BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT? HAVE THE EXPERIENCE AND THE IDEA OF ENLIGHTENMENT EVOLVED WITH TIME?

Enlightenment is not something special, it is one of the most simple, natural phenomena. Just because it is so simple and natural it has become extraordinarily difficult for man to understand.

Man's mind is attracted towards the difficult. There is challenge, something to prove, something to feel one's mettle. Man is interested in going to the moon. It is absolutely pointless. There is nothing there at all; it is a dead planet. But man is ready to risk his life to go to a dead planet where he is not going to meet anybody, even to say hello.

Man is interested in reaching Everest. The peak, the highest peak in the world is so narrow that you can barely stand on top of it. You cannot do anything else there, and there is nothing else to do... eternal snow. But for a hundred years, hundreds of adventurers have been going to climb Everest. The majority of them have died on the way, but still it has not prevented new adventurers, new climbers.

One has to understand this point very clearly: the difficult is attractive because it is ego-fulfilling. The impossible is very magnetic; it pulls you to risk everything, to risk even life, because if you can manage that which has been thought up to now impossible, you have fulfilled your ego the way nobody has yet been able to fulfil it. You are the first man, like Edmund Hillary on Everest -- the first man in history -- but what is the point? What have you gained? What has humanity gained? No, nobody even asks the question. Everybody knows, deep down, the answer; that's why nobody asks the question.

The more difficult, the more impossible, the more attractive: its impossibility has a fascination. The ego is not interested in the simple, in the ordinary, in the day to day; everybody is doing it. Because of this stupid ego, religions turned enlightenment also into something very difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing in existence. It has to be so. It is the realisation of God, it is the realisation of eternity. It is going beyond death; it is moving into the very mystery of existence.

All the religions of the world have been exploiting your ego. And the ego is very vulnerable to being exploited; it is just ready to be exploited: show it a goal, give it a way, make it difficult, almost impossible. I say almost impossible; I'm not saying absolutely impossible, because if you make it absolutely impossible then the ego loses hope. You have to keep the candle of hope burning. It is difficult but possible -- almost impossible, but yet possible. But it is possible only for rare, superhuman beings.

All the religions learned the simple strategy, in what man becomes interested, and why. And they want you to remain interested your whole life. It is not something that you achieve today and you are finished tomorrow. Religion does not deal in the commodities which you can get and be finished with. It deals with commodities which you can never get, but only hope for. And you go on hoping till death comes and destroys you.

Enlightenment itself is absolutely simple, but to say so is to destroy all priesthood. To say it is ordinary is to take away the very base of all the religions, their great scriptures, great masters, rabbis, messiahs. What meaning will these people have if enlightenment is an ordinary, simple, human experience?

No, they all will deny that it is simple and human, and they will all emphasise that it is superhuman, very arduous. Hindus say it takes thousands of lives to attain it. Buddhists say even Gautam Buddha, such a superman, had to pass through millions of lives before he could manage to reach the peak which is enlightenment. In fact the very idea of extending life into millions of lives is a by-product of making the experience of enlightenment so difficult, so impossible, so far away, that one life is not enough.

How can you attain enlightenment in one life? One life is too short. Perhaps that is the reason that in Mohammedanism, Judaism, Christianity, there exists nothing equivalent to enlightenment. These three religions were born outside India. These three religions believe only in one life. Just in one life, all that you can do is to believe in a savior, in a messiah: cling to his apron and he will take you. You cannot depend upon your own effort, because what effort can you make?

Just look at your life. Half your life is simply wasted in sleeping, taking baths, eating food, changing clothes, shaving your beard. The most important years of life are wasted in learning all kinds of rubbish: geography, history, geometry. By the time you come out of university you are almost thirty. If you have gone on to attain a Ph.D. or D.Litt., you are thirty. The best time of your life has gone down the drain. And now you have to get married, and the wife, and the children, and the service, and the politics... all your time is taken up.

If you count, you will not find even seven hours in seventy years which are absolutely yours. No, life keeps you engaged... in the movies, with the television, with the radio, in the churches, in the synagogues, in things in which perhaps you are not interested at all... in God.... I can't think what kind of a man is interested in God. And why? What wrong has he done to you? You don't even know whether he exists or not but you listen to sermons on God every Sunday. People are reading the same Bible, the same Gita, every day continually, their whole life. And how much life you have got? Only seventy years.

One day just sit down and note how your life is being wasted, and how much time is left just for you. You will not find seven hours. I am absolutely certain it will be impossible to find seven hours in seventy years of life. If sometimes you have some time, then friends are there, picnics are there, football matches are there, Olympics are there. From every direction you are being called.

A man, a very rich young man, listening to Buddha, asked to be initiated. Buddha said, "You should think about it; don't be so hasty" -- because Buddha knew about the man. He was well known in the capital; perhaps he was the richest man after the king. And he lived such a luxurious life that even the king was jealous of him, because the king had to think of many things, the whole kingdom, and this man has no responsibility of any kind. He was living as luxuriously as one can live. So Buddha knew about the man, that he has never even walked on the bare earth; he sleeps the whole day, and the whole night goes in music, dances, girls, wine. He was a drunkard. It was a miracle that he had come in the early morning. Perhaps he had come directly from his wine and women. He had not gone to sleep, thinking, "One day at least I should listen to this man. So many people are going there, and talking about him... gather about him."

Shrone was his name, that young man's name. Indian stories use names with some significance. Shrone means one who is capable of hearing, of listening. So the name is significant. He heard Buddha for the first time and he went to him and he said, "Initiate me."

Buddha said, "Think it over. I know you, I know about you."

Shrone said, "Once I have decided something, I have decided it. I am not accustomed to thinking twice about anything. Give me initiation right now." As he was so determined, Buddha gave him initiation. He became a Buddhist monk.

But he was the latest arrival. The serai, the caravanserai where Buddha was staying, was full of Buddhist monks. There was no space inside for him to sleep, so he had to sleep just on the steps -- and he could not sleep. He had never even dreamed of such hardship... just on the steps. And Buddha had this idea that the monk can have only three pieces of material for clothes. So one he uses for the bed -- a long piece of cloth -- and also uses it to cover himself, so it becomes a kind of sleeping bag. And two he uses for himself: one for the lower body, one for the upper body. That's all a Buddhist monk is allowed to use. He could not sleep on a stone step with just a thin cloth... and there were so many mosquitoes, and the whole night monks were coming in, going out, coming in, going out, and he was just on the steps, so each time anybody would come out or go in he was awakened.

Just early in the morning, when he was falling asleep at last, tired, Buddha came, awakened him, and said, "There is still time -- you go back home. Nobody knows you have become a sannyasin. Once people know, it will be difficult for you to go back. Go back! I know the whole night you have not been able to sleep. It is difficult: there are mosquitoes, and only three pieces of cloth are allowed, and in this place there is no space. And you are the youngest monk, just one day old, so you cannot have the space of some elderly monk. There is a seniority, and you are the last."

Shrone said, "Don't disturb me. What step I have taken, I have taken. Now whatsoever consequence has to be suffered, I will suffer. But I don't know how to look back. The question of going back simply does not arise; I never even look back."

Buddha said, "It is good, because in the last life you had become a monk and just because of these same difficulties you had gone back. So I thought perhaps you might do it again, because people go on in the same vicious circle again and again and again -- the same habit. And they go on moving in the wheel of the habits. I had come to ask you particularly because I knew that in the last life you had turned back. This is a good sign that you have grown up, that you have stopped turning back. But ahead it is not easy; perhaps a few lives with this determination, if you go on and on and on, you might achieve nirvana" -- that is the Buddhist term for enlightenment.

Nirvana simply means cessation of the candlelight, so that you are in absolute silence. And darkness has no bad connotation in Buddhism. It is peaceful, it has depth. Light is shallow; darkness is infinitely deep. Light is always bounded, it has boundaries. Darkness has no boundaries, it is unbounded. Light comes and goes; darkness always is. When there is light you cannot see it. When light is not there you can see it. But it is always there; you cannot cause it. Light has a cause. You burn the fire, you put on wood. When the wood is finished the light will be gone. It is caused, hence it is an effect. But darkness is not caused by anything, it is not an effect. It is uncaused eternity.

Nirvana is a very simple phenomenon. It simply means blowing out the small candle of the ego. And suddenly.... The reality has always been there, but just because of the candle of the ego you were not able to see it. Now the candle is no longer there, the reality is. It has always been there. You had never lost it in the first place. One cannot lose it even if one tries. It is your very nature, so how can you lose it? It is you -- your very being. Yes, you can forget, at the most.

Now, see the emphasis. It is not an achievement. Achievement is in the future, far away. Achievement is difficult, can be almost impossible, will take time, will take will and willpower, struggle. No, it is not an achievement. You have not lost it. Even if you want to lose it, there is no way to lose it. Wherever you go it will go with you. It is you, too. How can you escape from yourself? You can try, but you will always find you are there. You can hide behind trees and mountains, in caves, but whenever you look around you will see you are there. Where can you go from yourself?

So nirvana is just like darkness. The light is put off and your reality is all there, with all its beauty, benediction, blessing. But there is no word in English to translate nirvana. Jainas use the word moksha. Moksha means absolute freedom, ultimate freedom, freedom from all fetters. And the biggest fetter is the ego. Other fetters are just parts of the ego: greed, lust, ambition, anger. All that is thought to be sin in other religions, in Jainism is thought only to be a fetter.

But the root, the main root of the whole tree of your slavery, is the ego. So cut the main root and all other roots will die of their own accord. Don't bother to cut small roots, branches, leaves, because they will come again. Cut the main root and the whole tree will die. And when all your fetters fall, what remains? The unfettered consciousness, the freedom.

That freedom is not anything political, anything economic. It has nothing to do with the word freedom and its connotations that you have become acquainted with. It is simply an unfettered existence. You don't find anywhere around you, anything holding you. You are no longer tethered to anything. This untethered state they have called moksha. It makes no difference, just their terminology is different.

Patanjali, the founder of the system of yoga, has his own name. He calls it kaivalya. Kaivalya means absolute aloneness, where the other is no longer needed.

Enlightenment is a very simple and ordinary experience.

I emphasise it again and again because I am not a priest, I am not a rabbi, I am not a messiah. I have no desire to exploit anyone in the world. My function is totally different. I want to share with you something that is overflowing in me. I don't need anything in return. Just that you share it is enough obligation upon me; I am grateful.

That's why I say this is the first religion in the world: because all those religions were making you, forcing you to be grateful to the messiah, to the tirthankara, to the master -- but why? Why should you be grateful to Jesus or Buddha or anybody? If Buddha had something too much in him, and was overburdened just like a cloud full of rainwater, in tremendous need of showering upon you -- actually that's the case: Buddha wants to shower upon you -- then who is going to be obliged? He or the earth that receives it, that opens its heart and invites it?

A real master is grateful to the disciple, to the devotee. Only a pseudo-master tries to satisfy his ego trip through the disciples, the crowd of disciples, the number of disciples.

And because it is your own nature I'm not giving anything to you. All that I am doing is just putting a mirror before you so that you can look into it.

excerpt from: Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness
and as selected video discourse: Enlightenment the only way home