The modern mind is overloaded, and that which remains unassimilated creates neurosis. It is as if you go on eating and stuffing your body: that which is not digested by the body will prove to be poisonous. And what you eat is less important than what you hear and see. From your eyes, from your ears, from all your senses, you go on receiving a thousand and one things each moment. And there is no extra assimilation time. It is as if one were constantly sitting at the dining table, eating, eating, twenty-four hours a day.
This is the situation of the modern mind: it is overloaded; so many things are burdening it. It is not any surprise that it breaks down. There is a limit to every mechanism. And mind is one of the most subtle and delicate of mechanisms.
The world was very different in the past, obviously. About six weeks’ worth of sensory stimuli six hundred years ago is what we now get in a day. Six weeks’ worth of stimulation, information, we are getting in a single day – about forty times the pressure to learn and adapt. Modern man has to be capable of learning more than ever been before, because there is more to learn now. Modern man has to become capable of adapting to new situations every day because the world is changing so fast. It is a great challenge.
A great challenge, if accepted, will help tremendously in the expansion of consciousness. Either modern man is going to be utterly neurotic or modern man is going to be transformed by the very pressure. It depends on how you take it. One thing is certain: there is no going back. Sensory stimuli will go on increasing more and more. You will be getting more and more information and life will be changing, with faster and faster rhythms.
Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life.
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