Shanmugam

@Fidelio I agree that initially the quest to end suffering is what motivates people to pursue spiritual enlightenment... But there comes a point where even the desire for enlightenment itself becomes a barrier to enlightenment... It is not a question of right or wrong... By logical reasoning, it is correct to say that the purpose of enlightenment is to end suffering.. If you read my reply again, what I said was about the 'attitude' one should have... Logically, It may be right to say that the purpose of enlightenment is to end suffering, but seeing enlightenment as a purpose for something is not really a right attitude to have.. At some point, you will have to stop seeing enlightenment as a means to an end.. I don't parrot anyone.. I speak from my own experience..

It is true that enlightenment ends 'suffering'.. But when it comes to spiritual path, certain attitude is required.. Seeing enlightenment as a means to an end will not work and it will actually delay one's enlightenment. If A causes B, it doesn't mean the purpose of A is to cause B... The word 'purpose' implies enlightenment is something that you achieve.. Purpose is only in a person's mind, it is tied with intention. Intention is tied with karma. Enlightenment is all about getting rid of karma.

One of the reasons for much of the suffering that we go through in life is taking life too seriously. It is not uncommon though; almost everyone is so serious about the drama of life. So, everyone has assumed that there is no way out of it. But, there is a potential for a change in your attitude towards life which will make you to treat life as the lifelong movie in which we all are just characters. There is also a potential to remove all the unwanted suffering that we have imposed on ourselves by removing the serious identification with the character called ‘you’ and your story.. I went through a journey myself that helped me to realize this potential and make it possible. (You can read more about my journey here: The Journey of a Seeker). I will call that whole process as ‘Awakening Through Mindfulness (ATM)’. If you believe in God, you can use the belief itself as an aid towards changing your attitude. Many people consider themselves as a puppet of the God’s hands. That helps them change the way they react to the situations and stop taking everything personal. But it is just a coping mechanism; No one is actually sitting up there and directing your life. Life and the force of the life itself is a deep and interesting mystery. If you want to call that force God, you can. That is a beautiful personification. Warning! For many people, beliefs have actually been a hindrance in the whole process. There is a way to really experience life as a movie and to be not affected by your self-image. You can completely detach yourself from the identification you have with the self image. .. Changing the attitude is the first step to ending the self created suffering and experience the life impersonally.. Your personality and your ego that projects the personality are just a part of the mask that you, as the character of this movie, are wearing. What hurts the mask doesn’t hurt you anymore, once you start experiencing life this way. Not only your ego and personality, but every thought, emotion, experience and knowledge that you witness in your consciousness is a part of that mask. Remembering this analogy of the mask and contemplating on it can help you to change your attitude to be favourable in the process of awakening. As you proceed with this journey, you will eventually have to drop a lot of your beliefs and directly choose to know what you believed is true or false. Then, either you know or you don’t know. There is no need in believing something. The sense of security that we get from beliefs will not at all be needed anymore once you start experiencing the life devoid of self-created suffering. You don’t need any solace from the beliefs anymore. That life experience which stands apart and independent from your identity is what I call as an ‘awakened life’. What you Call as Self is an Illusion! The next step is just to realize and remember always that there is no self; I am not kidding! It is a scientific fact. What you perceive, think and experience every moment is the result of millions of neurons in your brain communicating with the neighboring neurons through electrochemical signals. This constant perceptual activity gives an illusion that there is a static self. This self which is experienced as being the one who inhabits the body, being the one who is thinking the thoughts, being the one experiencing emotions, being the agent of actions and having free will is an illusion. Also, every person you see is a complex network of forces communicating with each other in cell level, chemical level and atomic level. 2500 years ago, a man called Gautama Buddha revealed the truth of the no-self for the first time. Seeing this in neuroscientific perspective, what you experience as you and your story is just a result of activity happens in a combination of brain structures called Default Mode Network DMN). This network is active when you are mind-wandering,thinking about others, thinking about yourself, remembering the past, and planning for the future. Hyperconnectivity of the default network has been linked to rumination in depression. Studies have shown that meditators and people who claim spiritual awakening have less or almost no activity in DMN. This illusory self is not consistent and static; it is ever changing. But the only thing which is consistent and constant throughout your life is your existence; the conscious, moment to moment experience that you are alive. Three Aspects of the Absolute Reality There are three aspects to what that is consistent: Existence, Consciousness and experiencing. Existence can be defined as whatever that exists in the ultimate, absolute level. You perceive and know that objects exist because of this. It is the sense of being alive.The objects may keep changing but the existence itself is something that is constant. It is not a ‘thing’ though. It is the basis of anything that is subjective. Consciousness is like a light that shines up everything in the existence. It can be compared to the light in a movie screen using which your thoughts, emotions, perceptions and experiences are constantly being played. The movie screen is static all the time. It also exists in sleep, but there is nothing to show. Since consciousness is completely dark and since voluntary functions of the mind are shut off, there is actually nothing much is happening that is worth to be recorded in the brain and stored in long term memory. Experiencing is not about various experiences that you go through every moment. It is the base of all experience, which is naturally peaceful. Peace is always the first and last experience of the lifetime. Even in death, the final moment is peace; a lot of scientists believe that a neurotransmitter called Dimethyltryptamine or DMT released in the brain during the last moment of death which gives peace and bliss. You are so peaceful during the birth too. You can obviously see that in the new born babies. Even throughout the life, you go through a lot of peaceful moments where you are ultimately content, all drives seem to be temporarily satisfied and you experience the ultimate peace and contentment. That peace is not really something that comes and goes. It is the subtle backdrop of all the noisy perceptions happening in the mind and never changes too. It is the base experience of all the experiences. An awakened person may often go through peak experiences (rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter – Abraham Maslow) when they touch the ultimate level of peace. During peak experiences, the boundaries of experiencer, experiencing and the experience dissolve and they all become one. The same happens with the knowledge as well. The knower, knowing and the known become one. Note that, when I say experiencing, I am talking about the ‘experiencing’ aspect of your existence; not about an independent experience. Any experience, including the peak experience com and go. But the ‘experiencing’ part of that which is consistent never changes. It would be better to use a different word than experiencing but I can’t think of anything that comes closer right now. So, whatever that is consistent which has the aspects of existence, consciousness and experiencing can be called with any name you want to use. You can call it XYZ if you want! Some words that have been used in eastern traditions are absolute, Om, brahman, Sat-Chit-Ananda etc… Some call it as your ‘true self’. The problem with all these labels is that you start to see this XYZ as some object, a thing; Something that can be either perceived, experienced or known. But it is actually like the space or the field in which everything is perceived, experienced or known. So, it is very important to not to get too attached to the word. Seeing the illusory self for what it is and completely removing the identification with it lets you to relax yourself in the truth of being alive and conscious. It will eventually let you free from hedonic treadmill and the pursuit of subjective self worth. You will feel liberated from the prison of this illusory self. This will give you a tremendous acceptance of what is; You will see life as a game with its own rules and challenges. But seeing that as just a game which will eventually end, makes you to play it with enjoyment and a great sense of peace. Many practises have been suggested which help you to go through this process of awakening; self-inquiry, contemplation of the truth and so on. The practise that I can suggest for you is the one which worked for me.. It is called Sati in buddhism, Shikantaza in Zen, Shakshi bhav in Upanishads and mindfulness by buddhists as well as modern psychologists. Mindfulness is used not only as a path to awakening, but also in modern therapies as a means to decrease depression and stress, increase well being, control addictions, slow down emotional reactivity etc. What is Mindfulness and How to Practice it? Mindfulness can be defined as focused nonjudgmental attention to experiences of thoughts, emotions, and body sensation in the present moment that is practiced by simply observing them as they arise and pass away. The paper ‘Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition’ which was published by University of Toronto in 2014 suggests a two-component model of mindfulness: 1) Regulation of attention in order to maintain it on the immediate experience 2) Approaching one’s experiences with an orientation of curiosity,openness, and acceptance, regardless of their valence and desirability. When you try to observe your thought process, you may lose your attention many times. Once you notice that the mind has wandered, you just bring it back to the awareness of thought process or body sensations again. No matter how many times the mind wanders away, you must take it easy and accept it. You can do this while doing whatever you are doing, like walking, eating, working out, waiting in a queue etc. Notice the flow of thoughts as if you are watching a stream flowing or traffic moving. Eventually you can extend the time that you practise mindfulness to most of the waking hours of the day. This may take years and years of practise. When practicing mindfulness, don’t approach it as if you are working towards a goal. That would simply mean that you are enhancing the self-concept and strengthening the identification with it .Awakening is not an achievement. It is getting rid of the craving for any achievement that increases your self-worth or enhances your self-concept. Seeing mindfulness as a means for something to be achieved itself is a trap which may slow down the process of awakening. In a couple of months of practise you may start noticing gaps in your thought process.You may also notice reduction in the number of thoughts. Also, a lot of unconscious patterns and repressed thoughts may start to come up and appear in the light of your conscious observation. It is quite normal. Just pay attention to whatever that comes up without reacting to it. But if you do react to it, that’s ok. Just notice that and wait to see what comes up next. As you do it more and more, the gaps will be more frequent and you may even start to wait for the next thought or feeling to arise. In a few months, you will start to feel more peaceful and relaxed. Your emotional regulation would also have improved. While practising, become aware of the defense mechanisms of the ego whenever you notice them. Notice the repeated thought patterns and your attempts to maintain and protect your self-esteem. Reading the authentic sources of Zen and Advaita can help you a lot in moving through the process. Personally for me, reading the transcribed talks of Osho and J.Krishnamurti were helpful in understanding how mindfulness works and how to go about practising it. Osho called it ‘witnessing’ and J.Krishnamurti called it as ‘Choiceless awareness’. The names are different but the meaning is exactly the same. Once you have practised mindfulness for long term for a year or two, you may go through a crisis at times, usually called ‘Spiritual Crisis,’ a form of identity crisis where you experience drastic changes to your meaning system (your unique purposes, goals, values, attitude and beliefs, identity, and focus). It may cause a lot of disturbance, but don’t be alarmed. It happens to everyone but it will pass. The fruits of mindfulness always outweighs the disturbances caused by spiritual crisis. Benefits of Mindfulness I came across an interesting paper ‘How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective’ published in 2011 by Association For Psychological Science. It lists 5 major benefits of mindfulness and also lists the details of studies which support them. Here are those five benefits: Attention regulation Body awareness Emotion regulation, including a. Reappraisal b. Exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation Change in perspective on the self. The fourth one, ‘Change in perspective on the self’ is very important, which explains in detail about a lot of what we discussed about ‘Self’ in this post. You can search for this paper in ‘Academia’ and download it for free. There have been many other studies done on mindfulness which show that mindfulness decreases suffering and increases subjective well being. Buddha prescribed mindfulness as the path to spiritual enlightenment. Whether you are looking for spiritual enlightenment or just improved well being, there is no doubt that mindfulness is the way to go. Also published in my blog: https://nellaishanmugam.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/awakening-through-mindfulness-bridging-science-and-spirituality/

@username yes, pretty much.. thanks for correcting.. I still have to work on the language

In my own experience, It took many years to completely unclutch myself from the identification with self.. There are a lot of unconscious patterns, old habits and unresolved issues which have to be worked on... But neo-advaita doesn't address any of these issues... It is not a practical solution to the problem we have on realizing our true nature. It is true that our true nature is accessible for anyone at this very moment, but a lot has to be done in order to remove whatever that is obscuring it. It is very tricky when we put these things in words because my last statement says that a lot of things to be 'done' in order to be enlightened, but enlightenment itself has to do with annihilation of the sense of a doer. To put it simply, Until you have lost the feeling that you are the doer,, you need to do something... Does it make sense?

@abrakamowse Yeah.. I totally agree

@abrakamowse It is very interesting.. Thanks for the link. There has been some skepticism raised on this though... Here is an article that provides information about many explanations that has been given for this : http://skepdic.com/cellular.html

@The White Belt I was trying to be mindful when I was doing my everyday stuff, like walking, eating etc... I had to remind myself to be mindful when I started to practice it.. But in six months time, it became a habit... I was doing in almost all the waking hours.. But I did take breaks from reading spiritual books or thinking about anything that has to do with spirituality.. The longest break was about two years, I think.. But being mindful of my thoughts and emotions continued as a habit... At one point in 2014, when I started listening to spiritual talks and reading books again after a break, I began to practice it even more intensely and it led to a transformation. I have written more about it here: https://nellaishanmugam.wordpress.com/2017/05/10/the-journey-of-a-seeker-my-story/ But after this transformation, things have become weird... I don't have any motivation to intensely practice mindfulness because my search and desire for enlightenment disappeared. The transformation also took away the psychological boundaries between 'me' and 'others'.. Also, when I was practicing mindfulness earlier, there was a gap between the 'observer' and the 'observed' (my thoughts, feelings etc)... But the transformation also resulted in merging the observer and the observed together.. I am mindful without any effort at all.. But when I am involved in deep thinking (like trying to figure out certain things or thinking about what I should write in my blog etc), I don't pay any attention to the surroundings at all. I give my whole attention and mental energy on the stuff I am thinking about... This will not fit into how mindfulness is generally understood these days, because clinical mindfulness scale will rate you low on mindfulness if you are not paying attention to your sense perceptions.... But when I am not doing this thinking, my mind is very calm and still.. I am still trying to make sense of the transformation that happened and things are getting settled down for me now...

You are Welcome .. I have been practicing mindfulness for about 13 years.. I also practiced self -inquiry.. I did some yoga classes but did not practice it much..

Each thought is a result of communication between thousands of neurons... There are regions of brain associated with specific tasks of our thinking.. For example, prefrontal cortex - logical thinking and planning, amygdala -emotions, hippocampus-memory, default mode network -thoughts about you and your story etc... Some mental disorders are caused by damages in certain parts of the brain and some like phobias are due to what happened in the past... we are also genetically predisposed to think and react in certain ways.. For example, the level of certain neurotransmitters in your brain can decide how depressed you can be, how aggresive you can be etc.. Thats right... every thought rewires the brain... we use our cognition for self-inquiry. so it definitely rewires the brain. Science already has strong evidence for meditation rewiring the brain. Here is a list of books written by neuroscientists who have studied the brains of many buddhist teachers: Neuroscientists on Spiritual Enlightenment and Meditation Gary Weber is a scientist as well as somebody who has claimed to have become enlightened, has observed that most of the thoughts in his mind has disappeared after enlightenment. In an article about Gary Weber, it says “Over time, Weber figured out that it wasn’t that all his thoughts had disappeared; rather a particular kind of self-referential thinking had cut out, what he calls “the blah blah network.” Scientists now refer to this as the “default mode network” (DMN), that is, the endlessly ruminative story of me: the obsessive list-maker, the anxious scenario planner, the distracted daydreamer. This is the part of the thinking process we default to when not engaged in a specific task”. It is also interesting to note that science has observed that DMN activation correlates with more unhappiness. Here is a definition of DMN from Wikipedia: “The default mode network is most commonly shown to be active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering. But it is also active when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future”. My own observation about my mind after doing years of mindfulness meditation is that most of my thoughts have disappeared. Based on the Wiki definition of DMN, I can confidently assume that there is a very less activity in the DMN of my brain.

sorry, Didn't notice his name in the last line...

Does that awakened person have a name?

right! This is called 'Availability heuristics' in Psychology. The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. (wiki) Here is an example: "Although there are many problems associated with the availability heuristic, perhaps the most concerning one is that it often leads people to lose sight of life's real dangers. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, for example, conducted a fascinating study that showed in the months following September 11, 2001, Americans were less likely to travel by air and more likely to instead travel by car. While it is understandable why Americans would have been fearful of air travel following the incredibly high profile attacks on New York and Washington, the unfortunate result is that Americans died on the highways at alarming rates following 9/11. This is because highway travel is far more dangerous than air travel. More than 40,000 Americans are killed every year on America's roads. Fewer than 1,000 people die in airplane accidents, and even fewer people are killed aboard commercial airlines." Source: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/03/fear_and_the_av.html

The statement 'You're Already Enlightened' is logically derived from another statement "you are the truth" which is a metaphor and a device. The more precise truth is 'There is no you'... You don't exist. Buddha stated this thousands of years ago and today science says the same thing.. You are not, the truth is... But this is not something that everyone can understand and make sense of... People couldn't simply assimilate the statement that there is no self. So, mystics came up with another teaching... "you are not your thoughts, you are not your body, you are not anything that you perceive, feel, think or know.. You are that which is beyond, you are the space where everything is perceived, known, felt and thought'... This helped people to assimilate the teaching and progress. And according to this explanation, you are the truth.. so, you are already enlightened.. But there is a trap in this explanation as well.. People may mistake their individual self identified with mind and the body to be the truth....They may start thinking 'I am already enlightened, so there is nothing I should do.. ' That is why it is always said 'words are only pointers, they are not the truth'.. One must see what these words are exactly pointing to. Teachings are always like a finger pointing to the moon. The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao...

I am from Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India.. Anybody from Tamilnadu here?

I have questioned it too... ...

Sadhguru and Eckhart: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-rp3b-WsAA67RN.jpg:large

interesting.. who is organizing such a retreat?

It is a typical response that sometimes come from Osho and Ramana Mahirishi... If they were faced with a question from a seeker which comes merely from someone's curiosity, they used to ask questions like "what difference it would make to you? How does it help you in realization?".. It makes sense for masters to use such statements, because that is how they work with people; by making people to inquire when they were in a master's presence. But when people in forums and Quora start imitating these responses by answering others using these tactics, it sounds weird.. They start to play a role of the master, which obviously comes from ego's need to find faults and correct them.. After reading a couple of books which have the talks of enlightened people, they derive a sense of superiority from it in a subtle way... So, when someone who is so curious and innocently asks a question like "what happens after death", these people immediately start responding with statements like "what difference it will make, how is it going to help you by knowing the answer", as if they are a master. But not everyone is a seeker. Almost 99% percent of the population is interested in a life which is all about pursuing goals, chasing dreams and gaining knowledge... It doesn't mean that a spiritual seeker is superior to this people in anyway.. That is just another trap that people fall into...

It is a popular Zen quote.. And Osho has quoted this many times, not just once.. You can find an example talk here: http://www.osho.com/iosho/library/read-book/online-library-the-way-bayazid-disciple-3b2896ce-224?p=e52cfdb06e08c35f061a5cb048e8f3a9 Here is how it goes: "Just the other day somebody who was not yet a sannyasin had asked, ”It is said that if you meet the Buddha on the Way, kill him. Then why is it not said if you meet Rajneesh on the Way, kill him?” Exactly that has to be done: if you meet Rajneesh on the Way, kill him! But that statement was made to the disciples; you are not yet a disciple. You will never meet me on the Way in the first place. The question of killing me will never arise. I can meet you on the Way only if you have first allowed me to kill you. That is the meaning of being a disciple: the Master first kills the disciple – that is the beginning of the journey – then finally the disciple kills the Master – that is the end. Then the Master and the disciple have both disappeared. Then only God is. That tremendously pregnant statement by the Zen Masters, ”If you meet the Buddha on the Way, kill him,” is the last step of the journey, so whomsoever has asked it has not understood it at all. Yes, you have to kill me, but you will meet me only if you allow me first to kill you. That is a pre-requirement. I will not come on just anybody’s Way, Tom, Harry, or Dick, no. I will only come on the Way when you have allowed me to destroy you. And then, certainly, the Master has to be killed. The beginning is with the death of the disciple and the end with the death of the Master. Then the separation is gone; then there is no disciple, no Master. Then only pure energy is left. That pure energy is God." And this is 100% true... At some point in anyone's journey, he/she will be faced with this challenge..It happened to me.. I used to be tremendously addicted to Osho and attached to his talks... I read hundreds of his books... His talks created a revolution in me but unknowingly and unconsciously, I was making a conceptional cocoon around me with the concepts that my mind had formed from the talks of Osho.. And this is quite natural and bound to happen. Once should not be guilty about it. Because building a cocoon with concepts and becoming guilty, both are just the ways of ego... Ego gets security from the cocoon.. Being guilty and feeling anxiety arises from ego's need to match the self-image with an ideal self it is striving for... All one needs to do is just to be aware of it... Witness it.. Witnessing has a tremendous power of removing one's misery caused by the ego. @Sambodhi I don't know If Saddguru has met Osho.. But who knows, there is a possibility.. Osho died in 1990 ,when Sadhguru was 33 years old.. So, he was quite alive and young when Osho was alive... But i am quite certain that Sadhguru has read Osho's books...

Ha ha.. please stop getting preachy and just parroting Osho for everything.... I am familiar with almost everything that Osho said and I made it very clear that I also went through a transformation... Now I can kind of predict all the replies you would ever give me because you are just going to repeat Osho's words.. And I know what Osho would usually respond with for many questions... When I said Osho fabricated the story, i didn't mean to say that he was doing something wrong. I already made it very clear in my post.. In fact, Osho fabricated things by adding more spice and color and also making those stories in such a way which will enable him to convey what he intended to say.. That was his way... He himself said that many times.. You are asking me what difference it would make if it is fabricated or true... Nothing! I don't do things just because it is going to make a difference.. I do things if I enjoy doing it, period... I enjoy this discussion and hence I am sharing my views... It is not that I have a problem with it and trying to solve it. And you seem to be doing something that Osho would never approve of.. You are simply parroting Osho. Osho was against any kind of parroting.. Do you remember something that Osho always used to say?.. "“It is said that if you meet the Buddha on the Way, kill him".. He said that to make sure that we don't make concepts out of Osho's words... Osho's guidance helped me to get rid of my preconceived notions and see the reality the way it is but I actually ended up getting stuck with Osho's words at one point. Then I had to make a huge effort to get rid of them.. In other words, I 'killed' Osho... (said in the context of the quote 'if you meet the Buddha on the Way, kill him' ).. You will have to eventually do it at some point.. Because you seem to have got stuck with the words of Osho and literally trying to imitate him... You are asking me '"you think he was interested in stuffing you with great knowledge?....".. What made you to think that is what I thought? I know very well that he was not interested in feeding people with knowledge and make them into scholars.. I am familiar with all his contradictions.. So, I would appreciate if you stop preaching..I don't derive my identity from knowledge and I don't depend on the knowledge or anything else to define me... I don't even have to rely on an identity for fulfillment. I have crossed the boundaries of things which kept me in imprisonment..

@Garuda This definition by Ramana states how a jnani sees the reality... By looking at someone or his behavior, you can never say if they see the reality this way.. So obviously, you can never say if someone is enlightened or not.. So, why do you think that Osho was not enlightened? How would you know?

Whether he was fond of Rolls Royces or he just used it to provoke the society, no one can know.. We have to either go by Osho's words or choose to believe what the critics of Osho has said about that... But it obviously did its work.. It is only after Osho, people are able to accept that spirituality and material things can go together. The fact that Osho had so many Rolls Royces has made it easier for people to accept when Sadhguru flies a helicopter... He indeed created a revolution... @username By the way, Why did you get an username called 'Username'? Is your password 'password'?

@Prabhaker Thanks for all the examples.. This discussion is getting interesting.. I am familiar with most of them and I once had the exact same view that you have now... However, After my transformation (I am reluctant to call it enlightenment though), I started seeing things in a different way. It is very clear that most of these people criticized each other. I also remember U.G.Krishnamurti criticizing Ramana as egoistic. But the question is, is this type of criticism really a devise or just a fundamental attribution error? You seem to have completely accepted it when Osho said that criticism is really a devise.. Even I did the same thing years ago.. But now i don't think that is the case.. Criticism can be used as a devise in stopping people from jumping to different paths and some of the criticisms might have been devices.. But not all of them and not always.. I think most of these criticisms are just an attribution error that human beings are prone to, even after enlightenment... I will give you an example of this attribution error made by Osho.. Here is an excerpt from his book 'Theologia Mystica': "Somebody in Vishnu Devananda's own organization has been deceiving him for years.... It is good that Vishnu Devananda has confessed that somebody in his own organization was deceiving him, but what does it show? It shows one thing: that Vishnu Devananda is a fool. If somebody in his own organization, his own disciple can deceive him, then what integrity has he got and what consciousness? He should drop being a Master, he should stop initiating people. He has lost all right to." But if you are familiar with happenings in Rajneeshpuram, Osho talked about Sheela deceiving him all those days without his knowledge. His own personal secretary was deceiving him.. Sheela left Rajneeshpuram on 14 Sep 1985, in the whole new series that Osho started called 'From Bondage to Freedom', Osho talked mostly about how Sheela had been deceiving her all the time. This is an obvious example of a fallacy that all human beings have, whether enlightened or not... Here are some more examples of Osho's cognitively biased criticisms (Note: I always have respect on Osho and the work he has done.. I am familiar with both his extraordinary talent, charisma and his imperfections.. So, this is not to put him in a bad light.. But to show you the reality of enlightenment and point out some of the misconceptions that people have developed overtime) 1. In the initial years, Osho regarded Nostradamus as simply a crazy man. This is what he said about his predictions: “Nostradamus can be interpreted in any way you want. The sentences are not clear, the grammar is not correct. The words are such that you can fit them into any context you want”. But just read what he said about the same man later, when it seemed like Nostrademus predictions about a great future teacher fit with Osho: “Just a few days ago, I was seeing one of the most significant books to be published in this century, ‘Millenium’. It is a deep research into Nostradamus and his predictions. Eighty thousand copies were published – which is very rare – and they were sold within weeks. Now a second publication, a second edition, is happening in America, another is happening in England, and the book is being translated into many other languages – Dutch, German…. Nostradamus was a great mystic with an insight into the future. And you will be surprised to know that in his predictions, I am included. Describing the teacher of the last days of the twentieth century, he gives eight indications. Krishnamurti fulfills five, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi fulfills three, Da Free John fulfills four – and I was amazed that I fulfill all eight. In this book ‘Millenium’, they have made a chart of the teacher about whom Nostradamus is predicting – that his people will wear red clothes, that he will come from the East, that he will be arrested, that his commune will be destroyed, that flying birds will be his symbol, that his name will mean moon…. Three hundred years ago that man was seeing something that fits perfectly with me – my name means “the moon.” And in their chart they have declared me the teacher of the last part of the twentieth century.” Obviously, when Osho found this as boosting his superiority, he regarded the same man as mystic. 2. Initially Osho didn’t criticize S.N Goenka and even asked his disciples to attend a Vipassana retreat by Goenka. But once Osho heard that Goenka in an interview had said that Osho was his student before, Osho started criticizing S.N Goenka so harshly. 3. Osho always considered J.Krishnamurti as enlightened. When he heard that J.K had criticized him recently, Osho immediately reacted to it in his next discourse. He said that J.K was just in the border of enlightenment and is not enlightened yet. He also made the same statement in his last book Zen Manifesto. Also, from the link you sent me regarding Ramakrishna (http://www.bengalcuisine.in/ram-krishna), it is obvious that the incident that Osho quotes is fabricated (I don't think it is wrong... But I wanted to show how Sadhguru used Osho's examples but didn't endorse him or talk about him at all).. 1. Ramakrishna fasted for 8 days before dying.. So, it is obvious that Ramakrishna did not stop eating just three days before, as it is narrated by Sadhguru and Osho. 2. Ramakrishna did not die in spite of not being able to eat when he had cancer... So it is not true that he has to rely on the food or desire for the food to keep his body alive..

Let me ask you this first... how would you define enlightenment?