Question – Beloved Osho, What is happening to me? I am opening more and more, and I have the feeling that the shadows in my body are gradually disappearing. When I close my eyes I can see more light in the body. It is so beautiful, and I feel so much for you — more than I ever felt before. Beloved Osho, Can this be? Is this me? Why do these doubts still arise? Would you Please comment?

Osho – Whatever is happening is the deepest longing of every seeker. You are here only for this kind of happening. It is the beginning. In the beginning it is very natural: the mind will create doubts. There is no need to be angry with the mind; mind cannot understand it, it is beyond the scope of mind. And naturally the mind wants you to remain rational, reasonable, sane.

The mind creates doubts for the simple reason that it wants to protect you. It is not against you, it is trying to protect you so that you don’t get into some crazy space. But it is only in the beginning that the mind creates doubts. And this is the time when the master and the school of the master helps you not to be bothered with what your mind is saying, but to explore the new that is arising.

You are feeling light. All shadows are disappearing, and a luminous body is arising within you, a body of light. The mind can accept a skeleton; it cannot accept a body of light. Mind is very primitive; it still believes in matter. Physicists have come to the conclusion that there is no matter at all; only energy exists. But the energy particles are moving so fast that they create the illusion of solidness.

It is just like a fan moving fast: you cannot see the three wings separately, it becomes a circle. If it moved with the speed of light, the way electrons move in a pillar, then you could sit on the fan and you would not fall, and you would not feel that something is changing beneath you and there are gaps. Because before you could feel the gap, the other wing of the fan would have come in and you would not feel anything, the fastness of speed would make it a solid thing.

All that looks solid only looks solid. But mind is very primitive. The heart is neither primitive nor contemporary. The heart is eternal; it knows no divisions of time. So the heart can see without any doubt the body of light. In fact, that body is truer than the solid body that we see — because the body of light means the body of electrons, pure electricity.

It happened after the second world war: a soldier came back home. He had been away from home for five years, and naturally he was in a hurry to meet his wife. As he hugged his wife he got a shock — such an electric shock, he fell flat on the ground. He said, “My God, what has happened?”

For five years the wife had been waiting and waiting and waiting with such intensity, her electric forces had been accumulating. Doctors were called. They could not even take her hand to check her pulse — immediate shocks. Then the electrician was called, hoping that something… now it is no longer physical; something electrical has gone wrong. The electrician was very much afraid. He said, “First take this bulb in your hand.” He gave the woman a five-candle bulb to put in her hand, and the bulb lit up.

That was the first happening of its type. The whole woman was throbbing with electricity. Because of her, research started into human electricity, and now it is an established fact that every human body has electricity.

If your eyes are very perceptive, you can see the electric aura around the body. As you have seen around the photos of Nanak, Kabir, Krishna, Rama, Buddha — those circles around the faces are not fictions, they are not the imaginations of the painters; they have been seen by disciples, by meditators.

And now in the Soviet Union, there is a photographer who even takes photographs…. He has developed very sensitive plates. His name is Kirlian, and because of his name, his photography has become known as Kirlian photography. He has become world famous. If he takes your photo, it will not just be you but also surrounding your whole body an aura of light.

And strangely enough, if somebody’s hand has been cut off in an accident and Kirlian takes a photograph, the hand is not there in the photograph but the aura of the hand is still there. The electrical body is still intact — nothing has been disturbed, only the physical part has dropped. One of your fingers has been cut off for some reason, some accident; but in the photograph four fingers will show a darker photo of the physical finger with a lighter shade around it, and one finger will be simply the lighter electric shade. But the shade will still be there.

And this is not only with the human body. A roseflower: you can pluck a petal and Kirlian can say which petal has been taken out — his photograph will show the missing petal’s electric aura.
So what is happening to you is that as you become silent, you start becoming aware of your inner being — which is surrounded by a light.

The ancients have called it the astral body, the body of light, the body made of starlight — that is what `astral’ means. Just remember that it is not in the area of mind, and tell the mind, “This is none of your business. You do your thing.” And there are many more things. Existence is not limited to the mind, it is far bigger, far more mysterious.

You have all the possibilities that any mystic has ever experienced anywhere in the world, but you will have to silence your mind; otherwise those doubts can go on disturbing you. That’s why my insistence is: before entering the mysterious world, first silence the mind. Discipline the mind for silence, for no-thinking, so that when you enter the mysterious world the mind does not come in the way, does not raise awkward questions which you cannot answer — and which even if you answer, the mind cannot understand.

Mind has a limited scope. It is a bio-computer. It is not your whole being. The heart is far bigger. And beyond the heart is your being, which is bigger than the heart. And beyond your being is the universal being — which is infinite. To enter into these mysteries you will need a silent mind that does not disturb you.

Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Osho on Buddhafield, Osho on mystery of Buddhafield

Question : Beloved Osho, What is a Buddhafield? Just living together, running businesses, doesn’t seem to be enough, it is not satisfying. It feels like something deeper – something more challenging for the collective and the individual, in which both grow – is needed.

Osho : A buddhafield is one of the most mysterious phenomena in existence. It simply means whenever someone becomes awakened, his consciousness radiates a certain aura around him. Whoever is receptive, available, can be transformed by the radiating energy from an awakened being. The very presence of the awakened person can hit you so deep that your dormant energy starts awakening.

It has been described as a sleeping serpent being awakened. It was lying coiled, looking almost dead, and when provoked, it uncoils itself. Because of the similarity of the phenomena, in the East the uncoiling energy in the presence of the awakened person is called Kundalini. Kundalini simply means the serpent power.

The buddhafield can become a network. In the hands of a skilled master it need not be confined to a small area; hence I have introduced the communes. It is as if you put a mirror in front of a light. The mirror has no way of producing light, but it can reflect light. A single light surrounded by thousands of mirrors can create a light of immense quantity.

In India there is a temple made completely of small pieces of mirror. When you enter the temple you are suddenly surrounded by yourself from every side, in thousands of ways: from the ceiling, from the floor, from the walls. Each piece represents you in your totality. It is not that the piece of mirror is going to reflect only a certain part of you; it reflects you totally, your whole personality. And those thousands of mirrors all reflect you.

Just take a burning candle inside with you and you will be surprised at the effect: just one candle suddenly becomes thousands of candles, and all the reflections create tremendous light. The man who had made the temple was one of the richest men in India. He simply loved to make unique things. He loved me very much. I asked him – he had taken me to the temple to show me – I asked him, “Do you know the meaning of this temple?”

He said, “Meaning? I have simply created a unique piece of beauty, architecture, and something which has no parallel in the whole world.”

I said, “That’s true, but there is meaning also in it, and you must know it, because it is very embarrassing that you created the temple and you don’t know the meaning of it. The meaning is, this temple represents in a material way the fabric of a buddhafield.”

One buddha can create thousands of seekers around him. They are not awakened but they are willing to be awakened. They have not yet reached the goal, but they are very receptive, open, available. In the presence of the master they can at least function as mirrors very easily; then one buddha becomes millions of buddhas.

I had made the communes so that five thousand people could live together and learn to reflect me. Not to imitate me, remember – these are two totally different things. The mirror never imitates you; the mirror simply reflects you.

Now I have dissolved the communes, because now I want the whole world to be my commune. Wherever there is a sannyasin, he has to be a mirror. And time and space make no difference: If he is available to me, he is as close to me as you are. And from the farthest corner of the earth he can reflect me.

And now I have millions of sannyasins around the world. I have withdrawn all conditions that can hinder people from becoming sannyasins. These millions of people are going to create a network of energy enveloping the whole earth.

Just one sun rises in the morning, but it is being reflected by all the oceans, all the lakes, all the rivers, all the ponds. Small ponds reflect the same sun as the biggest ocean. Just one sun rises, and millions of places start reflecting it. And it is not only the ocean, lake, river, ponds – there are other reflections too, which are more subtle.

Even before the sun comes above the horizon, the birds suddenly start singing. They are awakened, something has happened to them, and something tremendously beautiful; otherwise from where will the song arise? And they are so full of life! The flowers open their petals… these are also reflections. There is no obligation on their part; they can remain buds. There is no obligation on the part of the birds; they may decide not to sing, but something irresistible which is beyond their control….

When the sun is rising, something is rising in them too: their life energy, their kundalini. Of course a bird cannot become a buddha, but he can at least sing, dance, fly in the sky just out of sheer joy, open his wings as an indication of freedom, aliveness. He can claim the whole sky as his own.

And all the flowers – from the smallest grass flower to the biggest lotus – they suddenly all fall into a symphony. They forget their differences; they forget that there are poor flowers and there are rich flowers, that there is the proletariat and there are the bourgeois; suddenly all classes disappear. And in their flowering, in their opening, they release whatsoever they have.

They give back to existence as a gift whatever existence has given to them. They don’t keep it, they don’t hoard it. They give it back a thousandfold, they multiply it, because what was – apparently – not in the seed, what was not in the roots, what was not in the tree, in the branches, in the leaves… has suddenly come to blossom in the flower: all the colors, all the fragrance. But they waited long in the dark night for the sun to rise.

The presence of the sun suddenly gets reflected in millions of ways and creates a network of light, life, joy, fullness, overflowing ecstasy. That’s what I mean by a buddhafield. One man getting awakened means the sun has risen. It is the declaration that the dark night of the soul is at an end. But it is possible only if there are millions of people spread all over the earth to create a connectedness. With this net of energy we may be able to transform many people who had no idea, who had never dreamed that there is something more than a mundane life.

So you are right – just working together, creating a commune, creating finances to run it, is not enough. It has nothing to do with the buddhafield. Seeing the fact that in communes you will get entangled in so many unnecessary things, that there is a possibility to forget for what you had gathered there in the first place…. Now I don’t want big communes but small groups, more intimate, or individuals doing their ordinary work in the world. That takes only five hours, five days a week, and leaves you immense time and energy to become part of a great, ecstatic experience.

In the commune I found it is difficult, because you are trying to create an alternative society – which takes too much time, too much energy. People were working for twelve hours, fourteen hours, and had no energy left. Even if the sun rises, the bird has no energy to sing. The sun rises, but the rose has no energy to open its petals and release the fragrance.

And because you are creating an alternative society,
the ordinary world is going to be antagonistic to you. You are strangers and you are trying something which their tradition and their experience prohibits. And they are in the majority; they have governments in their hands, they have the law in their hands. So creating takes your time and energy; and then fighting with the society – which is too big for you – that also takes your energy.

I was thinking that humanity had progressed since the days of Socrates, but I was wrong. It is still where it was, it has not progressed at all. Civilization has not yet happened, culture is still a dream, and democracy a faraway utopia.

So whenever you come in conflict you will see the barbarous, the primitive, the animalistic, coming up to destroy you. And naturally you cannot survive against the vast masses, the blind people.

I am reminded of a story – not a story but a real fact; it is so strange that it looks like a story. In South America in a hidden valley deep in the mountains, it was found that there lived a small community of people, not more than three hundred – all blind. It was strange – what had happened to these people? What calamity had fallen on them?

One man, very adventurous, a scientific enquirer, wanted to know what had happened to these people… because people were afraid to go into the valley, it was dangerous. If three hundred people are blind, perhaps there is something wrong in the air, something wrong in the water, something wrong in the food – who knows what is wrong? You may go blind!

But this courageous young man entered the commune and was surprised… he did not become blind. He figured out what was happening: there was a certain fly in the mountains…. Every child was born with eyes, as every child is born everywhere else, but within three, four months – if the fly bites the child – he will go blind. Three or four months was too great a time, and the fly was a common fly, all around, everywhere.

So everybody was born with eyes, but nobody ever remembered that once he had eyes because he had lost them so early in life – when he was two months old, at the most four months old. But that fly’s bite was not capable of destroying a young man’s eyes. So anybody who had passed at least one year was beyond the reach of the fly; it needed only the very vulnerable child.

The man wanted to help them because he had found the cause; the cause could be destroyed and those common children could be saved. While he was working on the plans of how to destroy the fly, the whole commune of those primitive people used to laugh at the madman. They used to laugh because they could not believe that he had eyes and they didn’t.

And of course they were three hundred and he was alone and there was no way to prove that he had eyes. Those three hundred people had never heard about eyes – he was just a poet, a dreamer!

But living with them he fell in love with a girl of the community. He wanted to marry that girl, but the community had a condition: “You will have to drop this illusion that you have eyes. And to make certain, we have our elders who will check you. If they find something that you call eyes, they will destroy them… because you have something which you should not have. No human being has eyes – something is wrong with you.

“You can marry the girl of our community, but the condition is that you have to become part of our community. You have to become blind. You can choose. Either you have to leave – leave us alone and don’t disturb us. Since you have come it has been a continuous disturbance. You have been corrupting our youth, putting in their minds the idea of eyes – which we have never heard of from our elders, our forefathers. We have always lived this way. And we don’t need eyes. What will we do with eyes? – we are perfectly happy and content.

“You have disturbed our peace and now you want to get entry into our community. You will have to choose: you will have to lose your so-called eyes if you want to get married, or you forget all about this love affair and leave this valley and never come back again.”

The young man thought for the whole night. He really loved the woman, but this was stupid, the condition was simply idiotic, that he had to lose his eyes. In fact he loved the woman because of his eyes. She was so beautiful, and all those three hundred people were not aware of her beauty and they would never be aware of her beauty. It was his eyes that had given the glimpse of the beauty of the woman.

He had seen so many women, but he settled for a blind woman. Although she was blind, she had something indescribable, something otherworldly. But to lose one’s eyes to get that woman seems to be a very strange bargain, because in losing your eyes you will be also losing that woman; you will never be able to see her again. Then all women are equal. To a blind man what difference does it make that you have a homely woman or a Cleopatra? It doesn’t matter.

No, he could not manage to convince himself to lose his eyes, because his eyes were the source of the experience of the beauty. In the middle of the night he escaped from the valley.
And this is not a story, it is a historical fact.

So when we created communes, I was thinking humanity has progressed, has come a long way from the days of Socrates and Buddha. But I was wrong. They have not moved a single inch! They have changed their masks, they wear better masks than their ancestors, but behind the mask is hidden a barbarous soul – uncivilized, uncultured.

It is not able to accept the stranger. It is not vast enough to absorb the new, the unknown, the unexperienced. It becomes irritated, it becomes annoyed. It wants to destroy your eyes, because it is blind and your eyes will remind it about its blindness.

Seeing the situation, I have dissolved the communes. I would rather rely on individuals. In that way I can spread my message far and wide. I have even allowed you, if you feel it difficult, not to use the red color, not to use the mala, so no blind man is annoyed by you…. Because I want to protect your eyes – and they are very vulnerable because you are in the situation of a child and just a fly can destroy your eyes. And these people are not flies, they are monsters.

The buddhafield has expanded its area, but its strategy has changed. Now I will depend on the individuals – and individuals can move around the world, to faraway corners; still there will be a connecting link with me. Wherever there is a sannyasins of mine, I am there. He will be my mirror, he will reflect me and my light. He will transmit my energy, my understanding.

So you are right: just being together and working hard and running a disco and making money and doing all kinds of things does not seem enough. It is not enough. It is not only not enough, it is a sheer wastage.

So you work in the world; and it is a simple thing – whenever you feel a deep urge to be with me, I will be available. You can always come to me.

To make it a reality, now we will not be having any celebrations; now the celebration will continue all the year round – three hundred and sixty-five days of celebration! And I will be living somewhere, soon – my people are searching for the right place for me to be. And all the year round you can come to me, whenever you have time. So there will be always three to five hundred people coming and going. And I would like a more intimate contact with you be
cause now I am going to depend on the individual.

You cannot understand how painful it has been for me that people longing for years to come, would come to the commune but then there would be twenty thousand people and they would not be able even to see me while I am speaking. I will not be able to see their faces, I will not be able to look into their eyes – and they have come from far away. Waiting for years, earning money, somehow they have managed to come. But with twenty thousand people gathering I cannot manage individual intimacy.

So my new format of work is going to be an all-year-round festival. So you are welcome any moment, because the festival will be continuous, so we don’t collect twenty thousand or fifty thousand people at one time. We distribute people all over the year, so I can sit with you on the lawn, I can sit with you under the trees, I can sit with you under the stars, and I can talk to you or I can be silent with you. So when you go back you are full of me. And this is going to be the new order of the buddhafield.

Osho on Mount Kailash and tirthankaras

Osho : I have told you some things to explain the tirtha to you – but that is not enough. There are many things connected with such places which can’t be understood – but they do happen. Such things cannot be intellectually clarified or made into mathematical formulas, but they do happen.

I will tell you of two or three things that happen…. If you sit somewhere alone in meditation, you are unlikely to feel aware of the presence of the few souls who may be around you. But in a tirtha, such an experience can be very powerful. It may become so deep sometimes that you feel your own presence less than that of the others.

For example, Kailash has been a holy place for Hindus as well as for Tibetan Buddhists. But Kailash is absolutely desolate, it has no houses and no human population – no worshipers, no priests…. But whoever sits in meditation in Kailash will find it fully inhabited.

From the moment you reach Kailash, if you are capable of going into meditation you will say that is inhabited by many souls, and wonderful ones too. But if you go there and cannot meditate, then Kailash is empty for you….

The word tirtha means a sort of jumping board from where one can take a dive into the infinite ocean. The Jaina word tirthankara means a creator of a tirtha, of a place of pilgrimage. A person can only be called a tirthankara if he has charged an area into which ordinary people can enter, open themselves up and begin their inner search.

Jainas call them not incarnations but tirthankaras. A tirthankara is a greater phenomenon than an incarnation, because if the divine enters a human form it is good, but if a man makes a place for others to enter the divine, it is a far higher event.

Osho : Existence is interconnected so deeply, so intimately… but the distances are vast. On the full moon night you see the ocean — it is affected by the full moon, hand in hand, but the moon is far away. And it is not only the ocean that is affected; even you are affected, because eighty percent in you is ocean water.

It is not strange that the people who have become enlightened — only with one exception, Mahavira — have all become enlightened on the full moon day. Mahavira became enlightened on the night of amawas — no moon in the night, total darkness. It is because of this fact he is
called Mahavira. That is not his name. Mahavira means the great warrior, going against the current — and not only going against the current but achieving it.

Gautam Buddha became enlightened on the day of the full moon. Gautam Buddha’s whole life is connected with the full moon: he was born on a full moon night, he became enlightened on the full moon night, he died on the full moon night. This cannot be just coincidence.

And now psychologists have been studying the effects of the full moon on the human psyche, and the results are staggering. On the full moon night more people go mad than any other night, the number is almost double. More people commit suicide — again, the number is almost
double. More people commit murder, and again the number is almost double. The full moon night does something to the human psyche.

The full moon is so far away — but not so far away; it affects you. Since the very beginning it has been affecting the poets, the painters, the sculptors, the musicians, the dancers. They all feel that something is different under the full moon, that perhaps the rays of the full moon
are hand in hand….

Osho on Past lives

Osho : Nature has a beautiful arrangement: with each death, a thick layer of forgetfulness comes over your memories. You are carrying all the memories of all your lives. But a small human being finds it so difficult to live with a small conscious mind of one life–if so many lives burst upon him, he is bound to be insane. It is a natural protection.

It happened….

I was in Jabalpur and a girl was brought to me. She must have been, at that time, nine years of age. She remembered her past life completely–so realistically that it was not a memory for her, it was a continuity. It was just some accidental error in nature that there was no barrier between the past life and this life.

There is a place just eighty miles away from Jabalpur, Katni. She was born in Katni and she remembered that she had her family in Jabulpur. She remembered the names, she remembered her husband, she remembered her sons, the house–she remembered everything. One of my friends brought them to me.

I said, “This is strange, because the people she is remembering are living just three or four blocks away from my house.” They had a petrol pump, so I used to go for petrol at their petrol pump every day. But I said, “You wait. You wait in my house and I will call them–the Pathak brothers–I will call them and we will see whether this girl remembers them or not.”

So they came with their servants and a few other neighbors. There were twelve, thirteen people in the crowd, so that they could see whether she could find out…. She immediately jumped, and said, “Brother, have you recognized me or not?” She caught hold of both brothers, among thirteen people, and she inquired about the mother and the children…and father had died, and she was crying. I

t was not a memory, it was a continuity. They took her to their home and then it was a problem: the girl was torn apart about whether to go to this family’s house in Jabalpur and live there, or to go back to Katni to the new family where she had been born.

Of course, in this family she had lived for seventy years, so the pull was more towards the past-life family. And in the new family she had been born only nine years before; there was no pull–but that was her family, her real family. This other family was only a memory, but to her, it was such a heart-rending problem.

And both the families were disturbed about what to do: if she remained in Jabalpur, she would remember the other family continuously, worry about what was happening to them and feel, “I want to go there.” If she was there, she would be thinking that she wanted to be in Jabalpur.

Finally I suggested that the only way–it was a freak case, there was nothing spiritual in it–was that she needed a deep hypnosis for a few days, so the barrier could be created. She had to be hypnotized to forget the old and the past. Unless she could forget the past, her whole life was going to be a misery.

Both families were ready to accept that something had to be done. She was hypnotized continually for at least ten days, to forget. It took ten sessions to create a small barrier so that the old life’s memories didn’t float into the new life.

I have been inquiring about her. She is now perfectly okay–married, has children, has forgotten completely. Even when those people come to see her, she does not recognize them. But her barrier is very thin and artificial. Any accident, and the barrier could be broken, or any hypnotist could break it very easily within ten sessions; or some great shock, and the barrier could be broken.

There is no need for you to remember. It is perfectly good.

We have to get free from the mind.

The East has known all the layers of the mind, but the East has emphasized a totally different aspect than the West: ignore it–you are the pure consciousness behind all these layers.

Western psychology is just childish, just born at the end of the last century. It is not even a hundred years old. They have taken up the desire to enter into dreams and to find out, to dig deeper into what is there in the mind.

There is nothing. You will find more and more memories, more and more dreams, and you will destroy the person because you will make him vulnerable to an unnecessary burden which has to be erased.

One has to go beyond mind, not within the mind.

And you don’t have any memory as far as the state of beyond mind is concerned.

Just drop the idea of the mind. Don’t meddle with it; it is getting into an unnecessary trouble and nightmare. You have to surpass the mind, you have to transcend the mind.

Your whole effort should be one-pointed, and that is how to be a no-mind: no dreams, no memories, no experiences.

Then you are at the very center of your being.

Only then do you taste something of immortality. Only then, for the first time, do you know what intelligence is

Osho teachings on Death

Osho : The first thing I would like to tell you about death is that there is no bigger lie than death. And yet, death appears to be true. It not only appears to be true but even seems like the cardinal truth of life–it appears as if the whole of life is surrounded by death. Whether we forget about it, or become oblivious to it, everywhere death remains close to us. Death is even closer to us than our shadow….

What I wish to say is that it is essential to see death, to understand it, to recognize it. But this is possible only when we die; one can only see it while dying. Then what is the way now? And if one sees death only while dying, then there is no way to understand it–because at the time of death one will be unconscious.

Yes, there is a way now. We can go through an experiment of entering into death of our own free will. And may I say that meditation or samadhi is nothing else but that. The experience of entering death voluntarily is meditation, samadhi. The phenomenon that will automatically occur one day with the dropping of the body–we can willingly make that happen by creating a distance, inside, between the self and the body. And so, by leaving the body from the inside, we can experience the event of death, we can experience the occurrence of death.

We can experience death today, this evening–because the occurrence of death simply means that our soul and our body will experience, in that journey, the same distinction between the two of them as when the vehicle is left behind and the traveler moves on ahead….

If the shell, the body, and the kernel, the consciousness, separate at this very instant, death is finished. With the creation of that distance, you come to know that the shell and the kernel are two separate things–that you will continue to survive in spite of the breaking of the shell, that there is no question of you breaking, of you disappearing. In that state, even though death will occur, it cannot penetrate inside you–it will occur outside you. It means only that which you are not will die. That which you are will survive.

This is the very meaning of meditation or samadhi: learning how to separate the shell from the kernel. They can be separated because they are separate. They can be known separately because they are separate. That’s why I call meditation a voluntary entry into death. And the man who enters death willingly, encounters it and comes to know that, “Death is there, and yet I am still here.”…

In meditation, too, one has to enter slowly within. And gradually, one after another, things begin to drop away. A distance is created with each and every thing, and a moment arrives when it feels as if everything is lying far away at a distance. It will feel as if someone else’s corpse is lying on the shore–and yet you exist. The body is lying there and still you exist–separate, totally distinct and different.

Once we experience seeing death face-to-face while alive, we will never have anything to do with death again. Death will keep on coming, but then it will be just like a stopover–it will be like changing clothes, it will be like when we take new horses and ride in new bodies and set out on a new journey, on new paths, into new worlds. But death will never be able to destroy us. This can only be known by encountering death. We will have to know it; we will have to pass through it.

Because we are so very afraid of death, we are not even able to meditate. Many people come to me and say that they are unable to meditate. How shall I tell them that their real problem is something else? Their real problem is the fear of death…and meditation is a process of death. In a state of total meditation we reach the same point a dead man does. The only difference is that the dead man reaches there in an unconscious state, while we reach consciously. This is the only difference. The dead man has no knowledge of what happened, of how the shell broke open and the kernel survived. The meditative seeker knows that the shell and the kernel have become separate.

The fear of death is the basic reason why people cannot go into meditation–there is no other reason. Those who are afraid of death can never enter into samadhi. Samadhi is a voluntary invitation to death. An invitation is given to death: “Come, I am ready to die. I want to know whether or not I will survive after death. And it is better that I know it consciously, because I won’t be able to know anything if this event occurs in an unconscious state.”

So, the first thing I say to you is that as long as you keep running away from death you will continue to be defeated by it–and the day you stand up and encounter death, that very day death will leave you, but you will remain.

These three days, all my talks will be on the techniques of how you can encounter death. I hope that, these three days, many people will come to know how to die, will be able to die….

Knowing death causes it to dissolve; then suddenly, for the first time, we become connected with life.

That’s why I told you that the first thing about meditation is that it is a voluntary entry into death. The second thing I would like to say is that one who enters into death willingly, finds, all of a sudden, entrance into life. Even though he goes in search of death, instead of meeting death he actually finds ultimate life. Even though, for the purpose of his search he enters the mansion of death, he actually ends up in the temple of life. And one who escapes from the mansion of death never reaches the temple of life….

I say both things simultaneously: meditation is entering voluntarily into death, and the one who enters death voluntarily attains to life. That means: one who encounters death ultimately finds that death has disappeared and he is in life’s embrace. This looks quite contrary–you go in search of death and come across life–but it is not….

These three days we shall do the meditation of entering into death. And I shall speak to you on many of its dimensions. Tonight we shall do the first day’s meditation. Let me explain a few things about it to you….

QUESTION: DOESN’T INTUITION COME TO ONE THROUGH THOUGHT WAVES THAT ARE JUST LIKE RADIO WAVES?

Osho : This, again, will be very difficult to explain. If intuition comes through some kind of waves, then sooner or later the intellect will be able to explain it. It comes without any medium; that is the point. It comes without a vehicle! It travels without any vehicle, that is why it is a jump, that is why it is a leap. If some waves are there and it comes to you through those waves, then it is not a jump, it is not a leap.

It is a jump from one point to another point, with no interconnection between the two; that is why it is a jump. If I come to you step by step, it is not a jump; only if I come to you without any steps is it a jump. And a real jump is even deeper: it means that something exists on point A and then it exists on point B, and between the two there is no existence. That is a real jump.

Intuition is a jump. It is not something coming to you; that is a linguistic error. It is not something coming to you: it is something happening to you, not coming to you – something happening to you without any causality anywhere, without any source anywhere. This sudden happening means intuition. If it is not sudden, not completely discontinuous with what went before, then reason will discover the path.

It will take time, but it can be done. If some X-rays, some waves or anything are carrying it to you, reason will be capable of knowing and understanding and controlling it. Then any day an instrument can be developed – just like radio or TV – in which intuitions can be received. If intuition comes through rays or waves, then we can make an instrument to receive them. Then Mohammed is not needed. But as I see it, Mohammed will be needed.

No instrument can pick up intuition because it is not a wave phenomenon. It is not a phenomenon at all; it is just a leap from nothing to being. Intuition means just that. That is why reason denies it. Reason denies it because reason is incapable of encountering it; reason can only encounter phenomena that can be divided into cause and effect.

According to reason there are two realms of existence: the known and the unknown. And the unknown means that which is not yet known, but someday will be known. But religion says that there are three realms: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. By the unknowable religion means that which can never be known.

Intellect is involved with the known and the unknown, not with the unknowable, and intuition works with the unknowable, with that which cannot be known. It is not just a question of time before it will be known; ”unknowability” is its intrinsic quality. It is not that your instruments are not fine enough or your logic not up to date or your mathematics primitive – that is not the question. The intrinsic quality of the unknowable is unknowability; it will always exist as the unknowable. This is the realm of intuition.

When something from the unknowable comes to be known, it is a jump. It is a jump! There is no interlink, there is no passage, there is no going from one point to another point. But it seems inconceivable, so when I say, ”You can feel it, but you cannot understand it,” when I say such things, I know very well that I am uttering nonsense. Nonsense only means ”that which cannot be understood by our senses.” And mind is a sense, the most subtle, and wisdom is a sense.

Intuition is possible because the unknowable is there. Science denies the existence of the divine because it says, ”There is only one division: the known and the unknown. If there is any God, we will discover him through laboratory methods. If he exists, science will discover him.”

Religion, on the other hand, says, ”Whatever you do, something in the very foundation of existence will remain unknowable – a mystery.”

And if religion is not right then I think that science is going to destroy the whole meaning of life. If there is no mystery, the whole meaning of life is destroyed and the whole beauty is destroyed. The unknowable is the beauty, the meaning, the aspiration, the goal. Because of the unknowable, life means something. When everything is known, then everything is flat. You will be fed up, bored. The unknowable is the secret; it is life itself.

I will say this: that reason is an effort to know the unknown and intuition is the happening of the unknowable. To penetrate the unknowable is possible, but to explain it is not. The feeling is possible; the explanation is not.

The more you try to explain it the more closed you will become, so do not try. Let reason work in its own field, but remember continuously that there are deeper realms. There are deeper reasons which reason cannot understand, higher reasons that reason is incapable of conceiving.

Osho : Consciousness is life; sleep is a form of death. Consciousness is the light of awareness that fills the heart; sleep is the darkness that is ridden with misery, pain and remorse. If this is how you feel, know well that you are in darkness. But you must understand that you are asleep, you must understand this state before you can awaken from it. To appreciate the desire for freedom you must first experience imprisonment.

I ask everyone to look inside, to be introspective. If you have any inclination whatsoever to escape form your inner mind, from your inner feelings, it is just an attempt to flee from the darkness you have encountered there. I meet people every day and have the opportunity to study many of them at length. One thing is common to them all, and that is suffering. Everyone is caught in a net of deep misery, entangled in a web of intense anxiety.

Everyone seems to be choked by a sense of suffocation. Is it the same with you? Do you have the same feeling of claustrophobia as well? Everywhere I look I see a lack of purpose; there is an atmosphere of boredom and of frustration all around. Is this what life is about? Are you satisfied with this? Have you not had enough yet? Is this life? or is this death?

Life is a totally different proposition altogether. It is a whole other experience – one you are not familiar with at all. I tell you this for a reason, because I too once mistook this so-called life for the real thing. This is a natural mistake, because unless your are aware that there is an alternative you will accept what you know as life. This is not a conscious mistake, it is an error of ignorance. But the tiniest thought about the self, the most minute attention to one’s inner being can eradicate this ignorance.

You should not accept whatsoever is presented to you, for this is blind, unconscious reacting. Thought is conscious, and so it can destroy all illusions. Thought is diametrically opposed to belief, which is completely unconscious. So to attain to a life that is real it is necessary to follow the path of thinking, not the cul de sac of belief. Belief is blind acceptance; thought is alert investigation. Those who accept everything blindly have no incentive whatsoever to move ahead. The greatest hurdle on the path to knowledge is this tendency to believe.

Belief is the only real barrier that stands in the way of freedom of thought. The chains of belief impede progress. Do not get caught in this trap. You will only attain to a life that is authentic through your own investigation. Do not be satisfied with life as it is. It is not real. It has no meaning, no validity. It is only an episode, just a part of the overall evolution of life.

I have heard a story of an old man who wanted to choose an heir before this death, and so he decided to put his two sons to a test. He gave each of them some wheat seeds, said he would be away for a while on a pilgrimage and told them to look after the seeds carefully. The first son stored the seeds is in an underground cellar; the second son planted them. Some years later, when the old man returned, he found that the seeds he had given the first son had rotted away while the second son’s seeds had increased a thousandfold.

Life is also like this. Life is like a seed; its potential is latent, hidden within it. Only the man who realizes this potential can become the master of his inner being.Each of us has the opportunity to grow. And reaching the greatest level of attainment possible, reaching the highest peak there is, is becoming real.

Osho : when you are happy you always feel weightless; when you are sad you always feel more weight, as if something is pulling you down. The gravitation becomes much more. When you are sad, you are more weighty. When you are happy, you are light. You feel it. Why? Because when you are happy, whenever you feel a blissful moment, you forget the body completely. When you are sad, suffering, you cannot forget the body, you feel the weight of it.

It pulls you down – down to the earth, as if you are rooted. Then you cannot move; you have roots in the earth. In happiness you are weightless. In sorrow, sadness, you become weighty.
In deep meditation, when you forget your body completely, you can levitate. Even the body can go up with you. It happens many times. Scientists have been observing one woman in Bolivia.

While meditating she goes up four feet, and now it has been observed scientifically; many films have been taken, many photographs. Before thousands and thousands of observers suddenly the woman goes up and gravity becomes nil, nullified. As of yet there is no explanation for what is happening, but that same woman cannot go up while not in meditation.

And if her meditation is disturbed, suddenly she falls down. What happens? Deep in meditation you forget your body completely, and the identification is broken. The body is a very small thing; you are very big, you have infinite power. The body has nothing in comparison to you.

It is as if an emperor has become identified with his slave, so as the slave goes begging, the emperor goes begging; as the slave weeps, the emperor weeps. When the slave says, ”I am no one,” the emperor says, ”I am no one.” Once the emperor recognizes his own being, once he recognizes that he is the emperor and this man is just a slave, everything will change suddenly.

You are infinite power identified with a very finite body. Once you realize your self, then weightlessness becomes more and the weight of the body less. Then you can levitate, the body can go up. There are many, many stories which cannot yet be proven scientifically, but they will be proven…

because if one woman can go up four feet, then there is no barrier. Another can go a thousand feet, another can go completely into the cosmos. Theoretically there is no problem: four feet or four hundred feet or four thousand feet, it makes no difference.

There are stories about Ram and about many others who have disappeared completely with the body. Their bodies were never found dead on this earth. Mohammed disappeared completely – not only with his body; it is said he disappeared with his horse also. These stories look impossible, they look mythological, but they are not necessarily so.

Once you know the weightless force, you have become the master of gravity. You can use it; it depends on you. You can disappear completely with your body.