Jean Paul Sartre wrote an autobiography. He has called it WORDS. The name is very meaningful. It is the autobiography of every man – words and words and words. You are filled with words, and this process of words continues the whole day, even in the mind. When you are sleeping, you are still filled with words, thoughts.

 

The mind is just an accumulation of words, and everyone is too much obsessed with the mind. That is why self-knowledge becomes more and more impossible. The self is beyond the words, or behind the words, or below the words, or above the words, but never in the words. You exist not in the mind, but just below the mind, behind the mind, above the mind – never in the mind. You are focused in the mind, but you are not there. Standing out, you are focused in the mind. Because of this constant focusing, you have become identified with the mind. You think you are the mind, this is the only problem, the basic problem, and unless you are aware that you are not the mind, nothing meaningful can happen to you. You will live in misery. This identification is the misery. It is as if one is identified with a shadow. Then the whole life becomes false. Your whole life is false, and the basic error is that you are identified with the mind.

 

You think you are the mind: this is the ignorance. You can develop your mind, but in that way ignorance will not be dissolved. You can become very intelligent, you can become very talented, you may even become a genius. But if the identification with the mind is there, you remain basically mediocre because you remain identified with a false shadow. How does it happen? Unless you understand the mechanism of how it happens you cannot go beyond it, and all the techniques of meditation are nothing but processes to go beyond, to go beyond the mind.

 

Meditation techniques are not against the world, they are against the mind – and not really against the mind, but against identification. How are you identified with the mind? What is the mechanism that is working? Mind is a need – a great need, particularly for humanity. And that is the basic difference between man and the animals. Man thinks, and he has used thinking as a weapon for his struggle to survive. He could survive because he could think; otherwise he is more helpless than any animal, more weak than any animal. Physically, it was impossible for him to survive. He could survive because he could think. Because of thinking, he has become the master of the earth.

 

If thinking has been so deeply helpful, then it becomes easy to understand why man has become identified with the mind. You are not so much identified with the body. Of course, religions go on saying, ”Do not be identified with the body,” but no one is really identified with the body – no one! You are identified with the mind, not with the body, and this identification with the body is not so fatal as the identification with the mind – because the body is more real. The body exists, it is related to existence very deeply. Mind is just a shadow.

 

Identification with the mind is more subtle than identification with the body, but we are identified with the mind because mind has been such a great help to survive – not only against animals, against nature, but against other human beings also. If you have a keen, intelligent mind, you will win against other human beings as well. You will succeed, you will become more rich, because you will be more calculating and more cunning. Against other human beings also, mind is the weapon. That is why we are so much identified – remember this.

 

Against death, against disease, against nature, against animals, against other human beings, mind has been your protection, your security. And mind has done much, so obviously we think of ourselves as mind. If someone says that your body is ill you do not feel offended, but if someone says that your mind seems ill you do feel offended. If your body is ill, you do not feel offended. Why? You are not identified with the body. But if your mind is ill and someone says you are psychologically ill, mentally ill, insane, you feel offended. Now this is something about you, not about your body.

 

You behave with the body as if it is a vehicle, something you possess, but not so with the mind. With the mind, you are the mind; with the body, you are the master. The body is a slave – you possess it. This mind has created a division in your being also, and that is the second basic cause of why we are identified with it. You think not only about external things, you think about internal things also. For example, the body has many instincts. You think about your instincts also. Not only do you think, you fight against your instincts, so there is a constant internal fight. There is sex: the mind fights it, or tries to mold it in its own way. It suppresses it, perverts it, tries to control it.

 

The mind is fighting inside also. That fight creates a division between you and your body. And really, you start thinking that the body is something inimical, not a friend, because the body goes on doing things which the mind is against. The body is not going to listen to the mind, so the mind feels offended, defeated. It attacks the body, and then a division is created. And you are always identified with the mind, never with the body.

 

The mind is your ego. That is your ”I”. If the body feels sexuality, you can divide. You can say, ”This is the body, not me. I am against it. I have taken a vow of celibacy, I am against it. This is the body; this is not me.” Then who are you? The mind which has taken a vow? This mind is your ego, and you go against the body because the body is very much ego-destroying. Whatsoever you decide, it never listens.

 

All the ascetic nonsense was born because of this: the body will not listen. The body is nature, the body is a part of the cosmic whole, the body has its own laws. Those laws are unconscious; it functions according to them. The mind tries to create its own laws over and above the body. Then a conflict is created. Then the mind starts fighting the body. Then the mind will starve the body; it will try in every way to kill it.

 

That is what has happened in the past: so-called religious people have been really mad against their bodies. And whatsoever they were doing was less for God and more against the body. Really, to be in search of God became synonymous with being against the body. Religious persons took the attitude, ”Kill the body, destroy the body. The body is the enemy.” And really, this is not a religious attitude, but one of the most irreligious attitudes, because it is the most egoistical. This is the ego, the ego feels offended.

 

You decide not to be angry again, and then anger comes: your ego feels defeated. Your decision is thrown overboard, and the anger comes. And when the anger comes you feel this is coming from the body. You decide against sex and sex comes: you feel offended, so you try to punish the body. Asceticism is nothing but punishment – punishing your own body in order to force it to behave according to the ego.

 

This mind, this process of thinking, this ego, is just a fragment of your whole total being, and this fragment is trying to be the sovereign. This is not possible, the fragment cannot be the sovereign. It is going to fail; that is why there is so much frustration in life. You can never succeed – you are trying the impossible. The fragment cannot be the sovereign. The whole is bigger and the whole is more powerful.

 

It is just as if a branch of a tree tries to control the whole tree, even the roots. How can a branch control the whole tree, and how can it force the roots to follow it? That is impossible. Whatsoever it thinks, it is mad; the branch has gone mad. It may go on thinking and dreaming, conceiving of some future where the tree will be following it, but it is not possible; it will have to follow the tree. It is alive only because of the tree and the roots. And the roots were there before it was. The roots are the source of it also.

 

Your mind is just a fragment of your body; it cannot control it. The very effort to control the body will create frustration and failure. And the whole humanity has been a failure because of this. Everyone is suffering, in conflict, in anguish, in anxiety, trembling, because the impossible is being tried. But the ego always likes to try the impossible. The possible has no challenge for it; the impossible is a challenge. And if the impossible can be done, then the ego will feel very good – because this cannot be done. You can try to do it, but you will waste your life trying that which cannot be done.

 

Because of this inner effort to become the master, you are identified with the mind. Who would like to be identified with a slave? Who would like to be identified with the unconscious? It is useless. The unconscious is negated because it cannot be grasped. And with the unconscious there is no ego; you cannot feel ”I”.

 

Try to understand it in this way: when sex overpowers you, really you cannot say ”I”. It is as if something greater than you has taken possession – as if you are in a strong current. You are no more; something else is driving you. That is why these words are meaningful… that is why those who are against sex will say, ”Sex possessed me.”

 

Anger possesses you, hunger possesses you. They are something greater than you, and you are just taken by the current. It is fearful. It is very fearful because then you are no more. It is a sort of death. That is why you are so much against sex – it is a sort of death. Those who are against sex will always be afraid of death, and those who are not against sex and can flow in it easily, spontaneously, will never be afraid of death. See the association: those who are against sex will always be afraid of death, and those who are afraid of death will be always against sex.

 

Those who are afraid of death will always create theories of immortality; they will always think about life beyond death. Those who think about immortality will always be against sex – these are alternatives. Sex gives you a fear. What is the fear? You are no more in it, something greater than you possesses you. You are thrown overboard; you are no more in it.

 

So even those who are not against sex, they too never move really deep into sex. They never move; they are always holding back, trying to remain there, not allowing themselves, not ready for a letgo. That is why orgasm, such a natural thing, has become so impossible for man and woman. A deep orgasm means you have been in something which was greater than you. You have been in something where you were not, the ego was not.

 

The ego is struggling to control everything, and mind helps you. In the effort you become identified with the mind, and this identification is the misery, it is a false shadow. Mind is a very utilitarian instrument. You have to use it, but do not become identified with it. It is a good instrument – necessary. Use it! But do not feel that YOU are the mind, because once you start feeling you are the mind, you cannot use it. The mind starts using you. Then you are simply drifting with the mind.

 

All the meditation techniques are an effort to give you a glimpse of that which is not mind. So how to go beyond it? How to leave it and look at it even for a single moment?

 

- Osho, “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, #25″