Difficulties for Spiritual Seekers, Before and After Enlightenment – Baba Purnanand Bharati

Since the day of my enlightenment in 1979, my way of sharing with spiritual seekers has changed many times.  I have been learning from Osho, but also from you, watching what happens to you day by day.

In the first part of these 35 years I have been sharing all my energy with the seekers who were coming to me, helping them to achieve quickly a spiritual experience, a satori or a stage of enlightenment. But I learned that it is not the best way to help you. Why? The first problem is that sometimes, if you have a Satori before the purification of your unconsciousness in meditation is deep enough, you may get scared. And if you are scared, it will take time for you to have the same experience again. It is better to grow slowly but safely, step by step.

For me it happened in a different way. I had many satoris every day and I was scared, but I was completely fed up of living my life as unenlightened, my lust for life was almost exhausted. And Osho was calling me inside….

One day, with my total will power I faced the fear, and crossed the point of no return.
But for most of the seekers, it is better to go slowly into new experiences.

Hence now I am working through continuity in meditation, making sure that you develop a good understanding before high experiences happen to you. In daily meditation you are facing the fear of disappearing little by little, and slowly, slowly you are learning how to overcome it. It needs patience, you will have to go through ALL your unconscious mind with awareness. But this path is very safe, if you are ready to work honestly you will all have good results. .

And one day, you will be ready to face the point of no return, and you will cross the border that separates from eternal bliss….

The second main reason why my working with people changed in the course of the years, is that many seekers attained with me some early stage of enlightenment, but they wanted immediately to be Masters, and their spiritual growth stopped.

It is necessary to understand the great mystery of enlightenment. Enlightenment comes in three stages. Self realisation, Being realisation and Non-being realisation, also called Nirvana.

We can be Masters only in the last stage, not before. Only in the last stage we attain to the understanding of the Great Mysteries of Existence.

In the first two stages we can share our energies with other seekers, that is helpful to them, but we should not give them advice and guidelines because we don’t understand deeply what is happening to them yet.

The person who has attained to the first two stages of enlightenment will simply feel that what has happened to him will happen to everybody, more or less in the same way and with the same techniques.

But this is totally false, because every human being is unique and in his unique stage, so his spiritual path is also unique. These complex and subtle differences are comprehended only in Nirvana, the space where the Great Mysteries are attained.

So what is the right attitude to have when you meet the seekers in the two stages of enlightenment? You can meditate with them, their spiritual presence is helpful.
But don’t listen to them, their understanding of your inner world is still very limited.

And remember, they can be very supporting to your meditation but you cannot disappear with them, because they are not yet disappeared themselves. Disappearing happens in Nirvana.

But what happened, many seekers attained with me the first two stages of enlightenment, and they started working with other seekers as they were already Masters. That’s not true, the Master appear only after Nirvana.

Their mistake is natural, after many lives of suffering and darkness, suddenly now they feel blissful, and vast as they are an infinite consciousness …. It is a natural mistake, it happens to everybody in the beginning.

At this point, only if you feel deep gratitude to your Master, if you remain trusting and surrendering to him you will proceed to the final and complete enlightenment.

That is what happened to me. I remained even more trusting and surrendering to Osho than before, my gratitude became immense! In this way Osho could guide me all the way to the final stage.
I wrote a letter to Osho, saying:

“I am nothing, you are nothing , and nothing is nothing ! What is happening now ?”
Osho answered: “Remain open and available, and many more mysteries will be shown unto you…”

And that’s what happened. Even now after 35 years I am still understanding more and more mysteries every day. But I am watching the seekers that have attained with me to some stage of superconsciousness, they are not experiencing trust and openness.

The reason is that their unconscious was not fully clean when their enlightenment happened, there was still some ego, to somebody greed, or lust, desire for recognition and other sicknesses. Traces of these unconscious forces are still there and influence them.

That’s why in the last years I have changed my way of working. Now my priority is to completely clean your unconscious mind before anything can happen. In long meditation camps, I spend most of my time with you sitting in silence. You will have to be very patient and trusting, I will guide you through a complete purification.

I have a commitment with you: before I dissolve in Existence, I will lead you to a very safe place inside yourself.

-Baba Purnanand Bharati