The Independent Mind

Day in day out, everyone’s mind is full of thoughts. But where do they come from? Are they independent thoughts or are they concepts and doctrines borrowed from other people? Have they been assimilated from parents or teachers? From religious or political leaders? In this series of talks given at a meditation camp, Osho describes what ‘thinking’ really means: the freedom to live an independent life, consciously, and with trust in one’s own experience. ‘A person who accumulates thoughts will become a scholar. A person who gives birth to thinking – gives birth to the ability to think, asks questions and challenges his consciousness and then waits for the answer – in his life, knowing is born. It is not through thoughts that you attain knowing but through thinking. Not by collecting thoughts, but by giving birth to thinking’ Osho ‘what I mean by the thinking state is that you should have eyes, what I mean is the ability to think on your own. But I don’t mean a crowd of thoughts. We all have a crowd of thoughts within us, but we don’t have thinking within us. So many thoughts go on moving within us, but the power of thinking has not been awakened’ Osho.