What happens when I realize there is no self during meditation?

A friend has asked: Osho, in the very first stage of meditation I feel completely exhausted within a minute or two.

No, you don’t actually get tired; the thought of being tired arises. The thought of tiredness is a big thing. When you feel, “I’m utterly exhausted,” if at that very moment someone were to come after you with a gun, threatening to kill you, you would discover you’re not tired at all. You’d run for miles, and the fatigue would vanish. What happened? You were tired, weren’t you? Someone is chasing you with a gun—how are you running now? In truth, we have no idea how much power lies within us. We live using only the small amount of energy that floats on the surface. When that little portion gets a bit weary, we conclude, “Now I’m tired; that’s the end of it.” The moment you feel fatigue, begin again with even more intensity. Within two minutes you will find the tiredness has disappeared and a great energy has surged…

Osho, is there any practical process for being in the realm of existence beyond thoughts, in the void?

The way to thin them out is non-cooperation. Right now we are their makers—that is, we are the ones maintaining them. When we sit idle, some thought or other is running, because without our cooperation they cannot run. Withdraw your cooperation from whatever thoughts are running, and do nothing else; regard just this as samayik, as meditation. If all thoughts dissolve, you will feel no ego and no person within. You will know only being—only being will be known, in which the distinction “I am an individual” or “I am the whole” will not be felt. Only pure being will remain—pure existence. In truth, because of the thoughts accumulated upon that pure existence, we appear to be a person. This sense that I am “A,” you are “B,” you are “C”—the A, B, C we have pasted on—is our thought-power. We commonly say, “I will become liberated”—this is not quite…

Question: FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM FROM THE TOES UP UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS BURNING TO ASHES AND BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMANAS, AS SUBJECTIVELY, LETTERS FLOW INTO WORDS AND WORDS INTO SENTENCES, AND AS, OBJECTIVELY, CIRCLES FLOW INTO WORLDS AND WORLDS INTO PRINCIPLES, FIND AT LAST THESE CONVERGING IN OUR BEING All the enlightened ones, all the religions, agree on one thing only. Their disagreements are many, but there is one agreement amongst all, and that is that man, because of his ego, is closed to the reality. The ego is the only barrier; the feeling that I AM. On this point Buddhas and Christs and Krishnas all agree. And because they all agree it seems to me that this is the basic thing in all religious endeavor.

Osho, how does the cessation of this ego-sense happen? That is, witnessing is not something that is brought in, nor does one make oneself into a witness. It is only because we have become something else that the feeling of witnessing does not arise. So this ego-sense—the “made-ness” we are—how does it come to an end?

No, no—you cannot bring about its cessation. Because the very one who is asking, “How should I end it?”—that itself is the ego. You cannot end it. The ego is so subtle that when it asks, “How do I erase the ego?” it is the ego itself that is asking. The question is not coming from anywhere else. Beyond the ego there is no questioning at all; there, the ego is not. Ego belongs to the mind that asks; it is not part of the consciousness-state of being a witness. Understand it like this: there is water. The water asks, “How can I eliminate my fluidity?” Water can only be by being fluid. It cannot remove fluidity, because in the very definition of water, fluidity is included; it is part of it. We say to it, “Cool down below zero degrees,” or “Heat up to a hundred degrees.” If you…

Osho, according to what you say and what all enlightened ones say, the ego has no existence—and yet you tell us to witness the ego! Please kindly help us understand this baffling riddle.

To live through that moment is tapascharya, spiritual austerity. It is a great austerity when you have absolutely no sense of who you are. When all the palaces built by your concepts have collapsed, when you stand in dense darkness, in emptiness, with not a single ray of light about who you are—the Christian mystics have aptly named this the Dark Night of the Soul. And only after this dark night does the dawn come. Whoever is afraid to pass through it never reaches the morning. So first the false notions have to be dropped, false identifications abandoned. A time will come when you will forget who you are; it will be a state like madness. If you are courageous and pass through this, then another time will come when the morning sun rises; for the first time you will know who you are. When it is revealed to you…