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Tricks of the Mind*

Don’t be fooled by experiences

All experiences are just tricks of the mind, all experiences are just escapes. Meditation is not an experience, it is a realization. Meditation is not an experience; rather, it is a stopping of all experience.

Experience is something outside you. The experiencer is your being. And this is the distinction between true spirituality and false: if you are after experiences, the spirituality is false; if you are after the experiencer, then it is true. And then you are not concerned about kundalini, not concerned about chakras, not concerned about all these things. They will happen, but you are not concerned, you are not interested, and you will not move on these bypaths. You will go on moving towards the inner center where nothing remains except you in your total aloneness. Only the consciousness remains, without content.

Content is the experience; whatsoever you experience is the content. I experience misery; then the misery is the content of my consciousness. Then I experience pleasure; the pleasure is the content. I experience boredom; then boredom is the content. You can experience silence; then silence is the content You can experience bliss; then bliss is the content. So you go on changing the content - you can go on changing ad infinitum - but this is not the real thing. The real is the one to whom these experiences happen - to whom boredom happens, to whom bliss happens. The spiritual search is not what happens, but to whom it happens. Then there is no possibility for the ego to arise.

Mind can enter again

In meditation sometimes you feel a sort of emptiness that is not really emptiness. I call it just “a sort of emptiness.” When you are meditating, for certain moments, for a few seconds, you will feel as if the thought process has stopped. In the beginning these gaps will come. But because you are feeling as if the thought process has stopped, this is again a thought process, a very subtle thought process. What are you doing? You are saying inside, “The thought process has stopped.” But what is this? This is a secondary thought process which has started. And you say, “This is emptiness.” You say, “Now something is going to happen.” What is this? Again a new thought process has started.

Whenever this happens again, don’t become a victim of it. When you feel a certain silence is descending, don’t start verbalizing it, because you are destroying it. Wait - not for something - simply wait. Don’t do anything. Don’t say, “This is emptiness.” The moment you have said that, you have destroyed it. Just look at it, penetrate into it, encounter it - but wait, don’t verbalize it What is the hurry? Through verbalization the mind has again entered from a different route, and you are deceived. Be alert about this trick of the mind.

In the beginning it is bound to happen, so whenever this happens, just wait Don’t fall in the trap. Don’t say anything, remain silent Then you will enter into emptiness, and then it will not be temporary, because once you have known the real emptiness you cannot lose it The real cannot be lost; that is its quality.

Once you have known the inner treasure, once you have come in contact with your deepest axe, then you can move in activity, then you can do whatsoever you like, then you can live an ordinary worldly life but the emptiness will remain with you. You cannot forget it It will go inside. The music of it will be heard. Whatsoever you are doing, the doing will be only on the periphery; inside you will remain empty.

Mind can deceive you

There are patterns the seeker gets entangled with.

The first thing is: most seekers get lost in an illusory feeling that they have arrived. It is like the kind of dream in which you feel you are awake. You are still dreaming - your feeling of being awake is part of the dream. The same kind of thing happens to the seeker.

The mind is capable of creating the illusion that “now there is nowhere to go, you have arrived.” The mind is a deceiver, and the function of the master for one in this condition is to make him alert that this is not the reality but only a dream that he has not arrived.

This can happen at many points, again and again. And one can get very irritated and annoyed with the master for the simple reason that whenever you feel you have got it, he simply takes it away and puts you back into your ignorant state. For example, it was happening to a German disciple continually - he would get the feeling that he had become enlightened. And the force of the illusion was so much that he could not keep it to himself, he would tell others.

He was so certain. This happened three times, and because of his certainty he came to India to get my blessings. Naturally, it shows his certainty that he came for my blessings.

Each time I had to tell him, “You are just being deceived by your own mind. Nothing has happened to you, you are simply the old man the new man has not arrived. And all that you are doing - writing letters to the U.N., to other governments - are just ways of the ego. You are in the grip of the ego.”

It is very easy to live in a beautiful dream. It is hard to see your dreams shattered by reality.

In the ancient scriptures of the East it is called the power of maya. Mind has the hypnotic power to create any illusion. If you are after a certain thing, desperately, it is one of the functions of the mind to create the illusion to stop your desperateness. It happens every day to everybody in their dreams, but people don’t learn things.

If at night you go to bed hungry, that night you are going to have a dream about eating delicious food. The mind is trying to help you so that your sleep is not disturbed; otherwise you are hungry and you are bound to be awakened by your hunger. The mind gives you a dream that you are eating delicious food of your choice, which satisfies your mind. The hunger remains but sleep is not disturbed. The hunger is covered by the illusion of the dream; it protects your sleep.

You feel in sleep that your bladder is full. If the mind does not create the dream that you have gone to the toilet, come back and gone to sleep again, then your sleep will be disturbed - and sleep is a great necessity for the body. The mind is taking care that you are not disturbed again and again; you can have a long sleep, rest, so in the morning you are rejuvenated.

This is the ordinary function of the mind; on a higher plane the same thing happens. One is an ordinary sleep and an ordinary awakening that mind prevents. On the path, it is an extraordinary sleep and an extraordinary awakening, but the mind is programmed - it is just a mechanical thing. It simply does its work without bothering, because it has no way of checking whether it is ordinary sleep or spiritual sleep, ordinary awakening or spiritual awakening.

To the mind it is all the same. Its function is to keep your sleep intact and create a barrier for anything that disturbs your sleep. If you are hungry it gives you food; if you are desperately in search of truth, it gives you truth, it gives you enlightenment You ask for anything, and it is ready to give it to you. It can create the illusion of the real thing - that is its intrinsic power.

 

* - excerpt from OSHO. Meditation - the First and Last Freedom.

Updated on 25-02-2019







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