What happens when I experience silence during meditation?

We are not the body and we are not the mind either. Mind is also part of the body. The visible part is called body, the invisible part is called mind. It is a psychosomatic mechanism and we are the witness of it. We are in it but we are not it. This is the greatest experience. Once it has happened your life goes through a radical change. Then you are never the same again. It is a breakthrough. The whole effort here is to bring this breakthrough closer and closer. Every support, every technique and device is provided for this breakthrough so that you can see yourself as a witness of it all, as pure consciousness. To know oneself as pure consciousness is to be free of all bondage. It is to be free of birth and death, it is to be free of time.

As you move into meditation this feeling starts becoming stronger every day. That does not mean that you start neglecting the body, on the contrary, you start caring about the body more carefully because it is a beautiful house, a gift of god. You have to keep it clean and beautiful and young and vital, energetic, alive, because you have to live in it for many many years. There is no need to make it ugly, poor, starved. Make it a palace, make it a marble palace, make it a temple, but remember "I am not it," so when it dies you are not dying. The body is born, the body dies; you are never born and you never die. And the method of meditation is very simple: just watching. Three things have to be watched. The first is the body and its actions.

Osho, for many years I have been making continuous efforts—nothing happened. I did this, I did that—nothing happened. But yesterday, when I simply sat holding awareness, I was astonished: What was that? What happened was beyond my imagination.

It will be; it is bound to be beyond imagination. You don’t even know—what will happen is utterly unknown and unknowable. You cannot make any expectation of it; you have no idea what it will be. What will happen in meditation cannot be said in advance, nor can it be imagined. What happens is unprecedented. It has never been known before. It is totally unknown, utterly unknowable. It will happen only when this entire known mind of yours becomes utterly quiet. And it will become quiet. Awareness stills the mind. When the mind becomes still, meditation descends. Meditation is not something you do; it descends. It surrounds you. Meditation is a state outside the mind-field. Meditation is the very nature of the soul. As soon as the mind-field is quiet, meditation begins to spread. So, very quietly, very effortlessly, without any tension, in silence; everyone sit with a little space…

What is meditation?

A consciousness that is focused only on words is non-meditative and a consciousness that is focused only on gaps is meditative. Whenever you become aware of the gaps, the words will be lost. If you observe carefully, you will not find words; you will only find a gap. You can feel the difference between two words, but you cannot feel the difference between two gaps. Words are always plural and the gap is always singular: "the" gap. They merge and become one. Meditation is a focusing on the gap. Then, the whole gestalt changes. Another thing is to be understood. If you are looking at the gestalt picture and your concentration is focused on the old lady, you cannot see the other picture. But if you continue to concentrate on the old lady -- if you go on focusing on her, if you become totally attentive to her -- a…

For example, it brings you the experience that not the body, so clearly, so solidly, so categorically, that even if the whole world denies it, it cannot make any difference: you know from your innermost core you are not the body. It brings you the experience that you are not the mind either. And the moment you know you are neither the body nor the mind, suddenly a door opens. You have never been born and you are never going to die because only that which is born can die. The body was born, the mind was born -- they will die -- but you were before your birth and you will be after your death. Once this reality is revealed to you all fears and all miseries disappear. You become part of eternity. Only one thing remains and that is pure consciousness. And pure consciousness is nothing but godliness.