Why Is No-Mind So Relevant to Today’s World?

5 min readOsho,
What is herenow? Does thought form part of it? Or, is herenow only in no-mind?

Thought is the capacity of not being here – so thought cannot exist in the herenow, it cannot be part of it.

“That is impossible. Thought can only be either of the past, or of the future. Thought can never be of the present; that is implied in the very process of thinking – it is intrinsic to it.
“The moment you think, either you think of the past, or you think of the future. It may be the immediate past, but it is still the past – it is never the present, it cannot be the present.
“Thought needs space. And the present moment has no space in it. Thought creates the past and the future to live in. The bigger the past, the more easily thought can move; the bigger the future, again, the more easily thought can move. The present is not capable of giving that space for thought to move.

The present moment is a moment of no-mind. Whenever you are in the present, you don’t function as a mind. Your body is in the present, but your mind is never.

“Your body is always in the present – that’s why the body is so beautiful and the mind is so ugly.
“And, down the ages, you have been taught to be with the mind and against the body. That has been the greatest calamity humanity has suffered up to now. If a new humanity is to be, we will have to put things right – you have to be with the body and not with the mind.

Use the mind, but never get identified with it. The mind is a good slave, but a very bad master. The body is wiser.

“When you are hungry, you are hungry herenow; you cannot be hungry in the future and you cannot be hungry in the past. When you are feeling thirsty, your throat is feeling it right now – it is immediate, it has a presence. But your mind is running in all directions, so your body and mind never meet. That’s how you have become split, that’s how schizophrenia has entered the very being of man.

Get out of the mind and get into the body. The more you are in your body, the more natural you will be. The more you are in the body, the closer to existence you will be.

“The mind is just a device. Good, helpful, can be used in a thousand and one ways. But it is from there that the problem arises – because it can be used in so many ways, you start becoming dependent on it and by and by you lose consciousness of the present and you become focused with the mind. Then your life will be dry, a wasteland.
“And suddenly questions will arise: ‘What is the meaning of life’ – because the mind cannot supply any meaning. The mind cannot give you any end. The mind cannot help you to live. It cannot give you life. It can give you technology, it can give you bigger machines, it can give you more affluence – but it cannot give you more life, more being.
“So riches go on growing, technology goes on becoming more and more sophisticated, and man becomes poorer and poorer. This is strange, that outside riches go on accumulating and inside man becomes a beggar. Never before in the history of man was there such inner emptiness, such inner meaninglessness, such inner poverty.
“The reason is:

Significance comes from the body – the body is the body of existence. The mind is man-created: the body is still in godliness, it still exists in godliness, it still breathes godliness.

“You ask, ‘What is herenow?’ Now, if any mind answer is given to you, that won’t be the right answer – because anything that the mind can say as a definition of herenow will be wrong; anything whatever, it will be wrong. The mind knows nothing of herenow. How can it define it? Just be silent; for a moment, just be – and it is there.
“This is herenow! I will not give you a definition because definitions come from the mind, and definitions will be taken by the mind, and herenow is an existential experience: these trees, this bird calling, and the traffic noise, and the train, and the sun and the trees, and you and me, and this silence, this presence.
“When not even a single thought is stirring in you, when the screen is utterly empty, not even a single picture moves… This is – and this cannot be defined. You can experience it; it is available. It is everybody’s right to experience it, but how to define it? If you try to define it you will have to bring in past and future. Go to the dictionaries, go to the Encyclopedia Britannica – what will they say? They will say the present is a moment between the past and the future – that’s the only way to define it. Now, can there be a more wrong way to define the present? If you have to bring in past and future into the definition, if you cannot define the present without bringing past and future into it, how are you going to define it?
“The present is neither past nor future – and it is not between the two! It cannot be between the two because the past is no more and the future is not yet. How can the present be between two nonexistentials? The present is existential; how can existence be defined by something which is not? That is utter absurdity! But that’s where logic moves. Logic appears very logical, but remains rooted in absurdity.

The present is not between the past and the future: the present is beyond past and future. The present is eternity. The present is not even part of time.

“And it is not that time passes: we pass, time remains; we come and go, time remains. It is not that the moment that was here just a moment before has become past, no. It is a single moment, utterly one. It is eternity. It is not passing, it is not going anywhere.
“Have you not observed some time, sitting in a train, waiting on a station, and your train starts moving and you feel the other train has started moving which is just on the other track? Or, the other train starts moving and you feel your train has started moving, and then you look closely and you find that, no, your train is not moving, the other train is moving.

Time remains there – we go on moving, we change. The ocean of time is there – the fish goes on moving. The movement is in our minds. The mind is movement. Truth is unmoving; it is always the same.

“Just see: when you were born… Have you changed since then? Yes, on one level you have changed, certainly – your body has grown, you are young or old, and you have lived through so many things, and experiences, and frustrations, and excitements, and ecstasies, and all that life gives. But go deep down: have you really changed on that plane? At the very core of your being, are you not the same? There, nothing has changed. It is where you were, and it is where you will ever be – it is always the same there, it is one climate.
“On the surface things go on changing. The wheel of the cart goes on moving, but it moves on something which remains unmoving: the axle. You are both the circumference and the axle, the center. Even the cyclone is not there at the center – there is silence. Nothing ever moves there.
“That is your being. What name you give to it matters not. That center of the cyclone… That center of the cyclone is herenow; it is not part of time. It is eternity.
“You ask me,

‘What is herenow?’ Feel it. Experience it. That’s what we are doing here. What is meditation? – getting into herenow. What is love? – getting into herenow. What is celebration? – getting into herenow. But no definition is possible.

“Getting-into is possible, because in fact you have never got out of it. It is there. You can again turn and face it.”
END
Excerpted from Osho, Walk without Feet, Fly without Wings, and Think without Mind, Talk #3 – How to Experience Herenow
To continue reading this talk: Sex, Love, and Sleep – Being in the Present Moment?
And: How to Stop the Chattering Mind

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The post Why Is No-Mind So Relevant to Today’s World? appeared first on OSHOTimes.