The only gift to me: your enlightenment

Question 1:

Chandaram, one basic thing has always to be remembered: not to get involved in questions of intellect. They are pseudo questions, they don't belong to your experience. Mind is tremendously capable of creating questions out of words.

But any question that is created by the mind, out of words, not out of experience, is an exercise in utter futility. You don't know what enlightenment is as an experience, you don't know what the spring of life is as an experience. The question is purely intellectual. It can lead to a great philosophical discussion, but it will not lead to any understanding or any transformation.

Intellect is one of the barriers to reach to the sources of existence. It does not allow you to ask the authentic question. It goes on giving you questions which only appear as questions, but they are not your quest. Of course in a dictionary, enlightenment will mean one thing and spring of life will mean something else.

But here we are not discussing linguistics. And the people who have been writing dictionaries, analyzing language and grammar, are not the people of the path. So the first thing: always remember whether the question is arising from some experiential source or not. If it is not arising from experience, then it is not worth discussing.

Carol, a newlywed, brags that her Romeo is a model husband. We looked up the word "model" in the dictionary, and found it means "a small imitation of the real thing."

It has been heard that the pope died but was allowed to return to earth to speak to the cardinals.

They gathered around him eagerly.

"What is he like?" they clamored. "Is he very old, with a long, white beard, like in all the paintings?

Tell us, describe him."

"Well," said the pope, "to start with, she is black."

Knowing is one thing; knowing directly and knowing through books are so different. Sometimes they may appear to be similar, but they are not similar.

I cannot answer your question in terms of intellect, but I can answer it in terms of existential experience.

The spring of life and enlightenment are not the same, although they are deeply related. The spring of life, when it becomes aware of itself, brings you to the experience of enlightenment. In other words, spring of life plus awareness is equal to enlightenment.

The spring of life is available to everybody; otherwise how can you live? Your life is continuously being nourished by the spring of life. The trees are nourished by the spring of life, the flowers blossom ... but the juice comes from the spring of life. The whole existence is nothing but a manifestation of the springs of life.

But trees cannot become enlightened - neither can mountains or oceans; neither can animals or birds. They all have the same source of life that you have. But man has a prerogative, a privilege, that he can become aware of his spring of life. This awareness is not possible in any other form in existence. It is man"s grandeur, it is his dignity. Existence has given him the most precious opportunity. If he can create awareness, consciousness, more alertness, then his spring of life explodes into a new dimension. The dimension of life becomes the dimension of light, of knowing - knowing the deepest roots of our being in eternity. And the moment we know our roots are eternal, we know our flowers are also going to be eternal.

Enlightenment is a flowering.

The springs of life are seeds; enlightenment is a flower. The seed has come to its ultimate expression - there is no further to go. Springs of life are the lowest rung of the ladder, and enlightenment is the highest rung of the ladder, although the ladder is the same.

The change comes slowly, as you become more aware of who you are, of what life is - not intellectually, not by reading through scriptures, but by reading the only holy scripture: your own being, and bringing your potential to its realization. So that which was hidden in the seed becomes an explosion in the flower, in the fragrance. That fragrance is enlightenment. It comes from the sources of life, but it is not synonymous with it.

The seed is not synonymous with the flower, although the flower comes from the seed. The seed is the womb, but the flower - although connected with the seed, with the womb - is a totally new experience.

Awareness ordinarily is objective. You know others, you know the world, you know the faraway stars. The moment awareness turns inwards and starts knowing itself - in other words, the moment awareness is the object of its own knowing - enlightenment blossoms with all its beauty, with all its immortal glory.

Life is accepted by the scientist, but he is not yet capable of accepting the possibility of enlightenment. Life is accepted by the atheist, but he is also not capable of comprehending the ultimate explosion. Just as for millennia we had no idea that matter is made of small atoms, which are not visible to the eyes ... they are so small that if you put one atom upon another atom, and then go on putting one on top of another, you will need one hundred thousand atoms, and then they will be as thick as a human hair. Such a small atom, one hundred thousand times thinner than a human hair, when it explodes, releases so much energy that a city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki disappears within seconds - evaporates.

I have seen a picture sent by a friend from Japan ... just looking at the picture, one feels so sad about humanity, so hopeless. The picture is of a small girl, maybe nine years old. She is going from the ground floor to the first story with her bag and books - perhaps to do her homework before she goes to sleep. She is just in the middle of the staircase when the atom bomb falls on Hiroshima.

Just a small atom exploding creates so much energy ... you can use it for destruction or you can use it for some creative purpose. Right now the scientists say we have come so far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki - our new nuclear weapons are so great in their energy - that the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima look like children"s toys.

If matter, in its smallest particle, contains so much energy, can you conceive how much energy may be available in the living cell of human beings?

Enlightenment is the explosion of a living cell. Certainly it is not destructive at all, but it transforms the whole man. In that way, it is destructive. It destroys the old man, it destroys the night, it destroys all that was constituting your personality: your jealousy, your anger, your hate, your lust, your greed - all that is simply finished in a single moment. And the same energy that was involved in jealousy, hate, greed, ambition, and a thousand and one desires, is changed into totally new forms of energy:

love, silence, peace, compassion, wisdom - all that is the basic search of life itself.

Life in itself is dormant, it is fast asleep. Enlightenment is absolutely awake. But it is the same energy that was asleep that becomes awake. So they are not synonymous, but they are two extremes of the same energy.

But this, if taken as an intellectual understanding, is not going to help you in any way. It has to become your own experience.

You have to see that light.

You have to see that explosion within your own being.

You have to see the darkness disappearing. You have to see the new dawn of a new life - a life of grace and gratitude, a life of beauty and blessings.

Chandaram, you have to remember, it is very easy to ask questions as mind gymnastics. I am not interested in mind gymnastics because it leads you nowhere; you remain stuck where you are. You only become more burdened with knowledge - knowledge which is meaningless because it is not part of your own experience.

Rabbi Bierstein was asking his congregation to donate money to help build a new synagogue.

Suddenly, the town prostitute stood and shouted, "Praise the Lord. I repent. I will give two thousand dollars right now."

"Well, as much as we need funds, I am afraid I cannot accept tainted money," said Bierstein.

"Take it, Rabbi," shouted a man from the back, "after all, it is our money anyway!"

Now, what are these guys doing in a synagogue? Just a formality. They are visiting prostitutes. The prostitute is more authentic. Perhaps the money also belongs to the Rabbi; that"s why the man is saying, "It is our money anyway."

Mind has been befooling man for centuries.

After holding mass in Warsaw Cathedral, the pope was giving words of encouragement to a group of devout Poles. One of them asked, "Your Holiness, Poles are such devout Catholics, why was Christ not born in Poland?"

"Don't you understand," said the pope, "that for such a birth, there had to be three wise men and a virgin?"

And where can you find three wise men and a virgin in Poland? You must know the story of Jesus, that he is born out of a virgin, and three wise men come from the East to pay him respect. They are the first to recognize in the small child the possibility of a future enlightened being. They recognized in the seed, the flower.

I recognize in you the seed and the potential of the flower. But if you go on thinking intellectually, you will become a philosopher, a theologian; you will never become a mystic. And unless you become a mystic, you have wasted your life. Such a great opportunity, where you can grow to your greatest height of consciousness, is being wasted in unconscious trivia.

Even if you think about something great, it is only a thought, it never becomes an actual reality in your being.

I would like you to be more existential. I am not an existentialist because that is again falling into the same trap. Existentialist philosophers are not enlightened people. Neither Jean-Paul Sartre is enlightened nor Jaspers, nor Martin Heidegger, nor Marcel, nor Soren Kierkegaard; they are philosophers of existence, they think about existence.

I want you not to be existentialist thinkers; I want you to be existential experiencers. That difference is so great, and makes all the difference - because Jean-Paul Sartre, or Jaspers or other existentialist philosophers live in anguish, in anxiety, in boredom, in despair. They even think that perhaps suicide is the only way out of this mess. These people are not to be categorized with Gautam Buddha or Chuang Tzu or Baal Shem. These people are thinking about existence, just as old philosophers were thinking about God; only the object of thinking has changed, but thinking continues, and thinking can only lead you into a desert.

It is only the experience which leads your life river towards the ultimate merger with the ocean, with the universe, with the life of full awareness. You come back home. You had left the home unconscious, you come back home with consciousness. The circle is complete. Your life has come to fulfillment and contentment. This is the only benediction and this is the only authentic religious path.

Question 2:

Raso, the way your understanding has been growing is perfectly the right way and the right direction.

The only thing you should think of is enlightenment. Yes, that is the only gift you can give to me: your enlightenment. Everything else is trivia. So your conclusion has my absolute, categorical approval.

Once you are committed, once you have decided wholeheartedly that enlightenment is the only purpose of being here in the world, of being alive, then a single pointed awareness - just like an arrow moving towards its target - begins in you.

You are asking for the right meditation. Meditation is a beautiful word; hiding behind it is a very dangerous reality. The dangerous reality is: if you want to be deeply in meditation, you will have to pass through almost a death - the death of the old, the death of all that you used to be, a discontinuity with the past - and a rebirth.

The place where your meditation is going to descend is the place occupied by your mind and your past. So the first and primary work is to clean your interior being of all thoughts. There is no question of choosing to keep the good thoughts in and to throw the bad thoughts out. For a meditator, all thoughts are simply junk; there is no question of good and bad. They all occupy the space inside you, and because of their occupation, your inner being cannot become absolutely silent. So good thoughts are as bad as bad thoughts; don't make any discrimination between them. Throw the baby out with the bath water!

Meditation needs absolute quiet, a silence so deep that nothing stirs within you. Once you understand exactly what meditation means, it is not difficult to attain it. It is our birthright; we are absolutely capable of having it. But you cannot have both: the mind and meditation.

Mind is a disturbance.

Mind is nothing but a normal madness.

You have to go beyond the mind into a space where no thought has ever entered, where no imagination functions, where no dream arises, where you simply are - just a nobody.

It is more an understanding than a discipline. It is not that you have to do much; on the contrary, you don't have to do anything except clearly understand what meditation is. That very understanding will stop the functioning of the mind. That understanding is almost like a master before whom the servants stop quarreling with each other, or even talking with each other; suddenly the master enters the house and there is silence. All the servants start being busy - at least looking like they are busy.

Just a moment before, they were all quarreling and fighting and discussing, and nobody was doing anything.

Understanding what meditation is, is inviting the master in. Mind is a servant. The moment the master comes in with all its silence, with all its joy, suddenly the mind falls into absolute silence.

Once you have achieved a meditative space, enlightenment is only a question of time. You cannot force it. You have to be just a waiting, an intense waiting, with a great longing - almost like thirst, hunger, not a word .... It is like the experience of people who have sometimes got lost in a desert.

At first, thirst is a word in their mind: "I am feeling thirsty and I am looking for water." But as time goes on, and there is no sign of any oasis - and as far as the eyes can see, there is no possibility of finding water - the thirst goes on spreading all over the body.

From the mind, from just a word, "thirst", it starts spreading to every cell and fiber of the body. Now it is no longer a word, it is an actual experience. Your every cell - and there are seven million cells in the body - is thirsty. Those cells don't know words, they don't know language, but they know that they need water; otherwise life is going to be finished.

In meditation, the longing becomes just a thirst for enlightenment and a patient awaiting, because it is such a great phenomenon and you are so tiny. Your hands cannot reach it; it is not within your reach. It will come and overwhelm you but you cannot do anything to bring it down to you. You are too small, your energies are too small. But whenever you are really waiting with patience and longing and passion, it comes. In the right moment, it comes. It has always come.

You are asking what meditation will be helpful to you. Raso, all meditations ... hundreds of techniques are available, but the essence of all those techniques is the same, just their forms differ.

And the essence is contained in the meditation vipassana.

That is the meditation that has made more people in the world enlightened than any other, because it is the very essence. All other meditations have the same essence, but in different forms; something nonessential is also joined with them. But vipassana is pure essence. You cannot drop anything out of it and you cannot add anything to improve it.

Vipassana is such a simple thing that even a small child can do it. In fact, the smallest child can do it better than you, because he is not yet filled with the garbage of the mind; he is still clean and innocent.

Raso, I would suggest vipassana as the technique for you. Vipassana can be done in three ways - you can choose which one suits you the best.

The first is: Awareness of your actions, your body, your mind, your heart. Walking, you should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand. You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing. You are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. Be alert of the movements of your body.

While eating, be alert of the movements that are needed for eating. Taking a shower, be alert of the coolness that is coming to you, the water falling on you and the tremendous joy of it .... Just be alert.

It should not go on happening in an unconscious state.

And the same about your mind: whatever thought passes on the screen of your mind, just be a watcher. Whatever emotion passes on the screen of your heart, just remain a witness - don't get involved, don't get identified, don't evaluate what is good, what is bad; that is not part of your meditation. Your meditation has to be choiceless awareness.

You will be able one day even to see very subtle moods: how sadness settles in you just like the night is slowly, slowly settling around the world, how suddenly a small thing makes you joyous.

Just be a witness. Don't think, "I am sad." Just know, "There is sadness around me, there is joy around me. I am confronting a certain emotion or a certain mood." But you are always far away: a watcher on the hills, and everything else is going on in the valley. This is one of the ways vipassana can be done.

And for a woman, my feeling is that it is the easiest, because a woman is more alert of her body than a man. It is just her nature. She is more conscious of how she looks, she is more conscious of how she moves, she is more conscious of how she sits; she is always conscious of being graceful.

And it is not only a conditioning; it is something natural and biological.

Mothers who have experienced having at least two or three children, start feeling after a certain time whether they are carrying a boy or girl in their womb. The boy starts playing football; he starts kicking here and there, he starts making himself felt - he announces that he is here. The girl remains silent and relaxed; she does not play football, she does not kick, she does not announce. She remains as quiet as possible, as relaxed as possible.

So it is not a question of conditioning, because even in the womb you can see the difference between the boy and the girl. The boy is hectic; he cannot sit in one place. He is all over the place. He wants to do everything, he wants to know everything. The girl behaves in a totally different way.

That"s why I say, Raso, it will be easier for you to take vipassana in this first form.

The second form is breathing, becoming aware of breathing. As the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. So the second method is to be aware of the belly, its rising and falling. Just the very awareness of the belly rising and falling ... And the belly is very close to the life sources because the child is joined with the mother"s life through the navel. Behind the navel is his life"s source. So when the belly rises up, it is really the life energy, the spring of life that is rising up and falling down with each breath. That too is not difficult, and perhaps may be even easier, because it is a single technique.

In the first, you have to be aware of the body, you have to be aware of the mind, you have to be aware of your emotions, moods. So it has three steps. The second sort has a single step: just the belly, moving up and down. And the result is the same. As you become more aware of the belly, the mind becomes silent, the heart becomes silent, the moods disappear.

And the third is to be aware of the breath at the entrance, when the breath goes in through your nostrils. Feel it at that extreme - the other polarity from the belly - feel it from the nose. The breath going in gives a certain coolness to your nostrils. Then the breath going out ... breath going in, breath going out ....

That too is possible. It is easier for men than for women. The woman is more aware of the belly.

Most men don't even breathe as deep as the belly. Their chest rises up and falls down, because a wrong kind of athletics prevails over the world. Certainly it gives a more beautiful form to the body if your chest is high and your belly is almost non-existent.

Man has chosen to breathe only up to the chest, so the chest becomes bigger and bigger and the belly shrinks down. That appears to him to be more athletic. Around the world, except in Japan, all athletes and teachers of athletes emphasize breathing by filling your lungs, expanding your chest, and pulling the belly in. The ideal is the lion whose chest is big and whose belly is very small. So be like a lion; that has become the rule of athletic gymnasts and the people who have been working with the body.

Japan is the only exception, where they don't care that the chest should be broad and the belly should be pulled in. It needs a certain discipline to pull the belly in; it is not natural. Japan has chosen the natural way; hence you will be surprised to see a Japanese statue of Buddha. That is the way you can immediately discriminate whether the statue is Indian or Japanese. The Indian statues of Gautam Buddha have a very athletic body: the belly is very small and the chest is very broad. But the Japanese Buddha is totally different; his chest is almost silent, because he breathes from the belly, but his belly is bigger. It doesn"t look very good because the idea prevalent in the world is the other way round, and it is so old. But breathing from the belly is more natural, more relaxed.

In the night it happens when you sleep: you don't breathe from the chest, you breathe from the belly.

That"s why the night is such a relaxed experience. After your sleep, in the morning you feel so fresh, so young, because the whole night you were breathing naturally ... you were in Japan!

These are the two points: if you are afraid that breathing from the belly and being attentive to its rising and falling will destroy your athletic form ... men may be more interested in that athletic form.

Then for them it is easier to watch near the nostrils where the breath enters. Watch, and when the breath goes out, watch.

These are the three forms. Any one will do. And if you want to do two forms together, you can do two forms together; then the effort will become more intense. If you want to do all three forms together, you can do all three forms together. Then the process will be quicker. But it all depends on you, whatever feels easy.

Remember: easy is right.

As meditation becomes settled, mind silent, the ego will disappear. You will be there, but there will be no feeling of "I." Then the doors are open. Just wait with a loving longing, with a welcome in the heart for that great moment, the greatest moment in anybody"s life - enlightenment.

It comes ... it certainly comes. It has never delayed for a single moment. Once you are in the right tuning, it suddenly explodes in you, transforms you. The old man is dead and the new man has arrived.

Big Chief Sitting Bull had been constipated for many moons. So he sent his favorite squaw to the medicine man for help. The medicine man gave the squaw three pills and told her to give them to the chief, and then report back to him the next morning.

The next morning the squaw came back with the message, "Big chief no shit." So the medicine man told her to double the dose.

The next day, she came back with the message, "Big Chief no shit." So again he told her to double the dose.

Again she came back with the same message. This went on for a week, and finally the medicine man told the squaw to give Sitting Bull the whole box.

The next morning, she came back with a very sad expression. "What is wrong, my child?" asked the medicine man. The little squaw looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, "Big Shit, no chief!"

One day it will happen to you, and that will be a great moment. That"s what I am calling the right moment.

Okay Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.