Can enlightenment happen anywhere, or is a specific environment necessary for it?

Does enlightenment need a special place, a special time, to happen?

Every place is special, because every place is overflowing with God. No place is ordinary. Enlightenment can happen even in your toilet! Enlightenment is not afraid of your toilet! It can happen anywhere. You need not go to sacred places; there are none. All existence is sacred! You need not go to Varanasi or Jerusalem or Kaaba -- all nonsense. All places are full of God. Every point is special. And what special time are you asking about? Is there a season, a certain climate for enlightenment? Enlightenment is not really a happening. If it were a happening, then maybe, in a certain soil, in a certain climate, in a certain place, on certain days it would be more possible. But enlightenment is not a happening. Enlightenment is simply a recognition -- a recognition that you have always been enlightened, that never, for a single moment, have you lost it;…

Beloved master, if buddha did not really need to leave his wife and children in order to attain enlightenment, then can enlightenment happen anywhere? Why do I feel that I need to be in your buddhafield?

And man has the capacity to renew himself -- to die to the past and to be reborn. Man has the capacity for resurrection. But the earth is almost like a desert today and small oases are needed everywhere, so those who are thirsty cannot say, "What can we do? The water is not available. How can we quench our thirst?" We have to make God available to every possible seeker all over the world. Yes, even in countries like China, Soviet Russia, and other communist countries, my effort is to create small oases there too. They have started: they are underground there -- they have to be underground there. You will be surprised, but in one Russian town we have twenty-five sannyasins -- of course not in orange. They have made their own malas, and when they meet in some underground basement they wear orange clothes, listen to the…

Are you the only enlightened person in this ashram? If yes, is it impossible to enlighten or to be enlightened near an enlightened person?

SINCE I BECAME ENLIGHTENED I have never come across a person who is not enlightened. You see only that which you are. Before I became enlightened, the same was the case with me -- the whole world used to appear tremendously asleep, in darkness, in death, unenlightened, because you are reflected continuously everywhere. Every other person is just a mirror; you see yourself. So don't be worried about others; think about yourself. That should be your problem. Others are not your problems. Whether they are enlightened or not, how does it concern you? Why should you be worried about it? If somebody wants to remain unenlightened, it is absolutely his business to decide about it. If they want to play the game of being unenlightened, it's perfectly okay. If you have become fed up with the world, if you are fed up with your anguish and anxiety and you have…

Beloved Osho, gautam buddha became enlightened sitting under a tree. You said about socrates that he was standing under a tree at the moment of his enlightenment, and a similar story is told of krishnamurti. You yourself left your house and went under a tree on the night of your enlightenment. Are trees connected in some esoteric way with the happening of the happening of enlightenment? Could you also explain that if enlightenment is a sudden happening, how did you come to receive the intimation of enlightenment that prompted you to leave your house and go and sit under a tree?

Repeat any idea often enough, psychologists tell us, and eventually it will take root in the mind and affect your behavior accordingly. You have created your self-image out of all that society says about you. This identity of yours is borrowed, you are dependent on the views of others for this image. Only those who have discovered their own true identity, who have realized their own self, can be free of this pseudo-identity. Only one who knows himself can liberate himself from this borrowed self-image, and only in breaking the borrowed image can you know yourself. This is why Mahavira and Buddha go to the forest -- it is not that the forests attract them, but that they are repelled by you. It is not that the mountains are calling, it is you that are driving them there! The mountains are lovely because they do not judge you. No mountain…

Osho, Buddha attained enlightenment under a tree. You say that on the day the event of enlightenment happened to Socrates, he was standing leaning against a tree. In Krishnamurti’s life too there is a similar mention, and you yourself, on the day of your enlightenment, left home and climbed a tree. So is there any esoteric relation between trees and enlightenment? And also explain: if enlightenment happens suddenly, how did you have prior intimation of it that day, so that you left home and climbed a tree?

If you go to England or America, you will meditate with the same ease—because what’s the point? That society isn’t yours. Those people are as good as non-existent. Whatever their eyes judge, what harm can it do you? But the eyes that know you, with whom you have dealings, business—those you fear. Your self-interest might suffer by offending them. And the image you have in their eyes—if that changes, you become restless. Because you have no understanding of yourself; what others think you are, that is what you think you are. If others say you are beautiful, you believe you are beautiful. If others say you are good and decent, you believe you are good and decent. And if others begin to think you are mad, it won’t be long before you start doubting yourself—and soon you will accept that you are mad. Psychologists say we stunt the intelligence of…