2- Make Thoughts Your Objects – Osho

You can never go beyond the mind if
you go on using it. You have to take a
jump, and meditation means that
jump. That’s why meditation is
illogical, irrational. And it cannot be
made logical; it cannot be reduced to
reason. You have to experience it. If
you experience, only then do you
know.

So try this: don’t think about it, try –
try to be a witness to your own
thoughts. Sit down, relaxed, close your
eyes, let your thoughts run just like on
a screen pictures run. See them, look
at them, make them your objects. One
thought arises: look at it deeply. Don’t
think about it, just look at it. If you
begin to think about it then you are
not a witness – you have fallen in the
trap.

There is a horn outside; a thought
arises – some car is passing; or a dog
barks or something happens. Don’t
think about it; just look at the thought.
The thought has arisen, taken form.

Now it is before you. Soon it will pass.
Another thought will replace it. Go on
looking at this thought process. Even
for a single moment, if you are capable
of looking at this thought process
without thinking about it, you will
have gained something in witnessing
and you will have known something in
witnessing. 

This is a taste, a different
taste than thinking – totally different.
But one has to experiment with it.
Religion and science are poles apart,
but in one thing they are similar and
their emphasis is the same: science
depends on experiment and religion
also. Only philosophy is non-experimental.


Philosophy depends just on thinking.
Religion and science both depend on
experiment: science on objects,
religion on your subjectivity. Science
depends on experimenting with other
things than you, and Religion depends
on experimenting directly with you.


It is difficult, because in science the
experimenter is there, the experiment
is there and the object to be
experimented upon is there. There are
three things: the object, the subject
and the experiment. In religion you are
all the three simultaneously. You are
to experiment upon yourself. You are
the subject and you are the object and
you are the lab.


Don’t go on thinking. Begin, start
somewhere, to experiment. Then you
will have a direct feeling of what
thinking is and what witnessing is. And
then you will come to know that you
cannot do both simultaneously, just as
you cannot run and sit simultaneously.

 If you run, then you cannot sit, then you 
are not sitting. And if you are sitting, 
then you cannot run. 

But sitting is not a function of the
legs. Running is a function of the legs;
sitting is not a function of legs. Rather,
sitting is a non-function of the legs.

When the legs are functioning, then
you are not sitting. Sitting is a non-
function of the legs; running is the
function.

The same is with the mind: thinking is
a function of the mind; witnessing a
non-function of the mind. When the
mind is not functioning, you have the
witnessing, then you have the
awareness.

-Osho

Excerpt from The Ultimate
Alchemy, V.1, Chapter 16