According to Osho, ‘conceptual thought’ is the mind’s habit of spinning ideas from external circumstances, creating labels like ordinary/extraordinary and turning life’s garden into a philosophical desert. Such conceptualizing feeds the ego’s polarities—desire and hatred—by reacting to appearances. Freedom comes not by theorizing but by dropping concepts and resting as pure awareness; in this choiceless seeing, the roots of craving and aversion wither.
When you keep labeling things from the outside, you start chasing or hating them; stop labeling and just be aware, and both chasing and hating fade.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
As the fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts.
LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER, STRANDED ON THE SHORE, THOUGHTS THRASH AND QUIVER. FOR HOW CAN THEY SHAKE OFF DESIRE? THEY TREMBLE, THEY ARE UNSTEADY, THEY WANDER AT THEIR WILL. IT IS GOOD TO CONTROL THEM. AND TO MASTER THEM BRINGS HAPPINESS. BUT HOW SUBTLE THEY ARE, HOW ELUSIVE! THE TASK IS TO QUIETEN THEM, AND BY RULING THEM TO FIND HAPPINESS. WITH SINGLEMINDEDNESS THE MASTER QUELLS HIS THOUGHTS. Ram was only wearing one single cloth, he had just wrapped a blanket around himself. He threw the blanket -- rather than answering he created a situation. That's how great mystics work. He threw the blanket, he was utterly naked, and he ran away. All the people ran with him! Not only those who were surrounding him but others also who were standing here and there or who had come for a morning walk, and people who were sitting on…
Osho, how does the energy of thought transform into feeling?
Therefore I am not teaching you religious thoughts. I am initiating you into no-thought. Generally, what goes on in temples and mosques is just this: people full of worldly thoughts are stuffed instead with spiritual thoughts—nothing more. But what difference does it make? You have given the disease a pious, pretty name; what changes? So long as you want to be anything, so long as you harbor the ambition to become something in the future, so long as you are eager for tomorrow, you will remain unquiet. The stream of thought will keep flowing. And as long as the stream of thought flows, you will remain cut off from God. I am telling you that religious thoughts are just as great an obstacle between you and God as worldly thoughts. Thought is the barrier; no-thought is union. Gorakh has said: See the Unseen, ponder what is seen, seat the Invisible…
6. Only the original mind which is born of meditation is free from desires. 7. The yogi's karmas are neither pure nor impure, but all others are three-fold: pure, impure and mixed.
8. DESIRES ARISE FROM THESE THREE-FOLD KARMAS WHEN CIRCUMSTANCES ARE FAVORABLE FOR THEIR FULFILLMENT. 9. BECAUSE MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS RETAIN THE SAME FORM, THE RELATIONSHIP OF CAUSE AND EFFECT CONTINUES, EVEN THOUGH SEPARATED BY CLASS, LOCALITY, AND TIME. 10. AND THERE IS NO BEGINNING TO THIS PROCESS, AS THE DESIRE TO LIVE IS ETERNAL. We have not paid much attention to the birth dates of Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, but we have paid much attention to the day that hey attained enlightenment -- because that is the real beginning of something which is never going to end. The enlightenment day of Buddha is very significant; that we have remembered, that we have worshipped again and again, again and again. Nobody knows when e was born; nobody has bothered about it. In fact, the myth says hat he was born on the same day as the day he died, and he became…
Pragya has asked: “You and all the saints say the same...”
I don’t know about all the saints, because among your so‑called saints most are not saints at all. Out of a hundred of your saints, perhaps one is a saint; the other ninety‑nine are as sick as you are—and often far more chronically sick. But you understand the language of those ninety‑nine, because they speak the language of your disease. The one who is a real saint—you don’t understand his language. I am choosing to speak about those few, those one‑in‑a‑hundred saints, so I can sift for you who the real saints are. There are too many non‑saints; they’re not worth counting. I keep speaking on saints. They are not many. Your “all saints” are not saints—and certainly Pragya’s “all saints” cannot be. For her, those she calls saints will be the sick and deranged—because her mind, her way of thinking, her chain of logic is repression: anti‑body, anti‑world. “You…
When (in winter) still water by the wind is stirred, it takes (as ice) the shape and texture of a rock.
WHEN THE DELUDED ARE DISTURBED BY INTERPRETATIVE THOUGHTS, THAT WHICH IS AS YET UNPATTERNED TURNS VERY HARD AND SOLID. MIND IMMACULATE IN ITS VERY BEING, CAN NEVER BE POLLUTED BY SAMSARA'S OR NIRVANA'S IMPURITIES. A PRECIOUS JEWEL DEEP IN MUD WILL NOT SHINE, THOUGH IT HAS LUSTER. KNOWLEDGE SHINES NOT IN THE DARK, BUT WHEN THE DARKNESS IS ILLUMINED, SUFFERING DISAPPEARS (AT ONCE). SHOOTS GROW FROM THE SEED AND LEAVES FROM THE SHOOTS. HE WHO THINKS OF THE MIND IN TERMS OF ONE OR MANY, CASTS AWAY THE LIGHT AND ENTERS THE WORLD. INTO A (RAGING) FIRE HE WALKS WITH OPEN EYES -- WHO COULD BE MORE DESERVING OF COMPASSION? <q>A PRECIOUS JEWEL DEEP IN MUD WILL NOT SHINE, THOUGH IT HAS LUSTER.</q> SAYS SARAHA: MIND IMMACULATE... when the mind has no thoughts -- that is when the mind is pure consciousness, when the mind is a silent lake without…