Enlightenment is not an experience

Question 1:

Prem Nandano, each individual needs a different treatment because each individual is so unique. On the path there can be no mass surgery. You are right that you have not been hit; you don't need it.

You are saying, "Whenever you talk about your surgery, or hitting people hard, I can sense what you mean by it."

Only people who are so unconscious that unless you hit them they cannot wake up...

everybody is not so asleep, so unconscious. There are so many categories. A few people are just on the verge, where a small push by a loving hand will do the whole surgery; a small push and the bird is on the wing. There was a little hesitation; just that little hesitation has to be removed. A little fear of the unknown... and the only way to remove the fear of the unknown is to push you into the unknown. Because what is unknown to you is known to me; so on my part there is no question of any hesitation.

You say, "Yet in all these years I have never experienced it myself." You will never experience it. You are one of those fortunate people who need a very tender and loving treatment -- a hit can destroy you, a hit can make you more afraid of the future and the unknown.

The master works according to the need of the disciple; each according to his need.

You say to me, "You are like a potter. I feel your hands molding me, guiding me, leading me, strong and firm, but also with such tenderness and love as I have never experienced before. It is such a joy to be formed by your gorgeous hands." To you I am a potter, because to me you are a pot! Now, to hit a pot is to destroy it -- and a very immature pot; you have not even gone through the fire test -- that's why you have not experienced it.

But if you want to experience, it is up to you: just wait a little! Once you have passed through the fire and you have become hard and capable of receiving a hit... because the hit is also so beautiful, so loving, that you will forget all the tenderness and all the love that I am

Enlightenment is not an experience showing to you -- it is out of pity. And when I strongly hit somebody -- that too is out of love -- my hit gives you dignity. It is a recognition of your strength, your integrity, your centeredness.

You are asking, "Beloved Master, in my doubting mind, a question arises: can it really be true that You are guiding me ever so gently?" I have to, you are fragile. But you will not remain fragile forever. And it is a spiritual surgery, not a butcher's shop.

Rejoice in whatever you are getting. The hits will also come in their right time. Perhaps they are also a basic need, finally -- just as a child is born and the cord that joins him to the mother has to be cut, although it has been his life for nine months. And cutting this life source is the most shocking thing he will ever experience -- unless he meets a master. Because to cut a physical cord between two bodies is not a very big thing, but to cut the cord between your consciousness and your body is certainly the biggest shock possible. It comes, finally -- when the season is right, and the moment has arrived that you have to be taken out of your body, out of your imprisonment, and left totally alone in your tremendous freedom. This is called, in the mystic language, the second birth.

The first birth is from the mother's body.

The second birth is from your own body.

From the first birth, you become a personality.

From the second birth you become an individual.

The first birth is bound to lead you one day to death. The second birth only begins, and never ends. It leads you to immortality.

But whatever is needed at a certain time will be provided to you. That's why I don't give you a discipline. All the religions are doing that stupidity -- they are giving disciplines, commandments, without even bothering about whom they are addressing. Because to one, something is a medicine, and to another the same thing becomes poison.

Unless you have the fortune of being with a living master, with whom you are related -- not the way people are related to organizations, but with whom you are related individually, the way lovers are related, in personal intimacy -- only then can care be taken, and you can be helped slowly, slowly, towards the final quantum jump.

I can also read in your question, between the lines, that somewhere you think you are missing the hits. Right now, any hit will be dangerous. Just wait a little more and you will get as big a hit... because what is the use of giving you small hits? I'm accumulating all your hits for a single hit: one hit and your head is gone! Be intelligent, and be patient.

Mrs. Harris stood before the chimpanzee cage and watched in frozen horror as one of the chimps picked up a peanut and placed it in his rectum, then pulled it out and ate it. The distraught woman rushed over to the zookeeper and said, "I thought chimpanzees were supposed to be the most intelligent animal next to man."

"That's right, lady," said the zookeeper.

"Then why is he doing that disgusting thing?" she countered.

"Well, some boy scouts were here yesterday and gave him peaches to eat. He had trouble passing the pits. Now he checks everything for size."

Question 2:

Anand Disha, one of the most fundamental things to be remembered -- not only by you but by everyone -- is that whatever you come across in your inner journey, you are not it.

You are the one who is witnessing it. It may be nothingness, it may be blissfulness, it may be silence, but one thing has to be remembered: however beautiful and however enchanting an experience you come across, you are not it. You are the one who is experiencing it. And if you go on and on and on, the ultimate in the journey is the point when there is no experience left -- neither silence, nor blissfulness, nor nothingness. There is nothing as an object for you, but only your subjectivity.

The mirror is empty; it is not reflecting anything.

It is you.

Even great travelers of the inner world have got stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences, thinking, "I have found myself." They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear.

Enlightenment is not an experience.

It is the state where you are left absolutely alone, nothing to know. No object, howsoever beautiful, is present. Only in that moment does your consciousness, unobstructed by any object, take a turn and move back to the source. It becomes self-realization, it becomes enlightenment.

I must remind you about the word "object." Every object means a hindrance -- the very meaning of the word is "hindrance," objection.

So the objects can be outside you, in the material world; the objects can be inside you, in your psychological world; the objects can be in your heart, feelings, emotions, sentiments, moods. The objects can be even in your spiritual world. And they are so ecstatic that one cannot imagine there can be more. Many mystics of the world have stopped at ecstasy. It is a beautiful spot, a scenic spot, but they have not arrived home yet.

When you come to a point when all experiences are absent, when there is no object, then consciousness without obstruction moves in a circle -- in existence everything moves in a circle, if not obstructed -- it comes from the same source of your being, goes around. Finding

Enlightenment is not an experience no obstacle to it -- no experience, no object -- it moves back, and the subject itself becomes the object.

That's what J. Krishnamurti, for his whole life, continued to say: that when the observer becomes the observed, know that you have arrived.

Before that, there are thousands of things in the way. The body gives its own experiences, which have become known as the experiences of the centers of kundalini; seven centers become seven lotus flowers. Each is bigger than the other and higher, and the fragrance is intoxicating. The mind gives you great spaces, unlimited, infinite. But remember the fundamental maxim that still, the home has not come.

Enjoy the journey and enjoy all the scenes that come on the journey -- the trees, the mountains, the flowers, the rivers, the sun and the moon and the stars -- but don't stop anywhere unless your very subjectivity becomes its own object. When the observer is the observed, when the knower is the known, when the seer is the seen, the home has arrived.

This home is the real temple we have been searching for, for lives together, but we always go astray. We become satisfied with beautiful experiences. A courageous seeker has to leave all those beautiful experiences behind, and go on moving. When all experiences are exhausted and only he himself remains in his aloneness... no ecstasy is bigger than that, no blissfulness is more blissful, no truth is truer. You have entered what I call godliness; you have become a god.

Anand Disha, you are asking, "If none of those three things are me, then where am I?"

An old man went to his doctor. "I have got toilet problems," he complained.

"Well, let us see. How is your urination?"

"Every morning at seven o'clock, like a baby."

"Good. How about your bowel movement?"

"Eight o'clock each morning, like clockwork."

"So, what is the problem?" the doctor asked.

"I don't wake up until nine."

Anand Disha, you are asleep and it is time to wake up. All these experiences are experiences of a sleeping mind.

The awakened mind has no experiences at all.

Question 3:

Atmo Shahid, my whole work -- day in, day out -- is going from one emergency room to another emergency room. I don't have any other work. I have so many people in the world, and they are so expert in creating emergencies, that I am running like crazy. Why do you think I have told you now to drop the mala and orange clothes? Because it is getting too much! -- running, without any rest.

But whatever happened to you has been of great value; this is the preparation every sannyasin is going through.

Life has to be a joy, a dance, a celebration. And when death comes, it has to be welcomed with silence, with serenity -- wholeheartedly, not holding anything back. This is a way to kill death itself.

If you have lived joyously, you will be ready to welcome death too -- invite her for a dance! Death is powerful only over people who have never lived, who don't have the courage to relax peacefully in moments of death without any fear -- because no accident, no disease, nothing can make even a dent in your consciousness; you are always intact.

But the problem with people is, they live their whole lives unconsciously -- in such misery, anguish, anxiety, that it is almost necessary for them to remain unconscious. They find new ways to be unconscious: drugs... anything that makes them unconscious. But then when death comes, they fall into a deep coma. The very fear of death, the very presence of death makes them absolutely unconscious, without any anesthesia.

Only for these people does death happen. Otherwise, death is a fiction. It is just moving the house; your old house has become such that renovating it is more troublesome than moving into a new house. The moment the body comes to a point when it is no longer functioning organically -- when its inner structure is fractured, when things are not happening as they should happen, when mechanisms have run to their full capacity...

Each child brings with himself at birth, the genes which tell his whole history. And soon it may become possible -- it is almost possible now -- in the reports of the scientists, they say that they can read the program of the first cells that begin your life. At least they will be able to know the great events in your life: when you will become sexually mature, at what age; when you will become old, when death will strike your body just to make you free.

Death is in the service of life. Life never dies.

But in unconsciousness you go on doing things that you are not clearly aware of why you are doing. You go on moving because everybody else is moving, but you don't know where

Enlightenment is not an experience you are moving and for what. You go on living because everybody else is living, but without any consciousness.

Why? Why should you wake up tomorrow morning and still go on breathing? Your whole past proves that it has been nothing but an exercise in futility, and you know perfectly well you will be repeating it as long as you are alive -- unless by accident, you come across a man who is awake. And the awakened people have become so few, as centuries have passed, that it is almost improbable that you will come across an awakened person.

But only the awakened person can wake you up, shake you up; can give you a little consciousness of what you are doing: This is not life. This is only a slow death which will be completed in seventy or seventy-five years' time. You are dying every day, every moment.

The great masses of the world only know slow death.

Only very few people who have become awakened have known the tremendous tidal wave of life.

Just as the unconscious goes on dying, the conscious goes on becoming more and more alive. The unconsciousness only grows old; the conscious grows up, becomes mature, reaches heights of consciousness. It is in its seed in everybody, but the problem is how to challenge the seed, how to call to the seed: "Don't remain dormant!" Only the awakened person can create the presence in which your seed inside starts waking up.

It was a good experience, Shahid. You remained aware in the moment of death. Now don't take it for granted. You have to be aware each moment in life.

Sometimes, particularly in accidents, people become aware because the accident is such a shock that the unconsciousness disappears. But if they survive, the unconsciousness again starts gathering around them like a dark cloud and they start living a life which is meaningless, imitative, not knowing why.

Goldstein got a job in the sports section of a large department store. On his first day there, the store manager overheard him with a customer: "Look," said Goldstein, "these fish hooks are fifty cents each. But I can sell you three for a dollar."

"I will buy them!" exclaimed the customer.

"Now, you have fish hooks but you need a fishing line. This excellent nylon line normally costs two dollars for a hundred yards but I can give you two hundred yards for three dollars," said Goldstein.

"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.

"Now you have fish hooks and a line, but you need a rod. Here is a rod -- normally costing one hundred dollars, but I can sell it to you for only seventy-five dollars," said Goldstein.

"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.

"Now you have fish hooks, a line and a rod but you need a fishing boat. Here is a boat normally costing eight thousand dollars but it is yours for five thousand dollars."

"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.

"Now you have fish hooks, a line, a rod, and a boat but you need a trailer to carry the boat on. Normally, this one costs two thousand dollars but it is yours for eighteen-hundred dollars."

"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.

Enlightenment is not an experience "Now," said Goldstein, "you have fish hooks, a line, a rod, a boat and a trailer. All you need now is a car to pull your boat and trailer. Here is a car especially made for fishermen, designed to pull a boat and trailer -- normally costing ten thousand dollars, but you can have it for eight thousand dollars."

"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.

After the customer had left with all his purchases, the manager went up to Goldstein.

"Goldstein," he said. "I've been running this store for thirty years and never have I seen anyone making such an incredible sale. Starting with fifty-cent fish hooks and working up to a ten-thousand-dollar car!"

"What do you mean I started with fish hooks?" demanded Goldstein. "The man came in asking where he could buy tablets for his wife's period, and I told him that what he needs right now is a weeks' fishing holiday!"

This is your life... Why are you doing things? Why are you buying things? How are you spending your life? You are not at all aware. You are just a sleepwalker, a somnambulist.

Anybody can cheat you -- the politicians are doing it, the priests are doing it, but in your unconsciousness it is absolutely natural. Only a conscious man cannot be exploited.

Only a conscious man really lives. And those who really live, die peacefully, silently, with a smile on their face. For these people who die with a smile on their face, there is no death -- because deep down in their consciousness there is an absolute certainty that it is only the body that is being dropped. Life has continued always, and will continue always.

Question 4:

Prem Vanshi, the question is: "At the moment, my life seems to be an endless dive into deep dark valleys of greed, jealousy, self-condemnation, deep pain and feeling very lost.

Coming out of these valleys, I feel refreshed, more clear -- like after a thunderstorm in hot summer. But the next valley follows soon afterwards. Are these dark valleys a sort of cleaning, and has this to happen again and again?"

As long as you wish.

Because these valleys are your creation. This is your creativity; they don't come from outside.

You have managed your life in such a way that these have become your constant companions: greed, jealousy, self-condemnation, deep pain. You cannot live without them, or you will feel very alone. However miserable they are, anyway it is your family. However ugly the mother is, no boy says that his mother is ugly.

Enlightenment is not an experience The gaps between valleys are not your creation. The valleys that you create are so painful that you cannot tolerate them continuously. Once in awhile you want to be alone, and when you are alone you again feel fresh.

But just look at your logic: You are consoling yourself that these deep valleys of darkness are cleansing you. Those few moments between two valleys, you think are cleansing, refreshing, because of the valleys. You are indebted to all the nonsense that you are creating yourself.

What is the need of greed in life? Greed arises only because your present moment is empty, and to live in an empty moment hurts very much. To forget it you project greed into the future, thinking that tomorrow things are going to be better, a lottery is going to open in your name. But of course you have to wait for tomorrow, it cannot be just now -- and tomorrow never comes. All that comes is always the present moment, which is empty.

Greed is because we don't know how to live the present moment in its total richness.

Just the other night I saw a small anecdote about a great Zen master, Ryokan. He used to live in the mountains in a small hut. Another Zen master was staying with him. The whole day passed, talking about poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and they both forgot about food.

He had to go to beg for his food in the town. By the evening, he became aware. He said, "I am sorry -- to me it is not much, it is my usual habit. Sometimes I forget. But I am keeping you hungry, so I will go immediately and find something before the sun sets." So he rushed down the mountain and his friend waited and waited and waited for three hours. No sign... and he was feeling so hungry that he came out of the house -- what has happened? Has there been some accident?

And he could not believe his eyes: Ryokan was sitting outside the house under a tree with closed eyes, a great grace on his face, murmuring -- almost in a whisper -- new haikus, new poetries. The guest went there, shook him and asked him, "What happened about the food?"

Ryokan said, "My god! When I saw the sun setting, it was so beautiful that I could not move away from this tree. From this tree, the sunset is a golden experience. I had stopped only for a moment but the sunset and its beauty impressed me so much that I forgot all about food and all about you! But here are a few beautiful haikus..."

The guest said, "But haikus won't help. I cannot sleep with such hunger."

Ryokan said, "Wait -- I will go. Although it is late, I may find something." And he rushed down from the hill towards the town. The whole night, the guest was tossing and turning, and coming out again and again to see what had happened to Ryokan.

In the early morning, when the sun was rising, the guest went out again -- he had not slept a single wink. Ryokan was still sitting under the same tree -- smiling and swaying and murmuring.

The guest said, "Ryokan, what about food?"

Ryokan said, "My god! When I reached the bottom of the hill, people were asleep and it was a fullmoon night. It was so beautiful, you would not believe. I have seen fullmoon nights before, but never anything comparable to this. So just to enjoy it a little, I sat under a tree -- and I don't know when the night passed, but I have found some beautiful haikus...

Enlightenment is not an experience "And living in this glory of the full moon... you can understand me, and forgive me. I forgot all about food. In fact, I was wondering, when the sun started rising -- what am I doing here? So I returned to my tree, from where sunset, sunrise, both have such a divine splendor."

The guest said, "You will kill me! I am going."

Ryokan said, "But at least listen to my few haikus. They are not mine, truly. Some are given by the full moon, some are given by the rising sun, some are given by the birds singing in the trees. And life has been so rich and I was so nourished by it that even the idea of food never crossed my mind."

The guest left. He said, "You seem to be a madman!" But a man like Ryokan cannot have greed.

Each moment is so full of blessings, each moment is such an eternity of joy, each moment is such a dance of beauty. Greed arises, Vanshi, only because you don't know how to live herenow.

Greed is a postponement of life.

It is one of the most stupid things one can do, because it will land you in death and nowhere else.

And a man who lives totally in the moment -- his heart full of songs, his presence radiating joy -- how can he feel jealous? The whole world may feel jealous of him, but he cannot feel any jealousy. These are your wrong approaches to life, that greed and jealousy arise in you and create dark valleys. And then comes self-condemnation, because you know deep down that you are the creator of your greed, of your jealousy. But self-condemnation does not help. it makes things worse: you become depressed, you start feeling unworthy of life. You start feeling that you don't deserve even a single breath more, and that gives great pain.

You have not lived life at all.

Each moment has gone empty.

It is great pain, great anguish -- but remember it is your creation.

When you become tired, and out of the tiredness there is a little relief, then you feel clean.

No condemnation, no pain, no jealousy, no greed -- but no energy either. You have spent all your energy in those idiotic fantasies. Because there is no energy, for a few moments, a few hours, you are left alone. It is peaceful. But this peace is not the authentic peace. It is the peace that rains on the graveyard; it is not the peace of the garden, full of songs and full of flowers.

And as you gather energy again, the old companions are back.

This wheel will go on rotating unless you understand and jump out of it. And the only way to jump out of it is to live each moment so totally that it brings such contentment, such fulfillment that you cannot be greedy. And you cannot be jealous, and you cannot be in self-condemnation, and you cannot feel pain.

Existence gives you one moment by one moment.

So if you know to live one moment totally, you know the whole secret of life.

An Irish worker used to take tunafish sandwiches to work every day, but a fellow worker noticed that each day he would take one bite and throw the rest away in disgust.

Enlightenment is not an experience "But if you don't like tunafish," said his friend, "why don't you ask your wife to make something else?"

"Ah," said the Irishman, "it is not as easy as that. I have not got a wife, I make them myself."

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.