Spiritual Awakening

Osho, the play-acting I have to do for security—should I keep doing it or drop it? And now even the acting itself seems to be abandoning me. Please guide me to the right path.

The whole of life is a play—of relationships, of the marketplace, of the household. Life is acting. Where will you leave it and go? Where can you run? Wherever you go, there again you will have to enact some drama. So I am not in favor of escapism. Become a skillful actor. Do not run away. Act knowingly, not in unconsciousness; act with awareness. Awareness has to be cultivated. A thousand tasks will have to be done—and perhaps they are necessary. But doing them with awareness is essential. Slowly you will find that life is no longer “life” as you knew it; it has become sheer play, and you have become an actor. To be an actor means that there is a great distance between you and what you do. For example, someone who plays Rama in the Ramleela performs the role completely—perhaps better than Rama himself, because Rama never…

Osho, the world is duality; all the laws of the world stand upon opposites. Then why are we instructed to be beyond duality? Are we outside the world?

You are not—but you can be. And no one is preaching to you to be outside the world. You yourself come asking, “I am surrounded by duality, there is great restlessness—what should I do?” If you remain in duality, restlessness will remain, because wherever there are two, there will be conflict. There is an old saying: where there are pots, there will be some clatter. Until only one remains, peace is not possible. No one is telling you, “Become beyond duality.” You come asking, “The mind is disturbed, tormented, unhappy—what should I do?” You ask; therefore I say: you are unhappy because you are still with two. Somehow the One has to be found. Find the One and the unrest will vanish. That is why Mahavira gave liberation the name kaivalya. He chose a very beautiful word. Kaivalya means utterly alone—only you, no other. Consciousness alone remains. Then with whom…

Osho, is it necessary to qualify awakening with the adjective “discernment” (vivek), or not? Because perhaps there could be an undiscerning awakening as well.

No, an undiscerning awakening is not possible. Awakening is intrinsically discerning. In fact, awakening and vivek mean the same. Just as we cannot speak of a living corpse, we cannot speak of an undiscerning awakening; they are opposing terms. Vivek means awakening. What commonly comes to mind with the word vivek is discrimination—hence your question: the idea of sorting out, “this is wrong and this is right.” But so long as you are making such discriminations—so long as you are saying, “let me take this as right and that as wrong”—you do not yet have vivek. Up to that point you have merely picked up what the truly discerning have lived as right and what they have regarded as wrong. The day real vivek dawns, there is no need to decide, “this is wrong, this is right.” What is right simply happens; what is wrong does not happen. From one…

Beloved Osho, I remember you saying once that the growth of man is dialectical; and you have also explained about thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Would you please give more clarity in this reference on the growth towards enlightenment?

That feeling cannot be expressed by "I" because "I" is just another way of saying "ego." Before enlightenment there was ego; ego can exist only in conflict. This state can be spoken of only as "am"-ness, without any "I." It is a very strange feeling: you are not, and yet you are. You are not your old self; you are no longer a self, but you have not lost the feeling of am-ness. So the question of what happens to individuals when they dissolve into the universal.... They still remain individuals, but with no assertion of "I" in them... just a silent song of am-ness or isness. It is as if we put hundreds of candles in this room; all their light will become one. You cannot differentiate in the light -- which part belongs to which candle -- it has become a universal phenomenon. But still, each candle has…