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Part IV : Immediately after Osho’s enlightenment & why
he became a master
If people have become enlightened before thirty-five, then they
have survived longer than others, because the body was younger,
stronger, and it was not on the decline; it still had a potential
to grow. They absorbed the shock, but the shock had shaken everything.
I was never sick before I became enlightened; I was perfectly
healthy. People were jealous of my health. But after enlightenment,
suddenly I found that the body had become so delicate that doing
anything became impossible. Even going for a walk - and I
was running before that, four miles in the morning, four miles
in the evening, running, jogging, swimming. I was doing all kinds
of things....
But after enlightenment, suddenly and very strangely, the body
became absolutely weak. And it is almost unbelievable - I
could not believe it, my father's sister's family, who I was staying
with, could not believe it. It was more of a surprise to them
because they knew nothing about enlightenment. I suspected there
was some connection but they had no idea what had happened: all
the hairs on my chest became white, just in one night! And I was
twenty-one!
I could not hide it - because it is a hot country, India,
and I used to only have on a wrap-around lunghi the whole day,
so my chest was always naked. So everybody in the house became
aware of this and was wondering what had happened. I said, "I
myself am wondering what has happened." I knew that the body
had certainly lost its stamina. It had become fragile, and I lost
my sleep completely.
I have been asked again and again why Ramakrishna died of cancer.
I know why he died of cancer: he must have become absolutely vulnerable
to any disease. And if it was only Ramakrishna we could think
it was just an exception; but Maharshi Raman also died of cancer.
That looks strange, that within one hundred years two enlightened
people of the highest order died of cancer. Perhaps they lost
all resistance to disease.
I can understand from my own situation, I lost all resistance
to diseases. I had never suffered from what you call allergies.
I loved perfume so much, and I had never suffered because of it.
I had beautiful flowers in all my houses where I lived; and India
has such flowers I think no other country has - with great
fragrance....
There are plants, for example a certain flower, "queen
of the night" - you can have just one plant, and the
whole house will be full of fragrance; and not only your own house,
the neighboring houses too will be full of fragrance. And there
are many other flowers - champa, chameli, juhi - which
are immensely full of fragrance. I always had those flowers around
me, and I never suffered from any allergy.
But after enlightenment I became so allergic that just the body-smell
of somebody was enough to give me a cold, the sneezes; and the
sneezes triggered something in my chest. I started coughing, and
coughing triggered another process; I started having asthma attacks
which were absolutely unknown to me. I had never thought that
these things would happen to me.
But I was aware of what was happening. My consciousness and
my body had fallen apart; the connection became very loose. The
body's resting became impossible, and when you have not rested
for many days, then you become vulnerable to all kinds of infections.
You are so tired, you cannot resist. And if for years you cannot
have any rest, then naturally you lose all resistance....
My feeling is that because enlightenment is the last lesson
of life, there is nothing more to learn, you are unnecessarily
hanging around. You have learnt the lesson - that was the
purpose of life - so life starts losing contact with the person.
And most of these people have died immediately; the shock was
so much. And death is not a calamity to them; it is a blessing,
because they have attained whatsoever life was to give.
But to live after enlightenment is really a difficult affair.
The most important thing is that one loses contact with his inactive
mind, and it becomes impossible to have any contact. The moment
you are silent, immediately the energy moves to your transcendental
awareness.
You are aware, even when you are doing something, saying something.
The flame is not that strong, because your energy is involved
in some activity. But when you are not doing anything, then suddenly
the whole energy immediately shifts to the highest point. It is
tremendously blissful, it is great ecstasy, but only for consciousness,
not for the body.
Nobody has ever explained exactly what the situation is. I think
there may have been a fear that if you explain it to people - they
are already not making any effort towards enlightenment - and
if you say it is possible that enlightenment may become your death,
they may simply freak out! "Then why bother about enlightenment?
Then we are good as we are - at least we are alive! Miserable,
but we are alive."
If your body becomes vulnerable, fragile, non-resistant to any
kind of disease, that may also give them the argument: "This
is not good; it is better not to bother about such things. It
is better to be healthy and have no diseases, rather than having
enlightenment and then suffer a fragile body and all its implications."
Perhaps that may have been the reason that it has never been
talked about. But I want everything to be made clear. I don't
want to leave anything about enlightenment, its process, as a
secret.
It is good for people to know exactly what they are doing and
what can be the result. If they do it consciously, knowingly,
it will be far better. And those who are not going to make any
effort, only they will find excuses; they were not going to make
any effort anyway. For those of you who are going to make the
effort - even if death comes, it will be a challenge, an adventure,
because you have attained whatever life could deliver to you,
and then life slipped away. light35
The first thing I did after my enlightenment, at the age of twenty-one,
was to rush to the village where my grandmother was, my father's
village....
Immediately after my enlightenment I rushed to the village to
meet two people: first, Magga Baba, the man I was talking about
before. You will certainly wonder why.... Because I wanted
somebody to say to me, "You are enlightened." I knew
it, but I wanted to hear it from the outside too. Magga Baba was
the only man I could ask at that time. I had heard that he had
recently returned to the village.
I rushed to him. The village was two miles from the station.
You cannot believe how I rushed to see him. I reached the neem
tree....
I rushed to the neem tree where Magga Baba sat, and the moment
he saw me do you know what he did? I could not believe it myself - he
touched my feet and wept. I felt very embarrassed because a crowd
had gathered and they all thought Magga Baba had now really gone
mad. Up till then he had been a little mad, but now he was totally
gone, gone forever...gate, gate - gone, and gone forever.
But Magga Baba laughed, and for the first time, in front of the
people, he said to me, "My boy, you have done it! But I knew
that one day you would do it."
I touched his feet. For the first time he tried to prevent me
from doing it, saying, "No, no, don't touch my feet anymore."
But I still touched them, even though he insisted. I didn't care
and said, "Shut up! You look after your business and let
me do mine. If I am enlightened as you say, please don't prevent
an enlightened man from touching your feet."
He started laughing again and said, "You rascal! You are
enlightened, but still a rascal."...
I then rushed to my home - that is, my Nani's home, not my
father's - because she was the woman I wanted to tell what
had happened. But strange are the ways of existence: she was standing
at the door, looking at me, a little amazed. She said, "What
has happened to you? You are no longer the same." She was
not enlightened, but intelligent enough to see the difference
in me.
I said, "Yes, I am no longer the same, and I have come
to share the experience that has happened to me."
She said, "Please, as far as I am concerned, always remain
my Raja, my little child."
So I didn't say anything to her. One day passed, then in the
middle of the night she woke me up. With tears in her eyes she
said, "Forgive me. You are no longer the same. You may pretend
but I can see through your pretense. There is no need to pretend.
You can tell me what has happened to you. The child I used to
know is dead, but someone far better and luminous has taken his
place. I cannot call you my own anymore, but that does not matter.
Now you will be able to be called by millions as theirs, and everybody
will be able to feel you as his or hers. I withdraw my claim - but
teach me also the way."
This is the first time I have told anybody. My Nani was my first
disciple. I taught her the way. My way is simple: to be silent,
to experience in one's self that which is always the observer,
and never the observed; to know the knower, and forget the known.
My way is simple, as simple as Lao Tzu's, Chuang Tzu's, Krishna's,
Christ's, Moses', Zarathustra's...because only the names differ,
the way is the same. Only pilgrims are different; the pilgrimage
is the same. And the truth, the process, is very simple.
I was fortunate to have had my own grandmother as my first disciple,
because I have never found anybody else to be so simple. I have
found many very simple people, very close to her simplicity, but
the profoundness of her simplicity was such that nobody has ever
been able to transcend it, not even my father. He was simple,
utterly simple, and very profound, but not in comparison to her.
I am sorry to say, he was far away, and my mother is very very
far away; she is not even close to my father's simplicity.
You will be surprised to know - and I am declaring it for
the first time - my Nani was not only my first disciple, she
was my first enlightened disciple too, and she became enlightened
long before I started initiating people into sannyas. She was
never a sannyasin. glimps16
And I have to confess, after Magga Baba he (Shambhu Babu) was
the second man who recognized that something immeasurable had
happened to me. Of course he was not a mystic, but a poet has
the capacity, once in a while, to be a mystic, and he was a great
poet....
I understand him, so when I say that although he was not an
enlightened master, not a master in any way, I still count him
as number two, after Magga Baba, because he recognized me when
it was impossible to do so, absolutely impossible. I may not even
have recognized myself, but he recognized me. glimps21
After my enlightenment, for exactly one thousand, three hundred
and fifteen days* I tried to remain silent - as much as it
was possible in those conditions. For a few things I had to speak,
but my speaking was telegraphic.
My father was very angry with me. He loved me so much that he
had every right to be angry. The day he had sent me to the university
he had taken a promise from me that I would write one letter every
week at least. When I became silent I wrote him the last letter
and told him, "I am happy, immensely happy, ultimately happy,
and I know from my very depth of being that I will remain so now
forever, whether in the body or not in the body. This bliss is
something of the eternal. So now every week, if you insist, I
can write the same again and again. That will not look okay, but
I have promised, so I will drop a card every week with the sign
"ditto." Please forgive me, and when you receive my
letter with the sign "ditto," you read this letter."
He thought I had gone completely mad. He immediately rushed from
the village, came to the university and asked me, "What has
happened to you? Seeing your letter and your idea of this 'ditto,'
I thought you were mad. But looking at you, it seems I am mad;
the whole world is mad. I take back the promise and the word that
you have given to me. There is no need now to write every week.
I will continue to read your last letter." And he kept it
to the very last day he died; it was under his pillow.
The man who forced me to speak - for one thousand, three hundred
and fifteen days I had remained silent - was a very strange
man. He himself had remained silent his whole life. Nobody heard
about him; nobody knew about him. And he was the most precious
man I have come across in this, or any of my lives in the past.
His name was Magga Baba....
Once in a while, particularly on cold winter nights, I used to
find him alone; then he would say something to me.
He forced me to speak. He said, "Look, I have remained silent
my whole life, but they do not hear, they do not listen. They
cannot understand it; it is beyond them. I have failed. I have
not been able to convey what I have been carrying within me, and
now there is not much time left for me. You are so young, you
have a long life before you: please don't stop speaking. Start!"
It is a difficult, almost impossible job to convey things in words,
because they are experienced in a wordless state of consciousness.
How to convert that silence into sound? There seems to be no way.
And there is none.
But I understood Magga Baba's point. He was very old, and he was
saying to me, "You will be in the same position. If you don't
start soon, the inner silence, the vacuum, the innermost zero,
will go on pulling you inwards. And then there comes a time when
you cannot come out. You are drowned in it. You are utterly blissful,
but the whole world is full of misery. You could have shown the
way. Perhaps somebody may have heard, perhaps somebody may have
walked on the path. At least you would not feel that you have
not done what was expected of you by existence itself. Yes, it
is a responsibility."
I promised him, "I will do my best." And for thirty
years continually I went on and on talking on every subject under
the stars. unconc01
*Note: Between 1981 and 1984, Osho observed a period of silence
lasting 1,315 days. Osho has indicated that while Magga Baba encouraged
him to teach, he warned Osho not to declare his enlightenment
as this would create antagonism. Osho did not publicly acknowledge
his enlightenment until 1971.
My experience is that once you are enlightened, you are so full,
just like a rain cloud, you want to shower. invita06
The moment I was fulfilled, the moment I was blessed by truth,
of course I wanted it to be shared; and it was natural that I
would share it with my father, with my mother, with my brothers,
with my sisters, whom I had known longer than anybody else. And
I shared it. unconc22
I am just a storyteller. From my very childhood I have loved
to tell stories, real, unreal. I was not at all aware that this
telling of stories would give me an articulateness, and that it
would be of tremendous help after enlightenment.
Many people become enlightened, but not all of them become masters - for
the simple reason that they are not articulate, they cannot convey
what they feel, they cannot communicate what they have experienced.
Now it was just accidental with me, and I think it must have been
accidental with those few people who became masters, because there
is no training course for it. And I can say it with certainty
only about myself.
When enlightenment came, I could not speak for seven days; the
silence was so profound that even the idea of saying anything
about it did not arise. But after seven days, slowly, as I became
accustomed to the silence, to the beautitude, to the bliss, the
desire to share it - a great longing to share it with those
whom I loved was very natural.
I started talking with the people with whom I was in some way
concerned, friends. I had been talking to these people for years,
talking about all kinds of things. I had enjoyed only one exercise,
and that was talking, so it was not very difficult to start talking
about the enlightenment - although it took years to refine
and bring into words something of my silence, something of my
joy. rebel02
The mystic's greatest problem, greater than attaining his experience,
is to express it. zara207
I have been in different phases of work. First, I was working
on myself, then I was working to find the right expression to
allow people to know what I have known. silent06
If somebody becomes enlightened it is not necessary that he will
be able to become a Master - or even a teacher. He may know,
but he may not be articulate enough to lead others to the same
experience. That is a different art.
It was easy for me to speak because I started speaking before
I became enlightened. Speaking became almost a natural thing to
me before I became enlightened.
I have never learned any oratory, never been to any school where
oratory is taught. I have never even read a book on the art of
speaking. From my very childhood, because I was argumentative
and everybody wanted me to keep silent.... In the family,
in the school, in the college, in the university, everybody was
saying to me, "Don't speak at all!"
I was expelled from many colleges for the simple reason that teachers
were complaining that they could not complete the syllabus, the
course for the year, because "this student leads us into
such arguments that nothing can be completed."
But all that gave me great opportunity and made me more and more
articulate. It became just a natural thing to me to argue with
the neighbors, to argue with the teachers, to argue on the street - anywhere.
Just to find a man was enough and I will start some argument....
I loved it, just the way I love it now! So when I became enlightened
it was not difficult for me. It was very easy.
So everybody is not necessarily going to be a Master or a teacher.
That is a totally different art. last319
From my very childhood, as long as I remember, I have been arguing,
fighting. Of course, a child will fight and argue in a child's
way, but from my very childhood I have never been ready to accept
anything without being rationally convinced about it. And I found
very soon, very early in life, that all these people with very
big heads - professors, heads of the departments, deans, vice-chancellors - are
just hollow. You just a scratch a little bit, you find nothing
inside. They don't have any argument for what they have been thinking
is their own philosophy. They have borrowed it, they have never
discovered it on their own. So I have been continuously fighting,
and in this fighting I have been sharpening my own argument. I
don't have a philosophy of my own. my whole function is deprogramming,
so whatever you say, I will destroy it. And I never say anything,
so I never give any chance to anybody to destroy it. My purpose
is to deprogram you, to clean you, to uncondition you and leave
you fresh, young, innocent. And from there you can grow into a
real, authentic individual - otherwise you are just a personality,
not an individuality. A personality is borrowed, it is a mask.
And my whole effort is how to help a person to be authentic, to
be himself, naked. last325
You ask me: Is it your supreme ability to communicate that makes
you the master of masters?
The situation of the world has changed dramatically. Just three
hundred years ago, the world was very big. Even if Gautam Buddha
had wanted to approach all human beings, it would not have been
possible; just the means of communication were not available.
People were living in many worlds, almost isolated from each other.
That has a simplicity.
Jesus had to face the Jews, not the whole world. It would not
have been possible, sitting on his donkey, to go around the world.
Even if he had managed to cover the small kingdom of Judea, that
would have been too much. The education of people was very confined.
They were not even aware of each other's existence.
Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu in China, Socrates in Athens - they
were all contemporaries but they had no idea of each other.
That's why I say that before the scientific revolution in the
means of communication and in the means of transportation, there
were many worlds, sufficient unto themselves. They never thought
of others, they had no idea even that others existed. As people
became acquainted more and more with each other, the world became
smaller. Now a Buddha will not be able to manage, nor Jesus nor
Moses nor Confucius. They will all have very localized minds and
very localized attitudes.
We are fortunate that the world is now so small that you cannot
be local. In spite of yourself, you cannot be local; you have
to be universal. You have to think of Confucius, you have to think
of Krishna, you have to think of Socrates, you have to think of
Bertrand Russell. Unless you think of the world as one single
unit, and all the contributions of different geniuses, you will
not be able to talk to the modern man. The gap will be so big - twenty-five
centuries, twenty centuries...almost impossible to bridge
it.
The only way to bridge it is that the person who has come to know
should not stop at his own knowing, should not be contented to
only give expression to what he has come to know. He has to make
a tremendous effort to know all the languages. The work is vast,
but it is exciting - the exploration into human genius from
different dimensions.
And if you have within yourself the light of understanding, you
can create, without any difficulty, a synthesis. And the synthesis
is not only going to be of all the religious mystics - that
will be partial. The synthesis has to include all the artists - their
insights - all the musicians, all the poets, all the dancers - their
insights. All the creative people who have contributed to life,
who have made humanity richer, have to be taken into account.
And most important of all is scientific growth.
To bring scientific growth into a synthetic vision with heart
and religion was not possible in the past. In the first place
there was no science - and it has changed a thousand and one
things. Life can never be the same again.
And nobody has thought ever of the artistic people, that their
contribution is also religious.
In my vision it is a triangle - science, religion, art.
And they are such different dimensions, they speak different languages,
they contradict each other; they are not in agreement superficially - unless
you have a deep insight in which they all can melt and become
one.
My effort has been to do almost the impossible.
In my university days as a student, my professors were at a loss.
I was a student of philosophy, and I was attending science classes - physics,
chemistry and biology. Those professors were feeling very strange;
"You are here in the university to study philosophy. Why
are you wasting your time with chemistry?"
I said, "I have nothing to do with chemistry; I just want
to have a clear insight into what chemistry has done, what physics
has done. I don't want to go into details, I just want the essential
contribution."
I was rarely in my classes, I was mostly in the library. My professors
were continually saying, "What are you doing the whole day
in the library? - because so many complaints have come from
the librarian that you are the first to enter the library, and
you have to be almost physically taken out of the library. The
whole day you are there. And not only in the philosophical department,
you are roaming around the library in all the departments which
have nothing to do with you."
I said to them, "It is difficult for me to explain to you,
but my effort in the future is going to be to bring everything
that has some truth in it into a synthetic whole and create a
way of life which is inclusive of all, which is not based on arguments
and contradictions, which is based on a deep insight into the
essential core of all the contributions that have been made to
human knowledge, to human wisdom."
They thought I would go mad - the task I have chosen can lead
anyone to madness, it is too vast. But they were not aware that
madness is impossible for me, that I have left the mind far behind;
I am just a watcher.
And the mind is such a delicate and complicated computer. Man
has made great computers but none is yet comparable to the human
mind. Just a single human mind has the capacity to contain all
the libraries of the world. And just a single library - the
British Museum library - has books, which if you go on making
them like a wall, one by one, they will go three times round the
earth. And that is only one big library. Moscow has the same kind
of library - perhaps bigger. Harvard has the same kind of
library.
But a single human mind is capable of containing all that is
written in all these books, of memorizing it. In a single brain
there are more than a billion cells, and each single cell is capable
of containing millions of pieces of information. Certainly one
will go mad if one is not already standing out of the mind. If
you have not reached the status of meditation, madness is sure.
They were not wrong, but they were not aware of my efforts towards
meditation.
So I was reading strange books, strange scriptures, from all
over the world; yet I was only a watcher, because as far as I
was concerned, I had come home. I had nothing to learn from all
that reading; that reading was for a different purpose, and the
purpose was to make my message universal, to make it free from
local limitations.
And I am happy that I have succeeded in it completely....
Because you love me, you call me "master of masters."
It is out of your love.
As far as I am concerned, I simply think of myself only an ordinary
human being who was stubborn enough to remain independent, resisted
all conditioning, never belonged to any religion, never belonged
to any political party, never belonged to any organization, never
belonged to any nation, any race.
I have tried in every possible way just to be myself, without
any adjective; and that has given me so much integrity, individuality,
authenticity, and the tremendous blissfulness of being fulfilled.
But it was the need of the time. After me, anybody trying to
be a master will have to remember that he has to pass through
all the things I have passed through; otherwise, he cannot be
called a master. He will remain just localized - a Hindu teacher,
a Christian missionary, a Mohammedan priest - but not a master
of human beings as such. After me it is going to be really difficult
to be a master. transm37
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