Meditation is independent of any other person; only you are to create the situation.

And naturally the conclusion will be to start with awareness, because you don't know how else to stop thoughts. It is not in your hands to stop thoughts or to stop time. Only one thing remains, and that is awareness -- that you can be more aware or less aware.

You know it. If this house is suddenly on fire, you will be more aware. You know that your awareness goes up and down. At certain moments you are more aware; at certain moments, less aware. So it is possible to create the situation of being more aware.

That's why awareness became the basis of meditation. And with awareness came the surprise that as you become aware, thoughts disappear. When you are fully aware, there are no thoughts, and suddenly time has stopped. Time can be there inside only with the movement of thoughts.

In fact time can be measured only with some movement. For example, with a watch, how are you measuring time? By the movement of the hands; otherwise, there is no way.

If everything is unmoving, you will not be able to think that anything like time exists. But you know that a car has passed, then a train is passing -- there has been a gap. In the gap...it means time. Then you hear the sound of an airplane.... This is movement -- you are finding movement around you.

Inside there is only one movement, and that is of thoughts.

When thoughts stop, suddenly time disappears, because time can be measured only through some kind of movement. That's why, if in the night you had many dreams, in the morning you will find that it was a long, long night, because so much movement happened. But if you had no dream at all, you will feel as if you have just fallen asleep, and now you are awake. The night has passed so quickly.

When you are in anxiety, in misery, in pain, time passes slowly because of your pain. You would like the pain to pass quickly, but with your expectation that the pain is not going, time is passing very slowly.

But when you are meeting a friend after years, you find hours have passed, and it seems just minutes since you met. When you are joyful, when you are miserable, it makes a difference in the speed of time immediately. But when you are neither -- just silent -- time has no way to move.

Osho