Is there a difference between a master and an ordinary enlightened person?

Beloved master, is there really no difference between an ordinary person and one who is enlightened?

Narendra, everyone is born enlightened. Everyone is born absolutely innocent, absolutely pure, absolutely empty. But that innocence, that purity, that emptiness, is bound to be lost because it is unconscious. One has to regain it -- one has to gain it consciously. That is the only difference between an ordinary person and the enlightened one. The ordinary person came with the same potential, has got the same potential still, but he has not claimed it yet. The enlightened one has lost it and claimed it back. The ordinary person is in a state of paradise lost and the enlightened person is in the state of paradise regained. But you can gain it any moment, it is up to you. Nobody can prevent you from becoming enlightened. It is not a question of any particular talent. Not everybody is a musician and not everybody can be a musician; that is a…

Lao tzu and you keep on saying, 'just be ordinary.' however you seem to be so extraordinary -- your appearance, your lifestyle. Is there a lot of difference between a master and an ordinary enlightened person?

It happens sometimes to people who use glasses. It happens that they have the glasses on and they are searching for them. They may be in a hurry, and when they are in a hurry, they search everywhere -- they completely forget that they have the glasses on. One can get in a panic. You may have had certain experiences like this in your life -- because of the very search you become so panicky and so worried and so disturbed that your vision is no longer clear, and something which is just in front of you, you cannot see. This is the case. You need not search for uniqueness, you are unique already. There is no way to make a thing more unique. The words 'more unique' are absurd. Unique is enough. There exists nothing like 'more unique'. It is just like the word 'circle'. Circles exist. There exists…

Beloved Osho, thank you for letting us taste from your ocean of consciousness. Both krishnamurti and gurdjieff were talking about their waves of consciousness. Beloved master, are they the waves of your ocean?

And in the fourteenth there is only one man, their own master, who was not known outside Agra. All his following is centered in Agra. A few people have moved to different places, but basically, it is a one-city-oriented religion. They asked me what was my opinion about this map. I said, "Who has made this map?" They said, "It is in our holy scripture. Our master himself has made this." I said, "Your master is right. He is in the fourteenth." They looked at me, because before me they had shown that map to many people. Everybody disagreed because their masters were put in the fifth degree, somebody's master in the third degree, somebody's master at the most in the seventh. After the seventh, the other six planes are empty. The fourteenth, the highest reach of consciousness, has been achieved by their master. Naturally no Hindu will agree, no…

Beloved master, I heard you saying that we are all enlightened. If so, why am I waiting for something to happen? Is it an old habit?

But you are never at home. You are looking into other people's homes. Somebody is in Gautam Buddha's, somebody in Lao Tzu's, somebody in Jesus Christ's, somebody in Moses'... it is a very strange situation that you have been diverted in such a way that everybody is somewhere else, where he is not expected to be, and he is not where existence wants him to be. I teach the immediate and ultimate ordinariness. It is the most beautiful experience, because now there is no desire, no tension, no search, no inquiry, nowhere to go. You are already where you wanted to be. And you are asking, "If so, why am I waiting for something to happen?" Now, do I have to answer this? Perhaps this is your unique enlightenment, that even though you are enlightened, still you are looking for some happening. A little crazy, but that does not destroy…

One last question. A small, final question a friend has asked: Osho, can the capacity for egolessness be available to an ordinary person too?

From his question it sounds as if, poor fellow, how could an ordinary person ever get it? Whereas the truth is: for the extraordinary it is very difficult. Because “extraordinary” itself means egoistic. It can be attained only by the ordinary. But not by the merely ordinary—by the extraordinarily ordinary, one who is ordinary in an extraordinary way. Whom do I call “ordinary-ordinary”? I call him ordinary-ordinary whom everyone else calls ordinary, but who himself does not accept he is ordinary. And whom do I call extraordinarily ordinary? The one whom the world may call extraordinary, yet he knows himself to be ordinary. For twelve years I traveled across the country. I met hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds came to me and said, “What you say—how will it ever be understood by the ordinary man?” I asked them, “Do you understand it?” They said, “I do understand; but how…