The Three Steps of Enlightenment – Osho

I am seeing that within the experience of pleasure there arises a deep longing to know something which is more total. Pleasure-pain, happiness-sadness, seem to be one, and I feel there must be something which transcends them. Is my longing for what you call bliss?

Yes. Pleasure and pain are not two things; happiness and sadness – just two sides of the same coin. That’s why every happiness can turn into sadness, every pleasure can turn into pain. […]

All polar opposites are parts of each other. They are complementary and can change into each other. So, your feeling is perfectly right: there is something beyond the polarities. And that’s what I call enlightenment.

Enlightenment has no polar opposite to it.

Unenlightenment is not the polar opposite of enlightenment; it is only the absence of enlightenment.

It is just like darkness and light. You ordinarily think they are opposites, but that is not true. Darkness simply does not exist; it is only the absence of light.

If darkness has its own existence, then first you will have to bring the light in the room and then push the darkness out of the room; but it has no existence. The moment you bring the light in, the darkness is not found.

Enlightenment is the light of your innermost core. Once you experience it, all darkness in your life disappears.

Blissfulness also has no opposite to it.

Truth also has no opposite to it.

Anything that has not any opposite to it, is part of the experience of enlightenment. It is beyond the polarities, far away from the polarities. You cannot change it into anything else. It is what it is.

Now, don’t just go on longing for it because just longing will not help. Start the first step toward it, and the first step automatically leads you to the second step, the third step, and you are home.

I call these three steps the whole science of meditation.

The first step is, become aware of your body.

See it as if it is covering you like clothes. It is around you, but it is not you. That is the first step: to disidentify yourself with the body.

The second step is to disidentify with your mind.

Your thoughts are not you. There is a constant traffic. On the screen of the mind so many thoughts are moving, but you are not one of them. You are a witness, you are outside; you are seeing those thoughts moving.

Anything that you can see is not you. That should be the criterion: anything you can witness is not you. You are the witness.

And the third step is witnessing, watching your feelings, your moods.

These three steps, and you are home.

Then there is only the witness, and nothing to be witnessed.

You are there in your total glory, luminosity, and all around you there is pure nothingness. This is the state of the awakened one, the enlightened one.

So when you do your gachchhamis and you say, “I go to the feet of the Awakened One, His commune, His truth,” it is not a prayer, it is simply a reminder to yourself. And you are not going to the feet of anyone else: you are going to your own awakened self.

If your master is awakened, he simply represents you. He is just a mirror in which you can see yourself.

But you are going toward the discovery of the awakened one within yourself. And when the disciple finds the master within himself, the journey is complete.

-Osho

From From Death to Deathlessness, Discourse #36, Q4

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