Make the Mind Your Friend

Individual Talk

From:The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here

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“You have to understand two things very clearly: first, mind is a great miracle. Existence has not been able to create anything higher than your mind."
“You have to understand two things very clearly: first, mind is a great miracle. Existence has not been able to create anything higher than your mind."

Osho continues:

So first you have to be grateful to the mind. That is a first step to go beyond mind, not as an enemy but as a friend. Listening to me continually saying that you have to go beyond mind, you can fall into a misunderstanding. I have tremendous respect for mind. We are obliged so much by the mind, there is no way to return our gratitude.
So the first thing is: meditation is not against mind, it is beyond mind. And beyond is not equivalent to against.
That misunderstanding spreads the more people talk about meditation, particularly people who don't understand meditation -- those who have read about it, those who have heard about it, those who know the techniques... And techniques are simple; they are available in many scriptures, you can read them. And now there are books on how to do anything -- car mechanics, electric engineering, anything -- you ask, and the bookseller is ready to give you a book about how to do it.
My people in Europe have been thinking to make a book with a cassette. The book will give all the background of the meditation and the cassette will give all the instructions, so you need not go anywhere. Just sitting in your room with your tape recorder and you have a master! Gautam Buddha is no longer needed....
A master will never become irrelevant for a simple reason: who will teach you to love the mind and yet go beyond it? to love your body, to respect your body? to have gratitude towards your mind, its tremendous, miraculous functioning? That will make a great friendship, a bridge between you and the mind.
With this friendship deepening, whenever you are meditating, the mind will not disturb because your meditation is not against it. It is in fact its own fulfillment, it is its own ultimate flowering. Going beyond it is not an antagonistic attitude, but a friendly evolution.
So this should be the background of all meditators: not to be a fighter. If you fight you may be able to make the mind quiet for some time, but it is not your victory. The mind will come back, you will need it. You cannot live without it; you cannot exist in the world without it.
And if you can create a friendly relationship with the mind, a loving bridge, rather than being a hindrance to meditation it starts becoming a help. It protects your silence because that silence is also its own treasure, it is not just yours. It becomes a soil in which the roses of meditation will blossom, and the soil will be as happy as the roses. When the roses will be dancing in the sun, in the rain, in the wind, the soil will also rejoice.
My approach is totally different from the approach that has been taken up to now. For thousands of years, all the religions have been teaching something against body, against mind.

More Information
Publisher Osho International
Duration of Talk 122 mins
File Size 26.87 MB
Type Individual Talks
Edition/ Version 2