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What is up with this attitude that enlightened individuals instantly leave fora like this and never speak out? Not quite the endless compassion I keep hearing about... @Dino D Wouldn't it be nice if one could buy a video course from Mooji, R Spira or some other guy and it would bring Bliss, Happiness and Endless Joy? (someone also mentioned immortality). I'm not even sure if Enlightenment exists, what effects it has on ones life and how long/much it takes to get it. What I know is that obsessing about it will have the opposite effect and rather than being in the now, one has a constant never-ending Enlightment To-Do list. Appreciate the Now, don't chase anything but give it a try. In any case, meditation retreat is apparently a good, chemical-free way to get you closer to the experience you desire.

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.

@faith The present can be found only when mind has ceased utterly— when the past no longer overpowers you and the future no more possesses you, when you are disconnected from the memories and the imaginations. In that moment where are you? Who are you? In that moment you are a nobody And nobody can hurt you when you are a nobody. You cannot be wounded because the ego is very ready to receive wounds. The ego is almost seeking and searching to be wounded; it exists through wounds. Its whole existence depends on misery, pain. When you are a nobody, anguish is impossible, anxiety is simply unbelievable. When you are a nobody, there is great silence, stillness, no noise inside. Past gone, future disappeared—what is there to create noise? And the silence that is heard is celestial, sacred. For the first time, in those spaces of no-mind, you become aware of the eternal celebration that goes on and on. That's what the existence is made of. Except man, the whole existence is blissful. Only man has fallen out of it, has gone astray. Only man can do it because only man has consciousness. Now, consciousness has two possibilities: It can become a bright light in you, so bright that even the sun will look pale compared to it-—Buddha says if a thousand suns have risen suddenly, when you look within with no mind it is all light, eternal light. It is all joy, pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted. It is simple bliss, innocent. It is wonder. Its majesty is indescribable, its beauty inexpressible, and its benediction inexhaustible. Aes dhammo sanantano—"so is the ultimate law." If you can only put your mind aside, you will become aware of the cosmic play. Then you are only energy, and the energy is always here now, it never leaves the "herenow." That is one possibility; you can become pure consciousness. The other possibility is you can become self-consciousness. Then you fall. Then you become a separate entity from the world. Then you become an island, defined, well-defined. Then you are confined because all definitions confine. Then you are in a prison cell, and the prison cell is dark, utterly dark. There is no light, no possibility of light. And the prison cell cripples you, paralyzes you. Self-consciousness becomes a bondage; the self is the bondage. And consciousness becomes freedom. Drop the self and be conscious! That is the whole message, the message of all the buddhas of all the ages, past, present, future. The essential core of the message is very simple: Drop the self, the ego, the mind, and be. Just this moment when this silence pervades, who are you? A nobody, a nonentity. You don't have a name, you don't have a form. You are neither man nor woman, neither Hindu nor Mohammedan. You don't belong to any country, to any nation, to any race. You are not the body, and you are not the mind. Then what are you? In this silence, what is your taste? How does it taste to be? Just a peace, just a silence . . . and out of that peace and silence a great joy starts surfacing, welling up, for no reason at all. It is your spontaneous nature. The art of putting the mind aside is the whole secret of religiousness because as you put the mind aside, your being explodes into a thousand and one colors. You become a rainbow, a lotus, a one-thousand-petaled lotus. Suddenly you open up, and then the whole beauty of existence—which is infinite—is yours. Then all the stars in the sky are within you. Then even the sky is not your limit; you no longer have any limits. Silence gives you a chance to melt, merge, disappear, evaporate. And when you are not, you are; for the first time you are. When you are not, God is, nirvana is, enlightenment is. When you are not, all is found. When you are, all is lost. Man has become a self-consciousness; that is his going astray, that is the original fall. All the religions talk about the original fall in some way or other, but the best story is contained in Christianity. The original fall is because man eats from the tree of knowledge. When you eat of the tree of knowledge, the fruits of knowledge, it creates self-consciousness. The more knowledgeable you are, the more egoistic you are . . . hence the ego of the scholars, pundits, maulvis. The ego becomes decorated with great knowledge, scriptures, systems of thought. But they don't make you innocent; they don't bring you the childlike quality of openness, of trust, of love, of playfulness. Trust, love, playfulness, wonder all disappear when you become very knowledgeable. And we are being taught to become knowledgeable. We are not taught to be innocent, we are not taught how to feel the wonder of existence. We are told the names of the flowers, but we are not taught how to dance around the flowers. We are told the names of the moun-tains, but we are not taught how to commune with the mountains, how to commune with the stars, how to commune with the trees, how to be in tune with existence. Out of tune, how can you be happy? Out of tune, you are bound to remain in anguish, in great misery, in pain. You can be happy only when you are dancing with the dance of the whole, when you are just a part of the dance, when you are just a part of this great orchestra, when you are not singing your song separately Only then, in that melting, is man free. OSHO

I am happy for you that you had a positive and mind-blowing shamadi experience. In life there are painfull experiences and blissful experience, both of which you will experience more of in your life (judging from your pic you are still young and will hopefull live a long life Experiences are form. You can see them, hear them, feel them. Accept them as they come. If bliss arises in your meditation. Fine. If pain arises. Fine. "What to do now?" ...Hear that question. Accept it & let it be. "I feel like i should do something!" ...Feel that emotion, see it and let it be. Feel , See & Hear the form and stay silent and mindful.

I expanded the above poem and made it as a part of a story. The story is metaphoric and has a conversation between a seeker and an old man.. Read this and let me know your comments: You are the Truth Carrying the weight of past in my head And dragging the scenes which were old and dead, I ran to grab the bliss of the future; The more I ran, the more was the torture.. The torture of the hedonic treadmill Followed me as I continued uphill; I was caught in the prison of craving With tedious thoughts, my mind was raving. I met an ugly old man on the way who had a long thick beard with shades of grey. His face was shining with heavenly bliss; In his eyes I saw an endless abyss! "What makes you so happy in this rat race?", I asked him as he slowly turned his face. He replied,"The answer is within you! The grand kingdom of God is within you!" "That's a joke", I said "Are you kidding me?". "No!" He said, "Turn inward, you'll become free! You've made your own boundaries inside your mind, You've closed your eyes and think you've become blind". I said, "How can I get out of this trap? I want to find the way, give me the map" He said, "You're the way, the truth and the life! Be still and know you're that, and end this strife! You’re not your body and you’re not your mind; Not knowing the timeless truth makes you blind; You’re not your story and you’re not your thoughts; You’re not those age old, buried mental knots. You’re not that chattering voice in your head; You’re not anything that you did or said; You’re not anything that you have or know You’re the truth that is watching all this show! You’re not anything that can be perceived; You’re not an object that can be observed; You’re the screen where the world is being played; You’re the emptiness where the form is made. You’re the one witnessing the mind and breath; You’re one without two, beyond birth and death; Like the air trapped in a small round bubble, You feel separate which brings all the trouble. Inquire inside and wake up from this dream! Let truth alone shine like a bright white beam! By inquiry, your illusions will break; You’ll stop mistaking the rope for a snake" Hearing these words stopped my thoughts for a while. Looking in, I slowly began to smile. I watched my thoughts as they slowly passed by; I observed my mind like a secret spy. For years, I contemplated on his words; I watched my thoughts fly like a bunch of birds. One day, I woke up and realized the truth; Since then my life has been peaceful and smooth!

I'm beginning to learn about spirituality but I have a growing interest with spiritual experiences. Flow states, peak experiences, divine inspiration, lucid dreams, Shamanic visions, trance states, bliss and ecstacy, Tantra, the Tao, having numinous emotions, self-discovery and self-realization is deeply fascinating to me. It feels like I'm tasting and catching brief glimpses of these experiences but I want to deepen these experiences and deeply ground them in my life. For example, sometimes, while meditating, I feel deeply relaxed and undisturbed. When writing, I can go into a flow state and words pour from me. While cuddling, I felt a deep sense of union and this deep bliss. Holding a girl's hand felt so warm and in that moment, the moment was magic. I want to craft a strategy and go on my own journey to practically apply spiritual experiences in my own life but without relying on religion or scriptures. I feel like i'm reclaiming something deeply emotional! Like i'm fulfilling a deep longing! I feel like my journey will focus on a middle path without going too hardcore with mortifcation of the flesh, or torturing myself, a vow of poverty, or starving myself. I want to achieve these experiences because they fascinate me and so I can experience such profound and staggering emotions or experiences. I feel like I deeply desire authenticity!

The Journal is over! Yesterday, I came back from a 10 day Sufi retreat. It's a spiritual retreat based on: Fasting, Prayers, Meditation (mantra meditation), and all other spiritual stuff. I had some strong insight....... Ignorance is a bliss. I need to move somewhere else: it becomes very strong after this retreat. I waste a lot of time online.

GOD is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth. God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence – like beauty, like joy. God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience – like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will be just nonsense. And that’s what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques. Man has lived under this impression of God as a person, and then two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above m the sky and you have to praise him. to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world AND of the other world. And this is sheer wastage of time and energy. And on the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists; they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of God. The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons. God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no more valid; meditation becomes valid. Martin Buber says prayer is a dialogue; then between you and God there is an ”I-thou” relationship – the duality persists. Buddha is far closer to the truth: you simply drop all chattering of the mind, you slip out of the mind like a snake slipping out of the old skin. You become profoundly silent. There is no question of any dialogue, no question of any monologue either. Words have disappeared from your consciousness. There is no desire for which favors have to be asked, no ambition to be fulfilled. One is now and here. In that tranquility, in that calmness, you become aware of a luminous quality to existence. Then the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people are all surrounded with a subtle aura. They are all radiating life, and it is one life in different forms. The flowering of one existence in millions of forms, in millions of flowers. THIS experience is God. And it is everybody’s birthright, because whether you know it or not you are already part of it. The only possibility is you may not recognize it or you may recognize it. The difference between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person is not of quality – they both are absolutely alike. There is only one small difference: that the enlightened person is aware; he recognizes the ultimate pervading the whole, permeating the whole, vibrating, pulsating. He recognizes the heartbeat of the universe. He recognizes that the universe is not dead, it is alive. This aliveness is God! The unenlightened person is asleep, asleep and full of dreams. Those dreams function as a barrier; they don’t allow him to see the truth of his own reality. And, of course, when you are not even aware of your own reality, how can you be aware of the reality of others? The first experience has to happen within you. Once you have seen the light within you will be able to see it everywhere. God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form; only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all the names become his. Then a person LIVES in prayer – he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church. Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden; if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine; if he relates then his relating is divine. The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core, because that is the secret of the whole existence. That’s where the Upanishads are tremendously important. They don’t talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don t bother about prayer. their whole emphasis is on meditation. Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind – your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams – becoming aware of all that goes on inside you. Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of. Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed. Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it – that is the only way to know it. Source: from Osho Book “I Am That”

Daily meditation - 6 day streak - 15 mins - do nothing Inner child healing/inner body feeling I've been working on "healing the inner child" today and it really seems to be hitting the right turf. It feels similar to when I was going really well with feeling the "inner body", but I don't know why that became hard after a while. This inner child healing is a facing of the inner pain that you've been turning away from and I think I started to forget to do that after getting close with my inner body and I just wanted the bliss it brung, so dismissed the discomfort and then ultimately started being less present with the truth of my real feelings...maybe. That's just a theory of why it became hard. I feel much more real when I face the pain of the child. My experiences feel much richer and my heart feels stronger when I feel into the old pain. It doesn't hurt so much then. It becomes a fire. I feel like a lion. It's funny to see how the little boy me was so scared, but at the same time I can see how easy it was. I don't want to be scared. I was using this website today to help with the inner child stuff. I've not read through it all yet, but it's already shown helpful ways of explaining and talking through it: https://www.mindful.org/healing-the-child-within/

(not sure about the order?) 1. Unconditional Love/ Compassion 2. Truth 3. Integrity 4. Devine Bliss 5. Source Consciousness 6. Infinite Creativity

I'm asexual yet yesterday, I looked at a book on tantra and the subject peaked my curiosity. What fascinates me about tantra is finding the deep intimacy and the union of souls and the emotional ecstacy of it. My mind is intrigued by this possibility. I had a Tantric experience while cuddling a girl on my bed and it felt so deeply relaxing and almost mystical. It felt like this flow state and I felt like I had this natural charisma being expressed. Regarding tantra, I want to learn more deeply about it and focus on applying it in my life but finding a way to apply it to my asexuality. I'm also discovering how I have a natural charisma and gravitate towards eccentrics and people on the Autism Spectrum. Tantra feels like a crystal clear insight by combining intimacy with ecstacy. I'm focusing on seeking out AMAZING experiences that leave you buzzing and vibrating with ecstacy or where you're overwhelmed with laughter and childlike bliss.

i started the day with a kind of good feeling, a cloudy day. now to make this short. i was in a bus getting back to home after college. and this good feeling increased then i remembered a series of moojie videos about divine laughter and similars i was paying closer attention to what the guru said just before the person burst out laughing and this line get in my head "you are the answer to what your looking how much distance exist to reach yourself" . getting back to the bus i begin to self enquiry and this good and calm feeling (i think is bliss) increased and i was not able to point something and called "I" then a brief moment of pure concentration pure awareness that last like 5 seconds and i just was very very aware of the present and the fact there was not person in here. now the why i ask this question is because i didn´t burst in laught or crying or 1000 orgasm to be honest i was hoping 10 orgasm and not realization like i am god came, just the clear perception there is no one here in my current experience.

@phoenix666 If you feel pain be attentive to it, don’t do anything. Attention is the great sword – it cuts everything. You simply pay attention to the pain. For example, you are sitting silently in the last part of the meditation, unmoving, and you feel many problems in the body. You feel the leg is going dead, there is some itching in the hand, you feel ants are creeping on the body and you have looked many times – there are no ants. The creeping is inside, not outside. What should you do? You feel the leg is going dead – be watchful, just pay total attention to it. You feel itching – don’t scratch, that will not help. Just pay attention. Don’t even open your eyes. Just pay attention inwardly and just wait and watch, and within seconds the itching will disappear. Whatsoever happens – even if you feel pain, severe pain in the stomach or in the head… It is possible, because in meditation the whole body changes. It changes its chemistry. New things start happening; the body is in a chaos. Sometimes the stomach will be affected because in the stomach you have suppressed many emotions, and they are all stirred. Sometimes you will feel like vomiting, nausea. Sometimes you will feel a severe pain in the head because the meditation is changing the inner structure of your brain. You are really in a chaos passing through meditation. Soon things will settle. But, for the time being, everything will be unsettled. So what are you to do? Simply see the pain in the head; watch it. Be a watcher. Just forget that you are a doer, and by and by everything subsides and subsides so beautifully and so gracefully that you cannot believe it unless you know it. And it is not only that the pain disappears from the head: if the energy which was creating pain is watched, the pain disappears and the same energy becomes pleasure. The energy is the same. Pain and pleasure are two dimensions of the same energy. If you can remain silently sitting and paying attention to distractions, all distractions disappear. And when all distractions disappear, you will suddenly become aware that the whole body has disappeared. In fact, what was happening? Why were these things happening? And when you don’t meditate they don’t happen. You are there the whole day and the hand never itches, the head has no pain and the stomach is perfect and the legs are okay. Everything is okay. What was really happening? Why do these things suddenly start in meditation? The body has remained the master for so long, and in meditation you are throwing the body out of its mastery. You are dethroning it. It clings; it tries in every way to remain the master. It will create many things to distract you so the meditation is lost; you are thrown off balance and the body is again on the throne. Up to now, the body has remained the master and you have been a slave. Through meditation, you are changing the whole thing; it is a great revolution. And, of course, no ruler wants to be thrown out of his power. The body plays politics – that’s what is happening. When she creates imaginary pain, itching, ants creeping, the body is trying to distract you. And it is natural, because the body has remained in rule for so long, for many lives it has been the emperor and you have been the slave. Now you are changing everything upside down. You are reclaiming your throne, and it is natural the body will try whatsoever it can do to disturb you. If you get disturbed, you are lost. Ordinarily, people suppress these things. They will start chanting a mantra; they will not look at the body. I am not teaching you any sort of suppression. I teach only awareness. Just watch, pay attention, and because it is false, immediately it will disappear. When all the pains and itches and ants have disappeared and the body has settled in its right place of being a slave, suddenly so much bliss arises you cannot contain it. Suddenly so much celebration arises in the being you cannot express; you are overflowing with a peace that passeth understanding, a bliss which is not of this world. Osho, Yoga: The Mystery Beyond Mind, Talk #2

@Mrkvn8 Maybe consider: instead of thinking about it as "ways" to have fun...as in specific activities (although @ajasatya has you covered with those, awesome)...you could alternately think of it as "THE way YOU have FUN" as in: allowing yourself to have: the wonder of a child, the bliss of truly savouring, and the freedom of truthful, joyful, expression, etc

Management of self talk Take a deep breath and do it for a couple of times... Good... Look at your phone and remember that it is a medium for self texting.. What do you really want out of life? To feel good... See now this is the problem right there... You assign labels to feeling instead of just feeling it and its physical manifestations objectively... But these physical manifestations are temporary and keep changing so clinging to a feeling will obviously cause dissatisfaction as it will change.. But Dissatisfaction itself is a feeling and the seeds of dissatisfaction cause trees of dissatisfaction... So that means that if I can treat every emotion just as it is I can experience less dissatisfaction? What if the existential void of dissatisfaction is actually just a label can I just cange this label to bliss and love this feeling? Lets start with mindfulness on a serious level. A commitment from the heart.

I don't know the purposes of those who write here. Perhaps to make some money in training schemes to which I have no objection. But my reply may cause you to feel you have lost face because I will disagree with you. That's my intention but only to share. If you delete my account, that's fine, I get it. Besides that I am very old. And nobody cares I get that too. The astral travelling experience is as unmistakable as the death experience. What you all appear to fail to comprehend is such experiences take you into a world that is not human. I mean for example, ghost stories where the ghost is still him/herself from the world but it is not so -- leaving the body is leaving the human. To be sure there are ghosts but they are only the remains of the personality, not the former human who soon goes elsewhere. All this is subjective knowledge to you, even if I've gained the knowledge through experience, its current worth to you is only entertainment. Astral travelling is accompanied by specific and unmistakable events, as I've said, which none of you has mentioned. The after-effects of astral travelling are also unmistakable. The time difference (even if time is illusory) is stark. I won't say more about the astral travelling experience as I don't like fakes or fakers. @Shin Enlightenment. I notice on the forums stipulations about what enlightenment involves; about what the enlightened should be, even how they think or don't think. Imho Buddha, among other things, was a bit slow. Took him 7 years to realize fasting was pointless. But no one's perfect. Enlightenment is a brutal thing, although if you really want it you can have it. The downside is it's like being at the centre of a wheel and if you detract from the state for any reason you will be thrown swiftly into states that could make you worse than you were when you began. At the same time denial and complete destruction of yourself so that being thrown from the centre are important to your growth and continuity. Becoming a lawyer, doctor, president or soldier in battle are difficult but attaining enlightenment and keeping it is difficult even beyond your worst nightmares. Enlightenment is a huge career move. You, your world and all that you believe and hold dear will never be the same. Even if you're surrounded by people, even friends and family you will be forever alone. Doesn't mean you can't have a beloved, you can but there is alone and 'alone.' People know that already, but there's another alone even beyond that. ^^ More seriously, do you get the enormity? Sure, you can have enlightenment but for you it will be like living on a distant planet surrounded by aliens. Aliens who communicate in specific ways. Any deviation from their ways will be uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous. You will have knowledge and solutions beyond the average person but there won't be a single thing you can do, and for many reasons. Become charming, rich even alter your features, no problemo, but from the standpoint of enlightenment mostly you won't, although charm is useful. Helping the world? Someone helped Pol Pot in Cambodia and he began Year Zero and genocidal insanity. You don't know their ultimate aims, you are not a God, you're only enlightened. Certainly enlightenment is all the lovely things you dream about, but it's not cheap. Are you ready to fast march up Mount Everest 9000 times with a heavy pack on your back hoping you don't lose your footing at 8999 while the world guesses you're a little strange? Then enlightenment is for you! Otherwise remember ignorance is bliss.

Meditation minus Bliss is not true meditation‏ It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together. Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face. That’s why your saints — so-called saints — look sad. Sadness has become a necessary quality for being a saint. They can’t laugh, they can’t dance, they can’t sing, they can’t love, they can’t rejoice. They talk about bliss but they only talk about it. You don’t see any bliss in their eyes, you don’t see any bliss in their milieu, you don’t see any bliss radiating from their inner center. They look sad, dull, dead, unintelligent, for the simple reason that they have chosen a shortcut and there is no shortcut. They have avoided the complexity of spiritual transformation. They have chosen meditation, they have forced their mind to be still. It is a negative state; their minds are only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence, it is not the flowering of silence. Their silence is like the cemetery, it is not the silence of a garden. The silence of the garden is full of music: the bees humming and the birds singing and a distant call of the cuckoo. They are all in it, essential parts of it. The garden has a very living silence, full of song and joy. The cemetery is also silent, but it is only the silence of death; because there is nobody, hence there is silence. You can meditate, force yourself to be silent, but you will miss God, you will miss nirvana. And you can also try to be blissful; that means you can pretend, you can practice, you can rehearse bliss. You can always try to be blissful, smiling, at least looking happy. Slowly slowly, it becomes so practiced… like Jimmy Carter. Now his smile is disappearing, but just remember two years before — you could have counted his teeth! You can practice it. I have heard that in the beginning days of his presidency his wife had to close his mouth in the night! I don’t know how far it is true, but it appears to be true — because if you practice the whole day, then in the night too your muscles become fixed. Even in sleep you will go on smiling. You can practice blissfulness too, but a practiced blissfulness is false. Anything practiced is false, remember it — never forget it. Things have to be spontaneous and natural, not practiced, not cultivated. Cultivated blissfulness is only a mask. You are smiling, but the smile is not in the heart. You are showing joy, but you are not joyous. Your heart is a desert; only on the face you have put plastic flowers. They may deceive others, but they can’t deceive you and they can’t deceive a master. Your smile, your joy, is formal — just good manners. This too has happened. There have been many saints, very blissful, always singing and dancing, but deep down just deserts. They both have chosen only the half, and the half-truth is far more untrue than any untruth. Truth has to be total, truth has to be whole. And the whole truth is: bliss PLUS meditation. It is difficult of course, arduous, to manage both. Why? — because they seem to be polar opposites. Meditation means silence and bliss means dance. Meditation means stillness and bliss means a song. Meditation means escaping from the world and bliss means sharing with the world. Meditation you can do in a Himalayan cave, but to be blissful you will have to come back to the world. Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when you are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life. Source – Osho Book “Dhammapada, Vol 8″

Watching is meditation. What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch the trees, you can watch the river, you can watch the clouds, you can watch children playing around. Watching is meditation. What you watch is not the point; the object is not the point. The quality of observation, the quality of being aware and alert - that's what meditation is. So perfectly good! Children are beautiful - pure energy dancing around, pure energy running around. Delight in it and watch it. I don't see why you are feeling yourself in trouble. The mind goes on creating trouble. Whatsoever you do, the mind goes on creating trouble. Now the mind says: Is this meditation at all? Remember one thing: meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation - and don't be worried about it! The mind constantly creates some anxiety. Many times people come to me. They say they are feeling very good, very high - but is this real? Now the mind is creating a new trouble: Is this real? The mind has never asked this before. When you have a headache, do you ask: Is this real? You trust in misery too much. A headache is necessarily real, but if you go high and you feel a peak of bliss, the mind starts creating a subtle anxiety: Is this real? You may be in a delusion, hallucination, imagination. You may be seeing a dream. Or if you cannot find anything else, then: Osho must have hypnotized you. You must be in hypnosis. You cannot believe that you can be blissful, that you can be happy. Because of this tendency of the mind, the mind clings to the miserable. Mind is always seeking and searching for hell, because it can exist only in misery; in bliss it disappears. Only in misery does it have throbbing life; only in misery does its business go well. Whenever you are happy it is not needed; when you are blissful, who needs mind? - you have already gone beyond it. The mind feels left behind, neglected, it starts nagging you. It says: Where are you going? Are you hypnotized? What illusions are you seeing? These are all dreams! Because of this tendency, millions of people have come to a meditative point some time or other in their life but they miss the door. The door comes but they cannot believe in it. Meditation is as natural a phenomenon as love. It happens to everybody! It is part of your being, but you cannot believe in it. Even if it happens, you somehow overlook it. Or even if you feel that something is happening, you cannot say to others that something is happening because you are afraid others will think that you have gone mad. Your own mind goes on saying that this is not possible; this is too good to be true. So you forget about it. Remember again: in your childhood, or later on when you were young, there must have been a few moments. It is impossible that those moments were not there; they have been there in everybody's life. Just try to recollect again and you will remember there have been moments when something was opening, but you closed it, afraid. Sometimes, sitting on a silent night, looking at the stars - and something was going to happen and you shrank; apprehensive, frightened, you started doing something else. It was too good to be true. You missed an opportunity. Sometimes, in deep love, just sitting by the side of your beloved, something started happening; you were moving in some unknown direction. You became scared, you pulled yourself back to earth. Sometimes, for no reason at all, just swimming in the river, or running around in the hot sun, or just relaxing on the beach and listening to the wild roar of the ocean, something started happening inside you, some inner alchemical change, as if your body was creating LSD. Something inside... and you were moving in a totally unknown dimension - as if you had wings and you could fly. You became afraid, you started clinging to the earth. Many times in each person's life, such moments come; but those moments are not aggressive, they cannot force anything against you. If you are ready you can move, drift into them, slip into them, float with them, to the farthest end of existence. If you are afraid you cling to your shore, and you miss the boat. The boat cannot wait for you. So don't be disturbed by the mind. Watching children playing around is a beautiful meditation - because watching is meditation. But remember, don't think about it. If children are dancing, running around, playing, shrieking, jumping, jogging, don't start thinking - just watch. Watch without any thought. Be aware, but don't think. Remain alert - just seeing, a pure seeing, a clarity, but don't start thinking about it; otherwise you have already moved away. Watching children, you can remember your own child back home. Then you have missed, then you are not watching these children. Some memories are floating in your mind. A film starts moving; then you are in a daydream. Simply watch! (Osho in The Search #7)

This experience occurred after roughly 2 ½ years of meditating almost every day. I was driving home from work when it happened. All morning I was in a meditative and contemplative state of mind. I was about 3 or 4 miles from home. In my mind I was thinking of the incomprehensible number of universes and the incomprehensible number of different “me’s” in existence. I thought about what would happen if they all met. Many of them would be similar and many of them would be vastly different. Some of them would look identical and others would look vastly different. Then everything stopped. I had felt stillness before but this was infinitely deeper than anything I had felt before. The moment I realized that all of the different possibilities of the form which constitutes “me” could look the same and others would look completely different something profound in my mind snapped. In an instant and outside of space and time I was all life. My entire perception of reality was cleaned. I was all life on earth, in the universe and in all of existence. I did not feel connected to all life. Thomas Roger did not exist anymore. There was just awareness in a body and that’s it. There was only life and it’s happening. I watched in sheer amazement at all of the people who drove by me and each person I saw was also myself. It doesn’t even make any sense that something like this is even possible but it happened. My mind did not judge or comment on the people I saw. I was simply in utter amazement at the sheer beauty of the life that was happening. (All of this happened while I was at a red light.) When the red light turned green I had no idea how I was driving, how I was seeing or anything. I returned home in a state of utter amazement, bliss and gratitude. It felt like all existence felt this way too. I know that doesn’t make any sense but it did. When I entered the driveway and emerged from the car and saw the world from outside the windows I almost cried. The air was so crisp. It was an overcast day but it was so profoundly beautiful. I walked in front of my house and said this. “I had never really seen reality before. This is the first time I have truly seen life.” I began to be overwhelmed with happiness. Every tree, every person, every blade of grass, every insect all life was one. I completely disappeared and was all life. I was all life. I walked up to some flowers in front of my house and looked at a bee walking along one of them. This made me especially happy. I began to laugh. I smiled so hard. I was the bee and the bee was me. All life was one. I walked into my house and went into my brother’s room he was sleeping. When I saw him I became even happier as I was also one with him. I began to laugh even more. I realized that the same consciousness that he was experiencing was the same consciousness that I was experiencing. That I am experiencing. That we all are experiencing. All life is experiencing the same consciousness. The medium through which it is experienced may be vastly different but the consciousness, the awareness is the same. I needed to get something to take to my college so I picked that up and went back out to the car still in sheer amazement and happiness. As I drove the car I also realized that the same consciousness that mom experienced I too experienced at that very moment and my whole life. ( My mother passed away when I was 16 years old.) At this point my mind couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled over less than a mile from home and broke down and cried at the sheer incomprehensible, profound and breathtaking beauty of existence. After about five minutes of crying in sheer awe and gratitude I sat there for about another minute and continued my day. This lasted for about two hours then I slowly came back as a tiny individuated ego. However there was still a great residual after effect from what I just experienced. (to call this an experience is limiting, it is a state of being) This was by far the most magical day of my life as of august 1st 2016.

Don't change the world, change yourself, grow into a meditator. You are only 15. When you are young, it is the easiest thing possible. It looks very difficult because you have not tried it yet. Give it a try. Why are you worried about the rest of the world? Let the world worry about itself. And you are not worried about what will happen to the rest of the world if you remain ignorant.... If you are ignorant, what happens to the rest of the world? You create misery. Not that you knowingly do it, you are misery -- so whatsoever you do, you sow seeds of misery all around. Please leave the world to itself. You can do only one thing, and that is, you can achieve inner silence, inner bliss, inner light. If you achieve this, you have helped the world very much. Just by changing one ignorant spot into an enlightened flame, just by changing one person from darkness into light, you have changed a part of the world. And this changed part will have its own chain reactions. Buddha is not dead. Jesus is not dead. They cannot be dead because there is a chain reaction -- from one lamp, from one flame, another flame takes over. And a successor is created, and they go on living. But if your light is not there, if your lamp is without a flame, you cannot help anyone. The first basic thing is that you must attain your inner flame. Then others can share. Then you can kindle others' light also. Then it becomes a succession. If you become enlightened, whatsoever you do -- or you need not do anything -- just your being, your presence will help others to flower, to be happy, to be blissful. But that should not be your concern. The first thing is how to be enlightened.

I wanted to experience a change in perception without too much of a mindfuck (which I had strongly during my first two shroom trips), so I decided to experiment with a low dose. I drank a hibiscus tea with ginger, since that’s supposed to prevent eventual nausea, with 2g of dried psilocybe cubensis. Although I expected the trip to be less intense than my first two, I was not quite prepared for it to be that different. My first two experiences where like a roller-coaster. It was a an emotional up and down from blank panic to profound bliss (at some points they even merged together). I had lost all my past and identity. I couldn’t remember who I was, but at the same time feeling very present and aware. This trip had nothing with me pacing around talking to myself like a complete psycho, as I knew it from my past experiences. I was lying on my bed meditating as I waited for the onset. I noticed exactly when the effects began. it was from one second to the other: suddenly I couldn’t do the labeling anymore. It was just impossible because ‚hearing‘ and ‚seeing‘ merged. I just wasn’t able to separate them from each other. Then ‚feeling‘ joined them. After some moments of very strong closed eye hallucinations (mostly fast moving geometrical patterns with neon colors), they stilled and I turned back to normal labeling. Then it became impossible again and the cycle began once more. That went on like this for like 10-20 times more, varying in duration. After a while I felt getting more and more lost in the patterns (like tunnels) and I had to give up the labeling. I tried focusing on my breath, but I had to give up that as well. So I decided to surrender and to follow my visual sense, focusing my awareness on the colorful patterns. Now, this is where it gets very difficult to put into words…but I’ll try it. After a while I felt like I was floating through concepts in my mind. like every thought that came up became plastic: the thoughts materialized in front of my eyes (they looked like grey, sharp stalagmites and stalagtites shooting out of every direction from an orange background. I just floated through that orange thing with sort grey rays coming towards me and I left them behind rapidly. Sometimes I would catch a more detailed glimpse on those thoughts and something inside of me would react like ‚wtf, this can’t be. what the heck is this? now, this can’t be real‘ (I can’t recall the exact content now, but I think most of them related to friends and people I know). Then this strange thing happened like 5-10 times: I suddenly identified with one of my friends (often from the past). I literally felt like I was him/her. and then I thought: ‚wait, no! this can’t be me. this is my friend, so I must be someone else‘ then an excited: ‚well, who am I then?‘ and I actually didn’t know. not figuratively, but quite literally: I couldn’t recall my name. I couldn’t recall my face or my personal history. But it didn’t terrify me. Neither did I feel euphoria or bliss. I was just generally curious. I continued asking myself ‚who am I?‘. shortly after that either my name, my personal history or the image of my face would return to my mind. I always felt a little disappointed afterwards. This trance eventually stopped and I felt hungry. I ate some fruits I had previously prepared for the trip. (eating whilst tripping I can only describe as a great delight: it tasted so sweet and fresh, I felt myself getting completely lost in that sweet moment) Then the trip became weaker and I tried to do some more meditation. I tried the ‚do nothing‘ technique and it felt amazing. sounds, but mostly visuals and feelings floated by and I just felt very distant from them, glossing over them with something I could only describe as curiosity and a mild amusement. I am not quite sure what to make out of this trip. It was just so different from what I expected (less emotional, less mindfuck and more of a calm state of flow) I hope I can elaborate this stuff the following days and integrate some of the experiences into my daily life. I still have to wrap my head around what the shrooms were trying to tell/show me. Thanks for bearing with me if you came so far. :-)

One should do physical exercises which make him more aware, alert and alive throughout the day, not only after gym. Every technique that makes your mind silent is not meditation. You can avoid the complexity of spiritual transformation. You can chose a technique to force your mind to be still. It is a negative state; it makes mind only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence. It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together. Weight trainers tend to pull their chest out and belly in. There is a stupid idea popular in the whole world that belly should be pulled in and chest should look larger, it hinders natural breathing. Breath is literally the bridge connecting all of these aspects of our being and our existence. When you are relaxed ,as the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. Try to see children, very small children, taking their breaths. They take them in a different way. Look at a child sleeping. His belly comes up and down, not the chest. That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used – in emergency periods. You are running to save your life; then the chest can be used. There is a Japanese word for the initial source of breath. That word is "tanden". Right breathing is connected with tanden, which is located two inches below the navel. The further a man is away from existence, the further his breath moves away from tanden. The higher your centre of breathing is, the more tense you are; the lower the point of your breath, the more you are relaxed. If your breathing is from tanden, there will be no tensions in your life. This is the very reason why children are free from tension. Observe your breath in a moment of relaxation. You will find it coming from tanden. When you are filled with tension and anxiety, observe your breath. It will become short, and it will come from the chest. Short breath is an indication that you are far removed from your original nature. There is a reason why we breathe from the chest. A very wrong concept has pervaded in the world. According to this, the chest should be well developed and large, and the abdomen should be flat, almost against the back. This mad tendency has created a terrible disturbance within the human body. In order to inflate the chest, the breath has to fill the chest and not be allowed to go down further. Observe yourself sometimes as you sit quietly by yourself on a chair. Let yourself loose, - there should be no tension - and you will feel the breath rising from your navel. But we do not let ourselves relax even when we rest. Is the idea of having an expanded chest so ingrained in us.

One thing that I am still strongly identified with is my self image. Its this dark, amorphous, subtly changing image of my physical self. My contour, my face, my head. It's always shadowy but there and it's as though it has a hook in my awareness. Even questions like 'who am I?' seem to unfold on top of it.. There is so much resistance. I did Leo's guided neti neti method and found myself grasping for some experience. Some massive bliss and relief.. of course that did not happen and I was left with anger and frustration and that stuck to me like glue....

If you find it too complicated, you can try OSHO KUNDALINI MEDITATION This “sister meditation” to the OSHO Dynamic is best done at sunset or in the late afternoon. Being fully immersed in the shaking and dancing of the first two stages helps to “melt” the rock-like being, wherever the energy flow has been repressed and blocked. Then that energy can flow, dance and be transformed into bliss and joy. The last two stages enable all this energy to flow vertically, to move upwards into silence. It is a highly effective way of unwinding and letting go at the end of the day. Osho on How to Shake: "If you are doing the Kundalini Meditation, allow the shaking – don't do it! Stand silently, feel it coming, and when your body starts a little trembling, help it, but don't do it! Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don't will it. "If you force, it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise. Then the shaking will be there, but just on the surface. It will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, stonelike, rocklike within. You will remain the manipulator, the doer, and the body will only be following. The body is not the question, you are the question. "When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rocklike being should shake to the very foundations, so it becomes liquid, fluid, melts, flows. And when the rocklike being becomes liquid your body will follow. Then there is no shaker, only shaking; then nobody is doing it, it is simply happening. Then the doer is not. "Enjoy it, but don't will it. And remember, whenever you will a thing you cannot enjoy it. They are reverse, opposites; they never meet. If you will a thing you cannot enjoy it, if you enjoy it you cannot will it." Osho Instructions: The meditation is one hour long, with four stages. First Stage: 15 minutes Be loose and let your whole body shake, feeling the energies moving up from your feet. Let go everywhere and become the shaking. Your eyes may be open or closed. Second Stage: 15 minutes Dance ... any way you feel, and let the whole body move as it wishes. Again, your eyes can be open or closed. Third Stage: 15 minutes Close your eyes and be still, sitting or standing, observing, witnessing, whatever is happening inside and out. Fourth Stage: 15 minutes Keeping your eyes closed, lie down and be still. http://www.osho.com/iosho/imeditate?mid=22

If they are real friends, they will let you be alone during this period, and they will rejoice your coming back once you do. It's a win-win situation you got there. Anyway, just follow your bliss ya kna