No-mind meditation from Osho

No-mind meditation

This text comes from page 191 of a book called 'The Everyday Meditator'

This meditation can be done alone but it is better to do it together with a group of friends. Find a place where you can make a lot of noise and where you will not be disturbed.

Try the meditation for seven days at first. That will be a good time period to experience the effects of the meditation. Then after that you can continue it or repeat it as you feel to. It is generally suggested that the Gibberish be done for 45 minutes to an hour, followed by a period of silent Witnessing for 45 minutes to an hour - but this timing is not mandatory. The Let-Go is to be done just a few minutes at the end of the meditation.

Have someone to time it and use a drum to indicate the beginning of each stage. The first part is gibberish. The word 'gibberish' comes from a Sufi mystic, Jabbar. Jabbar never spoke any language, he just uttered nonsense. Still he had thousands of disciples because what he was saying was, "Your mind is nothing but gibberish. Put it aside and you will have a taste of your own being."

To use gibberish, don't say things which are meaningful, don't use the language that you know. Use Chinese, if you don't know Chinese. Use Japanese if you don't know Japanese. Don't use German if you know German. For the first time have a freedom -- the same as all the birds have. Simply allow whatever comes to your mind without bothering about its rationality, reasonability, meaning, significance -- just the way the birds are doing. For the first part, leave language and mind aside.

Allow yourself to express whatever needs to be expressed within you. Throw everything out. The mind thinks, always, in terms of words. Gibberish helps to break up this pattern of continual verbalisation. Without suppressing your thoughts, you can throw them out - in Gibberish. Let your body likewise be expressive.

Awareness is always present - surrounded by your Gibberish, which has to be taken out. That is your poison. So first throw out all your rubbish, gibberish, insanity. Then the silence descends. Have a taste of this tremendous silence. This is what I have called the quantum leap from mind to no-mind.

Everything is allowed: sing, cry, shout, mumble, talk, whisper. But do not let empty spaces happen. If you cannot find sounds to gibber with, just say lalalala, but do not remain there doing nothing. Likewise you can let your body do what it wants: jump, lay down, sit, kick and so on.

If you do this meditation with other people, do not relate or interfere with them in any ways. Just stay with what is happening to you and don't bother about what the others are doing; they are all throwing out their garbage, if you listen you may catch it, so it is better to mind your own business.

Out of this will arise the second part, a great silence in which you have to close your eyes and freeze your body, all its movements, gather your energy within yourself. Remain here and now.

In the third part ... relax your body and let it fall without any effort, without your mind controlling. Just fall like a bag of rice. Each segment will begin with the sound of a drumbeat...