I Find It Difficult to Work and Meditate Each Day. It Is Easier to Work a Lot, Then Spend Some Time Meditating.

“You don’t understand the mechanism. In fact, one should continuously change, because the brain has many centers. For example, if you do mathematics, then a certain part of the brain functions and the other parts rest. Then you read poetry: then that part that was functioning in mathematics rests and the other part starts functioning.

That’s why in universities and the schools we change periods — every 40 minutes, 45 minutes — because each center of the brain has a capacity to function for 40 minutes.

“Then it feels tired and needs a rest, and the best rest is to change the work so that some other center starts working and one relaxes. So continuous change is very very good; it enriches you.

“I understand the difficulty: you do a thing and the mind becomes obsessed, you go mad after it. But that’s bad; one should not become so possessed. While doing it, become absorbed, but always remain a master; otherwise, you will become a slave. And slavery is not good. Even slavery to meditation is not good. If you can’t stop doing a certain thing, or you only stop very reluctantly, that simply shows that you don’t know how to change the gears of the mind.

“So do one thing… Whenever you are doing something…for example, you are meditating and now you want to do something else.

After you stop meditating, for 5 minutes simply exhale deeply, as possible. Then let the body inhale, don’t you inhale. Have a feeling that you are throwing out everything that was in the mind and in the body and in the system.

“Do this for just 5 minutes, then start doing some other work, and immediately you will feel you have changed.

“You need the neutral gear for 5 minutes. If you change gear in a car, the gear has to first move to neutral — even if just for a single moment, but it has to move. The more efficient the driver, the faster he can move from neutral. So give 5 minutes to the neutral gear. You are not working at anything…just breathing, just being. Then by and by you go on dropping: after one month, 4 minutes; after 2 months, 3 minutes. Then by and by there will come a point where just one exhalation is enough and you are finished with the work — closed, a full stop — and then you start other work.”

To read the complete talk and see all available media formats:
Osho, Hammer on the Rock, Talk #3 – Be Madly in Love with Life