According to Osho, to be present, become a mirror: practice witnessing meditation. Simply watch thoughts of past and future pass by without identifying, like sitting on the riverbank as currents flow. Stay awake, non-interfering, and the mind’s pendulum rests; the torrent thins to a trickle, revealing the only reality—the present—where silence, clarity, and the divine are.
Sit quietly and watch your thoughts come and go without chasing them, until only the here-and-now remains.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I either drown in memories of the past or in imaginations of the future. The present, for me, is just an empty word. What should I do?
This is not your condition alone; it is everyone’s. This is the very nature of the mind. The mind is either in the past or in the future; it cannot be in the present. Hence, for the mind, the word “present” is an empty word. Just inquire a little: whenever you are thinking, you either think of the past—what has happened, what is gone—or you think of what is going to happen. But how can you think about what is? It simply is. Where is the scope for thinking? What is, is. What difference will your thinking make? And if you think, you will miss—because thinking creates an interference. You ask, “What should I do?” Become a mirror. As long as the mind remains, you will keep swaying between past and future. The mind is like a clock’s pendulum—swinging from one end to the other, never resting in the middle.…
The old man wastes his present in the past, the young man wastes his present engaged in the future. Both exercises are absolutely futile. Not only futile but very harmful, because the present which is, is being wasted for that which is not. Don't think of the future. Live in the present. That's my message to you. Be in the present moment. And if you can be present to the moment you escape from all kinds of stupidities of the old people. If you can be in the present you transcend time. Time consists of past and future, eternity consists only of the present. Eternity is now, always now and never then, always here and never there. And to enter into the now and the here is to enter into God. This has to become your meditation, to come more and more close to the present moment.
Here, during the meditation camp, try it. Be like a child. Go back, back to your origins. And it's possible; you can go back. Just by going back you will become different. While meditating here, be like a child and throw civilization off. Secondly, remember that you have a very deep-rooted past, the burden of the past on you. Don't carry it; put it aside. The past is the problem. And because of this past, your mind moves into the future. The past creates its own future; the past becomes projected into the future. Because of this past, and the projected future, you miss the moment that is here, the real moment, the eternal moment. Remember, past and future are not part of time; they are part of mind. They don't exist. The past is no more, just in the memory. The future is yet not, just in the imagination.
I feel the need for effort to stay in the present. And this effort makes it hard to relax completely. Letting go often seems to bring back the past or future. Could you explain about being alert without tension?
The idea to be in the present will not allow you to relax. In fact, if you relax, you will be in the present. In the beginning, if you relax, the past will rush towards you. Many things that you have suppressed, many things that you have never allowed to come up before your consciousness, many things that you have been avoiding -- they will rush. When you relax, the doors are open. These things always wanted to come before your consciousness but you never allowed them. Now that you are not forcing them, THEY will rush. But this is going to be temporary. Many dreams about the future that you have also been suppressing will come. There will be a chaos for a time being; you have to relax and watch the chaos. There should be no anxiety about it -- it is natural. It is as if a…
Beloved Osho, is there any difference between the state of no-mind and being present?
Just leave the mind aside ... But we are against the body, we are very condemnatory of the body, not knowing at all that this condemnation of the body is breaking the bridge to your being. A man of authentic spirituality is deeply in love with his body, because he knows body shares many things with being. Mind shares nothing, either with body or with being. It is an absolute stranger that has been forcibly put into you by the culture, the religion, the society. They are using the mind to enslave you. And because you are in the mind you continuously go on asking about things of which you have no experience. You don't know what no-mind is, except a word. You don't know what presence of being is, except that you have heard about it. Just words won't do. Move away from the mind ... And when I…