Real awakening happens for no reason at all; you can’t force it or copy a trigger—one moment you’re the old you, the next you’re new.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
(In Punjabi; audio indistinct) About the “leap”: isn’t there some causal gap? He is no longer what he was—the same person, the same life, the same soul—he has become a cause… My point is: there must be a cause for the leap. A faint, causeless jump does nothing; something big must have caused it…
No—I am saying: not even by grace, because to make “grace” a reason is still to be seeking a cause. This fact must be accepted as uncaused. It happens. And when it happens, one sees there truly was no cause. Until it happens, we live in the world of causes. The mind’s mode of thinking is cause-and-effect; it cannot think without causes. As long as we live in the mind, we will say, “No—this doesn’t sit right.” I too would say: it doesn’t sit right. I too would say: it doesn’t satisfy the intellect. But there is no help for it—whether it satisfies or not, the fact is this: it is utterly uncaused—only then is it a jump. Have you understood what ‘jump’ means? Only if it is uncaused is it a jump. If there is a cause, it is development. Without a cause, it is revolution. Only when it…
Osho, you call sannyas, meditation, and love a leap. What do you mean by a leap?
Narendra! Whatever is essential in life—be it meditation, love, or sannyas—does not come the way mathematics does. It has no method, no staircase. There is no sequential movement in it. It is an explosion. Everything happens in a single instant. It is not a conclusion of thought; it is a condition of the heart, a state of feeling. Suddenly! When you light a lamp, darkness doesn’t go away gradually—first a little, then a little more. Here the lamp is lit, and there the darkness is gone—in one moment, at once. I call the lighting of the lamp and the vanishing of the darkness a leap. If it left little by little, in sequence, in measurable increments, then it would be a process. So too with sannyas: it is not a process. In a moment of awakening, the futility of life is seen. It is seen with such intensity that nothing…
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…
Beloved master, my question tonight is about causality. I am wondering what could produce the mystic's experience of the absolute. The absolute must be infinite and eternal, and yet the cause must be both spiritually and temporally distinct from what it produces. Since nothing could stand outside of eternity, or nothing could stand outside of infinity, there could be no cause which could produce this experience of the absolute. What possible chance, if this is the case, is there for me if all of my actions not only cannot produce this experience of the absolute, but would do the opposite, woul
Synchronicity is not a law of certainty, but it is certainly a law. A few things happen that way. Love happens that way. What in the East we have called darshan -- which is absolutely an Eastern concept, that people go to a master just to see him. In the West this seems absolutely absurd. Unless you have some question to ask, it is meaningless just to see a person, or just to touch his feet. But the West has not been aware of the law of synchronicity. Just seeing may do something miraculous. Just in the moment of touching his feet, something may transpire in you. Just seeing the master, something will immediately change within you. You are certainly not the same person in the presence of the master as you are ordinarily. These things can be just helpful, not causes to make you remember yourself. Coming close to…
Yesterday you said that sudden enlightenment is not bound by the law of cause and effect, but if nothing is haphazard in existence, nothing happens accidentally, then how can the highest experience like enlightenment happen this way?
Yesterday I was reading someone's autobiography. He has written that he had travelled to a foreign city and got lost there. He did not understand the language. He became very nervous. And in his nervousness he forgot the name of his hotel, and forgot the phone number too. Then his panic increased: now how will he inquire? He was looking with great anxiety as he walked along the road, looking for someone who could understand his language. It was an eastern country, in the far east, and this American! He was looking to see if any white skinned person appeared, who will understand his speech, or if he could find a store with an English sign board, so he can go ask there. He was walking along looking with such intensity, sweating, that he did not hear that a police car was coming behind him sounding the horn again and…