Question 1

Beloved Osho,

Lately, I feel that the longing inside to go beyond the mind and experience something more is growing. It seems like such a long process – Does it have to take a long time?

 

 

Atit Yama, the longing to go beyond the mind is the only longing worthwhile. All that man desires and hopes for is utterly meaningless. In success, in failure, in every possible way it leads you nowhere.

 

It is not only that you feel the pain in failure—the pain and the defeat and the agony. Those who succeed also feel the same pain in a different way, perhaps more deeply than those who have failed, because they have succeeded in what they wanted and yet their inner being is as dark and as empty as ever. They have everything on the outside and nothing inside. In fact, all that they have succeeded in attaining, in achieving, becomes a contrast and shows their inner emptiness more clearly than those who have failed to attain.

 

It is just as if you write with white chalk on a white wall: it doesn’t show. You have to write it on a blackboard and then it shows clearly. The emptiness, meaninglessness shows more clearly on the blackboard of success than it shows on the mind and its screen of failure. In failure there is still hope; in success there is no hope. You have already arrived, and your arrival is the death of all your hoping.

 

It is a very strange experience that the only successful lovers are those who never meet, are never allowed to meet by the society, by the parents, by the situations. They are the only successful lovers; the world remembers them for centuries. But once the lovers meet, then all hope and all romance from life simply evaporates.

 

There is one longing amongst all longings, and that is the longing to go beyond mind. But there is a contradiction in this longing, because all longing belongs to the mind: how can the mind long, desire, to go beyond itself? So the longing to go beyond mind has not to be understood in the same way as any other desire, any other ambition.

 

In fact to call it longing is not right. It is an understanding more than a desire. It is an understanding of the agony and the pain of mind that makes one feel it is better to go beyond. It is not something in the faraway future as a goal, but something that has to be allowed to happen right now.

 

If you can see what mind has done to you and what it is continuously doing to you, how much misery and how much suffering it goes on creating, then the very understanding of the misery of mind is enough to go beyond. You don’t ask how to go beyond; you simply cannot remain in the mind. You are in the mind because you are not clear that your misery is caused by the mind. You go on throwing the responsibility on something or other.

 

Jean-Paul Sartre has said—and when a man like Sartre says something it is significant; his statement has become immensely famous: “The other is hell.” In an ordinary way it appears to be right, because you always suffer because of others: your wife deserts you; your husband does not love you; your children are turning into hippies. It is always the others who are creating misery; otherwise, you would be in paradise.

 

In this ordinary sense his statement has meaning, and that’s why it has become so famous and so important. But deep down it is rooted in ignorance. The other is not hell; the other is only a mirror. The other only reflects your mind, your face.

 

I have heard an ancient parable…

 

A woman who was very ugly was against mirrors. She was so much against mirrors that she did not allow any mirror in her own home. Her antagonism was so deep that if she saw a mirror in somebody else’s house the first thing she did was to break the mirror. And people asked, “What is the matter, why have you broken the mirror?”

 

She said, “The mirror makes me ugly; otherwise, I am perfectly well. If there was no mirror, I would not have been ugly.”

 

The same is the situation when Jean-Paul Sartre says that the other is hell. It is you, it is your mind. And because Sartre goes on depending on this understanding, a man of his caliber and genius never transcends mind, never even thinks of it. It is unfortunate that such beautiful people with such sharp intelligence remain unaware of a simple fact that in your relationships it is your mind that is reflected. In your misery it is your mind; in your jealousy it is your mind; in your hate it is your mind; in your lust for power it is your mind.

 

Once you see the multidimensional capacity of the mind to create hell for you, the very understanding takes you out of it. You don’t have to long; you don’t have to desire; you don’t have to do anything else other than understand the mind.

 

Yama, you are saying to me, “I feel that the longing inside to go beyond the mind and experience something more is growing.” Superficially, anybody will say that a spiritual desire has taken possession of you, but I am going to be a little hard on you.

 

First, the feeling is part of the mind, the longing is part of the mind, to have some experience is a desire of the mind… and to have something even more is the very nature of mind. It can be reduced to a simple statement: Mind always asks for more. It may be money or it may be meditation, it doesn’t matter —mind goes on asking for more.

 

Even if you get God himself, the mind will still ask the same thing: something more. What are you going to do with this God? Now you are stuck forever. Just think of yourself getting stuck with God forever! The mind may even suggest to you, “It is better to lose this fellow rather than to remain stuck with him; either get something more… or even less will do, but a change is absolutely needed.” Mind is a continuous thirst for more. It never finds fulfillment.

 

So you have to understand one thing, that this longing should not be part of the mind. This desire to experience something more should not be mind deceiving you in the name of religion, in the name of spirituality.

 

The only way to avoid the mind and its deceptions—and they are very subtle—the only way is to drop these words: ‘longing’, ‘experience’, ‘more’. Rather try to understand the mind, what it is. Look into every nook and corner of the mind, from where all desires arise, all longings arise, from where all passions arise. Just look into this source of all your life.

 

With the very understanding that the mind is the hell, you will find yourself beyond it; you will not have to go beyond it.

 

It is almost like when you find your house is on fire. When you see it on fire, you don’t think and contemplate what to do. You don’t consult Holy Scriptures for right instructions. You simply jump out of the house—whether it is a door or a window it doesn’t matter; whether you are properly dressed or not it doesn’t matter. You know a great crowd is waiting, but if you are in your bathroom and suddenly find the house is on fire, you will jump out of the window naked. You will forget to take even the towel with you. It is not a time to think of all these trivia and the crowd is not going to be angry with you, even in Poona. Even the police commissioner is not going to take any action against you. In such a situation ordinary laws don’t apply.

 

The transcendence from mind has happened only to a very few people in the world. And the reason is that most people get deceived by the mind. The mind itself starts asking for transcendence, for going beyond, for searching the truth, and you forget that these are subtle devices of the mind to take you astray from one single thing: that is a deep understanding of mind itself.

 

Neither transcendence is needed nor going beyond is needed nor any spiritual experience is needed. What is needed is a total understanding of your mind and its structure and its functioning. And that very understanding, without any effort on your part, will become the transcendence, will take you beyond, will give you the experience that mind was only dreaming about and deceiving you.

 

Your question is certainly arising from the mind, because the next thing it says is: “It seems like such a long process.” Understanding is not a long process. Understanding is immediate. You come across a snake on the road—understanding does not take a long time. You simply jump out of the way without even thinking what you are doing.

 

[…]

 

You say it is a long process, “such a long process—does it have to take a long time?”

 

Somebody has sent me the Ashram’s Law of Shortcut: The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.

 

It is very difficult to find any shortcut here… but there is no need either if you follow rightly my understanding, my approach. Time is not involved at all; neither is any kind of distance.

 

This very moment you can look at your mind, and you can see all that your mind contains. And that will be enough just to be finished with it. It is not a question of time; it is not a question of effort. It is only a question of clear understanding.

 

That’s what we don’t do. We fight with anger, we fight with jealousy, we fight with everything, but fighting never helps because it takes time. And fighting shows one thing absolutely: that you don’t understand that by fighting you cannot go beyond mind. Fighting is simply one part of mind fighting with another part. It is like making both my hands fight with each other. Do you think any hand is going to win? It depends on me; I can make the right-hand win or I can change the idea and make the left-hand win. But I know perfectly well that it is within my power: both hands are mine.

 

Any conflict in your mind, any split in your mind is just a game. You have become two teams, football teams or… And you can go on playing the game and you can enjoy that you are on a spiritual pilgrimage, that you are a great seeker — but you are just playing football. And you are playing for both sides; there is no question of any victory, no question of any defeat.

 

That’s what so-called religious people have been doing and are still doing. Their rituals, their prayers, their austerities certainly take time. And not only do they take time, they never arrive anywhere, they remain the same persons. Maybe they have repressed their sexuality, but the sexuality is there. Repressed, it becomes more dangerous because it becomes more deep-rooted in your unconscious, from where it will create a thousand and one perversions.

 

I have heard that three rabbis were standing on the railway station. They were going somewhere, obviously. And finally, the youngest one said, “Now it seems the train is going to come and I should get the tickets.”

 

So he went to the window and saw a beautiful woman working on her register. The young rabbi said to the woman, “Lady, how much will it cost for Titsburgh?” He forgot that he is going to Pittsburgh.

 

The woman was very angry, and said, “You are a religious man…” The rabbi felt very ashamed. He came back and told the other rabbis, “You can purchase the ticket because I am feeling very nervous, and in my nervousness, I have said something wrong.”

 

They said, “But tell us what you have said wrong.”

 

He said, “I cannot repeat it. And don’t make me feel more guilty; I am feeling very bad.”

 

So the second rabbi, more elderly than the first, said, “I’m going. What kind of nervousness is this? Just purchasing the ticket…” And the moment he saw those beautiful tits he forgot everything—his old age, his austerities, his rituals, his prayers; all were forgotten. And of course, because he was older he committed more mistakes because his unconscious and his repression were greater. He said, “Just give me three tickets for Titsburgh and the change you can give me in nipples.”

 

The woman was outraged. She said, “You rascals! You are pretending to be rabbis? The first one came and now you have come, and you are worse than the first.”

 

And the second rabbi came back trembling. Then the oldest rabbi said, “What is the matter with you idiots? Just purchasing a ticket… What happens on the window?”

 

The second one said, “You go and see yourself. Something goes wrong. I was not thinking that I can do such a stupid thing, but it simply came out.”

 

The old rabbi said, “That window seems to be mysterious. But let me try.” And of course he was a very strict disciplinarian, a perfectionist, and the oldest of all. He kept himself very alert seeing that two persons have failed and something is wrong there. He saw the tits but he understood immediately, Okay, so this is the problem: Pittsburgh must be becoming Titsburgh!

 

He took the right approach and said, “Lady, how much will it be for Pittsburgh?”

 

The lady said, “You are really a religious person. Those two fellows are so ungentlemanly. They should not be accepted as rabbis.”

 

The rabbi said, “You are right. I will put them right, but I’m going to put you right too! You are not dressed properly. And remember, when you die Saint Finger on the gate of heaven will show his peter at you!”

 

The old man became angry…

 

But you cannot get away from the repressed; it is going to come in some way or other. Now Saint Peter becomes Saint Finger, and the poor finger becomes peter.

 

Perversions are the only achievement of the repressed approach of all your religions. It has created a very perverted humanity. I will not say to you to do something to transcend mind—I will say to you: the only scientific approach is to understand. First understand mind, which is your reality. Why be in such a hurry of going beyond it without understanding it? Understand it and the very understanding is transcendence. The moment you have understood your mind you are beyond it. You will find yourself beyond it within a split second; it won’t take any more time. It is not a process, it is a quantum leap.

 

My effort is to continuously emphasize that meditation is nothing but watching the mind, understanding the mind, seeing all its subtle and cunning ways. And once you have become perfectly aware of all its conscious, subconscious and unconscious layers you are already out of it. In your very watching you have gone beyond. And beyond the mind there is no desire for more, because beyond the mind you go on growing more and more into infinity. There is no need to desire, it happens spontaneously.

 

So the first thing is an understanding of the mind and the second thing is to rejoice in spontaneous growth.

 

The young nun rushed into the mother superior’s office and exclaimed, “We have got a fresh case of syphilis in the convent!” The mother superior looked up and said, “Thank God. I’m sick to death of red wine!”

 

It is a little difficult. The nun has reported to the superior mother that they have received a fresh case of syphilis. And the superior mother said, “Thank God. I’m sick to death of red wine. Always red wine, red wine… At least something fresh has come.”

 

A doctor received an urgent phone call. “Doctor,” said the voice. “My wife swallowed my fountain pen two hours ago.” “Why did not you phone me sooner?” asked the doctor.

 

“I have been using my pencil up to now,” replied the husband, “but the lead has broken and I don’t have a sharpener.”

 

Life is so ridiculous and so hilarious, that if you just try to understand your mind, you will have a great laugh at yourself and what you have been doing.

 

Once one of the girlfriends of Pablo Picasso said, “If my boyfriend would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings he would fall over in a dead faint.”

 

But Picasso is not aware what he is painting. The girlfriend is saying, “If some day on the road he meets the women he paints, he will forget all painting; he will faint and fall over on the road.” But Picasso is not aware that all his paintings are nightmarish. And he has been working so hard on those paintings all his life. And he was a genius, but he must be absolutely unconscious of what he is doing.

 

What are you doing? What goes on in your mind? What kinds of paintings do you make? What kinds of dreams come to you? What things make you jealous? What things make you infatuated? Just watch. You have been given, free of charge by your biology, a whole television set which needs no change of any batteries or any electricity; it runs continuously from the cradle to the grave. And who knows it may be running even in the grave.

 

Brain surgeons have become aware of the fact that the brain can be taken out from your skull and put into a mechanical head. All that it needs is oxygen and blood for everything to run through the mechanical head exactly as it used to run in your head on your body. Your brain continues to function. It does not know that the man has changed. It goes on dreaming, it goes on thinking; it goes on making plans, it goes on being jealous.

 

Brain surgeons have been very shocked that the brain does not need you at all; it goes on by itself. And it is very frightening that a brain without a body, just mechanically supported for its nourishment is perfectly well and it goes on doing the same old exercises.

 

You are being used by your brain almost like a mechanical support, nothing much more. This brain certainly has to be transcended, but to transcend it you are not to fall into the trap of taking any support from the same brain. If you take any support from it, you will never be able to get out of its trap. The only way not to take support is just to watch, wait and see all its functions. And you will feel immensely relieved immediately, because it has nothing to do with you, it is just a biocomputer.

 

And this understanding that “I am separate” is the transcendence, is what you mean by going beyond.

 

- Osho, "The Invitation, #13, Q1"