Enlightenment should be an individual experience‏

IF YOU LOOK INTO THE LIVES OF THESE MYSTICS, these enlightened people, you will not find any similarity. You will find only utter uniqueness. Sometimes they are so ordinary that you may not even recognize them. Sometimes they are so radiant that even those who are blind will see their light. But there is no general rule, and there are no fixed characteristics. YOU DON'T HAVE TO FULFILL CERTAIN IDEALS!

    MY OWN APPROACH is to take away all ideals from you, and to take away the very idea that enlightenment is going to happen to you in the future. FUTURE DOES NOT EXIST! In fact, the idea that it is going to happen in the future is simply to avoid the self-respect that you can have only in the present.

    THERE HAVE BEEN TEACHERS -- they were not Masters, they were as unconscious as you are. They were not aware of their own enlightenment. They were teaching morality, discipline, methods, how to become enlightened. But do you understand the inner logic? If you can become enlightened, then there is every possibility you can also become again unenlightened. If there are methods to become enlightened, there can be methods to make you unenlightened. This is a simple thing. If you can become sick, you can become healthy, and you can also again become sick.

    ENLIGHTENMENT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU HAVE TO ATTAIN, because that which is attained can be stolen. That which is attained can be robbed. That which is attained can be lost.

    I say unto you: YOU ARE ENLIGHTENMENT ITSELF.

    I DON'T WANT YOU TO ATTAIN ENLIGHTENMENT, I want you to live it. From this very moment, whatever you do, do it in the way enlightenment is bound to do it.

    I loved one statement of one of the most important people of the West, ALAN WATTS. He was a drunkard, but he was the man who introduced to the West the most essential parts of Zen and enlightenment. He wrote not as a scholar, but as a Master. Before he was dying, he was still drinking, and a disciple asked him that, "Have you ever thought... if Buddha had seen you drinking alcohol, what do you think he would have thought about it?"

    Alan Watts said, "There is no problem. I ALWAYS DRINK IN AN ENLIGHTENED WAY!"

    THE QUESTION IS NOT WHAT YOU DO, the question is how you do it. Yes, I accept Alan Watts' statement -- there is a possibility of a man to drink alcohol in an enlightened way. ENLIGHTENMENT SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY LIMITS; and it should not have a particular formula, a particular pattern that you have to follow.

    ENLIGHTENMENT SHOULD BE AN INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE -- the most individual experience, incomparable and unique to everybody. Once this is understood, all the clouds that surround you with darkness start dispersing.

    Veet Vigyanam, I WILL GO ON REPEATING AGAIN AND AGAIN, until it sinks into you, that you are enlightened. And you are not to do anything special for it. YOU HAVE JUST TO BE AS YOU ARE, totally relaxed, at ease with existence -- not going anywhere, no achievement, no goal.

    GOAL-ORIENTATION IS WHAT IS MAKING PEOPLE MISERABLE. Disperse all the goals, and you will start dancing this very moment. Because you have so much energy involved in your process of achieving, moving far away in your imagination, you don't have time, you don't have space, you don't have energy to be here. IF YOU CAN GATHER ALL YOUR ENERGY IN THIS VERY MOMENT, just the accumulation of that energy will become a dance in your heart. And that dance transforms everything -- not your efforts....

    Father Murphy is chosen to do some missionary work for the Catholic church, and is sent to a remote part of the Arctic. After a few months, a bishop comes to visit.
    "How do you like it here," asks the bishop, "among the ice and polar bears?"
    "Just fine," says Father Murphy. "The Eskimos are very friendly people."
    "And what about the weather?" asks the bishop.
    "Ah," says the priest, "as long as I have my rosary and my whiskey, I don't care a bit about the weather."
    "I am glad to hear of it," says the bishop. "Speaking of whiskey, how about a glass or two?"
    "Great idea!" says Father Murphy. "Rosary! Can you bring us the whiskey?"

    Hymie is a little drunk when he comes home.
    "Becky," he calls to his wife in the bedroom, "start nagging -- or else I won't be able to find the bed!"

    Just enjoy your life, it is perfect as it is. THE WHOLE IDEA OF PERFECTIONISM CREATES ONLY NEUROSIS, pathology and a derangement of the mind. I teach you the ordinary, I teach you the simple, I TEACH YOU THE NATURAL. I teach you that you are where you have been trying to reach, exactly at home. Don't waste your time running here and there.

    But you have been told always to become something, someone. THAT'S WHY EVERY RELIGION IS AGAINST ME, all the moralists are against me. I can understand -- BECAUSE IF I AM RIGHT, then all the traditions and all the teachings that have been driving humanity towards some faraway goal are proven absolutely criminal. Because they have taken away people's chance to live, chance to love, chance to sing, chance to dance, and in the ultimate sense, the very opportunity to feel the divine in the herenow.

    UNLESS YOU CAN FEEL THE DIVINE IN THE MUNDANE, you are not an intelligent person. If you cannot manage in your small things an expression of gratitude, joy, awareness, then you are bound to remain miserable -- not only in this life but perhaps for many lives.

    I CAN'T SEE MUCH OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU to find a man like me again. You will meet all those religious teachers, missionaries... try to find one and you will find a thousand. But I am absolutely respectful to your ordinariness. MY REVERENCE FOR THE MUNDANE IS ABSOLUTE; I don't want to improve on anything. For centuries people have been improving and improving and improving, and nothing is improved.

    Just give me a chance. STOP IMPROVING! And you will be surprised to know that the energy that was involved in improving becomes your dance, your celebration.

OSHO
Om Mani Padme Hum
Ch #17: Immediate and ultimate ordinariness
pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium