Astrall
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(Part 1).
...The human mind has become diseased; it has turned into a wound. It is no longer a healthy center; it has become a painful sore. That is why all your attention is focused on it. Perhaps you haven't considered the fact that when one part of the body becomes ill, all our attention shifts to it. You only become aware of your leg when it hurts; if there is no pain, you are completely unaware of it. If there is a wound on your arm, you begin to notice your arm; if there is no wound, you completely ignore it. In any case, your mind has undoubtedly become diseased because, twenty-four hours a day, you are only aware of it and nothing else. The healthier the body, the less it will be felt. You only feel the part of the body that has become unhealthy. And the only part of the body you are currently feeling is your head. Your consciousness moves only around it—it only knows it, it only recognizes it. A painful wound has appeared here. Without freeing yourself from this wound, without freeing yourself from this very tense and restless state of mind, no one can be happy.
Therefore, today we will discuss this structure, the mind, and how to change it. (Osho)...
Chapter 4: Understanding The first thing is that you must clearly understand the structure of the mind. If you sit in solitude for ten minutes and honestly write down on a piece of paper all the thoughts that pass through your mind, you won't want to show that paper even to your best friend because you will discover thoughts that are so insane that neither you nor anyone else could have expected them. You will discover so many irrelevant, useless, and contradictory thoughts that you will think you have gone mad. If you honestly write down everything that comes to your mind for ten minutes, you will be very surprised at what is happening there.
You will want to know whether you are in your right mind or whether you are crazy. You never look into your mind, even for ten minutes, to see what is happening there, or perhaps you don't look into it precisely because you already know deep down what is happening there. Perhaps you are afraid. That is why people are afraid of being alone and seek company twenty-four hours a day—they want to meet friends, go to a club, or do something else. And if they can't find anyone, they read a newspaper or listen to the radio. No one wants to be alone because, at the moment you are alone, you begin to learn the truth about your real state. When another person is present, you are involved in a relationship with them and are not aware of yourself. Seeking another is nothing more than seeking a convenient excuse to escape from yourself. The main reason you begin to be interested in other people is that you are afraid of yourself and know very well that if you fully know yourself, you will discover that you are absolutely insane. To get rid of this feeling, a person seeks company, seeks friends, seeks society, seeks a crowd.
A person is afraid of being alone. He is afraid of being alone because in solitude he may discover a reflection of his real state, meet the reflection of his own face. And this can be very frightening, very terrible. Therefore, from the moment he wakes up in the morning until the moment he falls asleep in the evening, he uses all sorts of methods to escape from himself and not meet himself. He is afraid that he may see himself. Man has invented thousands of ways to escape from himself. And the worse the state of the human mind became, the more new inventions he devised to escape from himself. If we look at the last fifty years, we will find that man has created more entertainment to escape from himself than ever before in history. Cinemas, radio, television—these are all ways to escape from oneself.
Man has become so restless. Everyone is looking for entertainment; you do all sorts of things to forget about yourself for a while because your inner situation is getting worse. Everywhere in the world, at the same time as civilization is developing, the consumption of drugs is increasing. New drugs have recently been discovered that are becoming very popular in Europe and America. These are drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and marijuana. In all the developed cities of Europe and America, among all educated people, the desire to try new drugs has reached a peak. The search for reliable means that allow a person to forget himself continues—without them, a person will be in great difficulty. What is behind all this? Why do you want to forget yourselves? Why are you so eager for self-forgetfulness? And don't think that only those people who go to the movies are trying to forget themselves; people who go to temples go there for the same reason; there is no difference.
The temple is an old way to forget oneself, and the cinema is a new way. If a person sits and repeatedly chants, "Ram, Ram," don't think that he is doing anything other than trying to forget himself in the chanting—just as someone else tries to forget himself by listening to a song from a movie. There is no difference between these two people. This desire to get involved in something outside of oneself—whether it is "Ram" or a movie or music—is essentially a desire to escape from oneself. You are all engaged in escaping from yourselves in one way or another. This indicates that your inner state is deteriorating, and you lack the courage even to look at it. You are very afraid to look in that direction.
You are acting like ostriches. When an ostrich sees an enemy, it hides its head in the sand because it thinks that looking at the enemy is dangerous. When the enemy is not visible, the ostrich's logic says, "Since it is not visible, it does not exist. I am safe." But this is incorrect logic. An ostrich can be forgiven, but a human cannot. A thing does not cease to exist just because it is not visible. If a thing is visible, then something can be done about it, but if it is not visible, then there is no way to do anything. You want to forget the state that exists inside; you don't want to see it. Perhaps your mind can be convinced that there is nothing there that is not visible, but this does not mean that it has disappeared. Invisible does not mean non-existent. If something were visible, you could change it, but since it is not visible, change is impossible. It will continue to grow inside like a wound, like a sore that you have hidden and do not want to look at...
Osho
...The human mind has become diseased; it has turned into a wound. It is no longer a healthy center; it has become a painful sore. That is why all your attention is focused on it. Perhaps you haven't considered the fact that when one part of the body becomes ill, all our attention shifts to it. You only become aware of your leg when it hurts; if there is no pain, you are completely unaware of it. If there is a wound on your arm, you begin to notice your arm; if there is no wound, you completely ignore it. In any case, your mind has undoubtedly become diseased because, twenty-four hours a day, you are only aware of it and nothing else. The healthier the body, the less it will be felt. You only feel the part of the body that has become unhealthy. And the only part of the body you are currently feeling is your head. Your consciousness moves only around it—it only knows it, it only recognizes it. A painful wound has appeared here. Without freeing yourself from this wound, without freeing yourself from this very tense and restless state of mind, no one can be happy.
Therefore, today we will discuss this structure, the mind, and how to change it. (Osho)...
Chapter 4: Understanding The first thing is that you must clearly understand the structure of the mind. If you sit in solitude for ten minutes and honestly write down on a piece of paper all the thoughts that pass through your mind, you won't want to show that paper even to your best friend because you will discover thoughts that are so insane that neither you nor anyone else could have expected them. You will discover so many irrelevant, useless, and contradictory thoughts that you will think you have gone mad. If you honestly write down everything that comes to your mind for ten minutes, you will be very surprised at what is happening there.
You will want to know whether you are in your right mind or whether you are crazy. You never look into your mind, even for ten minutes, to see what is happening there, or perhaps you don't look into it precisely because you already know deep down what is happening there. Perhaps you are afraid. That is why people are afraid of being alone and seek company twenty-four hours a day—they want to meet friends, go to a club, or do something else. And if they can't find anyone, they read a newspaper or listen to the radio. No one wants to be alone because, at the moment you are alone, you begin to learn the truth about your real state. When another person is present, you are involved in a relationship with them and are not aware of yourself. Seeking another is nothing more than seeking a convenient excuse to escape from yourself. The main reason you begin to be interested in other people is that you are afraid of yourself and know very well that if you fully know yourself, you will discover that you are absolutely insane. To get rid of this feeling, a person seeks company, seeks friends, seeks society, seeks a crowd.
A person is afraid of being alone. He is afraid of being alone because in solitude he may discover a reflection of his real state, meet the reflection of his own face. And this can be very frightening, very terrible. Therefore, from the moment he wakes up in the morning until the moment he falls asleep in the evening, he uses all sorts of methods to escape from himself and not meet himself. He is afraid that he may see himself. Man has invented thousands of ways to escape from himself. And the worse the state of the human mind became, the more new inventions he devised to escape from himself. If we look at the last fifty years, we will find that man has created more entertainment to escape from himself than ever before in history. Cinemas, radio, television—these are all ways to escape from oneself.
Man has become so restless. Everyone is looking for entertainment; you do all sorts of things to forget about yourself for a while because your inner situation is getting worse. Everywhere in the world, at the same time as civilization is developing, the consumption of drugs is increasing. New drugs have recently been discovered that are becoming very popular in Europe and America. These are drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and marijuana. In all the developed cities of Europe and America, among all educated people, the desire to try new drugs has reached a peak. The search for reliable means that allow a person to forget himself continues—without them, a person will be in great difficulty. What is behind all this? Why do you want to forget yourselves? Why are you so eager for self-forgetfulness? And don't think that only those people who go to the movies are trying to forget themselves; people who go to temples go there for the same reason; there is no difference.
The temple is an old way to forget oneself, and the cinema is a new way. If a person sits and repeatedly chants, "Ram, Ram," don't think that he is doing anything other than trying to forget himself in the chanting—just as someone else tries to forget himself by listening to a song from a movie. There is no difference between these two people. This desire to get involved in something outside of oneself—whether it is "Ram" or a movie or music—is essentially a desire to escape from oneself. You are all engaged in escaping from yourselves in one way or another. This indicates that your inner state is deteriorating, and you lack the courage even to look at it. You are very afraid to look in that direction.
You are acting like ostriches. When an ostrich sees an enemy, it hides its head in the sand because it thinks that looking at the enemy is dangerous. When the enemy is not visible, the ostrich's logic says, "Since it is not visible, it does not exist. I am safe." But this is incorrect logic. An ostrich can be forgiven, but a human cannot. A thing does not cease to exist just because it is not visible. If a thing is visible, then something can be done about it, but if it is not visible, then there is no way to do anything. You want to forget the state that exists inside; you don't want to see it. Perhaps your mind can be convinced that there is nothing there that is not visible, but this does not mean that it has disappeared. Invisible does not mean non-existent. If something were visible, you could change it, but since it is not visible, change is impossible. It will continue to grow inside like a wound, like a sore that you have hidden and do not want to look at...
Osho