How can one be free of the negative mind, the critical eye, and the ego?

How can one be free of the negative mind, the critical eye, and the ego? When will the intellect burn to ashes? If these are painful, why does attachment to them persist?

First thing, the attempt to get rid of the negative mind cannot succeed, because alongside it goes the attempt to preserve the affirmative mind. And the affirmative and the negative can exist only together, not separately. It is like wanting to keep one side of a coin and throw away the other. The mind either goes in its entirety or survives in its entirety; you cannot divide it. The negative and the affirmative are linked, conjoined, together. They are opposites—do not therefore think they are separate. Though opposed, they are complementary. As night and day are linked, so are the negative and the affirmative mind. So first understand that if you seek freedom only from the negative, you will never be free. Think of freedom from mind itself. Mind means both the negative and the affirmative. We spend our whole lives in such attempts and we fail. When we fail…

I am negative, I am not a positive mind. I am totally negative. I will negate what you say, but I won't say anything as my position, because to me a positive mind cannot become a vacuum, cannot become vacant, cannot be a nonentity. A positive mind can never be; only a negative mind. A mind which comes through thinking to be negative, negates everything. When you negate everything then the mind becomes a vacuum. This is my position. (Laughter) QUESTION: CAN YOU TELL US HOW YOU MANAGE TO GET AN UNOCCUPIED MIND -- BECAUSE THAT IS THE FIRST STEP FOR YOUR EXPERIENCE, YES? Osho: I try to understand the occupied mind. My own mind, occupied constantly -- I observed it. The very observation of the occupied mind makes the mind unoccupied.

Question: FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM FROM THE TOES UP UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS BURNING TO ASHES AND BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMANAS, AS SUBJECTIVELY, LETTERS FLOW INTO WORDS AND WORDS INTO SENTENCES, AND AS, OBJECTIVELY, CIRCLES FLOW INTO WORLDS AND WORLDS INTO PRINCIPLES, FIND AT LAST THESE CONVERGING IN OUR BEING Whenever you get identified with any memory, any knowledge, any experience, any name and form, that I is born. Then you are young, you are old; you are rich, you are poor; you are beautiful or you are not beautiful; you are educated or you are not educated; you are respected or you are not respected -- then you go on getting identified with things which accumulate around you and the ego is born. Ego is identification with the mind.

Osho, is there any practical process for being in the realm of existence beyond thoughts, in the void?

The way to thin them out is non-cooperation. Right now we are their makers—that is, we are the ones maintaining them. When we sit idle, some thought or other is running, because without our cooperation they cannot run. Withdraw your cooperation from whatever thoughts are running, and do nothing else; regard just this as samayik, as meditation. If all thoughts dissolve, you will feel no ego and no person within. You will know only being—only being will be known, in which the distinction “I am an individual” or “I am the whole” will not be felt. Only pure being will remain—pure existence. In truth, because of the thoughts accumulated upon that pure existence, we appear to be a person. This sense that I am “A,” you are “B,” you are “C”—the A, B, C we have pasted on—is our thought-power. We commonly say, “I will become liberated”—this is not quite…

Beloved Osho, how can I leave my ego outside the front gate? It follows me like a shadow and even hides behind my back and then I am not able to see it.

I said, "I understand perfectly well. You don't understand with whom you are talking." But I did not leave the chair. I told him that whatever he wants to do, he can do. He can go to the vice-chancellor, he can bring the vice-chancellor... "I am going to remain in this chair." He said, "What is the purpose of all this mess?" I said, "The purpose is to show you that it is not my sitting in the chair that is hurting you, it is your ego. If you accept it I will leave the chair. If you don't accept, then you can bring anybody to help you... but as far as I know the students, nobody is going to help." He waited a minute. There was utter silence in the class. Everybody was afraid that if the vice-chancellor came and the proctor came, there was going to be trouble…