Osho Quotes on Meditation

 

 

Go deep into meditation. And by meditation I mean awareness, watchfulness, witnessing. It is only through meditation that the inner light begins. Otherwise man lives in darkness. Meditation enkindles something that is latent in all of us, but needs to be provoked. We are looking outwards. Our backs are at our inner source; hence it is being neglected, ignored. and to ignore one's inner being is the only ignorance. To know it is the only knowledge. All other knowledge is worthless. It may help you in the world but it can't help you in eternity.

 

-Osho, "If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself, #10"

 

 

 

 

 

Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created.

 

And through meditation comes wisdom -- not through studying books, not through scriptures. Through scriptures one can become knowledgeable but no wise. and knowledgeable people are sad, they are bound to be sad because all their knowledge is borrowed. There can be no song in it.

 

-Osho, "If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself, #10"

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation means undoing what the society has done to you. It has reduced you to a machine; you have to de-automatise yourself, you have to become a man again. You have to come out of this state of unconsciousness, of mechanicalness. You have to come out of this sleep. It is possible only through meditation. There is no other way, there has never been, there will never be. The only way to reduce a man to a machine is take away his consciousness force him to function unconsciously. And just the opposite is the way of meditation: give him back his consciousness.

 

-Osho, "The Imprisoned Splendor, #24"

 

 

 

 

 

Dhyan means meditation. Meditation means awareness, watchfulness, a silent witnessing of all the processes of the mind. And the magic of watching is that as your watchfulness deepens, the mind starts evaporating. When the watchfulness is absolute mind becomes nil, a zero. And the disappearance of the mind gives you clarity, absolute clarity, transparency; you can see through and through, you become a mirror. And then life is reflected as it is -- not according to any doctrine, not according to the Bible or the Koran or the Gita but as it is. And to know life as it is, is to know god.

 

-Osho, "Is the Grass Really Greener...?, #14"

 

 

 

 

 

This witnessing is possible only if you slowly move into meditation. Choose one meditation, whichever fits with you, and then go on working on it without any desire for any immediate result; forget all about result. Just go on doing it, enjoying it, and one day the result comes. But it comes only when meditation has come to a certain intensity. It is like water evaporating: when it comes to a one-hundred-degree heat it evaporates. At ninety-nine degrees it still does not evaporate, it is still water; just one degree more and it disappears.

 

The same happens with meditation: you go on working, a certain intensity comes, a certain degree of heat is created, and the ego evaporates. And when the ego is no more, god is.

 

-Osho, "Just the Tip of the Iceberg, #19"

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is only through meditation that purity comes. Meditation means jumping out of the mind. There is no need to purify the mind, it can be put aside. One can become disidentified with the mind. To know "I am not the mind," is real purity because then you are only consciousness, awareness, a witnessing. To live twenty-four hours a day as a witness is the way of the sannyasin.

 

-Osho, "The Miracle, #18"

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation is basically the process of witnessing: looking from your centre all that is happening. Many things are happening on the outside -- the noise of the train far away; something is happening in you body -- your knees are hurting -- right? Your mind is churning many thoughts, that 'What am I doing here?' Your heart is feeling many emotions, you have waited for this moment for so long. There is joy in the heart, a certain ecstasy, a mood, a receptivity. All those things have to be watched very minutely.

 

Watching them opens your inner being. Just watching them opens your inner eye and that is the real eye; the outside eyes are of not much use. You are fortunate that you don't have them. You are blessed! Blessed are the blind for they shall not be forced to see this ugly world! And it is really ugly -- believe me!

 

And you can put your total energy for the inner eye. The outside eyes are wasting eighty percent of energy -- it is the major part. Man has five senses, eighty per cent is taken away by the eyes and only twenty per cent is left for the other four senses. They are very poor people, those four. Eyes are very rich, they have monopolised the whole thing; hence it is good -- eighty per cent energy is saved -- and that can be immediately used for witnessing, for seeing your inner world. hence in the East we call a person who is blind 'pragyanshakshu' -- this word is untranslatable.

 

It simply means one who has the inner eye: The outer eyes are not there but that is a great opportunity because eighty per cent of energy is available for the person and he can easily become a meditator, more easily then anybody else.

 

It is a well-known fact that blind people have better ears than anybody else. They become beautiful musicians, good singers, for the simple reason, for their eighty per cent energy is diverted towards the ears. Ears are the closest to the eyes, so when the eyes are not using the energy the ears start using it.

 

But that is again a misuse because ears will again take it outside. It is better to use this available energy for your observation, inner observation.

 

Just watch everything -- and it is good because you have nothing much to do. You have not to go here and there and visit people and become a member of the Rotary Club. You are saved from so much nonsense that I felt really jealous of you! Enjoy it! And feel sorry for everybody else! They are poorer and you can become immensely rich. And the art of that richness is witnessing.

 

Witnessing is another name for meditation.

 

-Osho, "Nirvana now or never, #20"

 

 

 

 

 

For dignity of character, consciousness is needed, not conscience and that's the function of meditation. Meditation does not give you any character directly. It does not say what to do and what not to do. It never gives you any commandments. It simply gives you a technique for becoming more aware, for being more alert, watchful, witnessing.

 

Meditation is the art of awareness. And once you are aware, out of your awareness your actions will arise -- not out of conscience. Conscience is cultivated by others, by the vested interests, by the establishment. Consciousness is yours. It is individual, it is not collective. Conscience is part of the mob psychology. Consciousness gives you dignity because it gives you individuality. It gives you rebellion, it makes you capable of saying yes or no of your own accord. There is no foreign agency manipulating you in the name of religion, morality, etcetera.

 

My effort here is just to help you to be more aware so whatsoever you do comes out of that awareness. That awareness has no ready-made answers; it is just like a mirror: it reflects the situation, the challenge of the situation, and you act immediately, spontaneously. You don't look for an answer in the memory, in the scriptures, in your parent's ideas, in all that has been taught to you. You simply encounter the situation immediately; in your own light. Your action then has dignity, beauty, grace, because it is coming out of freedom. Freedom makes everything graceful. Freedom is the greatest value in life.

 

And then certainly, whatsoever you do -- your character, your behaviour -- is yours, authentically yours. It has your signature on it. Then you are not a carbon copy, you are original. The Zen people call it finding the original face.

 

For that, one has to drop all the masks, one has to risk many things, particularly respectability. That is a bribe by the society. It will give you a Nobel prize and it will give you many honours; it will do everything to make you feel great, if you can fulfil one condition: if you are obedient, obedient like a robot, then all respect is for you. Then the society will make you a great hero, but there will be no grace, no beauty, no freedom, no truth, no being; you have committed a real suicide.

 

Meditation opens the doors of your inner treasures, what Jesus calls the kingdom of god. Meditation is only a key, and keys are always small things, but they can unlock immense treasures. Everybody is born as a prince or a princess, but gets lost in the blind crowd of beggars.

 

-Osho, "The Old Pond ... Plop, #25"

 

 

 

 

 

The moment you become attached to what is happening, the mind arises. The mind is an attachment. A thought moves and you become attached to it, you become identified with it. You say 'I am it. I am a Christian.' This is an attachment. 'I am a Hindu.' This is an attachment, this is the mind. The self is neither Hindu nor Christian. The mind is Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan and so on, so forth. The mind is Communist, the mind is Catholic, the mind is this and that. The self is a pure witness. There may be a thought which is Catholic or Hindu or Communist, but it is only a thought; the mind is a witness to it. Knowing it, remaining in this witnessing, the mind disappears. Then you are no more attached, and in that detachment is meditation. Meditation is a state of no-mind.

 

-Osho, "The Sacred Yes, #25"

 

 

 

 

 

So when you become a witness to what is happening in you, all that society has taught you to repress will begin to rise, because witnessing means that the weight holding it all down is removed. Right now you are sitting on top of it, so everything remains suppressed. People come to me to tell me about the strange states arising out of their meditations. They expected meditation to bring them peace, and instead they find themselves facing inner tempests. They expected meditation to bring them satisfaction, and find themselves aflame with dissatisfaction. They thought anger would disappear, and find themselves, to their dismay, hot with anger!

 

In the beginning this is bound to happen. You have been sitting on the lid that covers your repressions, and you have been riding on that lid a long time, trying continuously to hold down everything beneath it. To become a witness means that you have finally jumped off the lid; now you will only stand aside and will not do anything. Now you will no longer repress, now you will just witness. So everything suppressed will arise, all the repressions will catch fire; you will find flames leaping where there were only ashes.

 

All the anger and sex and turmoil will surge up, will surround you, but even in these moments you maintain your witnessing. It will not last for long, because it is just the explosion of the repressions. As these flames flare up, and fade, the fire below will begin to disappear; and as the smoke is dispelled into the vastness, you will find a clear, smokeless space within. A day comes when you find suddenly that you are standing alone, nothing is left to be seen. The witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed -- no anger, no sex, no hatred, no envy, no jealousy. But this will take time....

 

If you were dealing with the accumulated repressions of only one lifetime, it would be different. But these are the repressions of numerous lives. Nobody knows how many times you have been born, and how many societies have crushed you. And each time a different society, and all these societies destroying you in different ways... this is why you carry so many inner contradictions.

 

Once you were a Hindu, and you were taught that this is right and that is wrong. Then once you were a Mohammedan and you were taught exactly the opposite, that this is wrong and that is right. Once you were a Jaina, and once a Buddhist... the number of societies you have wandered through is endless. You have learned so many rights and so many wrongs, and they are so contradictory to each other that you are in deep inner conflict and great confusion. So many people have carved and shaped you that no single image of you has developed. So many images have been carved, and your stone would have looked so much more beautiful if it had been left untouched. The sculptors have made it deformed and ugly.

 

The process of witnessing will take time, and this will depend on the effort you put into witnessing, and also on how much is repressed within you. If your effort is really profound, things may happen very quickly. If the effort is only lukewarm, you may begin to feel the effects only after a few lives, or may never feel it at all. The time taken will depend on how intensely, how enthusiastically and how totally you give yourself to the effort to become grounded in witnessing. If your witnessing can be total, all the turmoils can come to an end in an instant! If you become the very awareness, if in the moment of awareness all your energy becomes awareness itself -- no doer remains at all, only the watcher -- then even in an instant such a seeing will burn up everything lying suppressed within you.

 

-Osho, "Nowhere To Go But In, #3"

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation is pure science. It does not want you to believe in anything. Believing as such is becoming blind, and giving your freedom to somebody, you know not where he is taking you. Perhaps he is also blind and somebody else is taking him. And that's how century upon century, blind people are leading blind people. The first thing to be done is to withdraw all belief. And it is such a relief when you are free of belief. There is no God, no heaven, no hell, no after-life. In fact, there is no tomorrow because that too is a belief. There are no grounds to believe, that tomorrow is going to be. It is open. Maybe, maybe not. You don't have any reason to believe.

So if you destroy belief systems slowly slowly you come upon a strange experience, that all that you have is only this moment. All else is just rubbish. Only this pure moment is existential.

And to live moment to moment is the life of meditation. Then life becomes spontaneous without any effort; then nobody can make you miserable, nobody can disappoint you, nobody can make you a failure because in the first place you were not trying to be a success; you were not asking the future to be in a certain way. So whatever happens, the next moment you can rejoice. It is always your victory.

 

-Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 4, #28"
 

 

 

 

 

If you were only to listen, it becomes meditation. Without meditation you cannot hear. What is the meaning of meditation? Meditation exists only where mind is not; where the internal dialogue is gone.

 

-Osho, "The True Name, Vol 1, #5"

 

 

 

 

 

If you meditate, meditation is so beautiful, who bothers about the result? And if you bother about the result, meditation is not possible. This result oriented mind is the only barrier, the only block. There are not many blocks, the only block is that of the result oriented mind: never here-now, always somewhere else thinking of the result; while making love, thinking about the result.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #2, Q6"

 

 

 

 

 

Real music will help you move towards meditation, beyond the mind needs, towards spiritual needs. Real poetry will give you a glimpse of the minds of the sages -- a glimpse of course. It will open a window so you can see the faraway distant Himalayas. And then an urge arises in you, and you start travelling.

 

Art is not the goal. It is a mind need. It has to be fulfilled. Through the window of art the urge will arise -- you will see the distant horizon, and the beauty of it will become a tremendous pull on you, you will be pulled.

Civilization is needed to create art, poetry, music, painting; but they are not the goals; at most resting places for the night. In the morning you are again on your feet moving towards the distant goal. The goal is always God, nothing less will do.

 

"Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #4, Q7"

 

 

 

 

 

Use the head, use the heart, and if you can use both a tremendous revolution will happen. If you can use both you will become aware that you are the third force -- neither; you are neither head nor heart; because if you can move so easily from one to another you cannot be either; you must be separate from both -- then the witnessing arises; then the identification is broken. And that witnessing is what meditation is all about.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #6, Q3"

 

 

 

 

 

Be aware, and wine becomes water. Be aware -- sex becomes love. Be aware -- love becomes prayer. Be aware -- prayer becomes meditation. Simply one thing has to be remembered: do whatsoever you like, but do it with full consciousness, and then you will not go astray.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #8, Q3"

 

 

 

 

 

When you start meditating you have a false personality, a painted face, which you have made beautiful according to the social needs. It is false, but you are identified with it. Then you start meditating; that face starts becoming loose, sometimes it slips, you come to feel your real face -- you become afraid, it looks ugly.

That's why you had painted it. That's why you were hiding it under a mask. But meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for the original face.

So a moment will come, you will grow and you will feel you are getting more ugly, because now you start seeing yourself RIGHTLY. Up to now you were seeing ugliness in others, now you have started to watch yourself. You have been seeing mistakes, uglinesses, wrong things, in others, now you start to see them in yourself. For the first time you start mirroring your own being. Everything seems to be topsy-turvy, chaos -- afraid, you can escape, and put your face on again. Go to the market, hide behind the mask, and forget about the meditation.

But if you are really in search, this is a good sign, a beautiful indication, that something is happening. Continue. Soon this ugliness will also disappear, because that ugliness belongs to your mind. That beauty that you are thinking was there never belonged to you, it was just a mask. It has to be taken away. Now you come face to face with the mind.

If you GO ON, sooner or later the mind will also fall -- that too is a mask. Then you will come face to face with your being. And that's tremendously beautiful. In fact that is the only beauty there is.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, #4, Q7"

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation is to attain to a no-mindness, to a state of no-thought. In that opening of no-thought, in that kind of space, suddenly you become pure, innocent, uncorrupted. You have never been like that before nobody has ever been like that before nobody is going to be like that again. Unique. And to know that is to realize one's self. To know that is to know all. If you have not known that, whatsoever else you know is just rubbish, garbage.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, #6, Q1"

 

 

 

 

 

My meditation techniques ARE dangerous. In fact there cannot be any meditation techniques which are not dangerous. If they are not dangerous, they are not meditation techniques, they are tricks. Just like Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They are mental tricks. Just consolatory. No danger. At the most they can give you good sleep, that's all. If you miss, you don't miss anything, you remain the same. If you attain, you attain to good sleep, that's all. No danger involved.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, #6, Q5"

 

 

 

 

 

One man has discovered that by running there is no need to meditate, just by running meditation happens. He must be absolutely body oriented. Nobody has ever thought that by running meditation is possible -- but I know, I used to love running myself. It happens. If you go on running, if you run fast, thinking stops, because thinking cannot possibly continue when you are running very fast.

 

For thinking an easy chair is needed, that's why we call thinkers armchair philosophers; they sit and relax in a chair, the body completely relaxed, then the whole energy moves into the mind.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, #8, Q2"

 

 

 

 

 

If you feel you are the body type, then running can be very beautiful for you: a four, five mile run every day. And make it a meditation. It will transform you completely.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, #8, Q2"

 

 

 

 

 

In fact everything can become a sort of meditation, because in everything there are two dimensions -- just as there are in the first breath: the outer and the inner.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4, #9"

 

 

 

 

 

It is better not to call anything to anybody — just remain centered in yourself. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you — no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness.

 

This watchfulness, I call meditation.

 

-Osho, "The Invitation, #1, Q2"

 

 

 

 

 

The West is aggressive, scientific, ready to conquer nature. The East is non-aggressive, receptive -- ready to be conquered by nature. The West is eager to know. The East is patient. The West takes every initiative to reach into the mysteries of life and existence; it tries to unlock the doors. And the East simply waits in profound trust: "Whenever I am worthy, the truth will be revealed to me."

The West is concentration of the mind: the East is meditation of the mind. The West is thinking: the East is non-thinking. The West is mind: the East is no-mind. And Kipling seems to be logically right, that it seems impossible that East and West could ever meet.

And 'the East and the West' does not only represent the earth being divided in two hemispheres: it represents your mind too, your brain too. Your brain is also divided in two hemispheres just like the earth. Your brain has an East in it and a West in it. The left-side hemisphere of your brain is the West; it is connected with the right hand. And the right-side hemisphere of your brain is the East; it is connected with the left hand.

The West is rightist. The East is leftist. And the processes of both are so different....

 

-Osho, "Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1, #1"

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being. You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #3"

 

 

 

 

 

Real music will make you more and more refined. It will become more and more silent. In fact, real music will help you to listen to silence, where all notes disappear, where only gaps remain. One note comes, disappears, and another has not come, and there is a gap. In that gap meditation flows in you.

 

Real music will help you move towards meditation, beyond the mind needs, towards spiritual needs. Real poetry will give you a glimpse of the minds of the sages -- a glimpse of course. It will open a window so you can see the faraway distant Himalayas. And then an urge arises in you, and you start travelling.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #4, Q7"

 

 

 

 

 

All methods of meditation are nothing but methods to help you to remember the art of let-go. I say remember, because you knew it already. And you know it still, but that knowledge is being repressed by the society.

 

-Osho, "Satyam Shivam Sundram, #5, Q1"

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation should not be a thing apart from life; it should be amidst life, it should be a part of life an organic part, nothing ‘put separate’. The temple should exist exactly in the middle of the market, and all distinctions between the sacred and the secular should be dissolved.

 

-Osho, "Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1, #14, Q1"

 

 

 

 

 

Children can be taught meditation more easily because they are not yet spoiled. When you have been spoiled the hard work is to help you to unlearn.

 

"Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 2, #12, Q4"

 

 

 

 

 

Contemplation needs an object. Without an object to contemplate on, you cannot contemplate -- contemplate on what? Some content, some object is needed for your mind to focus upon it; hence, contemplation never goes beyond mind.

Philosophy is contemplation.

Science is concentration.

Religion is meditation.

But meditation means you don't have anything, any object to think about. You are just in a state of absolute aloneness. You don't have anything on which you can focus yourself -- not a sutra, not a mantra, not any great value of life, just pure space all around you. Then you are in meditation.

Meditation is never about something.

Meditation is a state.

You can be in it; it is not something that you have to do -- not even thinking, not even contemplating.

There are beautiful ways of contemplation, and I will give you sutras to contemplate. But it has to be made absolutely clear that there is nothing in the world that you can meditate upon.

Meditation is simply going beyond mind, beyond the functioning of the mind, beyond all the fetters of the mind, and just entering into this silence, unmoving, unwavering -- just a pure awareness, a silent flame, a great joy... but nothing to see. A great clarity of seeing, a vast openness... the whole sky is yours, but nothing objects to you, nothing prevents you. For the first time the nothingness has opened its doors to you. You simply are, utterly centered, without even a single thought flying across your mind. Then you are in meditation.

 

-Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #22, Q1"

 

 

 

 

 

The being is here and now.

Drop dreaming and you are there where you have really been always, but you were never aware.

All meditation techniques are just antidream efforts, just dream-negating devices.

 

-Osho, "That Art Thou, #4"

 

 

 

 

 

When you are in deep meditation you don't feel meditation, you feel bliss. When you are deep in meditation, when you are deep in awareness, you don't feel awareness, you feel bliss. When you begin to feel bliss, that means now you have begun to be aware.

 

Awareness creates the situation in which bliss is felt.

 

-Osho, "That Art Thou, #7"

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation means how to be not a mind. How to be not a mind! Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness. It doesn't mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.

 

With mind one goes on being disturbed more and more, and then this whole process of disturbance is self-perpetuating. One disturbance creates ten more, and those ten create a hundred more. This is self-perpetuating, and then you are in a vicious circle. With this mind something can be done. That is, you can travel outwardly, you can go more into the world. But the more you go into the world the farther you are from yourself. And the farther you have gone, the more the track back is lost. Then you only remember that there is a home, but there is no way to get back. And we continue to remember there is a home; there is a homesickness always

 

-Osho, "That Art Thou, #9"

 

 

 

 

 

By meditation we try to slow down the mechanism of projections. If the mechanism is slowed down and even for a single moment you begin to be aware of the gap -- imageless gap of the screen -- you have the glimpse. Suddenly you know that you have lived in the dreams of your own creation; and whatsoever you have known as the world was not the world really, it was YOUR world.

 

-Osho, "That Art Thou, #14"

 

 

 

 

 

So silently, peacefully, without hurry, without any tension, without any anguish, move into yourself instantly. It is urgent. Unless meditation becomes urgent to you, it will never happen; you will die before it. Put meditation on your laundry list as the most important, urgent… number one.

 

But meditation in your life is just at the very end of your laundry list — and the laundry list goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And before you finish your laundry list, you are finished, so the time for meditation never comes.

 

-Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #10, Q2"

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent — not even a flicker of thought — and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.

 

-Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #21"

 

 

 

 

 

Don't move outward and you will find yourself in the heart, in the cave of the heart.

 

Mind moves with desires, outwards. Then it can continue, continue, and go on and on -- to the very end of the world it can go. Don't move with any desires. Desirelessness is the method to come in, and desirelessness is meditation. Do not desire anything. Even for a single moment, if you are in a desireless moment, you will find yourself in. And then you can encounter the flame of life which is immortality, which is non-dying, which has never been born and will not die. Once known, there will be no fear of death. And when there is no fear of death, only then you can live authentically. Then your life will have a different quality altogether. It will be aware, it will be alive, it will be fresh. It will be blissful, it will be a deep ecstasy, a continuous ecstasy.

 

-Osho, "That Art Thou, #20"

 

 

 

 

This is what meditation means: how to be not identified with the mind -- how to create a space between yourself and your own mind. It is difficult because we never make any separation. We go on thinking in terms that the mind means me: mind and me are totally identified. If they are totally identified, then you will never be at peace; then you will never be able to enter the divine, because the divine can be entered only when the social has been left behind.

 

-Osho, "That Art Thou, #21"