Rajneesh Quotes

When there is no mind, you are in yoga; when there is mind you are not in yoga. So you may do all the postures, but if the mind goes on functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in yoga. Yoga is the state of no-mind. If you can be without the mind without doing any posture, you have become a perfect yogi. It has happened to many without doing any postures, and it has not happened to many who have been doing postures for many lives.

The meditation I am talking about is not a meditation on something. If you light a lamp and remove all the objects surrounding it, the lamp will still go on giving light. In the same way, if you remove all objects from your consciousness, all thoughts, all imagination, what will happen? – only consciousness will remain.

Meditation stops the sound-loving mind.

Instead of 'watching the thinker,' you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

Leave your thoughtlessness behind you then you may begin to understand. Clear the emptiness around you with the waving of your hand.

Mind is the absence of meditation. The moment meditation arises in you, mind is found nowhere.

Whenever you step out of the noise of thinking, that is meditation, and a different state of consciousness arises.

Another way to look at meditation is to view thinking itself as a waterfall, a cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness, we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantage point in a cave or depression in the rock behind a waterfall. We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent.

The thinking mind can be so noisy that it cannot relate to stillness. It doesn't even recognize it and certainly can't remember it.

Mind only thinks, meditation lives.

You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present.

Meditation means how to be not a mind. How to be not a mind! Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness. It doesn't mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.

Mind is madness. Only when you go beyond the mind, there will be meditation.

I listen to music a lot, if I need to get into a particular space. I do stretching and breathing, and take time to mostly be quiet and find the stillness. I think that's important.

Mindfulness is a quality that's always there. It's an illusion that there's a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you're either mindful or you're not.

Sit in meditation ! But do not think ! Look only at your mind ! You will see thoughts coming into it ! Before they can enter, throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence.

It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.

Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to think and without trying to stop it. That is practice.

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.

Sometimes it's better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all. Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

We cannot empty the mind by thinking. Only by observation.

If you are in a state of intense presence you are free of thought, yet highly alert. If your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in, the mental noise returns, stillness is lost, you're back in time.

Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world.

From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.

The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts have their root in the I-thought. Whoever investigates the True "I" enjoys the stillness of bliss.