“You have lived in a certain way up to now – don’t you want to live in a different way? You have thought in a certain way up to now – don’t you want some new glimpses in your being? Then be alert and don’t listen to the mind. Mind is your past constantly trying to control your present and your future. It is the dead past which goes on controlling the alive present. Just become alert about it.

“But what is the way? How does the mind go on doing it? The mind does it with this method: it says, “If you don’t listen to me, you will not be as efficient as I am.” If you do an old thing you can be more efficient because you have done it before. If you do a new thing you cannot be efficient. The mind goes on talking like an economist, an efficiency expert; it goes on saying, ‘This is easier to do. Why do it the hard way? This is the way of least resistance.’

“Remember, whenever you have two things, two alternatives, choose the new one. Choose the harder, choose the one in which more awareness will be needed. At the cost of efficiency always choose awareness, and you will create the situation in which meditation will become possible. These are all just situations. Meditation will happen – I am not saying that just by doing them you will get to meditation, but they will be helpful. They will create the necessary situation in you, without which meditation cannot happen.

“Be less efficient but more creative. Let that be the motive. Don’t be bothered too much about utilitarian ends. Rather, constantly remember that you are not here in life to become a commodity. You are not here to become a utility, that is below dignity. Your are not here just to become more and more efficient. You are here to become more and more alive; you are here to become more and more intelligent; you are here to become more and more happy, ecstatically happy. But that is totally different from the ways of the mind.”

Osho, Ancient Music in the Pines, Talk #7

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