is chaos. And only out of chaos are stars born. Out of chaos is creativity.
You ask: How can I be accepting or even creative with this?
There is no question of accepting because every acceptance means that deep down there is rejection. Otherwise, why the question of acceptance? Why in the first place do you think of accepting? You must be rejecting somewhere. I don’t accept life because I don’t reject it in the first place. It is simply there, neither rejected nor accepted. It is so. Buddha calls it tathata, suchness.
A man came to Buddha and asked, “What should we do with death? Should we accept it?”
Buddha said, “There is no question of accepting or rejecting. Death is! It is so. Such is the nature of things: they are born one day, one day they die.”
Why do you think of rejecting or accepting? If you try to accept, that simply means a kind of repression. First you must have rejected; you must be still rejecting and you are covering up your rejection with acceptance. Deep down you are angry and on the surface you are smiling, you are all smiles. Deep down you are sad; on the surface you are laughing and trying to hide the fact not only from others but from yourself too.
Friedrich Nietzsche has said, “I laugh because I am afraid that if I don’t laugh I will start crying and weeping. I go on laughing just to avoid the possibility of crying and weeping. I don’t want to cry and weep. I want to forget that there are tears in me.”
But this is just a cover-up; this laughter is not true. This is not the laughter of the Buddhas – it can’t be. It is the desperate effort of a split mind. This is schizophrenia: one part wants to cry, another part is trying to hide it. You are in conflict. But we are brought up in conflict, we have learned how to live in conflict – this has become our very life style. It is not a question of accepting.
True acceptance is not an acceptance at all. You will be surprised by my statement: true acceptance is not an acceptance at all. True acceptance is absence of rejection and acceptance. One simply knows that this is how things are – the suchness of things, tathata. Hence one of the beautiful names of Buddha: Tathagata. The Buddhist scriptures always use the word tathagata for Buddha: one who lives in suchness, neither rejecting nor accepting, simply seeing whatsoever is the case, only reflecting.
And you ask me: How is creativity possible out of this absolute negativity? You don’t know anything about creativity. Creativity comes only out of total negation, it comes out of absolute emptiness. The whole world has come out of nothingness and the whole world will one day move into nothingness.
Now the scientists have stumbled upon one of the most important discoveries ever: the discovery of the black hole. They say there are a few spots in existence, which can be called black holes, where if anything comes close it is sucked in by the black hole and it disappears, it becomes nothing.
But this is only half the story; the other half has still to be discovered. I can predict it will be discovered soon: the white hole, the other side of the black hole, from which things start coming out of nothingness. Existence goes into rest, then nothingness prevails. When the rest is over, existence again becomes active, manifest; then creativity prevails. Creativity comes out of nothingness.
The more you are a nobody, the more you know that there is no ego in you, the more creativity will flow through you. You will become a vehicle, you will become a passage. Songs will pour out of you – and music and love and joy. And whatsoever you touch will be transformed into gold, and whatsoever you say will have something poetic in it, and whatsoever you do will have grace, will have something divine about it, something sacred and holy.
Creativity is nothing that you have to do; you are the barrier – it is because of you that creativity is prevented. Make way. Don’t stand in between. Move yourself away and let your void, your inner void, face existence. And the inner void will reflect the existence and, out of that reflection, creativity is born.
But I am not talking about ordinary creativity: that you compose a poem or you paint a small painting or you sculpt. These things can be done without being creative; all that you need to know is the art, the technique of doing them. Out of one hundred so-called creators it is very rare to find even one or two who are real creators; ninety-nine percent are only composers, not creators. They know how to put words together, they are clever, they are cunning, they are crafty; what they are doing is not creativity. They are putting things together – maybe in new arrangements, but there is nothing original.
The original always comes from an egoless state, it always comes when you are absent. When you are absent, consciousness is present, God is present. And then something miraculous starts happening, not by you but through you. It gives you a great feeling of humbleness and gratitude.
So don’t be worried about absolute negativity; that is one of the most beautiful spaces to be in. One can be in that space through absolute positivity also, but there is a danger: your mind can play tricks with the absolute positive. But it cannot play tricks with the absolute negative. With the absolute positive it can still hope to remain in some way or other; the positive seems to be sheltering, safe.
Hence, except with Gautam the Buddha, every other religion has used the positive. It is only Buddha who has used the negative. But you must know that more people have become enlightened through Gautam Buddha’s approach than through all the other approaches put together for the simple reason that with the absolute negative there is no safety, no shelter at all for the mind, for the ego. It is total death.
That’s why you are confused. I am happy that you are confused. I will be more happy if your confusion becomes a chaos. I will be still more happy if you disappear into a black hole, because then the only thing possible is that you will come out of a white hole. You will be resurrected. Crucifixion is the way of resurrection. Death is the way of being reborn.
Source: Osho Book “Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen”

Osho on Immature Mind – When I say, ‘Be mature,’ I mean become a no-mind

Question : You told me that my mind is immature. What does it mean to have a mind that is mature?
Osho : To think that you know is to be immature. To function from knowledge, from conclusion, is to be immature. To function from no-knowledge, from no conclusion, from no past, is maturity. Maturity is deep trust in your own consciousness; immaturity is a distrust in your own consciousness. When you distrust your consciousness you trust your knowledge, but that is a substitute and a very poor substitute at that. Try to understand this — it is important.
You have been living, you have experienced many things; you have read, you have listened, you have thought. Now all those conclusions are there. When a certain situation arises. you can function in two ways. You can function through all the accumulated past, according to it — that’s what I mean by functioning through a center. through conclusions, through experience, stale, dead — then whatsoever you do your response is not going to be a response, it will be a reaction. And to be reactionary is to be immature.
Or, if you can function right now, here in this moment, through your consciousness, through your being aware, putting aside all that you have known — this is what I call functioning through no-knowledge, this is functioning through innocence. And this is maturity.
I was reading one anecdote. It seemed to Mr. Smith that now that his son had turned thirteen, it was important to discuss those matters which an adolescent ought to know about life. So he called the boy into the study one evening. shut the door carefully, and said with impressive dignity. ‘Son, I would like to discuss the facts of life with you.’
‘Sure thing, Dad.’ said the boy. ‘What do you want to know?’
The mind is immature when it is not ready to learn. The ego feels very fulfilled if it need not learn anything from anybody; the ego feels very enhanced if it feels that it already knows. But the problem is that life goes on changing, it is never the same; it goes on flowing, it is a flux. And your knowledge is always the same. Your knowledge is not evolving with life, it is stuck somewhere in the past, and whenever you react through it you will miss the point because it will not be exactly the right thing to do. Life has changed but your knowledge remains the same. and you act out of this knowledge. That means you face today with your yesterday’s knowledge. You will never be able to be alive. The more you function through knowledge, the more immature you become.
Now let me tell you a paradox: every child who is innocent is mature. Maturity has nothing to do with age because it has nothing to do with experience; maturity has something to do with responsiveness, freshness, virginity, innocence. So when I use the word ‘mature’ I don’t mean that when you become more experienced you will be more mature. That’s what people usually mean when they use the word — I don’t mean that. The more you gather knowledge, the more your mind will become immature; and by the time you are seventy or eighty, you will be completely immature because you will have a stale past to function through. Watch a small child…knowing nothing, having no experience, he functions here and now.
That’s why children can learn more than aged people. Psychologists say that if a child is not forced to learn, not forced to discipline himself, he can learn any foreign language in three months. Just left to himself with people who know the language he will catch it in three months. But if you force him to learn, it will take almost three years, because the more you force, the more he starts functioning through whatsoever he learns, through yesterday’s knowledge. If he is left to himself he moves freely, spontaneously; learning comes easy, by itself, on its own accord.
By the time the child reaches the year eight he has learned almost seventy per cent of whatsoever he is going to learn in his whole life. He may live eighty years, but by the time he is eight he has learned seventy per cent — he will learn only thirty per cent more, and every day his capacity to learn will be less and less and less. The more he knows, the less he learns. When people use the word ‘maturity’ they mean more knowledge; when I use the word ‘maturity’ I mean the capacity to learn. Not to know but to learn — and they are different, totally different, diametrically opposite things. Knowledge is a dead thing; the capacity to learn is an alive process — you simply remain capable of learning, you simply remain available, you simply remain open, ready to receive. Learning is receptivity. Knowledge makes you less receptive because you go on thinking that if you already know, what is there to learn? When you already know. you miss much; when you don’t know anything you cannot miss anything.
Socrates said in his old age, ‘Now I know nothing!’ That was maturity. At the very end he said, ‘I know nothing.’ Life is so vast. How can this tiny mind know? At the most, glimpses are enough. Even they are too much. Existence is so tremendously vast and infinite, beginningless, endless… how can this tiny drop of consciousness know it? It is enough even that a few glimpses come, a few doors open, a few moments happen when you come in contact with existence. But those moments cannot be turned into knowledge.
And your mind tends to do it — then it becomes more and more immature.
So the first thing is that you should be capable of learning and your learning capacity should never be burdened by knowledge, never be covered by dust. The mirror of learning should remain clean and fresh so it can go on reflecting.
The mind can function in two ways. It can function like a camera: once exposed, finished — the film immediately becomes knowledgeable and it loses its learning capacity. Exposed once and it already knows — now it is useless; now it is not capable of learning more. If you expose it again and again it will become more confused. That’s why people who know too much are always afraid of learning… because they will become confused. They are already exposed films. Then there is another type of learning — learning like a mirror. Expose the mirror for a thousand and one times, it makes no difference — if you come in front of the mirror, you are reflected: if you go, the reflection goes. The mirror never accumulates.
The film in the camera immediately accumulates — it catches hold, clings, but the mirror simply mirrors: you come in front, you are in it; you go, you are gone.
This is the way to remain mature. Every child is born mature and almost all people die immature. This will look very paradoxical but this is so. Remain innocent and you will remain mature.
The second thing is that the immature mind is always interested in trivia. The immature mind is always interested in things: money, houses, cars, power, prestige…all trivia, all rot. The mature mind is interested in existence, in being, in life itself. So when I say to you that you have an immature mind I mean you are still interested in things, not in persons; still interested in the outside, not in the inside; still interested in objects, not in subjectivity; still interested in the finite, not interested in the infinite.
Just watch your mind — where it moves, what its fantasies are. If you find a valuable diamond on the road and just there by its side a rose has flowered, in what will you be interested? In the rose or in the diamond? You will not be able to see the rose if you are interested in the diamond; you will simply miss the rose, it is valueless. Your eyes will be too clouded by the diamond, your whole mind will become focused on the diamond, and you will miss another diamond which was more alive — the rose.
In the Hindu paradise they say roses are not ordinary roses, they are made of diamonds. I don’t know, but I have seen roses. If you can see roses here exactly on this earth, they are made of diamonds — so why go far away? Not in paradise but here now, once you know how to see a rose there is nothing comparable to it. And once you can see the rose you may forget completely about the diamond.
It happened that Mulla Nasruddin came to me one day. He was very much worried and he said, ‘Ah, poor Mr. Jones. Did you hear, Osho, what happened to him? He tripped at the top of the stairs, fell down the whole flight, banged his head and died.’
Shocked, I said, ‘Died?’
‘Died,’ he repeated with emphasis, ‘and broke his glasses too!’
The immature mind is more interested in glasses than in life and death and love; more interested in things, like houses and cars. When I tell you that you have an immature mind, I mean you are still interested in that which is worthless, non-essential. At the most it can be used, at the most it can become a decoration in life, but it cannot replace life, it cannot substitute life, it cannot become life itself.
And there are many people who have made it a life. I know a few rich people who live such beggarly lives — one cannot imagine it. I used to know a man in Delhi who had six bungalows, all out on rent. And he lived in a small dark cell with no children and no wife.
I asked him once, ‘You have enough. Why do you go on living in this small dark cell? Why have you imposed this imprisonment upon yourself? What penance are you doing?’
He said, ‘None. I have always lived this way and it is perfectly beautiful. And people are living in those six bungalows.’
He goes to those bungalows only to collect rent.
I asked him, ‘Why have you never married?’
‘I am a poor man and women are very costly. I could not afford it,’ he said.
If you meet that man you will not be able to recognize that he owns six big houses and earns a lot of money. What has happened to this man? He is more interested in money than he is in himself, he is more interested in money than he is in love, he is more interested in the power that money brings — but he has never shared anything with anybody.
These people are not rare, they are very common. Everybody has such a tendency inside. And people go on rationalizing. Man is very clever — he says, ‘This is not miserliness. Don’t misunderstand me. I am a simple man. I live a simple life. I am a religious man, and a simple life is beautiful.’
If you are too interested in things you are immature. Shift your attention. Become more and more interested in people rather than in yourself.
I have a SANNYASIN here, Nisha. She always falls in love with beggarly people and she is tremendously rich. Just a few days before, she came and asked ‘Why, Osho, do I go on falling in love with beggarly people — people who are almost on the street?’ I know the reason… with a beggarly man she need not be worried about her money. And she thinks that she helps these people — by food, by small things — in fact she has never fallen in love. She is so much in love with money that she cannot fall in love with persons. She purchases these people for money — they are without any cost, without any risk. And they feel obliged because she gives food, clothing, shelter — they feel obliged, so they pretend that they love her, and she goes on pretending that she has fallen in love. This is a way to protect the money and this is a way to remain closed, miserly.
And she is suffering, in pain, but she cannot see the point. She has to learn how to share. If you know how to share, you are mature; if you don’t know how to share, you are immature. This sharing goes on on all levels, in all directions, in all dimensions. So one of the most basic things to understand is the more you share something, the more it grows in you. Share whatsoever you have and it will grow; cling to it, become afraid of sharing, of friendship, of love, and it will shrink’. Life knows only one law and that law is of expansion and sharing.
Look at nature. Nature is such a spendthrift. When one flower is needed, a thousand and one flowers will bloom. When you make love to a woman or to a man, in each orgasm millions of cells are released. One would have been enough because at the most one child can be conceived, but millions of cells are released. One man can populate the whole earth — just one man! One ordinary man has at least four thousand intercourses in his life — one ordinary man — and in each intercourse millions of cells are released. The whole world, the whole population that exists right now, can be produced by one man. And yet the man will become the father of only two or three, if in the West; or twelve, fourteen, fifteen, if in the East — that’s all. For fifteen persons to be conceived, millions of cells are released.
Nature is a spendthrift. Where one flower is needed it produces millions. One tree will produce…. Look at the Gulmohr — millions of seeds are ready. They will all fall down and a few, one, two, four, five, ten, twenty, a hundred, may become trees. Why so many seeds? God is not a miser. If you ask for one he gives millions. Just ask! Jesus has said, ‘Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you, ask and it shall be given.’ Remember, if you ask for one, millions will be given.
The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target — you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target — not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things.
When I say you are immature, I mean you are too concerned with things and you have not yet learned that life consists of consciousness — of beings, not of things. Things are to be used, they are needed, but don’t start living by them. Man cannot live by bread alone — once living by bread alone, things alone, you are already dead.
And the third thing: maturity is always spontaneous. It does not plan, it makes no rehearsals. People come to me…. Just the other night somebody was there. He said, ‘I prepare so many questions when I come to see you. but when I come here I forget. What do you do to me?’ I am not doing anything at all. It is YOU. The moment you prepare something you are already saying that it is false. The real thing need not be prepared. In life. rehearsals are not needed, they are needed in a drama. A drama is a false thing. If you prepare your questions it means that those questions are not yours. If you are thirsty and you come to me, will you forget that you are thirsty and you would like your thirst to be quenched? How can you forget? In fact, when you reach the side of a river thirst will burn more intensely. The moment you see water flowing, and hear the sound of gurgling, immediately all that you have been suppressing will bubble up, it will respond, your whole being will say, ‘I am thirsty!’ If you are thirsty you will not forget.
But you prepare questions. You prepare yourself to go to the river and say, ‘I am very thirsty.’ What is the point of preparing? If you are thirsty, you are; if you are not, by the time you reach to the river, you will forget about it.
When I say you are immature I mean that you prepare your questions, your inquiries. They are mind things. they don’t come from your heart, they are not related to you, they have no roots in you.
It is related in George Bernard Shaw’s life that once, at the opening of one of his plays, he stepped forward at its conclusion with obvious complaisance, to accept the rousing plaudits of the crowd. There was one dissenter, however, who seized the occasion of a lull in the applause to call out in stentorian tones, ‘Your play stinks!’
There was a momentary horrified silence, but Shaw, unperturbed, exclaimed from the stage, ‘My friend, I agree with you completely, but what are we two’ — here he waved his hand over the audience — ‘against the great majority?’ And applause returned more loudly than ever.
You cannot prepare something like that, it is impossible It is a spontaneous response — hence the beauty of it. You cannot prepare for such things. And life is such a continuous thing: either you act or you miss. Later on, you will find a thousand and one answers — you could have said this, you could have said that — but they are of no use.
Mark Twain was coming back home with his wife from a lecture hall. He had just delivered a beautiful talk. His wife had not been present, she had just come to pick him up.
On the way she asked, ‘How was the lecture?’
Mark Twain said, ‘Which one? The one that I prepared, or the one that I delivered, or the one that I am thinking now that I should have delivered? Which one?’
If you prepare, this is going to be so. Remain conscious, alert, aware, and act out of your spontaneity. And not only will others see the alive response of it, you also will be thrilled by your own response. Not only will others be surprised, you will also be surprised yourself.
I call a mind mature which retains the capacity to be surprised. A mind is mature if it goes on continuously being surprised. by others, by himself, by everything. Life is a constant wonder: he has no ready-made plans or ready-made responses for it, he never knows what is going to happen, he moves into the unknown each moment. And he never jumps ahead of himself, he never lags behind himself, he remains simply himself, wherever he is.
And, the last and most basic thing: when I say that you have an immature mind, basically I mean that you have a mind. Mind as such is immature; only no-mind is mature. Maturity has nothing to do with mind because mind means all that you know; mind means your experiences, mind means your past, your rehearsals, your preparations. All these things are implied in the word ‘mind.’ Mind is not something in particular, it is the whole accumulation, all the junk, the whole heap, of your dead past.
When I say, ‘Be mature,’ I mean become a no-mind. If you act spontaneously, you will act out of no-mind. If you remain capable of learning, you will remain capable of being a no-mind again and again and again — the mind will never be accumulated. If you are capable of remaining alert-and spontaneous, able to be surprised by life and by yourself, you will become by and by more and more interested in the interior-most life, in the core of life. When you see a person, you will not see just the body, your gaze will become penetrating, your gaze will become like an x-ray. It will catch hold of the person — of the consciousness there, of the inner light there in the other person. The body is just an abode — you will meet the person, you will shake hands, but not only hands, you will shake the person, you will meet the person. And in your own life, by and by, you will become aware that the body is just the outermost garment: you have to take care of it, it is not to be neglected, it is valuable, but it is not the end. You are the master, not the servant. And by and by, the more you penetrate withinwards, you will see that the mind also is an innermost garment — more valuable than the body but not more valuable than you. You remain the supreme value.
Once you know your supreme value, you have become mature; and once you know your supreme value, you know the supreme value of all: all beings are Buddhas — nobody is less than that; the whole of life is Divine; you are always walking on holy ground.
It is said that when Moses went to the hill to meet his God, the bush was afire and from behind the bush he heard, ‘Stop! Take your shoes off. This is holy ground.’ I have always liked it, loved it. But all ground is holy ground and all bushes are afire with God. If you have not seen this yet you have missed much. Look again. All bushes are afire with God and from every bush comes the commandment, ‘Stop and take your shoes off. It is holy ground you are walking on. All ground, the whole earth, the whole existence is sacred. Once you have that feeling entering you, I will call you mature — not before that. A mature mind is a religious mind.
Source – Osho Book “Ancient Music in the Pines”

Osho on Effortless Effort in Meditation

Question : The other day you said that effort is dangerous, but hard work is needed in the meditations. For my german mind, effort equals hard work. Is there hard work without effort?
Osho : The point is delicate. Effort is always half-hearted, effort is always partial. You are doing it because you don’t see any way you can attain to the result you desire without doing it. If there was any way you would drop the effort and jump to the conclusion. One is never totally in his effort, cannot be, because the idea is of the future, the end result. Effort is future-oriented, result-oriented. One is doing it only for the sake of some future result, some profit, some greed, some good pay-off.
That’s why Zen Masters say effortless effort is needed. What do they mean by effortless effort? They say hard work is needed but it should not be future-oriented. You should enjoy it. Not for some other goal — even if nothing is attained through it, it is beautiful in itself. And that is the hardest thing for the human mind to do. That’s why I call it hard work. The hardest thing is to do something for its own sake, to sing a song for its own sake, to meditate for its own sake, to love for its own sake. That is the hardest thing for the human mind because mind is future-oriented. It says,’For its own sake? Then why? What is going to happen out of it?’
People come to me and they ask,’We can meditate but what will we attain? We can become sannyasins but what are we going to gain out of it?’ This is what mind is — always greedy.
Let me tell you…. One day Mulla Nasruddin was watching the street through the window when he saw his creditor approaching the house. Knowing what the fellow was up to, Mulla called his wife and told her to handle the visitor.
Accordingly, the wife opened the door and said,’Yes, sir, I know we haven’t yet been able to pay you. And although Mulla himself is not home at this moment, he thinks day and night about ways to get some money and pay you back. He has even asked me to watch the street and whenever a flock of sheep passes to go out and pick up any pieces of wool that might have been caught on the bushes. This way, when we get enough wool, we can spin it, make a couple of shawls, sell them and with the money pay you back.’
When she got to this point, the man started to laugh, whereupon Mulla came out of his hiding and said,’You rascal, now that you smell money, you start to grin.’
The mind is that rascal. Once it gets any hint of any sort of future it starts to grin. It immediately jumps on it, catches hold of it — you are no longer herenow. Meditation is for its own sake as love is for its own sake.
Ask a rose why he flowers. He simply flowers. It is so beautiful to flower. There is no motive in it. Ask the birds why they are singing. They are simply singing. They enjoy, they delight in it, there is no motive in it.
Drop the mind and motive disappears. So at least for a few hours in a day go on doing things for their own sake: dance, sing, play on the guitar, sit with friends, or just watch the sky. At least for a few hours go on devoting your time to intrinsic activities. These activities are the hard work. And I know, mind is very lazy. It likes to dream, it doesn’t want to work, that’s why it continuously thinks of the future. But mind is very lazy. It only thinks of the future so that the present can be avoided and the challenge of the present can be avoided.
I have heard an anecdote. While walking along a creek bank a man came across a young fellow lying lazily under a tree with a fishing line in the water, on which the cork was bobbling frantically.
‘Hey, you’ve got a bite!’ he said.
‘Yeah.’ drawled the fisherman. ‘Would you mind pulling it out?’
The walker did so, only to have the recumbent one ask,’Would, you mind taking the fish off, rebaiting the hook, and tossing it back in the creek?’
This was done and the man commented jokingly,’As lazy as you are, you ought to have some kids to do these things for you.’
‘Not a bad idea,’ yawned the fisherman. ‘Got any idea where I could find a pregnant woman?’
That’s how the mind is; it does not want to do anything. It simply hopes, desires, postpones. The future is a trick to postpone the present; the future is a trick to avoid the present. Not that you are going to do anything in the future, no — because again the same mind will be there and it will say tomorrow, tomorrow. You will die and you will not do anything, you will only think. And that thinking helps you to keep face: you don’t feel lazy because you think so much of doing, doing great things always, dreaming about great things and not doing the small things that are really to be done right now.
Hard work means to be present and to do that which the present has brought you as a challenge. THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT EFFORT IS DANGEROUS BUT HARD WORK WAS NEEDED IN THE MEDITATIONS. Yes, hard work — because you will have to go against the mind. The hardness is not in the work — the work is beautifully simple, the work is very easy — the hardness comes from the fact that because you are so fogged by the mind you will have to come out of it.
FOR MY GERMAN MIND, EFFORT EQUALS HARD WORK. That I understand — but all minds are German. That’s why everybody is in such trouble, that’s why everybody finds his own fascism, his own nazism, his own Adolf Hitler. Everybody does. Mind is fascist and mind looks continuously for leaders, for somebody to lead. It was a surprise to the whole world when Germany fell into the trap of Adolf Hitler.
Nobody could believe it, it was almost illogical. Such a beautiful race with such a great tradition of learning, of learned men, of great philosophy, of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx…. Such a great culture with such refined intellect; a culture of great scientists, of great musicians, of great novelists and poets; the country of the philosophers and professors….’Professor’ has never been such a respectable word in any other country as in Germany. What happened to such an intelligent race that it fell into the hands of a stupid, almost idiot person, Adolf Hitler?
But this has to be understood: that all learning, if it is superficial, if it is of the mind, is not going to help. The learning only remains at the surface — deep down you remain childish. Those professors, even a man like Martin Heidegger — a great philosopher, you could say the greatest that this century has produced — he also became a follower of Adolf Hitler. What happened to these giants following this man who was almost mad?
It has to be understood; it can happen, it has always happened. These great minds are just great on the surface, deep down their existence is very childish; only their intellect has grown, they have not grown. Martin Heidegger’s mind is very grown-up,.his being is very childish. His being is childish; it is waiting for somebody to lead it. A really mature person does not throw his responsibility on to anybody else; he becomes responsible for his own being.
Now this whole country of scientists, philosophers, professors, poets, giant intellectuals, fell victim to a very ordinary, mediocre man. And that man ruled over it. This must help everybody to understand the foolishness of intellect. Intellect is superficial. One should grow in being otherwise one is always prone, one always tends to become a victim of such people. They always happen.
Mind is conditioned from the outside; it can be ruled from the outside. You have to grow into no-mind, only then can you not be ruled from the outside. Only a man of no-mind is a free man, independent. He is neither German, nor Indian, nor English, nor American — he is simply free. American, Indian, German…these are the names of your prisons, these are not your freedom skies. These are not skies to fly in, these are the prisons to live in.
A free man belongs to himself and nobody else. A free man is simply an energy with no name, no form, no race, no nation. The days of nations and races are past, the days of the individual are coming. In a better world there will be no Germans, no Indians, no Hindus, no Christians — there will be pure individuals, perfectly free, living their life in their own way, not disturbing anybody’s life and not allowing anybody to disturb their lives.
Otherwise, mind is childish and yet cunning. It can fall victim to any Adolf Hitler, to any chauvinist, to any mad person who is bold enough…and people are bold, they never hesitate. That was the appeal of Adolf Hitler. He was so bold that he was absolutely bold. He would never hesitate, he was absolutely certain. And people who are uncertain in their being immediately find a deep appeal in such a person. This is a man who is so certain about truth that he must have attained to truth. They start falling in line with him.
Because of your uncertainty you become a victim to somebody who is mad. But mad people are always certain, only very, very alert and aware people hesitate. Their hesitation shows their awareness and the complexity of life. And mind is very cunning. It can rationalise everything.
I have heard. Berger, hiding with his wife from the Nazis in a secluded Berlin attic, decided to get a breath of fresh air. While out walking he came face to face with Adolf Hitler. The German leader pulled out a gun and pointed to a pile of horse manure in the street. ‘All right,.Jew!’ he shouted. ‘Eat that or I’ll kill you!’ Trembling, Berger did as he was ordered.
Hitler began laughing so hard he dropped the weapon. Berger picked it up and said,’Now, you eat the manure or I’ll shoot!’ The Fuhrer got down on his hands and knees and began eating.
While he was occupied, Berger sneaked away, ran through an alley, climbed over a fence, and dashed up the stairs to the attic. He slammed the door shut, bolted and locked it securely. ‘Hilda! Hilda!’ he exclaimed to his wife. ‘Guess who I had lunch with today!’
Mind goes on rationalising. Even if you eat horse manure it can make it a lunch — and ‘Hilda, Hilda, guess who I had lunch with today’! Beware of the traps of the mind. And the more you become alert, the more you will be able to live in the moment, in the act, totally. Then there is no motivation: you do it because you delight in it.
And that’s why I call it the hardest work. To get out of the mind is the hardest work. But it is not effort, it is awareness; it is not effort, it is intense alertness.
Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”

Osho – Buddha says, don’t be too much attached to the body

Buddha Sutra : “For behold your body — A painted puppet, a toy, Jointed and sick and full of false imaginings, A shadow that shifts and fades”.
Osho on above Buddha Sutra – Buddha says, don’t be too much attached to the body, don’t get identified with the body, beware! That is a bondage. Live in the body, use the body, but be alert — it is not you.
FOR BEHOLD YOUR BODY…. If you want to create light in yourself, this is the beginning: BEHOLD YOUR BODY — A PAINTED PUPPET, A TOY, JOINTED AND SICK AND FULL OF FALSE IMAGININGS, A SHADOW THAT SHIFTS AND FADES. How many people have lived on the earth? And they have all faded away, dust unto dust, they have all disappeared — as if they had never existed at all. And the same is going to happen to you, to everybody.
Today you are here, tomorrow you are gone. And then it is only in a few people’s memories that you will live for a few days; they will remember you — just a memory, a picture in their minds. And then those people will die and even the memory will fade away. After two thousand years, do you think there will be anybody who will know that you had ever existed? It is just a shadow, momentary; even though the moment lasts for seventy years, eighty years, it doesn’t matter.
Buddha says truth is eternal, and whatsoever is not eternal is a dream — beware of the dreams! And your mind is also part of your body; that’s why he says beware of false imaginings. Your mind goes on giving you false ideas; it says, “Look how healthy I am, how strong I am, look how beautiful I am.” It goes on deceiving you, it goes on telling you that death always happens to others, not to you. Nobody is an exception. And the mind is such a deceiver, so cunning, so crafty that it can make you believe anything. It can make you believe in money, and you will have to leave all your money when you go. But you cling to money, people are ready to die for money.
In fact, that’s how many people die: their whole lives are spent accumulating money; they sell their lives just to accumulate a few pieces of gold. That gold will remain here and you will be gone, and the gold has no attachment to you. It is you who have created all kinds of attachments.
And the mind always goes on creating a future; it goes on saying to you, “What has not happened yet is going to happen tomorrow — wait!” It keeps you hoping, it keeps you trying in new ways, in new pastures. If this woman has not satisfied you then the mind says, “It is because this woman is such — find another!” And this will go on and on. If this man is not satisfactory, the mind says, “It is because this man is wrong.” But the mind never allows you to see the fact that no man, no woman, can ever satisfy anybody. Satisfaction is not possible in this world. Contentment is possible only when you move into your state of being, when you become a no-mind. Contentment is the flavor of no-mind. And when you can manage, mind gives you fantasies, foolish, stupid, absurd. But mind is a great seducer….
Muriel and Tina were discussing their recent experiences over cocktails.
“Say,” asked Muriel, “how did you make out with that eccentric millionaire you met yesterday?”
“He gave me five hundred dollars,” said Tina. “That screwball wanted to make it in a coffin.”
“No kidding!” exclaimed Muriel. “I’ll bet that shook you up?”
“Yeah, but not as much as the six pall-bearers.”
The mind can seduce you into anything, into any stupid thing. And once anything gets into your mind, it tortures you, it haunts you. You have to do it — it seems that is the only way to get rid of it. But before you get rid of it, mind gives you another idea. Mind is very inventive as far as imagination is concerned. Mind can go on inexhaustibly creating new ideas for you; that’s what has been happening for centuries, for lives. You have lived in this world for so many lives repeating the same kinds of things again and again, maybe a little bit different but the things are the same… and still you go on hoping.
Buddha says beware of the false imaginings; the body is a shadow, you have to leave it one day. You are not it.
Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, The Way of The Buddha, Vol 5″

Osho – Never repent about the past because that is again wasting the present

Question – Beloved Osho, my mind, the monster, distracts me even when i’m sitting in discourse. It simply takes over and thinks all sorts of silly thoughts and by the time discourse is over i get the feeling i missed another golden opportunity to be with you, drink from you, tune in with you. This leaves me very, very sad. what can i do?
Osho – Nishigandha, everybody has cultivated his mind for so long, for centuries, that it has got deep roots in you. You cannot destroy it in one day, it will take a little time. And if you become depressed that you are losing the opportunity then it will take even longer. What is missed is missed.
Never look backwards. Nothing can be done about it. If you miss a train, the second train will be coming. There is no point in crying and weeping and making a fuss because you have missed the train. One understands that what has happened, has happened: now be more alert so that you don’t miss the second train. And also be alert that you don’t catch the wrong train.
I have heard… three professors were standing on the platform and got involved in a deep philosophical discussion, and then they suddenly realized the train had left. So they ran — two of them managed to enter the last compartment. Only one was left behind, who was standing there with tears in his eyes.
A porter was watching all this. He came to the third man and he said, “Many times people miss — I work here — but there is no need to cry. Within just half an hour another train will be coming. You can catch that train.”
He said, “You don’t understand the situation. Those two fellows had come to see me off! In a hurry they got into the train — and they have taken my luggage too! What am I going to do with the train that is coming? First I have to get the luggage…
“And those two must be crying inside the train. They were not going anywhere; they had just come to see me off. But it was all such a hurry, so sudden, that everybody forgot who had come to send off and who was going… we all belong to the university’s philosophy department.”
It happens almost to everybody, so take it naturally. You say, “My mind, the monster…” Don’t call it “monster,” because that creates a hate relationship. Just as there are love relationships, there are hate relationships. People are not aware about their hate relationships.
I am reminded: In the freedom struggle of India, Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah were arch enemies. Jinnah was asking for a separate country for Mohammedans, Pakistan, and Gandhi was insistent that the country should remain one: “Mohammedans and Hindus and Christians and Jains have always lived together — there is no need for Mohammedans to have a separate country. And why cut the country into parts?”
But Jinnah was very stubborn and he said, “Unless you agree to the separation, India will never become free, because Mohammedans will not agree to that freedom.”
And finally, in 1947 Gandhi had to agree, seeing that either you remain a slave forever or you divide the country: “It is better to divide the country; at least both countries will be independent.” The country was divided and in 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was shot, assassinated — of course by a man from Poona. Poona is a fertile land for murderers.
I am telling this because Jinnah was sitting in his garden in Karachi, Pakistan, talking to his secretary about some official work and suddenly a friend came running in and told Jinnah what had happened: “Gandhi has been assassinated!”
Nobody had seen tears in the eyes of Jinnah in his whole life. He was a very strong, stubborn, very logical, very rational man. The shock… his friend and his secretary could not believe it. He should be happy; his arch-enemy is dead — but there were tears.
He stood up, went inside the house, and told the friend, “Now I will not be living much longer either. Only today I realized how much I was related with Mahatma Gandhi. Without him, the whole world seems to be empty. We have been fighting our whole lives, and I never recognized that this fighting has also created a deep relationship. Without him I am almost half dead. All my joy for living is finished.”
Up to that day Jinnah never used to have bodyguards, because he could not believe that Mohammedans, for whom he had been fighting his whole life, could make an attempt on his life. The next day, Karachi was surprised: he had four people with loaded guns around him wherever he went. And somebody asked him what happened, because he used to go alone even in the market. There was no need even for a single bodyguard. He said, “If Hindus can kill Mahatma Gandhi, who has been fighting for them his whole life, what is the difficulty? Mohammedans can kill me.”I am already half dead, and now I cannot trust Mohammedans. Gandhi, who was loved and worshiped as a great soul, as a mahatma, has been killed by Hindus themselves. I was never loved as a great soul, as a mahatma. In fact Mohammedans have never thought that I am a proper Mohammedan,” because he never used to do the five prayers every Mohammedan is supposed to do. He never used to go to the mosque. He was a very ultra-modern man.
He was never in any way a man who can be considered a Mohammedan. He was educated in the West. He was not interested in the holy KORAN — he was just born into a Mohammedan family, that was all. And strangely enough, just within one year, he died. He started dying the same day Gandhi was assassinated. Hate is also a relationship, just as love is a relationship.
And psychology is now absolutely certain that the energy of love and hate is not different. It is the same energy: standing upside down it becomes hate, standing right side up it becomes love — it is the same energy. That’s why it is not very difficult — a friend turning into an enemy, an enemy turning into a friend.
Psychology has become aware of one more very significant thing: that you hate the same person you love. So there is a constant change: in the morning you love, in the afternoon you hate, in the evening you love, in the night you hate — just like a pendulum of a clock, your mind goes on moving between love and hate.
Don’t call your mind the “monster” because you are creating a hate relationship. And relationship is relationship, whether it is love or hate. Just be a silent watcher. “The mind distracts me even when I am sitting in discourse.”
So let him distract; you simply watch. You don’t interfere. You don’t try to stop, because any kind of action on your part is going to give energy to the mind. So whenever you can manage, you listen, and whenever mind wanders and takes you away, go easily with the mind. There is no harm.
It will look strange to you that I am saying go with the mind easily. Just be watchful — without condemning the mind, without abusing the mind — just be watchful that the mind is going somewhere else. And you are in for a great surprise.
It will take a little time, but slowly, slowly the mind will not wander so much. You will have a few gaps to listen to me; then those gaps will become bigger. And because you are not creating any relationship with the mind — of love or hate — you are becoming indifferent to mind.
Gautam Buddha has made it a meditation. He called it upeksha — indifference. Just be indifferent to the mind, and it won’t be a disturbance for long. And it is worthwhile to wait and not be in a hurry, because the very hurry will make your mind more stubborn. If you want to push it away, it will come back with force. You just let it do whatever it wants to do. It is none of your concern, this way or that. Suddenly a watchfulness arises. It takes a little time. It depends on you, how much indifference you can create towards the mind, how much you can be watchful. The mind will become slowly, slowly rejected. It will stop doing its things, because now nobody is interested. For whom to do all the circus?
Just a few days before… my sister is here; her son had come. Now he is married and has children. The moment I saw him I remembered. It must be twenty years ago… they used to live in Kanva.
The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh was also from Kanva. He wanted to meet me and he invited me to have dinner with him, so my brother-in-law took me in his car. And this boy was very small, he may have been five years old. He also went with us. He was sitting on the front seat by the side of his father; I was in the back seat. My brother-in-law got out of the car and told me, “I will go and look, and make arrangements, and inform him that you are here, so he can come out and welcome you.”
It took a long time. The minister was phoning somebody in the capital of Bhopal. The little boy fell asleep and struck his head on the steering wheel. I saw it, I heard it, but I started looking out of the window. He looked at me. I did not give any attention to what had happened. He tried two or three times to look at me: whenever he would look at me, I would look out of the window, so he thought: “It is useless.”
When we went back home, after two hours, as he got out of the car he started crying. I said, “What has happened? Why are you crying?”
He said, “It happened two hours before! I had hit my head on the steering wheel. But you are strange: whenever I would look at you for some consolation, you would not look at me. So I thought, what is the point of crying? This man will not even say anything, and even if I cry or weep, my father is out. Now we are back and my mother is here. Now I can cry.” “But,” I said, “two hours ago?”
But I could see his argument, it was right. If there is nobody to pay attention to you, what is the point in crying? At home everybody is going to pay attention. Then to make a fuss and cry… although now he is not hurting; it had happened two hours before. And just a few days ago he was here, and I remembered. Now he has a child of the same age. Mind is nourished by your attention, for or against. You just be indifferent; look out of the window.
“It simply takes over and thinks all sorts of silly thoughts and by the time discourse is over I get the feeling I missed another golden opportunity to be with You.” Don’t call them “silly” thoughts. These adjectives are dangerous: “monster” mind, “silly” thoughts. You are taking great interest in it. Maybe you are against it, but the interest is there. Be utterly indifferent. It is a golden key. And slowly, slowly the mind will start remaining silent.
And afterwards you repent that “I have missed another opportunity.” Never repent about the past because that is again wasting the present. First you wasted the past; now you are wasting the present.
If you have wasted the golden opportunity to be with me, now don’t waste the golden opportunity to be with the sun, to be with the moon, to be with the trees. It is the same opportunity. The whole thing boils down to one single point: be silent. And everything becomes a golden opportunity.
But you are taking attitudes. You are saying, “This makes me very, very sad.” You are in a vicious circle. First the mind takes you away; it is a “monster,” all its thoughts are “silly.” And when you are leaving here, you become sad, and you start condemning your mind.
There is no need to be sad: it is mind’s nature, and what has gone is gone. What is available herenow, don’t make it sad for that which is dead. On the contrary, make it so joyful that you can take revenge for the past too. Dance and sing so that what has been lost in the past moments is gained in the present. By sadness you cannot gain it, but by being joyous you can gain it.
And a few days or a few months are nothing much. In the long, long eternity they are just like small seconds. Nishigandha, a Frenchman staying at an English country house for the weekend was attracted to a debutante, and without much difficulty, seduced her. Several months later they met by chance at a very select society ball. He stepped forward with outstretched hand, but she walked straight past him without acknowledgement. As soon as he could, the Frenchman
cornered her and said, “Surely you remember me?”
“Of course I do young man, but you are not to assume that in England a one-night frolic constitutes an introduction.”
In a way she is right. Just a one-night frolic cannot be an introduction. The reality is that you may be living with your wife for thirty or forty years — even then you are strangers, you are not introduced to each other yet.
You have lived with the mind for centuries, for many, many lives, yet you are not introduced to it. You don’t know its workings, you don’t know its strategies. The repentance afterwards is also part of your mind; the sadness afterwards is also part of your mind. So you are moving in a vicious circle: first you miss the opportunity, then you abuse the mind, call the mind names: it is a “monster,” the thoughts are “silly,” then you become sad. And this whole game is of the mind.
You have to detach yourself and be a witness. Let the mind do whatsoever it is doing, but don’t get identified with it. It is not you. You are pure awareness. You are just awareness.
If you can remember only this much… Gautam Buddha has used the words samma sati — right remembrance — and the mind will disappear with all its silliness, sadness, monstrosity. A single thing you have to keep: a remembering that “I am not the mind.” You are not to say to yourself, “I am not the mind.” The moment you say it, it becomes part of the mind, because language belongs to the mind. You have to remember it without any language, just a feel: I am not the mind.
I am using words because I have to tell you, but you are not to use words. You have just to be aware and remember without using language. The mind will go. It has always happened. You cannot be an exception.
Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Splendor”

Osho – May way is the way of meditation: Neither of head nor of heart

Question – Beloved Osho, your way is the way of the heart, and the outside world is the way of the head. Will it ever be possible that man can function from a blend of both head and heart, or must the two always remain totally divorced? will it always be essential to make a conscious choice for one way or the other?
Osho – The first thing to be understood is that there is no way, either of head or of heart. Every way leads you away, away from the truth that you are.
It would have been so easy if there were a truth somewhere. Howsoever difficult the way, people would have reached. The more difficult, the more far away the truth was, the more challenging to the ego. If man’s ego challenges him to reach the highest peak in the Himalayas, Everest, where nothing is to be found; if man’s ego gives him incentive to waste billions of dollars to reach the moon, risking lives…. But man has reached the moon. And the first man who walked on the moon must have looked silly to himself – there was nothing for which so much endeavor, technology, preparation was needed.
Remember, the ego wants challenges.
It lives through challenge.
Why have so few people been able to have a glimpse of the truth? – because it is not a challenge; it is not there, it is here within you. It does not need any way, you are already it. But the question has one other implication too: Will it ever be possible for the head and heart to be married, or are they going to remain forever divorced? It all depends on you, because both are mechanisms. You are neither the head nor the heart. You can move through the head, you can move through the heart. Of course you will reach different places because the directions of the head and the heart are diametrically opposite.
The head will go round and round thinking, brooding, philosophizing; it knows only words, logic, argument. But it is very infertile; you cannot get anything out of the head as far as truth is concerned, because truth needs no logic, no argument, no philosophical research. Truth is so simple; the head makes it so complex. Down the centuries philosophers have been seeking and searching for the truth through the head. None of them has found anything, but they have created great systems of thought. I have looked into all those systems: there is no conclusion.
The heart is also a mechanism – different from the head. You can call the head the logical instrument; you can call the heart the emotional instrument. Out of the head all the philosophies, all the theologies are created; out of the heart, come all kinds of devotion, prayer, sentimentality. But the heart also goes round and round in emotions.
The word ”emotion” is good. Watch… it consists of motion, movement. So the heart moves, but the heart is blind. It moves fast, quick, because there is no reason to wait. It does not have to think, so it jumps into anything. But truth is not to be found by any emotionality. Emotion is as much a barrier as logic. The logic is the male in you, and the heart is the female in you. But truth has nothing to do with male and female. Truth is your consciousness. You can watch the head thinking, you can watch the heart throbbing with emotion. They can be in a certain relationship….
Ordinarily, the society has arranged that the head should be the master and the heart should be the servant, because society is the creation of man’s mind, psychology, and the heart is feminine. Just as man has kept the woman a slave, the head has kept the heart a slave. We can reverse the situation: the heart can become the master, the head can become the servant. If we have to choose between the two, if we are forced to choose between the two, then it is better that the heart becomes the master and the head becomes the servant.
There are things which the heart is incapable of. Exactly the same is true about the head. The head cannot love, it cannot feel, it is insensitive. The heart cannot be rational, reasonable. For the whole past they have been in conflict. That conflict only represents the conflict and struggle between men and women.
If you are talking to your wife, you must know it is impossible to talk, it is impossible to argue, it is impossible to come to a fair decision, because the woman functions through the heart. She jumps from one thing to another without bothering whether there is any relationship between the two. She cannot argue, but she can cry. She cannot be rational, but she can scream. She cannot be cooperative in coming to a conclusion. The heart cannot understand the language of the head.
The difference is not much as far as physiology is concerned, the heart and the head are just a few inches apart from each other. But as far as their existential qualities are concerned, they are poles apart.
My way has been described as that of the heart, but it is not true. The heart will give you all kinds of imaginings, hallucinations, illusions, sweet dreams – but it cannot give you the truth. The truth is behind both; it is in your consciousness, which is neither head nor heart. Just because the consciousness is separate from both, it can use both in harmony. The head is dangerous in certain fields, because it has eyes but it has no legs – it is crippled.
The heart can function in certain dimensions. It has no eyes but it has legs; it is blind but it can move tremendously, with great speed – of course, not knowing where it is going. It is not just a coincidence that in all the languages of the world love is called blind. It is not love that is blind, it is the heart that has no eyes.
As your meditation becomes deeper, as your identification with the head and the heart starts falling, you find yourself becoming a triangle. And your reality is in the third force in you: the consciousness. Consciousness can manage very easily, because the heart and the head both belong to it.
You know the story of a blind beggar and a crippled beggar…. They both lived outside the village in the forest. Of course, they were competitors to each other, enemies – begging is a business. But one day the forest was on fire. The cripple had no way to escape, because he could not move on his own. He had eyes to see which way they could get out of the fire, but what use is that if you don’t have legs? The blind man had legs, could move fast and get out of the fire, but how was he going to find the place where the fire had not reached yet?
Both were going to die in the forest, burned alive. It was such an emergency that they forgot their competition. In such emergencies only a Jew can remain a businessman, and certainly those two beggars were not Jews. In fact, to be a beggar and a Jew is a contradiction in terms. They immediately dropped their antagonism – that was the only way to survive. The blind man took the cripple on his shoulders, they found the way out of the fire. One was seeing, and the other was moving accordingly.
Something like this has to happen within you – of course, in reverse order. The head has the eyes, the heart has the guts to move into anything. You have to make a synthesis between the two. And the synthesis, I have to emphasize, should be that the heart remains the master, and the head becomes the servant.
You have as a servant a great asset – your reasoning. You cannot be befooled, you cannot be cheated and exploited. The heart has all feminine qualities: love, beauty, grace. The head is barbarous. The heart is far more civilized, far more innocent. A conscious man uses his head as a servant, and his heart as the master – just the opposite of the story I told you.
And this is so simple for the man of consciousness to do. Once you are unidentified with head or heart, and you are simply a witness of both, you can see which qualities should be higher, which qualities should be the goal. And the head as a servant can bring those qualities, but it needs to be commanded and ordered. Right now, and for centuries, just the opposite has been happening: the servant has become the master. And the master is so polite, such a gentleman, that he has not fought back, he has accepted the slavery voluntarily. The madness on the earth is the result.
We have to change the very alchemy of man.
We have to rearrange the whole inside of man.
And the most basic revolution in man will come when the heart decides the values. It cannot decide for war, it cannot go for nuclear weapons; it cannot be death-oriented. The heart is life’s juice. Once the head is in the service of the heart, it has to do what the heart decides. And the head is immensely capable of doing anything, just right guidance is needed; otherwise, it is going to go berserk, it is going to be mad. For the head there are no values. For the head there is no meaning in anything. For the head there is no love, no beauty, no grace – only reasoning.
But this miracle is possible only by disidentifying yourself from both. Watch the thoughts, because in your watching them, they disappear. Then watch your emotions, sentimentalities; by your watching, they also disappear. Then your heart is as innocent as that of a child, and your head is as great a genius as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Aristotle.
But the trouble is far bigger than you can conceive. It is a male-dominated society; man has been creating all the rules of the game, the woman has just been following. And the conditioning has gone so deep, because it has been going on for millions of years. If in the individual the revolution happens and the heart is re-enthroned, given its right place as the master, and the head given the right place as a great servant, this will affect your whole social structure. You can see it happening in my commune.
The woman is the master; she is not longer mistress, and the man is no longer master. People go on asking me why, for all significant posts, I have chosen women? For the simple reason that the woman will not create the third world war.
It has been a historical fact that each war is created by the man, but the woman suffers most. Strange – the man is the criminal and the consequence happens to the woman! The woman loses her husband, the woman loses her children. The woman loses her dignity, because whenever a country is invaded, the soldiers are so much repressed – just like the monks…. Sexually they had no opportunity while the war was going on. When the opportunity arises – they invade a city and conquer it – their first attack is on the woman.
And the war has nothing to do with the woman, she is simply outside of the game – it is a male game, just like boxing – but she has to be raped. Those soldiers are hankering not to be victorious for their nation’s glory – that is a faraway thing – they are hankering to get the women of the enemies as quickly as possible.
I am putting women in all significant, powerful positions. It is symbolic. Man has a tremendous capacity to do things, but he should not be the guide anymore. He is hung up in his head. He can also become the master if he puts his heart above his head. That’s why I said that all of my sannyasins are women – even those who biologically, physiologically, are men. The moment they become sannyasins they have accepted a new structure, they have put something above their head – their heart.
This is what I mean: that even men around me start learning feminine qualities. And feminine qualities are the only qualities worth having. So there is a possibility, but the possibility has a basic condition to be fulfilled: you become more conscious, a witness, a watcher of all that goes on inside you. The watcher becomes immediately free from identification. Because he can see the emotions, it is an absolute certainty that ”I am not the emotions.” He can see the thoughts; the simple conclusion is, ”I am not my thought process.”
”Then who am I?” – a pure watcher, a witness. And you reach to the ultimate possibility of intelligence in you: You become a conscious man. Amongst the whole world sleeping, you become awake, and once you are awake there is no problem. Your very awakening will start shifting things to their right places. The head has to be dethroned, and the heart has to be crowned again. This change amongst many people will bring a new society, a New Man in the world. It will change so many things, you cannot conceive.
Science will have a totally different flavor. It will not serve death anymore, it will not make weapons that are going to kill the whole of life on the earth. It will make life richer, discover energies which can make man more fulfilled, which can make man live in comfort, in luxury, because the values will have completely changed. It will still be mind functioning, but under the direction of the heart. My way is the way of meditation.
I have to use language, unfortunately, that’s why I say may way is the way of meditation: Neither of head nor of heart, but of a growing consciousness which is above both mind and heart. This is the key to open the doors for a New Man to arrive on the earth.
Source – Osho Book “From the False to the Truth”

Osho on Imagination, Remember to avoid any kind of imagination — all imagination

Question – Beloved Osho, the other morning before lecture, i suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to touch, with great gratitude, the floor where you walk. in that moment, i heard again that voice — it still sounds like your voice: “if you can kiss in gratitude the place on earth where i have stepped… i want to tell you, that i’ve stepped everywhere on this earth. “this is really too much, for i see myself in tears, kissing every spot on the earth. and again that voice comes in me, or from me, whispering, “if you can kiss in gratitude all the earth, and all that abides on the earth, you don’t need me anymore. “please, osho, tell me that i was just imagining, that it was just a dream. you haven’t said that to me, have you?
Osho – Sarjano, the idea is Catholic. You come from the country of the pope, and that fellow goes on kissing the earth wherever he goes — even in India, where kissing the earth means kissing cow dung. When he kissed it here, that very day I said, “He has tasted something of Hindu religion.”
It is just your imagination, Sarjano. There is no need for your gratitude to be expressed in stupid gestures. Just being grateful, your eyes full of tears, your heart just melting and merging with existence, is enough. Kissing the earth is just an idiotic symbol; I could never have said anything like this to you. But you love me, and you are so full of me that even if you speak in your imagination, you may hear my voice.
But remember one thing: except for silence, everything else is your imagination — howsoever beautiful. Only your silence I can say has my support, because only in your silence are you close to the very center of existence. In absolute silence, you become the very center yourself. But remember to avoid any kind of imagination — all imagination — even beautiful imagination, apparently looking like the divine.
It happened once: I had a few Mohammedan friends and they were followers of a Sufi mystic. The mystic used to come to the city once a year to see his disciples, and they were continuously telling me, “This time when he comes, some way has to be found so that you both can meet.”
I said, “There is no problem with it. I can be his host; he can be my guest. That will be the best thing because he is going to be here three days, so for three days we can be together.”
They liked the idea. The most impressive thing to them in the Sufi mystic was that he saw God everywhere: he would see a tree and he would go and hug the tree and start talking to the tree. Almost in a trance, he would kiss the earth; he would hold your hand and kiss it and he would start talking in a trance and address you as “God! My Lord!” People were very impressed.
He came to stay with me. Before he could kiss my hand, I said, “Wait! Do you really see God in me or have you been imagining for years?” — because that is one of the traditions in the Sufis: you start imagining and slowly, slowly, the imagination becomes a reality. He was shocked. There was a moment of silence — painful silence, because his disciples were there. But he was an honest man; he said, “Ah, at least thirty years ago I started on the path, and this was the path shown by my teacher: ‘Look into everything for God.’
“In the beginning, it was difficult to see God in a camel, in a donkey, in a buffalo. But my master insisted: All these forms are gods; you don’t have to judge them — your path is just to see God in everything, so that one day you can see God everywhere. And I succeeded in three years, and I started seeing God everywhere. Now I see God everywhere.”
I said, “Just listen to me. For the three days you will be here, stop imagining. Just see things as they are: a table is a table, not God; a camel is a camel, not God; and a buffalo is a buffalo, not God — just for three days.”
He was very reluctant and afraid and nervous, but he was staying with me, so I said, “I will remind you about this kissing and hugging — don’t forget! After three days you can hug with a vengeance, because no tree can prevent how much you hug it. For three days… you can fill the quota afterwards, but for three days I will be constantly after you. You have to see things as they are.”
There was no need for three days. Within just one day, in twenty-four hours, the god that had been there for thirty years, disappeared. In the morning, he was very angry at me. He said, “What have you done? I really see a table is a table! Just now I saw a man going by on a bicycle, and I saw neither the god in the man, nor in the bicycle. You destroyed my thirty years of practice.”
I said, “Just think a little. If something that you have spent thirty years discovering was really true, then in one day it could not disappear. For thirty years you have lived in a hallucination — you created the hallucination, and the hallucination can be so strong that all doubts disappear. And thirty years is a long time.”
I told him a story of Ramakrishna which is very rare in the history of mystics. After attaining enlightenment, nobody ever tries to look into other paths to see whether they also reach to enlightenment or not — there is no point. You wanted to reach here, you have reached — now what is the point of finding out whether other roads also reach here or not? But Ramakrishna had something tremendously significant on his mind, so he gave six months to each religion that was available in his vicinity; for six months he would practice the religion and forget everything else. Of course, he was already enlightened so the path was not a problem; in six months, he would reach back to the point of consciousness.
In Bengal, there is a small local group of a very strange religion: they believe that Krishna is the only man, and those who follow him are all women. They may be men, but that is only an illusion; in reality, except for Krishna, there is no other man — all are women. He is the lover and you are the beloved. In the night, the followers of that sect, men and women both, dress alike — like women. And even men sleep with a statue of Krishna in their beds — he is their husband.
Ramakrishna followed that path also for six months. For others it was just a ritual; they were born into that religion, just as you are born into Christianity, or Hinduism, or Jainism. You don’t really care; it is just accidental that you are born into a certain religion and you follow it, but it is a formality — at the most.
But Ramakrishna was not going into those processes in a formal way: when he was following something, he was following it with totality and intensity. And almost a miracle was seen! Even in the day, he used the same clothes as women use in Bengal. Even the people of that sect told him, “In the day you can use men’s clothes; otherwise it looks very awkward.” But he said, “When I follow something, I follow it totally. I cannot divide my day from my night. And I don’t care about the world.”
His breasts started growing; his disciples became very much afraid. So much intensity of projecting that even the doctors who came to know about it when they visited Ramakrishna and saw his breasts, could not believe it — because this was a physiological miracle. But his disciples whispered in the ears of the doctor, “This is nothing — he is having monthly periods!”
For six months continuously… his voice changed, it became more like a woman’s. He started walking like a woman — which is very difficult; difficult because only a woman can walk that way. She has a womb inside her body and that womb gives a different kind of movement to the legs. Man has no womb inside; his legs have a different movement.
He started walking like a woman, speaking like a woman, his voice changed. And when the menstrual period started, then the disciples became really afraid. They said, “We have lost him. How can we get him back?” They tried to persuade him, but until six months was up, he was not going to change his path. They said, “This path is dangerous. We don’t think that these breasts and this period are going to disappear even after six months. Your whole life you will be a laughingstock — and we are going to be laughingstocks because we are your disciples.”
It took almost six months after he stopped for the change to take place again. Slowly, slowly, he became a man again — before that he had become a woman. Such a deep psychological projection… It is through such projections that people are experiencing Krishna, Jesus, Buddha — and when they experience it, they see it.
And if you say to them that it is only an illusion, how can they believe you? Their illusion looks more real than you are. Mind has a capacity to project anything and make it appear almost real; or sometimes, if the mind is very powerful, even more than real.
But my path is not the path of imagination: It is the path that does not use the mind at all. Imagination and projection and hallucination and illusion — they are all parts of the mind. My simple approach is transcendence of mind; so only when you start seeing absolute nothingness, utter silence, can you see that I am very close by.
In that silence, you have heard me; in that nothingness, you have seen me. But if you see something, if you hear something, then it is your imagination — you have fallen from the beyond, back into the mind. Only one thing has to be remembered: the mind is the world — and going beyond the mind is the beginning of God.
Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Splendor”

Osho on Left and Right Brain (left hemisphere and right hemisphere)

Osho – Being is one, the world is many…and between the two is the divided mind, the dual mind. It is just like a big tree, an ancient oak: the trunk is one, then the tree divides into two main branches, the main bifurcation, from which a thousand and one bifurcations of branches grow. The being is just like the trunk of the tree — one, non-dual — and the mind is the first bifurcation where the tree divides into two, becomes dual, becomes dialectical: thesis and antithesis, man and woman, yin and yang, day and night, God and Devil, yoga and Zen. All the dualities of the world are basically in the duality of the mind — and below the duality is oneness of being. If you slip below, underneath the duality you will find one — call it God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you like.
If you go higher through the duality, you come to the many million-fold world. This is one of the most basic insights to be understood — that mind is not one. Hence, whatsoever you see through the mind becomes two. It is just like a white ray entering a prism; it is immediately divided into seven colors and the rainbow is created. Before it entered the prism it was one, through the prism it is divided. and the white color disappears into the seven colors of the rainbow. The world is a rainbow, the mind is a prism, and the being is the white ray.
Modern research has come to a very significant fact, one of the most significant achieved in this century, and that is that you don’t have one mind, you have two minds. Your brain is divided into two hemispheres: the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is joined with the left hand, and the left hemisphere is joined with the right hand — crosswise. The right hemisphere is intuitive, illogical, irrational, poetic, platonic, imaginative, romantic, mythical, religious; and the left hemisphere is logical, rational, mathematical, Aristotelian, scientific, calculative. These two hemispheres are constantly in conflict — the basic politics of the world is within you, the greatest politics of the world is within you. You may not be aware of it, but once you become aware, the real thing to
be done is somewhere between these two minds.
The left hand is concerned with the right hemisphere — intuition, imagination, myth, poetry, religion — and the left hand is very much condemned. The society is of those who are right-handed — right-handed means left hemisphere. Ten per cent of children are born left-handed but they are forced to be right-handed. Children who are born left-handed are basically irrational, intuitive, non-mathematical, non-Euclidean… they are dangerous for society so it forces them in every way to become right-handed. It is not just a question of hands, it is a question of inner politics: the left-handed child functions through the right hemisphere — that society cannot allow, it is dangerous, so he has to be stopped before things go too far.
It is suspected that in the beginning the proportion must have been fifty-fifty — lefthanded children fifty per cent and right-handed children fifty per cent — but the righthanded party has ruled so long that by and by the proportion has fallen to ten per cent and ninety per cent. Even amongst you here many will be left-handed but you may not be aware of it. You may write with the right hand and do your work with the right hand but in your childhood you may have been forced to be right-handed. This is a trick because once you become right-handed your left hemisphere starts functioning. The left hemisphere is reason; the right hemisphere is beyond reason, its functioning is not mathematical. It functions in flashes, it is intuitive, very graceful — but irrational.
The left-handed minority is the most oppressed minority in the world, even more than Negroes, even more than the poor people. If you understand this division, you will understand many things. With the bourgeoisie and the proletariat the proletariat is always functioning through the right hemisphere of the brain: the poor people are more intuitive. Go to the primitive people, they are more intuitive. The poorer the person, the less intellectual — and that may be the cause of his being poor. Because he is less intellectual he cannot compete in the world of reason. He is less articulate as far as language is concerned, reason is concerned, calculation is concerned — he is almost a fool. That may be the cause of his being poor.
The rich person is functioning through the left hemisphere; he is more calculative, arithmetical in everything, cunning, clever, logical — and he plans. That may be the reason why he is rich. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot disappear by communist revolutions, no, because the communist revolution is by the same people. The Czar ruled Russia; he ruled it through the left hemisphere of the mind. Then he was replaced by Lenin who was of the same type. Then Lenin was replaced by Stalin who was even more of the same type.
The revolution is false because deep down the same type of people are ruling — the ruler and the ruled mean the same, and the ruled are those of the right-sided hemisphere. So whatsoever you do in the outside world makes no difference really, it is superficial. The same applies to men and women. Women are right-hemisphere people, men are lefthemisphered.
Men have ruled women for centuries. Now a few women are revolting but the amazing thing is that these are the same type of women. In fact they are just like men — rational, argumentative, Aristotelian. It is possible that one day, just as the communist revolution has succeeded in Russia and China, somewhere, maybe in America, women can succeed and overthrow men. But by the time the women succeed, the women will no more be women, they will have become left-hemisphered. Because to fight, one has to be calculative, and to fight with men you have to be like men: aggressive.
That very aggressiveness is shown all over the world in women’s liberation. Women who have become part of that liberation movement are very aggressive, they are losing all grace, all that comes out of intuition. Because if you have to fight with men you have to learn the same trick; if you have to fight with men, you have to fight with the same techniques.
Fighting with anybody is very dangerous because you become like your enemy. That is one of the greatest problems of humanity. Once you fight with somebody, by and by you have to use the same technique and the same way. Then the enemy may be defeated but by the time he is defeated you have become your own enemy. Stalin is more Czar-like than any Czar, more violent than any Czar. Of course it has to be so: to throw Czars, very violent people are needed, more violent than the Czar himself. Only they will become the revolutionaries, will come out on top. By the time they reach there they have become Czars themselves, and the society continues on the same way. Just superficial things change, deep down the same conflict remains.
The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else. The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of the mind. A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some physiological defect or something else, the person becomes split, the person becomes two persons — and the phenomenon of schizophrenia or split personality happens.
If the bridge is broken — and the bridge is very fragile — then you become two, you behave like two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beautiful; in the evening you are very angry, absolutely different. You don’t remember your morning… how can you remember? Another mind was functioning — and the person becomes two persons. If this bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear as two and become one, then integration, then crystallization, arises. What George Gurdjieff used to call the crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the male and the female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle. If you can understand this basic bifurcation in your tree of then you can understand all the conflict that goes on around and inside you.
Source – Osho Book “Ancient Music in the Pines”