What is Meditation?
Excerpt 22. Meditation Is Mastery
The society gives language; the society cannot exist without language. Human society is an outgrowth of language; there are no animal societies because they have no language. Language creates the society. Society needs language; existence doesn’t need it. Existence can be without language; society cannot be. So I am not saying that you must be without language – you will have to be with language. But this mechanism must be a mechanism which can be put on and off.
When you are a social being the mechanism must be on: the mechanism of language. Without this you cannot exist within society. But when you are with existence, the mechanism must be turned off – and you must be able to put it off, otherwise the mechanism is mad. If you cannot turn it off – and it goes on and on, and you are not capable of putting it off, then the mechanism has taken hold over you – then you have become just a slave to the mechanism, to the instrument. Mind must be used as an instrument, and not as a master. It has become the master.
Mind as master is the non-meditative state. You, the consciousness as the master, is the meditative state. So meditation is mastering the mechanism, the mind.
Osho, The Psychology of the Esoteric