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You are trying to do the impossible, that which cannot be done: you are trying to find the real through the mind.
You lose the real through the mind, you cannot find it through the mind. You have to drop the mind completely.
Yes, the way is right before your eyes — but you are not there.
First thing: mind won't help. Try to understand it: mind won't help, it is the barrier. And the second thing: your over-concern about yourself is the greatest barrier. It has been my constant observation that people who meditate miss because they are concerned too much in themselves. They are too egocentric.
They may pretend humbleness and they may even want to know how to be egoless, but they are the most egocentric people; they are only worried about themselves, they are only concerned with themselves.
To be worried about others is stupid; to be worried about oneself is even more stupid — because to be worried IS stupidity; it makes no difference about whom you are worried. And people who are worried about others, you will feel they are always more healthy.
So in the West psychoanalysts help people to think about others and drop thinking about themselves. Psychologists go on teaching people how to be extroverts and not to be introverts, because an introvert becomes ill, an introvert becomes in reality perverted. He thinks continuously about himself, he becomes enclosed.
He remains with his frustrations, worries, anxieties, anguish, depressions, anger, jealousy, hate, this and that — and he only worries. Think what type of anguish he lives in, continuously worried about things: Why am I angry? How should I become non-angry? Why do I hate? How should I transcend it? Why am I depressed? How to attain bliss? — he is continuously worried, and through this worry he creates the very same things he is worried about. It becomes a vicious circle.
Have you ever observed that whenever you want to go beyond a depression the depression deepens?
Whenever you want not to be angry you become more angry.
Whenever you are sad and you don't want to be sad any more, more sadness descends on you — have you not observed it?
It happens because of the Law of the Reverse Effect. If you are sad and you want not to be sad, what will you do? You will look at sadness, you will try to suppress it, you will be attentive to it — and attention is food.
Psychoanalysts have found a clue. That clue is not very meaningful in the end; it cannot lead you to reality, it can at the most make you NORMALLY unhealthy. It can make you adjusted — it is a sort of adjustment to the people around you.
They say: Be concerned with others' worries, help people, serve people.Rotarians, members of Lions Clubs and others, they always say: We serve. Those are the extroverts.
But you will feel that people who are in social service, those who are concerned with others and are less concerned with themselves are happier than people who are concerned too much with themselves.
Too much concern with oneself is a sort of disease. And then the deeper you move within — you are opening a Pandora's Box: many things bubble up and there seems to be no end to it. You are surrounded by your own anxieties and you go on playing with your wounds, you go on touching them again and again to see whether they are healed or not. You have become a pervert. What to do?
There seem to be only two ways: either be an extrovert — but by being an extrovert you can NEVER become a buddha, because if you are worried about others, this worrying about others may be an escape. It is. You cannot look at your own worries when you are worried about others. Your focus is others, you are in a shadow.
But how will your inner being grow this way? You will look more happy, you may look as if you are enjoying life more, but how are you going to grow? How will your inner being come to that point where it becomes light? If you are not concerned with it at all, it is not going to grow.
To be an extrovert is good in the sense that you remain healthy — you don't become a pervert. To be an introvert is dangerous. If you move wrongly, you will become a pervert and the wrong movement is that you become too concerned. Then what to do?
Treat yourself as if you also are the other; don't be too concerned.
And you Are the other. Your body is other, why not my own body also? Your mind is other, why not my own mind?
The question is only distance: your body is away from me, my body is a little closer, that's all. Your mind is there, my mind is here — the difference is of distance. But my mind is as other as your mind, and my body is as far away from me as your body.
And if this whole world is not a concern to me, why make myself a concern? Why not leave both and be neither extrovert nor introvert? — this is my message.
If you cannot follow this then it is better to follow the psychoanalysts.
Be an extrovert, be unconcerned; you will not grow but at least you will not suffer so much as an introvert suffers. But don't be an introvert and don't play with your wounds.
Don't be concerned too much. Don't be so selfish and don't be so self-centered. Look at yourself from a distance; the distance is there, you only have to try it once and you will feel it. You are also the other.
When your body is ill it is as if somebody else's body is ill: do whatsoever is needed but don't be too concerned, because that overmuch concern is a greater illness than the body's. If you have a fever go to the doctor, take the medicine, take care of the body, and that's all. Why be concerned too much?
Why create another fever — which no doctor can treat? This fever in the body can be treated, but if you become too concerned another fever is created. That fever is deeper, no doctor can help with it.And this is the problem: the body may become well soon, but the other fever may continue; and the other fever may go on continuing, and you may feel that the body is still ill.
This happens every day: the disease disappears from the body but not from the mind and the mind carries it on.
You may be creating many diseases, not because the body is ill but because the mind carries the seed. So once a disease happens the mind carries the seed and goes on projecting it again and again and again. Many diseases, ninety percent, have their origin in the mind.Too much concern about yourself is the greatest disease possible.
You cannot be happy, you cannot enjoy yourself. How can you enjoy? So many problems inside! Problems and problems and problems and nothing else! — and there seems to be no solution. What to do? You go crazy. Everybody, inside, is crazy.
You also need to become mad now and then — that's how anger happens: anger is a temporary madness. If you don't allow a leakage now and then you will gather so much you will explode, you will go nuts. But if you are continuously concerned with this you are already nuts.This has been my observation, that people who meditate, pray, seek and search for the truth are more prone to neurosis than other people.
And the reason is: they are concerned with themselves too much, too egocentric, just continuously thinking of this and that, this block, that block, this anger, that sadness, headache, backache, stomach, legs… they are continuously moving inside. They are never okay, they cannot be, because the body is a vast phenomenon and many things go on.And if nothing is happening then too they are worried: why is nothing happening? And immediately they have to create something because that has become their constant business, occupation; otherwise they feel lost. What to do? Nothing is happening!
How is it possible that nothing is happening to me? They feel their ego only when something is happening — maybe it is depression, sadness, anger, an illness, but if something is happening they are okay, they can feel themselves.
Have you seen children? They pinch themselves to feel that they are. The child remains in you — you would like to pinch and see whether you are or not.
But why go on pinching? Why be concerned with paralysis? It is more of a disease if you have to pinch your leg thirty times a day for twenty years. Count it. This is worse than paralysis! Paralysis happens once; this is happening thirty times a day for twenty years. They say a brave man dies once and cowards die millions of times — because they go on pinching and feeling whether they are dead yet or not.Your diseases help you to retain your ego.
You feel that something is happening — of course not bliss, not ecstasy, but sadness and 'Nobody is as sad as I am,' and 'Nobody is as blocked as I am,' and 'Nobody has such a migraine as I have got.' You feel superior there, everybody else is inferior. If you are concerned too much with yourself remember, you will not attain. This over-concern will enclose you, and the Way is right before your eyes. You have to open your eyes, not close them.
OSHO