Category: Osho

The Mysteries of the Seven Bodies – Osho

In yesterday’s talk you said that the seeker should first worry about his own receptivity and should not go begging from door to door. But the very meaning of a sadhak is that there are obstacles on his path of spiritual growth. He does not know how to be receptive. Is it difficult to meet the right guide?

To seek and to ask are two different things. Actually, only he who does not want to seek asks. To seek and to ask are not one and the same; rather, they are contradictory. He who wants to avoid seeking asks. The process of seeking and the process of begging are very different. In asking the attention is centered on the other – on the giver; in seeking the attention is centered on oneself – on the receiver. To say that there are obstacles in the path of spiritual growth means there are obstacles within the seeker himself. The path too lies within and it is not very difficult to understand one’s own hindrances. It will have to be explained at length what obstacles are and how they can be removed. Yesterday I told you about the seven bodies. We shall talk in greater detail about these and it will become clear to you.

As there are seven bodies, so there are also seven chakras, energy centers, and each chakra is connected in a special way with its corresponding body. The chakra of the physical body is the muladhar. This is the first chakra and it has an integral connection with the physical body. The muladhar chakra has two possibilities. Its first potentiality is a natural one that is given to us with birth; its other possibility is obtainable by meditation.

The basic natural possibility of this chakra is the sex urge of the physical body. The very first question that arises in the mind of the seeker is what to do in regard to this central principle. Now there is another possibility of this chakra, and that is brahmacharya, celibacy, which is attainable through meditation. Sex is the natural possibility and brahmacharya is its transformation. The more the mind is focused upon and gripped by sexual desire, the more difficult it will be to reach its ultimate potential of brahmacharya.

Now this means that we can utilize the situation given to us by nature in two ways. We can live in the condition that nature has placed us in – but then the process of spiritual growth cannot begin – or we transform this state. The only danger in the path of transformation is that there is the possibility that we may begin to fight with our natural center. What is the real danger in the path of a seeker? The first obstacle is that if the meditator indulges only in nature’s order of things he cannot rise to the ultimate possibility of his physical body and he stagnates at the starting point. On the one hand there is a need; on the other hand there is a suppression which causes the meditator to fight the sex urge. Suppression is an obstacle on the path of meditation. This is the obstacle of the first chakra. Transformation cannot come about with suppression.

If suppression is an obstruction, what is the solution? Understanding will then solve the matter. Transformation takes place within as you begin to understand sex. There is a reason for this. All elements of nature lie blind and unconscious within us. If we become conscious of them, transformation begins. Awareness is the alchemy; awareness is the alchemy of changing them, of transforming them. If a person becomes awake toward his sexual desires with his total feelings and his total understanding, then brahmacharya will begin to take birth within him in place of sex. Unless a person reaches brahmacharya in his first body it is difficult to work on the potentiality of other centers.

The second body, as I said, is the emotional or the etheric body. The second body is connected to the second chakra – the swadhishthan chakra. This too has two possibilities. Basically, its natural potential is fear, hate, anger, and violence. All these are conditions obtained from the natural potential of the swadhishthan chakra. If a person stagnates at the second body, then the directly opposite conditions of transformation – love, compassion, fearlessness, friendliness – do not take place. The obstacle on the meditator’s path in the second chakra is hate, anger and violence, and the question is of their transformation.

Here too the same mistake is made. One person can give vent to his anger; another can suppress his anger. One can just be fearful; another can suppress his fear and make a show of courage. But neither of these will lead to transformation. When there is fear it has to be accepted; there is no use hiding or suppressing it. If there is violence within there is no use in covering it with the mantle of nonviolence. Shouting slogans of nonviolence will bring no change in the state of violence within. It remains violence. It is a condition given to us by nature in the second body. It has its uses just as there is meaning to sex. Through sex alone other physical bodies can be given birth. Before one physical body falls, nature has made provisions for the birth of another.

Fear, violence, anger, are all necessary on the second plane; otherwise man could not survive, could not protect himself. Fear protects him, anger involves him in struggle against others and violence helps him to save himself from the violence of others. All these are qualities of the second body and are necessary for survival, but generally we stop here and do not go any further. If a person understands the nature of fear he attains fearlessness, and if he understands the nature of violence he attains nonviolence. Similarly, by understanding anger we develop the quality of forgiveness.

In fact, anger is one side of the coin, forgiveness is the other. They each hide behind the other – but the coin has to be turned over. If we come to know one side of the coin perfectly we naturally become curious to know what is on the other side – and so the coin turns. If we hide the coin and pretend we have no fear, no violence within, we will never be able to know fearlessness and nonviolence. He who accepts the presence of fear within himself and who has investigated it fully will soon reach a place where he will want to find out what is behind fear. His curiosity will encourage him to see the other side of the coin.

The moment he turns it over he becomes fearless. Similarly, violence will turn into compassion.

These are the potentials of the second body. Thus, the meditator has to bring about a transformation in the qualities given to him by nature. And for this it is not necessary to go around asking others; one has to keep seeking and asking within oneself. We all know that anger and fear are impediments – because how can a coward seek truth? He will go begging for truth; he will wish that someone should give it to him without his having to go into unknown lands.

The third is the astral body. This also has two dimensions. Primarily, the third body revolves around doubt and thinking. If these are transformed doubt becomes trust and thinking becomes vivek, awareness. If doubts are repressed you never attain to shraddha, trust, though we are advised to suppress doubts and to believe what we hear. He who represses his doubts never attains to trust, because doubt remains present within though repressed. It will creep within like a cancer and eat up your vitality. Beliefs are implanted for fear of skepticism. We will have to understand the quality of doubt, we will have to live it and go along with it. Then one day we will reach a point where we will begin to have doubt about doubt itself. The moment we begin to doubt, doubt itself, trust begins.

We cannot reach to the clarity of discrimination without going through the process of thinking. There are people who do not think and people who encourage them not to think. They say, “Do not think; leave all thoughts.” He who stops thinking lands himself in ignorance and blind faith. This is not clarity. The power of discrimination is gained only after passing through the most subtle processes of thinking. What is the meaning of vivek, discrimination? Doubt is always present in thoughts. It is always indecisive. Therefore, those who think a great deal never come to a decision. It is only when they step out of the wheel of thoughts that they can decide. Decision comes from a state of clarity which is beyond thoughts.

Thoughts have no connection with decision. He who is always engrossed in thoughts never reaches a decision. That is why it invariably happens that those whose life is less dominated by thoughts are very resolute, whereas those who think a great deal lack determination. There is danger from both. Those who do not think go ahead and do whatever they are determined to do, for the simple reason that they have no thought process to create doubt within.

The dogmatists and the fanatics of the world are very active and energetic people; for them there is no question of doubting – they never think! If they feel that heaven is attained by killing one thousand people, they will rest only after killing one thousand people and not before. They never stop to think what they are doing so there is never any indecision on their part. A man who thinks, on the contrary, will keep on thinking instead of making any decision.

If we close our doors for fear of thoughts we will be left with blind faith only. This is very dangerous and is a great obstacle in the path of the meditator. What is needed is an open-eyed discretion and thoughts that are clear, resolute, and which allow us to make decisions. This is the meaning of vivek: clarity, awareness. It means that the power of thinking is complete. It means we have passed through thoughts in such detail that all the doubts are cleared. Now only pure decision is left in its essence.

The chakra pertaining to the third body is manipur. Doubt and trust are its two forms. When doubt is transformed trust is the result. But, remember, trust is not opposed or contrary to doubt. Trust is the purest and most ultimate development of it. It is the ultimate extreme of doubt, where even doubt becomes lost because here doubt begins to doubt even itself and in this way commits suicide. Then trust is born.

The fourth plane is the mental body or the psyche, and the fourth chakra, the anahat, is connected with the fourth body. The natural qualities of this plane are imagination and dreaming. This is what the mind is always doing: imagining and dreaming. It dreams in the night and in the daytime it daydreams. If imagination is fully developed, that is to say if it is developed to its fullest extent, in a complete way, it becomes determination, will. If dreaming develops fully it is transformed into vision – psychic vision. If a man’s ability to dream is fully developed he has only to close his eyes and he can see things. He can then see even through a wall. At first he only dreams of seeing beyond the wall; later he actually sees beyond it. Now he can only guess what you are thinking, but after the transformation he sees what you think. Vision means seeing and hearing things without the use of the usual sense organs. The limitations of time and space are no more for a person who develops vision.

In dreams you travel far. If you are in Bombay you reach Calcutta. In vision also you can travel distances, but there will be a difference: in dreams you imagine you have gone, whereas in vision you actually go. The fourth, psychic body can actually be present there. As we have no idea of the ultimate possibility of this fourth body, we have discarded the ancient concept of dreams in today’s world. The ancient experience was that in dream one of the bodies of man comes out of him and goes on a journey.

There was a man, Swedenborg, whom people knew as a dreamer. He used to talk of heaven and hell and that they can only exist in dreams. But one afternoon, as he slept, he began to shout, “Help! Help! My house is on fire.” People came running, but there was no fire there. They awoke him to assure him that it was only a dream and there was no danger of fire. He insisted, however, that his house was on fire. His house was three hundred miles away and it had caught fire at that time. On the second or third day news came of this disaster. His house was burnt to ashes, and it was actually burning when he cried out in his sleep. Now this is no longer a dream but a vision. The distance of three hundred miles was no longer there. This man witnessed what was happening three hundred miles away.

Now scientists also agree that there are great psychic possibilities of the fourth body. Now that man has set out in space, research in this direction has become all the more important. The fact remains that no matter how reliable the instruments at man’s disposal, these cannot be relied upon completely. If the radio communication in a spaceship ceases to function the astronauts lose contact with the world for all time. They will not be able to tell us where they are or what has happened to them. So today scientists are keen to develop telepathy and vision of the psychic body to overcome this risk. If the astronauts were able to communicate directly with the power of telepathy it would be a part of the development of the fourth body. Then space travel can be safe. A lot of work has been carried out in this direction.

Thirty years ago a man set out to explore the North Pole. He was equipped with all that was necessary for wireless communication. One more arrangement was also made which has not made known up until now. A psychic person whose fourth body faculties were functioning was also made to receive the transmission from the explorer. The most surprising thing was that when there was bad weather the wireless failed, but this psychic person received the news without any difficulty. When the diaries were compared later on it was found that eighty to ninety-five percent of the time the signals received by the psychic person were correct, whereas the news relayed by the radio was not available more than seventy-two percent of the time, because there were many breakdowns. Now Russia and America are both very eager, and a great deal of work is going on in the field of telepathy, clairvoyance, thought projection and thought reading. All these are the possibilities of the fourth body. To dream is its natural quality; to see the truth, to see the real, is its ultimate possibility. Anahat is the chakra of this fourth body.

The fifth chakra is the vishuddhi chakra. It is located in the throat. The fifth body is the spiritual body. The vishuddhi chakra is connected to the spiritual body. The first four bodies and their chakras were split into two. The duality ends with the fifth body.

As I said before, the difference between male and female lasts until the fourth body; after that it ends. If we observe very closely all duality belongs to the male and the female. Where the distance between male and female is no more, at that very point all duality ceases. The fifth body is non-dual. It does not have two possibilities but only one.

This is why there is not much effort for the meditator to make: because here there is nothing contrary to develop; here one has only to enter. By the time we reach the fourth body we develop so much capability and strength that it is very easy to enter the fifth body. In that case how can we tell the difference between a person who has entered the fifth body and one who has not? The difference will be that he who has entered the fifth body is completely rid of all unconsciousness. He will not actually sleep at night. That is, he sleeps but his body alone sleeps; someone within is forever awake. If he turns in sleep he knows it; if he does not he knows it. If he has covered himself with a blanket he knows it; if he has not then also he knows it. His awareness does not slacken in sleep; he is awake all the twenty-four hours. For the one who has not entered the fifth body, his state is just the opposite. In sleep he is asleep, and in the waking hours also one layer of him will be asleep.

People appear to be working. When you come home every evening the car turns left into your gate; you apply the brake when you reach the porch. Do not be under the illusion that you are doing all this consciously. It happens unconsciously by sheer force of habit. It is only in certain moments, moments of great danger that we really come into alertness. When the danger is so much that it will not do to go about lacking awareness, we awaken. For instance, if a man puts a knife at your chest you jump into consciousness. The point of the knife for a moment takes you right up to the fifth body. With the exception of these few moments in our lives we live like somnambulists.

Neither has the wife seen the husband’s face properly nor has the husband seen the wife’s face. If the husband tries to visualize the wife’s face he will not be able to do so. The lines of her face will start slipping away and it will be difficult to say whether it was the same face he has seen for the last thirty years. You have never seen, because there must be an awakened person within you to see.

One who is “awake” appears to be seeing but actually he is not – because he is asleep within, dreaming, and everything is going on in this dream state. You get angry, then you say, “I do not know how I got angry; I did not want to.” You say, “Forgive me! I did not want to be rude; it was a slip of the tongue.” You have used an obscenity and it is you who deny the intention of its use. The criminal always says, “I did not want to kill. It happened in spite of me.” This proves that we are going about like an automaton. We say what we do not want to say; we do what we do not want to do.

In the evening we vow to be up at four in the morning. When it is four o’clock and the alarm goes off we turn over saying there is no need to be up so early. Then you get up at six and are filled with remorse for having overslept. Then you again swear to keep the same vow as yesterday. It is strange that a man decides on one thing in the evening and goes back on it in the morning! Then what he decides at four in the morning changes again before it is six, and what he decides at six changes long before it is evening, and in between he changes a thousand times. These decisions, these thoughts, come to us in our sleepy state. They are like dreams: they expand and burst like bubbles. There is no wakeful person behind them – no one who is alert and conscious.

So sleep is the innate condition before the beginning of the spiritual plane. Man is a somnambulist before he enters the fifth body, and there the quality is wakefulness. Therefore, after the growth of the fourth body we can call the individual a buddha, an awakened one. Now such a man is awake. Buddha is not the name of Gautam Siddharth but a name given him after his attainment of the fifth plane. Gautama the Buddha means Gautam who has awakened. His name remained Gautam, but that was the name of the sleeping person so gradually it dropped and only Buddha remained.

This difference comes with the attainment of the fifth body. Before we enter into it, whatever we do is an unconscious action which cannot be trusted. One moment a man vows to love and cherish his loved one the whole life and the next moment he is quite capable of strangling her. The alliance which he promised for a lifetime does not last long. This poor man is not to be blamed. What is the value of promises given in sleep? In a dream I may promise, “This is a lifelong relationship.” What value is this promise? In the morning I will deny it because it was only a dream.

A sleeping man cannot be trusted. This world of ours is entirely a world of sleeping people; hence, so much confusion, so many conflicts, so many quarrels, so much chaos. It is all the making of sleeping men.

There is another important difference between a sleeping man and an awakened man which we should bear in mind. A sleeping man does not know who he is, so he is always striving to show others that he is this or he is that. This is his lifelong endeavor. He tries in a thousand ways to prove himself. Sometimes he climbs the ladder of politics and declares, “I am so and so.” Sometimes he builds a house and displays his wealth, or he climbs a mountain and displays his strength. He tries in all ways to prove himself. And in all these efforts he is in fact unknowingly trying to find out for himself who he is. He knows not who he is.

Before crossing the fourth plane we cannot find the answer. The fifth body is called the spiritual body because there you get the answer to the quest for “Who am I?” The call of the ‘I’ stops once and for all on this plane; the claim to be someone special vanishes immediately. If you say to such a person, “You are so and so,” he will laugh. All claims from his side will now stop, because now he knows. There is no longer any need to prove himself, because who he is, is now a proven fact.

The conflicts and problems of the individual end on the fifth plane. But this plane has its own hazards. You have come to know yourself, and this knowing is so blissful and fulfilling that you may want to terminate your journey here. You may not feel like continuing on. The hazards that were up to now were all of pain and agony; now the hazards that begin are of bliss. The fifth plane is so blissful that you will not have the heart to leave it and proceed further. Therefore, the individual who enters this plane has to be very alert about clinging to bliss so that it does not hinder him from going further. Here bliss is supreme and at the peak of its glory; it is in its profoundest depths. A great transformation comes about within one who has known himself. But this is not all; there is further to go also.

It is a fact that distress and suffering do not obstruct our way as much as joy. Bliss is very obstructive. It was difficult enough to leave the crowd and confusion of the marketplace, but it is a thousand times more difficult to leave the soft music of the veena in the temple. This is why many meditators stop at atma gyan, self-realization, and do not go up to brahma gyan, experience of the Brahman – the cosmic reality.

We shall have to be alert about this bliss. Our effort here should be not to get lost in this bliss. Bliss draws us towards itself; it drowns us; we get immersed in it completely. Do not become immersed in bliss. Know that this too is an experience. Happiness was an experience, misery was an experience; bliss too is an experience. Stand outside of it, be a witness. As long as there is experience there is an obstacle: the ultimate end has not been reached. At the ultimate state all experiences end. Joy and sorrow come to an end, so also does bliss. Our language, however, does not go beyond this point. This is why we have described God as sat-chit-ananda – truth-consciousness-bliss. This is not the form of the supreme self, but this is the ultimate that words can express. Bliss is the ultimate expression of man. In fact, words cannot go beyond the fifth plane. But about the fifth plane we can say, “There is bliss there; there is perfect awakening; there is realization of the self there.” All this can be described.

Therefore, there will be no mystery about those who stop at the fifth plane. Their talk will sound very scientific because the realm of mystery lies beyond this plane. Things are very clear up to the fifth plane. I believe that science will sooner or later absorb those religions that go up to the fifth body, because science will be able to reach up to the atman.

When a seeker sets out on this path his search is mainly for bliss and not truth. Frustrated by suffering and restlessness he sets out in search of bliss. So one who seeks bliss will definitely stop at the fifth plane; therefore, I must tell you to seek not bliss but truth. Then you will not remain long here.

Then a question arises: “There is ananda: this is well and good. I know myself: this too is well and good. But these are only the leaves and the flowers. Where are the roots? I know myself, I am blissful – it is good, but from where do I arise? Where are my roots? From where have I come? Where are the depths of my existence? From which ocean has this wave that I am arisen?”

If your quest is for truth you will go ahead of the fifth body. From the very beginning, therefore, your quest should be for truth and not bliss; otherwise your journey up to the fifth plane will be easy but you will stop there. If the quest is for truth, there is no question of stopping there.

So the greatest obstacle on the fifth plane is the unequaled joy we experience – and more so because we come from a world where there is nothing but pain, suffering, anxiety and tension.

Then, when we reach this temple of bliss, there is an overwhelming desire to dance with ecstasy, to be drowned, to be lost in this bliss. This is not the place to be lost. That place will come, and then you will not have to lose yourself; you will simply be lost. There is a great difference between losing yourself and being lost. In other words, you will reach a place where even if you wish you cannot save yourself. You will see yourself becoming lost; there is no remedy. Yet here also in the fifth body you can lose yourself. Your effort, your endeavor, still works here – and even though the ego is intrinsically dead on the fifth plane, I-am-ness still persists. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the difference between ego and I-am-ness.

The ego, the feeling of ‘I’, will die, but the feeling of ‘am’ will not die. There are two things in “I am,” the ‘I’ is the ego and the ‘am’ is asmita – the feeling of being. So the ‘I’ will die on the fifth plane, but the being, the ‘am’, will remain: I-am-ness will remain. Standing on this plane, a meditator will declare, “There are infinite souls and each soul is different and apart from the other.” On this plane the meditator will experience the existence of infinite souls, because he still has the feeling of am, the feeling of being which makes him feel apart from others. If the quest for truth grips the mind the obstacle of bliss can be crossed – because incessant bliss becomes tedious. A single strain of a melody can become irksome.

Bertrand Russell once said jokingly, “I am not attracted to salvation, because I hear there is nothing but bliss there. Bliss alone would be very monotonous – bliss and bliss and nothing else. If there is not a single trace of unhappiness – no anxiety, no tension in it – how long can one bear such bliss?”

To be lost in bliss is the hazard of the fifth plane. It is very difficult to overcome. Sometimes it takes many births to do so. The first four steps are not so hard to cross, but the fifth is very difficult. Many births may be needed to be bored of bliss, to be bored of the self, to be bored of the atman.

So the quest up to the fifth body is to be rid of pain, hatred, violence and desires. After the fifth the search is in order to be rid of the self. So there are two things: the first is freedom from something; this is one thing and it is completed at the fifth plane. The second thing is freedom from the self, and so a completely new world starts from here.

The sixth is the brahma sharira, the cosmic body, and the sixth chakra is the agya chakra. Here there is no duality. The experience of bliss becomes intense on the fifth plane and the experience of existence, of being, on the sixth. Asmita will now be lost – I am. The I in this, is lost at the fifth plane and the am will go as soon as you transcend the fifth. The is-ness will be felt; tathata, suchness will be felt. Nowhere will there be the feeling of I or of am; only that which is remains. So here will be the perception of reality, of being – the perception of consciousness. But here the consciousness is free of me; it is no longer my consciousness. It is only consciousness – no longer my existence, but only existence.

Some meditators stop after reaching the Brahma sharira, the cosmic body, because the state of “I am the Brahman” has come – of “Aham Brahmasmi,” when I am not and only the Brahman is. Now what more is there to seek? What is to be sought? Nothing remains to be sought. Now everything is attained. The Brahman means the total. One who stands at this point says, “The Brahman is the ultimate truth, the Brahman is the cosmic reality. There is nothing beyond.”

It is possible to stop here, and seekers do stop at this stage for millions of births, because there seems to be nothing ahead. So the Brahma gyani, the one who has attained realization of the Brahman, will get stuck here; he will go no further. This is so difficult to cross because there is nothing to cross to. Everything has been covered. Does not one need a space to cross into? If I want to go outside of this room there must be someplace else to go. But the room has now become so enormous, so beginningless and endless, so infinite, so boundless, that there is nowhere to go. So where will we go to search? Nothing remains to be found; everything has been covered. So the journey may halt at this stage for infinite births.

So the Brahman is the ultimate obstacle – the last barrier in the ultimate quest of the seeker. Now only the being remains, but non-being has yet to be realized. The being, the is-ness, is known, but the non-being has yet to be realized – that which is not still remains to be known. Therefore, the seventh plane is the nirvana kaya, nirvanic body, and its chakra is the sahasrar. Nothing can be said in connection with this chakra. We can only continue talking at the most up to the sixth – and that too with great difficulty. Most of it will turn out to be wrong.

Until the fifth body the search progresses within a very scientific method; everything can be explained. On the sixth plane the horizon begins to fade; everything seems meaningless. Hints can still be given but ultimately the pointing finger breaks and the hints too are no more because one’s own being is eliminated. So the Brahman, the absolute being, is known from the sixth body and the sixth chakra.

Therefore, those who seek the Brahman will meditate on the agya chakra which is between the eyes. This chakra is connected to the cosmic body. Those who work completely on this chakra will begin to call the vast infinite expanse that they witness the third eye. This is the third eye from where they can now view the cosmic, the infinite.

One more journey yet remains – the journey to non-being, nonexistence. Existence is only half the story: there is also nonexistence. Light is, but on the other side there is darkness. Life is one part, but there is also death. Therefore, it is necessary also to know the remaining nonexistence, the void, because the ultimate truth can only be known when both are known – existence and nonexistence. Being is known in its entirety and non-being is known in its entirety: then the knowing is complete. Existence is known in entirety and nonexistence is known in its entirety: then we know the whole; otherwise our experience is incomplete. There is an imperfection in brahma gyan, which is that it has not been able to know the non-being. Therefore, the brahma gyani denies that there is such a thing as nonexistence and calls it an illusion. He says that it does not exist. He says that to be is the truth and not to be is a falsity. There simply is no such thing, so the question of knowing it does not arise.

Nirvana kaya means the shunya kaya, the void from where we jump from the being into the non-being. In the cosmic body something yet remains unknown. That too has to be known – what it is not to be, what it is to be completely erased. Therefore, the seventh plane in a sense is an ultimate death. Nirvana, as I told you previously, means the extinction of the flame. That which was I, is extinct; that which was am, is extinct. But now we have again come into being by being one with the all. Now we are the Brahman, and this too will have to be left. He who is ready to take the last jump knows the existence and also the nonexistence.

So these are the seven bodies and the seven chakras, and within them lie all the means as well as the barriers. There are no barriers outside. Therefore, there is not much reason to inquire outside. If you have gone to ask someone or to understand from someone, then do not beg. To understand is one thing, to beg is another. Your search should always continue. Whatever you have heard and understood should also be made your search. Do not make it your belief or else it will be begging.

You asked me something; I gave you an answer. If you have come for alms you will put this in your bag and store it away as your treasure. Then you are not a meditator but a beggar. No, what I told you should become your quest. It should accelerate your search; it should stimulate and motivate your curiosity. It should put you into greater difficulty, make you more restless and raise new questions in you, new dimensions, so that you will set out on a new path of discovery. Then you have not taken alms from me, then you have understood what I said. And if this helps you to understand yourself, then this is not begging.

So go forth to know and understand; go forth to search. You are not the only one seeking; many others are also. Many have searched, many have attained. Try to know, to grasp, what has happened to such people and also what has not happened; try and understand all this. But while understanding this, do not stop trying to understand your own self. Do not think that understanding others has become your realization. Do not put faith in their experiences; do not believe them blindly. Rather, turn everything into questioning. Turn them into questions and not answers; then your journey will continue. Then it will not be begging: it will be your quest.

It is your search that will take you to the last. As you penetrate within yourself you will find the two sides of each chakra. As I told you, one is given to you by nature and one you have to discover. Anger is given to you; forgiveness you have to find. Sex is given to you; brahmacharya you have to develop. Dreams you have; vision has to evolve.

Your search for the opposite will continue up to the fourth chakra. From the fifth will start your search for the indivisible, for the non-dual. Try to continue your search for that which is different from what has come to you in the fifth body. When you attain bliss try to find out what there is beyond bliss. On the sixth plane you attain the Brahman, but keep inquiring, “What is there beyond the Brahman?” Then one day you will step into the seventh body, where being and non-being, light and darkness, life and death, occur together. That is the attainment of the ultimate… and there are no means of communicating this state.

This is why our scriptures end with the fifth body, or at the most they go up to the sixth body. Those with a completely scientific turn of mind do not talk about what is after the fifth body. The cosmic reality, which is boundless and unlimited, begins from there, but mystics like the Sufis talk of the planes beyond the fifth. It is very difficult to talk of these planes because one has to contradict oneself again and again. If you go through the text of all that one Sufi has said you will say this person is mad. Sometimes he says one thing and sometimes something else. He says, “God is” and he also says, “God is not.” He says, “I have seen him” and in the same breath he says, “How can you see him? He is not an object that the eyes can see!” These mystics raise such questions that you will wonder if they are asking others or asking themselves.

Mysticism starts with the sixth plane. Therefore, where there is no mysticism in a religion, know that it has finished on the fifth body. But mysticism also is not the final stage. The ultimate is the void – nothingness. The religion that ends with mysticism ends with the sixth body. The void is the ultimate; nihilism is the ultimate, because after it there is nothing more to be said.

-Osho

From In Search of the Miraculous, Discourse #16

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Related post: Your Identification Breaks in the Fifth Body, Now You will be the Master

In Search of the Miraculous

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.

Daydreaming About Enlightenment – Osho

I have taken lately to daydreaming about Enlightenment – even more delicious than love and fame.

Have you any comment about daydreaming?

The question is from Prem Pankaja. Daydreaming is perfectly okay as far as love and fame are concerned – they are part of a dream world. You can dream as much as you like. Love is a dream, so is fame; they are not against dreaming. In fact, when dreaming stops, they disappear. They exist in the same dimension, the dimension of dream.

But you cannot dream about Enlightenment. Enlightenment is possible only when dreaming disappears. Enlightenment is absence of dreaming – day or night, that doesn’t matter. Enlightenment means now your consciousness is fully aware. In an aware consciousness dreaming cannot exist. Dreaming is like darkness. It exists when the light is not there. When the light is there, darkness simply cannot exist.

Dreaming exists because life is dark, dim, dismal. Dreaming exists as a substitute – because we don’t have real joy, hence we dream; because we don’t really have anything in life, hence we dream; otherwise, how will we be able to tolerate the emptiness that we are? How will we be able to tolerate our existence? It will be absolutely unbearable. Dreams make it bearable. Dreams help us. They say to us, “Wait. Today things are not going right. Don’t be worried: tomorrow everything will be put right. Everything HAS to be right. We will try – maybe we have not tried enough yet. Maybe we have not worked in the right direction. Maybe fate was not with us, God was against us, but it cannot be forever.” And God is compassionate, kind; all the religions of the world say God is very kind, very compassionate. It is a hope!

Mohammedans continuously repeat: God is Rahim, Rehman – compassionate, kind. Why? For what do they repeat again and again? Each time they utter the word “God” they will repeat “the compassionate, the kind.” Why? If He is not kind then where will our hope and dreaming exist? He HAS to be kind for our dreams to exist because THERE exists our hope: in His kindness, in His compassion. Tomorrow things will be okay; tomorrow they are going to be okay.

Daydreaming is good as far as love and fame are concerned, as far as outgoing energies are concerned – because outgoing, we are going in a dream. The world is a dream phenomenon; that is what Hindus mean when they call it maya, illusion. It is made of the same stuff dreams are made of. It is a daydream seen with open eyes.

But Enlightenment is a totally different plane of being. Dreams don’t exist there. And if you continue to dream, Enlightenment will not be possible.

Just the other day I was reading a beautiful anecdote:

A parson had a parrot, but despite all efforts to try and teach it to speak the bird remained dumb. The parson mentioned this one day to an elderly lady parishioner who visited him. She was interested and said, “I also have a parrot which does not speak. It might be a good idea to put the two birds together and see what happens.”

Well, this they did, the parrots being put in a large cage while the parson and his lady parishioner withdrew out of sight but not out of hearing. At first all was quiet, then came some fluttering and the old lady’s parrot was heard to exclaim, “What about a spot of love, deary?” to which the parson’s parrot replied, “That’s what I have been silently praying and waiting for, for years, today my dream is fulfilled. I can speak today.”

If you are waiting and praying and dreaming for love and fame, it will happen one day! It is not a difficult phenomenon. One just needs stubbornness . . . and it happens. One just needs to go on and on and on . . . it is bound to happen because it is YOUR dream. You will find some place or other where you can project it, and you can see it, almost as if it has become a reality.

When you fall in love with a woman or a man, what are you doing exactly? You were carrying a dream inside you; now suddenly the woman functions as a screen – you project your dream on her.

You start feeling, “My dream is fulfilled.” The woman projects her dream on you; you function as a screen, and she feels her dream is fulfilled. If you go on dreaming, some day or other you will find a screen, somebody will become a screen, and your dream will be fulfilled.

But Enlightenment is not a dream. It is a dropping of all dreams. So please don’t dream about Enlightenment. Love is possible through dreaming. In fact, it is possible only through dreaming.

Fame is possible through dreaming – in fact, it is only possible through dreaming, it happens only to dreamers. But Enlightenment is not possible through dreaming – the very existence of dreaming will make it impossible.

Dream for it and you will miss. Wait for it and you will miss. Hope for it and you will miss. Then what are you supposed to do? What you are supposed to do is to understand the mechanism of dreaming. You can leave Enlightenment aside; it is none of your business. You just look deep into the faculty of dreaming, understand how dreaming functions. That very understanding will bring a clarity. In that clarity dreaming stops, disappears.

When dreaming is not, Enlightenment is.

You forget about Enlightenment! You are not to even think about it – how can you think about it?

And whatsoever you think is going to be wrong. How can you hope for it? – all hopes about it are going to be wrong. How can you desire it? It cannot be desired. Then what are we supposed to do?

Try to understand desiring. Try to understand hoping. Try to understand dreaming. That’s what is needed. You simply try to understand how your mind has been functioning up to now. Seeing into the functioning of the mind, mind disappears. Just a good look into the inner mechanism of the mind, and suddenly it comes to a halt. In that halt, there is Enlightenment. In that halt, there is a taste of a totally new dimension of existence.

Dreaming is one dimension: existence is another dimension. Existence is: dreaming is simply a belief.

-Osho

From The Tantra Experience, Discourse #6, Q1 (previously titled Tantra Vision, V.1)

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.

Advaita Means Not Two – Osho

The method that you have shown us for realizing the truth or the universal self is of negating everything and knowing oneself. Is the opposite of it not also possible: that we try to see the universal self in all, that we feel it in the whole?

It will be helpful to understand this.

One who cannot realize godliness within himself can never realize it in all. One who has not yet recognized godliness within himself can never recognize it in others. The self means that which is nearest to you; then anyone who is at a little distance from you will have to be considered as being farther away. And if you cannot see godliness in yourself, which is nearest you, you cannot possibly see it in those far from you. First you will have to know godliness in yourself; first the knower will have to know the divine – that is the nearest door.

But remember, it is very interesting that the individual who enters his self suddenly finds the entrance to all. The door to one’s self is the door to all. No sooner does a man enter his self than he finds he has entered all, because although we are outwardly different, inwardly we are not.

Outwardly, all leaves are different from each other. But if a person could penetrate just one leaf, he would reach to the source of the tree where all the leaves are in unison. Seen individually, each leaf is different – but once you have known a leaf in its interiority, you will have reached to the source from which all leaves emanate and into which all leaves dissolve. One who enters himself simultaneously enters all.

The distinction between “I” and “you” remains only so long as we have not entered within ourselves. The day we enter our I, the I disappears and so does the you – what remains then is all.

Actually, “all” does not mean the sum of I and you. “All” means where I and you have both disappeared, and what subsequently remains is all. If “I” has not yet dissolved, then one can certainly add I’s and you’s, but the sum will not equal truth. Even if one adds all the leaves, a tree does not come into being – even though it has had all the leaves added to it. A tree is more than the sum of all the leaves. In fact, it has nothing to do with addition; it is erroneous to add. Adding one leaf to another, we assume each one is separate. A tree is not made of separate leaves at all.

So, as soon as we enter the I, it ceases to exist. The first thing that disappears when we enter within is the sense of being a separate entity. And when that I-ness disappears, you-ness and the other-ness both disappear. Then what remains is all.

It’s not even right to call it “all,” because “all” also has the connotation of the same old I. Hence those who know would not even call it “all”; they would ask, “The sum of what? What are we adding?” Furthermore, they would declare that only one remains. Although they would perhaps even hesitate to say that, because the assertion of one gives the impression that there are two – it gives the idea that alone one has no meaning without the corresponding notion of two. One exists only in the context of two. Therefore, those who have a deeper understanding do not even say that one remains; they say advaita, nonduality, remains.

Now this is very interesting. These people say, “Two are not left.” They are not saying, “One remains,” they are saying “Two are not left.” Advaita means there are not two.

One might ask, “Why do you talk in such roundabout ways? Simply say there is only one!” The danger in saying “one” is that it gives rise to the idea of two. And when we say there are not two, it follows that there are not three either; it implies that there is neither one, nor many, nor all. Actually, this division resulted from the perception based on the existence of “I.” So with the cessation of I, that which is whole, the indivisible, remains.

But to realize this, can we do what our friend is suggesting – can we not visualize godliness in everyone? To do so would be nothing more than fantasizing, and fantasizing is not the same as realizing the truth.

Long ago some people brought a holy man to me. They told me this man saw godliness everywhere, that for the last thirty years he had been seeing godliness in everything – in flowers, plants, rocks, in everything. I asked the man if he had been seeing godliness in everything through practice because if that were so then his visions were false. He couldn’t follow me. I asked him again, “Did you ever fantasize about or desire to see godliness in everything?” He replied, “Yes indeed. Thirty years ago I started this spiritual discipline in which I would attempt to see godliness in rocks, plants, mountains, in everything. And I began to see godliness everywhere.” I asked him to stay with me for three days and, during that period, try not to see godliness everywhere.

He agreed. But the very next day he told me, “You have done me great harm. Only twelve hours have passed since I gave up my usual practice and I have already begun to see a rock as a rock and a mountain as a mountain. You have snatched my godliness away from me! What sort of a person are you?”

I said, “If godliness can be lost by not practicing for just twelve hours, then what you saw was not godliness – it was merely a consequence of your regular practice.” It is similar to when a person repeats something incessantly and creates an illusion. No, godliness has not to be seen in a rock; rather, one needs to reach a state in which there is nothing left to be seen in a rock except godliness. These are two different things.

Through your efforts to see it there, you will begin to see godliness in a rock, but that godliness will be no more than a mental projection. That will be a godliness superimposed by you on to the rock; it will be the work of your imagination. That godliness will be purely your creation; a complete figment of your imagination. Such godliness is nothing more than your dream – a dream which you have consolidated by reinforcing it again and again. There is no problem seeing godliness like this, but it is living in an illusion, it is not entering truth.

One day, of course, it happens that the individual himself disappears and, consequently, he sees nothing but godliness. Then one doesn’t feel that godliness is in the rock; then the feeling is, “Where is the rock? Only godliness is!” Do you follow the distinction I am making? Then one doesn’t feel that godliness exists in the plant or that it exists in the rock; that the plant exists and, in the plant, so does godliness – no, nothing of the kind. What one comes to feel is, “Where is the plant? Where is the rock? Where is the mountain?”…because all around, whatever is seen, whatever exists is only godliness. Then seeing godliness does not depend upon your exercise, it depends upon your experience.

The greatest danger in the realm of spiritual practice is the danger of imagination. We can fantasize truths which must otherwise become our own experience. There is a difference between experiencing and fantasizing. A person who has been hungry the whole day eats at night in his dream and feels greatly satisfied. Perhaps he does not find as much joy in eating when he is awake as he does when he is dreaming – in the dream he can eat any dish he wants. Nevertheless, his stomach still remains empty in the morning, and the food he has consumed in his dream gives him no nourishment. If a man decides to stay alive on the food he eats in dreams, then he is sure to die soon. No matter how satisfying the food eaten in the dream may be, in reality it is not food. It can neither become part of your blood, nor your flesh, nor your bones or marrow. A dream can only cause deception.

Not only are meals made of dreams, godliness is also made of dreams. And so is moksha, liberation, made of dreams. There is a silence made of dreams, and there are truths made of dreams. The greatest capacity of the human mind is the capacity to deceive itself. However, by falling into this kind of deception, no one can attain bliss and liberation.

So I am not asking you to start seeing godliness in everything. I am only asking you to start looking within and seeing what is there. When, in order to see what is there, you begin to look inside, the first person to disappear will be you – you will cease to exist inside. You will find for the first time that your I was an illusion, and that it has disappeared, vanished. As soon as you take a look inside, first the I, the ego, goes. In fact, the sense that “I am” only persists until we have looked inside ourselves. And the reason we don’t look inside is perhaps because of the fear that, if we did, we might be lost.

You may have seen a man holding a burning torch and swinging it round and round until it forms a circle of fire. In reality there is no such circle, it is just that when the torch is swinging round with great speed, it gives the appearance of a circle from a distance. If you see it close up, you will find that it is just a fast-moving torch, that the circle of fire is false. Similarly, if we go within and look carefully, we will find that the I is absolutely false. Just as the fast-moving torch gives the illusion of a circle of fire, the fast-moving consciousness gives the illusion of I. This is a scientific truth and it needs to be understood.

You may not have noticed, but all life’s illusions are caused by things revolving at great speed. The wall looks very solid; the rock under your feet feels clearly solid, but according to scientists there is nothing like a solid rock. It is now a well-known fact that the closer scientists observed matter, the more it disappeared. As long as the scientist was distant from matter, he believed in it. Mostly it was the scientist who used to declare that matter alone is truth, but now that very scientist is saying there is nothing like matter. Scientists say that the fast movement of particles of electricity, the electrons, creates the illusion of density. Density, as such, exists nowhere.

For example, when an electric fan moves with speed, we cannot see the three moving blades; one cannot actually count how many there are. If it moves even faster, it will appear as if a piece of circular metal is moving. It can be moved so fast that even if you sat on top of it, you wouldn’t feel the gap between the blades; you would feel as if you were sitting on top of solid metal.

The particles in matter are moving with similar speed – and the particles are not matter, they are fast-moving electric energy. Matter appears dense because of fast-moving particles of electricity. The whole of matter is a product of fast-moving energy – even though it appears to exist, it is actually nonexistent. Similarly, the energy of consciousness is moving so fast that, because of it, the illusion of I is created.

There are two kinds of illusions in this world: one, the illusion of matter; second, the illusion of I, the ego. Both are basically false, but only by coming closer to them does one become aware they don’t exist. As science draws closer to matter, matter disappears; as religion draws nearer I the I disappears. Religion has discovered that the I is nonexistent, and science has discovered that matter is nonexistent. The closer we come, the more we become disillusioned.

That’s why I say: go within; look closely – is there any I inside? I am not asking you to believe that you are not the I. If you do, it will turn into a false belief. If you take my word for it and think, “I am not; the ego is false. I am atman, I am brahman; the ego is false,” you will throw yourself into confusion. If this merely becomes a repetitive thing, then you will only be repeating the false. I am not asking you for this sort of repetition. I am saying: go within, look, recognize who you are. One who looks within and recognizes himself discovers that “I am not.” Then who is within? If I am not, then someone else must be there. Just because “I am not,” doesn’t mean no one is there, because even to recognize the illusion, someone has to be there.

If I am not, then who is there? The experience of what remains after the disappearance of I is the experience of godliness. The experience becomes at once expansive – dropping I, “you” also drops, “he” also drops, and only an ocean of consciousness remains. In that state you will see that only godliness is. Then it may seem erroneous to say that godliness is, because that is a repetition.

It is a repetition to say, “godliness is” because godliness is the other name of “that which is.” Is-ness is godliness – hence to say “godliness is” is a tautology; it isn’t correct. What does it mean to say, “godliness is”? We identify something as “is” which can also become “is not.” We say, “the table is,” because it is quite possible the table may not exist tomorrow, or that the table did not exist yesterday. Something that did not exist before may become nonexistent again; then what is the sense in saying “it is”? Godliness is not something that did not exist before, nor is it possible that it will never be again; therefore, to say “godliness is” is meaningless. It is. In fact, another name for godliness is “that which is.” Godliness means existence.

In my view, if we impose our God on “that which is,” we are pushing ourselves into falsehood and deception. And remember, the Gods we have created are made differently; each has his respective trademark. A Hindu has made his own God, a Mohammedan has his own. The Christian, the Jaina, the Buddhist – each has his own God. All have coined their own respective words; all have created their own respective Gods. A whole great God-manufacturing industry abounds! In their respective homes people manufacture their God; they produce their own God. It is a home industry. And then these God-manufacturers fight among themselves in the marketplace the same way the people who manufacture goods and commodities do. Everyone’s God is different from the other’s.

Actually, as long as “I am,” whatsoever I create will be different from yours. As long as “I am,” my religion, my God will be different from other people’s because they will be the creation of I, of the ego. Since we consider ourselves separate entities, whatever we create will have a separate character. If, to create religion, the appropriate freedom could be granted, there would be as many religions in the world as there are people – not less than that. It is because of the lack of the right kind of freedom that there are so few religions in the world.

A Hindu father takes certain care to make his son a Hindu before he becomes independent. A Mohammedan father makes his son a Mohammedan before he becomes intelligent, because once intelligence is attained, a person won’t want to become either a Hindu or a Mohammedan. And so there is the need to fill a child with all these stupidities before he achieves intelligence.

All parents are anxious to teach their children religion right from childhood, because once a child grows up he will start to think and to cause trouble. He will raise all sorts of questions – and not finding any satisfactory answers, will do things difficult for the parents to face. This is why parents are keen to teach their children religion right from infancy – when the child is unaware of many things, when he is vulnerable to learning any kind of stupidity. This is how people become Mohammedans, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, Christians – whatsoever you teach them to become.

And so, those we call religious people are often found to be unintelligent. They lack intelligence, because what we call religion is something which has poisoned us before intelligence could arise in us – and even afterward it continues its inner hold. No wonder Hindus and Mohammedans fight with each other in the name of God, in the name of their temples and their mosques.

Does God come in many varieties? Is the God Hindus worship of one kind, and the God the Mohammedans worship of another? Is that why Hindus feel their God is desecrated if an idol is destroyed? Or Mohammedans feel their God is dishonored if a mosque is destroyed or burned?

Actually, God is “that which is.” It exists as much in a mosque as it does in a temple. It exists as much in a slaughterhouse as it does in a place of worship. It exists as much in a tavern as it does in a mosque. It is as present in a thief as in a holy man – not one iota less; that can never be. Who else is dwelling in a thief if not the divine? It is as present in Rama as in Ravana – it is not one iota less in Ravana. It exists as much within a Hindu as it does within a Mohammedan.

But the problem is: if we come to believe that the same divinity exists in everyone, our God-manufacturing industry will suffer heavily. So in order to prevent this from happening, we keep on imposing our respective Gods. If a Hindu looks at a flower he will project his own God on it, see his God in it, whereas a Mohammedan will project, visualize his God. They can even pick a fight over this, although perhaps such a Hindu-Mohammedan conflict is a little far-fetched.

Their establishments are at a little distance from each other – but there are even quarrels between the closely related “divinity shops.” For example, there is quite a distance between Kashi and Mecca, but there is not much distance in Kashi between the temples of Rama and Krishna. And yet the same degree of trouble can erupt between them.

I have heard about a great saint…I am calling him great because people used to call him great, and I am calling him a saint only because people used to call him a saint.

He was a devotee of Rama. Once he was taken to the temple of Krishna. When he saw the idol of Krishna holding a flute in his hands, he refused to bow down to the image. Standing before the image, he said, “If you would take up the bow and arrow, only then could I bow down to you, for then you would be my Lord Rama.” How strange! We place conditions on God also – how and in which manner or position he should present himself. We prescribe the setting; we make our requirements – only then are we prepared to worship.

It is so strange we determine what our God should be like. But that’s how it has been all along. What we have been identifying as “God” is a product based on our own specifications. As long as this man-made God is standing in the way, we will not be able to know that godliness is not determined by us. We will never be able to know what determines us. And so we need to get rid of the man-made God if we wish to know the godliness which is. But that’s tough; it’s difficult even for the most kindhearted person. Even for someone we would otherwise consider a man of understanding it is hard to get rid of this man-made God. He too clings firmly to the basic foolishness as much as a stupid man does. A stupid man can be forgiven, but it is difficult to forgive a man of understanding.

Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan arrived in India and went around preaching Hindu-Mohammedan unity all over the country, but he himself is a staunch Mohammedan; about this, there is not the slightest doubt. It doesn’t bother him that he prays in the mosque like a loyal Mohammedan, yet he is going about preaching Hindu-Mohammedan unity. Gandhi was a staunch Hindu, and he also used to preach Hindu-Mohammedan unity. As the guru, so is the disciple: the guru was a confirmed Hindu; the disciple is a confirmed Mohammedan. And so long as there are confirmed Hindus and confirmed Mohammedans in the world, how can such unity come about? They need to relax a little, only then unity is possible. These zealous Hindus and Mohammedans are at the root of all the trouble between the two religions, although the roots of these troubles are not really visible. Those who preach Hindu-Mohammedan unity do not have the vaguest idea how to bring it about.

As long as God is different to different people, as long as there are different places of worship for different people, as long as prayers are different and scriptures are different – Koran being father for some and Gita being mother for others – the vexing troubles between religions will never come to an end. We cling to the Koran and the Gita. We say, “Read the Koran and teach people to drop enmity and to become one.” Or we say, “Read the Gita and teach people to drop enmity and to become one.” We don’t realize, however, that the very words of Koran and Gita are the root cause of all the trouble.

If a cow’s tail gets cut off, a Hindu-Mohammedan riot will break out, and we will blame ruffians for causing the fight. And the funny thing is that no hoodlum has ever preached that the cow is our sacred mother. This is actually taught by our mahatmas, our holy men, who put the blame for creating riots on “hoodlums”…. Because when the tail does get cut off, then for the mahatmas’ purpose, it is not the tail of the cow, it is the tail of the holy mother! When they bring this to people’s attention, the riots begin in which the hoodlums get involved and are later blamed for starting them.

So the people we call mahatmas are in fact at the root of all such troubles. Were they to step aside, the hoodlums would be harmless, they would have no power to fight. They get strength from the mahatmas. But the mahatmas remain so well hidden underground that we never ever realize they could be at the root of the problem.

What is the root of the problem, really? The root cause of all the trouble is your God – the God manufactured in your homes. Try to save yourselves from the Gods you create in your respective homes. You cannot manufacture God in your homes; the existence of such a God will be pure deception.

I am not asking you to project God. After all, in the name of God, what will you project? A devotee of Krishna will say he sees God hiding behind a bush holding a flute in his hand, while a devotee of Rama will see God holding a bow and arrow. Everyone will see God differently. This kind of seeing is nothing but projecting our desires and concepts. Godliness is not like this. We cannot find it by projecting our desires and our concepts – to find it we will have to disappear altogether. We will have to disappear – along with all our concepts and all our projections. Both things cannot go hand in hand. As long as you exist as an ego, the experience of godliness is absolutely impossible. You as an ego will have to go; only then is it possible to experience it. I cannot enter the door of the divine as long as my I, my ego, exists.

I have heard a story about a man who renounced everything and reached the door of the divine. He had renounced wealth, wife, house, children, society, everything, and having renounced all, he approached the door of the divine. But the guard stopped him and said, “You cannot enter yet. First go and leave everything behind.”

“But I have left everything,” pleaded the man.

“You have obviously brought your ‘I’ along with you. We are not interested in the rest; we are only concerned with your ‘I’. We don’t care about whatever you say you have left behind, we are concerned with your ‘I’,” the guard explained. “Go, drop it, and then come back.”

The man said, “I have nothing. My bag is empty – it contains no money, no wife, no children. I possess nothing.”

“Your ‘I’ is still in the bag – go and drop it. These doors are closed to those who bring their ‘I’ along; for them the doors have always been closed,” said the guard.

But how do we drop the I? The I will never drop by our attempts to do so. How can “I” drop the very I itself? This is impossible. It will be like someone trying to lift himself up by his shoelaces. How do I drop the I? Even after dropping everything, I will still remain. At the most one might say, “I have dropped the ego,” and yet this shows he is still carrying his “I.” One becomes egoistic even about dropping the ego. Then what should a man do? It’s quite a difficult situation.

I say to you: there is nothing difficult about it – because I don’t ask you to drop anything. In fact, I don’t ask you to do anything. The I, the ego, becomes stronger because of all the doing. I am merely asking you to go within and look for the I. If you find it, then there is no way to drop it. If it always exists there, what is there left to be dropped? And if you don’t find it, then too, there is no way to drop it. How can you drop something which doesn’t exist?

So go within and see if the I is there or not. I am simply saying that one who looks inside himself begins to laugh uproariously, because he cannot find his I anywhere within himself. Then what does remain? What remains then is godliness. That which remains with the disappearance of the I – could that ever be separate from you? When the I itself ceases to exist, who is going to create the separation? It is the I alone which separates me from you and you from me.

There is the wall of a house. Under the illusion that it divides sky into two, the wall stands – although sky never becomes divided, sky is indivisible. No matter how thick a wall you erect, the sky inside the house and the sky outside are not two different things; they are one. No matter how tall you raise the wall, the sky inside and outside the house is never divided. The man living inside the house, however, feels that he has divided the sky into two – one sky inside his house and another outside it. But if the wall were to fall, how would the man differentiate the sky within the house from the sky without? How would he figure it out? Then, only sky would remain.In the same way, we have divided consciousness into fragments by raising the walls of I. When this wall of I falls, then it is not that I will begin to see godliness in you. No, then I won’t be seeing you, I’ll only be seeing godliness. Please understand this subtle distinction carefully.

It will be wrong to say I would begin to see godliness in you – I won’t be seeing you any more, I will only be seeing the divine. It’s not that I would see godliness in a tree – I would no longer see a tree, only the divine. When somebody says godliness exists in each and every atom he is absolutely wrong, because he is seeing both the atom and godliness. Both cannot be seen simultaneously. The truth of the matter is that each and every atom is godliness, not that godliness exists in each and every atom. It is not that godliness is sitting enclosed inside an atom – whatever is, is godliness.

Godliness is the name given out of love to “that which is.” “That which is” is truth – in love we call it godliness. But it makes no difference by which name we call it. I do not ask, therefore, that you begin to see godliness in everyone, I am saying: start looking inside. As soon as you look within, you will disappear. And with your disappearance what you’ll see is godliness.

-Osho

From And Now and Here, Discourse #3

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.

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

Osho asks “Who am I?”

I used to ask myself, “Who am I?” It is impossible to count how many days and nights I passed in this query. The intellect gave answers heard from others or born of conditioning. All of them were borrowed, lifeless. They brought no contentment. They resonated a little at the surface, and then disappeared. The inner being was not touched by them. No echo of them was heard in the depths. There were many answers to the question, but none was correct. And I was untouched by them. They could not rise to the level of the question.

Then I saw that the question came from the center, but the replies touched only the periphery. The question was mine, but the answers came from outside; the question arose from my innermost being, the replies were imposed from outside. This insight became a revolution. A new dimension was revealed.

The responses of the intellect were meaningless. They had no relevance to the problem. An illusion had shattered. And what a relief it was!

It seemed as if a closed door had been flung open, filling the darkness with light. The intellect had been providing the answers – that was the mistake. Because of these false answers, the real answer could not arise. Some truth was struggling to surface. In the depths of consciousness some seed was seeking the way to break open the ground in order to reach the light. Intellect was the obstruction.

When this was made plain, the answers began to subside. Knowledge acquired from outside began to evaporate. The question went ever deeper. I did not do anything, only kept on watching.

Something novel was happening. I was speechless. What was there to do? I was, at the most, simply a witness. The reactions of the periphery were fading, perishing, becoming nonexistent. The center now began to resonate more fully.

“Who am I?” My entire being was throbbing with this thirst.

What a violent storm it was! Every breath quaked and trembled in it.

“Who am I?” – Like an arrow, the question pierced through everything and moved within.

I remember – what an acute thirst it was! My very life had turned into thirst. Everything was burning. And like a flame of fire the question stood forth, “Who am I?”

The surprise was that the intellect was completely silent. The incessant flow of thoughts had stopped. What had happened? The periphery was absolutely still. There were no thoughts, no conditioning of the past.

Only I was there – and there was the question too. No, no – I myself was the question.

And then the explosion. In a moment, everything was transformed. The question had dropped.

The answer had come from some unknown dimension.

Truth is attained through a sudden explosion, not gradually.

It cannot be compelled to appear. It comes.

Emptiness is the solution, not words. Becoming answer-less is the answer.

Someone asked yesterday – and someone or the other asks every day – “What is the answer?”

I say, “If I mention it, it is meaningless. Its meaning lies in realizing it oneself.”

-Osho

From Seeds of Wisdom #13

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.

Who Am I?

My father is the sky in which I breathe
My mother is the Earth on which I walk
I know their son but I am not he.

Then, who am I?

My heart is love
My head insight,
I am both, no, neither.

So, who am I?

When I close my eyes, the whole world disappears
When I open my eyes, I am reborn
I witness all of life.

But who Is this I?

-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.

 

 

Beyond the Astral Body – Osho

I have understood that the witness is pure consciousness, unaffected by the body and mind it takes temporary residence in. So, first: how do personality and conditioning persist from one life to another? And second: does not that which makes us unique individuals have a continuum?

Maneesha, first you have to understand that you have not only this body of flesh and bones and blood, not only this brain which is part of the body. Behind the brain you have a mind — that mind is abstract — and behind the body you have an astral body. The word `astral’ comes from stars; it means a light…. Instead of flesh or bones, only a body made of light. This body of light, the astral body, has the mind in it.

When you die, your physical body and your physical mind are left behind. But the astral body travels with you, with the mind, with all the remembrances of the past life and the body, remembering all the scars and the wounds that have happened to the physical body. This abstract phenomenon travels with you; hiding within it is your ultimate, existential center.

Until you know the center, you will have to travel continuously from one body to another body. You have been traveling already for thousands of lives, gathering more and more memories in your astral mind, more and more memories in your astral body. Although your center is unaffected, it is surrounded by the astral body, and the astral body goes on from womb to womb, from grave to grave. That is your individuality; it has a continuum.

But the continuum comes to an end when you become a buddha.

When you penetrate deeply to the center, you are also cutting the astral body apart, making a way through the mind, beyond the mind, through the astral body and beyond the astral body, to the center of your being. Once you have reached to the center of your being, the continuum of your individuality stops. Now begins the universal existence.

You will not enter into another womb again, and you will not be burnt on another funeral pyre again. Now you will be one with the whole.

Of course, everything has a cost. You will have to drop your long-cherished love of individuality. Millions of years you have loved your individuality, but your individuality at the final stage is a hindrance.

Now take a jump out of the continuum and become one with the whole. You will disappear just like a dewdrop in the ocean. But it is the ultimate bliss; it is the most profound ecstasy to become the oceanic, to become the cosmic. You will never repent that you have lost your individuality.

What was in your individuality?

Have you ever thought?

Your individuality was a light prison, which carried you from one womb, passing through the grave, to another womb, and repeating the same things again and again and again.

That’s why in the East they call it the life and death cycle. To jump out of this cycle is the whole purpose of meditation — to come out of this continuum, which has been just a deep anguish, anxiety and angst, and to disappear into the blue sky.

This disappearance is not your death. This disappearance makes you one with the whole.

And to be one with the whole is the greatest joy, the greatest blissfulness. Nothing is more significant, more full of splendor, more majestic. Here all the buddhas have disappeared in the ultimate eternity of existence. It is freedom from individuality, freedom from yourself.

You have known freedom from others, but you don’t recognize that you are still a slave of your own individuality. It is a cage… it may be golden.

Open the cage and fly across the sun into the blue sky and disappear, without leaving any footprints, any trace behind.

This Gautam the Buddha used to call anatta, no self, no mind, no you, no I. This in fact can be said in another way….

I have told you about Kabir, one of the great mystics of India. When he was young he became enlightened, and he wrote a small poem, in which comes the line: The drop has disappeared in the ocean.

When he was dying, he called his son Kamaal and told him to change that line. Kamaal said, “It is so beautiful — the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. Why are you changing it? And what is the substitute?”

Kabir said, “These are my last breaths; don’t argue, simply do what I am saying. You write instead: The ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop. That was my first impression, this is my last impression.” And he closed his eyes.

But both the impressions are beautiful. In the beginning, of course, you will see the dewdrop is disappearing in the ocean. But finally you will realize the ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop.

-Osho

From One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green, Discourse #1

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.

Making the Two 1

No-body is Here

No-mind is Now

Aligned

I slips out

in two

the 1

-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.

 

I Am a Dream-Breaker – Osho

By merely believing there is no darkness you do not have light.

An ideology that teaches one to believe that sin does not exist and that the soul is not involved in sin is very dangerous. It is just a means of forgetting one’s sinful condition. It does not lead to the extinction of sin but to forgetting about sin. And forgetting about sin is worse than the existence of sin. Are you able to see your sins? Being aware of them is good, beneficial. But being unable to see them, being ignorant of them is harmful, because when they have been seen they begin to goad us, to prick at us to transform ourselves. Awareness of sin brings about change and the full consciousness of sin brings about instantaneous transformation.

Therefore please don’t get involved in talk about the purity of the soul, enlightenment and so on. The soul has nothing to do with belief. It is something to be realized directly when the sin-ridden personality has been cast off and when the seeker, breaking through the layers of darkness, enters his own secret, innermost, centre of light. It is a direct realization. It is not something that can be imagined.

Any imaginary concept of it is probably going to be very harmful. It can become a hindrance and can stand in the way of attaining the light, because if you believe there is no darkness, there is no question of your being able to remove something you do not believe exists. And if the soul commits neither good nor evil, then what is the point of rising above them? These meaningless statements and questions of our so-called philosophers have thrown many people into worlds of delusion. This poison has spread far and wide and because of it, we think of ourselves as God. And at the same time it would be difficult, on this earth, to find greater sinners than us!

Don’t forget, also, that all this self-glorification and talk about the purity of the soul is really directed towards ignoring the existence of sin. It is very difficult for those who fall into the trap of this talk to get out of it later. It is easy to become free from sin but it is very difficult to escape the clutches of this dangerous kind of philosophy.

The fact that the soul is pure is neither a theory nor a principle, it is a direct realization. And any discussion about it is useless. It is just like creating an illusion in the mind of a sick man that his sickness does not exist. If the sick man accepts this as gospel, the result won’t be recovery but certain death.

Those who know do not discuss realization. They talk about the sadhana, the path that leads to realization. It is not the realization but the sadhana that should be considered. Realization is bound to follow the sadhana. It is useless to think about it. And if anyone takes realization for granted his sadhana will become impossible for him.

And yet look how easy it is to take realization without-sadhana for granted! This way one begins to feel the joy of freedom from sin without actually being rid of it, and in the deep spell of illusion beggars begin to feel the joy of emperors. What a joy it must be for beggars to be told they’re emperors! It is no wonder that those who tell them so are respected and that they worship them by falling at their feet. There cannot be an easier and cheaper liberation from poverty and sin! This phony philosophy gives you a very easy freedom but sadhana requires great effort on your part.

I hope you are not caught in the trap of any philosophy or philosopher. I hope you have not resorted to any such short cut. The easiest and cheapest way is just to believe that the soul is pure and enlightened, that the soul is Brahma itself and that there is nothing to be done by you – and of course, that whatever you happen to be doing at the time is the best thing because nothing needs to be given up.

Don’t forget that even truth can be abused, and even the noblest truth can be used to hide the meanest ones. This has happened in the past and it happens every day. Cowardice can be hidden by non-violence; sin can be hidden under the philosophy of the purity and enlightenment of the soul, and no-action under the garb of sannyas.

I want to warn you against these dangers. If you aren’t wary of them you cannot make much progress in the direction of the self. Don’t seek shelter in any philosophical lean-to to try to get away from the sin and darkness that have enshrouded you. Know them. Become familiar with them. They are there. Don’t forget they exist. Even though they are like dreams, they are still there. And don’t think that dreams don’t exist. Even a dream has an existence. It can also overwhelm us, disturb us. Saying “It was just a dream”, leads nowhere. There is no other solution than waking up. But if he likes, a man can even dream he has woken up. A false philosophy, a philosophy-without-sadhana does the very same thing. It does not awaken you; it simply causes a dream of awakening. This is a dream within a dream. Haven’t you had dreams where you have seen yourself as awake?

Merely believing and saying that there is no sin, no darkness, serves no purpose. It is only an expression of your desire, not of the truth. It is our desire that there should be no sin, no darkness, but desiring alone is not enough. It is important. And gradually these philosophers begin to believe the dreams of accomplishment, just like a beggar who wants to be a king will ultimately start dreaming he has become one. They are always wishing for it and they finally imagine they have achieved what they wanted, but in actuality they have not achieved anything. And so it is easy to forget defeat. And they have a sigh of satisfaction in their sleep because they’ve achieved in a dream what they could not in reality.

I hope you are not seeking such satisfaction here.

If so, you have come to the wrong person. I cannot give you any dreams. I cannot give you any basis for self-deception.

I am a dream-breaker and I want to wake you from your slumber.

-Osho

From The Perfect Way

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.

Osho comments on John Lennon’s Death

“We’re playing those mind-games together pushing the barrier, planting seeds. Playing the mind-guerilla, chanting the mantra ‘Peace on Earth’. We’ve been playing those mind-games forever… love is the answer, and you know that’s for sure. Love is the flower, you got to let it grow. Yes is the answer, and you know that’s for sure. Yes is surrender and you got to let it grow…”

This song was written by John Lennon about ten years ago. Now he is dead. Lennon was very much in love with you, even though he declared that he was not ready to become a disciple. I can feel this connection myself. I really would like you to say something about his death.

Swatantra Sarjano, words have their own magic, and the poets, the singers, live in the magical world of words, not of realities. They are skillful, very skillful and efficient, as far as the delicate, subtle waves of words, imagination, dreams is concerned, but all that they go on doing is utterly unconscious.

John Lennon on the one hand sings:

“Love is the answer, and you know that’s for sure.”

He himself does not know it. He says:

“Love is the flower, you got to let it grow.”

But to know it you have to be absolutely awakened, because love is the ultimate peak of consciousness. The poet can imagine about it, the singer can sing about it, the painter can paint about it, but they have seen only reflections of the moon in the lake; they have not seen the moon itself. And, of course, the moon reflected in the lake is just made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. The poets, the singers, are dreamers, they are not seers. So he says:

“Yes is surrender and you got to let it grow…”

His words sound true, but they are only reflections of the moon in the lake. If you dive in the lake you will not find the moon there. In fact, the moment you jump into the water, the reflection will disappear, will be broken into thousands of pieces. It will spread all over the lake; you will not be able to catch hold of it. The reflection is beautiful, but one has not to forget that it is only a reflection and it cannot transform your being.

So he sings: “Love is the answer… Love is the flower… Yes is the answer… Yes is surrender… And you know that’s for sure”—but he himself is absolutely unaware of it; he has not experienced it. A beautiful man, but still lost in dreams and imagination.

The poet lives unconsciously, the seer livers consciously. Sometimes their words are exactly the same—don’t be deceived by the words. If you really want to know whether those words represent reality or just empty wishes you have to look into the life of the man.

Kahlil Gibran has written tremendously beautiful words. They come so close to Christ, to Zarathustra, to Lao Tzu, to Gautam the Buddha, and there is every possibility many people will think that Kahlil Gibran is enlightened. He may even surpass Lao Tzu and Buddha and Christ as far as expression is concerned; his expression may be far more beautiful because he is a skilled poet, a very skilled painter. He has the sensitiveness to appreciate beauty, but howsoever he is appreciating it is unconscious.

Buddha may not say things so beautifully because he is not a poet in the ordinary sense, but whatsoever he says is the truth. His words may fall short of it… in fact, words always fall short of the truth; they are never adequate enough. So don’t decide by words.

Sarjano, you are deciding by words. That’s why you say:

I can feel this connection myself.

Sarjano himself has the quality of a poet, has the sensibility of a creative person. That’s why I have given him the name Sarjano; Sarjano means creativity.

But Kahlil Gibran or John Lennon have to be watched to know whether their truths are really truths or only fabrications of dream, fantasy, imagination; whether they have really experienced those things or they are only empty wishes. You have to watch the Buddha….

Buddha is reported to have said: “Don’t be too bothered about what I say, rather look at me, rather watch me, rather feel me. Let the words disappear. Don’t let the words stand between me and you. Experience my silence, feel the energy that surrounds me, resonate with me—only then will you be able to understand what I am saying.”

If you want to understand a Buddha, his words, you have to watch his life.

Buddha has also said, very poignantly: “Don’t follow my words, rather, follow what I am doing, follow what I am being.”

Sarjano, I can see these words are beautiful:

“We’re playing these min-games together

pushing the barrier, planting the seeds.”

But there is no need to go on playing them forever. There have been people who stopped all those mind-games, but the only way to stop those mind-games is meditation; there has never been any other way. Meditation means entering into a state of no-mind.

If he was really in love with me, then there was nothing to prevent him from coming here. To be in love with me means to be in love with meditation, but he must have been afraid of meditation. If he said that he was not ready to become a disciple he must have been afraid of meditation, of surrender, of saying yes, of falling in love. Why?—because the poets, the singers, the painters, the sculptors, the musicians, are the most egoistic people in the world. They talk about egolessness, saying yes and surrendering and love, but that is mere talk.

They are very egoistic people, in fact they far surpass even the politicians and the priests, for the simple reason that they are talented people. The politicians are not talented people—they are third-rate, they belong to the world of the mediocres. But poets, singers, musicians, painters, they are talented people. They really have something which they can brag about—they have got something. Their ego has a solid support. The politician is making his house on shifting sands, but the poet—any kind of creative person—Is making his ego on solid ground, on rocklike ground. His foundation is concrete; it is not made of just shifting sands. Hence he has every reason to feel egoistic, but then the danger is even far greater: he will be the last person to surrender, and his whole life he will talk about surrender and about egolessness and about love.

Kahlil Gibran talked about love, surrender, saying yes, but his whole life was quarrelsome. The people he loved, he always fought with them. He was talking about compassion, but he was a very angry man. He would go into childish tantrums for small reasons—aany excuse would do. He would throw things, he would break things—he would go mad! The people who lived with him were always afraid of him, the women who loved him were continuously in misery.

And this is the man who wrote the great book, The Prophet. It stands as one of the ten great books of the whole world and it will remain one of the greatest ever; there is no possibility for somebody to surpass it. And this is coming from a man who was very angry, very violent, very jealous, very egoistic.

Wilhelm Reich has written about how to get rid of jealousy — because jealousy is THE poison for love, it destroys the roots of love. And Wilhelm Reich is one of the greatest creative psychoanalysts after Sigmund Freud. But his wife writes something else—she writes about him: “I have never seen such a jealous person in my life. He was taking all kinds of freedom, he was moving with many women!”—because he was talking about freedom and that relationship should not be any kind of bondage, but about his wife he was very jealous. Almost twenty-four hours a day he was detecting, spying on where she was, with whom she was, what she was doing, was she looking happy with the man. When he went out of the town he would tell his friends to keep watch….

Finally his wife had to divorce him — it was too much of a torture. He was taking every kind of freedom — he was moving with many women — and his wife was not even allowed to have friends, not to mention lovers.

You have to look into the life of the person, because only that is decisive.

Now, Lennon was continuously fighting with his own woman — many times they separated and many times they got together again — and he is talking about mind-games, and he was playing those mind-games himself!

Sarjano, the words are beautiful: Love is the answer. I also say love is the answer, but I mean it! He does not mean it, he is simply saying beautiful words. Beautiful words have their own hypnotic quality. They catch the mind of the singers and the poets and the musicians; they fall in love with beautiful words. He must be in love with the word ‘love’—and remember, the word ‘love’ is not love, the word ‘God’ is not God, the word ‘yes’ is not yes.

Yes is a totally different existential experience. To say yes means to drop your ego entirely. Surrender means disappearing into the whole. He was a nice man, but as unconscious, Sarjano, as you are. That’s why you say:

I can feel this connection myself.

You must be feeling it!

Now the poor man is dead. Somebody played the game—the mind-game—killed him. Many questions have come to me asking that I should say something about his death. To me, birth and death have no significance at all. There are many ways to die, and the best way is to be killed—at least you are not responsible! The worst is to die in your bed and ninety-nine percent of people choose to die in their beds. Beware of the bed, because that is the most dangerous place in the world! All the accidents happen there: birth happens there, love happens there, death happens there. If you can simply renounce the bed you are enlightened!

He died a good death—somebody killed him. One has to die anyway; when one has to die one should choose a good way. I don’t think he chose it and I don’t think the person who killed him chose it either. People are living—all people are living—in utter unconsciousness.

A patient lying on the operating table started screaming, “I don’t want to be cut open! You’ll kill me! I don’t want to die!”

The surgeon tried to calm the patient.

“Just take it easy, sir,” he said. “Look at my long white beard. I’ve done thousands of operations and nothing has ever gone wrong.”

“Oh, doctor, you’re right! I know I can trust you!” replied the patient.

When the patient awoke after the operation, he looked around and saw the same white beard and said, “Oh, thank you, doctor! You are a saint!”

“It’s okay, son, you don’t have to thank me. I am not your doctor—my name is St. Peter!”

So what can I say about his death? It is perfectly okay! Everything is okay. Just… if he had really come here he would have died a totally different kind of death. He would have died celebrating, he would have died rejoicing. He would have died without any regrets, without any complaints. He would have died in love, in surrender, in yes. That he has missed this time—I hope next time he does not miss it.

-Osho

From Philosophia Ultima, Chapter 10

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.