Enlightenment is the greatest revolution you can conceive of because it destroys all fictions, all rituals, all gods, all traditions, all scriptures. It leaves you with only the essential consciousness of your own being. Its trust in consciousness is so total that there is no need of anything else.
It has not been said as clearly as I am putting it . . . I want to make it absolutely clear that the very idea of enlightenment is against all religions. Or, in other words, the only authentic religion is that of enlightenment. All other religions are part of the marketplace; they are businesses exploiting human helplessness, exploiting human weakness, exploiting human limitations.
Religions have done so much harm to man that it is unparalleled. Nothing else has been so dangerous. In every possible way they have been preventing man from even hearing the word ‘enlightenment’. You should not become aware that raising your hands to the sky is stupid — there is no one to answer your prayers, no prayer has ever been answered. […]
Enlightenment is a rebellion against all traditions, against all priests, against all religions, because it declares that there is nothing higher than man’s consciousness. And man is not suffering because some stupid man in the past disobeyed a fictitious God; man is not suffering because of millions of lives of evil acts. Man is suffering for the simple reason that he does not know himself. His ignorance about himself is the only cause of his suffering, misery, torture.
Enlightenment brings everything to a very simple and scientific conclusion. It pinpoints that all that you need is to learn the art of awareness.
Ta Hui is right to say that enlightenment is the key, the only key which opens all the realities and all the blessings and all the potentials which have been hidden within you. You are a seed: enlightenment is nothing but finding the right soil and waiting for the spring to come.
Enlightenment is such a radical standpoint.
It is not another religion.
It is the only religion.
All other religions are pseudo.
Ta Hui says, Some take sitting wordlessly with eyes shut beneath the Black Mountain, inside the Ghost Cave, and consider it as the scene on the other side of the primordial Buddha, the scene before their parents were born — They also call it “silent, yet ever illuminating,” and consider it ch’an. This lot don’t seek subtle wondrous enlightenment. They consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary.
This word ‘secondary’ has to be understood because it has a context, and without the context you will not be able to grasp the meaning. Gautam Buddha has said, “To experience enlightenment is primary, but to say anything about it is secondary.” To know it is fundamental, but to say anything about it — howsoever articulate, howsoever intelligently worded — falls into the secondary, into the nonessential. The essential is the experience; the expression is nonessential.
But this is one of the great misfortunes of humanity, that even great truths are destined to be misunderstood by people. What Buddha is saying is one thing; what people hear is another.
There is a school which says enlightenment is secondary, and Gautam Buddha himself has said it. Don’t be bothered by it. Certainly, Gautam Buddha has said it, but he has not said that enlightenment is secondary. He has said that to say anything about it is to go wrong . . . even the very word enlightenment, and you have gone far away from the experience.
And you know in your ordinary life there are situations . . . When you see a beautiful rose, is it the same to experience the beauty of the rose and to say that it is beautiful? Can the word ‘beautiful’ contain your experience of the rose? You experience love, but is it possible to say through the word ‘love’ exactly what you experience in the silences of your heart? The love that you experience and the word ‘love’ are not synonymous. The word is not even an echo of your authentic experience. And these are ordinary realities: beauty, love, gratitude. Enlightenment is the ultimate experience of being one with the whole. There is no way to say it.
Lao Tzu refused his whole life to say anything about it: “You can talk about everything, but don’t mention the ultimate experience” — because he cannot lie, and to say anything about the ultimate truth is a lie.
Gautam Buddha was right, but he was not taking into consideration the stupid people who are always in the majority. He would never have thought that there would be a school quoting him, saying that enlightenment is secondary; the real thing is to worship, the real thing is to pray. Gautam Buddha has denied . . . His last words were, “Don’t make statues of me, because I don’t want you to be worshipers, I want you to be buddhas. And a buddha praying before a stone statue is simply ridiculous.”
But such is the ignorance of man that the first statues made of any man were those of Gautam Buddha. There had been statues, but those were of fictitious gods. Gautam Buddha is the first historical person whose statues were made and made on such a great scale that even today he has more statues in the world than anybody else. And the poor fellow had said, “Don’t make my statues, because I am not teaching you to worship, I am teaching you to awaken. No worship is going to help; it is simply a waste of time.”
But the priest is interested in worship; hence Buddha’s words were not taken care of, and priests started making statues. Rituals were created, and he had been fighting for forty-two years continuously against rituals, against temples, against scriptures. Exactly what he had been fighting against was done afterwards — and done with all good intentions by people who thought they were doing some service to humanity, by people who thought that they were followers of Gautam Buddha.
It is a strange history. Every master has been betrayed, without exception, by his own people in different ways. The betrayal of Judas was very ordinary, superficial. But the betrayal of those who have created statues of Buddha, made temples of Buddha, created scriptures in the name of Buddha, brought everything back against which that man had fought for forty-two years continuously . . . From the back door everything has come in.
These people say . . . and they are many, and of many different sectarian ideologies. There are thirty-two Buddhist sects in the world, and they all think they are teaching exactly what Gautam Buddha has said. But there are only a few who can be said to have understood Gautam Buddha — because the only way to understand him is to become him, is to become an awakened being.
Except for that, there is no way to understand Buddha. You cannot study him from scriptures and you cannot persuade him by your prayers. You can be in his company only by being awakened the same way as he was. On those same sunlit peaks of consciousness, you will be able to understand him. In other words, the day you understand yourself you will have understood the message of this strangest man who has walked on the earth. The priests have been trying to misquote him, to distort him, to interpret him for their own interests. They consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary.
They think that enlightenment deceives people . . . The fact is, only enlightenment does not deceive people. Except enlightenment, everything in the name of religion deceives people.
. . . That enlightenment is a fabrication . . . And I say again to you: only enlightenment is the ultimate reality. Other than that, everything else is a fabrication. All your gods, all your messiahs, all your prophets are nothing but your own imagination, your own projection. They are fulfilling certain needs in you, but those needs are sick. They are providing you with father-figures.
It is not strange that people call God “the father,” because everybody feels alone in the world, unprotected. Always death is walking by your side; it can grab you any moment. Life is so insecure and unsafe that you need some insurance, some guarantee. God comes in handy; he is your father. In times of trouble, you can always rely on him, although he has never helped anybody.
Even Jesus on the cross is praying. Finally, he freaks out and shouts at the sky, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” But still, he goes on looking, hoping that God will be coming on a white cloud to save him, with angels playing on their harps, singing “Alleluia!” But not a single white cloud appears.
Jesus can be taken as the greatest example of all those who believe in fictions. He believed too much . . . The sky is not responsible for his beliefs, and if the sky is not fulfilling his expectations, only he is responsible — nobody else. He had immense belief, but he was not enlightened; he did not trust. He believed in a God; he believed madly that he was the only son of God.
These very ideas show that the man was a little neurotic. Instead of helping him and giving him the right treatment, there were other idiots who crucified him . . . but crucifixion is not a treatment. So one sort of idiots crucified him and another sort of idiots, in their imagination, have resurrected him. Now half of humanity is following a man who was a mental case.
But why has he been able to influence so many people? The reason is not that he had a great, convincing philosophy — he had no philosophy at all! The reason is that humanity at large is also neurotic. It feels very good to believe in Jesus Christ, to believe in God; it creates a protection — just in your mind. You will be deceived, finally you will be disillusioned, but to be disillusioned at the time of death is meaningless. Then there is no time is left to do anything else.
The people who say that enlightenment deceives people, the people who say that enlightenment is a fabrication, are people who since they have never awakened themselves, they don’t believe anyone has awakened either.
It is like blind people who don’t believe that there is light — and there is no way to convince them. Even the greatest logician will not be able to convince a blind man that there is light, because light is not an argument but an experience. You need eyes — you don’t need great philosophical proofs.
If you are deaf, no music exists for you. If you are crippled, it hurts you that somebody else can dance. And if the majority is crippled — which is the case as far as enlightenment is concerned . . . If once in a while there is a dancer and millions of people are crippled, they cannot believe that he is real. Maybe he is a dream, maybe an illusion, maybe a magical trick — but he cannot be real. Their own experience does not support his reality.
The awakened ones have found themselves in utter aloneness in a world where everybody is capable of becoming a dancer, but people have chosen to remain crippled, people have chosen to remain blind. There are people who can exploit you only if you are blind, if you are crippled, if you are deaf, if you are dumb. These parasites are your prophets, these parasites are your priests.
Enlightenment is a rebellion against all these parasites.
-Osho
From The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Discourse #34
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