Be aware! And then see how thoughts enter in the mind, how you get identified and become one with them. And they are moving so fast, the speed is so great, because there is nothing more speedy than thought. It is not possible to create anything more speedy than thought. It takes no time to reach anywhere. It jumps from one infinity to another; space doesn't exist for it.
Thoughts are there, moving with fast speed. Because of the fast speed you cannot see two thoughts separately. Sit, close your eyes, slow down all processes of the body. Breathing slows, heartbeat slows, blood pressure slows. You slow down everything, you relax, because if everything slows, thought has to slow down, because it is a compact whole. When everything is slow, thought has to get slow.
That's why in deep sleep thought stops; because everything is so slow and thought is so speedy a thing that there comes a breaking — the process cannot continue. The man is so slow and thought is so speedy, they cannot get together. Thought disappears. In deep sleep, only for a few hours, two hours at the most in the night, thought stops, because you are completely relaxed.
RELAX AND JUST WATCH: as the thought process slows you will be able to see gaps. Between two thoughts there is an interval — in that interval is consciousness. Between two clouds there is an interval — in that interval is the blue sky.
Slow down the thought process and look in the intervals, and pay more attention to the intervals than to the clouds. Shift the attention, change the gestalt. Don't look at the figure, look at the background.
If I put a blackboard, a big blackboard the size of this wall here, and mark it with a white point and ask you what you see, ninety-nine percent the possibility is you will not see the blackboard, you will see the white dot — because we see the figure, not the background.
Such a big blackboard, but if I ask you, "What do you see there?" you will say, "I see a little white spot." Such a big blackboard is not seen and only a little white spot, which is almost invisible, is seen? Why? Because this is the fixed pattern of the mind: to look at the figure, not at the background; to look at the cloud, not at the sky; to look at the thought, not at the consciousness.
This gestalt has to be changed. Pay more attention to the background and less attention to the figure. You will be nearer reality. In meditation this has to be done continuously. The mind, because of old habit, will look at the figure. You just shift again… Look at the background.
You are here, I am here. We can look at each other in two ways. I can look at the background; in the background are the trees, plants, greenery, the sky — the vast universe is your background. Or I can look at you, you are the figure. But mind always looks at the figure.
OSHO