Did you come across other enlightened individuals in your travels?

Beloved Osho, I loved hearing about your meetings with the old enlightened sand sculptor from bombay. Did you come across other enlightened individuals in your travels?

And if your watchfulness becomes really strong, then it may be music, it may be dance, it may be love -- it makes no difference: it simply cuts like a sharp sword between you and the object, whatever it is. Religious people are, perhaps, the farthest from watchfulness because they are trying prayer, they are trying devotion to God, they are trying to believe in God. They will be afraid of watching because watching will mean that God will simply disappear -- because it was only a belief, not a fact. The prayer will disappear because it was devoted to, addressed to a God who does not exist. The devotion will disappear because there is no one high above in the sky to be devoted to. Religious people are the most afraid of watchfulness. That's my experience. They do not want to meditate, they do not want to be alert,…

And then he renounced the world. Rather than becoming a wrestler, he became a meditator. And when he became enlightened, he dropped the cloths. He had only one cloth that he used to cover his body. And after his enlightenment, as he was coming down the hill, a beggar asked him something, because it is too cold and he has nothing. And Mahavira looked at himself, he has only one shawl, so he made two pieces out of one shawl and gave half to the beggar, and half he kept himself. It was not enough to cover the body now. And as he was just descending from the hill into the valley, a rose bush caught hold in its thorns, the one piece of the shawl. He looked back and he laughed, and he said, "This is too much.

Q: I WANT TO MAKE SURE MY READERS UNDERSTAND ALL OF THIS. YOU BECAME ENLIGHTENED WHEN YOU WERE IN YOUR VERY EARLY TWENTIES, AND THEN YOU BECAME A TEACHER AFTER THAT. IS THAT CORRECT? -- AND THEN TRAVELED AFTER THAT. COULD YOU DESCRIBE FOR ME WHEN YOU BECAME ENLIGHTENED, AND HOW THAT OCCURRED? A: Enlightenment simply means an experience of your consciousness unclouded by thoughts, emotions, sentiments. When the consciousness is totally empty, there is something like an explosion, an atomic explosion. Your whole insight becomes full of a light which has no source and no cause. And once it has happened, it remains. It never leaves you for a single moment; even when you are asleep, that light is inside. And after that moment you can see things in a totally different way. After that experience, there is no question in you.

Osho, forgive me; I want to ask something that has been on my mind for a long time. Why is it that all the great masters who are alive—including you—never come together?

Kabir’s disciples asked, “Why were you silent? Your speech has such power—give a little taste of it to Farid too! You shower it on us every day.” Kabir said, “Farid has already received it. What I shower on you, Farid has already received. Where I am, there is Farid. We both stand in the same place. Seeing each other, we were amazed. We are not two; we are one. So what is there to say? To whom to say it? If a man sits alone and talks, would you not call him mad? Someone sitting alone, talking to himself—raising the questions and giving the answers—that is what you call madness. So,” said Kabir, “did you want to make me mad? We were not two.” Therefore there is no need for saints to meet. Saints are not separate that they should have to meet. A Janata Party is formed by non-saints,…

Beloved Osho, when I took sannyas and I first met you, it was like meeting again with an ancient beloved, as if I had known you for a long time. Is it so, or is every meeting with an enlightened being so much a reminder of one's own inner self that it feels as if one has met before?

Purna, the experience of remembering as if you have been with me before in the past lives has two dimensions -- one, which you mention in your question itself. Each meeting with an enlightened person is meeting with a mirror. You see yourself as in reality you are -- not the mask but the original face, not the personality but your universal being. The meeting with the enlightened person creates a resonance, a certain vibration that reaches to the very depths of your being. Because you don't know your self, it seems you have met this enlightened being before -- because you don't know your own enlightenment. It is your self nature. This is one dimension. But there is another dimension also. You have lived many lives, and it is impossible that you have not come across the awakened, the enlightened, the illuminated beings -- perhaps many times. You have…