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Part IV : Osho describes Enlightenment
Enlightenment is nothing but your becoming light, your inner being
becoming light.
Perhaps you are aware that the physicists say that if anything
moves with the speed of light, it becomes light - because
the speed is so great that the friction creates fire. The thing
is burned, there is only light. The material disappears, only
immaterial light remains.
Enlightenment is the experience of an explosion of light within
you.
Perhaps your desire to be enlightened is moving with the speed
of light, like an arrow, so that your very desire, your very longing
becomes a flame, an explosion of light. There is nobody who becomes
enlightened, there is only enlightenment. There is only a tremendous
sunrise within you. upan41
I must have come across hundreds of mystics describing it as
if suddenly thousands of suns have risen within you. That is a
common expression in the mystic's language, in all languages,
in different countries, in different races. transm22
Enlightenment simply means an experience of your consciousness
unclouded by thoughts, emotions, sentiments. When the consciousness
is totally empty, there is something like an explosion, an atomic
explosion. Your whole insight becomes full of a light which has
no source and no cause. And once it has happened, it remains.
It never leaves you for a single moment; even when you are asleep,
that light is inside. And after that moment you can see things
in a totally different way. After that experience, there is no
question in you. last113
Enlightenment means being fully conscious, aware. Ordinarily
we are not conscious and not aware. We are doing things either
out of habit or out of biological instincts...
Just as Freud's conscious mind, unconscious mind, and Jung says
collective unconscious mind, I say there is a superconscious mind
and collective conscious mind. To reach to the collective conscious
mind they are going to the roots and I am going to the flowers.
But they're all interconnected and all the devices and matters
are to discover in you, something which is simply watchfulness.
For example, I can watch my body - certainly I'm not the
body. I can watch my hand: it's hurting, but I'm not the hurt - I'm
the watcher. I can watch my thoughts, then I'm not the thought.
I'm the watcher and I can watch even the watcher. That is the
moment beyond which you cannot go and enlightenment comes.
Enlightenment is simply that you become so conscious, so full
of light, that it starts overflowing your life, your being. You
can impart it. silent02
When one is enlightened one is conscious, but one is not conscious
of consciousness. One is perfectly conscious, but there is no
object in it. One is simply conscious, as if a light goes on enlightening
the emptiness around it. There is no object, there is nothing
the light can fall upon. It is pure consciousness. The object
has disappeared; your subject has flowered into totality. Now
there is no object - and hence, there can be no subject. The
object and subject both have disappeared. You are simply conscious.
Not conscious of anything, just conscious. You are consciousness....
...He is not conscious about enlightenment; he is simply
conscious. He lives in consciousness, he sleeps in consciousness,
he moves in consciousness. He lives, he dies in consciousness.
Consciousness becomes an eternal source in him, a nonflickering
flame, a nonwavering state of being. It is not an attribute, it
is not accidental; it cannot be taken away. His whole being is
conscious. yoga804
What is enlightenment? Coming to understand, coming to realize
that you are not the body. You are the light within; not the lamp,
but the flame. You are neither body nor mind. Mind belongs to
the body; mind is not beyond body, it is part of the body - most
subtle, most refined, but it is part of the body. Mind is also
atomic, as body is atomic. You are neither the body nor the mind - then
you come to know who you are. And to know who you are is enlightenment....
Enlightened means you have realized who you are. nomoon05
Enlightenment simply means becoming aware of yourself. Ordinarily,
a man is awake to everything around him, but is not aware who
is awake and aware of all the things around. So we remain on the
periphery of life and the center remains in darkness. To bring
light to that center, consciousness to that center is what enlightenment
is.
It is just being absolutely centered in yourself, focusing all
your consciousness upon yourself as if nothing else exists; only
you are. last202
Just be natural so that you can remain in tune with existence.
So that you can dance in the rain and you can dance in the sun
and you can dance with the trees, and you can have a communion
even with the rocks, with the mountains, with the stars.
Except this, there is no enlightenment.
Let me define it: Enlightenment is to be in tune with existence.
To be in tune with nature - the very nature of things - is
enlightenment. Against nature there is only misery - and misery
created by yourself. Nobody else is responsible for it. mani11
It will be difficult logically to understand it. It is something
to be experienced. Since the moment I found the ego evaporating
from me, I have not felt part of the universe, but the universe
itself. And yes, I have found many moments when I am bigger than
the universe - because I can see the stars moving within me,
the sunrise happening within me, all the flowers blossoming within
me. false21
When I roam the lofty mountains I feel like my soul is raised
on high and covered like the peaks in never melting caps of snow.
And when I descend into the valleys I feel deep and profound like
them and my heart fills with mysterious shadows. The same thing
happens at the edge of the sea. There I merge with the surging
waves; they pound and roar within me. When I gaze at the sky I
expand. I become boundless, unlimited. When I look at the stars,
silence permeates me; when I see a flower the ecstasy of beauty
overwhelms me. When I hear a bird singing, it's song is an echo
of my own inner voice, and when I look into the eyes of an animal
I see no difference between them and my own. Gradually my separate
existence has been effaced and only God remains. So where shall
I look for God now? How shall I seek him? Only he is; I am not.
I was in the hills, and what they wanted to tell me was transmitted
through their silence. The trees, the lakes, the rivers, the brooks,
the moon and the stars were all speaking to me in the language
of silence. And I understood. The words of God were clear to me,
I could only hear him when I became silent. Not before. long06
I cannot be other than compassionate; I am just helpless. It
has nothing to do with you, it is just the only possibility for
me.
The day I came to know myself, I lost many things and I gained
a few things. Of the things that I have gained, the most important
of them is compassion. So it is irrespective of who is the receiver:
a coconut tree or you, it does not matter. I can only look with
compassion. My eyes don't have anything else and my heart doesn't
have anything else. dawn03
The day you realize yourself, your very being becomes love. It
is no longer a relationship, it is no longer addressed to anyone
in particular; it is simply overflowing in all directions and
all dimensions. And it is not something on my part, that I am
doing it. Love cannot be done. And the love that is done is false;
it is only pretension.... It is just my heartbeat, my love
is my life; nobody is excluded from it. It is so comprehensive
that it can contain the whole universe...you too. razor09
You ask me: Is the process of enlightenment the same for everyone?
Enlightenment is a very individual process. Because of its individuality,
it has created many problems. First: there are no fixed stages
through which a person necessarily passes. Every person passes
through different phases, because every person in many lives has
gathered different kinds of conditionings. So it is not the question
of enlightenment. It is the question of the conditionings that
will make your way. And everybody has different conditionings,
so no two persons' paths are going to be the same. That's why
I insist again and again there is no superhighway; there are only
footpaths. And that too, not ready-made, not that you find them
already there and you have just to walk on them - no. As you
walk you make them, your very walking makes them.
It is said that the path of enlightenment is like a bird flying
in the sky: it leaves no footprints behind it, nobody can follow
the footprints of the bird. Every bird will have to make its own
footprints, but they disappear immediately as the bird goes on
flying. The similar is the situation, that's why there is no possibility
of a leader and a follower, that's why I say these people - like
Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Krishna - who say that "You just
believe me and follow me," don't know anything about enlightenment.
If they had known, then this statement was impossible, because
anybody who has become enlightened, knows that he has not left
any footprints behind; now saying to people "Come and follow
me," is just absurd.
So what happened to me is not necessary for anybody else to pass
through. It is possible that one may remain normal and suddenly
become enlightened.
It is like here there are fifty people: if we all go to sleep,
everybody will have his own dream; you can't have a common dream.
That is an impossibility. There is no way to create a common dream.
Your dream will be yours, my dream will be mine, and we will be
in different places, in different dreams. And when we will wake
up, I may wake up at a certain stage in my dream, you may wake
up at a certain stage in your dream. How they can be the same?
Enlightenment is nothing but awakening. For the enlightened person,
all our lives are just dreams. They may be good dreams, they may
be bad dreams; they may be nightmares, they may be very nice and
beautiful dreams, but all the same they are dreams.
You can wake up any moment. That is always your potentiality.
Sometimes you may an effort to wake up, and you find that it is
difficult. You may have had dreams in which you are trying to
shout but you cannot shout. You want to wake up and get out of
the bed, but you cannot, your whole body is paralyzed, as if.
But in the morning you wake up and you simply laugh at the whole
thing, but at the moment when it was happening, it was not a thing
to laugh at. It was really serious. Your whole body was almost
dead, you could not move your hands, you could not speak, you
could not open your eyes. You knew that, now you are finished.
But in the morning, you simply don't pay any attention to it,
you don't even reconsider it, what it was. Just knowing that it
was a dream, it becomes meaningless. And you are awake, then whether
the dreams were good or bad does not matter.
The same is the situation about enlightenment. All the methods
that are being used are simply somehow to create a situation in
which your dream is broken. How much you are attached with the
dream will be different, individual to individual. How much deep
is your sleep will be different, individual to individual. But
all methods are just to shake you so that you can wake up. At
what point you will wake up does not matter at all.
So my breakdown and breakthrough is not going to be for everybody.
It happened that way to me. There were reasons why it happened
that way.
I was working alone on myself, with no friends, no fellow travelers,
no commune. To work alone, one is bound to get into many troubles,
because there are moments which can only be called nights of soul,
so dark and so dangerous. It seems as if you have come to the
last breathe of your life, that this is death, nothing else. That
experience is a nervous breakdown.
Facing death, and nobody to support and nobody to encourage, and
nobody to say, "Not to be worried, this will pass away,"
that "This is is only a nightmare, and the morning is very
close. Darker the night, the closer is the sunrise. Don't be worried."
Nobody around whom you trust, who trusts you - that was the
reason for the nervous breakdown. But, it was not harmful. It
looked harmful at the moment, but soon the dark night was gone,
and the sunrise was there. The breakdown has become the breakthrough.
To each individual it will happen differently. And the same is
true after enlightenment: the expression of enlightenment will
be different....
Enlightenment is a very individual song - always unknown,
always new, always unique. It comes never as a repetition. So
never compare two enlightened persons, otherwise you are bound
to do unjustice with one or the other, or both.
And don't have any fixed idea. Just very liquid qualities should
be remembered. I say liquid qualities, not very determinate qualifications.
For example, every enlightened person will have a deep silence - almost
tangible. In his presence, those who are open, receptive, will
become silent. He will have a tremendous contentment, whatever
happens makes no difference to his contentment.
He will not have any question left, all questions have dissolved - not
that he knows all answers, but all questions have dissolved. And
in that state of utter silence, no-mind, he is capable of answering
any question with tremendous profundity. It needs no preparation.
He himself does not know what he is going to say, it comes spontaneously;
sometimes he himself is surprised. But that does not mean that
he has answers inside himself, ready-made.
He has no answers at all. He has no questions at all. He has just
a clarity, a light that can be focused on any question, and all
the implications of the question, and all the possibilities of
its being answered, suddenly become clear....
But the enlightened man has no answers, no scriptures, no quotation
marks. He is simply available; just like a mirror, he responds,
and he responds with intensity and totality.
So these are liquid qualities, not qualifications. So don't
look on small things, that what he eats, what he wears, where
he lives - those are all irrelevant. Just watch for his love,
for his compassion, for his trust. Even if you take advantage
of his trust, that does not change his trust. Even if you misuse
his compassion, cheat his love, that does not make any difference.
That is your problem. His trust, his compassion, his love remains
just the same.
His only effort in life will be how to make people awake. Whatever
he does, this is the only purpose behind every act: how to make
more and more people awake, because through awaking he has come
to know the ultimate bliss of life. last329
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