How can I meditate without rehearsing thoughts?

A friend has asked: Osho, you say “drop thoughts”—how do we drop them? How will a thought drop? This morning you said, “Drop thoughts and become thoughtless,” but how do we drop thoughts?

A man crashes into precisely what he wants to avoid. He is surrounded by precisely what he tries to flee. Ask celibates: they see nothing but women. It cannot be otherwise. Even if God were to appear, he would appear to them in the form of a woman—no other form is possible. The poor celibate’s misery is that he fights sex and is surrounded by sex. That is why rishis and munis have expressed such anger toward women. For whom is this anger? For the women who besiege them within, not for real women. What have real women to do with it? They say, “Woman is the gate to hell; avoid women.” Whom are they telling you to avoid? The inner woman who surrounds them. And why does she surround? Because they run from women; therefore the woman surrounds. Whatever you run from will encircle you. Whatever you try to…

It has been asked: It has been asked, Osho, you tell us to think—yet what will come from thinking alone? As I keep thinking, I get drowned in thoughts themselves, and my conduct does not change. My conduct remains exactly the same. So please tell me, how is conduct to be changed?

Commonly it is said, “What value is there in thought? The real value is in conduct.” This is utterly false and futile. It is false and futile because conduct, deep down, is nothing but the expression of thought. Where there is no seed of thought, there can be no plant of conduct. Yes, it is possible to throw a false conduct over oneself from the outside. But false conduct has no value whatsoever, except that it deceives others and destroys one’s own life. The question asked is: “What will happen by thought alone?” This is why I ask, and why the question arises—if I were to pray to you, I would say: as yet no thought has been born in you. You are taking others’ thoughts to be your own. Hence the problem of trying to bring thought and conduct into harmony. If the thought were truly yours, it would…

Osho, then I think many things will clear up on their own.

Yes, they will clear up on their own; there’s not much to it. Take this common notion that one must be silent in meditation—there is no need for such a notion. We are silence already, and whatever is happening is happening outside us. Thoughts are happening too; they are happening outside us. We do not have to become silent; we are silence already. Whatever is moving is moving outside us. By mistake we made it one with ourselves; there the error occurred. When you sit in meditation, thought is moving. We made the mistake of taking up an identity, an identification: “This thought is me, it is mine.” That was the error. This is a thought, and I am I. And this thought is circling around me—like a fan whirring, like a fly buzzing… this thought is circling. This is this, and I am I; what have I to do…

Osho said that there was no need to try to still the mind, to stop the thoughts. He said that just as the traffic goes by and one remains on the sidewalk, unaffected, just a watcher, so one should simply witness the thoughts as they went by. We are not our thoughts, and recognising that we are the witness is enough. The very acceptance of the thoughts makes one more relaxed. The relaxation helps to create a distance, to separate oneself. To evaluate a thought as good or bad means that you are attached to your thoughts -- so one should not put labels on them.] ... put yourself aside, sit under a tree, and just watch the traffic. Soon, one day, the traffic disappears and the road is empty. Suddenly there is an interval and in that interval is meditation. But that interval cannot be created or cultivated.

In 1969 followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi invited Osho to talk to them. This was the first occasion on which Osho addressed a western audience, and the first time he talked publicly at length in English. The discourse has been published in OTI January 1 & 16, 1991; and February 1, 1991. Osho: Really, there can be no method as far as meditation is concerned. Meditation is not a method. Through technique, through method, you cannot go beyond mind. When you leave all methods, all techniques, you transcend mind. So meditation itself is not a method. Truth cannot be achieved through method. Method is our own invention. We, who are ignorant, have achieved knowledge through methods constructed, created, projected, in our ignorance. Through method you can achieve a sort of self-hypnosis, a sort of auto-hypnosis. Any method, whatsoever it's name, can only give you an illusory kind of peace.