Effortlessness

Beloved Osho, can there be moments of effortlessness while a seeker is engaged in the first three stages? Is effort completely lacking in the second four stages? Does there come a point at which both effort and effortlessness must cease?

So don't go on suppressing, because a quantity can be tolerated but there comes a moment when the quantity reaches the climax, the evaporating point -- one hundred degrees. Then you start boiling and evaporating. Many persons who were just like you a day before are in madhouses now. You can be there any day. If you don't allow catharsis you are all prone to go mad, because civilization is such, the situation is such, that everybody accumulates madness. You have to throw it every day to remain clean and pure, to retain the clarity of mind and vision. But if you know the law that if you start a thing you can stop it, then you can start anything and you can stop. Be the master in the starting, you will be the master in the end also. But if a thing starts by itself then you cannot stop…

Beloved Osho, a number of times I have felt in the past that I had reached a state of effortlessness. It lasted for some time, for days or even weeks, but then I fell back from it. Why does this falling back happen? Can anything be done to prevent it?

Whenever it happens again don't get miserable about it -- let it happen and accept it. This is difficult. Whenever happiness happens you accept it, whenever you feel blissful you never ask any questions about it. You never ask, "Why has it happened?" You accept it. But whenever misery comes, whenever unhappiness comes, whenever you are in pain and anguish, immediately you ask, "Why has it happened?" Behave equally to both, have the same attitude to both. There are two possibilities: one, do the same with unhappiness as you have done with your happiness, or do the same with your happiness as you are doing with your unhappiness. Either accept both or reject both, and then you will have a transformation. If you can accept both, when misery comes accept it as part of life, suddenly the nature of the misery is transformed. Through acceptance the quality has changed --…

Osho, at times I feel I am on the very peak of life. It seems that everything—the whole mystery of life—has been found. But then, in certain moments, I also experience a very dense sadness and helplessness. I cannot grasp what my real problem is.

As long as there are peaks, there will be valleys. As long as there is the longing for the peak, you will have to endure the melancholy of the valleys as well. One who has asked for pleasure has, along with it, asked for pain. And when pleasure comes, pain enters with it like a shadow. We change the names of our pleasures, but we do not become free of pleasure; and the one who is not free of pleasure will not be free of pain. Ashtavakra’s entire teaching is just this: be free of duality. Only the one who is free of duality arrives. The peak you think you have reached is the illusion of arrival—because there is no peak to arrive at. Arrival is a vast plain—neither height nor depth. Arrival is like a scale that has balanced: both pans exactly equal and the needle at rest. Or…

In this second stage, many people may feel to throw away their clothes. If the thought arises, throw them away. Do not worry about anyone; do not take any concern. Here there will be no onlooker—everyone will be with eyes closed in his own work; no one has anything to do with anyone else. Many friends will feel that when the body is becoming very light, even a slight garment will suddenly feel like a mountain, like a rock. Mahavira was not mad that he became naked. There was a reason. And hundreds who practiced this meditation became naked—their nakedness had a reason. It is not that nakedness will become compulsory for you. Once the mind becomes light, you will return to the world, and can be simple and straight. This catharsis does not continue forever. At most for three months; at least three weeks.