According to Osho, you cannot stop thinking by force; effort splits the mind and breeds anxiety. Instead, allow thoughts total freedom and watch them lovingly, as a detached witness. With deep, nonjudgmental awareness, thoughts pass and natural gaps appear; in these intervals, no-mind and living silence reveal themselves. Sustained witnessing expands these gaps, bringing clarity, serenity, and samadhi-like insight.
Don’t try to shut thoughts off—just gently watch them come and go, and quiet spaces will appear by themselves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I have been thinking all day of a way to ask the question: how to stop thinking?
Mind is making almost no noise; goes on working silently. And such a servant! -- for seventy, eighty years. And then, too, when you are dying your body may be old but your mind remains young. Its capacity remains yet the same. Sometimes, if you have used it rightly, it even increases with your age! -- because the more you know, the more you understand, the more you have experienced and lived, the more capable your mind becomes. When you die, everything in your body is ready to die -- except the mind. That's why in the East we say mind leaves the body and enters another womb, because it is not yet ready to die. The rebirth is of the mind. Once you have attained the state of samadhi, no-mind, then there will be no rebirth. Then you will simply die. And with your dying, everything will be dissolved…
A friend has asked: Osho, you said about a wayward son that one should let him pass through his experiences, and he will learn on his own. But even after experiencing, he still prefers the same thing—someone is asking about his wayward son—no matter how much suffering he has to endure, even if death itself should come, still he does the same. After stumbling again and again, he repeats it. What can be done? How to reform him?
You will not be able to reform him. If life cannot reform him, if even death cannot reform him, what will you be able to do? If what you say is true—that again and again, even after suffering, he does the same thing; even if death comes, he will still do the same thing, and he does not change—then take your hands off. You will not be able to reform him. You cannot be stronger than death. And one who does not learn from suffering—what will he learn from you? Do not call him a wayward son. You have found yourself a Jadabharata. Because those whom suffering does not reform, whom even death does not reform—these are great, arrived masters; they are in the ultimate state. Do not even try to reform such a one. And why are you so eager to reform another? It is enough to reform yourself.…
Question: Third question: Osho, how can one control thoughts? He came back dancing. He placed his head at Buddha’s feet and said: You have given me a very deep message. Today I have found a sutra. I will use this same sutra with the mind. Today a great thing has become clear within me. Your great compassion sent me back. I was not willing to go—but a revolution has happened—just sitting on that bank. Sitting by that spring I understood: had I stepped into the water—had you not told me otherwise—I would have tried to purify it, and in doing so I would only have made it more impure. The moment I stepped in, more mud would have risen. You spoke rightly: sit on the bank and wait. Do nothing; just keep watching. The spring will clear by itself. So too I will do with my mind.
How is it possible that the mind can go on producing thoughts constantly, and how can we stop that which we have not started?
You have become identified with the mind, that's all. It is natural because the mind is so close to you and you have to use the mind so much. One is constantly in the mind. It is as if a driver has been driving a car for years and has never been out of the car. He has forgotten that he can go out, that he is a driver. He has forgotten completely; he thinks that he himself is a car. He cannot go out because who is there to go out? He has forgotten how to open the door, or the door is completely blocked by not having been used for years. It has gathered rust, it cannot open easily. The driver has been in the car so much that he has become the car, that's all. A misunderstanding has arisen. Now he cannot stop the car, because how…
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.