Pilgrimage

You said that life is a pilgrimage without a goal. Is this only for the unenlightened? When an enlightened being leaves his body, does the pilgrimage continue?

Yes, the pilgrimage continues, but the pilgrim is no more. The pilgrim disappears, the pilgrimage continues. In you just the opposite is the case: the pilgrim is there and the pilgrimage is not there yet. The pilgrim is too much, hence it obstructs the pilgrimage. The dancer disappears but the dance continues; the singer disappears but the song continues. The song cannot die because the song is out of God. The dancer cannot live eternally because the dancer is only out of your mind, just a fiction. The dance is the reality, the dancer is just a fiction -- hence Sufis have developed many methods through dance: the whirling dervish, the turn. What happens in the turn? What happens for the whirling dervish when he goes on dancing and whirling and whirling and whirling? What happens? A moment comes the whirler disappears, there is only whirling; the turner is no…

Osho, it seems true that one who attains self-realization finds supreme bliss in life. But after death, such a person’s soul is lost in Existence, like a salt doll dissolving in the ocean. Then what meaning does the effort for liberation have in such a case? In the absence of the soul, who will experience this liberation? Kindly clarify!

The trick is to ask questions first on which the subject cannot lie. “Look at the clock—what time is it?” “Nine twenty.” The graph is recorded. “What is in my hand?” “A book.” “Which book?” “The Bible.” The graph runs. “Is the door open or closed?” “Open.” Many such questions where he cannot lie. Then the psychologist asked, “Who are you?” The man was exhausted by endless arguments and thought, “Let me end this bother. I’ll plainly say I’m not Abraham Lincoln. In my heart I know I am, but how long can I quarrel with people?” “Are you Abraham Lincoln?” He said, “No, I am not Abraham Lincoln.” And the machine showed: he was lying. The belief had sunk so deep into the heart! The play had become real. Do you think if we told this man, “It would be best if you ceased to be Abraham Lincoln; then…

Is there still an individual body?

No. It only seems so to others. If I try to talk about it, to verbalize it, then the whole thing becomes a problem. Whenever we talk about what happens when one goes beyond meditation, it becomes a paradox. It can never be explained because any type of explanation will create new paradoxes, new contradictions. This fifth stage is an explosion of everything that has been. Now nothing remains. It is an explosion of the totality that you were: your memory, your intellect, your ego, your personality, your being, your soul. Everything that you were is now not; you just go beyond. There is no you; you become everything. That is the point of Brahman, cosmic consciousness. Dynamic Meditation can lead you only up to the fourth stage, satori. The fifth is beyond method. Guidance is possible only up to the fourth stage. That is why Krishnamurti talks of no-guidance.…

The more it becomes easy to go out and come in. out and in, the more a new stage comes in which neither you are out nor you are in. You transcend both. That is the culmination, that is samadhi. Some religions as Zen have mistakenly understood this, as Satori; this glimpse, as the ultimate experience or Samadhi. It is not Samadhi, for coming back is still a possibility. The Ego did not die, it only jumped You jumped out and you have come back--just like jumping on the ground. You jump above the ground, the gravitation is there, the Earth is there, so you come back. For a moment you were out of its grip, but now you are back. You go out, return, and you think; 'I have achieved it,' because it is so blissful. But you have not known something that is beyond bliss.