Osho,
You said that desires move between the dead past and the imaginary future.
Please explain how and why this dead past proves so dynamic and powerful that it compels a person to flow into the process of endless desire.
How can one be free from this dynamic past, the unconscious and the collective unconscious?

“The past is not dynamic at all: it is totally dead. But still it has a weight – a dead weight. That dead weight works. It is not dynamic at all. Why the dead weight works has to be understood.

The past is so forceful because it is the known, the experienced, and mind always feels fearful of the unknown, the unexperienced.

“How can you desire the unknown? You cannot desire the unknown. Only the known can be desired, so desires are always repetitious. They repeat, they are circular. You always move in the same pattern, in the same circle. The mind becomes just a groove of repetitions, and the more you repeat a particular thing the more weighty it becomes, because the groove goes deep.

“So the past is important not because it is dynamic; it forces you to do something and to desire not because it is forceful, powerful, alive, but only because it is a dead groove. The past has been repeated so many times, that to repeat it has become easy and automatic. The more you repeat a particular thing, the more easy and convenient it becomes. The basic convenience is this: that if you are repeating a thing, you need not be aware.

Awareness is the most inconvenient thing. If you are repeating a particular thing, then you need not be aware.

“You can be just deeply asleep and the thing can be repeated automatically, mechanically. So it is convenient to repeat the past because you need not be aware. You can go on sleeping and the mind will repeat itself.

“That’s why those who say that desirelessness is the state of bliss, also say that desirelessness is synonymous with awareness. You cannot be desireless unless you are totally aware. Or, if you are aware, you will find that you are desireless, because desires can have a repetitive force upon the mind only when you are not aware.

So the more asleep the mind is, the more repetitive and mechanical.

“The past has the grip only because it is a repetition and because it is the known. How can you desire the unknown?

“For the unknown there can be no desire; the unknown is inconceivable. That’s why, even when we begin to desire God, we are not desiring the unknown. By “God” we must mean something which is known. So go deep: what do you mean by “God”? – particularly your God. What do you mean by it? You will find under the garb of “God” something known, something experienced.

“It may be eternal pleasure. So the so-called religious persons go on saying, “Why are you wasting your life in desires which are momentary? Come to us. Here is the fulfillment. Here is the possibility to achieve permanent, eternal pleasure.” The language can be understood. You know the momentary pleasure, so you can desire permanent pleasure – but under the garb of “God” there is pleasure.

“You may be seeking God only because you are fearful of death. Then, under the garb of “God,” you are really asking for immortality, to not ever die, an eternal life. You know this life – that is your experience – now you want to make it eternal. So whenever we talk about God, the divine, liberation, moksha, don’t be deceived by the words because the words may be hiding something totally different – and they are hiding, because how can you desire the unknown? How can you conceive of it? How can you ask for it?

“Really, the phenomenon is quite different.

When you are not in desire the unknown comes to you – you cannot desire it.

“When you are desireless the unknown comes to you. You cannot desire it. The state of desirelessness is the opening for the unknown to come. You cannot desire it because the very desire will become the hindrance.

“So mind goes on repeating; it is a mechanical thing. So the dynamism is not in the mind – mind is just a dead, mechanical thing – the dynamism is in your consciousness, and if your consciousness is identified with the mind then the dead mind becomes dynamic.

The dynamism belongs to your energy, it is not part of your mind. You are the dynamism behind it.

“If you are identified with the mind, if you think that you are the mind, then the mind begins to be dynamic. If you are not identified with the mind, then the mind is just dead – just a dead weight, just a mechanical accumulation.

“It is a long accumulation – millennia of evolution, many, many, many lives are accumulated there. It is not only that your mind belongs to this life, it belongs to life as such. It has evolved, so it has deep grooves. It is not only that you fall in love: your father and mother have fallen in love, their fathers and their mothers, and theirs and theirs – they have all fallen in love.

The mind has a deep groove of falling in love, so when you fall in love don’t be deceived that you are falling in love.

“The whole humanity is behind you; the whole humanity has made the groove. It is in your bones, it is in your cells, it is in your very metabolism. Every cell has a sex part in it, and every cell has a groove, and every cell has a mind, memory – long memories, beginningless memories. So if you are identified with this mind it becomes a force – a dynamic force.

You give the energy; but the dead machine begins to move, you pedal it.

So remember: energy belongs to you, dynamism belongs to you.

“Mind is a mechanical thing produced by millennia of evolution, but it has deep grooves, and if you are identified then you will have to flow through those grooves. Then there is no escape.

So the first thing is how not to identify, how to remember constantly that mind is one thing and you are something else.

“It is difficult, it is arduous, but it is possible. It is not impossible. If you once have even a moment’s glimpse of unidentified existence, then you will never be the same again. Once you come to know that mind is not the force: “I am the force, the vitality comes from me,” if even for a single moment you have the glimpse of your mastery, then mind will never be master again. Only then can you move into the unknown.

Mind cannot move into the unknown: it is produced by the known.

“It is a product of the known, so it cannot move into the unknown. That’s why mind can never know what truth is, what the divine is. Mind can never know what freedom is, mind can never know what life is, because intrinsically mind is dead. It is dead; dust accumulated through centuries and centuries – just dust, memory dust.

“It seems that mind forces you. It doesn’t force you really, it only gives you the easiest grooves. It supplies you with only the repeated, routine tracks and you fall victim to convenience, because to break a new route and to create a new track and to move in a new groove is very difficult and inconvenient. That is what is meant by tapa – austerity. If you begin to move in some new grooves which are created not by the mind but created by consciousness, then you are in tapascharya – in austerity. It is arduous….

If you don’t cooperate the mind falls dead, because it is your cooperation which gives it dynamism, energy.

“It is your energy, but you only become aware when it is used by the mind – don’t give it, and the mind will just fall down as if without a backbone, just a dead snake with no life. It will be there, and for the first time you will become aware of a certain energy in you which doesn’t belong to the mind but belongs to you.

“This energy is pure energy, and with this energy one can move into the unknown. In fact, this energy moves into the unknown if it is not associated with the mind. If it is associated with the mind, then it moves into the known. If it moves into the known, then it takes the shape of desire. If it moves into the unknown, then it takes the shape of desirelessness.

Then there is sheer movement – a play of energy, a sheer dance of energy, an overflowing energy moving into the unknown.

“Mind can only supply the known, and if you can be detached from your mind, this energy will have to move, because it can-not remain static. That is what is meant by energy: it has to move! Movement is its very life. Movement is not a quality of energy, movement is the very life. It is not that energy cannot be without movement – no. It is the very life, intrinsic.

“Energy means movement, so it moves. If mind supplies it with grooves, then it moves into the grooves. If there is no supply of grooves and if you have just put off the mind, then too it moves, but now the movement is into the uncharted.

This movement is the play, the leela, this movement is creative, this movement is spiritual, and it is desireless.

“It is not because there is some desire that you move. It is because you cannot do anything else but move: you are energy and movement. So see the difference.

“When mind works, it works as a dead weight, a mechanical weight, through the past. It pushes you towards the future.…Because the past is pushing towards the future, the past again projects its own desires.

So first understand the repetitiveness of desires.

“There are not so many desires. Really, there are very few, you go on repeating them. Just count how many desires you have. They are not many – very few. You will not even be able to find enough to count on your fingers. How many desires do you have? Very few! Really, if you look deeply, you may even find that there is only one desire. There are modifications of it, but really only one desire, and the same desire is being repeated continuously. Life after life it is being repeated. You go on repeating and then it begins to seem, it begins to appear, that you are helpless, that the wheel is moving and you cannot do anything. It is not so. You are helpless only because you have forgotten totally that the energy by which the wheel is moving is given by you.

“The future is just a repetition because of the past. It is the projected past. You desire the same thing again, and you go on again and again.

That’s why I said that past and future are parts of mind, not parts of time. Time is just here and now, the present.

“If mind is not working, then energy will be here and now, in the moment. lt will move because it is energy, but now the movement will be into the unknown. The “known” is not there at all. Mind is not, so the known is not.

“Someone asked Hui-Hai, “How did you achieve? How did you attain?”

“Hui-Hai said, “When I became a no-mind then I achieved, then I attained.”

“We are minds. That means, tethered to the past. If we can become no-minds, that means untethered to the past. Then the moment is free, fresh, and energy moves – not for something but because it is energy.

Remember the difference exactly: energy moves not for something; it moves because it is energy.

“A river is moving; ordinarily we think it is moving for the sea. How can it know? It is not moving for the sea, it is moving because it is energy. Ultimately, the sea happens to be there; that is another thing. So when you move into the unknown, ultimately you reach to the divine – it happens to be there. If your movement is pure, you reach it.

“The river goes on moving without knowing, without any map. The past cannot supply the map because the river is not going to move on the past tracks again, so every step is into the unknown and where it is going there is no way to know. It is not moving because of any desire, it is not moving for something. The future is unknown – just unknown, dark. It moves. Why does it move? It moves because it is energy.

“A seed is moving, a tree is growing, stars are moving. Why do they move? Have they to reach somewhere? – no. They move because they are energy; pure energy is moving. Because pure energy cannot do anything else, it moves. So when you become just pure energy – not mind, but no-mind energy – you move; and then every step is just into the unknown.

Then life becomes a bliss, it becomes ecstatic, because the old is never repeated again.

“Never again will the morning be the same, never again this moment. Now it is a sensation, a thrill every time.”

END

Excerpted and abridged from: Osho, The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol. 1, Talk #4 – Desire: The Link with Life

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