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Be
a Witness
to Your Thoughts
by
Osho
 Meditation
needs great work. It is arduous, it is an uphill task.
To remain non-meditative is easy in a way. You have not
to do anything about it, you are already non-meditative,
everybody is born non-meditative. But to become
meditative really needs great courage, great
determination, great patience, because to go beyond the
mind is the most complicated phenomenon.
We don't
know anything except the mind. Even when we think about
going beyond it, it is the mind that is thinking. Even
when we try to go beyond it, it is the mind that is
trying to go beyond itself. And how can the mind go
beyond itself? -- that is the complexity. It is like
pulling yourself up by your shoestrings. You cannot pull
yourself up by your shoestrings.
But
there are methods, devices, which can be of immense
help. They are all indirect. Meditation cannot be
forced; anything forced will be nothing but a product of
the mind.
Mind is
very coercive. Mind is nazi, it is fascist, it is
violent. So meditation can come only when you slip out
of the mind without any coercion, naturally,
spontaneously. And the device, the greatest device ever
used is witnessing.
Just
watch your thoughts. Whenever you have time just close
your eyes and see thoughts and desires and memories
moving on the screen of the mind. Be totally
unconcerned.
Don't
judge that this is right and that is wrong. If you judge
you have already jumped in. If you say "This is
right," you have already chosen something, and the
moment you choose you become identified with it, you
have become attached to it. You would not like it to go,
you would like to keep it for yourself. And when you say
that something is bad you are pushing it away, you are
avoiding it, you don't want it any more. You don't want
it even to be there on the screen; hence you have
started fighting, struggling, and you have forgotten
witnessing in all this.
Just to
be a witness: one sits on the bank of a river and
watches the river flow by. There is nothing to judge,
nothing really to say, but only to see. And if one is
patient enough, slowly slowly the traffic becomes thin.
Less and less do thoughts come on the screen and
sometimes for moments there is nothing on the screen and
you are facing an empty screen.
Those
are the most precious moments of life, those intervals
when thoughts are not there, you are simply there. The
seer is there with nothing to see. Those are the moments
of purity, innocence, those are the moments which can be
called divine. They are no more human. You have
transcended humanity in those moments.
Slowly
slowly those moments become bigger and bigger, and one
day it becomes such a simple process that whenever you
want to you can go into that interval, into that
thoughtlessness. Fully aware yet thoughtless - that is
meditation. And that is the only thing that can liberate
you from all kinds of bondages, that can bring peace to
you, and bliss and god and truth.
Osho - Unpublished talks
Copyright © Osho International Foundation
1998
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