---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "POND"
dategiven: "03 January 1981 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #3"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8101035"
shorttitle: "POND03"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop: Chapter #3"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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> [!info]
> Note
>
[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]


Mind is basically a discord and there is no way to create accord in the mind. Its very nature is discord, because mind lives in duality, mind lives with polar opposites. If there is love, to balance it there is also hate. It is impossible for mind just to be loving without hating. It can love only in the same proportion as it hates. It can be compassionate only in the same proportion as it can be angry. They go together, all the opposites.


The mind can experience beauty only because it can experience ugliness. If the mind becomes incapable of experiencing hatred, ugliness, anger, it will also become incapable of love, of beauty, of compassion.


So to be in the mind is to be constantly in conflict. but there is a way to get out of the mind, to slip out of this turmoil, this constant tension, anxiety, anguish. That's what meditation is all about it is transcending the mind, going beyond the mind. And the moment you are beyond the mind there is harmony.


Just as mind is discord, no-mind is harmony. And to be harmonious is blissful. That is another meaning of your name, blissfulness, cheerfulness. it is a by-product of harmoniousness.


There have been two schools of seekers down the ages. The first school tries somehow to manage mind in such a way as to discipline it, to cultivate it, so that a certain harmony arises. That is the school of control, self-control, self-discipline. The ascetics down the ages have been doing that forcing the mind to be silent. They are trying to do something which is against nature, so they can only succeed momentarily, again and again the discord erupts.


Yes, for a few intervals they can repress the mind, but the volcano will erupt. In fact, while they are looking peaceful, their mind is gathering energy to explode. Hence the ascetic lives in constant fear, in constant guilt, in constant cautiousness. But a life of cautiousness, of fear, of guilt, cannot be cheerful. That's why the ascetic becomes sad and serious and takes his revenge on the world, all that he is doing he has somehow to get rewards for, so he becomes holier-than-thou, he becomes condemnatory of all those who are cheerful, living life easily, without anxiety. He creates the same fear in others, the same guilt, the same anxiety. That has been the sole work of your so-called saints, they have only created a guilt-ridden humanity. That is their great work; they have created an insane humanity.


And the ascetic can fall any moment, just a little temptation is enough, that's why he is so afraid of temptation, of the devil. The devil exists nowhere. The ascetic has created the devil -- it is his invention. whatsoever he has repressed becomes the devil. If he has repressed sex then the devil will tempt him towards sexuality. If he has repressed his desire to eat then the devil will tempt him with delicious foods -- spaghetti and all! (laughter) Then the devil becomes Italian! (more laughter)


The devil depends on the ascetic. For example, the Jaina monks in India have been forcing themselves to fast -- continuous fasting. Naturally, after a certain period of fasting you lose sexual energy because sexual energy needs a certain nourishing of the body. After three weeks of fasting you become impotent. So the Jaina monk is not tortured by the devil as far as sex is concerned, but he is tortured by all kinds of delicious dishes, those dishes go on floating all around in the air.(laughter) But the Christian monk eats well and is even allowed to drink. in fact, the Christian Catholic monasteries have been the best producers of wine, down the ages that has been their business. Even today the Christian monasteries have the ancientmost wines in their cellars, the most precious wine. So he is not tortured by these foods he is tortured by the woman, because he has renounced the woman.


Whatsoever you renounce becomes your devil. You give shape and form and life to the devil by your repression, it is your unconscious which comes as a projection and tempts you.


A man who is trying tc control his desires is bound to be trapped into a thousand-and-one temptations. His life becomes unnecessarily arduous, a self-imposed torture. So I am against that school. To me that school is the cause of all the misery that exists today. We have created enough technology and science to remove misery as far as the body is concerned, but these people for thousands of years have been creating a certain mind; even if you remove the physical causes of misery your mind is there which science cannot change.


Only a totally new kind of religiousness is needed, to undo the work of your so-called saints. And that is my work: undoing their work.


The second school is of those people who have not been trying to control, non-ascetics -- the mystics. It consists of a very small minority, but they are the real benefactors of humanity. They are life-affirmative. They have not tried to control the mind they have discovered a totally different technique -- slipping out of the mind. They are meditators, they are mystics, not ascetics, but they have been very few and they have not been able to influence humanity at large. Their voice was drowned by the ascetics.


The second school believes not in controlling but in understanding. That's what meditation is all about: trying to watch your mind so that you can understand its functioning, its mechanism, its ways, its subtle strategies, its devices.


The more understanding you become, the more aware you become, the more you are out of the mind. That transcendence happens through understanding nothing else is needed. One simply watches -- choicelessly watching one's own mind, not trying to impose any idea, any discipline -- just watchfulness, just to see what exactly is the case, what is this mind and what is going on? Unprejudiced, detached, one simply observes. That observation is meditation, that awareness is meditation. And the miracle is that whenever you watch something you are separate from it -- immediately, instantly you are separate. Whatsoever you can watch, you become separate from.


So the day you are able to watch your mind totally you are out of it, without any other effort you have transcended the mind. And then there is immense harmony, great silence, profound peace. Not only are you harmonious within yourself, once you are harmonious within yourself you become harmonious with the whole universe too.
And that is bliss, that is ecstasy -- that's the goal of sannyas!


Meditation gives you the real taste of life. Without meditation life is only lukewarm, it has no intensity. It is not a flame, it is just smoke. Once you enter into meditation life is a flame without smoKe. Such great intensity explodes in you -- as if suddenly spring has come in the inner world, flowers, songs, celebrations, for no reason at all. You have found the life-giving source within you.


Mind is a parasite, it sucks your energy, it deprives you of your life. Of course it does not kill you. No parasite can afford to kill you, because your death will be the death of the parasite, so every parasite only exploits you to a certain extent -- but it leaves you alive. But just to be alive is not enough. Every parasite keeps you at the minimum, and life blossoms forth only at the maximum.


And our mind is not one parasite but many parasites. We don't have one mind, we have many minds. We are multi-psychic -- there are many small minds. It is like a federation of many small minds, or more like a Rotary club, by rotation everyone becomes the king -- for a moment; or like a wheel moving -- every spoke comes to the top, every spoke has its chance to be on the top, but then it goes back and another spoke comes up. Exactly like that, every part of the mind has a moment when it reigns -- but it is momentary.


That's why there is so much confusion and mess you decide one thing today and tomorrow you cannot do it, you yourself cancel it, because now it is another mind. The mind that has decided is no more there, it is no more in power. In the evening you decide 'I will get up early in the morning,' and when the time comes to get up, you yourself decide not to get up. And when you get up again as late as usual or even later, you feel great guilt, you start condemning yourself. That is a third mind.


And this is how this sorry-go-round continues. (laughter) The person derides not to smoke; but he is not aware that the mind that is deciding it will not be in power long. Soon another mind will be there which will decide to smoke or do something else.


These many minds are many parasites -- they go on destroying your life. They leave only enough life for you so that you can vegetate, drag. They don't kill you, certainly, because it is against their vested interests, but they don't allow you to live totally either.


Meditation means finding the source of your life and disconnecting the source from the mind. Then mind is used by you, not vice versa. Right now the mind is using you, the mind is the master and you are the slave. This is the sole cause of misery. When you are the master and the mind is just a mechanism -- you can use it whenever you want and if you don't want it you don't use it -- then life flares up and the joy of it is tremendous. Then for the first time you know that to know life is to know god, that to know life is to know eternity. Then there is no death.


Death is only because we are existing at the minimum. When we exist at the maximum, death evaporates. And to live deathlessly is to live a divine life. Then naturally one is fearless, all anguish is dropped away, all darkness disappears. then life is light.


Your name also means a life-giving source. It is a beautiful name. To me it is equivalent to god! Discover the life-giving source in you. The method is meditation.


Meditation is the door to the divine. To live in the mind is to live in the mundane. Mind belongs to the marketplace; in fact it is prepared for the market-place -- for competition, for ego trips, for politics, for money, power, prestige. From the kindergarten, school to the university we create the mind so that a man can succeed in the world.


Mind is basically mundane -- that's its purpose. It has no divine quality in it. And there are fools who go on reading the scriptures and they think they are doing some divine work. You read the scripture through the mind, you understand the scripture through the mind. And there are fools who go on praying to god and whatsoever they are praying for is nothing but the desires of their mind. They are asking for some desires to be fulfilled.


Neither the scriptures nor the prayers are divine. The only divine phenomenon is when you fall into utter silence, when the mind stops functioning, when the mind ceases and you are no longer with any thought, any memory, any fantasy, any desire. When there is not even a ripple of any kind in you -- when you are simply a no-mind -- you experience for the first time what god is, you experience godliness. That is the world of the sacred.


So move from the mind to meditation. There is no other proof for god, the only proof is your own experience. There is no argument which can prove or disprove god, but one can experience. But the experience remains individual. Those who have known, they have known, and others only go on believing. Beliefs belong to the mind, experience belongs to meditation -- and these are worlds apart.


The sannyasin should remember again and again that he has to pull himself out of his mental traps, he has to bring all his energies out of the mind, he has to stop cooperating with the mind and enter into silence, thoughtlessness. And then the kingdom of god is yours!


The mind functions as a wall it separates you from the whole, it is a divorce from the whole. And of course, the whole is not at a loss, we are at a loss. We could have been oceanic and we remain just small drops of water. We could have been as vast as the universe and we become confined to a small body-mind structure, it is imprisonment.


Mind basically is ego. To get out of the mind means to get in tune with the whole. Attunement or at-onement -- that's yoga. It is a marriage with the whole, melting and merging, disappearing as a separate entity and becoming one with the whole.


The mind is a wall, meditation is a bridge. The mind disconnects, meditation reconnects. And once you are one with the whole that means you are one with the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the stars and the sun and the moon. Then this infinity is yours and all its joys are yours. Life starts having freedom for the first time because all limitations disappear -- and that is the ultimate desire of the human heart.


We are searching continuously for the union, knowingly or unknowingly. We want to merge with the whole, because only with the whole does life come to its ultimate peak. Ecstasy attains its Everest.


A man without meditation is a beggar. He is bound to be a beggar -- it is inevitable -- because a man without meditation means a man who is identified with the mind, and mind is asking continuously for more and more and more, it is never contented.


Discontent is its very nature, so whatsoever you give, it sill ask for more. It does not matter what you give, its demand remains the same. It is like the horizon: the distance between you and the horizon always remains the same. It looks so close by -- just a few miles ahead -- and you think, if you run fast within hours you will reach, but you can never reach.


As you are running towards the horizon, the horizon is running away from you, because it goes not really exist, it is illusory, it is a hallucination. So the distance between you and the horizon is constant -- it cannot be more, it cannot be less. It will remain the same. The same is true about mind and its desire the distance remains the same.


If you have ten thousand rupees it asks for one hundred thousand rupees, ten times more, if you have one hundred thousand it asks again ten times more. And it goes on and on, so wherever you are, you are in misery, whatsoever you have only creates misery. The poor are miserable, the rich are miserable in fact the rich are more miserable than the poor, because the poor can hope, the rich cannot even hope. The poor man can think that tomorrow things will be better, but the rich man knows perfectly well by his experience that tomorrow comes but things are never better.


So many times he has been able to attain whatsoever the mind wanted, and again mind started wanting more. Hence a very strange thing happens, the poor seem more contented than the rich, for the rich become really very hopeless. Once a society is affluent it starts feeling utterly hopeless, desperate, because whatsoever the mind had always wanted is there, but there is no joy. Mind is a beggar, if one wants to be an emperor he has to get out of the mind.


Meditation allows you to be the emperor, because suddenly that desire for more is no more suddenly there is immense contentment -- wherever you are, whatsoever you are. There is no hankering for tomorrow at all. This moment is so fulfilling, this now, this here, is so immensely rich -- who wants to be anywhere else? It is so overwhelming that one disappears in the now and the here, and that brings your real nature to the surface for the first time. Otherwise the mind is hovering around your circumference and never allows your centre to say anything. Once the mind is put aside then your being, which is hidden at the centre like a seed, starts sprouting its branches, its flowers, start reaching to the circumference, your joy starts overflowing. Life becomes a festival of lights.


Mind is prose, meditation is poetry. Mind is businesslike, calculative, cunning. Meditation brings a totally different dimension of innocence, of a heart singing, dancing, rejoicing. Mind is interested in money, power, prestige, meditation opens a door to a totally different style of life -- the life of the flowers and the stars and the birds and the rivers and the mountains.


It is a total transformation to move from mind to meditation. There is no other transformation bigger than that. There has never been and there will never be. To move from mind to meditation is to have travelled the greatest distance possible. These two points are the farthest points in existence, but they both exist within you.


One can slip from the head to the heart very easily and from the heart to the being even more easily. The heart is only a caravanserai -- just an overnight stay, a motel! (laughter) But it is a necessary state. It gives you rest from the tiredness of the mind, it rejuvenates you, it gives you great encouragement to go deeper, to go further. It opens to you a new vista, a new vision of the being. From the mind you cannot see anything of the being, from the mind you can at the most hear a few whispers from the heart. That too only if you are very alert, quiet; then the still small voice can be heard -- those little knocks from the heart. The heart does not speak loudly, it only whispers. It is a love-language, you cannot shout it. It cannot be like a political slogan! it can only be a whisper.


So if one is very alert, sensitive, then one can hear the whisper of the heart. It is constantly calling you, but it is like the distant call of the cuckoo: unless you are very very ready and listening for it, the traffic noise, the trains, the aeroplanes, the people, will not allow you to hear it. Once you are groping for it there is a possibility that you will be able to put aside all the noise and you will be able to hear the distant call of the cuckoo. That's exactly the heart's whisper, a very distant call, but very silent.


Once it is heard you cannot forget it. It becomes a magnetic pull -- that's what leads you into meditation. First meditation becomes a feeling, a movement from thinking to feeling. First meditation becomes a love affair. And when you have reached to the heart then you will be able to see a totally different world, another peak with virgin snows. But it becomes possible to see it only when you have reached to the heart; then you can see the world of being.


Meditation begins in the turmoil of the mind, reaches to a certain maturity in the hear world of feeling, and reaches to its ultimate flowering in the world of being. And these are the three things to remember first, the prose of the mind, second, the poetry of the heart, and third, just the silent music, the soundless sound, what Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping.
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>