Another seeker asked Osho – I AM SURE YOU WILL NOT SAY TO A SEED, “TAKE A SUDDEN JUMP AND FLOWER,” BUT WHY DO YOU LIKE TO SAY TO A MAN, “TAKE A SUDDEN JUMP AND BE A BUDDHA?”
Because a seed is a seed and cannot understand, and a man is not a seed and can understand. But if you are a seed you won’t listen; if you are a man you will understand. It depends on you because you may look like a man – you may be just a seed or even a rock. Appearance is not the real thing. You all look like a man, but rarely is one a man.
The word “man” is beautiful. It comes from a Sanskrit root manu. Manu means “one who can understand.” Thence, from that same root, comes the Indian term man, manasvi: one who can understand. “Man” is a beautiful word. It means “who can understand,” “who has the capacity to understand.” So I cannot say to a seed, “Take a sudden jump and flower,” but I say to man. And this is the irony, that sometimes even a seed can hear it and the man won’t hear.
Have you read anything about Luther Burbank, an American lover of trees and plants? He did this miracle: he talked to seeds, he talked to his plants, and he talked continuously – that’s what I’m doing – and a moment came when the plants started hearing him. He was working on a cactus for seven years – continuously talking to the cactus, saying, “You need not be worried and need not be defensive, because there is no danger to your life.”
Every cactus has thorns to protect himself. That’s his armor. Insecure in a desert; a cactus lives in a desert in very deep insecurity and danger. How a cactus survives in a desert is a miracle, and some cactuses survive even for two thousand years, very old cactuses. In a desert there is no water; life must be a very deep struggle. They live only on the dewdrops. That’s why they don’t have leaves, because leaves evaporate too much water. That is their trick so the sun cannot evaporate water from them. The water is so scarce. Cactuses have no leaves, only thorns; and deep inside their belly they go on accumulating water.
For months together if there is no water they will live; they are really only accumulators of water. They don’t have anything extra – no leaves, nothing. And there has never been any species of cactus without thorns.
This man Burbank was mad. Friends started thinking. “He has gone crazy.” Even his whole family started thinking, “Now this is too much: every day sitting near the cactus and talking. saying, ‘You need not be afraid; I am your friend. You can withdraw your thorns. There is no insecurity – you are at home with a friend, a lover. You are not in a desert. And nobody is going to harm you.’”
Seven years is a long… but it happened. After seven years a new branch sprouted out of the cactus without any thorns. That was the first human contact with the world of trees. It is a rare phenomenon – just by talk.
That’s why I go on talking, persuading you you can jump. knowing well that maybe seven years or seventy, or who knows? You will even start thinking about me: “He is crazy, goes on saying things every day; nobody listens.” But if Burbank can succeed with seeds. cactuses, trees. why not me?
CAN ONE TAKE THE SUDDEN JUMP WITH THE HELP OF DRUGS?
No. That will be the jump of the drug, not yours; and the point is for you to take the jump, not the drug. Drugs are not in search of enlightenment; they are quite well as they are. If you take a drug, and something happens to you, it is happening to the drug really, not to you. It is happening just to the chemistry of the body, not to your consciousness. It is a dream phenomenon, a hallucination.
It can be beautiful sometimes – sometimes, remember. Sometimes it can be the very hell. It depends. That’s why I say a drug can only create a situation in the chemistry of your body, but if your mind is going through hell, the mind will continue going through hell. Now the hell will be stronger, that’s all; because now the chemistry is different. You will move towards hell, but you will now go faster. The drug can give you speed. So it is good to call drugs “speed”; they give only speed, nothing else. If you are feeling beautiful and good, you will feel beautiful and good “with speed,” but they cannot change you. Whatsoever you are you will remain the same.
And the danger is that you can be befooled by them. And once you are befooled and you think, “This is ecstasy, this is what was needed,” then you are lost. Then you will think always in those terms: that you take the drug and you experience God.
You are not experiencing anything, because God is not an experience at all. It is the cessation of all experience. When all objects disappear – experience is an object – and when only the subjectivity remains, the consciousness – nothing to know, but only the knower – then there is God. God is not an object; God is pure subjectivity. No drug can give you that.
Another seeker asked Osho – AM I RIGHT TO FEEL THAT YOU HAVE TRAVELLED THE PATH OF GRADUAL ENLIGHTENMENT? DID YOU DANCE WHEN THE ENLIGHTENMENT HAPPENED?
I am still dancing. If you have eyes you can see. If you don’t have eyes what can I do?
And there is no gradual enlightenment; enlightenment is always sudden. You can prepare gradually, you can prepare suddenly, but enlightenment is always sudden. It happens in a single moment. It is not that somebody is fifty percent enlightened, sixty percent enlightened, seventy percent enlightened, no. Just a moment before he was a hundred percent unenlightened, and just a moment afterwards he was a hundred percent enlightened. It happens suddenly: otherwise there would be degrees. There are no degrees.
It is just like death: it happens in a single moment. You cannot say that a man is half dead. Even if he looks half dead he is perfectly alive; that is only appearance.
A man may be in a coma, lying unconscious, but then too he is perfectly alive, not half dead. Either you are dead or you are alive – there is no other way – either this or that. Enlightenment is always sudden.
And preparation? This is the very subtle point to understand: preparation is not for enlightenment; preparation is for your courage. A courageous man can take it right now; a coward will take years to prepare himself. The whole problem is of fear. If the fear is dropped, you are in freedom. If you continue to nurse your fear and tend your fear, you will never be free. So make it a clear point in your minds: that enlightenment needs no preparation; all preparation is only because you are afraid. So it depends on you. Whenever you decide to drop the fear, it can happen.
It is not something outside you which has to be attained; you are already carrying it with you. It is just like childbirth: a woman is carrying the pregnancy – the child is already there, throbbing, alive, kicking – but if the woman is very much afraid, the birth will take a long time. If she is very much afraid and tense, when the child wants to come out of the womb, she will clench her whole mechanism in fear and will not allow the child to come out. The child needs a relaxed passage to come out, and the woman is so tense that she won’t allow the child to come out. And the child wants to come out because now that is his only life – a few days more and, if he is in the womb, he will be dead. So the child will make all the efforts to come out, and the woman is tense: there is a conflict. That conflict creates pain; otherwise no childbirth should be with pain. There is no need; it is not a necessity.
Go to the old, ancient tribes in India. Childbirth happens so easily, so naturally, that those people have never heard that there is any pain in it. A woman will be working in the field, and the child is born – not a single person to look after her; she will look after herself. She will put the child under the tree, do her whole day’s work – there is no hurry to go back home – then take the child back by the evening. Simple. Just simple, as it is happening in animals, no problem.
The mother creates the problem. The mother is tense, afraid. That tension, and the child’s effort to come out, creates a struggle; and, then, it takes time.
The child is ready to come out any moment. You have all passed the gestation period. As I see, everybody is in the ninth month – everybody has always been in the ninth month. Now, the whole problem is how to relax and let the child come out and be born. You can relax only if you are not afraid. Accept, don’t be afraid. Accept life. It is the friend, not the enemy. This whole existence is a home; you are not strangers here. Forget all about what Darwin says – survival, struggle, conquest. All nonsense. Listen to people who say it is a home, because they are true. Otherwise it is not possible.
You are born in life – how can it be against you? How can the mother be against the child? And you will return back to it: just like a wave reaching high, dancing in the sun, and then going back. How can the ocean be against the wave? In fact the whole strength of the wave is a gift from the ocean: it rises high, not that it rises, but because the ocean rises in it.
You are just waves in a cosmic ocean of consciousness. Accept it. Feel at home.
You are not strangers here; you are beloved to the existence. And then, suddenly, you gather courage because there is no fear.
Enlightenment is always sudden. If you have to move gradually it is because of your non accepting mind, afraid, cautious.
Tags: A Single Moment Patanjali
