Osho – Truth is pure Awareness
Question: Beloved Osho, Once some years ago, while making love, I disappeared. I would like to say, ” Literally Disappeared,” because I felt as if all of me simply vanished. But certainly my body must have been there, because my partner didn’t notice that he was suddenly alone. I heard my voice say: ” I am going,” and then possibly only for a second or two, no one was there. Though I have had moments of joy while love making since, I have always been present to know that they are moments of joy. Presumably ecstasy was the trigger for what happened, but the happening itself wasn’t ecstatic, it wasn’t anything, it simply was. Is meditation that previous stage of ecstasy, or that state of not – even ecstasy, just isness?
Osho: Ecstasy or blissfulness are all toys to allure you towards meditation. You will find them only in the beginning. As the meditation grows deeper there is only isness. Everything disappears, even ecstasy, because ecstasy too, carries with it, just behind it, the shadow of agony. It is a duality. Blissfulness carries with it, hiding behind it, suffering, misery. It is a duality. Only isness is not a duality because isness is simply synonymous with existence, and there is no non-existence.
Anything can trigger it. Love is one of the most likely things to trigger it because you are so totally in it, so intensely in it and without any effort. It is a biological help to man to experience his first isness. It can be scary to feel that you have literally disappeared, and to tell your partner, I am going, rather than I am coming! is to kill the poor man! What is happening? What kind of love is happening?
He has always heard that in love one comes, but this is a rare quality to be going! The man must have been cultured; otherwise he would have got up and said, I am going also! you are going what am I doing here? He was a man of culture and etiquette that he remained!
But coming and going both are two sides of the same coin. People have noted only the coming; they have not been sharp enough to see the other side of it. The moment of coming is simultaneously the moment of going. You as a personality, you as an ego, are going; you as pure isness, are coming. So they are not contradictory, they are complementary.
But it can be triggered anywhere… sometimes for no reason at all just the situation and you may not be able even to know what has triggered it. I used to go for a morning walk, and I used to pass a beautiful house every day that was my route.
And one day, when I was coming back, the sun was just shining on my face; I was perspiring I had gone for four, five miles, and just… I could not move from that place. I must have been eighteen or seventeen. Something happened between the sun and the beautiful morning, that I simply forgot that I have to go home. I simply forgot that I am. I was simply standing there.
But the man who owned the house, he has been watching me for almost a year that I come and go by the side of the house; today, what has happened? I am simply frozen. But frozen in such ecstasy!
He came and shook me, and it was like coming down from a very far away place, rushing into my body. He said, What has happened?
I said, Thats what I was going to ask you. Something certainly happened, and something that I would like to happen forever. I was not. You unnecessarily got worried, shook me, and brought me back. I had moved into some space which was absolutely new to me and it was pure isness.
Anything can do, it seems that just your preparedness, knowingly or unknowingly, your closeness to the point where the phenomenon can be triggered…. But this kind of experience is not within your power. It happens to you like lightning. You cannot do anything to bring it back, unless you start with a device that suits you; for example, if relaxation suits you, then whenever you have time, relax and relaxation does not mean that you have to lie down and relax. You can go on walking and relax.
You can go on working, but in a relaxed way. No tension, no hurry, no speed, nowhere to go… just in the moment. And the window will be opening again and again and more often, and one day it remains open forever. It is pure isness.
Chetana has asked one question: when awareness is total and all thoughts disappear, does enlightenment, realization, or any other experience happen or only the awareness remain? The truth is that all experiences are lower. Truth is not an experience. It has to be said that it is an experience; otherwise how to convey it to you?
Truth is pure awareness. Just all is, and all is beautiful, and all is benediction. But the basic quality is of awareness. You can call it isness. The Sanskrit word for theist is astik. It is a beautiful word, distorted because of the association with God. Astik comes from the root, ast, and asti means isness. In that sense, nobody is astik by believing in God; astik is one who has come to the state of isness, and this state is not separate so there is no way of it going away; it remains. All words silence, peace, ecstasy, blissfulness fall short. The juice of isness is far deeper, far juicier than any word that any human language can provide.
Source – “The Transmission of the Lamp” – Osho
