Osho – Only meditation is not a mind trip; everything else is a mind trip

Question – ANYTHING I SEE HAPPENING IN MYSELF IS FALSE, ILLUSORY, AND A MIND TRIP, RIGHT? AND MY RECOGNITION OF THE MIND TRIP IS A MIND TRIP TOO?

Osho – RIGHT. As far as thoughts go, everything is a mind trip. When thoughts cease and you see without any thoughts crowding in your mind, when you see clearly with no smoke of the thoughts surrounding you, when your look is simple, innocent, uncorrupted by thoughts, then it is not a mind trip.

Only meditation is not a mind trip; everything else is a mind trip. Or, love is not a mind trip; everything else is a mind trip. If love or meditation has happened to you, you will know what I am indicating towards. In a deep moment of love, thinking stops. The moment is so intriguing, the moment is so tremendously powerful, the moment is so intensely alive, that thinking stops. You are simply in awe, a great wonder surrounds you.

Or in deep meditation, when the moment of silence has come and you are absolutely silent, still — no flickering, no wavering, no trembling, the flame of your consciousness is straight — then thinking stops. Then you are outside the grip of the mind. Otherwise, everything is a mind trip.

Remember it: one has to go beyond the mind because the mind is SAMSAR, the mind is the world. It is because of your thinking that you are missing the truth. Once thinking is stopped you are face to face with the reality. It is the continuous screen of thinking that is distorting reality. It is as if you are looking in a lake full of ripples. It is a full moon night, and the lake is reflecting the beautiful moon — but it is full of ripples. You cannot gather it together; the moon goes on splitting into a thousand fragments. The whole lake seems to be spread over by the moon, silvery, many fragments of the moon all around. Then the wind stops, the ripples disappear: those fragments start falling into one moon. The silver that was spread all over the lake becomes more concentrated in one place. When the lake is completely without ripples, the moon is reflected perfectly.

When the mind is with thoughts, the lake is with ripples; when the mind is without thoughts, the lake is without ripples. God is reflected perfectly when there is no ripple in you. Forget all about God — the only thing to be done is how to become ripple-less, how to become thoughtless, how to drop this constant obsession with thinking.

It can be dropped — it is because of your cooperation that it continues. It is your energy that you go on giving to it that keeps it alive. It is just like a man on a bicycle: he goes on pedaling — it is his energy that keeps the cycle going on. Once he stops pedaling, the cycle may go a little further because of the past momentum, but then it has to stop.

Don’t give energy to your thoughts. Become a witness — indifferent, aloof, distant. Just see the thoughts, and don’t be in any way involved in them. Note the fact: the thoughts are there; but don’t choose this way or that, don’t be for or against, don’t be pro or con. Just be a watcher. Let the mind-traffic move, just stand by the side and look at it, unaffected by it, as if it has nothing to do with you.

Sometimes try it: go on the busiest street where the traffic rush is too much. Stand by the side of the road and see the traffic — so many people going hither and thither, and cars and bicycles and trucks and buses. You just stand by the side and look, and do the same inside: close your eyes and see — the mind is a traffic of thoughts, thoughts rushing here and there. You watch, you just be a watcher. By and by, you will see that the traffic is becoming less and less. By and by, you will see that the road is empty, nobody is passing. In those rare moments, first glimpses of SAMADHI will enter in you.

There are three stages of SAMADHI. First, when you achieve glimpses through gaps — one thought comes, then it has gone and another has not come for the time being. There may even be a gap for a few seconds; in that interval reality penetrates you — the moon becomes one. The reflection is there only for a single moment, but you will see the first glimpse.

This is what in Zen they call SATORI. By and by, the gaps will become bigger, and when the gaps become bigger and you can see reality more clearly, that vision of reality changes you. Then you cannot be the same because your vision becomes your reality also. Whatsoever you are seeing affects your being. Your vision, by and by, is absorbed, digested. That is the second stage of samadhi.

And then comes the last stage: when suddenly the whole traffic disappears, as if you were fast asleep and dreaming and somebody has shaken you and awakened you, and the whole traffic of dreaming has stopped. In that third stage you become one with reality, because there is nothing to divide. The fence that was dividing you has disappeared.

The wall is no more there. The wall is made of the bricks of thoughts, desires, feelings, emotions; once it disappears — it is a China wall, very ancient, and every strong — but once it disappears, there is no fence between you and God. When for the first time the third stage happens, that is where the Upanishads announced, “AHAM BRAHAMASMI” — I am God, I am the Brahma. It is where the Sufi mystic, Mansur, declares, “ANA’L HAQ” — I am the truth. It is there when Jesus declares, “I and my God are one, I and my Father are one.”

Source – from Osho Book “The Beloved, Vol 2”