Life is a dream.

What if I dream that I am a huge ogre? Will I become a huge ogre?

Yes, you will, but only in your dream)..



"1. Question: What is meditation?

Answer: Dhyana – meditation – is not an Indian method, not just a technique. You cannot learn it. It is a growth: a growth of your whole life process, from your whole life process. It can come to you only through a fundamental transformation, through a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth always happens from the whole: it is not an addition.

The complete flowering of the personality must be rightly understood. Otherwise, one can play games with oneself, indulge in mental tricks. And there are so many of them! They not only mislead you, not only give you nothing, but can also cause direct harm. The idea of meditation as some kind of method is fundamentally wrong. And when you start engaging in mental tricks, the quality of the mind itself degenerates.

The mind is what it is – it is not meditative. Before meditation can happen, the mind must change completely. So what is the mind in the form in which it exists now? How does it function?

The mind is constantly verbalizing. You know words, language, a conceptual structure of thinking, but this is not yet thinking. On the contrary, it is an escape from thinking. You see a flower and verbalize it. You see a person walking and again verbalize it into words. Any existential phenomenon, the mind is able to transform into words. And words become an obstacle, a prison. This constant translation of objects and being into words is an obstacle to a meditative mind.

Therefore, the first necessary condition for achieving a meditative mind is to be aware of one's constant verbalization and the ability to stop it. Just contemplate objects; do not verbalize. Feel their presence, but do not translate them into words. Let things be, but without language; let situations arise, but without language. This is quite possible, it is natural. Unnatural is the current state, but we have become so accustomed to it that we no longer even realize that we are constantly translating sensations into words.

The sun rises. You never feel the interval between the moment of seeing the sunrise and expressing it in words. You see the sun, feel it, and immediately verbalize it. The interval between seeing and verbalization is lost. This is a fact, a presence. The mind automatically translates experiences into words. And these words then become between you and your experience. Meditation means living without words, living without language. Sometimes this happens spontaneously. When you are in love, you feel a presence, not a word. When two lovers are close to each other, they fall silent. This does not mean that they have nothing to express. On the contrary, there is so much that needs to be expressed. But there are no words, and there cannot be. They come only when love is gone.

If lovers do not fall silent, it means that love is dead. And now they fill the void with words. When love is alive, there are no words, because the very existence of love is so all-encompassing and overwhelming that the barrier of language and words is overcome. And it is usually overcome in love.

Meditation is the culmination of love: love not for one person, but for all that exists. For me, meditation is a relationship with everything that surrounds us. If you are able to love any situation, then you are in meditation.

And this is not a trick of the mind. It is not a method of stopping the mind. On the contrary, it requires a deep understanding of the mechanism of the mind. Once you understand your mechanistic habit of verbalization, of translating life into words, an interval, a gap arises. It arises spontaneously. It is like a shadow following understanding.

The main problem is not how to be in meditation, but to know why you are not in meditation. The process of meditation itself is negative. It does not add anything to you, it does not deny anything that has already been added.

Society cannot exist without language; it needs language. But being does not need it. I am not saying that you should live without language. You have to use it. But you must be able to turn the mechanism of verbalization on and off. When you feel yourself as a social being, the mechanism of language is necessary for you; but when you are alone with being, you must be able to turn it off. If you cannot turn it off, if it is constantly working and working, and you are powerless to stop it, then you become its slave. The mind must be a tool, not a master.

When the mind is the master, a non-meditative state is created. When you are the master, your consciousness, then the state is meditative. Meditation occurs when you become the master of the mechanism of the mind.

The mind and its linguistic functioning are not the pinnacle. You are above this; being is beyond this. Consciousness is above language; life is above linguistics. When consciousness and being are one, they are in union. This union is meditation.

Language must be discarded. This does not mean that it should be excluded or suppressed. I mean that it should not remain your habit all 24 hours a day. When you walk, you have to move your legs. But if you continue to move your legs even when sitting, then you are simply crazy. You must be able to control them. Similarly, when you are not talking to anyone, there should be no language. It is a technique of communication. When you are not communicating with anyone, it is not needed.

If you cannot do this, you cannot grow into meditation. Meditation is a process of growth, not a technique. Technique is dead, so it cannot be applied to you, but the process is always alive. It grows and expands.

Language is necessary, but you cannot remain in it all the time; there must be moments when verbalization stops, when you simply exist. This is not a vegetative existence – consciousness is present, it becomes more alive and sharper, because language dulls it. Language inevitably repeats and creates boredom. The more important language is to you, the more boring you are.

Being, on the other hand, is never repeated. Every rose is a new rose, completely new. There was no such thing before, and there will never be again. But by calling it a rose, we repeat the word "rose." This word was before and will always be. With one old word, you kill something new.

Life is always new, language is always old. Through language, you escape from life, from being, because language is always dead. The more you immerse yourself in language, the more dead it makes you. A learned theologian is completely dead, because he consists entirely of language and words.

Jean-Paul Sartre called his autobiography "Words." We live in words. That is, we do not live. As a result, only a series of accumulated words remains – and nothing more. Words are like photographs. You see something alive and photograph it. The photograph is dead. And then you put together an album of dead pictures. A person who has not lived in meditation is like a dead album. Only verbal snapshots, only memories remain in it. Nothing was lived, everything was only verbalized."
Osho