ENLIGHTENMENT: THE LAST NIGHTMARE
Enlightenment is the final destination of every seeker. And yet a seeking mind cannot find it. One cannot attain to it through effort, no matter how arduous that effort is nor can one reach the state of enlightenment without totally exhausting oneself. When a seeker has done all that could be done and realized the futility of all doing, only in that state of utter non-doing, the state of total let-go does enlightenment descend.
Enlightenment in itself is simple, natural. Unenlightenment is our decision. Enlightenment is the flowering of our innermost being but then it is up to us to decide.
how long we want to remain unenlightened. Any moment we can drop unenlightenment. The right question would not be: How to become enlightened? The right question would be: How to drop all the props that are keeping us unenlightened? We all are born enlightened. Enlightenment is our being, we cannot become it.
The contemporary mystic, Osho is both the continuum of this ancient lineage and the beginning of a new one. With him, a new era of mysticism has heralded. Osho challenged the long held belief that regarded asceticism and materialistic pursuit as two parallel quests that mutually excluded each other. His original and revolutionary vision, which was broad enough to embrace both the mundane and the sacred together, called for a new man, who responded to the call of this world and the otherworld with equal zeal, enthusiasm and joy. His teachings do not denounce any pursuit of pleasure and yet he continuously reminds us that the ultimate joy, the ultimate contentment can come through enlightenment alone. This book is a rare compilation of his discourses in response to the questions of seekers. Never before a subject, as lofty and as delicate as enlightenment had been explained with such candor, covering all important aspects of the subject. And that too with an enviable sense of humor!
It is an impossible task to contain the uncontainable, to give the taste of enlightenment through the limited frame of words. And yet Osho has done it beautifully, with a flare of great aesthetics and poetry. Not only his words, but every gesture, every movement, everything that he did was an expression and expansion of his enlightenment.
Osho's revolutionary approach to religion responds aptly to the need of a contemporary man. For example, we are aware that in all the religions of the world, except for a few tantric sects, women have been denied equal footing with their male counterparts. They were not considered to be a worthy candidate for enlightenment. In fact, it is said that even a great master such as Gautama Buddha hesitated to allow women into the sangha and finally when they were allowed, they had been subject to many conditions. Mahaveer went as far as to declare that enlightenment was not attainable through a woman's body. At most, a sadhika (a Jain nun) could earn enough good virtue to attain a male body in her next life. Osho was unwilling to continue the legacy of this flawed and biased view-point. Not only did he recognize women as equally worthy candidates but even initiated a woman as his first disciple. And in his ashrams all leading and decision-making positions were given to female sanyasins.
A DATE WITH DEATH AND GOD
I am reminded of the fateful day of twenty-first March, 1953 For many lives I had been working-working upon myself, struggling, doing whatsoever can be done-and nothing was happening. Now I understand why nothing was happening. The very effort was the barrier, the very ladder was preventing, the very urge to seek was the obstacle. Not that one can reach without seeking. Seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped. The boat is needed to cross the river but then comes a moment when you have to get out of the boat and forget all about it and leave it behind. Effort is needed, without effort nothing is possible. And also only with effort, nothing is possible.
Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search.
And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air-it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close.
Just because I was seeking I had become incapable of seeing the near. Seeking is always for the far, seeking is always for the distant and it was not distant. I had become far-sighted, I had lost the near-sightedness. The eyes had become focussed on the far away, the horizon, and they had lost the quality to see that which is just close, surrounding you.
The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving. The phenomenon of the ego, of the self, is not a thing, it is a process. It is not a substance sitting there inside you; you have to create it each moment. It is like pedalling bicycle. If you pedal it goes on and on, if you don't pedal it stops. It may go a little because of the past momentum, but the moment you stop pedalling, in fact the bicycle starts stopping. It has no more energy, no more power to go anywhere. It is going to fall and collapse.
The ego exists because we go on pedalling desire, because we go on striving to get something, because we go on jumping ahead of ourselves. That is the very phenomenon of the ego-the jump ahead of yourself, the jump in the future, the jump in the tomorrow. The jump in the non-existential creates the ego. Because it comes out of the non-existential it is like a mirage. It consists only of desire and nothing else. It consists only of thirst and nothing else. The ego is not in the present, it is in the future. If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing.
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