Osho on Mini Satori and Full Satori

Question: What is ‘getting it’? When is the Goose out? What is a mini Satori and what is a ‘full Satori’? And what is Samadhi? Are all these part of some map?
Osho : The question is from Somendra. ‘Getting it’ means coming to know that there is nothing to get. ‘Getting it’ means getting rid of all greed, of all ambition, of all goals. The day you get that the way things are is the perfect way, you have attained. The day you recognise the fact that things cannot be better than this, suddenly you have exploded into a new light, into a new being, into a new consciousness. ‘Getting it’ is getting that there is nowhere to get to. Then one lives moment to moment. This is samadhi.

But many times you get it and it gets lost. You get it again and again you lose it. Then it is a mini-satori. Mini-satori means a glimpse. The possibility is you may lose it.

Somendra had such a glimpse a few days before, hence the question. When he came to me I told him it was a mini-satori so he must have been wondering what a mini-satori is and what a satori is and what a samadhi is.

A mini-satori is a guarded statement about satori. It means, Somendra, that you can lose it. If you are not very alert you are bound to lose it. If you are very alert it can turn into a satori. A satori is an experience which has become established and there is no way to lose it.

A mini-satori is an experience which has just come like a glimpse, like a breeze. Suddenly you see that all perception is available. The aperture opens. But it closes like a camera. Before a satori many mini-satoris happen, it depends — sometimes thousands of mini-satoris, sometimes hundreds, sometimes a few, sometimes one. It depends on the person. Sometimes the first satori can become the satori, there is no need for it to be a mini — it depends on you.

But whenever it happens to any of you I an icing to call it mini for a certain reason. The reason is I want to make you alert so that you don’t lose it. It can become a satori but if I call it a satori immediately you will lose it and it can become a mini. You follow me? I call it mini so that it can become a satori. Sometimes you will think that Osho is being very miserly. Why does he call it mini? Why can he not call it satori? It is a very guarded statement — I have to protect you against you in many ways. Even if it is satori I will call it mini — remember. In fact, ‘mini’ is my invention; the Zen people don’t call any satori mini.

I call it mini and the reason is very, very meaningful. I want you to be very, very alert and careful. A man who attains to a mini-satori has become pregnant.Now he should be as careful as a pregnant woman. He is carrying something valuable in him. There is every possibility of miscarriage. To avoid miscarriage I call it a mini-satori. If I say it is satori you can become too confident, you can become too egoistic. And in that very confidence and egotism it is lost.

A mini-satori is a glimpse. It will depend on you. If you nourish it, nurture it, protect it, if you care about it, it can grow into a satori. But it is a very soft and tender and fragile sprout. It can be destroyed very easily. Any accident can undo it. Remember, all that is great is fragile. The lower existence is more hard, the higher existence is more soft. A rock is hard, a rose slower is soft. The rock will be there if you don’t even care about it but a rose flower needs great care. Uncared for there is every possibility that it will disappear. A satori is a rose flower.

And the day the glimpse happens you have to be very, very responsible from that moment. You are answerable. Then you owe something. The existence has given you something, you are not to throw it away. It can be thrown away very easily. It is very difficult to get it, it is very easy to lose it. That’s how higher things are. They are so subtle. Hence I call it mini.

And sometimes hundreds of mini-satoris happen . Only by and by do you become alert and the thing gets established in you. A mini-satori is a vision; with a satori the vision has become your very style.

And then what is a samadhi? A satori is when you have become full of light inside you but still there is a separation between you and the whole. A satori is a person becoming enlightened; a samadhi is when the whole existence has become enlightened through the person. Now the person is no more separate. That is the meaning of the very strange statement of Buddha that the day he became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened. It is very strange because we know that we have not become enlightened yet and he says that the whole existence became enlightened that day. He is right. As far as he is concerned, the whole existence did become enlightened that day. And I repeat it again: the day I became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened.

Samadhi means that you are no more an individual. Satori gives you great individuation. Now listen to it…. Before satori you are a person, not an individual. ‘Person’ comes from a root which means persona, a mask. Before satori you are just a person, a personality, but not an individuality.

And in fact, a person is never a person, a person is many persons — because you can’t keep only one mask, you have to keep many masks. In different situations you need different faces. With your wife you need a different face, with Your mistress you have a different face, with your servant another, with your boss another. You have to go on changing your faces. You have many personalities. Personality is never singular, it is always plural. You are a crowd. When you are a person you are a crowd, you are many. Satori makes you one. By and by it brings Unity in your being. Those many faces disappear, the original face appears — individuality. The word ‘individuality’ means India Bible — that which cannot be divided. Undivided you become.

Satori Intakes you individual and samadhi makes you universal. Then you are no longer individual either. First you were not all individual because you were a crowd, now again you are not an individual because you are the whole. These are the three stages: personality, individuality, universality.

A mini satori is a glimpse of your unity for a moment and then you lose the glimpse and again you are many. Yes, the original face appears as if in a dream. You see it, you recognise it, yes, it is there, you feel happy, you feel tremendously blessed — and suddenly it is gone, it was a vision. Again you fall back to your old pattern. The old gestalt again gathers around you. You will carry the memory, you will carry the fragrance, you will remember it — but it is not a reality ally longer, it is just part of your memory.

When satori has become established then it never leaves you, it is always there; just like your shadow it follows you. The n you have become an individual. Then the individuality has also to be lost. Become one from many and then become zero from one. This is the whole mathematics of spirituality — from many to one and from one to nothingness.

Plotinus says about his own samadhi — he is one of the most important mystics in the West, can be compared to a Buddha — ‘There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. One has become unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity. No movement now. All being calmed, one turns neither to this nor to that, not even to the without or to the within. Utterly resting one has become the very rest.’

The Plotinian rest is no other than samadhi itself. One has become the rest. Ordinarily, when you are a person, you are in tremendous unrest. Restlessness is what you are. When you come to satori you have become very, very restful. You are and you are rested, deeply rested. In samadhi you have disappeared, there is only rest, nobody resting… eternal rest.

Source: from book “Zen: The Path of Paradox Volume 1” by Osho