Osho – Mind is never silent. It is constantly chattering. It is constantly crowded with many thoughts, desires. It goes on dreaming and dreaming. It is never still even for a single moment. And we have become identified with the mind, we think that we are our mind. That is creating the whole misery.
Get out of the mind and you will come back to your senses. Get out of the mind because the mind is a kind of madness. But one can get out of the mind in two ways. One is falling below it — then you will have to be put in a mental asylum. The other is going beyond it — then you become a Buddha or a Jesus. So please choose this way, the second.
There is a fear of going out of the mind. The fear is because mad people are also out of the mind. But they have fallen below, and one has to rise above. When you rise above the mind great silence descends. You see the mind deep down in the valley chattering still, but the distance becomes bigger and bigger every day and one day you cannot hear all that chattering at all. That day one becomes enlightened.
Mind lives either in the past or in the future. If you are young then the mind lives in the past. The old man has no future. He knows that there is death so he is afraid to look at the future. He goes on reminiscing about the past, all that has been and is no more. He enjoys those golden days. Much of it is just imagination, it has never been there; much of it is just invention to remain occupied.
The moment a person starts living in the past is the moment when he starts becoming old. Psychologically, that is the point from where one becomes old. Physiologically, it may not coincide, that that is the psychological old age, when you start thinking about the past and the beauties of the past and those golden experiences and those nice days, and how everything was just great. The future is so dark that you are afraid to look at it and you want to remain occupied with the past.
But that is not so with the young person. The young person looks at the future. Death is far away, in fact the young person never thinks of death. It is so far away, it is beyond his scope to think about it; he does not have that much insight. So he lives in the future, he makes castles in the air:”I will do this and I will get that and I will be this and tomorrow it is going to happen; if not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow.”
The old man wastes his present in the past, the young man wastes his present engaged in the future. Both exercises are absolutely futile. Not only futile but very harmful, because the present which is, is being wasted for that which is not.
Don’t think of the future. Live in the present. That’s my message to you. Be in the present moment. And if you can be present to the moment you escape from all kinds of stupidities of the old people. If you can be in the present you transcend time. Time consists of past and future, eternity consists only of the present. Eternity is now, always now and never then, always here and never there. And to enter into the now and the here is to enter into God.
This has to become your meditation, to come more and more close to the present moment. I am not saying not tp prepare for a journey. If you are going somewhere you will have to purchase the ticket ahead of time, you will have to plan it. I’m not saying not to do that. That has nothing to do with the future. What I mean is a psychological hope, desire, because the present seems to be unfulfilling you escape into the future and you start hoping that there will be fulfilment.
Stop going into the psychological future. The factual future is okay, it is not a disturbance at all. The factual past is also okay, it is not a disturbance at all. You have to remember your name and your address and when you meet your father you have to recognise him. You can’t say to him “The past is the past and I don’t know who your are!”(laughter) These are factual things, they are perfectly okay. But deep inside, the past should not possess you and the future should not be your occupation. Relax into the moment. And then one is entitled to all kinds of miracles.
Source – Osho Book “If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself”