purushottama

Witnessing the Monster – Osho

You have said much lately about inner silence and emptiness. After two years as your disciple, much of the time, particularly during the meditations at the ashram, my mind seems more than ever to be out of control and working like a computer gone mad. I try to be a witness to the whole absurdity, but the monster goes on and on!

Let the monster go on and on and don’t you be worried. The very worry is the problem, not the monster.

The whole world is going on and on: rivers go on flowing; clouds go on moving in the sky, birds go on chattering in the trees. Just why are you so against only the mind? Let it also go on and on – you be unconcerned.

Witnessing is not an effort. When you are unconcerned the witness arises. Be indifferent to the mind; in the climate of indifference the witness arises. The very idea that you have to stop it is wrong, that you have to still it is wrong, that you have to do something about this constant ongoing process is wrong. You are not required to do anything. If you do anything it won’t help – it will help the trouble, not you. That’s why when you meditate you feel the mind going more mad; when you don’t meditate it is not so mad. When you are meditating you are too concerned with the mind, trying your hardest to make it still. Who are you? And why should you be worried about the mind?

What is wrong with it? Allow the thoughts, let them move like clouds.

When you are indifferent, suddenly you are watching. With nothing left to do, what will you do?

You can only watch, you can only witness – and in witnessing mind stops. Not that you can stop it. Nobody has ever been able to stop the mind, because the stopper is also part of the mind. The idea of meditation is part of the mind too – the idea that if you become silent you will attain to the ultimate is also of the mind. So don’t be stupid! The mind cannot silence the mind.

Who is asking this question, you or the mind?

You are not aware of yourself at all; it’s the mind playing tricks. The only thing that can be done, and which is possible, is to be indifferent and let the mind go. When you are indifferent suddenly a distance arises between you and the mind. You still listen to it because it is knocking continuously at your doors, but now you are indifferent. Now, inside, you are not worried whether it goes on or stops, you don’t choose. You say to the mind, “If you want to go, you go on; if you want to stop, you can stop. It is none of my concern.” This unconcern is needed. In this climate of unconcern and indifference the witness arises. Suddenly you see that the mind never belonged to you; it is a computer, it is a mechanism. You are absolutely separate from it.

Drop all efforts to still it and just remain passive, looking at whatsoever is going on. Don’t give direction to the mind; don’t say, “Be like this.” Don’t be a guide to the mind and don’t be a controller.

The whole existence is going on, nothing disturbs you – why only this mind, a small computer, a small mechanism? Enjoy it if you can. If you cannot, then be indifferent. And then suddenly one day you find that something which was fast asleep within you is awakening; a new energy is coming up in you – a distance from the mind. And then by and by the mind goes on – far away, far away, far away. Then still it goes on chattering, but you know that somewhere far away, near a star it is chattering; you cannot even make sense out of it, what it is saying. And this distance goes on and on and on, and one day suddenly you cannot find where the mind has gone.

This silence is qualitatively different from a silence that you can practice. The real silence comes spontaneously; it is not something to be practiced. If you practice it you can create a false silence.

The mind is so tricky, it can give you a false notion of silence – and that too will belong to the mind.

So don’t try hard to still it. Rather, stand aside, by the side of the road, and let the traffic pass.

Just watch it, just look at it with eyes of unconcern, indifference, and the thing that you have been desiring will happen – but not through desire. Because desire will not allow you to be indifferent.

Buddha has used a word upeksha; the word means absolute indifference. And he says that you can never become meditative unless you have attained to upeksha, to indifference. That is the very soil.

In that soil the seeds of meditation sprout – and there is no other way.

-Osho

From Absolute Tao, Discourse #8 and previously published as Tao: The Three Treasures, V.1, Discourse #8

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Witnessing the Monster.

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

A Slip of the Tongue

Woke up this morning and found my English slipping

Maybe it’s the result of all those years teaching it

Can’t find the distinction between god and happiness

Are love and meditation two words or one?

Not able to slip a sliver between the Tao and the Logos

Used to be a division between me and you, what happened?

Perhaps we’ll just rest here before the word

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

The Great Accident – Osho

Can a person become enlightened by accident?

This is something very significant to understand. Enlightenment is always accidental. That does not mean that you have not to try for it, but your trying is not going to bring it. Your effort is not going to achieve it. But making the effort, searching in all directions in every possible way, some day it happens – not because of your efforts but because of your intense urge, a tremendous intensity like a flame within you. But it is always accidental; you cannot say, “It happened because I did that.” Otherwise, things would have been very simple.

For example, Buddha was sitting under a bodhi tree, and enlightenment happened. Now, thousands of Buddhist monks…. In every Buddhist monastery there are bo trees, and they are sitting, waiting for enlightenment to happen – as if the bo tree has something to do with it.

Buddha had eaten that evening a sweet made of milk and rice. Buddhist monks think that has something to do with it, so for them it has become very spiritual food. Before sitting for meditation, they will eat kir – that is the name of the sweet. But enlightenment has nothing to do with kir.

Buddha was sitting in a certain posture, the lotus posture. So every Buddhist monk sits in the same posture – perhaps the posture has something to do with it. The posture has nothing to do with it, but millions, throughout history, have been sitting in that posture, torturing their legs. And now Westerners have started learning yoga postures, in which the lotus posture is the most important because Buddha became enlightened in that posture. For a Westerner, who has been sitting in a chair his whole life – in a cold country you don’t sit on the ground – his legs are in tremendous torture, but he tries hard. It takes almost three months for him to attain to the lotus posture, but only to the lotus posture; and then he waits his whole life for enlightenment. It doesn’t happen.

So it is not a certain sequence of causes that brings enlightenment. Your search, your intense longing, your readiness to do anything – altogether perhaps they create a certain aroma around you in which that great accident becomes possible.

But you cannot manage it. Every seeker has to begin from the beginning; you cannot learn by watching somebody. That’s what all the religions have been doing: a certain prayer, a certain posture, a certain ritual, a certain way of breathing. Nothing helps.

I have always loved a small story…. The archbishop of Russia became very much annoyed because on a small island three men had become known to the population as saints. Now, this is against Christianity. Christianity is the most foolish religion of all the religions. A saint has to be certified by the church – as if to be a saint is a degree, a title. The English word saint comes from sanction. When the church gives the sanction, one becomes a saint.

The archbishop was very angry that without his sanction, these three people had become known as saints. And thousands of people were going to touch their feet, to get their blessings. Naturally, this was making him very angry.

One day he finally decided to go and see what kind of saints these were. He went in a motorboat, reached the island – it was a very small island, only those three people lived there. It was early morning, and those three were sitting under a tree. They looked simple, uneducated, illiterate people.

The archbishop on the way was very nervous about facing three saints who have influenced thousands of people. But now he saw there was no problem – these were idiots! He went there and they all touched his feet. He was well satisfied. He said, “Do you think you are saints?”

They said, “We are uneducated, illiterate, poor people. How can we think such high things? They are not for us. But what can we do? People go on coming. We try to prevent them, we tell them they should go to you, but they don’t listen.”

The archbishop said with an authoritative tone, “What is your prayer?”

The three looked at each other, they nudged each other. One said, “You say it.” The others said, “You say it.”

The archbishop said, “Anybody can say it, there is no harm. But start!”

They said, “We feel very embarrassed, because it is not really a prayer; we have made it up.”

The archbishop was really angry: “You have invented the prayer? What is the prayer?”

One of them said, “You insist, so we have to say; but we are feeling very embarrassed, because the prayer is not very great, it is very simple. Our prayer is: ‘You are three, we are three; have mercy on us.’”

Even the archbishop in his anger had to laugh. He said, “Great! This is your prayer?”

Those poor people said, “We are ready to learn. If you teach us the right prayer, the proper prayer, we will try it. But it should not be long, because we may forget it, or we may make mistakes, get confused. Our prayer is so simple we cannot forget it, we cannot make any mistake.”

The archbishop read the whole prayer of the orthodox church of Russia. It was too long. Those three poor people said, “This is too long. Please read it again.” The third time, they said, “Just one time more, so we can remember.”

The archbishop was happy that these idiots… “Now there is no problem: I can convince people that they know nothing – not even the prayer of the church!”

They touched the archbishop’s feet, thanked him and told him that there was no need for him to come, he should have just sent a message and they would have come to him. Why should he take such trouble? Anytime he wanted, he should just send a message and they would come to the church itself.

Very happy and contented, the archbishop left. When he was just in the middle of the lake, he saw those three running on the water, coming towards him, saying, “Stop! We have forgotten the prayer! Just once more!”

The archbishop looked at them – they were standing on the water, running on the water. He must have been a man of some intelligence. He said, “Forgive me. Your prayer is right; you continue your prayer. Your prayer has reached; my prayer has not reached. You are really saints; it does not matter whether the church has sanctioned you or not. Sanctions are needed by those who are not really saints; your very existence proves it. Just forgive me that I interfered in your life.”

This is a story by Leo Tolstoy. It is possible. With purity of heart, with serenity of the mind, with calmness, even this becomes a prayer: “You are three, we are three; have mercy on us.” And the great accident happens.

But you cannot copy it – that is the problem. You can go to an island and sit under a tree, and say, “You are three, we are three; have mercy on us,” and nothing will be happening. Within an hour or two you will get bored, and you will say that this does not work. It is not a question of methodology.

Existence has allowed enlightenment in so many different ways to people, all that we can say is that certain qualities – not very particular methods, but certain qualities – when they come to meet within you, function not as a cause, but something happens because of their presence. This is what in science is called a catalytic agent. They function as a catalytic agent.

For example, you know that water is made with hydrogen and oxygen. But you can go on mixing oxygen and hydrogen and water will not be made. If you divide water, you will find only hydrogen and oxygen. Then what is missing? Why, even when mixing them in the proper proportion, H2O, is the water still not happening? For that, the presence of electricity is needed. It does not cause it – it is a totally different phenomenon than causality – but its presence is a catalytic agent. Without its presence, oxygen and hydrogen can remain together for eternity, but water will not happen.

So when you see silver lines in black clouds, it is not just for painters and people who understand beauty and are sensitive to esthetic values. That silver line is nothing but the presence of electricity that transforms hydrogen and oxygen into water. But scientists were surprised in the beginning, because it does not take any part – just its presence is needed. But without its presence nothing happens.

So I can say to you that enlightenment is always an accident, not an effect produced by a certain cause; otherwise, things would have been very easy. Everybody could have produced the cause, all the necessary ingredients, and would have become enlightened.

If the lotus posture is needed, he will do it. If standing on the head is needed, he will do it. If sitting under a bo tree is needed, he will do it – anything. If other men have been able to do it, you can. But the problem is that it is not a cause-and-effect phenomenon. So I can describe only a certain presence which functions as a catalytic agent.

Meditation creates the catalytic agent: a totally silent mind with no thoughts, a totally relaxed body with no tensions, a totally empty heart with no moods, no feelings, no sentiments, no emotions. And then, simply wait.

In this silence, serenity, just wait….

And out of nowhere something explodes in you.

Yes, it is an explosion – of light, of love, of tremendous bliss, which remains with you forever. You cannot lose it even if you want to. Nobody can become unenlightened again, that is not possible.

In an ancient sutra it is said, “You can make curd out of milk, but you cannot make milk out of curd.” The process is not reversible. You can make butter out of curd – in India people make purified butter they call ghee, but you cannot make ghee again butter or curd or milk. You have come to the end of the process. You cannot go back and there is no possibility of going beyond.

In India, ghee became a very spiritual, symbolic thing, for a simple reason; otherwise, there is nothing spiritual in it. The symbolic reason was that it gives you the whole process of enlightenment. You can attain it, but you cannot step down the stairs. Those stairs are gone; any step that you have passed no longer exists.

Nobody has said what I am saying to you: that enlightenment is accidental. There are only two possibilities – either a thing can be causal or a thing can be accidental. The causal thing cannot bring you to eternal freedom because it is based on a chain of cause and effect. Only the accidental can bring you to freedom, to total newness, freshness, a new birth. Because of this phenomenon all religions have failed, because they were trying just to imitate somebody’s enlightenment.

The Taoists are still trying to imitate Lao Tzu – after twenty-five centuries doing the same things, eating the same things, living the same way, thinking that they will become Lao Tzu. But in twenty-five centuries not a single man has been able to attain the goal.

Jainas are doing it, Buddhists are doing it, all religions are doing a single thing: they have seen somebody whose eyes had a different light, whose gestures had a different grace, whose words had a different authority. He spoke from his very innermost core, he was not a scholar. He was not saying anything within quotes; he was simply expressing his own vision. He was singing his own song, dancing his own dance. He was utterly individual and immensely blissful. People seeing him started imitating – what he was doing, they should do. And they have been doing, for thousands of years, all kinds of imitations.

Thomas a Kempis has even written a book which is thought by Christians to be next only to The Holy Bible in importance. The name of the book is The Imitation of Christ. You can understand from the very name what the book contains. But even Thomas a Kempis could not become what he thinks by imitating Jesus Christ one can become. His book is read by monks, and they try to imitate. They become carbon copies.

And one thing is certain: this existence is absolutely against carbon copies. This existence knows only original faces. It will recognize you only when you come with your original face – not Christian, not Buddhist, not Hindu, but just you in your utter nudity.

So I can suggest only that you can create the catalytic situation, and then wait. And have patience; you cannot force enlightenment to happen. You can manage the catalytic atmosphere, that’s all that is within your hands – then wait. Be patient.

Existence is impartial. Whenever the time is ripe, you will suddenly be aflame. All the old will be burned and something new, absolutely new, that you could not have even thought about, dreamed about, will have happened.

It is possible, but nobody can guarantee it.

It is going to happen if you can manage the catalytic atmosphere and wait. One never knows: it may happen today, it may take the whole life – but it will happen. Just wait. Wait with deep trust in existence.

But whenever it happens, it will come as a great surprise to you, because it is accidental.

-Osho

From From Bondage to Freedom, Discourse #32

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Acausal Enlightenment – Osho

I have heard that enlightenment, or the natural state of man, is something acausal—it just happens. And all our endeavors to bring about awareness, to be aware, are actually taking us away from this state since they are all mind games, and these activities for self-awareness are just a “holy business.” I cannot imagine what my life would be if I gave up the search since it has permeated my life as long as I can remember. If there is no way to integrate, nothing one can do, why all this activity? Why bother? Yet what else is there to do? Please comment.

Deva Samadhi,

It is one of the most significant questions to be asked. We will have to go deep into it. It is true, absolutely true, that enlightenment is acausal: it cannot be caused by our efforts. But that does not mean that you have to cease making efforts, because then too it will not happen.

This mystery, this paradox, has to be understood deeply. The tendency of the logical mind is either to decide that enlightenment is causal so that one can make efforts to achieve it, or it is acausal, it happens only when it happens of its own accord, then there is no need to make any efforts.

In both ways you will miss. If you think it is causal, and make efforts, you will miss, because it is not causal. If you think it is not causal, that hence there is no need to make any efforts—why bother—you will miss again.

The reality is: you have to make all possible efforts, yet it is not going to happen through your efforts, but you will be prepared through your efforts to receive it when it happens. It is acausal. It will happen. It is not a doing on your part. But when it happens, will you be ready to see it? That is the point, the very crux of the matter. When it happens, will you be ready to recognize it? When it happens, will you be ready to welcome it, to open your heart to it, to receive it into your being? Will you be ready to become a host to the guest when it knocks on your doors?

Your efforts are not going to create enlightenment: your efforts are simply going to make you more and more available to it, open to it, vulnerable to it. Your efforts are going to make a womb out of your being so you can be pregnant with it. It is going to happen from the beyond.

And it is not that it is going to happen somewhere in the future — it is already happening.

You are just not ready.

When it happened to Buddha, it could have happened to the whole earth, to the whole of humanity. But Buddha was ready to receive it and others were not ready to receive it. The sun rises: it will rise only for those who have eyes, it will not rise for those who are blind.

If you go to the physician, he can help — he can help you to get rid of your blindness. His medicines are not going to create the sunrise; his medicines are of no use as far as the sunrise is concerned. It happens on its own — it is already happening, happening every day — but it never happens to the blind person or to the person who is not blind yet keeps his eyes closed.

Samadhi, your efforts will only open your eyes. And this is part of the opening of your eyes — to understand that enlightenment is acausal. But this is not yet your understanding, remember.

You say: I have heard that enlightenment or the natural state of man is something acausal . . .

You have heard it. It is not going to help you—unless you start feeling that it is acausal.

And how are you going to feel that it is acausal? By making all possible efforts and failing again and again and again, one day suddenly the realization happens that efforts can’t make it. In that realization you don’t start thinking, “Why bother?” You don’t start thinking of stopping efforts. Efforts simply stop in that understanding. In that understanding efforts evaporate.

That’s how it happened to Gautam the Buddha. For six years he made all possible human efforts to achieve it, but because it is not an achievement he could not achieve it. And the more efforts he made, the more frustrated he became — obviously. If you don’t make any efforts for it you will not be frustrated, and when you make efforts with your total heart, it hurts to fail each time. He staked his whole life for it, and yet it was not happening. He was not holding anything back. If he had been holding anything back, then this understanding that happened to him would not have been possible—that all efforts are futile.

It happens only to those who are not holding anything back, when you have put all that you have at stake, when nothing is left behind, when you are utterly empty, you have emptied yourself totally, and it is not happening, then the understanding arises, “My efforts are futile. My efforts are ego efforts —the ego is futile. My efforts are my own mind games. The mind itself is the barrier.”

But this has to become your own experience, Samadhi. It is not going to help if you have heard it. You can hear great truths, but unless they arise in your own being they are not true. A heard truth is a lie: only an experienced truth is a truth. And only the experienced truth liberates. How will you experience it? You would like to have it without any efforts. You would like it to happen as it happened to Buddha — minus those six years that preceded it. Those six years of tremendous effort are a must. Then one day suddenly, one evening when the sun was setting, the revelation happened to him: “My efforts cannot take me beyond myself.” This is so natural! It is like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings — it is utterly futile. But how is one going to know it?

Those six long years . . . and they must have looked like sixty years to him, because they were really painful. All kinds of ascetic practices, long fasts, torturing the body, doing all kinds of yoga exercises, many of which are just stupid: standing on your head, distorting your body, utterly ridiculous postures — he did all! Whatsoever was said to him, he followed it literally, word for word. He went to all kinds of teachers; they must have all been pseudo. Not even a single one of them was a Buddha, was yet enlightened. They gave him many strategies to work out.

If he had not been doing them perfectly well, they would have been safe. They would have told him, “Because you are not doing totally, hence you are missing.” But this was impossible: the man was so authentic, so sincere, so innocently total, that even those pseudo teachers had to tell him, “Excuse us, forgive us — this is all we know. And you have done it all, and we cannot expect more from you. Now you have to go somewhere else. This is all we know, and now you know that this is not going to give you enlightenment — it has not given enlightenment to us either. But it is very rare to find a person like you. People come and they do it very partially. With them we can always say, ‘Because you are not total, hence you are missing,’ but we cannot say this to you! Your innocence forbids it. Your totality … we are ashamed. In fact, we ourselves have not done these practices so totally. Forgive us, and find another teacher. And if you ever find enlightenment, don’t forget us. If you ever find truth, please remember us — we are also seeking and searching. We are also blind,” those teachers confessed to Buddha.

After six years of wandering, one evening, sitting silently underneath a tree, by the side of the River Niranjana, this revelation welled up within his being: that human effort cannot help you to transcend humanity. It can only happen: it cannot be caused. But now these six years of austerity had purified him; this fire had made him gold. These six years had helped him to see the utter uselessness of the mind. Now he was ready to be silent, effortless, passive.

That night he slept with no search, not even for truth, because search creates desires, desires can be fulfilled only through effort — the search disappeared! The desires disappeared. The efforts disappeared. For the first time he slept totally relaxed—neither worldly desires tortured him nor other-worldly desires. He had no dreams that night: that was the first night without dreams, because dreams are a by-product of your desires. The worldly people dream of worldly things, the other-worldly people dream of other-worldly things. And the worldly people are not so much deceived, because if in the night you see a dream that you have come upon a great treasure of diamonds — in the morning you know that it was only a dream. But the other-worldly people are very much deceived by their dreams.

Somebody sees Krishna playing on his flute; somebody sees Jesus Christ, somebody sees Rama, and so on and so forth. And they cannot say that these are dreams, they are so valuable to them. They start thinking that these are experiences. These are dreams! As much as other dreams.

And the other-worldly person starts hallucinating in the day too, even with open eye—because the worldly man is in the world, and in the world you cannot hallucinate because others will think you are mad. In the world you live with objects, and you have to prove to others that what you are seeing is a reality. The treasures of your dreams, nobody is going to believe in them. There are so many non-believers around you; they will ask for proofs and proofs you cannot supply. So you can dream only in the night. But the other-worldly, those who have escaped from the world, a person who lives in isolation in a Himalayan cave, has no need to prove; there is nobody to prove to and nobody asks him. He has dropped the objective world; now he lives in his subjectivity — he can dream in the day, he can dream with open eyes.

It is now a well-known, well-established psychological fact that if people go on a long fast in isolation, after the first week they start hallucinating, and after the third week they lose all distinction between what is real and what is unreal. After the third week of fasting, the reality and the dream start getting mixed up.

It is like small children: small children don’t know what is real and what is unreal. So sometimes a child who was dreaming about a beautiful toy wakes up and starts crying for it. And the mother goes on trying to convince him that it was only a dream, but he says, “It was here — how can it be a dream? I had it! Where has my toy gone? Bring it back to me!”

The same thing happens in deep isolation. If it is a prolonged thing, a three weeks’ fast in an isolated cave in the Himalayas, slowly slowly you will start hallucinating. Then you see Krishna playing on the flute — not only that: he starts talking to you. Not only that — he starts playing with you And because it is thought to be spiritual … It is simple madness! But because it is thought to be spiritual you feel very, very gratified, your ego feels very fulfilled. You brag about it, that Krishna has appeared, that you have talked with Krishna, that you have played with him, that he was playing on the flute and you danced around him.

And there are other fools also who will believe it. The whole world is full of superstitious people.

Buddha lived those six long years through all kinds of things like this. It is only by experiencing these things that one day one can conclude that this is all nonsense. And when it is your own realization that it is all nonsense, you need not drop it: it simply disappears.

That night he slept without dreams. And in the early morning when he opened his eyes and the last star was disappearing, something in him disappeared — the ego. He became enlightened .

This enlightenment is not something that has come from the outside—It is your intrinsic nature. It has come from within. But the within and the beyond are synonymous: the within is the beyond. It is through the within that the beyond penetrates.

Then Buddha said, “Enlightenment is not an achievement — it is a gift from existence.”

But those six years had prepared him to receive it.

Samadhi, prepare yourself to receive it. It is acausal, but that does not mean that you have to stop all efforts. If you stop, you will miss. If they stop on their own, because your understanding has penetrated so deeply that it is impossible to make any effort any more, even if you want to you cannot, in that state of effortless passivity you become the host and God becomes the guest.

-Osho

From The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, Discourse #3

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Appa Deepo Bhava – Osho

The first question.

Osho, how can I become a light unto myself?

These were the last words of Gautam the Buddha, his parting message to his disciples: “Be a light unto yourself.” But when he says, “Be a light unto yourself,” he does not mean to become a light unto yourself. There is a great difference between being and becoming.

Becoming is a process, being is a discovery. The seed only appears to become the tree; that is an appearance. The seed already had the tree within itself, it was its very being. The seed does not become the flowers. The flowers were there unmanifest, now they are manifest. It is not a question of becoming, otherwise a pebble could become a flower. But that doesn’t happen. A rock cannot become a rose; that doesn’t happen because a rock has no potential to become a rose. The seed simply discovers itself through dying into the soil: dropping its outer shell, it becomes revealed in its inner reality.

Man is a light in the seed. You are already buddhas. It is not that you have to become buddhas; it is not a question of learning, of achieving. It is only a question of recognition–it is a question of going within yourself and seeing what is there. It is self-discovery.

You are not to become a light unto yourself, it is already the case. But you don’t go in, your whole journey is outward. We are being brought up in such a way that we all become extroverts. Our eyes become focused on the outside. We are always seeking and searching for some goal “there,” far away. The farther the goal, the more challenging it appears to the ego. The more difficult it is, the more attractive it appears. The ego exists through challenges; it wants to prove itself. It is not interested in the simple, it is not interested in the ordinary, it is not interested in the natural, it is interested in something which is neither natural, nor simple, nor ordinary. Its desire is for the extraordinary. And the reality is very ordinary, it is very simple.

The reality is not there but here, not then but now, not outside but in the innermost sanctum of your being. You have just to close your eyes and look in.

-Osho, Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen, Chapter 13

The last words of Gautam Buddha were, appa deepo bhava: Be a light unto yourself. And those words were said to his chief disciple, Ananda, who had been with him for forty-two years, just like a shadow, non-stop, day out, day in. But he had not become enlightened. And many others who had come afterwards had become enlightened.

Buddha said, “That is the barrier. You think I can make you enlightened – that’s why these forty-two years have gone by and you have not attained. Perhaps after my death, within twenty-four hours you may become enlightened. For these forty-two years there was a hope that I would do something. Nobody can do anything. Be a light unto yourself.”

-Osho, Razor’s Edge, Chapter 12

This statement of Gautam Buddha is one of the milestones in the history of human growth: Appa deepo bhava – be a light unto yourself. Nobody before him was courageous enough to say this. They were all trying to say, “We are the light, follow us. Be surrendered to us and whatever we say never doubt it.” These people were not really for human freedom, human integrity, they destroyed all self-respect in man, they reduced him to a slave, a spiritual slave.

Gautam Buddha has brought a great revolution to the world. He says, “Be a light unto yourself” – because there is no other light. You are not to surrender to somebody because every surrender is slavery, and spiritual surrender is the greatest of all because it is so subtle. The chains are so invisible that you may never become aware of it, and the imprisonment is not something outside you, it is something imposed on the very being of your interiority. You are carrying your prison wherever you go, whatever you do.

-Osho, Sword and the Lotus, Chapter 19

Don’t live on borrowed concepts.The last words of Gautam Buddha on the earth were, “Be a light unto yourself. Don’t be bothered about what others say, don’t be bothered about traditions, orthodoxies, religions, moralities. Just be a light unto yourself.”Just a small light is enough, and you can go on with that small light for ten thousand miles without any difficulty. Your light may be falling only four feet ahead of you – just go on moving. As you move, the light will be moving ahead, and if you can see four feet ahead, that’s enough. You can go as far as you want. You can go on an eternal pilgrimage with just a small light of your own.Don’t live on borrowed light.Don’t live on borrowed eyes.

Live according to your own light, and your life will be, each and every moment, a greater joy, a greater blissfulness, a greater ecstasy.

-Osho, The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Discourse #10

Buddha says nobody can deliver you. You have created the mess, you have to sort it out. Nobody has created it, so nobody can deliver you either. Your bondage is created by you, so only you can come out of it. Hence his last statement on the earth was: Be a light unto yourself. This is a totally different dimension: Be a light unto yourself. The buddhas only show the way, but you have to work upon your being; you have to work hard to discover your innermost core.

-Osho, Wild Geese and the Water, Discourse #8

Buddha’s last words to his disciples were: Be a light unto yourself. And how can you be a light unto yourself? Go beyond the body, the mind, the heart. Find the center of your being and suddenly there is light. It is already there, it is already burning bright. It is your very being; you just have to discover it.

-Osho, Dhammapada V. 12, Discourse #5

The last words of Gautama the Buddha on the earth were: Be a light unto yourself. Do not follow others, do not imitate, because imitation, following, creates stupidity. You are born with a tremendous possibility of intelligence. You are born with a light within you. Listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. Nobody else can guide you, nobody else can become a model for your life, because you are unique. Nobody has there been ever who was exactly like you, and nobody is ever going to be there again who will be exactly like you. This is your glory, your grandeur – that you are utterly irreplaceable, that you are just yourself and nobody else.

-Osho, Dhammapada V. 2, Discourse #9

But if you want to end this whole nonsense that has persisted down the ages for so many lives, the same repetitive wheel of birth and death moving; if you want to stop it, then the other, the way of the intelligent person, the way of the wise…be a light unto yourself.

-Osho, Dhammapada V. 2, Discourse #9

In the same way, Krishnamurti is also contained in Buddha. Krishnamurti is Buddha’s latest edition, the freshest – in today’s language. But the difference is only of language. Krishnamurti is just an elaboration of Buddha’s ultimate sutra: “Be a light unto yourself.” A commentary on this sutra – deep, profound, tremendously vast, immensely significant – but he is just an elaboration.” These were Buddha’s last words on this earth. Before leaving his body he had given this essential sutra, poured his whole life’s treasure, his whole life’s experience, into this one small sutra.

-Osho, Die O Yogi Die, Discourse #1

Don’t search for any light outside. The last words of Buddha were, “Be a light unto yourself. Be a lamp unto yourself.” Don’t search for light anywhere else; the light is already there, the fire is already there. Just probe a little deeper into your being. Inquire. Maybe much ash has gathered around the fire…just probe deep inside, and you will find the spark again. And once you have found a single spark inside yourself, you will become a flame soon, you will be a fire – a fire that purifies, a fire that transforms, a fire that gives you a new birth and a new being.

-Osho, The Sun Rises in the Evening, Discourse #3

The last message on his deathbed was…Ananda, his chief disciple asked “Bhagwan, give us your last message.” And he said “Ananda, appa deepo bhava: become a light unto yourself. There is no other light, so don’t look into the sky, don’t look at me. There is no other light. Be a light unto yourself. Your own intelligence has to become your light, depend utterly upon yourself – no other dependence, no shelter anywhere, no refuge.”

-Osho, I Say Unto You V. 1, Discourse #2

It is good that religious experience has to be experienced individually. Nobody can lead you there. People can indicate the way and those indications are very subtle. Don’t take them literally. Buddha said, “Be a light unto yourself.” He is saying, “Remember, my truth cannot be your truth, my light cannot be your light. Imbibe the spirit from me, become more thirsty from me. Let your search be intense and be totally devoted to it. Learn the devotion of a truth-seeker from me but the truth, the light, will burn within you. You will have to kindle it within you.”

-Osho, Ancient Music in the Pines, Discourse #4

The master said, “Buddhas can only show the way, but you have to travel alone – and with your own light. Be a light unto yourself.”

-Osho, Nirvana the Last Nightmare, Discourse #5

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

A Gathering of Friends – Osho

We have gathered here to consider a few very significant matters.

I had no idea that what I am saying to individual people would someday also need to be made public. I had never thought about it. I talk to people according to my capacity and capability, about whatever feels blissful to me and whatever it seems may help them. But slowly, slowly having the opportunity to come into contact with hundreds and hundreds of people, I came to realize, I began to see, that I have my limitations; and no matter how much I may wish to, I cannot bring my words to all the people who are in need of them. And many people have a tremendous need of them. The whole country, the whole earth is extremely thirsty and in distress.

Even if we leave the rest of the planet aside, this country itself is in a spiritual crisis. All the old values have shattered, respect and regard for all the old values has disappeared and no new values have been given birth to. Man is simply standing with no idea where to go or what to do. In such a situation it is natural that man’s mind should become very restless very distressed and very unhappy. Each individual is carrying so much misery within him that if we were able to open his heart and look into it, we would be at a loss.

The more people I have come in contact with, the more puzzled I have become to see that man is carrying within him exactly the opposite of what he appears to be from the outside. His smiles are false, his happiness is false and all his so-called rejoicings are false. And an enormous hell, a deep darkness, much unhappiness and misery have accumulated in him.

There are ways to destroy this anguish, this pain. It is possible to be free of them. Man’s life can become a life of heavenly peace and melody. And since I started to perceive this, I also felt that if we don’t bring that which can take man’s life towards peace, to those who are in need of it, we are in a way committing a crime. Knowingly or unknowingly we are committing sins of omission.

So I started feeling that it is necessary to take anything that can transform people’s lives to the maximum number of people. But I have my limitations, my capabilities and capacities have limitations. Alone, no matter how much I run, no matter how many people I reach , no matter how extensive it may be, seeing the vastness of life all around, and this society with its deep anguishes, there is no way to deal with it all. If we drop some color on the seashore, a small wave may become colored, but it does not make any difference to the vast ocean. And the interesting thing is that the small wave which may become colored, is in no time also going to be lost in that great ocean and the color too will disappear.

So we have gathered here to discuss how the color of peace may be spread far and wide in this vast ocean of life. But along with this, I am also aware that a person who becomes interested in his own peace alone, can never become peaceful in the true sense, because to be interested only in oneself is one of the causes of disease. To be only self-centered is one of the fundamental reasons for disease. A person who becomes self-centered and is interested only in himself and is oblivious of everything else around him, is like someone who builds a beautiful house and does not want to bother with the piles of garbage surrounding the house. He may create a beautiful garden in his property without bothering at all that it is stinking all around his house. If the whole neighborhood is dirty, his garden, his flowers and their fragrance will not mean much. That stink will enter into his house, and drown the fragrance of his flowers.

Man should not only be interested in himself, but also in his environment. A religious person is not only interested in himself; he also takes an interest in everything around him. I also feel that it is not enough to be only concerned with one’s own peace: it is necessary to be concerned that the breezes of pace reach to all sentient beings with whom we are inter-related, with whom we are connected. This should also be of interest to us. And a person who becomes eager and thirsty to bring all of life around himself towards peace, will discover that he may or may not succeed in making others peaceful, but in the very effort he himself certainly becomes peaceful.

There is an anecdote in the life story of Buddha, perhaps it is a fictitious story but it is very beautiful. When Buddha attained to nirvana, the ultimate liberation, he reached the door of moksha, salvation, and the gatekeeper opened the gate. But Buddha stood with his back towards it. So the gatekeeper asked, ‘Why are you standing with your back towards moksha?’ Buddha said, ‘There are many people behind me, and until they all attain to moksha, I will stop here and wait. I am not so hard, so cruel and violent that I can enter salvation alone. All the peace I have attained is simply saying to me, that I should be the last person to enter moksha, first all others should enter.

It is a very beautiful story: the story goes that Buddha is still waiting at the gate of moksha, so that all others may enter first; he himself wants to enter last of all.

The heart of someone in whom such a feeling has arisen, has already attained to moksha, he need not enter any gate of moksha. For him, all notions of moksha become irrelevant.

One in whom such feelings of compassion have arisen has already attained to moksha.

Only those people become peaceful in whose life a strong inspiration to spread peace all around starts functioning.

I feel that those friends who have become interested in this direction, should not remain only interested in themselves, but they should become interested in other people and their environment too. Because this interest may benefit others, and even if it does not, it will still be very meaningful for them themselves; it will be helpful for them to enter deeply into great peace, and into great blissfulness, because one of the reasons for disease lies in becoming self-centered. And someone who spreads out from his center to all those around him starts moving towards becoming peaceful. So we have gathered here so that I can discuss with you in what ways the message of love, peace and compassion can be spread to as many people as possible.

What methods can we find to make sure that the message reaches them? Is it possible? It is not to be propaganda; it is not to create a cult, it is not to create an organization, or a group. We are not to create a center which becomes powerful in itself, but we are to spread the message as widely as possible, without becoming a group, without becoming a cult, without becoming an organization, without creating any centralized power. And this needs a great deal of contemplation.

If one wants to create a cult then there is not much need to think about it; if one is to create an organization, there is not much need to think about it – everyone in the world knows how to create groups and organizations. Thousands of cults have already been created. We are not going to create another cult among all those cults. That is why it has to be thought through thoroughly, so that we do not create a cult or an organization and yet we want to be able to share with everybody what we love and what feels blissful to us. We don’t want to become propagandists and at the same time it may be possible to disseminate. Hence it is a very delicate issue and it needs to be thought through very carefully and with great sensitivity. It is like walking on a tight rope. One option is not to disseminate at all, because there is the danger of becoming a cult. This means we simply do not spread the message at all to anybody. And the second alternative is that we spread the message, but end up creating a cult. That danger also exists.

We have to spread the message, but it is absolutely necessary to take care that a cult is not created. So it is a question of making the dissemination possible without propagandizing, without becoming a cult, or an organization; so that the necessary transmission, the vital message reaches to the maximum number of people. This is what you have been invited here to discuss. In the coming sessions, I will gradually tell you about the things that I can see. And I will also expect you to think along these lines. I will say a few basic things to you so that you can think them over. The first thing is that our gathering of friends today is not as big as the message is. An organization is not needed, only a gathering is needed. And the difference between an organization and a gathering must be clearly understood. A gathering means that everybody is free, has come out of his own freedom and can leave of his own freedom. The meaning of a gathering is that everybody is equal, nobody is higher or lower, nobody is in any hierarchy, nobody is a follower, nobody is a leader. This is the meaning of a gathering. We are to create a gathering of friends, not an organization in which there are authorities, hierarchies, higher and lower people. And an organization has its own infrastructure, there is a hierarchy from the bottom to the top, there are rungs and positions, and along with it all, comes politics. Because politics is bound to enter wherever there is status and position. Those who hold a position become scared that somebody may replace them. Those who do not hold a position become eager to reach a position. So the organization has its own hazards.

We have to create a gathering of friends, not an organization, In the gathering everybody is equal and has equal value. Nobody is an authority, nobody is respectable, nobody is higher and nobody is lower and each person has only come there out of his love. Except for love there are no other commandments which he has to follow; nor are there any oaths and pledges which he has to fulfill; nor are there any vows and precepts to which he commits himself. He has joined in only out of his love and individual freedom, and he can leave the moment he wants to do so. And even when he is part of the gathering, he is not bound by any dogma or ideology; even then he is free to have different opinions, to have his own thought, to follow his own thought, to follow his own wisdom. He is not there to be somebody’s follower. So a gathering of friends, Jeevan Jagruti Kendra, may come into existence; we have to think along these lines.

Certainly, the rules by which a gathering of friends is formed are different from the rules by which an organization is formed. The gathering of friends is totally what we may call an anarchic institution. An organization is a well planned system bound by rules, principles and laws. I do not intend to bind people by laws, rules or principles, because I am fighting against these very things. Such organizations already exist all over the world; what is the point in creating one more of them. Certainly in an organization, there is more efficiency, there cannot be that much efficiency in a gathering. But to have efficiency at the cost of freedom is an expensive bargain. Democracy is not as efficient as a dictatorship, but efficiency can be sacrificed, freedom cannot be sacrificed. A gathering of friends means that it is a voluntary get-together of free individuals. If there are to be some minor laws and systems within it, they will be below the individuals not above them. They will be functional, they cannot be the goal. We will be free to disrupt them at any moment. They should never be capable of disrupting us. The laws will be for us, not the other way around. It is important to keep this in mind.

Now, some friends think that there should be a charter. Certainly there should be a charter but not the way it would be for an organization. It should be formed keeping in mind that it is for a gathering of friends. It will be very much functional; it will be utilitarian, and it will be outlined for this purpose, but there will be no insistence on clinging to it. It can be thrown and burned at any moment. And it is important to bear in mind that howsoever valuable the charter may be, our individual friends are more valuable than it, because this charter has been formed for the sake of these friends; they have not gathered here for the sake of the charter. So, we have to create a gathering of friends where the value and dignity of each and every individual is preserved. Obviously, the greater the number of individuals, the more varied their way of thinking and understanding will be. The bigger the gathering of friends, naturally, the more dissimilarities there will be among them.

So, we should not attempt to create uniformity, otherwise an organization starts coming into existence. And the more we try to create a uniformity the more the individuality of the person, his dignity and his freedom begin to be destroyed. The concern is not for uniformity, but for the respect for all friends, even for their differing opinions. Because my whole vision is that free thinking may be born all over the country. So if the people who want to give birth to free thinking are themselves trapped within controlled thinking, then there will be danger. So, even towards me this gathering of friends should not show any special reverence. Towards me too, there should not be any feeling of reverence.

Towards me too, there should be a rational approach and an intelligent approach. If what

If what I say seems right to you, if it is to your liking, if it appears useful, only then you should communicate it to people. Do not commit the mistake of communicating to people what I say just because I have said it.

The gathering of friends is not to be centered around an individual either, because that person, I or anyone else, may become the center of worship. We will neither have any worship, nor will we be anybody’s followers, nor will we have any leader. Collectively, we are in love with a vision, a message, and it feels that if it reaches more people they will be benefited; that is why we friends have gathered, wishing to bring this vision it people.

So first of all we will talk a little about organizations. We don’t want to create an organization, only a gathering of friends. And we will try to understand the subtle difference between the two. It will be the responsibility of every individual that he tries to save the gathering of friends from becoming an organization. It is not in my hands alone. I can only say it, but it is not in my hands alone. And if we are not very alert then there is a danger that it may become an organization. So it is necessary to be very alert. And it has to be a very conscious experiment, so that it does not become an organization.

There are certain unknown ways in which a cult is formed; before we even become aware of it, a cult starts forming. So we have to be careful about that. And if we are aware beforehand then maybe we can manage things in such a way that this does not happen.

This is one alternative. And the other possibility is that if we are afraid that it may become an organization, or a cult, we don’t do anything at all. That is the other danger, that if nothing is done, then the message that has to be spread cannot be spread. Then it is left on my shoulders alone to run as much as I can to bring people the message. I will continue to do that anyway; it makes no difference to me. But the same message could reach many more people. The more friends cooperate, the farther it can reach, the more easily it can reach. And today science has developed so much technology that is modernizing society, that we would be foolish not to make use of it. We would be making a mistake if we did not make use of it. For instance here, if I spoke without the use of a microphone it would be adequate. Then even if my voice did not reach you very clearly, it would still be adequate. When there are fewer people they can hear me, but if there were more people then my voice would not carry far enough. When we use a microphone, my voice can reach a long way. Today so much technology is available that if it is all made use of, one person can do more work in his lifetime than Buddha and Mahavira could have managed in twenty lives, had they wanted to.

Buddha and Mahavira were at a disadvantage. Making use of whatever means were available to them, the work they did was more than enough. But if someone was asked to work in the same way in present times, it would be sheer foolishness. Today a lot of technology is available, it can all be made use of. And one person can do so much more work in one life, than he could manage even if he were to live for four hundred years without modern technology. So we must make use of all of this technology. That too is important to think about. It is not possible for me to do it alone. For that many more friends are needed, many types of friends are needed. Someone can do manual labor, someone can use his intellect, someone can take care of the money, someone can help in some other way; whatever one’s understanding, whatever one’s disposition, one can help accordingly. It is also important to remember that the wider the variety of friends the better it is, because the more different types of people come, contributing in different ways, doing different types of work, offering different types of help, the richer the work becomes.

It often happens that friends within their own circles are afraid of strangers. They are afraid that once the stranger comes in he will cause all kinds of trouble. So it generally happens that whenever a group of friends gathers together somewhere, they make their circle and are then afraid of new friends joining them. The fear is that the newcomer may create a disturbance.

And this fear is natural too. This protective feeling is not altogether bad. But twenty-five year old friends fearing one newcomer is a sign of great weakness. Instead their thinking should be that we twenty-five people will transform the newcomer, not that the newcomer will change us twenty-five people! And if we twenty-five are so weak that one newcomer can change us, then we should be changed; what harm is there in it? What is so bad about it?

It always happens that whenever any group gathers together it starts forming a circle. Then a distance is created between it and the people outside that circle. It happens unknowingly, no one does it consciously. These are natural traits of the mind. If you go to some unknown village and you have a few friends with you, then perhaps you will not make any friends in that village. You will remain surrounded by the circle of those few friends and will not come out of it. In a situation where you found yourself unavoidably alone then it would be a different matter, you might have to make a friend. Otherwise you would not make a new friend.

So every group has the tendency to remain confined; there is a tendency to become confined. And in being confined there is a sort of security; all is known, all is good, whatever we like the others like too; some stranger coming in might say new things and might disturb everything. We need to drop this fear. If the work is to become widespread and vast then this fear must be dropped. The emphasis should be on remaining so accommodating, our hearts so spacious and open, our arms extending so far that we are able to assimilate even people of the most opposite nature. Not a single one must be left out. We must make space within ourselves even for one who is totally different from us and we must find out what skills he has that can be useful to us.

Connected with this, in the recent past in India, Mahatma Gandhi did a great experiment.

He gathered together many people of different and even antagonistic views. Totally dissimilar people, people between whom no consensus of opinion could ever be achieved, came under the same umbrella and became instrumental in an epic undertaking.

Whenever someone thinks that people of different views, ideas and personalities should not included in a particular endeavor, then that endeavor cannot become great; it will remain very limited. It will remain like a small river thinking that, ‘Not every river and rivulet coming from other distant places should join me; who knows what sort of mud and rubbish, what sort of substances and minerals they may bring with them, and how good or bad their water is?’ If a river starts thinking along these lines then it will remain only a rivulet; it cannot become a great river, a Ganges. And if it is to become a Ganges, it will have to receive them all. So this capacity to receive everything needs to be there.

It is necessary to reflect on how to assimilate as many people as possible. We will have to create space. Slowly, slowly, we will have to see how we can provide people with the opportunity to join in, how we can find work for them and how to help them also to participate.

So many people all over the country come and say to me that they want to help in the work; so many people write me letters asking me what they can do to help in the work. It is your responsibility to make room for all these friends to contribute. And you completely drop and let go of the notion that there could be anyone who might not be useful for something. Such a person does not exist on the earth. What to say about people, even animals and birds become a help. Even their help becomes… There is absolutely no one who is of no use – no person on this earth is useless.

So we need to look at how best to employ someone who is interested. If we concern ourselves with ideas about this man being like this and that man being like that, then it will be very difficult, you cannot imagine how much the work will be set back.

A man used to come to Gandhi’s ashram. People complained that he was really immoral, that he was a drunkard, that he did this and he did that, Gandhi simply went on listening to all this. All the friends became very disturbed that Gandhi was not banning this man from coming to the ashram, on the contrary he went on bringing him closer, until finally once his fears had vanished, the man began to enter the ashram rather arrogantly.

One day some of Gandhi’s closest people told him that this situation had gone too far; that day they had seen this man with their own eyes sitting in a pub; and it was absolutely disgraceful and defamatory that this man should be drinking wine there dressed in khadi, Gandhi style clothes, and that it was very unfortunate that such a man should come to the ashram; and that it would be a disgrace to the ashram.

And Gandhi said, ‘For whom have I opened this ashram? For good people? Where then will bad people go? And those who are good, what need is there for them to come to the ashram? For what and for whom am I here in the first place? And the second thing is that you say that he is sitting there in the pub wearing khadi clothes, so what will people think? If I were to see him there I would hold him close to my heart. Because the first thought that would arise in my mind is, that it is amazing, it seems my words have started reaching the masses; even drinkers have started wearing khadi. You are seeing that someone wearing khadi is drinking wine; I would have seen that someone who drinks wine has started wearing khadi. And in such a case, the day is not too far away when this man may drop drinking wine. Transformation has begun in this man. He has shown courage; at least he wears khadi. Love has taken birth in his heart, transformation has begun in him.

So, this man can be looked at from either side: That he is drinking wine while dressed in khadi; then your mind will want to throw him out of the ashram. But it can also be seen from the other side, that a man who is a drunkard is wearing khadi. Then you will feel like welcoming him into the Ashram with a celebration.

If this Ashram is to expand and if it is to reach out to the masses, then you will have to take the second perspective not the first. Then whosoever comes close to us, will only be seen for the good in him and for the way in which he can be helpful. And I would also like to say to you that we are giving a great deal of incalculable and priceless energy and impetus towards being good to the man whom we start looking upon with love.

If twenty good people start to accept a bad man as good, it becomes difficult for him to continue being bad. But when the whole world starts calling someone bad, it becomes easy for him to become or continue being bad. If someone is a thief and another man shows trust in him, as though he were not a thief, his ability to steal and the likelihood that he will steal weaken. Because there is no one anywhere who does not respect the good feelings of another heart.

If a thief were to come amongst us here and we were all able to just trust him, as though he were a good man, then he would not be able to steal here. It sounds against all common laws, but it becomes impossible. Because so many people placing respect and trust in him, would be so much more precious than to steal, that he could not reject it.

Each and every individual has the feeling to be good, but the problem is that nobody is ready to accept them. And when they meet someone who is ready to accept them as good, you can’t imagine what wakes up and arises in them.

You may have heard the name of an American actress Greta Garbo. She was born in a poor family in a small country in Europe. And until the age of nineteen, she was working as an assistant in a barber’s shop, for next to nothing. An American tourist whose beard she was lathering saw her face in the mirror and said, “Very beautiful, your face is very beautiful.” Greta said to him, “What are you talking about? I have been doing this job for six years, and no one has ever told me that I am beautiful. What are you talking about?! Am I really beautiful?!”

The American said, “You are very beautiful. I have rarely seen so beautiful a woman.” And Greta Garbo has written in her autobiography, “On that very day I became beautiful for the first time. One man called me beautiful. I myself was unaware of it. That day when I came back home and stood in front of the mirror, I realized that I had become an altogether different woman.”

This girl who was an assistant in a barber’s shop until the age of nineteen, later proved to be America’s greatest film actress. And she only had that American who for the first time had told her that she was beautiful to thank for it. She said that, ‘If this man had not said those few words to me that day, I would probably have remained a barber’s assistant my whole life. I had no idea at all that I am beautiful. It is possible that he just said it very casually. It is possible that he was simply being polite. And it is possible that this man had not even been aware of what he was saying; it may just have been a passing comment. And he may not have even felt that a simple statement from him had given birth to an image of beauty in a woman, that something that had been asleep had somehow awakened in her.

It is necessary to awaken what is asleep in the people for whom you want to do something. Hence it is necessary to focus less on what they are and more on what they could be. If you have a big job to be done and without help you couldn’t get any work done, and I told you to get so and so to help, you might say, but this man is bad, he is dishonest, he cannot be trusted.

It is okay that this man is bad or dishonest – who is not? And it is not a question of what he is, but rather of what he could be. If you are to get him to do any great work, you will have to give a call to that within him which he could become.

Kripalani used to work as a cook in Gandhi’s ashram. An American journalist was staying in the ashram and he asked, ‘This man who cooks your food seems to be J. B. Kripalani.’ Kripalani was washing dishes, he said, ‘This old man is amazing! In fact, I was only fit to be a cook and this man awakened in me something that is beyond description.’

The awakening can happen even in the most insignificant person. Once we give him a call, once we draw what is asleep in his soul nearer and we trust in him, once we give a call and create a challenge to what is asleep in him, much can come out of him. And you can demoralize even the greatest man. Even if you tell the greatest man that he is nothing, and if this is what he hears several times coming from everywhere, rest assured he will become nothing.

So if a spiritual revolution is to be carried out on a vast scale in this country – and it is absolutely necessary that it should happen -and if we can do no more than pave the way for it, that too is enough, because someone else will complete it. What difference does it make through whom it happens. The point is not that it has to happen only through us. No, if we can even pave the way for it so that later, some day, a revolution could pass down it, that is more than enough; the matter is already taken care of. So if it is to be done, a very comprehensive group has to be formed. An organization can never be comprehensive. A group of friends can be very comprehensive, very extensive. Because within it there is an acceptance of diversity. No one is forced or controlled. Within the group everybody is free and nobody is being controlled. Because whenever an intelligent person starts to feel that he is being controlled, he becomes troubled by it. No intelligent person enjoys being in bondage.

People with an inferiority complex want to be controlled; only those who are full of inferiority would rather be in fetters; no one else is going to care for that. Hence the group has to be kept so open that when someone comes in he doesn’t even feel that he came in somewhere, that he got tied down somewhere. He should feel free. Whether he comes in or goes out, it should not feel different to him, or that it has created any difference.

I would like such a group to happen, such a comprehensive group of friends to happen.

Because the people who initially gather for a revolution are not aware of how big a revolution it is going to be. The companions of Lenin had no idea that what happened in 1917 would become such a universal phenomenon. Voltaire and his friends also had no idea what the French Revolution would bring. Gandhi and his friends also had no idea what would happen or would not happen. Christ couldn’t have known at all what was beginning there…Christ just had eight friends and they too were not very educated people, just rustics; someone was a carpenter, someone was a cobbler, someone was fisherman – not educated people. Christ had no way to even imagine that it would become such a widespread revolution, that one day half the world would recognize his message. He couldn’t have even imagined it.

No one who first sows the seeds has ever imagined how big the trees will be. Had it been so, the work would have become inconceivably beautiful.

Meeting with more and more people across the country, I have begun to feel that this work could become an enormous banyan tree. Thousands of people could find shade under this tree. It could become such a huge spring that it could quench the thirst of millions. But this is not yet clear to those friends who are the first to gather here. If they can be aware of it, then perhaps they may begin to work in an organized fashion.

Recently I was reading a scientific book. In Russia when they are building roads, they project how many people will be using these roads in one hundred years time, and then build them accordingly. And then here we are, we also build roads in our country, but we don’t even take into consideration how many people will be traveling on them in two years time. So every two years the roads have to be dug up again to make them wider. And every five years we realize that the traffic has increased and the road is no longer adequate. Are we blind or what, that we can’t even estimate how many people will be using the roads! These are amazing people who can project how many people there will be in a certain town after one hundred years, and how many people will be using the roads after one hundred years, and how wide the roads will need to be after one hundred years, and then decide that it is better to build them accordingly now.

The work of those who have foresight becomes easy, and there are less recurring difficulties.

Right now the group of friends is small but in ten years time it could be bigger than you might possibly imagine. And we have to work with that in mind – the road has to be made wide enough to accommodate that possibility. In ten years time, unknown strangers will be walking down this road; you may not be here, I may not be here, none of us may be here, but someone will be walking on this road. So we must keep that in mind while we are working. And we should remember too that we are not precious, it is the path which we are creating and which we dedicate our lives to that is precious. If it is large and wide enough many people will be able to walk on it.

We need to consider these points in detail. I have just mentioned a few things around the issue which we will consider during the next days. And it is necessary to contemplate each of these points in detail to see what can be done about them. My understanding of the details is very limited. You have more understanding than I do about those things.

I can tell you some of the central points around which some thinking needs to be done. But I have almost no understanding of the details; how things are to be done, how many people will be required to do them, how much money will be needed, how much labor will be needed. All of this you probably know more than I do. How to give it a practical form and how far to take it, you certainly know about all that more than I do. I don’t know even the ABC of it. That is why I thought that I would tell you my ideas and would also listen to your ideas. And between the two sets of ideas, in their merger, perhaps something will be possible. I can tell you some things about the sky but I don’t know much about the things of the earth. And talks about the sky alone do not have much value. The roots have to go into the earth, they have to take water and nourishment from the earth. So I will talk about how a tree can spread across the sky, and how can it flower, but you will have to think a little about the roots. And remember, flowers are not as important as the roots are. Flowers depend on the roots.

So what roots can we provide this work with, so that this tree can grow? I will give my whole effort and energy to it whether it grows bigger or not – I am giving it. It is not work for me; it is my joy, my bliss. It doesn’t make any difference whether I have companions or not, it will continue in the same way. But if there were companions, this work could become vast, and reach out to many people.

I have said some things to you about these few points. Now you give it some thought to the details; what can be done; how can it be done? Give some thought to it with a very open mind and then we will discuss it here. All your opinions are invited tomorrow morning; express them, consider them, and then come to a decision.

The camp that I am doing here is a small camp. But then the idea will be to arrange a camp for all my friends from all over the country who have become interested in this work. This one is experimental, because fewer people will be able to come to a conclusion more easily. It may perhaps not be as easy with larger numbers of people.

So we should reflect and then we should again have a camp in which people from all over the country can gather. It is also necessary for them all to meet each other, it is necessary that they become acquainted with each other. They are doing the work in their areas. Your cooperation and encouragement are necessary for their work. They shouldn’t feel alone there. They should feel that there are also more friends all over the country, that they are not standing all alone somewhere, that they have fellow travelers, and that if there was ever a need they would all be with them, to give advice, or if there was work to be done, they would come and help.

Recently, friends in Rajkot told me that they want to take my message to those cities and places where I have not yet been. And they want to create a base there so that I can go there. It has become necessary. When I go to a new city, a few hundred or a few thousand people get to hear me. If some preparatory work was done beforehand, ten thousand people, fifty thousand people could hear me.

Friends at different places come up with different suggestions. Their suggestions are very significant, very useful. All these friends can meet to consider the situation. This meeting will become the basis for that to happen. So right now I will not say anything more. From tomorrow morning we will begin to discuss the details. And bear in mind that you have not come here to listen to me. This is not a gathering for my discourses. I have talked as much as I have so that you can also speak. I have not been giving a speech; it has been just to encourage you to think and discuss.

And the idea is that in these two days we come to some conclusions thinking and contemplating collectively, so that we can move ahead based on firm decisions, which will in turn get some work done.

-Osho

December 23, 1967, Lonavala, Maharashtra, India

This translation from Hindi appears in Osho – The Luminous Rebel, Vasant Joshi, PhD, Wisdom Tree, New Delhi, India

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Evolution of Consciousness – Meher Baba

When God identifies Himself with human beings, He is no longer semi-conscious; because at this stage in the divine dream state, as soon as God identifies Himself with a human form He gains full consciousness.

Full consciousness now having been gained, this consciousness ought to dispel all dreams and cause God to experience the real awake state, giving Him the realization that He is God. At this stage, although God identifies Himself with human beings and although God is now fully conscious, with a feeling of greatest awareness,* yet God has not realized His real, divine awake state because the full consciousness thus far gained is of the Nothingness of the Nothing which was latent and which is now manifested apparently as Everything through the projection of His own divine infinite sub-consciousness. This leads God to identify Himself with His projected creation rather than to become conscious of Himself as the real Everything and of His own identity as God.

* Before attaining human form there is consciousness but not awareness. In sound sleep there is neither consciousness nor awareness. Till the sixth plane there is awareness. In the seventh plane there is only consciousness.

In short, this is the stage at which God, while identifying Himself with human beings in full consciousness, still remains quite oblivious of His own real and original state of God-Is.

Even in this state of full consciousness God still continues to experience the world of His own creation, and with greatest awareness simultaneously continues to identify Himself with human beings, thus finding Himself sometimes as man and sometimes as woman according to the predominance of impressions which are opposite in nature. In other words, God in the man state, although fully conscious and completely aware, experiences Himself not as God in the God-Is state but as man in the human state, not as infinite but as finite.

The paradoxical irony is that God the Real now finds false creation as real, having lost His own reality in illusion and having made His own reality an obstacle to experiencing Reality.

In order that God-in-man should experience Himself as God-in-Reality, the projection of the full consciousness of God, which is now fixed on man, should be so drawn inward that the same full consciousness, which when projected outward identified God as man, should now identify Him as Himself. This is realization of the God state and this realization is the divine goal which alone brings about the end of the divine dream.

Attainment of the divine goal would mean that at this stage God-in-man, through the gradual process of involution of consciousness, should eventually experience the passing-away-in that original divine sound sleep state of absolute vacuum while retaining the legacy of the full consciousness which has been gained. Thus God would be able to realize His eternal “I am God” state consciously. Whereupon, attaining His original state consciously, God would experience His own divine eternal existence and His own divine nature which is the Everything—infinite and real; and so at last get the real answer to His First Word or question of “Who am I?” as “I am God.”

To make it clearer, to attain the divine goal with full consciousness evolved, the human-conscious God strives, through further experiences by the process of reincarnation, to withdraw inwards towards Himself the already projected full consciousness, which He gained as soon as He identified Himself with the first human-form in His divine dream (Creation).

As this stage of the beginning of the end of the divine dream approaches, the full consciousness of God which experiences the false awake state in the human form strives to the utmost through the process of involution to withdraw inwards, unto Himself, this fully evolved consciousness which is projecting outwards onto all things in the cosmic universe rather than unto Himself.

In order to describe the various stages by which the complete unconsciousness of God in His original sound sleep state gradually projected full consciousness through the process of evolution of consciousness, and how the projected consciousness was eventually withdrawn inwards through the process of involution of consciousness, after numerous reincarnations, before actually experiencing the real divine awake state of “I am God,” let the different stages be visualized step by step, comparing each stage of gradual gain in consciousness of God with the relative states of a normally conscious man who is at first in sound sleep and who subsequently gains consciousness enough to realize eventually his ordinary awake state every day.

First Stage

Visualize a man with eyes completely shut and in sound sleep. This man is completely unconscious and is oblivious of all that surrounds him. Now picture at the same time the original divine sound sleep state of God as He is in the original absolute vacuum of the God-Is state. In both cases, that is, both in God’s formless state and God’s state of human-form as man or woman, there is complete absence of consciousness, and in both cases absolute vacuum prevails. Simultaneously, also picture the total absence of consciousness in both cases as comparable to the completely shut eyes of a man in sound sleep.

Second Stage

Visualize the next state of the man as being still asleep but beginning to open his eyes very, very slightly, because he is just bestirred from his sound sleep state and the spell of absolute vacuum is shattered by the emergence of the dormant impressions now commencing to project through the sub-consciousness of the man which also lay latent in him in his sound sleep state. Because of the projection of the varied impressions through the sub-consciousness of this man, he now begins to experience dreams while still asleep, although no longer in the sound sleep state, because the absolute vacuum no longer prevails. For the man to commence experiencing dreams means that in his initial stage of the semi-conscious state he begins to experience through his sub-consciousness the dormant impressions of the Nothingness in sub-subtle forms. The man now is not only in the initial stage of the semi-conscious state and is not only beginning to experience dreams, but he is also starting to get involved in the dreams by beginning to associate with the creatures in sub-subtle forms of his own creation. Thus the projection of impressions, which lay dormant in the sub-consciousness of man, makes man play the role of the hero or the creator in the drama of his dreams. Because this man in this dream state has only just stirred from his sound sleep and has just attained the semi-conscious state, picture this man experiencing the dreams as one who is starting now to open his eyes very, very slightly. The beginning of the opening of the eyes resembles the advent of the first trace of consciousness as sub-consciousness manifested in man.

While visualizing this state of man, as a parallel, picture likewise that state of God in which He has just stirred from His original divine sound sleep state. God now only begins to experience the divine dream state, or the Creator state, as soon as the first most-finite impression of the Nothingness is projected through the divine sub-consciousness of God. Both of these—i.e., the Nothingness and the divine sub-consciousness of God—were latent as of Nothing in the original state of God as the Everything. God, now in the initial stage of the divine semi-conscious state, just begins to identify Himself with the creatures of His own Creation (i.e., His own divine dream) through the infinite divine sub-consciousness which just begins to project the Creation, that is, the impressions of the Nothingness.

Third Stage

Visualize the third state of the man as still asleep, but with half-open eyes, because a man in this state now completely experiences the semi-conscious state. In order to picture this complete semi-conscious state of the still-sleeping man, continue to visualize him with eyes very, very slightly open, representing the beginning of the semi-conscious state. In this state, as said above, he starts to experience dreams due to the false, illusory impressions of the Nothingness which were collected sub-consciously and are now ejected out through the projection of the sub-consciousness, giving rise to the beginning of the dream state of man. But, as the dreams continue, and as they gather momentum due to the intensity of the projection of multifarious and varied dormant impressions through the sub-consciousness of the man, he gets more and more involved sub-consciously. As a result he now firmly associates himself with the creatures of his own creation in the dreams and he is completely in the semi-conscious state. This semi-conscious state of the man represents that state which is neither the complete sound sleep state without consciousness nor the complete awake state with full consciousness. This state, so to speak, is the semi-awake state. Now visualize this third state of the man as the state of semi-consciousness represented by half-opened eyes experiencing the dreams more forcefully and much more intently.

While visualizing this state of the man, picture as a parallel that state of God in the divine dream state where God is experiencing a semi-conscious state. At this stage, God as the creator of Creation experiences the creator state through the infinite, divine semiconscious state. Here the infinite divine sub-consciousness, intensively projecting Creation into being, continually affirms God’s identification with the creatures of His own creation. This gives rise to infinite experiences of a more forceful nature in the divine dream of God, when God actually finds Himself as the creatures of His Creation.

Fourth Stage

Visualize the fourth state of the man as that in which he is still asleep but trying gradually to open wider his already half-opened eyes in accordance with the greater and greater intensity of the projection of more and more impressions through the sub-consciousness of the man still in his dream state. Here the man is not only in a semi-conscious state but is verging on being fully conscious, and is about to realize his awake state.

Now paralleling this, picture also that state of God in the fourth stage of His divine dream state. Compare the fourth state of the man in the semi-conscious state with a very critical stage in the divine dream state of God. Here the projection of infinite impressions, through the infinite divine sub-consciousness of God, is so intensified in the course of the cosmic evolution of the consciousness of God, that this projection is about to be so completely fixed, or so perfectly focused, onto the infinity of Nothingness as to identify God with His own most perfect image in His divine dream of Creation. Thus at this stage in the divine dream state, God the Creator is about to identify Himself with a human form after innumerable identifications with all and everything that is in His Creation including inanimate and animate objects. God, in the divine infinite semi-conscious state, is now nearing the verge of gaining full consciousness concurrently with His identification with human form.

Fifth Stage

Visualize the fifth state of the man as being still asleep but with eyes now almost open. The man in this state is still in the semiconscious or semi-awake state, experiencing the dreams at their height in their final stage, in which the impressions are projected through his sub-consciousness with the greatest intensity. The zenith is reached both by the intensified projection of the impressions in much less hazy forms, or in greater degree of realism, and by relevant dreams which are dreamt in a greater degree of clarity or in their ripe stage. This is the stage in dreams when the sub-subtle forms of Nothingness have reached their zenith and appear more clearly. The dreams at their height now must stop, because the zenith reached by the projections of impressions through the sub-consciousness of the man is at this point sufficient to excite and urge the emergence or manifestation of full consciousness at any moment. This state of the man almost fully conscious may therefore be pictured as a man with his eyes almost wide open, though still asleep. This is the stage reached a split second before the man has roused from his dream state to become wide awake. This is the completely matured semi-conscious state of sub-consciousness.

While visualizing the fifth state of the man, side by side with it picture that state of God in His divine dream state where God is experiencing the completely matured state of the divine, infinite semi-conscious state and is almost about to gain full consciousness. At its zenith the intensity of the projection of infinite impressions through the divine, infinite sub-consciousness of God has almost ceased to identify God semi-consciously with the last of the creatures in the cosmic evolution of Creation and forms. With divine, infinite sub-consciousness, God is in His divine, infinite semi-conscious state, which when almost matured identified God with infinite impressions of animal forms. But now in the fifth stage of the divine dream state where God is in the completely matured divine, infinite semi-conscious state, God can no longer be made to identify with impressions of animal forms even though they are intensively and infinitely projected through His divine, infinite sub-consciousness.

At this point a stage is reached in the divine dream state where in, with the projection to infinity of impressions projected infinitely through the divine, infinite sub-consciousness of God at its zenith, this infinite projection has almost identified God with a human form and God is almost fully conscious.

Sixth Stage

Visualize the sixth state of the man as having completely awakened from his sleep and as having his eyes completely wide open. In this state the man is no longer in the semi-conscious state, dreaming the dreams which were nothing but the hazy and faint projection of the dormant impressions of Nothingness which were stored in the sub-consciousness of the man, and realized through his sub-consciousness in sub-subtle forms of Nothingness. This is the stage in the state of the man where he has just awakened completely, but albeit he is fully conscious, he is not conscious of his “Self” as yet. The man is no longer in his sound sleep and semiconscious states and, with full consciousness gained, is pictured now with wide-open eyes. This means the end of the dream, or the end of the false state of man where he experienced the latent or dormant Nothing manifested in its raw state as Nothingness in the shape of hazy and faint sub-subtle forms. The man now in the awake state no longer experiences or sees the Nothingness as something hazy or faint as he used to see it in his dream state. With his eyes just opened wide and fully, he is dazed and stares vacantly at things that now confront his sight more realistically. The man now observes things that confront his sight as if he were seeing the ripe, the clear and the fully developed forms of the same Nothingness that he saw in his dream as raw, hazy and faint. In this state the man sees, as it were, yet another dream, but he sees it much more realistically than the dream from which he awakened a split second before.

This is the sixth stage in the state of man where the man, dazed, simply experiences the sight of things much more realistically but still as if it were just a vacant dream. That is, the man sees more forcefully and realistically but still vacantly the dream of his dream state, giving him the sense of yet another dream within the dream of his dream state.

This state corresponds to the few seconds immediately after a man has awakened and cannot help but see at first the objects that come within range of his vision rather than his own self. This is because, as soon as his eyes open after the sleep state, the spontaneous opening of the long-shut eyes creates in him a sort of dazed state and, although the man has awakened and is fully conscious, he is still unaware of his Self or of its position in relation to the objects surrounding his very self. He simply stares at the objects upon which his gaze falls.

While visualizing the sixth state of the man, make a parallel of it by picturing in the same way that state of God as of that instant when God has just identified Himself with a human form and has just gained full consciousness. At that moment God is no longer in the divine, infinite semi-conscious state, dreaming the original divine dream which was the projection of the latent Nothing re l e a s e d by the divine, infinite sub-consciousness as the Creation, or as completely evolved Nothingness.

In this sixth state, God is now out of His original, divine sound sleep and His divine, infinite semi-conscious states because He is now fully conscious. Here God is conscious not of His unlimited Self nor of His infinite, unbounded and unlimited trio-nature of infinite power, knowledge and bliss, but is just fully conscious. God is fully conscious now in the sense that God is consciously absorbed in the Nothingness which now manifests through His full consciousness as clear and well defined, realistic gross states apparently demonstrating their infinite aspects ad infinitum.

Seventh Stage

Visualize the seventh state of the man where he has his eyes wide open and is completely and fully awake in the sense that he now asserts his limited self or ego, and is conscious of his human form or the gross body, of his surroundings and of the gross world. Though this man is fully conscious and completely aware of the gross, and experiences the gross world in full, yet he is still unconscious of the limited energy and mind of which he indirectly makes unconscious use, being aware of their aspects through the limitations of his gross body alone. In this state the man is fully conscious, but gross-consciously, and is fully aware of his self as a man in the world of his surroundings.

The man is not only completely aware of the gross world, and of all things in the world which confront his view, but he also actually experiences them by involving his fully conscious and fully aware state of limited self in them. He now recognizes the objects of the gross world through his five predominant gross senses and differentiates them one from another, using them discriminately or indiscriminately, automatically and indirectly utilizing energy and mind which are now fully developed, in attaching to them their relative values as and when his limited self asserts in his awake state before he passes away once again in sound sleep.*

* In the awake state, it is the mind that sees through the gross eyes, hears through the gross ears, smells with the gross nose, eats through the gross mouth and acts through the gross limbs. In the dream state (sub-conscious state) it is the mind that sees through the sub-subtle eyes, hears through the sub-subtle ears, and so on. In the sound sleep state, it is the mind that is at peace and at rest.

While visualizing the seventh state of the man, picture likewise that state of God where God identifies Himself completely with the human form and gains full and complete consciousness. God now no longer dreams divinely the original divine dream but, with full consciousness now completely gained, He experiences falsely the complete awareness. This awareness makes God falsely aware of that original Nothing which was latent in His own state of infinitude, and which, with the present gain of full consciousness, makes God experience that Nothing realistically as the Everything, infinite and real. In other words, God, when He was in the divine, infinite semi-conscious state, was experiencing the latent Nothing manifested as the Nothingness as His divine dream. Now, when God is in a fully conscious state, He apparently experiences that Nothing, not as the divine dream of Nothingness, but He now actually experiences the awareness of this Nothing as the Everything.

In this stage with the advent of awareness, although God in the state of creator has stopped dreaming divinely the original divine dream, yet, because of His having gained full consciousness and complete awareness, God now becomes completely aware of the original divine dream not as a dream but as something realistic, not as illusion but as reality, not as the Nothing but as the Everything, preserving the Nothing that He created. Thus it is that, although God gained full consciousness and experienced complete awareness in the state of creator, this very awareness of God the Creator proves a deception and makes God now experience His own divine dream (or the Creation) of the Nothing as Reality while He identifies Himself with the human being.

In short, God the Creator as the God-in-man, though now fully conscious and completely aware and out of His original divine dream state, yet finds Himself not as God but as man with complete gross consciousness, experiencing the creation of His own original divine dream state as Reality. Here it is to be said that the God-in-man continues to experience in the awake state with the awareness of false reality the vacant divine dream as yet another dream of God within that original divine dream.

This is the most alluring stage in the state of God when, with full consciousness gained, God is led astray, by the false awareness attained, to identify Himself not with His unlimited and infinite Self, but with His most perfect image in the shape of the human being, while God continues to experience the vacant divine dream.

Although it appears as the most fantastic imagination, yet it is a fact that the very life of man is the veil that shrouds the reality of the eternal existence of God.

It is the irony of divine fate that God gets lost in man to find Himself, and the instant that man gets lost in God, God realizes His Reality as Existence, eternal and infinite.

In other words, infinite God becomes infinitely absorbed in His own infinitely perfect image intently seeking His infinity; and although God does gain full consciousness through it, He does not realize the reality of His own eternal, infinite existence in it. But, the instant the full consciousness thus gained ceases to identify God with the infinite reflection of His infinitely perfect image, this image vanishes from the consciousness of God, and God spontaneously and automatically and consciously realizes His own identity as God, the infinite Existence, and finds that He alone ever was, always is and eternally will remain the Only Reality.

Thus God in the man state, at first realizing Himself as man, asserted His limited aspects through the limited self or the limited ego, the limited mind, the limited energy and the finite gross body. Then eventually and ultimately realizing Himself as God, He manifests His unlimited, unbounded, infinite trio-nature of infinite knowledge, infinite power and infinite bliss through His divine unlimited Self.

While depicting, through the seven different primary stages, the process of unfoldment of the latent consciousness of God in His original, unconscious, divine sound sleep state, as compared with the seven different primary states of man gaining consciousness right from his unconscious sound sleep state to the state wherein he gains full consciousness and wakes up completely with wide-open eyes, it is found that this is the process of the evolution of consciousness of God which eventually identifies the fully conscious God with the fully conscious man, after identifying God with all and everything inanimate and animate in the drama of the divine dream of Creation.

Right from the unconscious state (compared to the divine sound sleep state) until full and complete consciousness is gained in the man state (compared to the wide-open eyes of man experiencing the gross world), God remains One, indivisible, infinite, formless and eternally all-pervading. But it is the all-pervading, infinite nature of God that expresses consciously and unconsciously His eternal divine existence, directly and indirectly, in one and all states and forms, through their expressions of their very being.

The whole process of evolution was an absolutely spontaneous outcome of the original, infinite whim surging in the unconscious God to become conscious of His eternal and infinite existence. And, paradoxical as it may seem, in the process of evolution the unconsciousness of God urged the gradual unfoldment of the latent consciousness of God, which consciousness grew greater and greater through a gradual, systematic and progressive process of gathering and experiencing varied and innumerable impressions through identifying God with varied and innumerable gross forms.

So it is that the evolving consciousness of God gives rise to the identification of God with forms and states of forms of higher and higher types. This identification of God in turn gives rise to an apparently unending chain of associations and dissociations, or the so-called births and deaths, of forms and beings which continue to form and assert and then dwindle away in the Nothingness, leaving behind the legacy of impressions which in turn again lead the evolving consciousness of God to identify Himself with yet another form moulded of the very impressions left behind by the form that dwindled away.

Through the process of evolution, the unconscious God did eventually gain full consciousness when the evolved consciousness of God eventually identified God with the human form. But this full consciousness gained was impressioned consciousness and therefore did not make God realize the original, infinite state of God. On the contrary, God realized that He is man. Thus God, after having the original whim of His First Word (“Who am I?”), at this stage finds Himself to be man and experiences the gross world, apparently living in it as man and quite oblivious of His infinite and eternal existence until He finds the real answer to His First Word of “Who am I?” to be “I am God.”

-Meher Baba

From God Speaks, Part 8

For more posts on Meher Baba see: http://o-meditation.com/category/meher-baba/

Is pain, pain?

Jean Klein used to say that the word ‘pain’ is not the thing ‘pain,’ meaning that the word itself is not the experience of pain. That is the same for anger, love, etc. It is important because rather than actually experiencing the issue, be it pain, anger, etc., we relate to the word and all of the memory associated with the word.

If we feel that there is pain, it is more helpful if we experience the pain directly, immediately, without an intermediary like memory. We allow it to reveal itself without condemning or trying to eliminate it. Where is the location of the pain? What does it actually feel like?

When we do so, we may find that the pain is much smaller and less intense than we thought. At the very least, by experiencing the pain, we will notice that pain is an object in our awareness. It is not that we are in pain but rather pain is in our awareness. This is quite liberating.

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

Be That!

There is that which is so subtle

and fine to be neither within

nor without or both.

It is no-thing.

Be that

–purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

Drop the Mirror

When we look into the mirror, we see an image and because of memory we identify with that image as ourselves. With just a little bit of self-awareness, we know that the image that we see is not our real self but just a reflection.

It is the same with the images of thoughts and feelings. We perceive those images and identify thus creating ME. We then hold these images in memory and thus the ego is born. Thereafter, when we look out into the world, we first look through that collection of memory known as ME. It passes through the prism of collected past impressions.

But if we carefully examine the situation, we understand that those thoughts and feelings are just images on a screen, and with self-awareness, we experience the perceiving and know that I am not that which is being perceived. Now the ME has begun to lose its grip. Of course, the grip that the ME has is only what we give. It has no power of its own. It is inanimate.

Just as we do not walk around holding a mirror in front of us to relate to the world, we can also drop the mirror of ME. Now the world is That which Is.

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

Author: purushottama

Witnessing the Monster – Osho

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A Slip of the Tongue

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The Great Accident – Osho

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Acausal Enlightenment – Osho

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Appa Deepo Bhava – Osho

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A Gathering of Friends – Osho

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Evolution of Consciousness – Meher Baba

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Is pain, pain?

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Be That!

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Drop the Mirror

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