According to Osho, thinking turns into being when the winds of desire stop. Thought is a disease born of wanting; when you understand desire and cease demanding to be different, the mind’s waves subside and samadhi—the silent lake of being—appears. Accept yourself totally, be content now, watch without chasing goals, and even spiritual ambition ceases; then energy rests in presence and joy naturally flowers.
Stop always wanting more, relax and accept yourself right now, and your busy thoughts calm down so your quiet, happy self shows up.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
How can the energy of thinking be transformed into being?
How can an ambitious man be connected to the kingdom of god? He has made his connection with hell. Then after a whole life in the rat race, after drinking the dirty water of who knows how many streams, after getting covered by the dust of who knows how many roads, when the sun of life starts to set and when it feels you have nothing in your hands, just as empty as ever. You have run much, but reached nowhere -- then repentance engulfs you. Now the mind thinks how to attain samadhi, how to attain god. And again the mind has deceived you. This same language of attaining... Now you will have new ambitions. The form of this ambition will be religious, its flavor will be religious, but its soul is the same as ever. Whether you want money or religion, power or god, as long as there…
Osho, how does the energy of thought transform into feeling?
Therefore I am not teaching you religious thoughts. I am initiating you into no-thought. Generally, what goes on in temples and mosques is just this: people full of worldly thoughts are stuffed instead with spiritual thoughts—nothing more. But what difference does it make? You have given the disease a pious, pretty name; what changes? So long as you want to be anything, so long as you harbor the ambition to become something in the future, so long as you are eager for tomorrow, you will remain unquiet. The stream of thought will keep flowing. And as long as the stream of thought flows, you will remain cut off from God. I am telling you that religious thoughts are just as great an obstacle between you and God as worldly thoughts. Thought is the barrier; no-thought is union. Gorakh has said: See the Unseen, ponder what is seen, seat the Invisible…
Beloved Osho, in the mind, in the process of thinking, there is so much energy. How can we use that energy in a creative and constructive way?
He sat in his worshipping place, but the monkeys were inside. He closed his eyes, they were sitting all around him. He said, "I have never thought that monkeys are so interested in me. Why are you bothering me? A few are inside the mind, and if I close my mind, a few are sitting all around me. They push me from this side and from that side, and giggling! I am a silent man, and this is not gentlemanly behavior." And again the wife looked into his worshipping place and she said, "With whom are you talking?" He said, "My God, now I have to explain something which I do not understand myself. Just don't you disturb me tonight. Tomorrow morning I will go and I will see that old man." The whole night he took showers many times, rubbed the soap as much as he could to clean…
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
Akbar, the great Moghul emperor, drew a line on the wall, and he told his wise men not to touch it and yet make it smaller. They were puzzled and they thought, "It is impossible!" Then one of his wise men, Birbal, drew another line near it, a bigger one, without touching the first line. When the bigger line was drawn the first line became smaller. If you draw a small line then the first line will become bigger. So there are two ways. Either you make your being bigger -- then the world becomes smaller, smaller, smaller smaller... a moment comes when your being becomes the total, the BRAHMA, the world disappears. then there is no more world. Then there is another way, and the other is just a trick. You go on saying the world is illusory, MAYA, it is not there. You go on denying the reality…
Osho: You cannot be open through effort. If you are thinking this, then you have not understood it. Thinking means non-understanding. The person who thinks is a man of non-understanding. A person who knows doesn't think. (much laughter) It is not a question of thinking. He sees, he is aware, but not in thinking. Thoughts are not opening, thoughts are closing; they close your mind. The more you are in a thinking mood, the more you are closed and isolated from the whole. If you are not thinking, if you just are, if you are in a state of being, then something comes. That is not thinking, that is the realization. That is not thinking, you have not thought it. And the more you have thought about it, the less is the possibility for its coming. The known must go for the unknown to come.