According to Osho, to fully merge and 'drown' in the experience, stop grasping at thoughts and the surface supports of the mind. Practice bare awareness: observe thoughts pass like pedestrians without judging or following. Enter the silent gap between thoughts; there, with no footing, you naturally sink into your own being. This surrender becomes the only real support.
Watch your thoughts come and go without grabbing them, and slip into the quiet space between them, where you naturally rest in who you truly are.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You suggest that we become fully-merged, that we drown. How can we do this?
I tell you from my own experience that there is no easier path than merging with one's own self. The only thing one has to do is stop seeking for the support of anything on the surface of the mind. By catching hold of thoughts you cannot drown and because of their support you remain on the surface. We are in the habit of catching hold of thoughts. As soon as one thought passes on we catch hold of another -- but we never enter the gap between two successive thoughts. This gap itself is the channel to drowning in the depths. Do not move in thoughts -- go deep down between them in the gaps. How can this be done? It can be done by awareness, by observing the stream of thoughts. Just as a man standing on the side of a road watches the people passing by, you…
Osho, you tell me to float, but my body is so heavy with a dead-weight mind that I feel I will drown if I float. So I keep swimming in panic.
And just as the wretched soul jumped into the pit, a whistle blew and a voice called out: "All right, everybody! Tea break's over -- stand on your heads!" If you choose you choose hell. Choice is hell. That's how you have created your hell all around you -- by choosing. When you choose you don't allow God to choose for you. Krishnamurti goes on insisting for choicelessness. That is just one end of the whole story. The other end is: if you arc choiceless God chooses for you. That is only half of the story -- become choiceless -- just the beginning. The moment you are choiceless life continues. You will not be there -- life will continue. And you are nothing but a hell. Once you don't stand between you and God he chooses. He has been always choosing for you. There is a proverb which says, "Man…
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…
Consciousness is the source, the spring. If you wish to know it you must go beyond the waves. You must transcend the waves. You can't just keep sitting on the seashore. Kabir has said, "I went in search, but foolishly kept sitting on the shore." Please don't sit on the shore like Kabir. You have to go beyond the shore. The shore is only there so you can jump into the sea. And it is also possible that a man may not remain standing on the shore but will remain floating on the waves. In my view, this is the shore as well. Whatever stops you from diving in and drowning is the shore. People swimming in thought are like this. They are under the illusion they have left the shore but in actual fact they haven't. To fathom the sea they also have to leave the waves behind.
Question: when I meditate I usually repeat a mantra or a namokar, but the mind remains restless. How can one best occupy one's mind while meditating?
Mind itself means projection, so unless you transcend the mind, whatever you come to experience is projection. Mind is the projecting mechanism. If you experience any visions of light, of bliss, even of the divine, these are all projections. Unless you come to a total stopping of the mind you are not beyond projections; you are projecting. When mind ceases, only then are you beyond the danger. When there is no experience, no visions, nothing objective -- the consciousness remaining as a pure mirror with nothing reflected in it -- only then are you beyond the danger of projections. Projections are of two types. One type of projection will lead you to more and more projection. It is a positive projection; you can never go beyond it. The other type of projection is negative. It is a projection, but it helps you to go beyond projections. In meditation you use…