Limbo

Not to be is the only way of really being. So I cannot agree with Shakespeare that to be or not to be is the question. It is not the question at all, (laughter) because not to be is the only way to be! The moment you disappear as an ego you become vast; you start experiencing some oceanic, unbounded ecstasies. But we are attached too much to the mind, which is a very tiny thing, a very small biocomputer. And we are attached to the body, identified too much with it. It is just a small hut live in it, keep it clean, keep it beautiful -- use your biocomputer, take care of it as one should take care of every mechanism, and it is a very subtle and delicate mechanism -- but don't become identified with these things.

To my mind the real sanity is that which comes after the transcendence of madness. Then there is neither the question nor the answer. The mind becomes calm and quiet. Then the fourth stage is reached. It comes only when you have come to the peak, to the height of tension. Then comes Relaxation. Having gone through the previous three stages each for ten minutes, for the next ten minutes or more just relax, and remain just as you are, without doing anything, because you are tired completely--The policy of 'LET GO' is achieved as an automatic process. The fourth step is the moment of doing nothing. That I call dhyana, meditation. The first three stages are steps only, the fourth is the door. Then you are there without breathing or movement. Just silence! This fourth step comes of its own accord and in these moments comes Grace.

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: OSHO, HOW DOES ONE EXPLORE THE HIGHER STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS? He throws a rock into the well and runs away. Certainly, the rock falling in the well makes a big noise, and all the people who are following him stop near the well -- they think that the man has jumped into the well. So now some arrangement has to be made: more light has to be brought, somebody has to go down and find out who this man is, whether he is alive or dead. Now their whole mind is diverted. He reaches his home, really angry, almost ready to kill the father. And the father is sound asleep, covered with his blanket... it was a cold night. He pulls off his blanket, and he says, "Is this the way to teach your own son?" He said, "Are you back? That's enough; you have learned the art.