What are the difficulties on the path of meditation and how can we overcome them?

Beloved master, what are the difficulties on the path of meditation and how can we overcome them?

How do you learn to swim? It is not an art. If it was an art you could have learned it in your bedroom. Just on your bed you could have done all the exercises that are prescribed in the book. But it is not an art; you have to go to water. And you will have to face death a few times, but that is part of the progress. Each time you face death, each time you learn something -- the knack slowly comes to you. Within two or three days you will be able to swim. One Japanese professor of psychology is trying to teach six-month-old children to swim, and he has succeeded. Then he tried with three-month-old children, and he has succeeded. Now he is trying with the newly born, and I hope that he succeeds. There is every possibility because it is a knack. It does…

Just sitting like a Buddha is not going to heip. It is easy to learn because the body is visible but inside the mind is going crazy -- and you are sitting like a Buddha. You can fast, you can learn exercises, you can chant mantras, because these things are visible-but the real thing is to become a witness of your mind. Mind is not visible; it has no weight. Thoughts are not things; they are weightless. That's why you can contain millions of thoughts. If they had weight it would be impossible to contain so many thoughts in the head; the head is so small. As many weightless thoughts as you like can be contained. In fact they say that a single man's mind is capable of containing all the libraries of the world.

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…

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…

Let me say a thing or two about meditation, and then we will enter it. First: apart from the lack of your own resolve, there is no other obstacle in meditation. If you truly want to go into meditation, no power in the world can prevent you. So if you find yourself obstructed, know that the flaw is in your resolve. Perhaps you do not really want to go in. This will sound strange, because anyone who says, “I want to meditate but I can’t,” assumes he does want it. But there are very deep inner reasons because of which we do not notice that, in fact, we do not want it. For example, anyone who says, “I want to go into meditation,” should first understand clearly: is he ready to drop both pleasure and pain? Everyone is ready to drop pain.