The mind will always remain unsteady, because unsteadiness is its nature. If a wave does not move, it will cease to be a wave. It is called a wave because it is moving, because it remains in motion. What would a silent wave be? The existence of the wave is in its motion, in its restlessness.

Never hope for your mind to be quiet; it does not know how to be at peace. As long as the mind is there, there is certain to be restlessness. When the mind is no more, what remains is peace. The absence of mind is peace — to be in no-mind is peace.

The mind will always be shaky, will always remain indecisive. If you wait for a decision by the mind — if you think, “I shall do this when the mind decides” — you will never be able to do anything. To remain in indecision is the way of the mind. It will always remain divided, broken into parts. Some parts will be for something and other parts will be against it. Within the mind there is always a civil war, there is always an internal conflict, there is always a duel going on.

What is this duality? It is important to understand its roots.

In you there are three things, three factors. One is your body. Your body is a fact; it has a material existence. And then there is the flow of consciousness within you. That is your atma, your soul. That is also a fact. Between these two is the mind. The mind is not a fact; it is a false thing.

It is a little bit body and a little bit soul — it is a situation created between the two. It cannot be total, it is always divided, always with one side or the other. And so it remains partly with the body and partly with the soul. It is created by the union of these two, and so it can never be totally with the body.

The desire to be a saint, to be a holy person, is hidden in everyone; it is even hidden in the mind of the greatest sinner. Whenever you are going to do something terrible — even though you may have been doing it for lives — the mind will caution you not to. It will say, “Don’t do this. It is bad.” If the mind were only body, then nothing would be bad. At the body’s level nothing is good or bad; neither holy act nor sin can exist. In the case of the enlightened man both disappear, and for the ignorant man neither exists. For the ignorant man, there is no possibility of the existence of good or bad, and the enlightened man has reached a place where both of these are left far behind.

When you are at prayer or at worship the mind will ask, “Why are you wasting your time?” When you are going to steal something, when you are going to commit a theft, the mind will ask, “Why are you committing a sin?” When you are preparing to give something away in charity the mind will ask, “Why are you throwing your money away unnecessarily?” Then you are in a great fix trying to figure out what the mind wants.

The mind is like a bridge joining the two banks — the bank of the body and the bank of the soul. Half of the mind is on either side, and so there will always be a problem. If you follow the mind you will always be unsteady. Whatsoever you do, bad or good, the mind will repent it. Then you will fall into great difficulty and confusion; then you will be at a loss to know what to do.

When you are in good spirits you lean to one side, and when those good spirits have left you, you lean to the other. In between the two you are torn to pieces, just as a rock is reduced to dust between the stones of a gristmill.

Kabir has said:

BETWEEN TWO MILLSTONES

NONE REMAIN UNBROKEN.

These two stones are within you, and you are that gristmill.

Kabir says:

SEEING THE WHEEL TURNING,

KABIR BROKE INTO TEARS.

If you become a little alert you will be able to see this gristmill working within you; you will be able to see yourself going round and round. The mind joins the two millstones.

Because of the mind you think, “I am the body,” and because of the mind you also think, “I am the soul.” When the mind disappears, these mistaken notions that you are the body and that you are the soul disappear. They evaporate because the person who made these claims is no more. Only you, the soul, remains. Only your original nature remains; the claimant is gone. What will there be to say then? To whom will the soul speak when the body is not? That which is opposite to the body we call the soul. That is where the highest delight arises.

So the first thing to be understood is that the mind can never be whole, can never be total. The mind will always remain divided. And if you decide you need the mind’s approval before doing something you will never be able to do anything. You will never commit a sinful act or a holy deed, a religious act or an irreligious one, an act of sansara or an act of sannyas. You will not be able to do anything at all. The mind will always remain indecisive, perplexed.

During the second world war a very famous philosopher was recruited for military service because there was a shortage of soldiers. Enlistment was compulsory, and so he was recruited against his will. He was a great philosopher. He had spent his life thinking and thinking, he had never put anything into practice, he had simply thought and thought.

This world of thoughts is quite a different world, it is quite distinct. Philosophy is a kind of exercise that pleases the mind greatly, because you never do anything so there is never any question of repentance. If you simply think of sin, no harm is done because no one is hurt, and if you think about some act of merit there is no problem either, because no one is benefited. You simply sit and think. Something only happens when there is action involved; nothing happens just by thinking. Philosophers think a lot. They waste their lives thinking, and do absolutely nothing. You will not find them among the sinners, or among good people either. They just stand on the side of the road. They do not walk, they think. And they make no decisions.

This particular recruit was a very famous philosopher. The general under whose command he had been put also knew of him — he had read the philosopher’s books. The general thought, “What can this man do? Before he has to shoot he will think about it a thousand times. And the enemy won’t wait for him.”

His training began. The first time the order “Left turn” was given everyone turned accordingly, but the philosopher stood where he was. He was asked, “What are you doing?” He answered, “I can’t do anything without thinking it over first. When I hear ‘Left turn’ I ask myself, ‘Why? What is the reason? What harm is there if I don’t turn left? What is the advantage if I do?’”

If all soldiers were to ask such questions you can imagine what would happen, but because he was a very famous philosopher and because he could see no other way out, the general decided to give him a very small and unimportant job. He sent him to work in the kitchen.

On the very first day the philosopher was given a dish of peas and told to separate them, to put the big peas on one side and the small peas on the other. After an hour the general went to check on his work. He found the philosopher sitting in front of the dish with his eyes closed. The peas were untouched. He was thinking. The general asked, “What are you doing?” “A great problem has arisen,” he said. “If I put the big peas on one side and the small ones on the other, then where shall I put the medium-sized ones? It is not right to start anything until the whole thing has been settled.”

The mind is a great philosopher — it is unable to decide anything. Philosophers have never been able to decide anything.

Look at it in this way — knowledge that is associated with the body is science, knowledge that is associated with the mind is philosophy, and knowledge that is associated with consciousness is religion. Science has certainly accomplished some very substantial things; it has been able to do much in fact. Religion has also done a lot. Philosophy has not been able to do anything because philosophy is associated with the mind. Philosophers simply go on thinking, they simply go on finding arguments for and against. And there is no end to it. The chain is endless. That is why, even after thousands of years of thinking, philosophy has not yet reached a decision. Not one single decision has been made. There have been questions, thousands and thousands of questions, but not one single solution.

Do not bother about pleasing the mind — you will be wasting your life. Just set the mind aside. If you can do that, then your life will be meaningful. If you understand the mind correctly you will see that it is only a process, only a series of thoughts. No action is born out of the mind, it just thinks a lot. At times you mistakenly believe the mind has arrived at a particular decision. You go to a temple, for example, and you vow never to tell a lie from that moment on. And hiding in its dark corner the mind laughs at your vow, at your decision, because it is a decision made by half a mind, by a partial mind, and you have not consulted the other half. Then you go to the market or sit in your shop and begin your business. You enter the world of business and then that hidden part of your mind will induce you to lie.

Your vow is a challenge to the mind. You did not consult it before you made your resolution and your mind will not be still until it breaks it. You have taken many vows, and many times you have broken them. The only reason you keep doing this is that you take your vow after listening to the mind. The real vow is born when you give up the mind.

There are two kinds of vows. One is the kind you take following the dictates of the mind. You hear a sadhu or a saint and you like what he has to say. But who likes it? It is liked by the mind. The half of the mind near the soul is delighted to hear such talk, is enchanted by these words; it will become enraptured by them and will take a vow. This vow is taken, but you have not yet consulted the other half of the mind. Now the other half will take revenge. It will never pardon you, it will immediately start some game to make you break your vow.

Even in small matters, challenges play a great part in life. When a person decides not to smoke, for example, this becomes a challenge to the mind. If today you decide to fast, then the half portion of the mind that belongs to the body will decide to break your vow. For the whole day it will make you think of food, it will make you dream about food. It will try to entice you in a thousand and one ways. And the opposite of this is also true. If you follow the dictates of the body, then the other half of the mind will create trouble for you.

The man who follows the mind is like a traveler who is trying to sail in two boats, and each boat is going in a different direction. Such a person will always be in a quandary — he will always remain suspended in the middle. He will have no place to stand; he will be neither of the earth nor of the sky.

There is another type of vow which I call MAHAVRATA, the great vow. This is not taken by the mind. This vow is taken after the full realization that the mind is afflicted by duality, that the mind is duality, that the mind is conflict. In taking such a vow the mind is set aside. It is not that the mind makes a vow it will not speak the truth. When you have realized what the mind is, the feeling that arises in your consciousness is not this sort of vow. The feeling comes because you have realized what falsehood is and what the mind is, and now your understanding, your realization itself becomes the greatest vow.

The man who has understood what smoking is does not have to throw his cigarette away; the cigarette falls from his hand by itself. And the man who has realized what wine is watches the bottle slipping from his hand. When you quit something it is the mind that is giving it up; if it goes away by itself it is mahavrata, the great vow. But if it is you that is putting something aside, you will surely pick it up again.

Mulla Nasruddin once went to address a meeting. It generally happens that speakers say one thing but act differently. You may be surprised at this, but it is what usually happens. It is not their fault, and you are mistaken if you think they are deceiving you on purpose. On such an occasion it is that part of the mind nearer the soul that begins to function.

Addressing a gathering, who will speak out in favor of sin? It is only talk, no doing is involved, so one can speak of high ideals and of great deeds. It is only discussion. Nothing is at stake, there is nothing to lose. So at the time he is speaking, a speaker will talk about nonavarice and not about greed, about nonviolence and not about violence, about truth and not about falsehood. When he is speaking, the speaker becomes a pious man, a sadhu — when he is speaking.

The Mulla also spoke about great and wise things — about truth, nonviolence, about honesty. The audience was surprised. And the Mulla’s son, who was also there, was surprised as well. The Mulla explained that anyone could achieve liberation by climbing the steps of truth — by being honest, by practicing nonviolence, celibacy and nonpossessiveness. “This ladder is right in front of you,” he said. “You just have to begin to climb.” I was present the next morning when the Mulla’s son said to him, “I had a dream last night, and I saw the ladder you spoke about yesterday.”

Seeing that his talk had greatly impressed his son, the Mulla was eager to hear more. “Go on,” he said. “What happened next?”

His son replied, “The ladder rose high towards heaven — its top was lost, far away in the sky. At the base of the ladder there was a noticeboard with sticks of chalk, one foot long, kept near it. The instructions on the board said that whoever climbed the ladder was to take a stick of chalk with him and make a mark on each step for each one of his sins.”

The Mulla was becoming more and more excited. He said, “Go on. What next?”

The son continued, “I took a stick of chalk, made my first mark, and began to climb. After climbing a little I heard the sounds of someone climbing down.”

The Mulla asked, “Who was it?”

The son said, “I wondered that too, so I raised my eyes and saw that it was you climbing down.”

The Mulla said, “Me? Climbing down? What are you talking about? Why should I climb down?”

The boy said, “I asked you the same question and you replied, ‘I am going back down to get more chalk.’”

Actions are full of sins, while talk is only about great deeds. You keep on sinning and at the same time go on taking vows that you will perform acts of great merit. And so both parts of the mind are satisfied. The part of the mind near the body is satisfied with sin and the other is satisfied with the scriptures. You sail in both boats and seem very pleased with yourself. But you never reach anywhere, you cannot. No one has ever reached anywhere this way. Even if you choose one boat the difficulty remains the same — both boats belong to the mind.

Kabir says that those who sit in a boat, in either boat, drown. The voyage across the ocean of life is such that those who accept the help of a boat are the ones who sink. One has to swim oneself — there is no need for any boat at all. Both the boats are of the mind; their names are sin and holiness.

And so you remain divided, in duality. I see that the man sitting in the shop is divided; I see that the man sitting in the ashram is divided as well. The man in the shop thinks about holy acts because he is committing sins, and the man in the ashram performs holy acts and thinks of sinful things. There is no difference in their perplexity; both are in difficulty. So you have to give up the mind completely. The mind is madness. And to give it up means to understand it. When you understand the nature of the mind it will be easy to let it go.

Now let us try to understand these words of Kabir:

STOP WAVERING, MAD MIND!

The mind is mad. This is not poetry; what Kabir has to say are direct truths of life. Madness is another name for the mind. There is no need for anybody to explain this to you; you are very well acquainted with your mind. If you have even the slightest ability to see through it, to see through the workings of your mind, you will realize that it is mad.

The mind is always asking you to do something over again, something you have already done so many times before. And every time you see that by doing it nothing is achieved. What else can madness be?

Many times you have tried to extract oil from sand, but it does not work. You know that sand is sand, that oil cannot be extracted from it, and yet you do the same thing over and over again. If this is not madness, what is?

You have indulged in the pleasures of the flesh countless times, innumerable times, and yet you have achieved nothing. You still do not know what real joy is, you still do not know what ecstasy is. You simply remain thirsty and miserable, weeping and repenting what you have done. And in spite of this experience, the mind induces you to repeat things over and over again. If this is not madness, then what else is it?

To be mad is to keep repeating something that has already been seen as useless, as worthless. To be mad is not to do something even though there may be a little substance in it, not to go near something that has a glimpse of some substance in it.

People come to me and they say, “We practiced meditation for a few days and then gave it up.” I ask them how they found those few days. They say, “We experienced great joy and peace.” This seems very surprising, giving up meditation in spite of the fact they experienced peace while doing it. They say, “It was the mind that made us stop.”

Do you give up those things that make you unhappy and miserable? You have been angry many times. Have you ever experienced any joy from your anger? Has it brought you joy even once? Whenever you have been angry you have experienced unhappiness — but the mind does not give anger up. Whenever you meditate or pray, or go to a temple and sit in silence, you feel happy — yet your mind asks you to give it up. And you take its advice!

You do things from which nothing but misery results because the mind says, “Make another attempt. This time you might succeed. It may have borne no fruit up to now but you might get some in the future, so keep on. Who can definitely say you won’t get it just because you haven’t obtained it up to now? So keep on seeking. Keep on making an effort.”

And so your mind pushes you on a fruitless journey. What else can madness be?

OSHO, The Great Secret
Come what may, allow

You may have observed that man’s child is the weakest child in the world. He needs care for years until it is possible for him to stand on his own. The mother was continuously afraid for the child: in the deep forest — all the wild animals were in search of food just as man was in search of food. That was the basic search for millions of years — food. And even today, for millions of people, that is the basic search.
Mind developed as a survival measure — how to hide yourself, how to find caves, how to make caves? How to live in darkness without being harmed, how to live in trees? It has been a difficult time for millions of years.
And man’s child is so weak against any animal. You cannot fight hence you had to invent weapons as a substitute. You don’t have the claws of a tiger, you need something as a substitute. You don’t have the teeth of the lion or the crocodile; you needed to be inventive enough so that you were not too close. Because even if you had a knife in your hands — which was very difficult, the early knives were made of stone… even if you had a knife in your hand and a lion came, most probably you would tremble with fear and the knife would fall down! Just the roar of the lion and you would be frozen; you would not know what to do now.

I have heard… a man with his wife and his mother-in-law had gone hunting. Suddenly they heard from a nearby cave the mother-in-law shouting, “Help! Help!” The wife was sitting on a tree and she saw that a lion was there, so she asked her husband, who was underneath the tree with his gun, “My mother is in trouble — a lion is facing her. Do something!”

The husband said, “The lion got into trouble himself — why should I do anything? Your mother-in-law is enough! She finished me, she will finish the lion. Now it is his problem, not my problem.”

Man had to invent arrows so that he could be far away from the wild animals and still kill them. Slowly slowly other weapons came. All these weapons came because of the helplessness of man.
When he found fire, then he was safer. When he discovered gunpowder, first in China, he became even more safe. Perhaps the Chinese became civilized before anybody else for the simple reason that they finished off the wild animals, and in finishing the wild animals a great fear, a constant fear and danger, disappeared.
But the mind remained, the mind that has been created through millions of years. It is still afraid of darkness, although you know there is no need to be afraid of darkness. But the mind does not know that times have changed; millions of years’ habit still continues. The mind does not know, the mind is blind.

One professor, a vice-chancellor of Varanasi University, Professor Rajnath Pandey, was staying with me, and he was very much against the way I grow trees around my house. I said, “Why are you so much against them?”
He said, “These trees are enemies! If you don’t go on cutting them, if you don’t go on keeping them away, sooner or later your house will be a ruin and the trees will have overtaken it.”

Man has been fighting with trees. We don’t think in that way now, but he was right, he was a man of history. I had never thought of it but he was right, that trees have killed man. We had to destroy trees to create towns, villages, and we had to destroy trees because they were hiding wild animals.
Man has passed through such a struggle for survival that he cannot forget those habits. So even though now we don’t have wild animals to attack, we are preparing nuclear weapons. We don’t have any reason to fight, but we are cultivating more and more arms just out of old animal habit. Everybody knows that the Third World War is impossible, simply because the Third World War will destroy everybody. Nobody is going to be the winner and nobody is going to be the loser. All will be finished, the whole planet will be a graveyard.

The whole joy of fighting is in being victorious — but there will be no victory, what is the point? It is absolutely clear. Just now there are only five countries with nuclear weapons, but by the end of this century there will be twenty-five countries with nuclear weapons. One cannot understand… for what? Already we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy this earth seven hundred times.

And only one man in the whole history, Jesus Christ, got resurrected. I don’t think that he will get resurrected seven hundred times. People even suspect that he was not resurrected this one time; he never died. Because here in India, in Kashmir, we have the graves of both Jesus and Moses. And a village exists in Kashmir named after Jesus, Pahalgam, because Jesus used to call himself `the shepherd’, who had come to save the sheep. Pahalgam, in Kashmiri means the shepherd, the village of the shepherd. Strangely enough, when they were escaping from Egypt, Moses had come to Kashmir in search of the lost tribe.
It took forty years of searching for great Moses to find Israel, and Jews will never forgive him. In forty years, such a long journey through the whole desert of Saudi Arabia — by the time he reached Jerusalem almost three-quarters of the original people who had come with him had died. And my own feeling is that he never found Israel. He had to say to his people… he himself was eighty years old, tired, utterly tired… he declared Jerusalem to be the holy place they were searching for.
I don’t see that Jerusalem has anything holy in it.
And Jews will never forgive Moses because he passed by all the oil lands, which are now really the richest countries in the world. If he had stopped in Saudi Arabia, or in Iran…. But one tribe just got lost in the desert. Declaring Jerusalem was just hiding his failure.
And Moses put new people in charge, who were not acquainted with him at all, because two-thirds of the original people had died. The third generation was just entering its youth and they had no respect, just as no young people have ever had respect for the older generation. This generation gap is not a new thing. Moses found an excuse: “I have to go. You manage things, I am going to search for the lost tribe.” The lost tribe had reached Kashmir, and Kashmir certainly looks like paradise.

When the first great mogul, Babur, came to India, seeing Kashmir he could not believe it. People coming from the desert, seeing so much greenery, so many flowers, so many streams, such pure crystal-clear water, such beauty, eternal snows on the mountains…. That lost tribe had really found paradise! So Moses remained there with his people. Kashmiris are basically Jewish; you can look at their noses….
You know the nose of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru; he was a Kashmiri. You know the nose of Indira Gandhi; she was a Kashmiri. And Jesus, you should remember always, was never a Christian. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he proclaimed himself as a Jewish prophet — that was his sin. He died as a Jew, but he died here in India. I have been to his grave.

It is a strange coincidence that the graves of Moses and Jesus are in the same village. And the couple, the family who takes care of those two graves are still Jews. Mohammedans converted the whole of Kashmir to Mohammedanism, but they left that one family out of respect for Moses and Jesus.

It seems that Jesus never died on the cross. The Jewish cross is such that it takes hours to kill a young man, and Jesus was only thirty-three. A man who is healthy and young, the Jewish cross will kill him in forty-eight hours. It is the slowest process of killing a person. Just by nailing his hands and his feet to the posts… the blood oozes slowly, slowly. It takes forty-eight hours.
And there was a conspiracy between the followers of Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, that he should be put on the cross on Friday, as late as possible. So the whole process was delayed. First he had an interview with Pontius Pilate, and then Jesus was forced to carry his cross, a heavy cross; he fell three times on the road. And the place chosen for the cross was a hillock, so in every way they tried to postpone the time. The crucifixion happened near about two o’clock, and Jews stop working on Friday evening. All work has to be stopped by sunset on Friday because Saturday is their sabbath, their holy day.
So Jesus had to be brought down from the cross; he was still alive. He may have been in a coma, but he was not dead. And he was put in a cave, but the people who were guarding the cave were Roman soldiers, not Jews. They allowed him to escape. His friends took him out. It was dangerous to remain in Judea, and it was dangerous to go back to Judea when he was healed.

The news had already reached that there was a place in India where Moses had gone, and had found the lost tribe and died. Jesus thought, “That is the only place where I will be at home.”
He traveled to Kashmir and he lived a long life, one hundred and twelve years. That is all written on his grave in Hebrew. In India, nobody knows Hebrew.

But the world powers are collecting nuclear weapons for ordinary people who only die once; they never resurrect.
Only here do they resurrect — every night!

There are enough nuclear weapons. But it is out of fear — the mind is still the old mind repeating old fears, dangers — that if you stop making nuclear weapons, the enemy is not going to stop. And the enemy is also thinking in the same terms; every country is thinking in the same terms. So seventy percent of the world’s wealth, production, genius, everything, is devoted to a war which is never going to happen. Just by making it so total, you have made it out of date.

Professor, the mind had to develop in a destructive direction just to save itself. But now it is no longer needed. Now the destructive energy has to be transformed into a creative energy. And a mind that can create destructive weapons like atom bombs and hydrogen bombs, and destroy cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki within seconds…. And today the bombs that were thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are — in comparison to American and Soviet nuclear missiles — child’s play, just toys. We have gone far in these forty years: we can destroy ourselves within ten minutes.

This totality is a great blessing in disguise. This means, now we have to find ways to protect ourselves from our mind’s fear, to protect ourselves from our own weapons. Now there is no enemy to be killed; now the world war, if it happens at all, will be suicide.

We have to save ourselves from our own minds. This mind was created for a certain reason: to save us from the animals. For centuries we were in danger; now we are in danger from our own destructive weapons.
This is a great moment in the history of mankind, and perhaps in the whole history of the universe, because we only suspect that there are some planets where life may exist, but there is no certain proof. It may be that only on this earth has life come to such a point that a few people have become buddhas, a few people have come to know the universal secret of life. To destroy it is so idiotic, is so against the universe!

The only way is to find something within you which can overpower your mind. Otherwise the mind knows nothing else except destruction; that was the function it was created for. It is not its fault, but it is continuously afraid for no reason at all. Sometimes it knows that there is no reason to be afraid; then it starts asking, “Why is there no reason to be afraid?”

Mind knows only one language — that is of fear, danger, and how to survive and make yourself safe against an antagonistic universe.
Even a great man like Bertrand Russell wrote a book, Conquest of Nature. The same fear of the mind — we have to conquer. This idea has to be changed. The idea should be that now we have to rejoice in nature, we have to find the mysteries and secrets of nature, and we have to go beyond mind. This artifact is not our nature.

That’s what we are doing in meditation.
Meditation is finding something in you that is superior to the mind. Only then can the mind be prevented from destroying humanity and this beautiful planet. It was perfectly okay to be destructive up to now, but now the situation and the context is totally different.

Somebody asked Albert Einstein, “What do you think about the Third World War?”
He said, “I cannot say anything about the Third World War, but I can say something about the Fourth World War.”
The questioner was puzzled. He said, “If you don’t know about the third, how can you know about the fourth?”
Albert Einstein said, “The fourth will never happen; that much can be said. If we just let the third happen… finished.”

Look at the past of the mind: Genghis Khan killed thirty million people, alone. His successor, Tamerlane, killed forty million people. We don’t know the exact numbers for Nadir Shah, but we know about Adolf Hitler; he killed thirty million. And now we are ready to kill five billion human beings, not to say anything about millions of birds, millions of animals, millions of trees — because the Third World War will be an end to all life on this planet. It is not just human beings who will be killed, it is going to be a loss to the whole universe.

Scientists say that there are perhaps five hundred planets where some kind of life exists, but it is all guesswork. No certainty, no communication has been possible up to now. All we know is that in this vast infinity we are the only people alive with a potentiality of becoming eternal, of becoming immortal. In every possible way this earth should be saved — from our minds.

The only way I can see is meditation.

Up to now, mind has been our survival. From now onwards only meditation can be our survival because meditation means going beyond mind, searching for something in your consciousness which is higher than your mind, which can dictate to the mind, which can rearrange the mind. Mind is just a bio-computer; it needs new data, that’s all. Instead of fear it can learn to love; instead of being in danger it can start enjoying the eternity of its life source.
There is no death. Only forms change, life continues on and on.
This is what we are trying to do here. This is what all the buddhas of the past have been doing, but in the past they were not so relevant. Today the situation is different: today either you listen to the buddha or you commit suicide. There is no other choice — meditation or suicide, global suicide. That is the simple alternative, there is no third way.

In Gautam Buddha’s time there was not much difficulty — small wars, a few people killed, there was no harm. But now the destructive mind has brought us to a situation where we have to re-code the mind for construction, for creation. And if the mind can be so destructive, it can be transformed in the same way to great creativity, with the same energy. Energy is neutral: you can put it in the service of death or you can put it in the service of life.

Our effort here is to put our minds, our bodies, in the service of life — in creativity, in music, in poetry, in dance. Great is the moment when we can change the mind, feed it with new information. And the same mind that brings nuclear weapons can bring great joys, plenty of food, better clothes, more health, longer life, less disease; it can eliminate old age completely.
And the moment is ripe because nobody who is a little bit intelligent can be in favor of a third world war; only a few retarded politicians — and even they cannot openly say that they are in favor of a third world war. But their preparation continues. That preparation is dangerous, dangerous in many ways, because a third world war may happen accidentally: the weapons have become so sophisticated that just a push of a button….

Just a few days ago I was telling you about a Soviet nuclear base which had a map of the whole world in the office showing the distance and the time, how much time it would take for its nuclear weapons to reach to this land or that land. The map also had push-buttons on it and a janitor, seeing that too much dust had gathered on the board, was dusting it. The professor in charge came in. He said, “You idiot, what are you doing?”
He said, “I am simply dusting, there is too much dust…”
He said, “Do you see? Where is England? You have dusted it off!”
He had pushed the button.

But I don’t think we would like to be dusted off in this way. It is now time…. No greater question has ever been asked, and there has never been such a parting of the ways. Those who want to commit suicide can commit suicide on their own, but they cannot be allowed to destroy the whole world!

Professor Wessling, your question absolutely fits with the Zen series, because Zen is a search for no-mind, or a cosmic mind, beyond the human mind.

Before we enter into our inner being, our every-evening meditation… I don’t want Professor Wessling to understand that we are serious people. We are very non-serious. We are absolutely playful; whatever happens we will sing and dance to the very last moment.

On his first trip out of Poland, Kabloski finds himself sitting next to a priest in the plane. He has never seen a priest before, and asks, “Why do you wear your collar back to front?”
“Because I am a father,” replies the priest, smiling.
“Funny,” says Kabloski, “I’m a father too!”
“Ah!” says the priest, “but I am a father to hundreds of people.”
“Really?” says Kabloski, thinking for a moment. “In that case,” he continues, “shouldn’t you wear your pants back to front?”

Little Rufus has been playing in the woods all day. Suddenly, he realizes that he is lost and that it is late. He hunts around for a way out, but finally gives up. Kneeling on the ground, he holds out his hands.
“Please, God,” Rufus prays, “I am lost. Please show me the way out of here.”
Just then a little bird flies overhead and drops a load of shit on his outstretched hands. Little Rufus examines it closely and then goes back to praying.
“Oh! Please, God!” he says. “I really am lost, so don’t hand me that shit!”

“I locked my husband out of the house last week for playing around with other women,” sobs young Mrs. Bedspring in the confession box. “And now he wants me to take him back. What should I do, Father?”
“You must take him back,” replies Father Fungus, patting her hand through the curtain. “It is your Christian duty. But first,” Fungus continues, tightening his grip, “how would you like to get even with the bastard!”

An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian Jew are discussing the meaning of true happiness.
“Coming home from work to a loving wife with a gin and tonic,” spouts the Englishman.
“Ah, you English!” says the Frenchman. “Real happiness is meeting a cute little girl who spends the night with you. She entertains you and then leaves you quietly and with no regrets.”
The Russian Jew is sitting, thinking.
“True happiness,” he says, “I experienced a few years ago. In the middle of the night the KGB knocked on my door and shouted: `Herman Fingel! You are under arrest!’”
The Englishman and the Frenchman look at him in alarm.
“Yes!” says the Russian Jew, smiling happily. “And I shouted back: `Herman Fingel lives upstairs!’”

Enough for today.”

Osho, excerpted from: Turning In, Chapter 1, Question 2

Walk without Feet, Fly without Wings and Think without Mind

Price: $14.99

ISBN: 978-0-88050-025-8
212 Pages

About Walk without Feet, Fly without Wings and Think without Mind

These talks took place over a ten day period – a series of personal questions from seekers touching a wide variety of fundamental life issues, and an enlightened being’s profound, loving and, at times, humorous responses to them. Amongst the many subjects covered, Osho speaks on parents and children, trust and surrender, love and jealousy, sex and pornography; play and creativity, desirelessness, enlightenment and the belief in God.

Chapter Titles

Excerpt from Walk without Feet, Fly without Wings and Think without Mind

Chapter 3

“The moment you think, either you think of the past or you think of the future. It may be the immediate past, but it is still past – it is never the present, it cannot be the present.

“Thought needs space. And the present moment has no space in it. Thought creates the past and the future to live in. The bigger the past, the more easily thought can move; the bigger the future, again, the more easily thought can move. The present is not capable of giving that space for thought to move.

“The present moment is a moment of no-mind. Whenever you are in the present you don’t function as a mind. Your body is in the present but your mind is never. Your body is always in the present – that’s why the body is so beautiful and mind is so ugly. And, down the ages, you have been taught to be with the mind and against the body. That has been the greatest calamity humanity has suffered up to now. If a new humanity is to be, we will have to put things right – you have to be with the body and not with the mind.

“Use the mind, but never get identified with it. The mind is a good slave, but a very bad master. The body is wiser.”

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The God Conspiracy

About The God Conspiracy

The God Conspiracy exposes the age-old alliance of the politician and the priest against human freedom,joy, pleasure, comfort and luxury. The politician pays homage to the priest in order to legitimize his power, and the priest enforces the rules of individual behavior – all in the name of God.

It is one extreme to believe in God; it is another extreme not to believe in God. Osho is not about ‘belief, ’ he is all about ‘experience’ — so that in the ideological debate about the existence of a supreme being, both atheism and theism become irrelevant.

It is through meditation that one can come to discover the universal truth of one’s own consciousness — and through this direct experience, to know that life itself is enough unto itself, does not need the fiction of any god. Once this is experienced inside at one ’ s deepest core, one will never project the same superstitions again.

Authentic living , free of divisive belief systems based on fear and greed, does not need any god, does not need any priest, and does not need any prayer. All that it needs is an exploration of one’s inner world , and a recognition of that inner world as the place where all divisions and belief systems disappear. That exploration Osho calls Zen, going inwards, reaching to the very point where we are connected to all that is divine in existence.

This experience and understanding creates a new human being and consciousness, which is so urgently needed today.

Books like The God Delusion by British biologist Richard Dawkins and God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens all demonstrate a growing understanding that the fictitious father figure of God might not be the most intelligent arrangement to determine the course of human affairs. This book brings a transformation — making us aware of the freedom and responsibility we have for ourselves and the environment of which we are part – here – now

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Concentration is a dual consciousness: that’s why concentration creates tiredness; that’s why when you concentrate you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire, meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four hour thing — day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself.

Concentration is an act, a willed act. Meditation is a state of no will, a state of inaction. It is relaxation. One has simply dropped into one’s own being, and that being is the same as the being of all. In concentration there is a plan, a projection, an idea. In concentration the mind functions out of a conclusion: you are doing something. Concentration comes out of the past.

In meditation there is no conclusion behind it. You are not doing anything in particular, you are simply being. It has no past to it, it is uncontaminated by the past. It has no future to it, it is pure of all future. It is what Lao Tzu has called wei-wu-wei, action through inaction. This is what Zen masters have been saying: Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Remember, ‘by itself’ — nothing is being done. You are not pulling the grass upwards; the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That state — when you allow life to go on its own way, when you don’t want to direct it, when you don’t want to give any control to it, when you are not manipulating, when you are not enforcing any discipline on it — that state of pure undisciplined spontaneity, is what meditation is.

Meditation is in the present, pure present. Meditation is immediacy. You cannot meditate, but you can be in meditation; you cannot be in concentration, but you can concentrate. Concentration is human, meditation is divine.

Source: OSHO