Question – Beloved Osho, What is a Contemporary Mind?

Osho – Contemporary mind is a contradiction in terms. Mind is never contemporary, it is always old. Mind is past — past and past and nothing else; mind means memory. There can be no contemporary mind; to be contemporary is to be without mind.

If you are herenow, then you are contemporary with me. But then, don’t you see, your mind disappears; no thought moves, no desire arises: you become disconnected with the past and disconnected with the future.

Mind is never original, cannot be. No-mind is original, fresh, young; mind is always old, rotten, stale. But those words are used — they are used in a totally different sense. I can understand your question — in that sense, those words are meaningful. The mind of the nineteenth century was a different mind; the questions they were asking, you are not asking.

The questions that were very important in the eighteenth century are now stupid questions. “How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?” was one of the greatest theological questions in the middle ages. Now can you find such a stupid person who will think that this is an important question? And this was discussed by the greatest theologians; not small people, great professors were writing treatises on it, conferences were arranged. How many angels? Now who cares? It is simply irrelevant.

In Buddha’s time, a great question was: “Who created the world?” It has persisted for centuries, but now fewer and fewer people are worried about who created the world. Yes, there are some old-fashioned people, but very rarely such questions are asked of me. But Buddha was encountered every day. Not a single day must have passed when somebody did not ask the question, “Who created the world?”

Buddha had to say again and again that the world has always been there, nobody has created it; but people were not satisfied. Now nobody cares. Very rarely somebody asks me the question, “Who created the world?” In that sense, the mind goes on changing as time goes on changing. In that sense, the contemporary mind is a reality.

Husband to wife: “I said we are not going out tonight, and that is semi-final.”

Now this is a contemporary mind. No husband in the past would have said that. It was always final; the last word was his.

Two high-class English ladies met each other by accident while out shopping in London. One noticed the other was pregnant and asked, “Why, darling, what a surprise! You obviously got married since I last saw you! ”
The second said, “Yes. He’s a wonderful man; he’s an officer in the Ghurka rifles.”
The questioner was horrified. “A Ghurka! Darling, are not they all black?”
“Oh no,” she said. “Only the privates.”
The questioner exclaimed, “Darling, how contemporary!”

In that sense, there is a contemporary mind….

Have you heard about the latest family game? It is called incest.
Little sister to brother in bed: “Hey, you are better at this than Daddy.”
“Yes, Mummy says so too!”

Otherwise, there is no contemporary mind. Fashions come and go; if you think of fashions then there are changes. But basically all mind is old. Mind as such is old, and there can be no modern mind; the most modern mind is still of the past. The really alive person is a herenow person. He does not live out of the past, he does not live for the future; he lives only in the moment, for the moment. The moment is all. He is spontaneous; that spontaneity is the fragrance of no-mind.

Mind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again. No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.

Source – Osho Book “The Book of Wisdom”

Osho – Mind is mischief; there is no other mischief. Mind is the source of all mischief. A master is a master only because he has ceased to be dominated by the mind. A master is a master of himself; he is no longer unconscious. Whatsoever he does, he does it knowingly. Whatsoever he is, he is perfectly aware about it. His life is not accidental. His every act is rooted in consciousness, it is intentional.

We live in the mind. The mind can even become a saint, can pretend to be holy, but it will not be. It is impossible; it is not in the very nature of the mind to be holy. Just look at the history of religions — they are full of bloodshed. In fact more crimes have been committed in the name of religions than in the name of anything else.

More people have been killed, butchered in the name of religion, God, truth, Christianity, Islam, than in the name of political ideologies even. Religion tops the list. Religion has been far more mischievous; it has even defeated the politicians. It could defeat them for the simple reason that the politician cannot hide himself for very long; sooner or later he is exposed. But the religious person can hide himself for centuries and you will never know.

Osho – Shraddho means loving trust. There are three words which are synonymous in the dictionary but not in actual experience. One is belief, the second is faith, the third is trust. In actual experience they have nothing to do with each other – not only that: they are totally different dimensions. Belief is intellectual; it is a kind of information that has been fed to you.

One is a Christian, another is a Hindu; this is a belief. A system of thought has been imposed on the child and he accepted it because he was not aware when it was imposed on him. He had to accept it because he was helpless; he had to accept whatsoever the parents were feeding him.

This is a social strategy so that the children always remain in the boundaries of the parental fold. It is a kind of slavery, mental slavery. It is a spiritual poisoning; it is harmful. In a better world there will be no Hindu, no Mohammedan, no Christian. In a more intelligent worldwe will not feed children any system of thought.

We will simply help them to become more and more alert and intelligent so that they can choose their own system of thought, whatsoever it is; we will leave it to them. We will give intelligence to them, we will help their intelligence to become sharpened so that they are not deceived. But right now the parents themselves are deceiving their children. They are doing just what their parents had done to them. Belief is an ugly phenomenon; it should disappear from the world.

Faith is a little better; faith is of feeling. Just as belief is of intellect, thought, faith is of feeling. It is a little better because it goes a little deeper, but it too is without any awareness. It is emotional, sentimental, but blind. It goes deeper and transforms your life a little more than belief. Belief simply remains a facade, because it never touches your heart; faith makes you more devoted. But that devotion is also based on a kind of blindness, and blindness in itself has to be dropped to knowtruth.

Trust is neither of the head nor of the heart: it is a transcendental phenomenon. It comes by becoming more aware of the mechanism of the mind and the heart. You watch how the mind functions, how thinking proceeds – the whole process of thought – and you watch the whole process of emotions. You remain aloof, you remain just a watcher. Then slowly slowly a third dimension opens in you: that is trust. It is existential, it comes only when you have known something on your own.

Belief is given by others and faith is also given by others. Trust arises out of one’s own experience. Then one falls in love with existence; that love is true religion. It is not a dogma, it is not a doctrine, it is not a church. That is the meaning of shraddho.

Source: from Osho Book “Turn On, Tune In and Drop the Lot”

Osho – The mind is always indecisive. That is one of the basic characteristics of the mind, indecisiveness. The moment a resolution arises in you the mind disappears. To be decisive is to go beyond the mind; to remain indecisive, hesitant, divided, is to live in the mind.

Resolution means totality, commitment, involvement, a quantum leap into something, into something which is not yet clearly known. Taking a risk is resolution. But the mind is a coward. It avoids risks; it seeks security, safety. Resolution is one of the ways to go beyond misery, schizophrenia.

Ordinarily man is a crowd, a thousand and one desires dividing him. When all these desires become
a single pool of energy, that is resolution. Sannyas is resolution; it is a total effort to get out of the
mind. And if one really strives to get out of the mind – difficult thought it is, but not impossible…

Question – How is one to Stop Worrying?
Osho – This is from “Pathik the Pathetic.” He unnecessarily goes on becoming pathetic. Now, “how to stop worrying?” What is the need to stop worrying? If you start trying to stop worrying, you create a new worry: how to stop worry. Then you start worrying about the worries; then you double them. There is no way.

And if somebody says, as there are people…. Dale Carnegie has written a book HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND START LIVING. These people create more worries because they give you a desire that worries can be stopped. They cannot be stopped, but they disappear — that I know.

They cannot be stopped, but they disappear! You cannot do anything about them. If you simply allow them and don’t bother a bit, they disappear. Worries disappear, they cannot be stopped — because when you try to stop them, who are you? The mind which is creating worries is creating a new worry: how to stop. Now you will go crazy, mad; now you are like a dog chasing its own tail.

Watch a dog; it is a beautiful phenomenon. In winter in India you can watch anywhere dogs sitting in the morning sunning themselves, enjoying. Then they suddenly become aware of their tail just by the side. Such temptation, they jump. But then the tail jumps farther back.

Of course this is too much for a dog to tolerate, this is impossible. It hurts: this ordinary tail, and playing games — with such a great dog? He goes mad — round and round he goes. You will see him panting, tired, and he cannot believe what is happening. He cannot catch this tail?

Don’t be a dog chasing your own tail, and don’t listen to Dale Carnegies. That is the only method they can teach you: chase your own tail and go mad. There is a way — not a method — a way worries disappear: when you simply look at them indifferently, aloof; you watch them as if they don’t belong to you. They are there; you accept them. Just like clouds moving in the sky: thoughts moving in the mind, in the inner sky. Traffic moving on the road: thoughts moving on the inner road. You just watch them.

What do you do when you stand by the side of the road waiting for a bus? You simply watch. The traffic goes on; you are not concerned. When you are not concerned, worries start dropping. Your concern gives them energy. You feed them, you vitalize them, and then you ask how to stop them. And when you ask how to stop them, they have already overpowered you.

Don’t ask a wrong question. Worries are there, naturally; life is such a vast and complicated phenomenon, worries are bound to be there. Watch. Be a watcher and don’t be a doer. Don’t ask how to stop. When you ask how to stop, you are asking what to do. No, nothing can be done. Accept them — they are. In fact look at them, watch them from every angle, what they are.

Forget about stopping, and one day suddenly you realize just by watching, looking, a gap arises. The worries are no longer there, the traffic has stopped, the road is empty, nobody passing…. In that emptiness, God passes by. In that emptiness, suddenly you have a glimpse of your Buddha nature, of your inner plenitude, and everything becomes a benediction.

But you cannot stop it. You can accept it, allow it, watch it, with a very indifferent, unconcerned look as if they don’t matter. And they are simply bubbles of thought; they really don’t matter. The more you become concerned with them, the more they matter. The more they matter, the more you become concerned. Now you create a vicious circle. Jump out of the circle.

Source: from Osho Book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6″