Osho Sayings on Witnessing

Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises. Finally, eventually, one day, you become master. Then when you want to think, you think; if thought is needed, you use it; if thought is not needed, you allow it to rest. Not that mind is simply no more there: mind is there, but you can use it or not use it. Now it is your decision. Just like legs: if you want to run you use them; if you don't want to run you simply rest -- legs are there. In the same way, mind is always there.

When I am talking to you I am using the mind -- there is no other way to talk. When I am answering your question I am using the mind -- there is no other way. I have to respond and relate, and mind is a beautiful mechanism. When I am not talking to you and I am alone, there is no mind -- because it is a medium to relate through. Sitting alone it is not needed.

You have not given it a rest; hence, the mind becomes mediocre. Continuously used, tired, it goes on and on and on. Day it works; night it works. In the day you think; in the night you dream. Day in, day out, it goes on working. If you live for seventy or eighty years it will be continuously working.
Meditation is not an effort against the mind. It is a way of understanding the mind. It is a very loving way of witnessing the mind -- but, of course, one has to be very patient. This mind that you are carrying in your head has arisen over centuries, millennia. Your small mind carries the whole experience of humanity -- and not only of humanity: of animals, of birds, of plants, of rocks. You have passed through all those experiences. All that has happened up to now has happened in you also. In a very small nutshell, you carry the whole experience of existence. That's what your mind is. In fact, to say it is yours is not right: it is collective; it belongs to us all.
REMEMBER remain alert that you don t get too much attached to the accidental -- and all is accidental except your consciousness. Except your awareness, all is accidental. Pain and pleasure, success and failure, fame and defamation -- all is accidental. Only your witnessing consciousness is essential. Stick to it! Get more and more rooted in it. And don't spread your attachment to worldly things.

I don't mean leave them. I don't mean leave your house, leave your wife, leave your children -- but remember that it is just an accident that you are together. It is not going to be an eternal state. It has a beginning; it will have an end. Remember that you were happy even before it began; and you will be happy when it has ended. If you can carry this touchstone, you can always judge what is accidental and what is essential. That which is always is truth. That which is momentary is untrue.
That true renunciation comes through witnessing; it is not indifference. Indifference will make you alienated, being alienated you will feel meaningless, joyless, accidental. Feeling accidental, the desire to commit suicide will arise, is bound to arise. Why go on living a meaningless life? Why go on repeating the same rut, the same routine, every day? If there is no meaning, why not end it all, why not be finished with it all?
This self-remembering Buddha calls sammasati -- right mindfulness. Krishnamurti calls it 'choiceless awareness', the Upanishads call it 'witnessing', Gurdjieff calls it 'self-remembering', but they all mean the same. But it does not mean that you have to become indifferent; if you become indifferent you lose the opportunity to self-remember.
Witnessing is the way. Do whatsoever you are doing but remain a witness. Watch it, observe it, continue to remember yourself. Walking on the road, remember that there is a point inside you which is not walking, which has never walked, which cannot walk with you. It has no legs to walk. That point is your center. Through that center you will come to know the reality.
Becoming more alert will make you conscious of the fact that there is only one thing you have got that you can call yours and that is witnessing. Everything else belongs to the universe; only witnessing belongs to you. But when you become aware of witnessing, even the idea of being I is dissolved. That too does not belong to you. That was part of darkness, part of the clouds that had gathered around you. In the clear light, when the sky is open and the clouds have disappeared and the sun is bright, there is no possibility of any idea of being I. Then simply witnessing is; nothing belongs to you. That witnessing is the goal of the journey.
Only one thing remains and that is your witnessing. Catch hold of it, don't lose track of it. It will be difficult to catch hold of it; again and again you will lose track, but again and again remind yourself to catch hold of it. Many times you will miss the goal, many times you will have glimpses. But by and by, more and more possibility will open. And if you can remain alert even for a few minutes together, a new man will be born unto you. You will be totally different. The old will be gone, and then you will not be worried with past, or future, or present. You will simply live in a different dimension, the dimension of eternity -- where nothing passes, nothing is born, nothing dies, everything remains.
Watch anything in the mind, and you are cut off. Watching is a sword. If a thought is moving in your mind, just watch it -- and suddenly you will see the thought is there, you are here, and there is no bridge left. Don't watch, and you become identified with the thought, you become it; watch, and you are not it. Mind possesses you because you have forgotten how to watch. Learn it.

Just looking at a roseflower, watch it; or at the stars, or the people passing on the road, sit by the side and watch. And then slowly slowly close your eyes and see the inner traffic moving -- thousands of thoughts, desires, dreams, passing by. It is always rush hour there. Just watch as somebody watches a river flowing by, sitting on the bank.Just watch -- and watching, you will become aware that you are not it.

Mind is being identified with it. No-mind is being disidentified with it. Don't be a mind, because in fact you are not a mind. Then who are you? You are consciousness. You are that watchfulness, you are witnessing, you are that pure observation, that mirrorlike quality that reflects everything but never becomes identified with anything.
Witnessing is a happening, a by-product -- a by-product of being total in any moment, in any situation, in any experience. Totality is the key: out of totality arises the benediction of Witnessing.
Just remember one thing, just the one thing that is the only quality of the buddha -- witnessing. Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are not the other subtle bodies, layer upon layer. You are only a witness, nothing else. The moment you are simply a witness, you are a buddha. This buddha has been hiding deep within you for millions of lives.

He has to be brought out. He has to change your whole life. He has to bring his grace to your gestures, beauty to your eyes, agelessness to your being, to your feeling. But first make sure that you are simply a witness.

Being simply a witness you are at the highest peak of consciousness, and when you are at the highest peak of consciousness, from there you can look at the deepest depth of your being -- the very abysmal depth. You have moved from a horizontal into a vertical being.

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