Swamiji’s Enlightenment Day

A born rebel or a freedom fighter or a highly educated person or a top corporate executive or a sannyasin? Is it possible to find such a versatile being? YES! Everything is possible with the blessings of Osho for the authentic seekers who came to Him and remained at His feet, before taking the highest flight and dissolving into the Ultimate. Swami Om Prakash Saraswati is one such blessed being who scaled the peaks of worldly success and then surrendered unconditionally at the feet of the Master, dissolving himself completely. Lovingly known as “Swamiji”, he is the epitome of absolute surrender by a disciple to his Guru.

Born on December 31, 1918, in Faridnagar near Meerut in UP, India; Swamiji was a born rebel, questioning everything – any injustice or violence. As a resolute & earnest youth, Swamiji joined government service and was soon married. The absence of meritocracy and abundance of inefficiencies plaguing government service compelled him to quit his otherwise stable job; and he joined the renowned corporate DCM at Kota, Rajasthan; as a senior executive. During his stint as the Accounts Head, he was inspired by a series of magazine articles of Osho, then known as Acharya Rajneesh. Allured by Osho’s magnetism, he attended that momentous meditation camp at Mt. Abu, Rajasthan in 1971 and was initiated into Sannyas. Guided by his Master, he integrated his family life and professional life with his inner journey with remarkable elegance. His life is truly exemplary of a Sannyasin balancing a life of career, family, meditation and aloneness. He moved to Delhi to take care of his wife who needed personal and medical care and continue to work in the DCM.  After his wife died in 1976 Swamiji took pre mature retirement from his work and was invited by Osho to relocate to the Ashram in Pune, a call that he was eagerly awaiting.

In 1978, Osho sent Swamiji to Delhi to start a meditation center and He also gave Swamiji the name for this new Centre – Rajyoga Rajneesh Dhyan Kendra. This is how the Centre (now known as Osho Rajyoga) came into being. Swamiji’s powerful presence made this Centre the fulcrum of Osho’s work for the entire northern India conducting meditation camps, distributing audio/video discourses, publishing magazines and more. In 1981, when Osho went to the United States, the Center began publishing a newsletter “Rajneesh Buddhafield” to connect people with Rajneeshpuram, Oregon. The creation of Osho Dham, a meditation campus on the outskirts of Delhi, was the culmination of Swamiji’s efforts to provide a suitable space for meditation for a large number of seekers with restful accommodation facilities. Swamiji’s commitment and love enabled the realization of Osho’s vision ‘to bring meditation to the marketplace’ when Osho World Galleria was inaugurated at Ansal Plaza, a fashionable mall in the heart of south Delhi. The creation of the website www.oshoworld.com a treasure chest of Osho’s audio & video discourses, ebooks, posters, meditations and articles; and the publication of monthly magazines Osho World Patrika and Osho News were further manifestations of Swamiji’s vision to make Osho available to a Seeker in any corner of the world.

As Swamiji blossomed in meditation, his inner growth manifested in his work. He is an inspiration to young disciples on the journey of meditation. Swamiji attained enlightenment on May 21, 2001. He continued to meditate, work and provide vision for the future to spread the message of his beloved Master till he attained his Mahaparinirvana on March 27, 2003. Like a drop that dissolves into the Ocean, Swamiji merged with the vast ocean of Osho.

“A disciple becomes almost a part of the very being of the Master. There arises an invisible connection between the two hearts. They dance together.” Osho

Osho Says…..

BELOVED OSHO,

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED IN A REALLY EASY AND RELAXED WAY, WITH NOT TOO MUCH EFFORT AND LOTS OF NAPS?

Gayano, you are asking me, a man who has never done anything. Just through relaxation … without any effort and lots of naps! Mostly I am asleep. I just get up to talk to you in the morning, then I go back to sleep; then I get up again in the evening to talk to you and go back to sleep. My total hours of sleep must be eighteen. Six hours I am awake, two hours with you, one hour for my bath, for my food and the remainder I am in absolute samadhi. And I don’t even dream — so lazy! And you are asking me the question.

This is my whole philosophy, that you should not make any effort, that you should relax and enlightenment comes. It comes when it finds you are really relaxed, no tension, no effort and immediately it showers on you like thousands of flowers.

But all the religions have been teaching just the opposite, that enlightenment is very arduous, it takes life-long efforts, perhaps many lives and then too there is no certainty, no guarantee. You can lose the way even when you are only one step away from enlightenment. And you don’t know the way towards enlightenment! So there is every possibility of losing the way, of going astray. By chance a few people have stumbled upon enlightenment. It was just by accident.

Millions of people have been trying and finding nothing and they are not aware that their very search is making them too tense; their very effort is creating a state in which enlightenment cannot happen.

Enlightenment can happen when you are so silent, so relaxed, that you are almost not. Just a pure silence and immediately the explosion, the explosion of your luminous soul.

The people who have been very arduous simply destroyed their intelligence, or their body, and I don’t think they attained to enlightenment.

The very few people who have attained to enlightenment have attained in a relaxed state. Relaxation is the very soil in which the roses of enlightenment grow. So it is very good that you want to be relaxed, at ease, with no effort and lots of naps. This is the recipe. You will get enlightened. You can get enlightened today! Enlightenment is your innermost being. Just because you are so much engaged in effort, in seeking, in searching, doing this, doing that, you never reach to your own self. In relaxation you are not going anywhere, you are not doing anything and the grass starts growing by itself.

All that is needed is alertness, intelligence, consciousness, which are not efforts; witnessing, watching, which are not tensions. They are very joyful experiences. You don’t get tired of them. You get very calm and quiet. Intelligence has not been known to be a part of your so-called saints. They destroyed it completely by their stupid efforts. And I say unto you, all efforts for enlightenment are stupid.

Enlightenment is your nature!

It is just that you don’t know, otherwise you are enlightened already. As far as I am concerned you are all enlightened, because I can see your luminous flame within. When I see you, I don’t see your figure, I see your being, which is just a beautiful flame. It is said that Gautam Buddha was surprised that the moment he became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened, because his own eyes changed, his own vision changed. He could look as deep into himself as he could into everyone, even animals and trees. He could see that they are all moving towards enlightenment. Everything needs to realize its own nature; without that life is not a joy, not a festivity. Just be a little intelligent Gayano, and enlightenment will happen on its own accord; you don’t even have to think about it…

The manager, looking angry, strides over to Paddy’s desk and taps him on the shoulder.

“Listen,” he says, “do me and everyone a favor and stop whistling while you work.”

“Hey, man,” says Paddy, “who is working?”

A cannibal chief treats himself to a Mediterranean cruise, and on the first night he sits down for dinner and asks for the wine list. He orders a bottle of French wine and consumes it immediately. Then the waiter approaches him and asks if he would like to see the menu.

“No thanks,” the chief replies. “Just bring me the passenger list.”

A Catholic missionary is captured by cannibals and is surprised to find out that the chief has been to school in England and speaks perfect English.

“I can’t understand it,” says the indignant priest. “How could you have spent so much time in civilization and still eat people?”

“A-ha!” says the chief. “But now I use a knife and fork.”

Just be a little intelligent. The world is not intelligent. It is functioning in a very unintelligent way and is creating all kinds of miseries for everyone rather than helping them to be happier. Everybody is pulling on each other’s legs, dragging them into deeper darkness, into deeper mud, into deeper trouble. It seems in this world everybody enjoys only one thing: creating misery for others. That’s why such a cloud of darkness surrounds the earth. Otherwise there would have been a continuous festival of lights — and not ordinary lights, but lights of your very being. Why have the priests succeeded in convincing man that enlightenment is a very difficult, almost impossible task? The reason is in your mind. Your mind is always interested in the difficult, in the impossible, because that gives it a challenge and the ego needs challenge to become bigger and bigger and bigger.

The priests were successful in convincing you that enlightenment is very difficult, almost impossible. In millions of people only once in a while a man becomes enlightened. Their idea was that you should not become enlightened. To prevent you from enlightenment they used a very clever device. They challenged your ego and you became interested in all kinds of rituals, in all kinds of austerities, self-torture. You made your own life as deep an anguish as possible.

But these people who have made their life a torture, masochists, cannot become enlightened. They go on becoming more and more endarkened. And these people living in darkness start crawling like slaves very easily, because they have lost all their intelligence, all their consciousness in their strange effort.

Have you seen a dog in winter just resting in the sun in the early morning? He sees his tail and immediately becomes interested. What is it? He jumps to catch the tail. But then he becomes crazy, because this seems very strange. As he jumps, the tail also jumps. Yet the distance between the dog and the tail remains the same. He goes round and round. I have watched: the more the tail jumps the more determined he becomes; he uses all his will-power, tries this way and that way to catch hold of it. But the poor dog does not know that it is not possible to catch hold of it. It is already part of him. So when he jumps, it jumps.

Enlightenment is not difficult, not impossible. You don’t have to do anything to get it. It is just your intrinsic nature; it is your very subjectivity. All that you have to do is for a moment relax totally, forget all doing, all efforts, so that you are no longer occupied anywhere. This unoccupied consciousness suddenly becomes aware that, “I am it.”

Enlightenment is the easiest thing in the world, but the priests never wanted the whole world to become enlightened. Otherwise people would not be Christians, they would not be Catholics, they would not be Hindus, they would not be Mohammedans. They have to be kept unenlightened. They have to be kept blind to their own nature. And they have found a very clever way. They are not to do anything, they have just to give you the idea that it is a very difficult, impossible task. Your ego became immediately interested. The ego is never interested in the obvious. It is never interested in that which you are. It is only interested in a faraway goal — the farther the goal, the greater the interest.

But enlightenment is not a goal and it is not even an inch away from you — it is you! The seeker is the sought. The observer is the observed. The knower is the known. Once you understand that your very nature is enlightenment … in fact, the Sanskrit word for religion is dharma. It means nature, your very nature. It does not mean a church, it does not mean a theology, it simply means your nature. For example, what is the dharma of fire? — to be hot. And what is the dharma of water? — to flow downwards. What is the nature of man? What is the dharma of man? — to become enlightened, to know one’s godliness.

If you can understand the easiness, know effortless achievement of your nature …

I’ll call you intelligent only if you can understand this; if you cannot understand this, you are not intelligent, you are simply an egoist who is trying …

Just as some egoists are trying to be the richest man, a few other egoists are trying to be the most powerful, a few egoists are trying to become enlightened.

But enlightenment is not possible for the ego:

riches are possible, power is possible, prestige is possible, and they are difficult things, very difficult.

Henry Ford, one of the richest men of his time though he was born poor, was asked, “What is your desire in the next life?”

He said, “I don’t want to be the richest man again. It has been a continuous self-torture my whole life. I have not been able to live. I used to reach the factory early in the morning at seven o’clock, and the manual workers would reach at eight o’clock, the clerks would reach at nine o’clock and the manager would come at ten o’clock and leave at two o’clock; everybody else would leave at five o’clock and I had to work late into the night, sometimes up to ten, sometimes up to twelve. I worked hard to become the richest man and I became the richest man. But what is the point? I could not enjoy anything. I worked harder than my laborers. They enjoyed life more. I had no holidays. Even on holidays I used to go to the factory to work out plans for the future.”

It is difficult, but you can become the richest man if you make enough effort. It is difficult, but you can reach the top of Everest if you make enough effort. But if you make any effort at all, enlightenment becomes impossible for you. If you bring your mind with all its tensions and worries to work out your enlightenment, you are moving in the wrong direction, away from enlightenment. You need a total let-go, an utterly peaceful, tensionless, silent state of being. And suddenly … the explosion. You are all born enlightened whether you realize it or not.

Society does not want you to realize it. Religions don’t want you to realize it. Politicians don’t want you to realize it, because it goes against every vested interest. They are living and sucking your blood because you are unenlightened. They are able to reduce the whole of humanity into stupid labels: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, as if you are things, commodities. They have labeled on your forehead who you are. In India you will actually find brahmins with symbols on their foreheads. You can see the symbol and you can recognize to which class of brahmin this man belongs. These are means or commodities. They have their symbols marked on their foreheads. You may not have your symbol marked, but you know deep down it is engraved within your being that you are a Christian, that you are a Buddhist, that you are a Hindu.

If you all become enlightened, you will be simply light, a joy to yourself and to others, a blessing to yourself and to the whole of existence, and you will be the ultimate freedom. Nobody can exploit you, nobody can in any way enslave you. And that is the problem: nobody wants you to become enlightened. Unless you see the point you will go on playing into the hands of the vested interests which are all parasites. Their only function is how to suck blood out of you. If you want freedom, enlightenment is the only freedom. If you want individuality, enlightenment is the only individuality. If you want a life full of blessings, enlightenment is the only experience. And it is very easy, utterly easy; it’s the one thing you don’t have to do anything to get, because it is already there. You just have to relax and see it.

Hence in India we have nothing parallel to Western philosophy. Philosophy means thinking about truth, `love of knowledge’. In India what we have is a totally different thing. We call it darshan. And darshan does not mean thinking, it means seeing. Your truth is not to be thought about, it has to be seen. It is already there. You don’t have to go anywhere to find it. You don’t have to think about it, you have to stop thinking so that it can surface in your being. Unoccupied space is needed within you so that the light that is hidden can expand and fill your being. It not only fills your being, it starts radiating from your being. Your whole life becomes a beauty, a beauty that is not of the body, but a beauty that radiates from within, the beauty of your consciousness.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: Sat Chit Anand

Chapter #25

Chapter title: Nobody is planning except man

4 December 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘Enlightenment, relaxation, nature, consciousness, silence, intelligence, witnessing, watching, individuality, freedom, blessings’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master
2. From the False to the Truth
3. The Great Zen Master Ta Hui
4. The Osho Upanishad
5. When the Shoe Fits
6. Take It Easy, Vol 1
7. Sermons in Stones
8. Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons
9. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
10. From Bondage to Freedom
11. The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
12. The Golden Future
13. The Invitation
14. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
15. The Rebel