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Chapter title: None
24 June 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive code: 8006245 ShortTitle: IMPRIS24 Audio:
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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]
Meditation is a state of no-mind. Mind means being in thinking, desiring, dreaming; no-mind means no thinking, no desiring, no dreaming, absolute inward silence, when nothing stirs inside, as if everything has totally stopped. It is a full-stop, the mind is no more functioning. It is a tremendous silence, very pregnant. It is not dead, it is very alive, very vibrant, full of great possibilities. In fact mind is absolutely impotent; it only thinks. And thoughts are just hot air and nothing else.
An old man was telling his physician 'I am feeling very weak.' The physician checked him and told him
'You will have to cut your sex life to almost half.' The old man said, 'Which half do I have to cut? -- talking about it or thinking about it?'
That's what mind goes on doing. Talking means thinking loudly; thinking means talking silently inside, whispering to yourself. It is the same: whether you talk aloud or you talk without moving your lips the process is the same. Thoughts cannot lead you to reality. Thoughts are just thoughts.
You can think about great things: god, love, truth, but to think about god has no
meaning. To know god is a totally different phenomenon. The person who knows god never thinks about god -- there is no need to think.
Thinking is like a blind man pondering over, contemplating light -- what light is, how it looks, what exactly it consists of, why people are so interested in light. He is trying to define light -- which is impossible for him. A blind man cannot define light -- it is an experience. So is god, so is love, so is truth.
Mind keeps you clouded. The whole sky of your inner universe remains clouded; you can't see clearly. It keeps you in the dark, it keeps your eyes closed. You are not blind, nobody is born blind; as far as 1/08/07
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consciousness is concerned nobody is born blind. Even the physically blind person is not blind inwardly. He can become enlightened. He may not be able to know the outer light but he can know the inner light. That inner light is everybody's birthright, it is intrinsic to our being. But for it one has to go beyond mind.
Going beyond mind is just like taking your aeroplane above the clouds, moving upwards. When you are travelling in an aeroplane sometimes you are below the clouds, sometimes you are in the clouds, sometimes you are above the clouds. And the beauty of being above he clouds is tremendous. The whole sky is open for you, the whole infinity is open to you. Nothing debars your vision, the insight is absolutely clear. You can see into the unbounded.
Meditation is exactly the same process: taking yourself above mind, transcending mind, surpassing mind. And once you have known something beyond the mind, mind looks just child's play, of no utility at all. It looks ridiculous, and all its efforts and all its endeavours that you have made your whole life, look stupid, silly, because now you can see. And it was impossible for the mind to conceive that which you are seeing, it is incomprehensible through the mind.
The way to transcend the mind is watchfulness: you have simply to watch the
mind. It is a very simple process but with immense possibilities. One cannot even imagine how such a simple process can take you beyond the mind. But all ultimate laws are very simple.
Man had never thought that one day he would be able to fly. Of course people had imagined it for centuries; all the scriptures of the world are full of stories. But they are all stories, fiction, an old type of science fiction; nobody really believed them.
When for the first time the Wright brothers started working to make a machine that would fly, everybody laughed. People thought they were mad, their whole family thought they were mad. They were so condemned that they could work only in the night and that too, in the basement of their house so nobody would disturb them. Otherwise everybody was ready to condemn them.
The first flying machine that they made was made out of old cycle parts, because their father owned a bicycle shop. He used to purchase old bicycles and make them workable and then sell them again. So there was a huge pile of old parts in the basement of the house. The first aeroplane was made of old bicycles.
When they had made it they didn't declare it, because nobody would believe it. In fact they themselves were very afraid to believe, it was impossible for them to believe that it was going to fly. They went alone outside the town. The first time they were the only persons there: one brother watched and the other brother took the machine up. For only sixty seconds, for only one minute, was it in the air. But that was enough: the principle had been found. And then the whole world said, 'There is nothing in it -- anybody could have done it.' But for centuries nobody had done it. That's how people are: once you do a thing they will say, 'This is so simple.'
Meditation also is a very simple process. It is just a silent watching of the mind: thoughts moving, desires moving, dreams coming in, going out, and you remain centred, looking at it without doing a thing.
That's the most important point to remember. If you start doing something, immediately you have forgotten to watch, you have fallen into the mind. You are no more sitting on the bank of the river, you have jumped into the river. That temptation is the only barrier, and it is a great temptation.
Some thoughts are so beautiful, some dreams are so beautiful, that one forgets to
watch; one becomes identified, one starts following those thoughts, one starts getting into imagination, into fantasising.
All that is needed is not to be tempted by anything passing by; just remain untempted. Slowly slowly the knack is learned, and when you are untemptedly watching, the transcendence happens of its own accord.
The moment you are a watcher you have already transcended, because the watcher cannot be the watched, the observer cannot be the observed. Those thoughts are there; you are here, a witness. You are no more part of it; the no- mind has started growing in you. This is the way a man becomes a Christ or a Buddha or a Zarathustra or a Lao Tzu.
The word 'Marie' is very beautiful. It has three meanings which define the whole process of meditation.
The first meaning is bitterness. Meditation starts in a very bitter state. The taste is bitter. In the beginning it is bitter, because temptation is sweet and you have always been a victim of temptation; it is an old habit. It is really bitter to keep yourself aloof, cool, untempted, not to get into the merry-go-round of the mind, not to start playing with the beautiful toys -- and they are very colourful, very psychedelic, really alluring, intoxicating, infatuating.
For example, a sexual desire passes in the mind. Suddenly you think of a beautiful man or a woman --
and no man, no woman, is as beautiful as the colourful image of a man or woman can be inside the mind. It 1/08/07
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Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished
Query:-
is so attractive. One is unconsciously pulled into it; one gets into the whirlpool of it, forgets all about meditation. One says to oneself, 'I can meditate later on but let us go a little more into this thought. This Sophia Loren may come again, may not come again, this Mohammed may visit, may not visit again -- who knows? Meditation you can do any time, it is up to you, but don't miss this
opportunity.' One starts postponing meditation.
And the strange thing is when you start meditating, very beautiful thoughts will come, great desires will arise because mind will try in every way to manipulate you; mind is a master of you and you are a slave, and through meditation You will become the master and the mind will be the slave. And the mind has remained a master for so long, it does not want to become a slave. 11ho wants to lose one's mastery so easily?
So it will give all kinds of temptations. There is no other devil except your own mind; hence the beginning is very bitter. The first meaning of Marie is bitterness. If you can pass through it...
The second meaning of Marie is rebellion. If one can pass through bitterness, if you can start centering and settling into yourself, and the mind no longer has any power over you, a great radical change happens in your consciousness; a rebellion happens. You are no more the same person, you are reborn.
This rebirth is true rebellion. All other rebellions are just so-called. They are only reforms, not rebellions, because they only change the outer form, they never change the inner spirit.
All the revolutions have failed in that sense. No revolution has yet succeeded. French or russian or Chinese -- no revolution has succeeded. Only a few rebellious people have succeeded, but they have succeeded through meditation.
The fight is not outside, the fight is inside, with your own mind. the mind is the real csar, and you have to rebel against the mind. Once this rebellion is possible you are for the first time beginning to live life with a new light, with new perceptiveness, with a new clarity, with new transparency. Your whole inner world is new, and because the inner is new the outer is bound to change for you. It will not change for anybody else, but for you the whole world will be different.
And the third meaning of Marie is fragrance. If this rebirth happens you flower; your ultimate potential becomes actual. You are no more a seed, you become a flower. You have become a grown-up, you have matured, you have come home. And great fragrance is released. That fragrance is a celebration: the celebration of coming home, the celebration of the ultimate achievement.
Buddha calls it nirvana, Jesus calls it kingdom of god, Mahavira calls it moksha, ultimate freedom. Now you know what the meaning of life is, now you know what the beauty of life is, now you know what the music of life is, now you know what the poetry of life is. Each moment becomes a dance, a song. And it goes on growing -- it is a process that begins but never ends.
The Imprisoned Splendor
Chapter #24
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