Jean-Paul
Sartre wrote an autobiography. He called it Words. The
name is very meaningful. It is the autobiography of every man-words
and words and words. You are filled with words, and this process of
words continues the whole day, even in the mind. When you are
sleeping, you are still filled with words, thoughts. The mind is
just an accumulation of words, and everyone is too much obsessed with the
mind. That is why self-knowledge becomes more and more impossible.
The self is beyond the words, or beyond the words, or behind the words, or
below the words, or above the words, but never in the words. You
exist not in the mind, but just below the mind, behind the mind, above the
mind-never in the mind. You are focused in the mind, but you are not
there. Standing out, you are focused in the mind. Because of
this constant focusing, you have become identified with the mind.
You think you are the mind, this is the only problem, the basic problem,
and unless you are aware that you are not the mind, nothing meaningful can
happen to you. You will live in misery. This identification is
the misery. It is as if one is identified with a shadow. Then
the whole life becomes false. Your whole life is false, and the
basic error that you are identified with the mind. You think you are the mind: this is the
ignorance. You can develop your mind, but in that way ignorance will
not be dissolved. You can become very intelligent, you can become
very talented, you may even become a genius. But if the
identification with the mind is there, you remain basically mediocre
because you remain identified with a false
shadow.
The Book of Secrets - Osho