Question – Our Beloved Master, I have understood that the witness is pure consciousness, unaffected by the body and mind it takes temporary residence in. So, first: how do personality traits and conditioning persist from one life to another? and second: does not that which makes us unique individuals have a continuum?

Osho – Maneesha, first you have to understand that you have not only this body of flesh and bones and blood, not only this brain which is part of the body. Behind the brain you have a mind — that mind is abstract — and behind the body you have an astral body. The word `astral’ comes from stars; it means a light…. Instead of flesh or bones, only a body made of light. This body of light, the astral body, has the mind in it.

When you die, your physical body and your physical mind are left behind. But the astral body travels with you, with the mind, with all the remembrances of the past life and the body, remembering all the scars and the wounds that have happened to the physical body. This abstract phenomenon travels with you; hiding within it is your ultimate, existential center.

Until you know the center, you will have to travel continuously from one body to another body. You have been traveling already for thousands of lives, gathering more and more memories in your astral mind, more and more memories in your astral body. Although your center is unaffected, it is surrounded by the astral body, and the astral body goes on from womb to womb, from grave to grave. That is your individuality; it has a continuum. But the continuum comes to an end when you become a buddha.

When you penetrate deeply to the center, you are also cutting the astral body apart, making a way through the mind, beyond the mind, through the astral body and beyond the astral body, to the center of your being. Once you have reached to the center of your being, the continuum of your individuality stops. Now begins the universal existence. You will not enter into another womb again, and you will not be burnt on another funeral pyre again. Now you will be one with the whole. Of course, everything has a cost. You will have to drop your long-cherished love of individuality. Millions of years you have loved your individuality, but your individuality at the final stage is a hindrance.

Now take a jump out of the continuum and become one with the whole. You will disappear just like a dewdrop in the ocean. But it is the ultimate bliss, it is the most profound ecstasy to become the oceanic, to become the cosmic. You will never repent that you have lost your individuality.

What was in your individuality?
Have you ever thought?

Your individuality was a light prison, which carried you from one womb, passing through the grave, to another womb, and repeating the same things again and again and again. That’s why in the East they call it the life and death cycle. To jump out of this cycle is the whole purpose of meditation — to come out of this continuum, which has been just a deep anguish, anxiety and angst, and to disappear into the blue sky.

This disappearance is not your death. This disappearance makes you one with the whole. And to be one with the whole is the greatest joy, the greatest blissfulness. Nothing is more significant, more full of splendor, more majestic. Here all the buddhas have disappeared in the ultimate eternity of existence. It is freedom from individuality, freedom from yourself.

You have known freedom from others, but you don’t recognize that you are still a slave of your own individuality. It is a cage… it may be golden. Open the cage and fly across the sun into the blue sky and disappear, without leaving any footprints, any trace behind. This Gautam the Buddha used to call anatta, no self, no mind, no you, no I. This in fact
can be said in another way….

I have told you about Kabir, one of the great mystics of India. When he was young he became enlightened, and he wrote a small poem, in which comes the line: The drop has disappeared in the ocean. When he was dying, he called his son Kamaal and told him to change that line. Kamaal said, “It is so beautiful — the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. Why are you changing it? And what is the substitute?”

Kabir said, “These are my last breaths; don’t argue, simply do what I am saying. You write instead: The ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop. That was my first impression, this is my last impression.” And he closed his eyes.

But both the impressions are beautiful. In the beginning, of course, you will see the dewdrop is disappearing in the ocean. But finally you will realize the ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop.

Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.
Miss Goodbody says to her class one afternoon, “Okay, children, the one who gives me the right answer to the next question may go home right away.”
Immediately, Little Albert throws his schoolbag out of the window.
“Who did that?” snaps Miss Goodbody, angrily.
“I did!” says Albert. “See you tomorrow!”

Paddy decides that it is time to get a full-time job. A new salami factory has opened in town, so he goes to apply. He picks up his application form, and he meets Mussolini McVey, the manager.
“Now, Mr. Murphy,” says Mussolini, “we have got many applications for these jobs, so we have included two intelligence-testing questions. Come back tomorrow with your application and the answers to the questions.”
At home, Paddy looks at the form.

Question 1 reads: How many seconds are there in a year? Question 2 reads: How many days of the week begin with the letter “T”?
The next morning, Paddy goes for his interview at the appointed time.

“Good morning, Mr. Murphy,” says Mussolini McVey. “And what is your answer to the first question — How many seconds are there in a year?”
“No problem, sir,” says Paddy. “The answer is twelve.”
“Twelve?” asks Mussolini. “How did you get that?”
“Easy,” replies Paddy. “The second of January… the second of February…!”
“Okay, okay Mr. Murphy,” says McVey. “What about question two: How many days of the week begin with `T’?”
“No problem, sir,” says Paddy. “The answer is two.”
“Very good,” says McVey. “and by the way, what are they?”
“Easy,” replies Paddy. “Today and tomorrow.”
Farmer Scrumpy has been in the city for a couple of days, and when he gets back, Homer, his hired hand, collects him from the train station in the old farm Ford.
“How is everything, Homer?” asks Scrumpy.
“Ah, so-so,” replies Homer.
“Anything much happen while I was gone?” asks Scrumpy, climbing into the car.
“Nothing much to speak of,” replies Homer, driving off. “The dog limps a little.”
“Really?” asks Scrumpy.
“Yup,” says Homer.
“How did that happen?” asks Scrumpy.
“Well,” explains Homer, “I guess the old horse was acting kind of crazy, running out of the stable, half scorched, in the middle of the night, and kicked him.”
“The horse?” cries Scrumpy. “Half scorched?”
“Yup,” explains Homer. “When the barn burnt down and all the hay went up in smoke, the horse got scorched.”
“Really?” cries Scrumpy. “The barn burnt down?”
“Yup,” replies Homer. “I guess a few sparks must have jumped from the house to start it. I got out of the house just in time.”
“Really?” cries Scrumpy. “The house was on fire? How did you get out?”
“Well,” explains Homer, “your wife kicked me out of bed and woke me up!”
“Really?” shouts Scrumpy. “You were in bed with my wife?”
“Yup! We were drinking your homemade whiskey.”
“Really?” shouts Scrumpy. “You were drinking my whiskey and in my bed with my wife? Where is she now?”
“Well,” explains Homer, “she got crisped in the fire, but don’t worry! I saved the whiskey!”
“Thank God!” cries Scrumpy. “Did anything else happen?”
“Nope,” explains Homer, “it was a pretty quiet weekend!”

Source – Osho Book “One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green”

Osho – A very deep and intense experiment on Samved Shikhar was made by the twenty-two tirthankaras, just as they were leaving their bodies. On that mountain they tried to intensify and multiply the vibrations of their developed consciousness so that it would be easier for us to communicate with them. It was thought that if so many souls of such consciousness left their body from the same place, a path between that place and another plane could be laid. And such a path has existed.

The rainfall is not the same everywhere on earth: there are some areas of heavy rain, where it rains as much as five hundred inches, and desert areas where there is no rain or it is very scarce. Similarly there are places which are very cold, where there is nothing but snow everywhere; and there are areas so hot that it is difficult to make ice. In the same way on the earth there are places with high density consciousness and low density consciousness. Conscious attempts have been made to create areas of high consciousness, fields charged with human consciousness. They do not happen automatically, but are a result of the consciousnesses of powerful individuals.

Twenty-two tirthankaras traveling to that one mountain, entering samadhi and leaving their bodies there, created a highly charged field of consciousness, in some special sense, at Samved Shikhar. It was intended that if someone sits there, chanting the special mantras given by those twenty-two tirthankaras, his journey in out-of-the-body experiences will immediately begin. This is as scientific an experiment as any which takes place in a laboratory.

The only reason for creating the places for pilgrimage was to experiment with creating powerfully charged fields of conscious energies, so that anyone could easily begin his inner journey. There are two methods of making a boat move. One method is to open the sails at the right time in the direction of the wind and not use the oars; the other method is not to open the sails, but to help the boat move with the use of the oars. The places of pilgrimage are places where a stream of consciousness is flowing automatically: you just have to stand in the middle of the stream where the sails of your consciousness open up and you begin your journey onwards. You will be able to travel far more easily and faster in such places than anywhere else, and alone. Elsewhere, you may unknowingly reach some negative place and open up your sails in the wrong direction: you may move further away from your destination and become lost.

For example, if you are sitting in meditation at a place which is full of negative emotions – where butchers are killing animals the whole day – there will be a great struggle and conflict in your mind. In meditation you become very receptive, open and vulnerable, so whatever is happening around you at that time enters you. So when you meditate it is always necessary to choose a place which will not take you in a wrong direction. Whenever, during meditation, you have disturbing thoughts or find it difficult to be silent, move from such a place.

You can sit in meditation in a jail too, but that requires a very strong individuality. There are different methods to help you meditate in a jail: you create a line of demarcation over which negative forces cannot enter.

But in a tirtha, a holy pilgrimage place, such a line is not necessary. In such a place you drop all resistance and open all your doors and windows. There, positive energy is flowing in abundance. Hundreds of people have traveled into the unknown from there and have created a path. It is as if they have made a path by cutting down trees and removing the bushes blocking the path, so that those walking behind them find it easier to travel. On the religious path, efforts are made by the higher, stronger consciousnesses to help weaker people, in every way. The place of pilgrimage was one such experiment.

A place of pilgrimage is where the currents are flowing from the body towards the soul, where the whole atmosphere is charged; from where people have achieved samadhi, from where people realized their enlightenment. Such places have become specially charged. In such a place, if you just open your sails, without doing nothing else, your journey will begin.

So all religions have established their places of pilgrimage. Even those religions which were against temples have done it. It is surprising that religions that were against idol worship and temples established places of pilgrimage. It was easy to remove idols, but places of pilgrimage could not be removed because such places have a value which no religions could oppose or deny.

Jainas are not basically idol worshipers, nor are Mohammedans nor Sikhs nor Buddhists; in the beginning Buddhists were not idol worshipers at all. But all of them have established their sacred places of pilgrimage. They had to. Without such places there is no meaning for a religion. If there were no such places, everything would have to be done by the individual, and in that case there would be no meaning or purpose in a religious commune.

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.
Jainism does not believe in a god, it believes in man’s potential. That is why Jainas could benefit more deeply from the tirtha and the tirthankaras than followers of any other religion. In the Jaina religion there is no concept of ”God’s grace” or ”God’s compassion.” Jainas do not think that God can give any help; the seeker is alone and has to travel by his own effort and energy.

But then there are two ways in which he can travel.On the first, every man has to travel in his own boat, with the strength of his own hands, using the oars. One out of many may succeed. But on the second path you can take the help of the winds and open up your sails so that you can travel faster and more easily.

But are such ”spiritual winds” available? This is the whole purpose of the places of pilgrimage. Is it possible that when a person like Mahavira is there, all around him, from some unknown direction, a flow of energy begins? Can he create an energy flow in a particular direction so that if anyone enters that current he will just be carried along by it and will reach his ultimate destiny? In fact, this flowing in a spiritual direction is the holy pilgrimage.

There are physical indications of such places of pilgrimage, but as time passes, those signs may disappear. So they have to be protected by building temples or erecting huge idols so that the footprints of those great seers can be preserved. Great care has to be taken so that those places do not shift even by an inch from where the event had happened sometime in the past.

Source – Osho Book “Hidden Mysteries”

Question – Beloved Osho, Why and how are people coming to you from the four corners of the earth?

Osho – If one tells the truth, he’s sure to be found out sooner or later — that’s why. It is impossible… if you have uttered the truth, it is impossible for people not to come. They are hankering for it, they are thirsty for it, they are hungry for it; and they have remained hungry for many lives. Once a ripple of truth arises anywhere, a song, those who are hungry — they may be anywhere on the planet — something in their unconscious starts happening.

We are connected in the unconscious; in the deepest realm of our being we are one. If one man becomes a Buddha, then everybody’s unconscious is thrilled. You may not know consciously, but everybody’s unconscious is thrilled. It is like a spider’s web: you touch it from anywhere and the whole web starts trembling. We are one in our base. We are like a solid strong tree, standing solitary in the field — big, huge, with great foliage. Leaves are millions, branches are many, but it all depends on a solid trunk, and they all are rooted in one soil. If one leaf turns enlightened, the whole tree will know it unconsciously… “Something has happened.” Those who are consciously searching for truth will be the first to start moving. The unconscious will have the ripples.

A friend has just written: he was sitting somewhere in California… And it can happen more easily in California than anywhere else. California is the future; the most potential consciousness is happening there. California is the most vulnerable, so it can happen only in California. It cannot happen in Soviet Russia — things are very dull and dead.

A friend went to visit a woman. They were eating and drinking, and suddenly he looked into the eyes of the woman and there was immense power. Maybe the alcohol, the drinking, the music, the aloneness of these two persons, the loving atmosphere, triggered something. He saw immense power in the eyes of the woman, and he got caught in those eyes, almost magnetized, hypnotized. And he started looking, and when he started looking the woman started swaying, something started moving, something in the unconscious. And after a few minutes the woman started saying, “Rauneesh, Rauneesh, Rauneesh” — and she had not known me at all, had not ever heard about me. When she came back, the man said, “You were repeating a certain name — Rauneesh — it seems to be very strange. I have never heard it.”

And the woman said, “I have never heard it. I don’t know.” They both went to a bookstall to search for the name. Of course, it was not Rauneesh, it was Rajneesh. And he looked into my books, and that’s what he had been searching for for many, many years. Next month he will be coming here. Now how does it happen? Something in the depth of the woman…

It is easier for a woman to receive messages, because she is closer to the unconscious than man. Man has gone far away from the unconscious. He has become too much hung up in the head, in the conscious. The woman still lives by hunches. Something started stirring in her unconscious with the man looking into her eyes. And the man is a conscious searcher; the woman is not. The woman had never been looking for a master. She is not coming. She must have explained it away as just a coincidence or something. She has never been interested in any search, but her unconscious was more receptive. Being a woman, and then alcohol, and this man looking immensely magnetized by her eyes — all these things worked, something surfaced. And this man’s conscious was looking. Hearing this word he was hooked. He got hooked with the word; he could not forget it. He had to go to the bookstalls to find out, to the library, here and there, ask friends what this word was.

It is not a miracle. It is a simple process of how things happen. You ask me: “How and why are people coming to you from the four corners of the earth?”

Distance is not the question; search, hunger, thirst is the question. If somebody is in search, sooner or later he will come to know about me — sometimes accidentally — and he will start having a pull towards me. Millions are searching, and the more people are around me, and the more people start getting deeper into their beings, the more will become the pull of this place. Then it will not be only I pulling them, not only I stirring their depths — the whole place here will start pulling. It can become a magnetic center. It depends on you, on how far you start moving into your being, how far you fall in tune with me, how deep is your surrender.

Source – Osho Book “The Heart Sutra”

Question – While in an art museum in frankfurt recently, i entered one room with nothing but statues and carvings of buddha. I put absolutely no faith in stone idols, but i was surprised to feel a very strong energy current in the room, similar to what i feel here in the lecture. Was i imagining things? And if so, how can i trust what i feel here with you?

Osho – The question is from Anand Samagra. The first thing to be understood: you will be surprised to know that the Buddha statues have nothing to do with Gautam Buddha. They are all false, they don’t resemble Buddha at all, but they have something to do with buddhahood. Not with Gautam Buddha, the person – they have something to do with buddhahood.

You can go into a Jain temple and you will see twenty-four statues of twenty-four TEERTHANKARAS, the founders of Jainism, and you will be unable to make out any difference between them; they are all alike. To make a distinction, Jains make small symbols on them to know who is who, because they are all alike. So if somebody’s symbol is a line figure, then just underneath the feet is a small line figure. Then they know whose statue this is. Somebody’s symbol is a snake – then they know whose statue this is. If those symbols were hidden, not even a Jain could make any demarcation. Whose statue is this? Mahavir’s? Parswanatha’s? Adinatha’s? And you will also be surprised to know that they are exactly like Buddha – no difference.

In the beginning, when the West became acquainted with Mahavir, they thought it was nothing but the same story of Buddha, because the statue is the same, the philosophy is the same, the understanding is the same, the teaching is the same – so it was just the same thing; it was nothing different from Buddha. They thought Mahavir was another name for Buddha. And of course both were called Buddhas – ’Buddha’ means ’the awakened one’ so Buddha was called Buddha and Mahavir was also called Buddha. And both were called Jains – ’Jain’ means the ’conqueror’, one who has conquered himself. Buddha is called ’the Jain’ and Mahavir is called ’the Jain’, so they thought that they were just the same person.

And the statues were a great proof: they look absolutely alike. They are not photographic, they don’t represent a person, they represent a certain state. You will have to understand it, then the thing will be explained. In India, three words are very important: one is TANTRA, which we are talking about, another is MANTRA, and the third is YANTRA.

TANTRA means techniques for expanding your consciousness. MANTRA means finding your inner sound, your inner rhythm, your inner vibration. Once you have found YOUR MANTRA, it is of tremendous help: just one utterance of the MANTRA and you are in a totally different world. That becomes the key, the passage, because once uttering that MANTRA, you fall into your natural vibe. And the third is YANTRA. These statues are YANTRAS. YANTRA means a certain figure which can create a certain state in you. A certain figure, if you look at it, is bound to create a certain state in you.

Have you not watched it? – looking at a Picasso painting you will start feeling a little uneasy. Concentrate on a Picasso painting for half an hour and you will feel very bizarre – something is going crazy. You cannot look at a Picasso painting for half an hour. If you keep Picasso paintings in your bedroom you will have nightmares. You will have very dangerous dreams: being haunted by ghosts, tortured by Adolf Hitler and things like that; a war victim in a concentration camp – things like that.

When you watch something, it is not only that the figure is outside – when you watch something, the figure creates a certain situation in you. Gurdjieff used to call this ’objective art’. And you know it: listening to modern pop music, something happens in you – you become more excited sexually. There is nothing but sound outside, but the sound hits inside – creates something in you. Listening to classical music, you become less sexual, less excited. In fact, with great classical music you almost forget sex, you are in a tranquility, a silence, a totally different dimension of your being. You exist on another place.

Watching a Buddha statue is watching a YANTRA. The figure of the statue, the geometry of the statue, creates a figure inside you. And that inside figure creates a certain vibe. It was not just imagination that happened to you, Samagra, in the Frankfurt museum; those Buddha statues created a certain vibe in you.

Watch the state of Buddha sitting so silently, in a certain yoga posture. If you go on watching the statue, you will find something like that is happening within you too. If you are in company where ten persons are sad, and you are the eleventh person, how long can you remain happy? Those ten persons will function like a YANTRA, a YANTRA of sadness: you will fall into sadness sooner or later. If you are unhappy and you go into company where people are joking and laughing, how long can you remain sad? Those laughing people will create laughter in you. They will change your focus, they will change your gear; you will start moving in a different direction. This happens every day – knowingly, unknowingly.

When you watch a full moon, what happens to you? Or when you listen to the birds and look at the green trees, what happens to you? When you go into a forest and look at the greenery, what happens to you? Something green inside starts happening. Green is the colour of nature, green is the colour of spontaneity, green is the colour of life – something green starts happening in you. The outer colour reflects something inside, vibrates with something inside, creates something inside. Looking at a green tree you become more alive… you become younger!

When you go to the Himalayas and you see the mountains, the snow-capped mountains – eternal. snow which has never melted, the purest snow where no man has ever walked, uncontaminated by human society and human touch – when you look at a Himalayan peak, that uncorrupted, virgin snow creates something virgin in you. A subtle peace starts happening inside. The outer is not the outer, and the inner is not just the inner; they are joined together. So beware of what you see, beware of what you listen to, beware of what you read, beware of where you go – because all that creates you.

That’s what happened in Frankfurt. The Buddha statues, the many statues all around you created a certain geometry. You will be surprised: that is the basic reason why statues were created. They are not idols, as you think. The Christian and the Mohammedan and the Judaic idea has given a very wrong notion to the world. They are not idols, they are very scientific. They are not objects to be worshipped, they are geometries to be imbibed. It is a totally different thing.

In China there is one Buddha temple which has ten thousand Buddha statues, all Buddha statues. Wherever you look – the same figure. The ceiling has the same figure, all the sides have the same figure, the walls have the same figure. Ten thousand Buddha statues! Just think, sitting cross-legged in a Buddha posture and you are also surrounded by ten thousand Buddhas! It creates a geometry. From everywhere Buddha impinges upon you. From every nook and corner he starts surrounding you. You are gone. Your ordinary geometry is no longer there. Your ordinary life is no longer there. For a few moments you are moving on higher planes, at higher altitudes.

That’s what is happening here. While listening to me something is created – by my presence, by my words, by your attitude, by so many orange people around you. It is a situation, it is a temple. A temple is a situation. It is not just that you are sitting in a lecture hall. So many people listening to me with such love, gratitude, with such silence, with such sympathy, with such rapport this place becomes holy. This place becomes a TEERTHA; it is sacred. When you come into this place you are riding on a wave, you need not make much effort. You can simply allow it to happen. You will be taken away, far away to the other shore.

A marriage broker arranged with a family to bring over a girl he thought would be a fine match for their son. After dinner, the girl left and the family began to attack the marriage broker. ’What kind of a girl did you bring? A monster! One eye in the middle of her forehead, the left ear way up here, the right ear way down there and the chin way back!’
The marriage broker interrupted. ’Look, either you like Picasso or you don’t!’

Modern painting represents the ugly in existence. The ugly has become predominant for a certain reason. This century is one of the ugliest centuries: two world wars within fifty years; millions of people killed, destroyed; such cruelty, such aggression, such violence, such madness; this century is a nightmarish century. Man has lost track of his humanity.

What man has been doing to man! Naturally this madness has erupted everywhere – in painting, in music, in sculpture, in architecture – everywhere the ugly human mind has created ugliness. Ugliness has become an aesthetic value. Now the photographer goes and looks for something ugly. Not that beauty has stopped existing, it exists as much as before, but it is neglected. The cactus has replaced the rose. Not that the cactus is something new, it has existed always, but this century has come to know that thorns seem to be more real than a rose flower. A rose flower seems to be a dream; it does not fit with us, hence the rose flower has been expelled. The cactus has entered your drawing-room. Just one hundred years ago nobody would have ever thought to bring a cactus home. Now, if you are modern, your garden will be full of cactuses. The rose looks a little bourgeois; the rose looks a little out-of-date; the rose looks Tory, orthodox, traditional. The cactus looks revolutionary. Yes, the cactus is revolutionary – like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and Mao Tsetung and Fidel Castro. Yes, the cactus seems to be closer to this century.

The photographer looks for some ugly thing – he will go and photograph a beggar. Not that the beggar has not existed before, he HAS existed before. He is REAL, certainly real, but nobody has been making art out of him. We are feeling humble before the beggar; we are feeling apologetic before the beggar; we are feeling that something which should not be is still there; we want the beggar not to be there. But this century goes on searching for the ugly.

The sun still penetrates the pines on a certain morning. The rays penetrating the pines create such a web of beauty. It still exists, but no photographer is interested that no longer appeals. Ugliness appeals because we have become ugly. That which appeals to us shows something about us. Buddha is a rose flower: that is the highest possibility. And remember, it is not exactly a Buddha figure; nobody knows what Buddha looked like. But that is not the point. We were not interested in those days, at least not in the East, we were not interested in the real at all; we were interested in the ultimately real. We were not interested in the factual; we were interested in truth itself.

Maybe Buddha’s nose was a little longer, but if the artist thought that a nose which was a little smaller would be more in tune with meditation, then he dropped that long nose of Buddha – he made it a little smaller. Maybe Buddha had a big belly. Who knows? Japanese Buddha statues have big bellies, but Indian Buddhas don’t have big bellies – different attitudes.

In Japan they think that a meditator has to breathe from the belly, from the navel. And when you breathe from the belly, the belly of course becomes a little bigger. Then the chest is not as protruding as the belly; the chest is relaxed. So Japanese Buddhas have big bellies. That too is for a certain reason: to indicate to you that belly-breathing is the right breathing. It has nothing to do with Buddha; nobody knows whether he had a big belly or not.

Indian statues don’t have big bellies, because Indian yoga does not insist on belly-breathing: the belly has to be in. That too has a certain different reason. If you want the sexual energy to move upwards, then it is better not to belly-breathe. When the belly is pulled in, the energy is sucked upwards more easily – different techniques.

Belly-breathing is also good for a certain meditator – it is very relaxing. But then the energy cannot move in the same way as it moves when the belly is pulled in. The Indian statues of Buddha have small bellies – almost no bellies. Nobody knows exactly how Buddha looked. The statues are very feminine, very round; they don’t look masculine. Have you ever seen any statue with a moustache and beard? No, the people who painted Jesus were more realistic. The people who painted Buddha were not concerned with facticity, they were concerned with ultimate truth. They were not concerned how Buddha looked, they were concerned how Buddhas should look. The emphasis was not on Buddha but on the people who would be looking at these statues – how this statue was going to help those people.

So Buddha is not painted as old. He must have become old, he became eighty-two. He was very old – certainly, very old and ill – a physician had to follow him continuously. But no statue has painted him as old, ill, because that is not the point. We are not interested in the physical body of the Buddha, we are interested in his inner geometry. That inner quality of Buddha is always young, it is never old. And it is never ill, it is always in a state of well-being; by its very nature it cannot be ill. The body is young, the body is old, the body becomes crippled, the body dies. Buddha is not born, never dies: Buddha remains eternally young.

Looking at a young statue, something of youth will happen in you, and you will feel something fresh. Now, Indians would never have preferred Jesus to be pictured, painted, sculptured on the cross. It is ugly, it is sad. Even if it is historical, it is not worth remembering because whatsoever you think has happened, you tend to help it happen again. There is no obligation towards facts: we don’t owe anything to the past, we need not remember the past as it was. It is in our hands to choose the past – to choose the past in such a way that a better future can be created.

Yes, Jesus was crucified, but if he were crucified in India, we would not have painted that. Even on the cross we would have painted a totally different thing. The Western painting is of Jesus in anguish, in sadness – naturally, he is being killed. When you watch, when you concentrate, meditate, on Jesus, you will feel sad. It is not accidental that Christians say that Jesus never laughed. And it is not accidental that you are not allowed to dance and laugh and be gay in a church. Church is a serious affair: you have to be very serious… long faces. In fact, when Jesus is crucified just there on the altar, how can you laugh and sing?

In India you can sing and laugh and enjoy. Religion is a merriment, a celebration. The whole point is that the Western mind is historical, the Eastern mind is existential. The West pays too much attention to mundane facts, the East never pays any attention to history. You will be surprised to know that until Western people came to India, India had not known anything like history.

We have never written history, we have never bothered about it. That’s why we don’t know when exactly Buddha was born, when exactly he died – we have never paid much respect to facts. Facts are mundane! What does it matter whether he was born on Monday or Tuesday or Thursday? What does it matter? How does it matter? In fact, it does not matter at all – any day will do, and any year will do. That is not the point. The point is: WHO was born? Who was this man in his innermost core?

History thinks about the periphery, myth thinks about the innermost core. India has written mythology but not history. We have PURANAS. PURANAS are mythology, they are not histories. They are poetic, mystic visions of how things should be, not how they are. They are the vision of the ultimate. And Buddha is the vision of ultimate SAMADHI.

Those Buddha statues you saw in the Frankfurt museum are the states of inner silence. When a person is absolutely silent, he will be in that state. When everything is still and quiet and calm inside – not a thought moves, not a small breeze blows; when everything has stopped, time has stopped – then you will also feel to sit like a Buddha. Something of the same geometry will happen to you.

It is objective art – less concerned with the reality of Buddha, more concerned with those people who will be coming and will be seeking Buddhahood. The emphasis is different: what will happen to those who watch these statues, and will kneel down before these statues, and will meditate on these statues.

In India there are temples like Khajuraho where all sorts of sexual postures are sculptured. Many postures are so absurd that even a de Sade or a von Sacher-Masoch would not be able to imagine them. The most perverted person also could not imagine them. For example, the man and woman standing on their heads and making love – it does not seem that anybody is going to try or imagine it. Why did they paint these pictures? They are examples of objective art.

These temples of Khajuraho were no ordinary temples. They were a kind of therapy: they exist as a therapy. Whenever somebody was suffering from some sexual perversion he was sent to Khajuraho. He had to watch and meditate on all those abnormal, bizarre things. He had something perverted in his mind: that perversion was inside the unconscious. What does psychoanalysis do? It tries to bring things from the unconscious to the conscious, that’s all. And psychoanalysis says that once something comes from the unconscious to the conscious, it is released; you are free of it.

Now this was a great psychoanalysis this Khajuraho. An abnormal, perverted man is brought. He has repressed his perversions – sometimes they erupt, but he goes on repressing. He knows that something is there like a wound, but he has never been able to see it face to face. He is brought to Khajuraho. He moves slowly, meditating on each statue, each bizarre posture. And one day, suddenly, one posture fits with his inner perversion. Suddenly, from the unconscious, the perversion surfaces to the conscious, and it is released without any Freud or Jung or Adler there – just the temple will do. He is left in the temple. For a few weeks he can be there. For each meditator who really wanted to go into deep meditation in those days, it was good to visit a temple like Khajuraho.

On the walls of the temple are all these statues – very abnormal, very crazy, very perverted. Inside the temple there is no sexual painting, no sexual statue at all, no sexuality at all. Inside is neither Buddha’s statue. Shiva’s statue nor Krishna’s statue.

What is the meaning of it? Why sex on the wall just outside, and inside no sex? It is a technique. First you have to move on the periphery, so that you can become free of sex. When a person feels that these sexual statues don’t attract him at all – now he goes on sitting before them and nothing happens inside, he remains calm and quiet, no sexual arousal, no excitement; for weeks he waits, and no sexuality is felt then he is capable of entering the temple.

It is symbolic. Now his sexuality can go beyond. These temples were Tantra temples: one of the greatest experiments ever done. They are not obscene, they are not pornographic, they are spiritual – a great experiment in spirituality, a great experiment in transforming human energy towards higher levels.

But first the energy has to be freed from the lower level. And to free it there is only one way: to make it absolutely conscious, to bring all the fantasies of the unconscious mind to the conscious. When the unconscious is completely unburdened, you are free. Then you don’t have any blocks, then you can move inwards. Then you can go inside the temple. Then you can meditate on Buddha, on Shiva, or Krishna.

It was not imagination, Samagra, it was objective art which you stumbled upon unknowingly.

Source – Osho Book “The Tantra Vision, Vol 2″

[The new sannyasin says: Before I came here I was in Goa. For three days before I left I was in a state of very high energy. I wrote some notes in a book. Two days after I arrived here you gave one of the lectures using almost exactly the same words as were written in the book. Please can you comment?]

Osho – It is possible, it is possible. We are all connected, very deeply connected. We are only separate on the surface, at the centre we are one. On the periphery we are individuals, in the centre we are universal.

And if sometimes you are at the centre, you can have all those glimpses which happen to anybody who is at the centre. At some time everybody moves to the centre; in spite of oneself sometimes one reaches. It can happen accidentally also: something triggers a process, one is flowing very high.

You may not be able to express it sometimes, or maybe your expression is not adequate, because the expression belongs to the periphery and the experience belongs to the centre. When you are at the centre you experience something.

When you come back to the periphery you may not be able to express it or may be able only to express it inadequately. Somebody else may be able to express in a better way. Listening to him, suddenly you will see, ‘But this is what I was going to say, this is what I have been feeling.’

It has always been happening in the world. Now they call it synchronicity; parallel processes are going on. Scientists also think that if a certain discovery is made, for example, the theory of relativity….

Now they say that if Einstein had not discovered it, then within months somebody else would have discovered it because many people around the earth were feeling the same. Einstein was just the first to express it. When he expressed it, many people felt that this is what they had been vaguely feeling. It was ambiguous, not very clear and loud, but it was there. In some mysterious way it was felt by many people.

Sometimes it has happened that a patent has been registered in America on a certain day, another patent for the same thing has been registered in England on the same day and another in Japan. All the three persons have come to discover the same thing almost at the same time. It becomes difficult: who is the discoverer? Einstein himself said later on that if he had not discovered the theory somebody else would have; the time for the idea had come.

So you will feel this many times. And when you are in a kind of depth or height — call it height or depth — when you are not feeling ordinary, when you are feeling something extraordinary, then you will have glimpses. And others may have those glimpses in that state too. Those who permanently abide in that state can always feel whatsoever is being felt around the world.

It happens. Life is more mysterious than we think it is, it is far more mysterious than fictions. It will happen again and again — watch! Good!

Source – Osho Book “Believing the Impossible Before Breakfast”

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”

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 : 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.

Related Link: If a Tirthankara desires to be born, Can he take a physical Body?

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 : 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 : 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….