According to Osho, 'thinking' means viveka-like discretion and wakeful awareness: the capacity to distinguish the eternal from the ephemeral, the real from the unreal, and to seek Truth rather than dreams. True thinking ends unconsciousness, questions desire, and redirects life toward the permanent. It awakens inquiry, extinguishes craving, brings freedom, and catalyzes transformative turning points toward peace and bliss.
Thinking is being fully awake and choosing what truly lasts instead of chasing short-lived dreams and desires.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho: To think is the nature of the mind. And if you don't think then there is no mind. A state of no-mind comes, then you know. That is nature, this too is nature; that is not against this nature which creates ignorance, creates unknowing, creates conflict. We have not known the total mind, we have known only the mind which thinks. If you transcend it then you know the total mind -- which knows. Thinking is one thing, knowing is quite another. QUESTION: THE NATURE OF THE MIND IS TO THINK, AND THEN IT CEASES TO THINK. WHAT DO YOU DO IN ORDER TO CAUSE IT NOT TO THINK? DOES IT NATURALLY NOT THINK? Osho: If you become aware of your thinking process, then the process by and by is dissolved.
Someone asked Osho to explain the thinking mechanism.
First of all, let me tell you that most of us do not know how to think. Possibly the most subtle science is the science of thinking and we have to know about this science. We have to learn to think. At the outset, bear in mind the difference between accumulating thoughts, and developing the faculty of thinking. The notion is that collection of thoughts and the ability to think are one and the same. But accumulation of anything is not real gain; accumulation is only the means of hiding one's lack, and thereby deceiving oneself. And self-deception is self-destruction. This self-deception is universal; and because of it, though there is phenomenal worldwide increase in the number of ideas, there is, at the same time, marked decrease in the ability to think. Seldom do we come across an independent thinker.
Osho, I too have begun to feel that it is not valuable.
If you decide to do social service—uplift the “Harijan,” redistribute land, do this and that—and you think self-realization will result, you are mistaken. Self-realization will not come from that. You may become a good and popular person; you will taste a subtle pleasure of ego—and nothing more. You will enjoy the pleasure of being “a servant,” but you will not taste the joy of service. The pleasure of the role of “servant” is one thing; the joy of service is entirely another. But if you enter religious practice, which is utterly personal, then a day will come when that sadhana will transform your life into service. Now life is self-interest; then life will be service. In self-ignorance, life is self-centered; whatever you do, some form of self-interest is present. In self-knowledge, life is service; whatever you do, self-interest cannot remain. For me, religion is fundamental; its result will surely come.…
And someone has asked: Osho, who is it that thinks when one is witnessing?
As it is now, whenever we know, three things are present: the one who knows—the knower; that which is known—the known; and the relationship between the two—knowledge. Knowledge is bound and burdened by the knower and the known. Keval-gyan means the known dissolves—the object disappears. And when the known dissolves, where will the knower be? He was bound to the known. When the known dissolves, the knower dissolves. What remains then? Only knowledge remains. In that moment of pure knowing there is the sense of liberation and of freedom. So keval-gyan means to experience pure knowledge. What I have called samadhi is the experience of pure knowing. These are different names in different traditions: what Patanjali called samadhi, the Jains called keval-gyan, and Buddha called prajna. Keval-gyan does not mean telling what is going on in your head. That is very easy—a simple thing. That is ordinary telepathy, thought-reading; it…
Osho, when the mind becomes completely thoughtless, then what will it think about? To think, one still needs something to think about, at least as a problem, isn’t it?
If you understand rightly, thoughtlessness does not see problems; it sees solutions. Thought sees problems and then has to think up solutions. The solution is self-fabricated; the problem is outside. For a mind full of thought, the problem is outside and the solution is concocted within. For a thought-free consciousness the problem is not seen at all; only the solution is seen. Therefore there is no need to think. If you like, you can call this right thinking. This, in truth, is what thinking should be: where seeing happens—where there is no problem, only the solution. Understand it like this: when first the problem is seen and then you have to make a solution, that is thought. But if, the very moment the problem is seen, the solution appears—no gap at all between problem and solution, not even a moment left over for cogitation—then know it is thoughtlessness. Therefore, do…