Osho,
When things become difficult for me I take refuge in the here and now. In the moment all is still, and it is the only way for me to stand on the razor’s edge. And yet a doubt comes in that I am escaping what is really happening: I may simply be wearing blinkers. Beloved, please help me understand which is true.

Never listen to the mind. Mind is the great deceiver. If you are feeling silent and still in the present moment, that experience is so valuable that mind has no authority to judge it. Mind is far below it.

Mind is always of the past or about the future. Either memory or imagination, it knows nothing of the present. And all that is, is in the present.

Mind is a beggar. It goes on hoping that tomorrow things will be better, that the golden age is going to come…or the golden age has passed and there is nothing in the future except darkness. These are the two possibilities for the mind to take. About the present, whatsoever it says is a lie because it has no experience of it; it has never come into the moment. By its very nature it is either in the past or in the future.

Because the mind has no experience – and cannot have any experience – of the present, don’t listen to it when it comes with any judgment concerning the present moment. And silence is of the present, and joy is of the present, and ecstasy is of the present.

Mind can only do one thing: it can create doubt. It cannot say directly, “What you are experiencing is wrong,” because that much is beyond it, but it can say, “You are escaping from the reality that is past, or the reality that is going to come; that is, future.” It can condemn you as an escapist: “You are afraid of life, that life is big enough; the present moment is too small. Life is vast. Don’t escape from life just to enjoy a momentary silence and joy and peace.” And it looks logical on the surface.

Life consists only of moments; there is no past life, there is no future life. Whenever life is, it is always in the present.

And this is the dichotomy: life is herenow, and mind is never herenow. This is one of the most important discoveries of the East, that mind is absolutely impotent as far as your subjectivity is concerned, as far as your being is concerned.

Mind is perfectly right with the objects, but the moment it comes close to life, it starts doubting even the existence of life. It starts creating philosophies that life is only a byproduct.

Materialism is an old philosophy, but one of the most dull and dead. From the charvakas in India, five thousand years past, to Karl Marx, it has repeatedly said the same thing in different languages – that life is a byproduct, it has no existence of itself. Man is just a machine, pure matter. Just a certain combination of matter creates the illusion of life and consciousness – they are epiphenomena.