Rajneesh Mind Quotations

Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea - and there is no experiment up to now that has found any center in the brain which corresponds to awareness.

With effort, reach to effortlessness. With seeking, reach to a state of no-seeking. With mind, arrive at no-mind.

Unless you come out of your mind and become a no-mind you will not know what life is all about, you will live in vain. You will not have your honeymoon, it is impossible. You will not know the sweetness that existence is full of and the ecstasy.

If you were only to listen, it becomes meditation. Without meditation you cannot hear. What is the meaning of meditation? Meditation exists only where mind is not; where the internal dialogue is gone.

Never imitate. The mind is an imitator, because imitation is very easy. To be someone is very difficult. To become someone is very easy - all that you need is to be a hypocrite, which is not much of a problem. Deep down you remain the same, but on the surface you go on painting yourself according to some image.

Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being. You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand.

The West is concentration of the mind: the East is meditation of the mind. The West is thinking: the East is non-thinking. The West is mind: the East is no-mind.

Meditation is nothing but putting the mind aside, putting the mind out of the way, and bringing a witnessing which is always there but hidden underneath the mind. This witnessing will reach to your center, and once you have become enlightened, then there is no problem. Then bring the mind in tune with you

Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle - the whole mystery of life

Meditation is a state of no-mind! You can not find meditation through the mind .. because mind will perpetuate itself! You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind.

Mind is just in the middle. You are nothing but a mess. If you can go beyond it, intelligence grows in you; if you go below it, any intelligence that you had disappears.

The mind is a mechanism. It has no intelligence. The mind is a bio-computer. How can it have any intelligence? It has skill, but it has no intelligence; it has a functional utility, but it has no awareness. It is a robot; it works well but don`t listen to it too much because then you will lose your inner intelligence. Then it is as if you are asking a machine to guide you, lead you. You are asking a machine which has nothing original in it.

Your ego is just an idea implanted in your mind. It is poisonous. Your ego keeps driving you madder and madder.

You can enter yoga, or the path of yoga, only when you are totally frustrated with your own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, yoga is not for you.

Mind only thinks, meditation lives.

The heart is always right - if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart - because mind is a creation of society. It has been educated. You have been given it by society, not by existence. The heart is unpolluted.

The mind always hankers for more and more. If you have money, it hankers for more money; if you have prestige, it hankers for more prestige; if you have knowledge, it hankers for more knowledge. Mind lives in the 'more.'

The tongue never slips – remember this always. What goes on within the mind comes invariably on the tongue.

Concentration is not the approach towards God. Concentration is a mind approach. God is everywhere, so you have to relax, you have to be meditative.

Mind cannot think without duality. Duality is the way of thinking. In silence, all dualities disappear.

To be here and now, you have to be in meditation, beyond mind.

Without any fight, just being a witness, mind disappears.

Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state - which we have lost.

Mind is not your intelligence.

The mind is constantly involved in thinking, in judging, in evaluating. Its whole function seems to be to keep you involved in thoughts, which are nothing but soap bubbles - or perhaps soap bubbles have more substance to them than your thoughts.

This is the way the mind functions: its whole interest is in that which you have not got.

As you walk, you simply walk. Don't go ahead, don't jump here and there. Mind always go ahead or lag behind. Remain with the moment.

Watch, witness. Your body is not you; your mind is not you. You are just a pure witness.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher. And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty...

Trust life. If you trust, only then can you drop your knowledge, only then can you put your mind aside.

A mature mind is one who understands the impossibility of knowing the ultimate, and with this understanding there is a new dimension: the dimension of being.

I am all in favor of the skeptical mind. Do not believe anything unless you have experienced it. Do not believe anything - go on questioning, however long it takes.

Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind thinks nothing, is just there, is just a presence. And more and more totality will be coming.

The modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous - because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows.

Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskillful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again, how to be here without any mind.

We exist solely because we have a body and a mind ? a mind that arises out of the body. If this were true, we would cease to exist after our body was gone.

[M]ental peace is not meditation. Meditation is the flight beyond the mind. It has nothing to do with mental peace.

Meditation is neither of the body nor of the mind, but belongs to the third within you—your being.

The western mind is linear, the eastern mind is circular.

Your mind is a constant traffic of thoughts, and it is always rush hour, day in, day out. Meditation means to watch the movement of thoughts in the mind.

When you become centered, suddenly there is great freedom because you know you are not the mind and you are not the body.

Time is a need of the miserable mind. Time is a creation of misery. If you are happy there is no time - time disappears.

Truth cannot be defined, although it can certainly be experienced. But experience is not a definition. A definition is made by the mind, experience comes through participating. If somebody asks, "What is a dance?" how can you define it? But you can dance and you can know the inner feel of it. God is the ultimate dance.

Just one quality of the Buddha has to be remembered. He consists only of one quality: witnessing. This small word witnessing contains the whole of spirituality. Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are only a witness. As the witnessing deepens, you start becoming drunk with the divine. That is what is called ecstasy.

These tenses-past, present and future-are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past....

Remember this: with mind you will always be a loser. Even if you are victorious, your victories will be just defeats. With mind there is no victory, with no-mind there is no defeat. You have to shift your whole consciousness from mind to no-mind. Once no-mind is there, everything is victorious. Once the no-mind is there, nothing goes wrong, nothing can go wrong.

Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, 'Be happy! Look, I have done it.' And immediately the contact is lost.

Whenever you feel happiness it is always from the inner. Then mind immediately jumps in and takes control and says, 'It is because of me.' When you are in love, it is like death, you feel blissful. Immediately mind comes in and says, 'Okay, this is me, this is because of me.'

Start from the body, and then go, slowly slowly, deeper. And don't start with anything else unless you have first solved the primary. If your body is tense, don't start with the mind. Wait. Work on the body. And just small things are of immense help.

If you become capable of relaxing the body voluntarily, then you will be able to help your mind relax voluntarily. Mind is a more complex phenomenon. Once you have become confident that the body listens to you, you will have a new trust in yourself. Now even the mind can listen to you. It will take a little longer with the mind, but it happens.

The more mind is filled with chattering, more sex has appeal.

If I fulfill YOUR expectations, how am I going to transform you? I have to DESTROY your expectations. I have to destroy the very mind that creates those expectations. If you come to me, never come with expectations, otherwise you will be disappointed - because I have no obligation to fulfill your expectations in any way. In fact, if I see that there are some expectations, I do things DELIBERATELY to destroy those expectations. That is the price you have to pay to be with me.

Paradise is within you, in your state of no-mind. And hell is also within you, in your very mind.

Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.

Man has been condemning women. Perhaps there is a reason; perhaps he was aware of some superiority in woman - the superiority of love. No logic can be higher than love, and no mind can be higher than the heart. But the mind can be very murderous; the mind can be very violent, and that's what the mind has done for centuries. Man has been beating women, repressing women, condemning women.

The body sleeps, the heart sleeps, the mind sleeps - but you remain alert because you are nothing else but alertness. Everything else is a false identification. Awareness is your nature. The body is your abode. The mind is your computer. Awareness;s you, is your very being.

Mind is dual, it always divides things into polar opposites: the conqueror and the conquered, the observer and the observed, the object and the subject, the day and the night. It goes on dividing things which are not divided. Neither is the day divided from the night, nor is birth divided from death. They are one energy. But mind goes on dividing everything into polarities, opposites. Nothing is opposite in existence; every contradiction is only apparent. Deep down all contradictions are meeting together.

I is a great prison. It is your slavery and bondage to the mind. The moment you enter beyond the mind, you are - but you don`t have any notion of being an ego, of being an I. In other words: the more you think you are, the less you are; the more you experience that you are not... the more you are.

You may be trying to attain power in this world, then you start trying to attain power in that world. First you want to attain wealth in this world, then you try to attain wealth in that world. But you remain the same, and the mind and the functioning and the whole scheme remains the same: Attain! Reach! This is the ego trip. The achieving mind is the ego.

The Mind: a beautiful servant, a dangerous master.

Meditation is the only magic that can help you to be free from the mind, can help you to be free from yourself, your past and all the burden of the past.

In this world, the greatest courage is to drop the mind aside. The bravest man is who can see the world without the barrier of the mind, just as it is. It is tremendously different, utterly beautiful. There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior - there are no distinctions.

Witness the witness itself - and... the ultimate ecstasy is created. Start watching your thoughts but don't stop there... One more thing has to be done, one more step: now watch the watcher... Nothing else is left, only you are. By watching the mind, the mind disappears. By watching the witness, the witness expands and becomes universal.

Meditation means how to be not a mind. How to be not a mind! Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness. It doesn't mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.

You want a love which is born out of meditation, not born out of the mind.

Many women don’t know what orgasm is. Many men don’t know was total orgasm is. Many only achieve a local orgasm, a genital orgasm; it is confined to the genitals. Just a small ripple in the genitals-and finished. It is not like possession when the whole body moves into a whirlpool and you are lost in the abyss. For a few moments time stops and the mind does not function. For a few moments you do not know who you are. Then it is a total orgasm.

Only no-mind can be without any duality, because it is empty. The no-mind is choicelessness. The no-mind is pure awareness. It is just the empty sky.

This moment! - this here-now - is forgotten when you start thinking in terms of achieving something. When the achieving mind arises, you lose contact with the paradise you are in.

No thought, no mind, no choice — just being silent, rooted in yourself.

Let ur love be ur state of being ,, NOT that u fall in love , but just that u r loving .. it is simply ur nature ...You can be in state of love only if u drop the old mind pattern of relationships ,,,, LOVE IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP ..

The mind is continuously running around. It never sits, it can't sit. Sitting seems to be death to it, and in a way it is.

Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present.

If you are absolutely without mind, just pure consciousness, time stops completely, disappears, leaving no trace behind.

Mind is blocking the fountain of intelligence like a rock.

Mind is a broken mirror.

Each moment brings new surprises to the one who has no expectations, who comes with an absolutely open mind. Then incredible things start happening. Even if you had wanted them you could not have expected them; you could not have found yourself worthy enough to expect them.

Mind's requirements and expectations cannot be fulfilled. Existence has no obligation to fulfill mind's requirements and demands. You have to accept existence as it is.

All expectations belong to the mind, all disciplines belong to the mind, all so-called saintliness and so-called sin belong to the mind. When there is no mind, there is no sinner and no saint, and the gift simply showers on you.

Mind is the illusion that which is not but appears, and appears so much that you think that you are the mind.

The body is there because the mind seeks desires through the body; desires cannot be fulfilled without the body. You can be completely fulfilled without the body, but desires cannot be fulfilled without the body. Desire needs the body; the body is the vehicle of desire. That's why possession happens. You have heard, you must have heard, many stories about a ghost possessing somebody else. Why is a ghost so interested in possessing somebody else? It is because of desires. Desires cannot be fulfilled without a body, so he enters somebody's body to fulfill his desires.

Don't choose. If you choose, you will be in the quagmire. Don't choose! A choiceless awareness is the goal. Just remain aloof; don't choose. The moment you choose, you have fallen into the trap of the world, or into the trap of the mind.

Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises.

All duality is a mind creation, all duality is created by the clinging and attached mind. When there is no attachment there is no duality.

The mind is the world and the no-mind is freedom from the world. The mind is misery and no-mind is the end of misery and the beginning of ecstasy.

Future is your projection of unfulfilled desires. The more unfulfilled you are, the bigger a future you have. The more unfulfilled is your being, the richer the dreams you have of the future. But it is just in your mind.

And desires are never here and now - they are non-existential. They are just mental, in the mind. And they cannot be fulfilled because their very nature is to move into the future.

Desire means the way to go out; desire is the path that leads you out. If your mind is still desiring, you cannot move within.

You cannot possess all and everything. Whatsoever you possess will not give you contentment. The mind, the ego, will always feel unfulfilled.

Because of watching your breath and thoughts you have come to know now that you are neither thoughts nor your breath, you are the watcher, the witness. This is awareness. This is what I call meditation. Once you have known this awareness you are unidentified with your body, with your mind. Now you experience a vastness inside you, in one sense utterly empty and in another sense overflowingly full. Because of its emptiness you will remain calm and quiet. And because of its overflowing fullness you will be creative.

If you want to do Vipassana, or any silent meditation, Dynamic Meditation becomes absolutely essential, because Christianity having poisoned your mind, that poison has to be thrown out. You have to go completely crazy to throw it out; otherwise that craziness remains inside you, and won't allow you to get into a silent, watching, witnessing meditation.

When you start meditating on your ego, on your thoughts, on your mind, you are suddenly separate, because whatsoever you meditate on, you are separate from it. That has become the object and you have become the subject.

Bliss follows witnessing - and that is going to be your meditation. Witness your body as separate, witness your mind as separate. Remain rooted in witnessing: "I am only a watcher." That is going to transform your whole life, it is going to give you the ultimate.

Mind is a door that leads you outside in the world; meditation is the door that leads you to your interiority - to the very innermost shrine of your being.

I repeat again: the male mind is egoistic. You have to learn the way of the feminine, you have to become egoless, you have to learn the path of surrender. You have to learn how to melt into existence, how to become one with the rivers and the mountains and the clouds, how to feel affinity, attunement, at-onement. And then slowly, slowly you become a host. The day you are a host, the Guest comes.

Drop the mind and the divine. God is not an object, it is a merger. The mind resists a merger, the mind is against surrender; the mind is very cunning and calculating.

Take a good look at your mind. Examine it closely. The first thing you will come to know is that the mind has become the master - not you and not your soul! The mind says: Do this! And you do it! If you don't the mind creates problems. It become sad, and the sadness of the mind becomes your sadness. If you do as it says you get nowhere, for the mind is blind. Where can you reach by obeying the mind! The is unconsciousness. If you listen to it you reach nowhere.

One of the names of Buddha is TATHAGATA - one who lives in suchness, one who has become free from all the distractions of the mind. And the miracle is that the mind consists only of distraction, so once you are free of all distractions there is no mind left. In the present there is no mind. In the present there is only consciousness, awareness, watchfulness.

Zen is the most scientific method to inquire into your consciousness. It takes you beyond mind into a space called no-mind. No self, but pure awareness, and you have a taste of eternity and immortality.

In the East we call this state meditation: no belief, no thought, no desire, no prejudice, no conditioning - in fact, no mind at all. A state of no-mind is meditation. When you can look without any mind interfering, distorting, interpreting, then you see the truth. The truth is already all around; just you have to put your mind aside.

No need to choose; become choiceless. And whatsoever happens happens; whatsoever happens is good. Let things happen rather than trying to do, and you will be surprised that all ambiguity disappears. It is a by-product of the chooser's mind, the choosing mind, that creates ambiguity. Otherwise there is no dilemma. Negative and positive are perfectly balancing in life.