What is the criterion for evaluating experiences?

Osho, before beginning practice we read in books that a seeker has such-and-such experiences, that this or that will happen, may happen. So when I prepare to practice on my own and I try to see where these colors show up—white, green, blue—and I sit right at the start to imagine them, even before a thought-free state arrives, don’t all these imaginations that we are taught become an obstacle to entering meditation?

In truth, for me there is no wrong and right. There are two paths and two kinds of people. And in each person both kinds of aspects exist. The complexity is great. Therefore for the masculine mind—not man, the masculine psyche—the positive path becomes easier, immediately easier, because there is aggression, a drive to conquer, to achieve, to grasp. The feminine mind is negativity, receptivity—let it come. It is not an attack but a waiting. So in those centuries where the masculine predominated—as in the past centuries, where woman had no influence—those were centuries of means, of methods. In the coming days woman is slowly becoming influential, and in the West, where woman has become very influential, a Krishnamurti-like view can have influence, because negativity has increased. But this is such a wavering matter—it wavers daily. Whatever of the two seems right to you, each person should decide within. If…

Osho, is the experience of the Divine different for each person?

Think of it like this: you go home from this garden, and your children say, “Tell us—what was the garden like?” A painter might tell you by making a painting: “It was like this.” A poet will write a poem—of the trees, of the winds passing through them, of the sun filtering between their leaves. Now a poem and a painting differ greatly. Or perhaps someone is a musician; he will not even write a poem—he will lift his vina. Why write? The winds passed through the trees and there was sound and resonance—he will reproduce that resonance on the vina. The colors in the trees he will translate into tones. The sun and shade he will pour into music. He will play the garden on his vina. Another will write a poem; another will render it on paper. The three expressions will differ. And if you look only at…

Osho, if in your presence a person has an inner experience but later cannot, what is that? Would you call it a direction toward liberation or dependence?

There can be two kinds of reasons. In fact there can be many, but broadly two will do. - One: he may only be imagining, not actually experiencing. Even for imagination my presence gives support. Alone, even imagining becomes difficult. Imagination too asks for props. So in my presence he will be able to imagine more easily, and it will be easier to mistake imagination for experience. At home, if the same kind of thing happened, he might suspect it is only imagination. - The other, less frequent, possibility: you did not imagine; you actually took a leap. For a moment you jumped two feet off the ground; you lifted your head and saw a little higher. Then you fell back to the ground. That is possible too. Both can be useful. Even imagination is an indicator that you want to imagine—really, that you want to experience; that is why…

You told us that truth can't be transmitted or transferred, it can be attained only by experience. Many years ago when I was converted to catholicism and when I took the "holy communion," I had genuine, pure feelings of love for jesus and felt I had attained the "truth." as I see it today, I simply fell victim to a vicious fallacy induced by the priests through a kind of self-hypnosis, and had adored and worshipped nothing more than a piece of bread. I had to face the fact that I had attained, by experience, the wrong truth. How to distinguish between these cases of unconscious self-delusion a

Farid, truth cannot be transferred, truth cannot be handed over to you by somebody else, because it is not a commodity. It is not a thing, it is an experience. In fact, the word experience is not exactly the right word. It will be truer to say that it is an experiencing; this is the first thing to be understood. I have to use language which is already there, created by the centuries, with all kinds of fallacies in it -- obviously. Language is created for day-to-day use, language is created for the mundane world; as far as it goes, it is good. It is perfectly adequate for the marketplace, but as you start moving into deeper waters it becomes more and more inadequate -- not only inadequate, it starts becoming utterly wrong. For example, think of these two words, experience and experiencing. When you use the word experience it…

And people, from a distance, will say: this is not right. Keep quiet—neither call it right nor wrong—until you have experimented within. Life is not so simple that it can be tested from a distance. You have to dive in. If one has no experience of love and he speaks about love—what is the value? And often it happens that those who have no experience of love discuss love the most. The reason is that through discussion they gratify the mind. Since there is no love in their life, they get a little juice by talking of love. Often the people who write love poetry are precisely those who have never experienced love. The poem is a substitute. What they would have done in love, they could not; they are doing with words. So do not go to meet the poet after reading his love poems—otherwise you will be disappointed.