Seeing rightly means enjoying life’s colors with a calm, grateful heart—loving and kind—without hurting yourself with harsh rules or excess.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I have heard that a seeker has to pass through four stages of sadhana: tariqat, shari’at, marifat, and haqiqat. The last is haqiqat, where the seeker meets his beloved and comes face to face with Truth. Osho, please explain the first three states.
These words are from the Sufis—very significant, and very straightforward. The first is tariqat. Tariqat means: the way, the method, the discipline, the means, the yoga. Tariqat means: something has to be done; only then will you attain—without doing, you will not receive. One has to walk a path; find the way; make a footpath. One has to bring some discipline into life, give it an order. Tariqat means learning the way to become worthy of it. When you go to have an audience with an emperor, you learn the etiquette of his court. You don’t just walk in. If you do, you will not be accepted. You learn how to sit there, how to stand there, how to bow there. If you are going to meet an emperor, you must taste something of the flavor of the emperor’s way of life. If you are going to meet the Divine,…
Osho, while listening to you, many times you begin to appear colorful, and yet like an emptiness. The wall behind your chair also looks colorful, and I become filled with a strange joy. What is all this?
And once you learn the knack of entering those colors—if you descend even a single step into this depth—then you won’t need to see those colors only around me. If you look at any tree with the same peace and love with which you looked at me, then around that tree too a sea of colors will begin to surge. It is surging; you lack the eyes. Existence is veiled by no curtain; only you are blind. Even by a small flower you will see dimensions of aura opening. Once you understand that to look at anyone with quietude and love is essential for seeing truth, then you will see as it is. Until now you have seen very little. You have seen as if many curtains had been hung and behind them the lamp is hidden, and only tiny rays manage to reach you. As each curtain is removed,…
Beloved Osho, sitting silently, suddenly, softly, slowly, soundlessly, peacefully, something peeled off which I could see was my illusion for a better world and good people. Beloved Osho, can you say something about the difference between a vision and an illusion?
The difference between a vision and an illusion is very delicate and fragile, but the difference is very big. The dream is a mind phenomenon; it happens in your mind. It happens because you repress, and whatever is repressed comes up in the night when the conscious represser is asleep. Then the unconscious releases itself in dreams. Dream is the language of the unconscious. Through the dream, the unconscious is doing many things: one is catharsis, second is giving messages to the conscious. If you don't hear, the same dream will be repeated again. It has happened in very rare cases that a dream was repeated almost every night for years. And it happened to a very intelligent, great creator -- Leo Tolstoy. He used to have a dream -- which was a nightmare, although there was no violence, no torture -- but the set-up of the dream was such…
Why is a spiritual experience often called a vision? What is the difference between sight and vision? A while ago you spoke about what it is 'to hear'. Please, what does it mean 'to see'?
Be more sensitive -- less of belief, less of the head, and more of sensitivity. Be more sensuous, alive in your senses, and then suddenly one day you will see: it is not simply the light that is coming to you, it is God in the form of light; and it is not the tree that is standing there in front of you, but God; not the rock, but God; not the woman that you have fallen in love with, but a God; not the man, but God. When the insight becomes clear, unclouded, suddenly you start seeing that everywhere God is, because all is God. A man took a flower once, and without a word, held it up before the men seated in a circle about him. Each man in his turn looked at the flower, and then explained its meaning, its significance, all that it symbolized. The last…
Osho, I find your words very full of rasa, very delightful. But as a stage actor I want to go deep into the art of acting. So I am not yet ready for sannyas. Nor do I want to be limited to a single ochre color. I am interested in colorful clothes, because life too is colorful, rainbow-like. Can I come from time to time for your darshan without becoming your sannyasin?
But I had to choose some symbol. And I chose saffron deliberately. Deliberately—because for some five thousand years saffron has been in the wrong hands. It must be taken back from them. This lovely color has become a symbol of the denial of life. Yet it is the color of life, of spring. Hence its other name: basanti—the color of spring, when all flowers bloom. I don’t know how this spring-color fell into the hands of the wrong people—enemies of flowers, lovers of thorns—people who lay thorn-beds and sleep upon them, who long for thorns, who torment themselves in every way, who are filled with violence. Since there is risk in doing violence to others—for others will answer back—they do violence to themselves. No one can answer that, no one can defend against it. It became the symbol of the self-violent. It became the symbol of hypocrites—those who say one…