When the body dies, the mind continues

Beloved Osho,

Also, if it is not of the physical brain, then is this why it is a waste of time to attempt to end your suffering by putting a bullet through your brain?

Prem Sakino, the question that you have asked implies almost the whole psychology of man. In one way, man is divided into the body, the physiology, and the mind, the psychology. The brain is part of the body; mind is the psychology – another name of psychology. They both belong to something else – a deeper and higher consciousness, a universal consciousness. But the state of the mind is very complex; it is almost like a bridge between the soul, the universal, and the body, the individual.

When the body dies the mind continues, as a wavelength of memories, with the conscious soul. It will enter into new bodies; it will gather more experiences, sufferings, joys. And through many lives, mind goes on collecting. Each body allows it to have sufferings or blessings – but slowly slowly, if it goes again and again into pain, misery, agony, it becomes habitual for the mind that whichever body it may have, it will fall into painful experiences.

The mind also dies one day.

Body dies many times; mind dies only once.

The day mind dies, you enter into the world of immortality, the universal. That’s what we call enlightenment.

Until the mind dies, it remains the master; it does not accept being a slave. The moment your innermost being asserts, that very assertion becomes the death of the mind. Hence, meditation is defined as no-mind.

It does not mean that the mind is not there; it simply means the mastery of the mind is no longer there. It can still be used as a vehicle, just like a flute, but the song is not of the flute. And the flute cannot sing on its own – the flute is only a passage; it gives way.

A man of no-mind also uses the mind when he speaks, but just like the song of the flute.

One of the most cherished books of Hindus, Shrimad Bhagavadgita, is very strange in the sense that it is called “the song of the divine.” Just its title is so significant; from the very title it means that the words are used not by the mind but by someone who has no mind.

In the East we never developed any psychology. This is one of the most important differences that has grown between East and West. In the East we have developed techniques and methods to go beyond mind; in the West the philosopher, the thinker, has become too much involved in the mechanics of the mind: what is mind?

The mind
also dies
one day.

It is so surprising that for ten thousand years in the East, which has been continuously concerned with the inner search, nobody has bothered about what mind is. If you can drop it, drop it, because all that is real and authentic and true is beyond it. Why waste time with something which is ephemeral?

But the whole of Western psychology is concerned with the ephemeral. The psychologist is concerned with dreams. It is not just symbolic – he is actually concerned with a bigger dream called the mind. And by trying to look into dreams, the psychologist is trying to figure out the functioning of the mind.

Why does he have to go to the dreams? Why can he not rely upon your waking hours?

Your waking hours are fake. You say things which you don’t mean. Perhaps you don’t intend to deceive anyone, but your very upbringing is such that you are bound to deceive. Your every gesture is political, is diplomatic. You are trying to influence the other person, you are trying to convert the other person. You are trying, in short, to exploit the other person’s gullibility. You are not saying what is true, you are saying what people want to hear.

In each church, in each temple, in each synagogue, all the sermons are simply what people want to hear. They are opium for the people, they are consolations for people. People are in misery, people are in suffering, but this suffering humanity becomes a great marketplace for those who can exploit – in the name of compassion, in the name of God.

They don’t remove your suffering – they can’t remove it, it is beyond their power. But they can console you. They can make you feel at ease with your agony; they can give you a dose of opium so that you can go on living with all the suffering, all the pain, without even bothering about it, without even thinking about it.

Hence, when you say something, it is not reliable. It may be true, it may not be true. The psychologist has to go into your dreams because your dreams have not been polluted by the priests, by the politicians, by the educationists.

They are trying.

…watch whatever
you say or do: is it
authentically yours?

They are developing in the Soviet Union and in America both, techniques for teaching people while they are asleep. Once those techniques are refined, man will lose all freedom. Anyway, he is not free – freedom is only a beautiful word, corresponding to no reality. But a small freedom is there: you can dream your dream without any fear of the neighbours, without any fear of the government, without any fear of anybody – the parents, the teachers, the vested interests.

Dreaming is the only freedom. It is such a sad statement that I am making, that you have only dreams where you are free. Otherwise, you are not free; your freedom is just a show. Everybody is in chains, but the chains are invisible.

The psychologist has to enter into your dreams so that he can find out who you are. On the surface you are a celibate, a Catholic monk. But do you think in the dreams also you are a Catholic and a celibate and a monk? Most probably you are just the opposite of what you are pretending to be when you are awake. Your whole wakefulness has been so polluted, so dominated, so conditioned by others that you don’t even know that what you are saying is not your own voice. It may be Voice of America or it may be voice of anybody else, but it is not your voice.

Sometimes, watch whatever you say or do: is it authentically yours? Or has somebody put it in your mind just like things are fed to a computer? – your mother, your father… they were all well-wishers but ignorant, utterly ignorant as far as self-knowledge is concerned. They have made you Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans and communists. And they have created a world which is, as far as consciousness is concerned, absolutely contaminated, divided, a thousand and one discriminations.

But it is only a thin layer. Underneath this thin layer is a vast unconscious. This unconscious is all that has been repressed and not allowed expression.

Everybody can remember hearing the parents say, “Don’t say that, never say that! It is against civilization, culture; it is against respectability, honour. Never mention it.” And slowly slowly, when again and again it is said, you start pressing it deeper into your being. That which has been repressed in you is your unconscious.

A man like Gautam Buddha has no unconscious. A man who is fully awakened is simply pure consciousness. He does not dream, there is no need for him to dream. He is living his life with all its dangers, risks, the way he wants to live. He is not in any way following anybody against himself.

He is not a hypocrite, a pretender, an actor, repeating like a parrot either what he has been told by religions or by politicians or by other vested interests: “You have to be like this and you have to be like that.” Everything… how to sit, how to stand up, how to walk. So many chains and so many locks on your mouth that you cannot say a single word that arises within you, not a single flower that blossoms in your consciousness.

This repressed part of your being creates the unconscious.

You are asking, “What exactly is this unconscious mind which is also called the dark night of the soul?” It is your repressed mind, centuries old, of many lives. Each time you change the body, your unconscious mind becomes bigger because more repressions are added to it.

You will be surprised that you are not at all aware of what is contained within you, in your own house. […]

You are asking, “Is it something belonging to the physical monkey brain?” Ordinarily yes. Ordinarily your mind belongs to your body because it is nothing but the functioning of your brain, which is part of the body. But the whole effort of meditation is to take it away from the body, to take it away from the brain, purify it from all that gives it limitations – of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, of man, of woman, of all kinds of inferiorities, superiorities. To take it away from all that towards nothingness, towards a silence, towards a peace that passeth understanding… then it is not part of the brain; then it becomes part of the universal consciousness.

That’s what you are saying: “Or is it something of the universal mind?” Ordinarily, no. Extraordinarily, yes.

You are saying, “… which I am assuming is my own higher mind.” Yes, it is your own higher mind, but there is no you. It is simply pure awareness with no ‘I’ and with no ‘you’ – just a mirror, reflecting.

And finally, you are asking, “If it is not of the physical brain, then is this why it is a waste of time to attempt to end your suffering by putting a bullet through your brain?”

Prem Sakino, it is not only a waste of time putting a bullet through your brain, it is again creating more unconsciousness. By suicide, nobody can become enlightened. By suicide, one is born again more deeply rooted in agony. The agony of suicide follows into the next life, the following life.

So it is certainly a waste of a bullet, and immensely harmful to your future life.

If it were so simple to become enlightened by putting a bullet in the brain, there would have been millions of enlightened people. But enlightenment has to be earned. It has to be deserved.

It is a strange phenomenon because in a sense, it is already yours, and in a sense you have to find it. It is hidden inside your being.

No bullet can reach there, but you can reach.

You can reach just by being silent and more silent. As the silence deepens, you are coming closer and closer to a light which is your ultimate source of life.

Yes, you will be burned; as an individual entity you will be no more. But as a universal being, as a whole cosmos, you will be.

And that is the only blissful state. Other than that, you never know what bliss is. It is not pleasure; pleasure is not even something like a faraway cousin. You cannot understand bliss by measuring it in terms of pleasure. Pleasure is almost like scratching: it feels good, but after a while it hurts. Because you have scratched too much, blood starts coming. What you call pleasure is nothing but scratching.

Blissfulness has nothing to do with you; blissfulness is your very nature. You simply relax into yourself, to the deepest rock bottom of your being…

And you are light and you are truth, and you are beauty and you are love, and you are all that one can desire. The glory, the splendour of the whole existence is yours.

But you are not there.

Osho, YAHOO: The Mystic Rose, Ch 19, Q 1