I AM FRUSTRATED — YOU SAY BE HERENOW, DROP THE MIND, BE SPONTANEOUS — TO ME THIS WOULD BE AN ENLIGHTENED STATE. I DON'T EXPERIENCE BEING ENLIGHTENED, SO WHAT DOES THIS ASSHOLE DO IN THE MEANTIME?
MEANTIME, ENJOY BEING UNENLIGHTENED — because, WHO knows, tomorrow you may become enlightened.
I make you beware: meanwhile enjoy being unen-lightened — because once enlightened, you are en-lightened forever. Watch out! Then don't come to me and say that "Now I have become enlightened and I want to enjoy things which only can be enjoyed in a state of unenlightenment." Then I will not be of much help.
I can help you from unenlightenment towards en-lightenment; I cannot help you from enlightenment towards unenlightenment. That is not possible. That has never happened! That is not possible — once you know, you know. Then a thousand and one things will immediately become impossible. So don't waste time — enjoy!
You ask me: I AM FRUSTRATED…
Because you are carrying an idea of becoming enlightened — and you are unenlightened! And the idea of becoming enlightened is continuously hammering, and continuously you know you are unenlightened, so frustration….
You misunderstand me. You continuously misunderstand me. I am not giving you a goal, enlightenment is not a goal. Naturally, you will ask, "Then how does it come?" If you can start enjoying your unenlightened state, it will come on its own — enjoyment bridges both. That's why my emphasis is on joy, celebration, happiness — because happiness bridges both.
The unenlightened person can also be happy, and the enlightened person is necessarily happy. That is the only quality that they share; that is the only quality that overlaps. I have not come across any other quality that overlaps. Hence, I say: The quality that overlaps can be used as a bridge.
The unenlightened person can be joyous only momentarily — obviously, because his mind is wavering. He is continuously dragged to the past, to the future, here and there, and he cannot remain here. But for moments he can… just coming from the past and going to the future, he can for a moment be in the present. Coming from the future, going to the past, he can have a halt, just a little holiday in the present. He passes many times in the day, again and again; he shuttles back and forth. Shuttling back and forth he crosses the present many times. In those fragmentary spaces he can be happy. His happiness cannot be eternal. But happiness is happiness, eternal or momentary.
When you are dancing and celebrating, your dance and celebration has the same quality as when Kabir is dancing or Meera is dancing the SAME quality. The difference is of quantity, not of quality. It is only momentary; it comes and it goes. It does not stay; it is like a flash. By the time you become aware of it, it is gone. But it is the same thing!
It becomes a sun to a Kabir, to a Meera; it becomes a constant source of light. But lightning in the clouds has the SAME quality — it is not different. It is the SAME light — although you cannot read a book, and you cannot write a letter. By the time you take the pen in your hand, the lightning is gone and it is deep darkness. But still, remember, the quality of fire, the quality of electricity is the same — whether it is a constant source like the sun or a very momentary flash of lightning, the difference is only of time.
Happiness overlaps. When Buddha is, he is happy, he is simply happy; it remains. It is like breathing; it is a climate around him — it never leaves him. To you it comes like a fragrance: for a moment your nostrils are full of it and the next moment it is gone and you are full of the stink of the world — but it is the same fragrance. In Buddha's life the flower has bloomed, in your life the flower has not bloomed — it comes and goes.
You are feeling frustrated because this idea of enlightenment is becoming a heavy phenomenon for you. You are making a goal out of it, and you will create misery. And a miserable person can never become enlightened.
Drop misery!… And you will ask: "How to drop misery?" Drop goals. Goals create misery. When you are hankering for something and you cannot get it, you become miserable. When you don't hanker for anything, but start moving in a new dimension, whatsoever you have, you start enjoying it…. You may be sitting in the small garden of your cottage and thinking of the great palace — how to get it?
In that very idea of the great palace which you can see far away in the sunlight, the marble palace, you are becoming miserable. The more you become focussed on THAT palace, the more you forget the beauties of this small cottage — the flowers are there, the lawn is green, the trees are happy, the wind is blowing, the sun is showering, the birds are singing….
For the birds there's not much difference between a palace and a hut. And the flowers bloom the same, and the sun showers the same — on the just, on the unjust, on the poor, on the rich, on the beautiful, on the ugly, on the successful, on the failures.
You are missing.
Forget the palace! In forgetting the palace, you will not be miserable. Start moving with this bird that is blessing you, sitting on your small tree singing a song. Listen to it! And these rays of the sun that are falling on you, rejoice! sing a song! dance with the trees! Lie down on the grass; feel the wetness of it and the aliveness of it.
That's what I mean: Meanwhile enjoy your unenlightenment.
And if you can enjoy your unenlightenment, you will be surprised that the hut has become a palace. You will be surprised by the transformation that happens around you — because it has happened inside you. When you change, the whole world changes.
If you can enjoy your unenlightened state, enlightenment is going to happen to you. It cannot happen by desiring — it happens only by rejoicing. Jesus says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! Why? There is a key, a golden key: if you can rejoice, you will become capable of more rejoicings. If you can rejoice, your heart will dance, throb, will be able to open more… and more will be coming.
You always get that for which you are ready. More you cannot get.
You say: I AM FRUSTRATED. YOU SAY BE HERENOW, DROP THE MIND, BE SPONTANEOUS…
You go on misunderstanding me. When I say to you, "Be spontaneous," you make a goal out of it — and that's what I am saying not to do, please. Be spontaneous means don't have any goals. You make a goal out of being spontaneous. You start trying: How to be spontaneous? The moment you bring 'how', you can never be spontaneous, because there is no how to it. How always leads into the future. How always prepares, plans. How can you plan to be spontaneous? Spontaneity is an understanding that "I have not to run after the desires." Seeing the futility of desires, one no more runs after them and there is spontaneity.
When I say drop the mind, you start trying to drop the mind. Who is trying? The mind starts trying to drop the mind itself. Now, this is impossible the mind cannot drop the mind. You have to understand these things!
What I am teaching you here is not something that has to be done: it is something that has to be understood. And you are much too interested in doing. You are in such a hurry to do something that you don't listen to what I am saying, you don't get the point, and immediately you start planning how to drop the mind. Now, WHO IS this planning? Who is this thinking how to drop the mind? It is the mind itself. Now a new desire has arisen in you of dropping the mind — now a new marble palace, now a new goal.
Mind is desiring. Mind is goal-orientation.
To drop the mind means: see the point! that mind leads you astray; it never allows you to be herenow. Seeing that, be finished with goals. Seeing that, don't create new goals of dropping the mind and being spontaneous and being herenow. Seeing the point, have a good laugh… relax, rejoice. And you are herenow, and in the herenow there is no mind. And when there is no mind, there is spontaneity. Meanwhile, enjoy!
I DON'T EXPERIENCE BEING ENLIGHTENED.
You will never experience being enlightened. How can you experience being enlightened? You are the barrier. And enlightenment is not an experience — because there is no experiencer in it. Enlightenment is experiencing, not experience.
In experience there is division — the experiencer, the experienced. Between the two exists experience. When the experiencer and the experienced are no more separate, they have melted into each other, when the observer has become the observed, when the knower and the known are no more separate, then there is a totally new phenomenon for which I would like to use the word 'experiencing'. I would like to use a verb: experiencing.
Experience is a noun, closed, finished. Experiencing is ongoing, it is riverlike. Those two, the duality of the knower and the known, have dissolved into the river. There is nobody who knows enlightenment, and there is not anything like enlightenment which can be known as an object.
Forget about these complex things. Simply start enjoying. That simple thing can be done easily — you can dance, you can sing, you can love, you can eat, you can go for a walk, you can have a good sleep. All these activities are beautiful if you can be totally in them, dissolved.
Mind will go on trying its ways on you, its tricks on you. And you will be led astray by the mind many times. Whenever you remember, again have a good laugh, rejoice. Don't start fighting with the mind. Neglect. Ignore. This is just an old habit. Watch. Don't pay much attention.
By not giving attention, slowly, slowly you will starve the mind. It will start shrinking. One day, it will not be there. When the mind is gone, you are gone. When you are gone, there is enlightenment.
You say: I DON'T EXPERIENCE BEING ENLIGHTENED, SO WHAT DOES THIS ASSHOLE DO IN THE MEANTIME?
You ARE enlightenment… you have simply forgotten it. A remembrance will come to you — not by your effort, but by being in tune with existence.
OSHO