The Independent Mind: Learning to Live a Life of Freedom

Preface

Your thoughts are not yours – you have gathered them together. Sometimes in a dark room, a beam of light comes from the roof and you can see millions of dust particles floating in that beam. When I look into you I see the same phenomenon: millions of dust particles. You call them thoughts. They are moving in you and out of you. From one head they enter another and on they go. They have their own life.

A thought is a thing; it has its own existence. When a person dies, all his mad thoughts are released immediately and they start finding shelter somewhere or other. They immediately enter those who are nearby. They are like germs, they have their own life. Even when you are alive you go on dispersing your thoughts all around you. When you talk, of course you throw your thoughts into others. But when you are silent, you also throw thoughts around. They are not yours; that is the first thing.

A man of positive reasoning will discard all thoughts that are not his own. They are not authentic, he hasn’t found them through his own experience. He has accumulated them from others, they are borrowed. They are dirty, and have been in many hands and in many heads. A man of thinking does not borrow, he likes to have fresh thoughts of his own. If you are positive, and look at beauty, truth, goodness, flowers; if you become capable of seeing even in the darkest night that the morning is approaching – you will become capable of thinking.

You can then create your own thoughts. A thought that is created by you is really full of potential; it has a power of its own.

Osho

Yoga: The Science of the Soul, Vol 2

Chapter: 1

Discovering Life

My beloved ones.

In the coming three days I will talk to you about the search for life. Before I begin talking about this search – from tomorrow morning onward – I must first say that life is not what we understand it to be. Until this is clear to us, and we recognize in our hearts that what we think of as life is not life at all, the search for the true life cannot begin.

If someone thinks darkness is light, he will not go in search of light. If someone thinks death is life, he will be deprived of life. If what we think and understand is wrong, the end result of our whole life is bound to be wrong. Our search will depend on our understanding. So the first thing I want to say is that very few people attain life. Everyone attains birth and most people mistakenly consider birth to be life. What we know as life is just an opportunity to discover life, to find life or to miss it. Through that opportunity we can find life, but we can also miss it.

What we know as life is only an opportunity, is just a possibility. It is a seed out of which something may or may not blossom. It is also possible that the seed may lie dormant, may not sprout. Flowers may not blossom out of it, it may not bear fruit; both possibilities are there.

Up to now, the seed of most people’s life remains infertile. It is only in a very few people’s lives that the seed sprouts, that flowers blossom, that fragrance comes. These are the few people we worship and remember. But we never remember one thing: we also have been given the same seed, we could also attain exactly the same fragrance.

Unless, when seeing people like Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, and Christ, someone finds it humiliating that he too has the same seed within him and can attain the same life as theirs, all his worshipping and prayers are futile. They are a mere pretense, hypocrisy.

Just to avoid this suffering, just to avoid this pain, we have turned Krishna, Buddha, and Mahavira into the blessed one – into God. If they were ordinary human beings like us, we would be ashamed of being human beings. If they were just like us, there would be no place, no possibility, for us to escape. Just to avoid this humiliation, this pain and suffering, we have started calling them God, the son of God, tirthankaras, and who knows what. By calling them God, the son of God, or tirthankara we have imposed foolish things on them. All these people were just like us, were ordinary human beings. But most human-seeds are unable to blossom. Very few life-seeds blossom so perfectly that a divine light starts manifesting through them.

If religion has any purpose at all, it is this: all seeds should become what they are supposed to be, what is hidden within should become manifest. Unless we realize that what we are doing and the direction in which we are moving are completely wrong, no revolution, no transformation, no about-turn will be possible. This is the first thing I want to tell you today.

What we know as life is nothing more than a slow and gradual death, day by day. Such a lengthy death cannot be called life. If a man dies after seventy years, the process of death continues for seventy years. Someone may die after one hundred years, someone else after fifty years – we simply go on, quietly considering this lengthy process of death to be life. Today your life span is one day less than it was yesterday and tomorrow it will be less by one more day. What you think is an increase in age is actually a decreasing of age. The days you celebrate as birthdays are nothing but milestones indicating that death is coming closer. And after running in all directions, we find that in the end we have reached death.

We run in every possible direction, we take a thousand and one measures and make a thousand and one arrangements: we do anything and everything, but all our running around is nothing more than an attempt to avoid death. Someone may be accumulating wealth, someone may be accumulating fame, someone may be accumulating status, and someone may be trying to become more powerful; all these efforts are just to avoid that one thing. So when death comes, we have a defense, a security arrangement to protect ourselves against it. But all these arrangements fail. Death simply comes.

I am reminded of a short story…

An emperor from Damascus had a dream one night in which he saw himself standing next to his horse under a tree. A dark shadow came from behind and put its hand on his shoulder. When he turned and looked around, he became frightened.

The shadow said, I am Death, and tomorrow I will be coming to take you, so be ready and make sure that you reach the chosen place.

He woke up, the dream disappeared, but he was afraid. When morning came, he called all the greatest and most famous astrologers of his kingdom. He called renowned scholars who could interpret dreams and asked them, What does this dream mean? What does it indicate? Last night in my dream I saw a dark shadow that put its hand on my shoulder saying, ‘I am Death and tomorrow I will come to take you, so be ready and make sure that you meet me at the chosen place.’

There was not much time. He only had that day because Death would be arriving in the evening, at sunset. The astrologers said, There is not much time to think. Just take the fastest horse you have and ride away from here as far as you can. The further away you can go the better.

There didn’t seem to be any other option. What else could one think of? This was the only solution: he should go away as far as possible from that palace, from that state. What other way could there be to save himself? If someone had asked you, what could you have suggested? Or if someone had asked me, what else could I have said? Those astrologers advised rightly. Man’s mind cannot think further than this, it cannot find a better solution. It was a clear-cut thing: he should ride away from the palace to save himself from Death.

The emperor obviously had no shortage of fast horses. He had the fastest and best. He called for one of the fastest, mounted it, and it started running. The horse ran at a fast speed and seeing this rapid speed, slowly, slowly the emperor became very relaxed in his mind. Naturally, he gained confidence: he would go as far as possible, now he would be saved.

Slowly, slowly the capital city was left far behind, his state was left far behind, towns and villages were left far behind. The horse continued running at the same fast pace. The emperor did not take a rest; he neither ate any food nor drank any water. Who would stop? Who would eat food or drink water when he was being chased by Death? And he did not give the horse a break either; he did not even arrange any water for it. It was essential for him to ride as far away as possible that day.

Afternoon came. The king had ridden far from his palace, he was utterly happy. Up until the afternoon he had been sad, but by late afternoon he started humming songs. He had the feeling that now he had come far enough. By the time evening came he was hundreds of miles away.

Just as the sun was setting, he went into a nearby mango grove, tied up his horse and stood under a tree. He was utterly relaxed. He was about to express his thankfulness to God that he had come far enough, when the same hand that he had seen the night before in his dream touched his shoulder. He became frightened. He turned around carefully – and saw the same dark shadow standing there.

The dark shadow said to him, I was very worried whether you’d be able to reach this far or not, as this is the place where you are destined to die. I was wondering how it would be possible for you to travel such a long distance. But your horse was so fast and you rode very well. You have come at the right time.

No matter how far we may run, it is going to happen. It makes no difference whether you have had the dream or not. This is bound to happen: one day you will meet death at the place where it is supposed to be met.

The directions we are running in may be different, our routes may be different and the speed of our horses may vary – this is possible. But ultimately it won’t make much difference. Someday or other, under some tree, a hand will be placed on your shoulder. Then you will find yourself meeting the one you were running away from. That day you will feel frightened. In fact, you were only running toward that which you were trying to run away from. There is no way to escape death.

No matter where we may run, we only run toward death. The very running takes us to death. Whoever runs, will reach death. It is possible that a poor man may run very slowly. He does not have a horse, so he will have to run without a horse. A rich man may run with a bigger horse and the emperors may run with a fast horse. But eventually the people without horses will reach the same place – death – as the people with horses have reached. Then what is the solution? What is the path? What can be done?

The first thing I would like to tell you is that whatever you are doing will simply take you to death. This is nothing to be surprised about. Even in the past, whatever people have been doing has taken them to death. Very few people have escaped death. What they have done to transcend death you are not doing at all. Whatever preparations you are making, they are simply preparations for death. You may find this pleasant or unpleasant, but the truth is: all our preparations are nothing but preparation for death. In these three days, I would like to tell you what the signs of preparing for death are, and how preparations for life can be made.

It is possible that deep down you have the desire to know and discover life. In reality, there is not a single person who does not have the desire to find life. And yet there is some kind of madness, some deep madness which has afflicted the whole of humanity. As soon as a newborn child comes into the world, he is initiated into the same madness. Perhaps it is natural. If the child does not get initiated into it, he will appear mad to us. The day Mahavira left home, people thought him mad. The day Buddha ran away from home, he too was considered mad, and Christ was also thought to be madman. The whole of mankind is insane, so whenever a sane man is born, he is considered mad.

Perhaps you will understand my point better if I tell you a short story…

It happened that one day early in the morning an old woman came and threw something into the village well and announced that whoever drank water from that well would become mad. There were only two wells in the village. One was in the village itself and the other was in the king’s palace. By evening, the whole village went mad as they had no choice but to drink water from their well. Only three people – the king, the queen, and the prime minister – did not drink the water from the village well, so they were saved from going mad.

A rumor spread around the village: it appears that the king has gone mad. And this is quite natural – when the whole village has gone mad, someone who is not mad will definitely appear mad to everyone else. This is simple arithmetic. So everyone in the village became very worried and disturbed. Among them, the ones who