Prabhaker

Osho was not a serious man but it is not necessary that your body will die after enlightenment but unless you are ready to die you cannot be reborn. Unless you are ready to welcome death, know well that you have missed life. Unless you are ready to sacrifice life to it, unless you are ready to die completely as you have been up to now, you are not prepared for enlightenment.

Preparation of enlightenment relieves, but if you want to be fully enlightened, you have to die a psychological death, if not a physical death.

Full enlightenment is very rare phenomenon, your body is going to die whether you are enlightened or not. When you grow spiritually you will find death is an illusion. Still if want to prepare body --- yoga, martial arts, Osho dynamic meditation helps in preparing the body.

Cancer is not the only cause. Great India mystic Vivekananda died at age of thirty-nine, not due to cancer. Enlightenment certainly disturbs much psychosomatic health, because it is something for which the body is not ready or prepared. Nature has not built in anything in the body so that enlightenment can be absorbed. Mystics are not ordinary people, they have extraordinary health, still few survive full enlightenment, or save their brain.

No, cancer doesn't kill most of the people when they grow old. Most of the spiritual teachers are not fully enlightened.

The phenomenon is not natural; one should say, it is beyond nature. When a phenomenon occurs which is contrary to nature, or which is beyond nature, the entire harmony and adjustment of nature becomes disorderly. A great deal of preparation is needed if one wants to save oneself from such a disorderly state. Various yogasanas and mudras, yoga postures, are very helpful in this respect. In fact all the techniques of Yoga are useful in this direction. So you need an extraordinary body -- an ordinary body won't work. You need your body to be made of steel so that it can withstand an unnatural phenomenon of such great magnitude. Ramakrishna died with a cancer of the throat, Raman Maharshi died with a cancer. J Krishnamurti suffered almost forty years with the most intense migraine possible. Buddha was often sick, so much so that one of his disciples -- an emperor, Prasenjita -- offered him his own personal physician. For his whole life, King Prasenjita's physician followed Gautam Buddha with a large wagon full of all kinds of medicines, books on medicine, particularly those which might be needed for Buddha. Mahavira continuously suffered from stomach troubles and finally died from the same troubles. Very few people survive enlightenment, and the reason why these people survive is strange: people who have been adventurous, people who have enjoyed taking risks, who have lived like a tightrope walker, whose lives have been on a razor's edge, may survive. The shock will be there, but they are accustomed to smaller shocks. They have never had such a big shock, but smaller shocks have prepared them to accept even this enormous phenomenon. They still continue to breathe; their heart still continues to beat. But still the body suffers in many ways because something has happened that the body cannot understand. No scripture of the world discusses it. The question of discussion does not even arise -- no scripture even mentions it, and it has been happening for centuries. Perhaps they were afraid that if they say it... People are already not interested in enlightenment, and if you tell them that this is going to be the reward -- that you become enlightened and your fuse goes off -- this may prevent even those few who might try. They will say, "What nonsense it is. You work hard to attain enlightenment and what do you get as a reward? -- that you are finished! You are not even going to see yourself enlightened. So what is the point? It is a strange game.

The whole idea that children are your possession is wrong. They are born through you but they do not belong to you. You have a past; they have only future. They are not going to live according to you. To live according to you will be almost equivalent to not living at all. They have to live according to themselves in freedom, in responsibility, in danger, in challenge. That's how one becomes strong. Once you understand that your children do not belong to you that they belong to existence, you have been just a passage you have to be grateful to existence that it has chosen you to be a passage for a few beautiful children. But you are not to interfere in their growth, in their potential. You are not to impose yourself upon them. They are not going to live in the same times, they are not going to face the same problems; they will be part of another world. Don't prepare them for this world, this society, this time, because then you will be creating troubles for them. They will find themselves unfit, unqualified. If you have enlightened experience, only then you can watch and protect your children, only then you will know how to raise children.

Learn Osho's dynamic meditation. Talk with your psychiatrist if you would like to try treating your schizophrenia with diet alterations. Step 1 Reduce sugar, carbohydrate and caffeine intake. This will help your blood sugar stay balanced. Many drugs prescribed to treat schizophrenia can mess with your blood sugar, so avoiding excess stimulants can help keep it at a desired level. A study published by Nutrition and Metabolism has indicated an alleviation of many symptoms associated with schizophrenia by following a low-carbohydrate diet. Foods to avoid include candy, soda, bread, crackers, some fruits and vegetables and coffee. Step 2 Add foods containing essential fatty acids. People with schizophrenia have reduced amounts of these fatty acids in their brains, so adding foods that contain them can help treat the illness. Good sources include fish, nuts and olive oil. Incorporating them into the diet can help you feel better and provide more control over your schizophrenia. Step 3 Increase your antioxidant levels. Antioxidants are responsible for counteracting oxidation in your body that can cause other health concerns, such as cancer. Specifically, people with schizophrenia experience increased oxidation in the brain. Adding foods that contain vitamins A, C and E can help treat this issue. In addition, avoiding burnt and fried foods reduces the amount of oxidation likely to occur in your brain. Antioxidant foods include beans, berries, apples, plums and pecans. Step 4 Take a daily multivitamin. Niacin deficiency can produce thought disorders, hallucinations and depression, so taking a megadose of niacin daily can help you reduce these symptoms associated with your schizophrenia. Your doctor will work with you on how much you should get daily. In addition, adequate intake of B vitamins and folic acid is responsible for maintaining the chemical balance in your brain. Increasing your intake can help you achieve this balance, thereby alleviating the severity of your schizophrenia symptoms. Finally, many mental illnesses result in a zinc deficiency, so your doctor may recommend taking a multivitamin containing zinc. In some cases, you may have to take these nutrients separately in supplement form because a traditional multivitamin might not have the high levels of the vitamins that you need. Step 5 Cut gluten out of your diet. Mental illness often produces a sensitivity to gluten, which can result in many of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Eliminating gluten sources from your diet will reduce these issues. Gluten is present in foods that contain wheat, rye, barley and their byproducts. Read labels to be sure you are completely avoiding foods that aren't gluten-free. Common foods you will need to avoid include bread, crackers, many cereals, soy sauce, baked goods, beer and some other alcoholic drinks.

When he experienced beauty, love ; was he critical of his direct experience ?

Message not only depends on Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed, it also depends on the people for whom the message is given. Message of Jesus was not suitable for the people who only understand the language of sword.

JESUS SAID: MEN POSSIBLY THINK THAT I HAVE COME TO THROW PEACE UPON THE WORLD, AND THEY DO NOT KNOW THAT I HAVE COME TO THROW DIVISIONS UPON THE EARTH - FIRE, SWORD, WAR. Peace is possible if everybody is almost dead. There will be no war, no conflict, but there will be no life either. That would be the silence of the graveyard. But that is not worth anything; then even war is better because in war you are alive and vital. Another type of peace - a totally different dimension of peace - exists when you are vital, alive, but centered in your being: when self-knowledge has happened, when you have become enlightened, when the flame is lit and you are not in darkness. Then there will be more life, more silence, but the silence will belong to life, not to death. It will not be the silence of the graveyard. This is the paradox to be understood: war is bad, hate is bad; they are the evils on the earth and they must go. Disease is bad, health is good; disease must go, but you must remember that a dead man never falls ill; a dead body can deteriorate but cannot be ill. So if you don't understand, all your efforts may create a dead world. There will be no disease, no war, no hatred - but no life either. Jesus would not like that type of peace. That type of peace is useless; then this world, with war, would be better. But many have been endeavoring, and their attitude is just negative. They think, "If war stops, everything will be okay." It is not so easy. And this is not only the ordinary man's conception - even very great philosophers like Bertrand Russell think that if war is finished everything will be okay. This is negative - because war is not the problem, the problem is man.

Many souls of higher consciousness do not find a suitable womb for hundreds of years are not born in a human body, but they can communicate through a suitable medium, Mohammed was a medium.

There are bodiless souls in the universe who are very compassionate and loving to us and who try to help us even from their ethereal existence. And they do send messages if they come across some suitable medium. Many people like Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Colonel Olcott and Leadbeater have worked as mediums for such bodiless souls in the past. And by contacting such souls who have attained higher states of spiritual growth many things can be known and communicated. The Theosophists carried out a great experiment of this kind in relation to J. Krishnamurti. Many efforts were made to put Krishnamurti in contact with souls in search of right mediums. Krishnamurti's earliest books, AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER and LIFE OF ALCYONE belong to the period when he was in contact with Tibetan Masters. That is why Krishnamurti disowns their authorship. He did not write them in his conscious state; they were really communicated to him by Tibetan Masters. AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER is an extraordinary book, but it is not written by Krishnamurti he was only a medium who received it in the form of messages. Mohammed was illiterate, but he was a great mystic, so he became a suitable medium for Gabriel.

Concentration is not Meditation Concentration is a choice. It excludes all except its object of concentration; it is a narrowing. If you are walking on the street, you will have to narrow your consciousness in order to walk. You cannot ordinarily be aware of all that is happening because if you are aware of everything that is happening you will become unfocused. So concentration is a need. Concentration of the mind is a need in order to live–to survive and exist. That is why every culture, in its own way, tries to narrow the mind of the child. Children, as they are, are never focused; their consciousness is open from all sides. Everything is coming in, nothing is being excluded. The child is open to every sensation, every sensation is included in his consciousness. And so much is coming in! That is why he is so wavering, so unstable. A child’s unconditioned mind is a flux–a flux of sensations–but he will not be able to survive with this type of mind. He must learn how to narrow his mind, to concentrate. The moment you narrow the mind you become particularly conscious of one thing and simultaneously unconscious of so many other things. The more narrowed the mind is, the more successful it will be. You will become a specialist, you will become an expert, but the whole thing will consist of knowing more and more about less and less. The narrowing is an existential necessity; no one is responsible for it. As life exists, it is needed, but it is not enough. It is utilitarian, but just to survive is not enough; just to be utilitarian is not enough. So when you become utilitarian and the consciousness is narrowed, you deny your mind much of which it was capable. You are not using the total mind, you are using a very small part of it. And the remaining — the major portion — will become unconscious.

I am for Muhammed and not for Quran, because it's a dead book written by others, and Muhammad was a lively master, the real master, as simple as that. Quran can't be from Muhammed. Mohammed was a rebellious man — his whole life he was haunted by enemies. Many times he was just on the brink of being killed. He had to fight his whole life — a mystic had to become a warrior, a mystic had to waste his whole life in being a warrior. He had to carry a sword. And you can see the contradiction, the paradox — on his sword he had written the words: peace, love. Love had to carry a sword because of mad people. Peace had to carry a sword because of neurosis. Mohammed had to wage war continuously; he was fighting and fighting. His whole life was wasted in fight. He could have brought more flowers from the unknown, but there was no opportunity.

@Bronsoval Even if you believe in the big bang theory, there must have been something that exploded. Do you think nothing exploded? – if something was there before the explosion then the explosion is not the beginning. It may be A beginning but it is not the beginning. And when I say there has never been any beginning, I mean the beginning. Something was always there – whether it exploded or whether it grew slowly, in one day or in six days or in one single moment, doesn’t matter. There must have been something before it, because only something can come out of something. Even if you say there was nothing, and it came out of nothing, then your nothing is full of something, it is not really nothing. Hence I say there has never been any beginning and there will never be any end. Maybe a beginning, maybe many beginnings and maybe many ends, but never the first and never the last. We are always in the middle.

Ego death is self-realization. Self-realization is reaching to your center. Many religions have believed that self-realization is the end—for example, Jainism—you have come to your ultimate truth. It is almost impossible to fall back from self-realization— not absolutely impossible, because the self can deceive you; it can bring your ego back. The self and the ego are very similar. The self is the natural thing and the ego is the synthetic, so it happens sometimes that a self-realized man becomes a pious egoist. His egoism is not going to harm anyone, but it certainly prevents him from dropping into the ocean and disappearing completely. Enlightenment is the dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the vast, infinite ocean. METAPHYSICS is nonsense !

The etheric body can travel in dreams. There is every possibility of it leaving your body. When you remember it, it is remembered as a dream, but it is not a dream in the same sense as the dreams of the physical body. The etheric body can go out of you when you are asleep. Your physical body will be there, but your etheric body can go out and travel in space. There is no space limiting it; there is no question of distance for it. Those who do not understand this, who do not recognize the existence of the etheric body, may interpret this as the realm of the unconscious.

nope, never !

It is an arduous journey. Dropping the clinging to the known is not easy. It is a struggle, it is an uphill task.

Each path will pass through different lands; there are paths that will go through the desert, and there are paths which will go through the mountains, and there are paths which will pass through beautiful flowering trees. But if you travel some time on one path and then you change the path, you will have to start again from ABC. Whatever you have learned on one path is invalid on another path, and if you go on keeping it within you it is going to create tremendous confusion. You are already in a great mess. Your mind always wants change. It does not know devotion; it loves fashions, its interest is always in some novelty. So it will go on moving from one path to another path, becoming more and more confused because each path has its own language, each path has its own unique methods. If you move on many paths you will collect contradictory arguments; you will become so much divided you will not know what to do. And if it becomes your habit to change paths – because the new has a certain attraction for the mind – you will move a few feet on one path, a few feet on another path, but you will never complete the journey.

As the topic starter's video has been removed by YouTube, I found another video on YouTube

There is interval between the giving up of one body and the taking of another. After the giving up of one body and before the taking of another we do not have senses. The body itself is not there, so whatever you might experience in that state is like a dream, as if you are seeing a dream. When we see dreams, we do not doubt their reality. So what we call heaven and hell are just deep dream lives. The intensity of the fire burning in hell can never be found in real life, though it is a very inconsistent fire. In scriptures, there are descriptions of the fires of hell, into which you are thrown without being burned. But one is never aware of this inconsistency – that if you were thrown into an intense fire you would not be able to withstand the heat; yet you are not in any way being burned. This inconsistency, that ”I am being burned in the fire,” that the fire is terrible, that the burning is unbearable and yet ”I am not burned at all,” is realized only after one is out of this dreamlike experience. In the interval between two births, there are two types of souls. One type is of evil souls. For them it is difficult to find a womb for another birth. I call such souls evil spirits. The other type consists of good souls. For such souls also it is difficult to find suitable wombs for taking another birth. Between these two are the majority of souls in which there is no fundamental difference, but only a difference of character, personality and mental make-up. They are of the same type; only their experiences will be different. The evil souls return back to earth with such painful experiences that the remembering of them in itself is hell. Those who have been able to recollect such memories have described the conditions in hell. It is just a dreamland; it does not exist anywhere, but one who remembers having returned from there says that a fire such as he has seen there can find no comparison in this world, that the violence and the hatred which we find here are nothing compared to what he has seen there. The experience of heaven is also the same. The difference is only one of pleasant and painful dreams. This interval is a full dream period. During that interval, there is no clear awareness of the duration of time. Because of this, Christianity has said that there is hell forever. This is said on the basis of the memory of those who have seen a very long dream. It was such a long dream that when they returned they had no memory of any relationship between this body and the previous one. That is why they said that hell is eternal and it is very difficult to get out of it. Good souls see happy dreams and evil souls see unhappy dreams. Only because of their dreams are they feeling unhappy and miserable.

@Will Bigger The moment samadhi has happened, you are not there to remember it. Samadhi never becomes a part of memory because the one who was is no more. As they say in zen, ”The old man is no more and the new one has come...” and these two have never met, so there is no possibility of there being any memory. The old has gone and the new has come, and there has been no meeting between the two, because the new can come only when the old has gone. Only when somebody is not there, is absent, does he reach. Somebody moves into meditation, somebody comes out of meditation – that is the feeling of the soul. But nobody reaches samadhi, because when samadhi is reached, nobody is there. You go out – you leave the body, the mind, the ego – and you come back again. It is not the point of no return; there is every possibility of coming back. You come back because the whole mechanism is still there waiting for you. You come back and again the whole thing begins to work. All that is left then is the memory of the gap. But that gap calls you back again and again. It is not samadhi because there is still a possibility of coming back. The ego did not die, you only jumped away from it temporarily. For a moment you were out of its grip, but now you are back again.

@Nature Transcript I am reminded of the fateful day of twenty-first March, 1953. For many lives I had been working—working upon myself, struggling, doing whatsoever can be done—and nothing was happening. Now I understand why nothing was happening. The very effort was the barrier, the very ladder was preventing, the very urge to seek was the obstacle. Not that one can reach without seeking. Seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped. The boat is needed to cross the river but then comes a moment when you have to get out of the boat and forget all about it and leave it behind. Effort is needed, without effort nothing is possible. And also only with effort, nothing is possible. Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose—out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air—it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close. Just because I was seeking I had become incapable of seeing the near. Seeking is always for the far, seeking is always for the distant—and it was not distant. I had become far-sighted, I had lost the near-sightedness. The eyes had become focussed on the far away, the horizon, and they had lost the quality to see that which is just close, surrounding you. The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving. The phenomenon of the ego, of the self, is not a thing, it is a process. It is not a substance sitting there inside you; you have to create it each moment. It is like pedalling bicycle. If you pedal it goes on and on, if you don't pedal it stops. It may go a little because of the past momentum, but the moment you stop pedalling, in fact the bicycle starts stopping. It has no more energy, no more power to go anywhere. It is going to fall and collapse. The ego exists because we go on pedalling desire, because we go on striving to get something, because we go on jumping ahead of ourselves. That is the very phenomenon of the ego—the jump ahead of yourself, the jump in the future, the jump in the tomorrow. The jump in the non-existential creates the ego. Because it comes out of the non-existential it is like a mirage. It consists only of desire and nothing else. It consists only of thirst and nothing else. The ego is not in the present, it is in the future. If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing. The day I stopped seeking…and it is not right to say that I stopped seeking, better will be to say the day seeking stopped. Let me repeat it: the better way to say it is the day the seeking stopped. Because if I stop it then I am there again. Now stopping becomes my effort, now stopping becomes my desire, and desire goes on existing in a very subtle way. You cannot stop desire; you can only understand it. In the very understanding is the stopping of it. Remember, nobody can stop desiring, and the reality happens only when desire stops. So this is the dilemma. What to do? Desire is there and Buddhas go on saying desire has to be stopped, and they go on saying in the next breath that you cannot stop desire. So what to do? You put people in a dilemma. They are in desire, certainly. You say it has to be stopped—okay. And then you say it cannot be stopped. Then what is to be done? The desire has to be understood. You can understand it, you can just see the futility of it. A direct perception is needed, an immediate penetration is needed. Look into desire, just see what it is, and you will see the falsity of it, and you will see it is non-existential. And desire drops and something drops simultaneously within you. Desire and the ego exist in cooperation, they coordinate. The ego cannot exist without desire, the desire cannot exist without the ego. Desire is projected ego, ego is introjected desire. They are together, two aspects of one phenomenon. The day desiring stopped, I felt very hopeless and helpless. No hope because no future. Nothing to hope because all hoping has proved futile, it leads nowhere. You go in rounds. It goes on dangling in front of you, it goes on creating new mirages, it goes on calling you, 'Come on, run fast, you will reach.' But howsoever fast you run you never reach. That's why Buddha calls it a mirage. It is like the horizon that you see around the earth. It appears but it is not there. If you go it goes on running from you. The faster you run, the faster it moves away. The slower you go, the slower it moves away. But one thing is certain—the distance between you and the horizon remains absolutely the same. Not even a single inch can you reduce the distance between you and the horizon. You cannot reduce the distance between you and your hope. Hope is horizon. You try to bridge yourself with the horizon, with the hope, with a projected desire. The desire is a bridge, a dream bridge—because the horizon exists not, so you cannot make a bridge towards it, you can only dream about the bridge. You cannot be joined with the non-existential. The day the desire stopped, the day I looked and realized into it, it simply was futile. I was helpless and hopeless. But that very moment something started happening. The same started happening for which for many lives I was working and it was not happening. In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you. It is waiting. When it sees that you are working on your own, it does not interfere. It waits. It can wait infinitely because there is no hurry for it. It is eternity. The moment you are not on your own, the moment you drop, the moment you disappear, the whole existence rushes towards you, enters you. And for the first time things start happening. Seven days I lived in a very hopeless and helpless state, but at the same time something was arising. When I say hopeless I don't mean what you mean by the word hopeless. I simply mean there was no hope in me. Hope was absent. I am not saying that I was hopeless and sad. I was happy in fact, I was very tranquil, calm and collected and centered. Hopeless, but in a totally new meaning. There was no hope, so how could there be hopelessness. Both had disappeared. The hopelessness was absolute and total. Hope had disappeared and with it its counterpart, hopelessness, had also disappeared. It was a totally new experience—of being without hope. It was not a negative state. I have to use words—but it was not a negative state. It was absolutely positive. It was not just absence, a presence was felt. Something was overflowing in me, overflooding me. And when I say I was helpless, I don't mean the word in the dictionary-sense. I simply say I was selfless. That's what I mean when I say helpless. I have recognized the fact that I am not, so I cannot depend on myself, so I cannot stand on my own ground—there was no ground underneath. I was in an abyss…bottomless abyss. But there was no fear because there was nothing to protect. There was no fear because there was nobody to be afraid. Those seven days were of tremendous transformation, total transformation. And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light and new delight, became so intense that it was almost unbearable—as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness. The new generation in the West has the right word for it—I was blissed out, stoned. It was impossible to make any sense out of it, what was happening. It was a very non-sense world—difficult to figure it out, difficult to manage in categories, difficult to use words, languages, explanations. All scriptures appeared dead and all the words that have been used for this experience looked very pale, anaemic. This was so alive. It was like a tidal wave of bliss. The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing. Mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away. It was difficult to catch hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away, and there was no urge to keep it close. I was simply indifferent about it all. It was okay. There was no urge to remain continuous with the past. By the evening it became so difficult to bear it—it was hurting, it was painful. It was like when a woman goes into labour when a child is to be born, and the woman suffers tremendous pain—the birth pangs. I used to go to sleep in those days near about twelve or one in the night, but that day it was impossible to remain awake. My eyes were closing, it was difficult to keep them open. Something was very imminent, something was going to happen. It was difficult to say what it was—maybe it is going to be my death—but there was no fear. I was ready for it. Those seven days had been so beautiful that I was ready to die, nothing more was needed. They had been so tremendously blissful, I was so contented, that if death was coming, it was welcome. But something was going to happen—something like death, something very drastic, something which will be either a death or a new birth, a crucifixion or a resurrection—but something of tremendous import was around just by the corner. And it was impossible to keep my eyes open. I was drugged. I went to sleep near about eight. It was not like sleep. Now I can understand what Patanjali means when he says that sleep and samadhi are similar. Only with one difference—that in samadhi you are fully awake and asleep also. Asleep and awake together, the whole body relaxed, every cell of the body totally relaxed, all functioning relaxed, and yet a light of awareness burns within you…clear, smokeless. You remain alert and yet relaxed, loose but fully awake. The body is in the deepest sleep possible and your consciousness is at its peak. The peak of consciousness and the valley of the body meet. I went to sleep. It was a very strange sleep. The body was asleep, I was awake. It was so strange—as if one was torn apart into two directions, two dimensions; as if the polarity has become completely focused, as if I was both the polarities together…the positive and negative were meeting, sleep and awareness were meeting, death and life were meeting. That is the moment when you can say 'the creator and the creation meet.' It was weird. For the first time it shocks you to the very roots, it shakes your foundations. You can never be the same after that experience; it brings a new vision to your life, a new quality. Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened—I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration—almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality. That's why when Buddha and Shankara say the world is maya, a mirage, it is difficult for us to understand. Because we know only this world, we don't have any comparison. This is the only reality we know. What are these people talking about—this is maya, illusion? This is the only reality. Unless you come to know the really real, their words cannot be understood, their words remain theoretical. They look like hypotheses. Maybe this man is propounding a philosophy—'The world is unreal'. When Berkley in the West said that the world is unreal, he was walking with one of his friends, a very logical man; the friend was almost a skeptic. He took a stone from the road and hit Berkley's feet hard. Berkley screamed, blood rushed out, and the skeptic said, 'Now, the world is unreal? You say the world is unreal?—then why did you scream? This stone is unreal?—then why did you scream? Then why are you holding your leg and why are you showing so much pain and anguish on your face. Stop this? It is all unreal. Now this type of man cannot understand what Buddha means when he says the world is a mirage. He does not mean that you can pass through the wall. He is not saying this—that you can eat stones and it will make no difference whether you eat bread or stones. He is not saying that. He is saying that there is a reality. Once you come to know it, this so-called reality simply pales out, simply becomes unreal. With a higher reality in vision the comparison arises, not otherwise. In the dream; the dream is real. You dream every night. Dream is one of the greatest activities that you go on doing. If you live sixty years, twenty years you will sleep and almost ten years you will dream. Ten years in a life—nothing else do you do so much. Ten years of continuous dreaming—just think about it. And every night…. And every morning you say it was unreal, and again in the night when you dream, dream becomes real. In a dream it is so difficult to remember that this is a dream. But in the morning it is so easy. What happens? You are the same person. In the dream there is only one reality. How to compare? How to say it is unreal? Compared to what? It is the only reality. Everything is as unreal as everything else so there is no comparison. In the morning when you open your eyes another reality is there. Now you can say it was all unreal. Compared to this reality, dream becomes unreal. There is an awakening—compared to that reality of that awakening, this whole reality becomes unreal. That night for the first time I understood the meaning of the word maya. Not that I had not known the word before, not that I was not aware of the meaning of the word. As you are aware, I was also aware of the meaning—but I had never understood it before. How can you understand without experience? That night another reality opened its door, another dimension became available. Suddenly it was there, the other reality, the separate reality, the really real, or whatsoever you want to call it—call it god, call it truth, call it dhamma, call it tao, or whatsoever you will. It was nameless. But it was there—so opaque, so transparent, and yet so solid one could have touched it. It was almost suffocating me in that room. It was too much and I was not yet capable of absorbing it. A deep urge arose in me to rush out of the room, to go under the sky—it was suffocating me. It was too much! It will kill me! If I had remained a few moments more, it would have suffocated me—it looked like that. I rushed out of the room, came out in the street. A great urge was there just to be under the sky with the stars, with the trees, with the earth…to be with nature. And immediately as I came out, the feeling of being suffocated disappeared. It was too small a place for such a big phenomenon. Even the sky is a small place for that big phenomenon. It is bigger than the sky. Even the sky is not the limit for it. But then I felt more at ease. I walked towards the nearest garden. It was a totally new walk, as if gravitation had disappeared. I was walking, or I was running, or I was simply flying; it was difficult to decide. There was no gravitation, I was feeling weightless—as if some energy was taking me. I was in the hands of some other energy. For the first time I was not alone, for the first time I was no more an individual, for the first time the drop has come and fallen into the ocean. Now the whole ocean was mine, I was the ocean. There was no limitation. A tremendous power arose as if I could do anything whatsoever. I was not there, only the power was there. I reached to the garden where I used to go every day. The garden was closed, closed for the night. It was too late, it was almost one o'clock in the night. The gardeners were fast asleep. I had to enter the garden like a thief, I had to climb the gate. But something was pulling me towards the garden. It was not within my capacity to prevent myself. I was just floating. That's what I mean when I say again and again 'float with the river, don't push the river'. I was relaxed, I was in a let-go. I was not there. it was there, call it god—god was there. I would like to call it it, because god is too human a word, and has become too dirty by too much use, has become too polluted by so many people. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, priests and politicians—they all have corrupted the beauty of the word. So let me call it it. It was there and I was just carried away…carried by a tidal wave. The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place—the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time—their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful. I looked around. One tree was tremendously luminous—the maulshree tree. It attracted me, it pulled me towards itself. I had not chosen it, god himself has chosen it. I went to the tree, I sat under the tree. As I sat there things started settling. The whole universe became a benediction. It is difficult to say how long I was in that state. When I went back home it was four o'clock in the morning, so I must have been there by clock time at least three hours—but it was infinity. It had nothing to do with clock time. It was timeless. Those three hours became the whole eternity, endless eternity. There was no time, there was no passage of time; it was the virgin reality—uncorrupted, untouchable, unmeasurable. And that day something happened that has continued—not as a continuity—but it has still continued as an undercurrent. Not as a permanency—each moment it has been happening again and again. It has been a miracle each moment. That night…and since that night I have never been in the body. I am hovering around it. I became tremendously powerful and at the same time very fragile. I became very strong, but that strength is not the strength of a Mohammed Ali. That strength is not the strength of a rock, that strength is the strength of a rose flower—so fragile in his strength…so fragile, so sensitive, so delicate. The rock will be there, the flower can go any moment, but still the flower is stronger than the rock because it is more alive. Or, the strength of a dewdrop on a leaf of grass just shining; in the morning sun—so beautiful, so precious, and yet can slip any moment. So incomparable in its grace, but a small breeze can come and the dewdrop can slip and be lost forever. Buddhas have a strength which is not of this world. Their strength is totally of love…Like a rose flower or a dewdrop. Their strength is very fragile, vulnerable. Their strength is the strength of life not of death. Their power is not of that which kills; their power is of that which creates. Their power is not of violence, aggression; their power is that of compassion. But I have never been in the body again, I am just hovering around the body. And that's why I say it has been a tremendous miracle. Each moment I am surprised I am still here, I should not be. I should have left any moment, still I am here. Every morning I open my eyes and I say, 'So, again I am still here?' Because it seems almost impossible. The miracle has been a continuity. Just the other day somebody asked a question—'Osho, you are getting so fragile and delicate and so sensitive to the smells of hair oils and shampoos that it seems we will not be able to see you unless we all go bald.' By the way, nothing is wrong with being bald—bald is beautiful. Just as 'black is beautiful', so 'bald is beautiful'. But that is true and you have to be careful about it. I am fragile, delicate and sensitive. That is my strength. If you throw a rock at a flower nothing will happen to the rock, the flower will be gone. But still you cannot say that the rock is more powerful than the flower. The flower will be gone because the flower was alive. And the rock—nothing will happen to it because it is dead. The flower will be gone because the flower has no strength to destroy. The flower will simply disappear and give way to the rock. The rock has a power to destroy because the rock is dead. Remember, since that day I have never been in the body really; just a delicate thread joins me with the body. And I am continuously surprised that somehow the whole must be willing me to be here, because I am no more here with my own strength, I am no more here on my own. It must be the will of the whole to keep me here, to allow me to linger a little more on this shore. Maybe the whole wants to share something with you through me. Since that day the world is unreal. Another world has been revealed. When I say the world is unreal I don't mean that these trees are unreal. These trees are absolutely real—but the way you see these trees is unreal. These trees are not unreal in themselves—they exist in god, they exist in absolute reality—but the way you see them you never see them; you are seeing something else, a mirage. You create your own dream around you and unless you become awake you will continue to dream. The world is unreal because the world that you know is the world of your dreams. When dreams drop and you simply encounter the world that is there, then the real world. There are not two things, god and the world. God is the world if you have eyes, clear eyes, without any dreams, without any dust of the dreams, without any haze of sleep; if you have clear eyes, clarity, perceptiveness, there is only god. Then somewhere god is a green tree, and somewhere else god is a shining star, and somewhere else god is a cuckoo, and somewhere else god is a flower, and somewhere else a child and somewhere else a river—then only god is. The moment you start seeing, only god is. But right now whatsoever you see is not the truth, it is a projected lie. That is the meaning of a mirage. And once you see, even for a single split moment, if you can see, if you can allow yourself to see, you will find immense benediction present all over, everywhere—in the clouds, in the sun, on the earth. This is a beautiful world. But I am not talking about your world, I am talking about my world. Your world is very ugly, your world is your world created by a self, your world is a projected world. You are using the real world as a screen and projecting your own ideas on it. When I say the world is real, the world is tremendously beautiful, the world is luminous with infinity, the world is light and delight, it is a celebration, I mean my world—or your world if you drop your dreams. When you drop your dreams you see the same world as any Buddha has ever seen. When you dream you dream privately. Have you watched it?—that dreams are private. You cannot share them even with your beloved. You cannot invite your wife to your dream—or your husband, or your friend. You cannot say, 'Now, please come tonight in my dream. I would like to see the dream together.' It is not possible. Dream is a private thing, hence it is illusory, it has no objective reality. God is a universal thing. Once you come out of your private dreams, it is there. It has been always there. Once your eyes are clear, a sudden illumination—suddenly you are overflooded with beauty, grandeur and grace. That is the goal, that is the destiny. Let me repeat. Without effort you will never reach it, with effort nobody has ever reached it. You will need great effort, and only then there comes a moment when effort becomes futile. But it becomes futile only when you have come to the very peak of it, never before it. When you have come to the very pinnacle of your effort—all that you can do you have done—then suddenly there is no need to do anything any more. You drop the effort. But nobody can drop it in the middle, it can be dropped only at the extreme end. So go to the extreme end if you want to drop it. Hence I go on insisting: make as much effort as you can, put your whole energy and total heart in it, so that one day you can see—now effort is not going to lead me anywhere. And that day it will not be you who will drop the effort, it drops on its own accord. And when it drops on its own accord, meditation happens. Meditation is not a result of your efforts, meditation is a happening. When your efforts drop, suddenly meditation is there…the benediction of it, the blessedness of it, the glory of it. It is there like a presence…luminous, surrounding you and surrounding everything. It fills the whole earth and the whole sky. That meditation cannot be created by human effort. Human effort is too limited. That blessedness is so infinite. You cannot manipulate it. It can happen only when you are in a tremendous surrender. When you are not there only then it can happen. When you are a no-self—no desire, not going anywhere—when you are just herenow, not doing anything in particular, just being, it happens. And it comes in waves and the waves become tidal. It comes like a storm, and takes you away into a totally new reality. But first you have to do all that you can do, and then you have to learn non-doing. The doing of the non-doing is the greatest doing, and the effort of effortlessness is the greatest effort. Your meditation that you create by chanting a mantra or by sitting quiet and still and forcing yourself, is a very mediocre meditation. It is created by you, it cannot be bigger than you. It is homemade, and the maker is always bigger than the made. You have made it by sitting, forcing in a yoga posture, chanting 'rama, rama, rama' or anything—'blah, blah, blah'—anything. You have forced the mind to become still. It is a forced stillness. It is not that quiet that comes when you are not there. It is not that silence which comes when you are almost non-existential. It is not that beautitude which descends on you like a dove. It is said when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, god descended in him, or the holy ghost descended in him like a dove. Yes, that is exactly so. When you are not there peace descends in you…fluttering like a dove…reaches in your heart and abides there and abides there forever. You are your undoing, you are the barrier. Meditation is when the meditator is not. When the mind ceases with all its activities—seeing that they are futile—then the unknown penetrates you, overwhelms you. The mind must cease for god to be. Knowledge must cease for knowing to be. You must disappear, you must give way. You must become empty, then only you can be full. That night I became empty and became full. I became non-existential and became existence. That night I died and was reborn. But the one that was reborn has nothing to do with that which died, it is a discontinuous thing. On the surface it looks continuous but it is discontinuous. The one who died, died totally; nothing of him has remained. Believe me, nothing of him has remained, not even a shadow. It died totally, utterly. It is not that I am just a modified rup, transformed, modified form, transformed form of the old. No, there has been no continuity. That day of March twenty-first, the person who had lived for many many lives, for millennia, simply died. Another being, absolutely new, not connected at all with the old, started to exist. Religion just gives you a total death. Maybe that's why the whole day previous to that happening I was feeling some urgency like death, as if I am going to die—and I really died. I have known many other deaths but they were nothing compared to it, they were partial deaths. Sometimes the body died, sometimes a part of the mind died, sometimes a part of the ego died, but as far as the person was concerned, it remained. Renovated many times, decorated many times, changed a little bit here and there, but it remained, the continuity remained. That night the death was total. It was a date with death and god simultaneously.