Category: Awakenings

Flowering, Awakening, Self-Realization and Enlightenment – Osho

A short time ago you said that spring has come and many sannyasins are ready to flower. Do “flowering,” “awakening” and “self-realization” all mean enlightenment, the ultimate truth? Or is there a difference? And can a person, after attaining, fall back into identification with the mind?

Mukto, there is a difference between flowering, awakening, self-realization, and enlightenment. Enlightenment is the ultimate truth — the seeker disappears but the truth is found. The pilgrim disappears but God is found. It is important to understand the differences . . .

From enlightenment there is no possibility of falling back, because you are no longer there to fall back. As long as you are, there is a possibility.

Only your absence is the guarantee that you cannot fall back.

Flowering is just the beginning of entering within yourself — just as you enter into a garden. It is immensely important, because without entering you are never going to reach to the center. But in flowering, for the first time you recognize your potential, your possibility. In flowering is the transition period, from human to divine. But one can fall back, because the flowering is so new and so fragile, and your past is so old and so strong — it can pull you back; it is still there.

Awakening is getting very close to your center. And as you get closer to the center, falling back becomes more and more difficult because your new experience is gathering power, strength, experience, and the old is losing. But the old is still there; it has not disappeared. Ordinarily people don’t fall from awakening, but the possibility remains: one can fall.

Self-realization is reaching to your center. Many religions have believed that self-realization is the end — for example, Jainism — you have come to your ultimate truth. It is not true. Self-realization is only a dewdrop which has become aware, alert, contented, fulfilled. It is almost impossible to fall back from self-realization — but I am saying almost impossible, not absolutely impossible, because the self can deceive you; it can bring your ego back.

The self and the ego are very similar. The self is the natural thing and the ego is the synthetic, so it happens sometimes that a self-realized man becomes a pious egoist. His egoism is not going to harm anyone, but it certainly prevents him from dropping into the ocean and disappearing completely.

Enlightenment is the dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the vast, infinite ocean. Once the dewdrop has fallen into the ocean, now there is no way even to find it. The question of turning back does not arise.

Enlightenment, hence, is the ultimate truth. What begins as flowering moves on the path of awakening, reaches to self-realization. Then one quantum leap more—disappearing into the eternal, into the infinite.

You are no more, only existence is.

I have told you about Kabir, India’s greatest mystic. When he was young, he became self-realized and he wrote a small couplet:

Herat, herat he sakhi
Rahya, Kabir, herai

“Searching and searching and searching, oh my friend, the searcher is lost. Seeking and seeking and seeking, the seeker is lost.”

Bund samani samund mein
Sokat herijai

“The dewdrop has slipped into the ocean; now there is no way to get it back.”

But it was too early to say that. The dewdrop was still there, slipping towards the ocean, but it had not yet fallen into the ocean.

When Kabir was dying, he became enlightened. He called his son Kamaal and told him, “I have written something wrong. At that moment, that was my feeling — that I had come to the ultimate. Before I die, you write this down, and change it.”

The change is very small in words, but in experience it is tremendous. He has used again the same words:

Herat, herat he sakhi
“Oh beloved, seeking and searching, the seeker is lost.”

Samund samund bund mein
Sokat herijai
“And the ocean has fallen into the dewdrop; now it is impossible to find it.”

Just a little difference in the words . . . “The dewdrop has fallen into the ocean” – something of the self has remained in it. But “the ocean has fallen into the dewdrop” . . . that is the tremendous experience and explosion of enlightenment. The first statement was about self-realization; the second statement is about enlightenment.

From enlightenment, falling is simply impossible. You are gone — and gone forever; not even a shadow or a trace of you is left behind.

Up to self-realization the possibility remains — it becomes less and less, but it remains.

You can start being egoistic about your self-realization: “I have known, I am a realized person. I am a saint, I have encountered God ” — but that “I” is there, howsoever pious. Even its shadow is dangerous; it can pull you back.

I have heard a very beautiful story about Jesus . . .

Jesus was walking through Jerusalem when he saw an angry crowd shouting and screaming at a woman. He came closer and heard the mob accusing the woman of adultery. Jesus strode to the front of the mob, held up his arms and said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

The crowd fell silent, but one little old lady pushed to the front, picked up a huge rock, and hurled it at the sobbing woman. Jesus gently took the old lady by the arm and said quietly,

“Mother, why do you always embarrass me?”

Jesus’ mother! She is a virtuous woman — so virtuous that she has given birth to Jesus without any contact with another human being. She stands alone in the whole of history with the claim — even after the birth of the son, of being the virgin Mary. That idea must have got into the old woman’s mind too much. Her virtue, her piousness — God has chosen her to be the mother of His only begotten son-has become a subtle ego in her. The others were not pious. The moment Jesus said, “The first stone has to be hurled by one who is virtuous,” the mob stopped. They were all in the same boat.

And you can see it in your saints . . . a strange but very subtle ego. Spirituality has become their achievement. Somebody has all the riches of the world, somebody is the most beautiful person, somebody is the strongest, and somebody is the most pious. The question is not what it is by which the ego can get nourished — any idea can make you fall.

One has not to stop until he has reached the point when he is not: when there is no claimer, when one has moved the full circle and has come back to the world, just nobody. Perhaps people may not recognize him as a great saint . . . and this is my understanding, that the greatest of saints have remained unrecognized, because you understand only the language of the ego. You don’t understand the language of egolessness.

The greatest sage will appear to you just an ordinary man, nothing special, with no claim for any talent, for any possession, for any power, for any genius, for any knowledge — no claim at all. He has become absolutely a zero. But the zero is not negative, it is full of godliness, overflowing with godliness.

-Osho

From The Hidden Splendor, Discourse #16, Q1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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.

Charaiveti, Charaiveti – Osho

A while ago you said something about silence which startled me. In my sleepiness I’d simply thought of it as just an absence — an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations, I’ve noticed the distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind. I can have the first, without the second. Beloved Master, please talk to me about silence.

Anand Somen, silence usually is understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because very few people have ever experienced silence. All that they have experienced in the name of silence is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon. It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It is overflowing with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen by the inner eyes. It is not something fictitious; it is a reality, and a reality which is already present in everyone — just we never look in. All our senses are extrovert. Our eyes open outside, our ears open outside, our hands move outside, our legs . . . all our senses are meant to explore the outside world.

But there is a sixth sense also, which is asleep because we have never used it. And no society, no culture, no educational system helps people to make the sixth sense active.

That sixth sense, in the East, is called “the third eye.” It looks inwards. And just as there is a way of looking in, so there is a way of hearing in, so there is a way of smelling in. Just as there are five senses moving outward, there are five counter-senses moving inward. In all, man has ten senses, but the first sense that starts the inner journey is the third eye, and then other senses start opening up.

Your inner world has its own taste, has its own fragrance, has its own light. And it is utterly silent, immensely silent, eternally silent. There has never been any noise, and there will never be any noise. No word can reach there, but you can reach. The mind cannot reach there, but you can reach because you are not the mind. The function of the mind is again to be a bridge between you and the objective world, and the function of the heart is to be a bridge between you and yourself.

The silence that I have been talking about is the silence of the heart. It is a song in itself, without words and without sounds. It is only out of this silence that the flowers of love grow. It is this silence that becomes the Garden of Eden. Meditation, and only meditation, is the key to open the doors of your own being.

You are asking, “A while ago you said something about silence which startled me in my sleepiness. I had simply thought of it as just an absence—an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations, I have noticed a distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind.”

Your experiences are true. The body knows its own silence—that is its own well-being, its own overflowing health, its own joy. The mind also knows its silence, when all thoughts disappear and the sky is without any clouds, just a pure space. But the silence I am talking about is far deeper.

I am talking about the silence of your being.

These silences that you are talking about can be disturbed. Sickness can disturb the silence of your body, and death is certainly going to disturb it. A single thought can disturb the silence of your mind, the way a small pebble thrown into the silent lake is enough to create thousands of ripples, and the lake is no longer silent. The silence of the body and the mind are very fragile and very superficial, but in themselves they are good. To experience them is helpful, because it indicates that there may be even deeper silences of the heart.

And the day you experience the silence of the heart, it will be again an arrow of longing, moving you even deeper.

Your very center of being is the center of a cyclone. Whatever happens around it does not affect it; it is eternal silence. Days come and go, years come and go, ages come and pass, lives come and go, but the eternal silence of your being remains exactly the same – the same soundless music, the same fragrance of godliness, the same transcendence from all that is mortal, from all that is momentary.

It is not your silence.

You are it.

It is not something in your possession; you are possessed by it, and that’s the greatness of it. Even you are not there, because even your presence will be a disturbance. The silence is so profound that there is nobody, not even you. And this silence brings truth, and love, and thousands of other blessings to you. This is the search, this is the longing of all the hearts, of all those who have a little intelligence.

But remember, don’t get lost in the silence of the body, or the silence of the mind, or even the silence of the heart. Beyond these three is the fourth. We, in the East, have called it simply “the fourth,” turiya. We have not given it any name. Instead of a name we have given it a number, because it comes after three silences — of the body, of the mind, of the heart — and beyond it, there is nothing else to be found.

So, don’t misunderstand. Most of the people… for example, there are people who are practicing yoga exercises. Yoga exercises give a silence of the body, and they are stuck there. Their whole life, they practice, but they know only the most superficial silence. Then there are people who are doing concentrations like transcendental meditation, of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It can give you a silence which will be only of the mind. Just by repeating a name or a mantra . . . the very repetition creates in its wake, a silence in the mind. But it is not meditation, and it is not transcendental.

And there are Sufis who know the third, which is the deepest of the three. But still it is not the goal, the target; your arrow is still falling short. It is very deep because Sufis know the heart more than anybody else. For centuries they have been working on the heart, just as yogis have been working on the body, and people of concentration and contemplation have been working on the mind.

The Sufis know the immense beauty of love. They radiate love, but still the home has not been reached. You have to remember the fourth. Unless you reach the fourth, continue the journey.

People misunderstand very easily. Just a little bit of experience and they think they have arrived. And mind is very clever to rationalize.

There is a Sufi story about Mulla Nasruddin. The Mulla hears a commotion in the street outside his house in the middle of the night. His wife tells him to go down, and after many arguments he puts a blanket on his shoulders and goes down to the street. There were many people in the street and a lot of noise, and in the crowd somebody steals his blanket.

The Mulla goes home naked, and his wife asks him, “What was that all about?” The Mulla says, “It seems to be about my blanket, because as they got the blanket they all disappeared. They were just waiting for the blanket. And I was telling you `Don’t force me to go there.’ Now I have lost my blanket and I have come naked. It was none of our business.”

He has found a rationalization, and it looks logical, that as they got his blanket they all disappeared. And the poor Mulla thinking that perhaps that was the whole problem….

“Their argument and their noise just in front of my house in the middle of the night, and my foolish wife persuaded me finally to lose my blanket!”

Mind is continuously rationalizing, and sometimes it may appear that what it is saying is right, because it gives arguments for it. But one has to beware of one’s own mind, because in this world nobody can cheat you more than your own mind. Your greatest enemy is within you, just as your greatest friend is also within you.

The greatest enemy is just your first encounter, and your greatest friend is going to be your last encounter—so don’t be prevented by any experience of the body or the mind or the heart. Remember always one of the famous statements of Gautam Buddha. He used to conclude his sermons every day with the same two words, charaiveti, charaiveti.” Those two simple words—just one word repeated twice — means “Don’t stop; go on, go on.”

Never stop until the road ends, until there is nowhere else to go—charaiveti, charaiveti.

-Osho

From The Golden Future, Discourse #1, Q1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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.

No-body IS One with Existence

How can one say, “I am one with the whole existence” on the one hand, and on the other hand state, “I am not the body”?

These are not philosophical statements. They are based on one’s own experiencing. We can see for ourselves if we look at the situation without bringing in that which has been heard from others. If we can put aside memory and just look at the situation without prejudice, we can see the fact of the statements.

When we say, “I am not the body,” what is it that we are actually saying? Are we not saying that I am not the body separate from the rest of existence? To say that I am the body implies that I am separate, that there is the body which I am and everything else that I am not.

When I close my eyes and examine the situation after first putting aside memory, mind, and preconceived ideas, I find a different world than the one I had believed to be true. I experience sensing, and if I do not make use of memory, I do not find anything other than sensing. I do not find any distinctions within the sensing. Of course, if I make use of memory, then I can draw borders in my imagination that correspond to what I have been taught and to that which is held in memory as body parts. But in my own experiencing, I do not find those borders. I can perceive sensing which has varying degrees of intensity, and again with memory, I can zero in on a portion of sensing and in my mind draw a border around that portion to the exclusion of all other sensing – but this is not my own immediate experience. I am relying on memory and the knowledge of anatomy and hearsay, all of which are held in the mind.

In my own experience, I discover a single field of sensing without borders, without a center, and without divisions. If I look with my sensing, there is not that which is not sensing. How could there be? How would I know it if it was not sensed? In this experiencing there is only oneness. This experience is one. There is nothing that is not sensed in that moment of experience. In this sense it is my experience that I am one with the whole existence in my sensing. It is also true that there is no body separate from existence. I have already discovered that the defined border of body is held in memory but not in my own firsthand experience.

And so, it is clear in this moment with the mind put aside that “I am not the body but am, in fact, one with existence.”

-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.

This understanding is expressed even more simply and clearly by Annamalai Swami:

When I say give up your identification with the ‘I am the body’ idea, I don’t mean that you are not the body. I mean that you should give up the idea that you are only the body. You are all bodies, all things, all creation, but paradoxically, this knowledge will not come to you unless you give up identifying with particular objects, such as ‘I am the body’, and limiting thoughts such as ‘I am so-and-so’. When you have given up all thoughts, all identifications, the true knowledge suddenly dawns on you: ‘I am the unmanifest Self and I am also the whole of creation.’

So I tell people: ‘This physical body is not you; the mind is not you. Go beyond them to see what is really behind them.’ This is done to make people give up their incorrect, limiting ideas, so they can have a direct experience of what is truly real.

-Annamalai Swami

From Final Talks, pages 36 & 37

Birth of Universal Man – Dada Gavand

Birth of Universal Man

A Journey from Personality to Divinity

When the seeker begins to arrive nearer the spirit, he starts to feel the signs of opening. Here at this stage the seeker has to remain utterly silent, inward and innocent. Knowledge, imaginations, hopes and the authority of books, gurus or one’s own strong opinions are all barriers. Only the factual experience within, in that moment, is real.

One has to be alert and obedient only to the inner happening. There the seeker must wait in total silence, without any movement of thought, with humility and in the spirit of anonymity.

At this point, abundant patience and openness are needed without any movement of thought — which is faith. Such faith is not in someone or in some idea created by the wishful mind. Faith is the state of humility, aloneness and total inwardness. This is surrender to the unknown.

In this state of surrender — which is humility, inwardness and anonymity — Life energy undergoes a mystical change. This is a point of transition, a critical point in consciousness when a dimensional change begins to take place. Here, in this state of absolute aloneness, the radical revolution occurs.

When the whole energy attentively awaits in the inner space without any fragmentation, the alchemy of Cosmic Intelligence begins to unfold within. One stands the chance to witness the magic of a radical revolution only when the mind comes to total silence through the in-depth understanding of itself.

At this point, the Life energy is utterly still, transparent and dynamic, awaiting in readiness for its ultimate freedom. In its creative intelligence, the whole energy acts upon itself to explode the old structure of the crystallized mind.

This is the moment of breakthrough. In this revolutionary action the old, time-bound structure of the ego/me is shattered, giving the experience of a new-dimensional energy flow. This is the true re-birth of a human being. It is the blessing and the grace of the Causeless Creation.

This celebration is the outcome of the alchemy of Life, an act of the unknown. It is a spiritual opening, a turn toward new-dimensional existence.

When one begins to perceive and feel the bondage of the mind very clearly, without any reservation, this sets in motion a counter-force in consciousness. This counter-force is a catalyst for change, for the radical revolution. This is a natural unfoldment toward the final flowering of the human mind.

In all types of matter particles there are corresponding anti-matter particles. When the matter particles collide with the anti-matter particles, both are destroyed, leaving only energy.

In true meditation — which is free from the frame of technique and tradition, and carries all-around awareness to all that is within and without — the alchemy of transformation begins. There is an important change in the energy particles when attentive awareness is going totally inside. You become internally silent and free from any outward movement, and energy is actively pulsating only within.

When the energy particles of unbiased perception of the present collide with the particles of the past memory-mind, the annihilation of this psychological memory structure occurs. In this annihilation the perceiver and the past memory-mind are both negated. Awareness and the content of awareness are both annihilated, and there remains only energy.

This energy, being of a different dimension, will free us from the bondage of thought, which is time. It is elemental energy — that which is impersonal, spontaneous and intuitive. It functions in absolute freedom, beyond the realm of time and tradition. This timeless energy is pure Intelligence, the wisdom of Life, the Divine.

Eminent scientists working in the field of particle physics and genetic engineering also seem to have reached the conclusion that there exists an energy of a higher frequency which is beyond the dimensions of time and space and which behaves in mysterious ways.

True meditation opens up the possibility of entering this sphere of the mysterious, the unknown, the timeless, which may be eternal as well. Intense sensitivity is the outcome of thought-free inward pondering. It is an inward movement of exalted innocence — a movement of thinking without thought as well as feeling without emotional drive.

When this movement is free from the reflections of any reference to the past, it is detached from the shadow of Time. By entering deeper into one’s own inner space, quite inadvertently, one would arrive at a point where one can get the first insight to behold the dawn of the Timeless. The rigidity of thought is then loosened; thought comes into No man’s Land — a state of not-knowing, which is complete innocence.

Such a state of intense sensitivity loosens the hold of the genetic code. This prepares the ground for the eventual rushing in of the mysterious Life energy, which operates with its own Intelligence, without reference to the brain or nervous system.

At the moment of breakthrough, the mysterious Life energy explodes within and shatters the very foundation of one’s personality, along with one’s well-organized, conditioned memory-mind. The dawn of freedom is experienced!

The liberated man is completely freed from the clutches of the genome and lives from moment to moment, with a sense of being complete, contented, fully attuned and alive. He is also extremely creative, being governed by intuitive intelligence rather than bound by one’s conditioning or genetic code. This is a great achievement for man on earth, a historical landmark in the unfoldment of creative intelligence in the human being. Here lies the beauty, mystery and alchemy of Nature. Here also lies the hope and assurance of the liberation of human beings.

Yet, this stage is only the right beginning, like opening a door to something new. The door is open, and you are experiencing that other energy flow. The mold of mind has been broken, but even then one has to guard that new opening by remaining vigilant and totally faithful to it. Here is the need for, that classical state of ‘shraddha’ or faith. Faith is not a wishful mental choice of anything, either inside or outside. Faith is a total state in itself. It is anonymity with humility and inwardness, untouched by the desiring mind.

After the breakthrough, there is a possibility that that the surrounding environmental influences will affect this new opening. They can overshadow and engulf it again, just as a few dark clouds can subdue and block the light of the mighty sun. The whole basin of ego-mind has to become empty and cleaned of the residue gathered by the personality during its centuries of travel.

So even after the door has been opened, the old habits do linger on. The mind, with its ingrained self-interest, very cleverly tries to turn every new experience into an idea.

Truth is destroyed by making an idea of it. Thought embalms the Truth in time to keep it dead. This way the intellect can use Truth easily and conveniently whenever needed — to fulfill the vested interest of the ego. Be aware of the idea, the thought or concept. Thought is the slayer of Truth. Memory is a barrier to the Timeless.

Thus one needs to go deeper, to intensify the awareness, to remain faithful to that new beginning. The social mind and strong collective environmental pressures are always there. Those have the capacity to influence, to cast their own dark shadow, to take over again. You are open to a new freedom, yet the past is always lingering around to overcome the present. This, too, is a Law of Nature.

So one has to be vigilant and very aware even at this stage. Constant vigilance is the price of freedom. This new opening is not something that is permanent once it takes place. Life is a constant movement, a momentum of moments. One needs to be awake at every moment, which deepens one’s own faith.

Faith depends on what depth one has entered into oneself. One can play on the shore with the ocean water, or enter further into it to experience the full depth, the immensity. It is the depth that helps one loosen the grip of the foothold and thus become free from one’s own identity. Then one is carried aloft by the celestial current beyond the horizon to witness the panorama of unbounded space — the infinity.

Before that, the possibility is still there that the ego-mind will restructure itself and come back very subtly in a new guise. Some seekers see the glimpse through the door, but then they start glorifying the door, worshipping the light, singing songs about it. This can and does happen. The past is still there; the influences are still around. Any indulgence in glorificatory thought and idea about anyone or anything is a subtle and dangerous backward step. It implies that you are not yet completely free of mind.

The explosion almost completely breaks the mold, but the mold has the capacity to remake itself. That is why constant awareness is necessary. The mold of ego-mind has come into being through centuries and has created its own powerful vested interest. The mind mechanism, by utilizing all of the energy of Life, has rooted itself firmly. It does not let one move easily beyond itself towards divinity.

Even after this breakthrough, simplicity and austerity along with humility are essential, and deepening of the alert watchfulness is crucial. The explosion does bring a new order. It shatters the shell of the ego, the mind, and gives the experience of freedom and peace. But that freedom and peace have to unfold and flower to touch the source of one’s own inner being — the enormity of Life, the Divinity.

So there is not only the explosion but the deepening beyond it as well. You still have to let go of the foothold, to enter into the deeper eternal waters of Life. Then you become the water, the ocean, that vastness itself, in the flow of the Timeless. The ‘I’ as center merges into the circumference, which is limitless. You as a separate identity are not.

Here you come in Universality, the cosmic reality of Nature. You are not individual; you are not personality. That Universal state of being is the final point of arrival for human being. From personality to impersonality — which is Universality — is the unfoldment and fulfillment of life. He who merges with his own inner space becomes impersonal, becomes the whole. He is then not just in the world, but is one with it. And from there, when he loves one, he will love all.

This is the birth of the universal being, the impersonal one, and to experience this is our destiny. Here one is related to that vastness, to the infinity. In that enormity one experiences love and empathy. The entire world will then be in one’s orbit of relationship and love. What is love but one’s relationship with the impersonal intelligence beyond thought? When that comes into play, spirituality becomes much higher than just a religion, doctrine, philosophy, or tradition.

When one is operating from this impersonal state, intuitive expression brings forth the Truth that is the Cosmic Law. This Law will naturally guide one, rather than ethics prescribed by society or religion.

Love is the expression of cosmic creation in its highest form, beyond ethics, social morality and the rules of man. Intuitive expression from one’s inner space becomes the way of life. One finally embraces the Law of Divinity, which is not created by thought and so shall never perish. In this realm the creator and creation are one, subject and object are one.

Mankind is now facing its greatest challenge, with humanity on the brink. Sensitive and intelligent people are recognizing the fact that everybody is adding his bit to the world problems. Now their obligation is to become part of the solution. Only the individual acting and inquiring alone, within himself, can take up this challenge. Each one must explore within, with utmost urgency and honesty, to invite the radical revolution in the age-old mind.

Therein alone lies the hope for mankind. The mindless mind, freed from its fetters, will transform our perception, way of living and relationships. The human being will rise above individuality and nationality to embrace the Law of Universality.

Only through total upheaval and revolt, with a radical revolution of mind, can one discover the supreme fulfillment, with peace, love and the benevolence of Life. Universal human beings will live by the intelligence beyond thought, manifested in lives of creativity and intuitive spontaneity. This is the birthright of every human being on earth, the mystery which the Eternal is offering.

Let that Life lead you on…

With love,

Dada

From Intelligence Beyond Thought, Chapter twenty-eight

Here is a website maintained for Dada.

To see more from Dada look here.

Inside Out

We often speak of going or looking inside. But looking with careful attention, it can be seen there is simply no such thing as inside/outside. When we close our eyes and just watch whatever appears in our awareness, a bird singing, a thought passing, a sensation in the body, there is not any delineation between inside and outside. And it is the same when looking with open eyes. Either everything is outside, meaning outside of the seer and hence seen, or they are all inside, as all being contained in awareness. But I have found no distinction between inside and out.

As a result of finding there is no longer an inside opposed to an outside of me, it is discovered that the belief, that I am some being residing inside this body, is exposed as a mere fabrication. It is much more accurate to describe the situation as the body, and for that matter the rest of the manifestation, as residing inside my awareness. It is a bit like an inside-out sock that one pulls right-side out. It is here that the Zen story applies, “The Goose is Out.”

This revelation is more important than it might first appear. The inside/outside division the mind makes is part and parcel of the me identity, and when one sees, and I mean actually sees, not just intellectually understands, then the very foundation of the ego self is pulled out from under.

-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.

 

 

This is Going to be Your Last Life – Osho

I have held the following events close to my heart over the years. I relate them to you now because they may have some connection with the beautiful revelations of Swami Siddharth at darshan several evenings ago. The events may not be described as momentous, but they have significance of their own, and I bring them before you in grave humility and from the depths of my being.

I was thirty-two years old. By then I had four babies, and was kept tied to the house. To keep my spirit alive, I was taking on a correspondence course. On the day of your enlightenment, my husband was out, the babies were asleep. I was drawing a life study of my left hand; suddenly the room was filled with a shimmering light – no light was ever like it. I could see nothing but the light. I do not know how long it was there; I only knew that something tremendously significant had occurred. It left me breathless.

When my husband came home, I tried to explain what had happened, but there were no words to describe it so we did not discuss it. I had to wait another thirty-two years before the truth of that event became clear.

I had been taking a theater class with seventeen year olds, two of who came to me distressed, with feelings of helplessness because they had seen a film depicting the effects of a nuclear war. I took their pain home with me. Once inside the door, I threw myself face downwards on the floor, arms outstretched. I was in an empty dark space, opening myself to existence for some kind of answer. I was there for a long time. Later I went into my bedroom and lay on my back on the bed. Suddenly the same white shimmering light enveloped me; the room seemed to disappear, and after a few moments the head and shoulders of the man came into the light, his eyes towards me. Soon the head and shoulders of the woman appeared in profile in front of his left shoulder, her hands cupped together in front of her and against her breast. Into her hands came a small child. All was encompassed in this light. I cannot say how long they were there, but then they and the light were gone. I was panting as if I had been running.

I knew that the first light thirty-two years before had been Osho’s light as it filled the world and was available to all those to receive it. I was now ready to receive him.

I knew that the second event brought me to the one who was the truth of our time.

The first reality was when I was thirty-two and you were twenty-one, the light was your enlightenment and it filled the universe.

The next day, my sannyas friend – who was doing some work for me – observed a great change in me. It was not long before I was at the feet of my beloved Master.

I write these things because this light within us cannot be hidden. I bow down to the ultimate truth of the enlightened one.

My beloved Master and friend, I realize these events may seem small beside the others that are revealed to you at last; but they are brought to you from my loving heart.

Jivan Mary, the path of spiritual realization knows no differences in experiences.

There are not big, significant experiences and small, insignificant experiences. All experiences on the path are exactly of the same significance, because each experience takes you a step deeper into reality, deeper into yourself, deeper into existence.

Your first experience of suddenly encountering a white, shimmering light, and after thirty-two years you came to know that it was the day I had become enlightened . . . You are not alone in experiencing that; perhaps ten persons more have related the same experience to me. And naturally they were amazed, and there was no clue available to them. Only later on, years afterwards, it became clear to them that there seemed to be some correspondence between my enlightenment and their experience.

There were great distances between me and all these people.

But as far as man’s spiritual being is concerned, space and distances do not matter at all. If you are open, if you are available, if you are receptive, then one man becoming enlightened . . . the experience, the vibration, the light goes around the whole earth. Wherever there are people who can receive it, who can welcome it, who can take it in . . . They will not only see a shimmering white light – that is the outer manifestation – there is something more hidden behind it. In their seeing, their being has taken a quantum leap.

They will never be the same as they were before. The experience of the light has drawn a line, a discontinuity in their life. Something new has entered: they have become available to the beyond; they are no longer only psychological human beings. Something of the spirit has come up out of the darkness, just like an iceberg – a part is above the water, one-tenth. Most of the iceberg is still underneath the water, but a revolution has started.

Your second experience is of even deeper mystery. It is also connected with the first experience.

The first experience was my enlightenment. You shared it, you participated in the celebration. You were a welcomed guest.

The second experience is indicative of my whole philosophy: I have gone beyond enlightenment, something new is born. Enlightenment has been, up to now, the ultimate.

It is not the ultimate any more.

I have broken the ice. I have opened a small door – a new birth, of a new man, of a new humanity, of a new future.

Enlightenment will always remain of tremendous value, but up to now it was the end. Now it will be again a beginning of a new journey.

This breakthrough has immense implications. A few are worth remembering. One, the old idea of enlightenment was partial. It was partial in the sense that all the religions of the world have emphasized the fact that the man has to renounce the woman, to renounce the world, renounce all the pleasures of the world. He has to become an ascetic – in reality he has to become a self-torturer, because to cut man from woman is the beginning of torture.

Man and woman are part of one whole; they are not opposites, they are complementaries.

My emphasis is: no more renunciation, no more self-torture, no need to create a painful, miserable life for yourself.

The woman is not against the man.

The new humanity has to create the right atmosphere where men and women are friends, fellow travelers, making each other whole. The journey becomes a joy, the journey becomes a song, the journey becomes a dance.

And if men and women in total harmony can give birth to children, those children will be the ‘superman’ we have been dreaming about for thousands of years. But the superman can be created only out of the harmonious whole of man’s and woman’s energy. Then he will be born enlightened.

In the past, people had to seek enlightenment. But if a child is born out of a couple who are in total harmony, in absolute love, he will be born enlightened. It cannot be otherwise. Enlightenment will be his beginning; he will go beyond enlightenment from the very first step. He will seek new spaces, new skies.

Your second experience is indicative of my whole philosophical approach.

I am bound to be condemned by the old religions. I cannot even complain against them. I accept it, it is just natural – because I am trying to bring a totally new religious experience into the world. And with the new religious experience there is bound to be a new world, a new humanity, new eyes to see and new hearts to feel.

Jivan Mary, you are blessed that, far away from me, you experienced my enlightenment and you also experienced my transcendence of enlightenment. You are absolutely ripe; mature, to explode into the beyond, the unknowable, the ecstatic existence.

You are old, but only in the body. Your heart is younger than the so-called young generation. You have not just grown old, you have grown up, you have matured.

And I can say it without any hesitation: this is going to be your last life. You will not die without experiencing your immortality, your eternity.

It is very difficult to predict any such thing, because there are so many hazards. One can go astray from the very last step – just one step more and he would have arrived home, but one can go astray.

There is a Sufi story.

A king, who was not just a king, but also an enlightened human being, was talking to the court astrologer. He told the astrologer, “Your science is the most difficult one. Predicting anybody’s behavior, future, is almost an impossibility, because on each step there are crossroads, and one never knows where the person will start moving and changing. And life is so accidental and everything is in darkness; people are unconscious.”

But the astrologer said, “No, that is not so.”

The king said, “Then you will have to prove it by experiment. I know a beggar who sits just in front of the palace . . .”

In front of the palace there was a beautiful, big river, and the beggar used to come across the bridge to sit in front of the palace. And certainly he was the richest beggar; he was the royal beggar. And he was a very strong man – he had made it clear to all the beggars of the capital that this place belonged to him; nobody should ever try to enter here.

You may not know that beggars go on doing this. You may not be aware that you belong to some beggar, that no other beggar can approach you; you are a possession of some beggar.

In one of the cities where I used to go, I always used to find a beggar at the railway-station and I would give him one rupee. One time I went there, the beggar was not there. A young man was standing there. I said, “What happened? What happened to the old man?”

He said, “I am his son-in-law.”

I said, “Son-in-law? But where is the old man?”

He said, “He has given the railway station as a dowry to me. Now it belongs to me.”

Only then did I become aware that we may not know at all who the beggar is who possesses us, our house, our street . . . nobody knows. That is their decision amongst themselves; there are divisions.

So the palace of the king was the kingdom of the beggar. And the king said, ”Tomorrow when this beggar comes towards the palace, we will put a golden pot full of gold coins in the middle of the bridge. He comes so early that he is almost the first man to cross the bridge, and he will get hold of the pot and all the money that the pot contains.”

And the astrologer and the king and their other friends were waiting and watching from the palace. The beggar came, but they were all surprised: he was coming with closed eyes, with a walking stick to find the way. He was not blind; he had never been seen with a walking stick.

The astrologer said, “This is strange.”

And the beggar certainly missed the pot, because the bridge was big, and he was walking with closed eyes.

He reached the palace.

The king called to him, “What is the matter? You are not blind.”

He said, “No, I am not blind.”

“And you have never carried a walking stick.”

He said, “Never.”

“What happened today?”

He said, “Just this morning when I was coming out of my home, the idea arose in me that if I should become a blind man – anything can happen in this world; people become blind – will I be able to find my way to the palace? So I said, ‘It is better to try.’ I am not blind, but it is better to try, as a rehearsal, in case I become blind.”

The king said to the astrologer, “Do you see my point? This man passed by the pot full of gold. But an idea in his mind . . . ‘If someday I become blind, it is better to have some rehearsal beforehand.’ And it is a coincidence that he has chosen today to practice it.”

It is very difficult to predict that somebody is going to become enlightened, because people have slipped from the very last step – they were just at the door of the temple and they turned back . . . some idea . . .

But about Jivan Mary, I am saying she is going to make it in this life. Her experiences show the purity of her heart. She is not a woman of the mind. And her purity has been growing, and death cannot be so cruel. She is going to become enlightened any day . . . but certainly before her death.

She should go on just as simply, as ordinarily, as humbly as she has been going up to now. She should not start thinking that she is going to become enlightened; otherwise the idea has entered, and can distract.

She should not bother about enlightenment or no-enlightenment. She is perfectly good as she is, and she should continue in her humbleness, in her love, in her purity, in her compassion.

Enlightenment will come on its own accord. She is not to desire it, she is not to expect it.

-Osho

From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse #41

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

See a related post:  The Enlightenment of Govind Siddharth

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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.

 

From Centering to Satori

Sumati and I spent almost five months making the journey overland to Poona. It was not easy at times. We started off from England and combined hitchhiking with a few buses. For part of the journey, I drove a Mercedes-Benz car to Beirut where it was to be sold by the owner.

Sumati was only twenty and had not experienced that kind of overland traveling – it took its toll. I was so relieved when we finally arrived. I felt I had delivered my package to Osho. There were times, like once on the side of the road near Ankara, Turkey, when both of us wished we hadn’t embarked on this journey together. But in the end, we made it and soon we were in harmony again.

Osho gave me five groups to do this time: Centering, which was the usual first group; Enlightenment Intensive; Tantra; Zazen; and Awareness. Sumati was given a different schedule of groups.

A couple of insightful moments led up to a breakthrough. There was an exercise given in the Centering group which used a nonsensical phrase that had to be memorized in a particular pattern and which required very keen concentration to remember correctly while performing other unrelated activities. The phrase was something like, “Shatatti, shamaui. Shamaui, shamaui, shatatti. Shatatti, shamaui, shamaui, shatatti, shamaui, etc.” And once we memorized this phrase, we were paired up and sent into the busiest market area in Poona. Rickshaws, cars, bullock carts, cows, beggars, thousands of people all moving about, and we had to maneuver through this chaos all the while reciting our phrase. This exercise created a witnessing consciousness. You concentrated on the phrase so much that all the other actions, crossing the road, making your way through the throngs of people, happened almost as if in a dream. And because of your non-involvement, it flowed harmoniously. It really was quite remarkable.

Enlightenment Intensive was based on the format developed by Charles Berner, who combined interpersonal communication processes with the questioning “Who Am I” so that rather than internalizing the question, practitioners were paired up and asked each other to “tell me who you are.” This was a three-day group and, in the beginning, very superficial answers would assert themselves. I am a man. I am an American. I am a Leo. I am independent, selfish, wonderful or any other adjective. As one persisted and exhausted all superficial responses one was left with only an objectless inquiring. Of course, some people mistakenly made an objectification of this empty inquiring and thought, “I’ve got it.”

During the Tantra group I had the opportunity to face jealousy. During a break, I walked out and saw Sumati in a loving embrace with one of the guys Kaveesha had sent off to Poona from Kansas City. I could feel the energy of what one would call jealousy, but when I looked carefully, it was just energy. I had heard and read many times Osho talking about facing fear, jealousy, anger and not reacting but just observing. Here now, in front of my face, was an opportunity to do just that. And as he had said, I found that when one stayed with this energy without condemnation, it transformed, and lo and behold it had become love. And I felt the most love for the fellow; perhaps because of the opportunity he had given me to experience this transformation of emotion (energy).

At some point within the five days of the Zazen group, it became clear to me that I would be going to Japan. It just suddenly dawned on me. The experience seemed to trigger some very deep feelings that needed to be freed. Besides the sitting and walking meditation, we experienced a Japanese tea ceremony performed by Asanga and a shakuhachi performance by Chaitanya Hari (Deuter). During the time I was in the Zazen group, Osho was speaking on Buddha’s Heart Sutra.

While I was in Zazen, Sumati was doing the Leela group led by Somendra. My next group would also be led by Somendra, the first meeting of a new group called Awareness. After my Zazen and Sumati’s Leela group had finished, we had a day or two together before I was to begin my last group. It was then I learned that part of her “therapy” in Somendra’s group was his bedding her. Somendra was known for his magical work with energy, a bit of an energy “wizard,” and so apparently, he worked his sexual wizardry on Sumati.

Because of my knowledge of this, I went into the Awareness group with a presence of energy in my hara which I was very much aware of. This energy fueled my meditation within the group. I’m sure that Somendra had no idea that I was the partner of his bedfellow nor probably would he have cared. I never said a word. I stayed with that energy and let it work its own magic in my belly.

Several days into the group, we were lying on the floor in a meditation and I was “being with” the exhalations of my breath. With each breath I went to its end and then let the inhalation happen on its own. On one of the exhalations as it finished, there was a movement that I would describe as the motion of a French press coffee maker pushing down the plunger, plunging my head down into my torso, then it stopped. At the time I felt like I was just on the verge of something but did not know what. At the end of the meditation, Somendra told the group that I had had a mini satori.

The next day in one exercise we were moving around the room with blindfolds on and I found myself drawn to the window. It felt as though my being was looking for a way out. Later we were again on the floor, and again I was staying with my exhalations, letting them come to a complete stop, waiting for the inhalation to happen on its own — and then — the French press. Only this time it completed its plunge and it was as if everything that had been in my head, moved down into my torso below the shoulders. The head was gone. Just at the moment of this happening, the call of a bird was heard — but there was no space between the call and myself. It was as if, up to that point, there had always been a very subtle screen through which the outside world had to pass; but not now. There was no separation. The meditation ended and Somendra had us sit up. We had had blindfolds on and when I removed mine, my eyes they looked like some kind of antenna. Somendra made a remark and everyone laughed. But when everyone laughed, I laughed and there was no sense of a person who was being laughed at. There was no person there.

He must have motioned for me to speak because I heard myself say, “The goose is out.” I went on to tell him that yesterday when he had said that a satori had happened, he was wrong. It hadn’t quite fully come to fruition, but today it had.

Note: Following is a question from a discourse in which Osho talks about Satori.

Beloved Osho,

Over the years, I have heard various sannyasins saying that they experienced a satori. What exactly is a satori, and how does it come about?

Satori is a glimpse of the ultimate . . . as if you are seeing the Himalayan peaks. But you are far away, you are not on the peaks, and you have not become the peaks. It is a beautiful experience, very enchanting, exciting, challenging. Perhaps it may lead you towards samadhi. Satori is a glimpse of samadhi.

Samadhi is the fulfillment of satori. What was a glimpse has become now an eternal reality to you.  Satori is like opening a window – a little breeze comes in, a little light. You can see a little sky, but it is framed. Your window becomes a frame to the sky, which has no frame. And if you always live in the room and you have never been out of it, the natural conclusion will be that the sky is framed.

It is only in this decade that a few modern painters have started painting without frames. It was a shock to all art lovers, who could not conceive it: what is the meaning of a painting without a frame?

But these modern painters said, “In existence nothing is framed, so to make a beautiful, natural scenery with a frame is a lie. The frame is the lie – it is added by you. It is not there outside, so we have dropped the frames.”

Satori is just a glimpse, from the window, of the beautiful sky full of stars. If it can invite you to come out to see the unframed vastness of the whole sky full of millions of stars, it is samadhi.

The word samadhi is very beautiful. Sam means equilibrium; adhi, the other part of samadhi, means all the tensions, all the turmoil, all disturbances have disappeared. There is only a silent equilibrium . . . as if time has stopped, all movement has frozen. Even to feel it for a single moment is enough: you cannot lose it again.

Satori can be lost because it was only a glimpse. Samadhi cannot be lost because it is a realization. Satori is on the way to samadhi, but it can become either a help or a hindrance – a help if you understand this is just the beginning of something far greater, a hindrance if you think you have come to the end.

In meditation, first you will come to satori – just here and there glimpses of light, blissfulness, ecstasy. They come and go. But remember, howsoever beautiful, because they come and go, you have not yet come home – where you come and never go again.

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Chapter 37

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

That was the last group that was assigned and the last group that I did.

Within a short time Sumati and I made preparations to go to Japan. We had bought the very first tickets for the train to Gujarat, going to the new commune, and because it was delayed, we decided to go to Japan and make some money teaching English. We got a refund on our tickets for the train and bought some tape discourses to take with us. My friend Peter, who I had traveled with from Kenya to Madagascar, was living in Tokyo, and so that would be a good place to land.

-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.

 

 

My First Enlightened Sannyasin – Osho

The moment my grandfather died, my Nani was still laughing the last flicker of her laughter, then she controlled herself. She was certainly a woman who could control herself. But I was not impressed by her control, I was impressed by her laughter in the very face of death.

Again and again I asked her, “Nani, can you tell me why you laughed so loudly when death was so imminent? If even a child like me was aware of it, it is not possible that you were not aware.”

She said, “I was aware, that is why I laughed. I laughed at the poor man trying to stop the wheel unnecessarily, because neither birth nor death means anything in the ultimate sense.”

I had to wait for the time when I could ask and argue with her. When I myself become enlightened, I thought, then I will ask her – and that’s what I did.

The first thing I did after my enlightenment, at the age of twenty-one, was to rush to the village where my grandmother was, my father’s village. She never left that place where her husband had been burned. That very place became her home. She forgot all the luxuries that she had been accustomed to. She forgot all the gardens, the fields, and the lake that she had possessed. She simply never went back, even to settle things.

She said, “What is the point? All is settled. My husband is dead, and the child I love is not there; all is settled.”

Immediately after my enlightenment I rushed to the village to meet two people… first Magga Baba, the man I was talking about before. You will certainly wonder why. Because I wanted somebody to say to me, “You are enlightened”… I knew it, but I wanted to hear it from the outside too. Magga Baba was the only man I could ask at that time. I had heard that he had recently returned to the village.

I rushed to him. The village was two miles from the station. You cannot believe how I rushed to see him. I reached the neem tree….

The word neem cannot be translated because I don’t think anything like the neem tree exists in the West at all. The neem tree is something strange: if you taste the leaves they are very bitter.

You cannot believe that poison could taste more poisonous. In fact it is just the opposite, it is not poisonous. If you eat a few leaves from the neem tree every day… which is a difficult thing. I have done it for years; fifty leaves in the morning and fifty again in the evening. Now, to eat fifty leaves of the neem tree really needs someone who is determined to kill himself!

It is so bitter, but it purifies the blood and keeps you absolutely free from any infection, even in India, which is a miracle! Even the wind passing through the leaves of a neem tree is thought to be purer than any other. People plant neem trees around their houses just to keep the air pure and unpolluted. It is a scientifically proven fact that the neem tree keeps away all kinds of infection by creating a wall of protection.

I rushed to the neem tree where Magga Baba sat, and the moment he saw me do you know what he did? I could not believe it myself – he touched my feet and wept. I felt very embarrassed because a crowd had gathered and they all thought Magga Baba had now really gone mad. Up till then he had been a little mad but now he was totally gone, gone forever… gate, gate – gone, and gone forever. But Magga Baba laughed, and for the first time before the people he said to me, “My boy, you have done it! But I knew that one day you would do it.”

I touched his feet. For the first time he tried to prevent me from doing it, saying, “No, no, don’t touch my feet anymore.”

But I still touched them, even though he insisted. I didn’t care and said, “Shut up! You look after your business and let me do mine. If I am enlightened as you say, please don’t prevent an enlightened man from touching your feet.”

He started laughing again and said, “You rascal! You are enlightened, but still a rascal.”

I then rushed to my home – that is, my Nani’s home, not my father’s – because she was the woman I wanted to tell what had happened. But strange are the ways of existence: she was standing at the door, looking at me, a little amazed. She said, “What has happened to you? You are no longer the same.” She was not enlightened, but intelligent enough to see the difference in me.

I said, “Yes, I am no longer the same, and I have come to share the experience that has happened to me.”

She said, “Please, as far as I am concerned, always remain my Raja, my little child.”

So I didn’t say anything to her. One day passed, then in the middle of the night she woke me up.

With tears in her eyes she said, “Forgive me. You are no longer the same. You may pretend but I can see through your pretense. There is no need to pretend. You can tell me what has happened to you. The child I used to know is dead, but someone far better and luminous has taken his place. I cannot call you my own any more, but that does not matter. Now you will be able to be called by millions as theirs, and everybody will be able to feel you as his or hers. I withdraw my claim, but also teach me the way.”

This is the first time I have told anybody; my Nani was my first disciple. I taught her the way. My way is simple: to be silent, to experience in one’s self that which is always the observer, and never the observed; to know the knower, and forget the known.

My way is simple, as simple as Lao Tzu’s, Chuang Tzu’s, Krishna’s, Christ’s, Moses’, Zarathustra’s… because only the names differ, the way is the same. Only pilgrims are different; the pilgrimage is the same. And the truth, the process, is very simple.

I was fortunate to have had my own grandmother as my first disciple, because I have never found anybody else to be so simple. I have found many very simple people, very close to her simplicity, but the profoundness of her simplicity was such that nobody has ever been able to transcend it, not even my father. He was simple, utterly simple, and very profound, but not in comparison to her. I am sorry to say, he was far away, and my mother is very, very far away; she is not even close to my father’s simplicity. You will be surprised to know – and I am declaring it for the first time – my Nani was not only my first disciple, she was my first enlightened disciple too, and she became enlightened long before I started initiating people into sannyas. She was never a sannyasin.

She died in 1970, the year when I started initiating people into sannyas. She was on her deathbed when she heard about my movement. Although I did not hear it myself, one of my brothers reported to me that these were her last words…. “It was as if she were talking to you,” my brother told me. “She said, ‘Raja, now you have started a movement of sannyas, but it is too late. I cannot be your sannyasin because by the time you reach here I will not be in this body, but let it be reported to you that I wanted to be your sannyasin.’”

She died before I reached her, exactly twelve hours before. It was a long journey from Bombay to that small village, but she had insisted that nobody should touch her body until I arrived, then whatever I decided should be done. If I wanted her body to be buried, then it would be okay. If I wanted her body to be burned, that too would be okay. If I wanted something else to happen, then that too would be okay.

When I reached home I could not believe my eyes: she was eighty years of age and yet looked so young. She had died twelve hours before, but still there was no sign of deterioration. I said to her, “Nani, I have come. I know you will not be able to answer me this time. I’m just telling you so that you can hear. There is no need to answer.” Suddenly, almost a miracle! Not only was I present, but my father too, and the whole family, were there. In fact the whole neighborhood had gathered. They all saw one thing: a tear rolled down from her left eye – after twelve hours!

Doctors – please note it, Devaraj – had declared her dead. Now, dead men don’t weep; even real men rarely do, what to say about dead men? But there was a tear rolling from her eye. I took it as an answer, and what more could be expected? I gave fire to her funeral, as was her wish. I did not do that even to my father’s body.

In India it is almost an absolute law that the eldest son should begin the fire for his father’s funeral pyre. I did not do it. As far as my father’s body was concerned, I did not even go to his funeral. The last funeral I attended was my Nani’s.

That day I told my father, “Listen, Dadda, I will not be able to come to your funeral.”

He said, “What nonsense are you saying? I am still alive.”

I said, “I know you are still alive, but for how long? Just the other day Nani was alive; tomorrow you may not be. I don’t want to take any chances. I want to say right now that I have decided I will not attend any other funeral after my Nani’s, so please forgive me, I will not be coming to your funeral. Of course you will not be there so I am asking your forgiveness today.”

He understood and was a little shocked of course, but he said, “Okay, if this is your decision, but who then is going to give fire at my funeral?”

This is a very significant question in India. In that context it would normally be the eldest son. I said to him, “You already know I am a hobo. I don’t possess anything.”

Magga Baba, although utterly poor, had two possessions: his blanket and his magga – the cup. I don’t have any possessions, although I live like a king. But I don’t possess anything. Nothing is mine. If one day someone comes and says to me, “Leave this place at once,” I will leave immediately. I will not even have to pack anything. Nothing is mine. That’s how one day I left Bombay. Nobody could believe that I would leave so easily without looking back, even once.

I could not go to my father’s funeral, but I had asked his permission beforehand, a long time before, at my Nani’s funeral. My Nani was not a sannyasin, but she was a sannyasin in other ways, in every other way except that I had not given her a name. She died in orange. Although I had not asked her to wear orange, but on the day she became enlightened she stopped wearing her white dress.

In India a widow has to wear white. And why only a widow? – So that she does not look beautiful, a natural logic. And she has to shave her head! Look… what to call these bastards! Just to make a woman ugly they cut off her hair and don’t allow her to use any other color than white. They take all the colorfulness from her life. She cannot attend any celebration, not even the marriage of her own son or daughter! Celebration as such is prohibited for her. The day my Nani became enlightened, I remember – I have noted it down, it will be somewhere – it was the sixteenth of January, 1967.

I say without hesitation that she was my first sannyasin; and not only that, she was my first enlightened sannyasin.

-Osho

Taken from Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Discourse #16

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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.

He Died in Samadhi – Osho

Osho and his father in Buddha Hall

Osho, would you say something about your father’s death yesterday?

Vivek,

It was not a death at all. Or it was the total death. And both mean the same thing. I was hoping that he would die in this way. He died a death that everybody should be ambitious for: he died in samadhi, he died utterly detached from the body and the mind.

I went to see him only three times during this whole month he was in the hospital.

Whenever I felt that he was just on the verge, I went to see him. The first two times I was a little afraid that if he died he would have to be born again; a little attachment to the body was there. His meditation was deepening every day, but a few chains with the body were still intact, were not broken.

Yesterday I went to see him: I was immensely happy that now he could die a right death.

He was no more concerned with the body. Yesterday, early in the morning at three o’clock, he attained his first glimpse of the eternal — and immediately he became aware that now he was going to die. This was the first time he had called me to come; the other two times I had gone on my own. Yesterday he called me to come because he was certain that he was going to die. He wanted to say good-bye, and he said it beautifully — with no tears in the eyes, with no longing for life any more.

Hence, in a way it is not a death but a birth into eternity. He died in time and was born into eternity. Or it is a total death — total in the sense that now he will not be coming any more. And that is the ultimate achievement; there is nothing higher than it.

He left the world in utter silence, in joy, in peace. He left the world like a lotus flower — it was worth celebrating. And these are the occasions for you to learn how to live and how to die.  Each death should be a celebration, but it can be a celebration only if it leads you to higher planes of existence.

He died enlightened. And that’s how I would like each of my sannyasins to die. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened, and even death becomes beautiful if you are enlightened. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened because it is a misery, a hell. Death becomes a door to the divine if you are enlightened; it is no more a misery, it is no more a hell. In fact, on the contrary, it is getting out of all hell, out of all misery.

I am immensely glad that he died the way he died. Remember it: as meditation deepens, you become farther and farther away from your body-mind composite. And when meditation reaches its ultimate peak, you can see everything.

Yesterday morning he was absolutely aware of death, that it had come. And he called me.

This was the first time he had called me, and the moment I saw him I saw that he was no more in the body. All the pains of the body had disappeared. That’s why the doctors were puzzled: the body was functioning in an absolutely normal way. This was the last thing the doctors could have imagined, that he could die. He could have died any day before. He was in deep pain, there were many complexities in the body: his heart was not functioning well, his pulse was missing; there were blood clots in the brain, in the leg, in the hand.

Yesterday he was absolutely normal. They checked, and they said it was impossible; now there was no problem, no danger. But this is how it happens. The day of the danger, according to the physicians, didn’t prove dangerous. The first twenty-four hours when he was admitted to the hospital one month before were the most dangerous; they were afraid that he would die. He didn’t die. Then for the next twenty-four hours they were still hesitant to say whether he would be saved or not. A suggestion had even come from a surgeon to cut the leg off completely, because if blood clots started happening in other places it would be impossible to save him.

But I was against cutting off the leg, because one has to die one day — why distort the body and why create more pain? And just living in itself has no meaning, just lengthening the life has no meaning. I said no. They were surprised. And when he survived for almost four weeks they thought I was right, that there had been no need to cut off the leg; the leg was coming back, becoming alive again. He had started walking also, which Dr. Sardesai thought was a miracle. They had not hoped for that much, that he would be able to walk.

Yesterday he was perfectly normal, everything normal. And that gave me the indication that now death was possible. If meditation happens before death, everything becomes normal. One dies in perfect health, because one is not really dying but entering into a higher plane. The body becomes a stepping-stone.

He was meditating for years. He was a rare man — it is very rare to find a father like him.

A father becoming a disciple of his own son: it is rare. Jesus’ father did not dare to become a disciple, Buddha’s father hesitated for years to become a disciple. But he was meditating for years. Three hours each day, in the morning from three to six, he was sitting in meditation. Yesterday also, in the hospital also, he continued.

Yesterday it happened. One never knows when it will happen. One has to go on digging…one day one comes across the source of water, the source of consciousness. Yesterday it happened; it happened in right time. If he had left his body just one day before he would have been back in the body again soon — a little clinging was there. But yesterday the slate was completely clean. He attained to no-mind, he died like a Buddha.

What more can one have than Buddhahood?

My effort here is to help you all to live like Buddhas and die like Buddhas. The death of a Buddha is both! It is not a death, because life is eternal. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death. Millions of times you have been born and died; they are all small episodes in the eternal pilgrimage. But because you are unconscious you cannot see that which is beyond birth and death.

As you become more conscious, you can see your original face. He saw his original face yesterday. He heard the one hand clapping, he heard the soundless sound. Hence it is not a death: it is attaining life eternal. On the other hand it can be called a total death – total death in the sense that he will not be coming any more.

Rejoice!

-Osho

Taken from Be Still and Know, Discourse #9

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.