If there is a bad effect on the mind, who is responsible?

Beloved Osho, you have told us that the mind becomes more and more quiet if we meditate regularly. Last year, when I was living in europe outside of a commune, thoughts became stronger and stronger during my meditations until I began to dread sitting. Now that I am with you again, this problem has gone away. But I wondered: how can one be a sannyasin for ten years, meditating every day, and have a mind which becomes more and more noisy?

Scientists say there is no reason for the body to die for at least three hundred years. It is just an old hypnosis, autohypnosis, which has made the idea prevalent that you have only seventy years to live. It goes so deep in your consciousness that by the seventieth year you start thinking you are sinking, you are gone. And anyway by the time you are retired at the age of sixty there is nothing to do. Death seems to be a relief, not a danger. We have not been capable enough and human enough to provide a situation where our old people can have some dignity, some self-respect, some pride. We have not been able to find dimensions where they can contribute to the world. And they are experienced and certainly capable of contributing enough -- enough for their self-respect, enough for them to live and not to feel…

Osho, I have been listening to you for years. I have been with you a long time. From time to time I have heard many different statements from you, even mutually contradictory ones, yet no question has ever arisen in my mind about them. And in spite of them you have always remained one and indivisible in my vision and in my heart. Kindly shed some light on this.

You can be with me in two ways: through thought and intellect, or through the heart and feeling. If you are with me through the intellect and thought, there will be great difficulty. Day after day you will find contradictory statements. Every day you will have to sort them out, and still you will not succeed. The intellect never really resolves anything. Even where things are simple, the intellect tangles them up. And my words are very tangled. Even where everything is clear, the intellect creates problems. And I speak of paths filled with mist. Even if there were only one path, the intellect would find contradictions; here there are countless paths—contradictions upon contradictions. There is hardly a statement I have not refuted a thousand times. So if you are with me through the intellect, only two things are possible: either you will go mad and drop the intellect, or…

so first one has to transcend the body and it is simple by just watching and remembering i am not the body slowly slowly the remembrance becomes an undercurrent then you don't remember it is there, you know it and the same has to be done with the mind i am not my thoughts thoughts are like birds who come in the evening for an overnight stay in the tree and in the morning they are gone thousands of thoughts have been taking shelter in your mind and have left they don't belong to you, they come and go you abide, they don't abide they are changing, you are eternal the remembrance that i am not my thoughts slowly slowly seeps deep into you and becomes a realisation and then nothing has to be done the body goes on doing its work the mind goes on doing its work only…

Beloved Osho, for years I have been a "groupie" searching for ways to understand myself. I have been in such misery that almost nothing asked of me was too much if it held a chance of alleviating my distress. Now you offer meditation as a means for leaving my misery behind, and all I do is resist. The thought of being still and quiet doesn't excite me. In fact it scares me, and I end up even more anxious. I don't understand this. Could you please explain this resistance to meditation?

In India if you take a bath once a year you alone will be enough to stink up the whole neighborhood -- so much perspiration, so much dust. And those lamas are still using many clothes, layer upon layer, I think seven layers at least. And they suffer from the heat, but the mind... they feel something is wrong, but the mind has gone so deep. For centuries they have lived that way. I told them, "If you want to talk to me you have to be at least ten feet away. Don't come near me because I am allergic to any kind of smell -- it may be Buddhist, it does not matter." In India it is very usual to take two baths, one in the morning, one in the evening. And those who have time, people like me... I used to take three -- one in the morning,…

That's why there is so much confusion and mess you decide one thing today and tomorrow you cannot do it, you yourself cancel it, because now it is another mind. The mind that has decided is no more there, it is no more in power. In the evening you decide 'I will get up early in the morning,' and when the time comes to get up, you yourself decide not to get up. And when you get up again as late as usual or even later, you feel great guilt, you start condemning yourself. That is a third mind. And this is how this sorry-go-round continues. (laughter) The person derides not to smoke; but he is not aware that the mind that is deciding it will not be in power long. Soon another mind will be there which will decide to smoke or do something else.