How can enlightenment be contagious?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, HOW CAN ENLIGHTENMENT BE CATCHING? Just like a cold! It is catching. How does laughter catch? Why suddenly do you all start laughing together? Enlightenment happens just the same way. Just wait, it is going to happen to you too!

The printing press was discovered by certain individuals in different places at about the same time. Will the same happen to consciousness? As more people become conscious, will there be an explosion in the world? Is consciousness contagious?

Yes. It is contagious, and it is going to happen exactly in the same way; a few individuals will explore it and then it will become a wildfire. There is no way to prevent it. It is a well-known fact, not only about printing presses but about other discoveries.... The printing press was discovered in different countries unrelated to each other, almost at the same time. It is a strange phenomenon. How does it happen? Something invisible seems to be passing around. Albert Einstein was asked, "If you had not discovered the theory of relativity, what do you think -- would it ever been discovered or not?" Albert Einstein laughed. He said, "At the most, just within two years somebody else would have discovered it." And he said, "I am saying two years at the LONGEST." It could have been only two weeks, because human consciousness had come to a…

Beloved Osho, the other day you were telling us the effects of radioactive matter on the body. But I am feeling and experiencing the radiation of a buddha -- an enormous energy radiating from you which not only rejuvenates body-mind continuously, but makes us laugh, dance and celebrate.

I have commented on hundreds of mystics, many of them Sufis who are in revolt against the orthodox Mohammedan structure. When Sufis heard about my commentaries on Sufism, at least two or three times a year I received beautiful printed copies of the KORAN, with letters saying, "You are the only person who can write a commentary, because you are not a Mohammedan. Mohammedans cannot do anything against you; they cannot expel you." But my problem was different. Many times, listening to their invitation, their love, I opened the KORAN, read a few pages. There is nothing to comment on. It is written by an illiterate Mohammed who could not even make his own signature. He has dictated it, and others have written it. It is such a childish thing. I have tried my best to find a few fragments here and there; then I will choose those fragments and…

Osho: has anyone ever become enlightened while listening to a joke? Maybe there is hope for me yet!

Listen to these jokes and give it a try. Who knows? Enlightenment is always unpredictable -- it may happen today. But don't expect it. These are the problems with enlightenment: if you expect, you miss. Such strange conditions are attached to enlightenment: if you expect you miss, if you desire you miss. So don't expect that it is going to happen; just sit relaxed and listen to the joke. It may happen, it may not. The marriage between the elderly farmer and his young wife was not working out too well, so the farmer consulted his doctor for advice. "The next time you are down in the field plowing and feel a yearning for your wife," said the doctor, "don't wait until lunchtime or the end of the day, but quit what you are doing and go to the house!" "I tried that," said the farmer, "but by the time…

Beloved Osho, what is enlightenment? Have the experience and the idea of enlightenment evolved with time?

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…