No—peace is real; the mind’s doubts are the trick, so notice the calm, thank it, and it will grow while thoughts fade.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, while meditating I experience peace and joy, yet alongside a thin stream of thought keeps flowing. In this state, is the peace I feel a trick of the mind?
The mind is very strange. It never doubts; if there is suffering it never asks, “Is this a trick of the mind?” If there is anger, it never asks, “Is this a trick of the mind?” But if a little peace is felt, trust does not arise. The mind says, “It must be a deception. Can you receive more peace? Impossible. Can you experience more joy? That cannot be. Surely there is some mistake somewhere.” You have lost so much trust in yourself. You have tied your destiny to darkness. You have made melancholy your fate. If, in a moment of that melancholy, even a single ray of the sun descends, you think, “It must be a dream. A sunray, and descending upon me? Impossible. Only darkness can descend upon me.” Why have you come to believe this? And if this is your belief, so it will be—because your belief…Read the full discourse →
Beloved master, for the past few weeks, I have been able to sit and allow my mind to be quiet -- sometimes for only a second, but sometimes for longer. Since this has been happening, I have experienced many beautiful spaces, as if this quietness somehow invites the universe in. Inside these glimpses there is no doubt, no `me' to doubt. Coming out, I doubt. I do not know whether this doubt comes from my mind or simply from an inner knowledge that there is yet so much more. Master, can I trust that I am moving into meditation, or is my mind cunning enough to make me believe that I am?
For centuries, the East worked only on meditation. Meditation cannot create technology. Meditation can give you tremendous experiences of your immortality, of the universal godliness, of an oceanic ecstasy. But meditation is incapable -- in the same way as mind is incapable -- of knowing anything about matter. That's why, in the East, the mystics have denied the very existence of the outside world, saying it is maya, it is illusion. It is the same logic. Mind denies the inner world -- that there is no inner world, no spiritual world, no soul, nothing divine, all is solid matter. Meditation, on the other hand, in a similar way denies that there is anything real outside -- the real is inside. That's why the East has remained poor -- at least outwardly poor; its richness is of the inner. The West has become rich outwardly; its poverty has remained of the…Read the full discourse →
But Osho, as I understand it, our mind is conditioned, and sometimes it plays all sorts of monkey tricks and does not allow us to enter the state of meditation. What measures do you suggest for that?
It will happen. The mind will make every effort to save itself. It will try with all its strength to preserve itself. And the truth is, it succeeds only because we also believe that we are the mind. Therefore its efforts succeed. But these efforts can be broken, because they do not stand on truth—this is not the truth. What we have been taught is not what we are. If that were what we are, then who would there be to teach? A child is born. He brings consciousness; he does not bring a mind. The mind will now be manufactured. He has brought consciousness, the capacity to learn, an inner awareness, a soul. Around this soul a wall of mind will be raised, on which it will be written, “You are a Hindu.” Into it everything will be written: higher and lower; Brahmin and Shudra; what is and what…Read the full discourse →
Peace of mind can be gained by withdrawal from the world, by stilling the vortices of the mind. But how much inner peace is appropriate in a world that contains attica, vietnam, johannesburg, biafra, pakistan and sub-sahara africa?
Withdrawal is escapist. Withdrawal can give you a kind of death, but not peace. Peace is very alive. Peace is more alive than war -- because war is in the service of death, peace is in the service of life. Peace is very alive, vibrant, young, dancing.... Withdrawal? -- that is the oldest way escapists have chosen. It is cheap. It gives a kind of peace -- remember, I say 'a kind of peace' -- the same kind as you see in a graveyard. You can go to a Catholic monastery -- there is a kind of peace, the same that exists in the graveyard. You can go to the Jaina monks and you will see a kind of peace -- the same that exists in a graveyard. These people are dead! They have renounced life. The day you renounce life you renounce responsibility, you renounce all kinds of commitments.…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, sometimes I realize how much I am afraid of the unknown. I have experienced moments of total trust and moments of bliss. What are the tricks of the mind to avoid these beautiful experiences again and again?
But a man of blissfulness has his tremendous freedom -- it comes with it. A man of love cannot be enslaved. Freedom, love, joy create the real individual you are. They are the qualities you are made of. And the society tries to hide that individual, repress that individual -- and creates a phony individual which it can manipulate. But nothing is perfect in the world. The society does everything, but still there are loopholes. There are moments when your real nature asserts. Soon the mind catches hold of you, convinces you that it was illusory: "You are just imagining. It never happened -- I am the reality." So you have to be conscious of this strategy. The mind is not yours, it is your enemy. Don't listen to it. Whatever it says goes against you. Listen to something that comes not from the mind -- that's why it looks…Read the full discourse →