Enlightenment means awareness, witnessing. Enlightenment is neither of the body nor of the mind. It is of the beyond. The body can be manipulated by mechanisms, the mind can be manipulated by mechanisms, but your soul is beyond and cannot be manipulated by any mechanism whatsoever.
Sannyas means that you have decided to live the life of Tao, that you will not cling to the mind, that you will let it go, that you will not nourish it anymore, that you will not support it in any possible way, that you will go on finding how you have been supporting it and withdrawing your support. When all supports are withdrawn it falls on its own accord. And the moment the ego falls and disappears is the greatest moment in life. That’s the moment of enlightenment, the moment of awakening, the moment when you become a Christ or a Buddha or a Krishna.
Remember, enlightenment is not somewhere else, neither in space nor in time, it is here-now. And if you hurry too much you will go astray, you will go far away. The whole thing is to slow down — to slow down so deeply that one day NOTHING moves in you. In that very moment, in that moment of no-movement, you will become enlightened.
In the East, SATSANGA has been one of the most valuable methods for enlightenment. The East has said that if you are in the presence of the Master, nothing else is needed. Just be in his presence, just sit silently with him, just be with him and enlightenment will take care of itself. Whenever the right moment comes it will happen. You need not worry about it, you need not plan it, otherwise you will be in a turmoil: ‘When is this enlightenment going to happen?’ Then enlightenment has also become a desire, a greed, a lust.
Enlightenment is never more or less: either one is enlightened or one is not. It is not a question of more or less. How can you be more enlightened and less enlightened? This is absurd. Enlightenment is not a relative concept: either one has arrived or one has not arrived. How can you partially arrive? You have come back home. Can you say ‘I have partially come back home — only one leg… the head has not come’?
Intelligence is the first requirement for it to happen at all. Intelligence is the preparation for it. Be intelligent. Behave intelligently. Live intelligently. Otherwise enlightenment is not going to happen at all. If you are hoping that one day enlightenment will come and then you will be intelligent, a genius, you are wrong.
To help your energy rise and soar high you will need tremendous intelligence, sharp intelligence. Otherwise you will not be able to bring your energy up so high. A stupid person cannot do that. Enlightenment, nirvana, moksha, liberation, the arousal of your kundalini whatsoever the name — are just names, symbolic. But one thing is certain: intelligence has to precede them. You cannot afford to be stupid and hope that someday something will happen and you will become enlightened. Then you are hoping in vain. You will have to create intelligence.
What is enlightenment? It is to attain to your mirror-like quality again. It is a recovery. It is not something that you invent, it is already the case — deep down you are en-lightened. Dust has just gathered on the surface, you need a good cleansing.
Watch it in your own life. How do you live? Do you bring the past in again and again? So you always live through the past? Is your life too coloured by memory ? Then you are living the worldly life. To live in memory is to live in the world, SANSARA; to live without memory, is to live in God, to live without memory is to live in nirvana, enlightenment.
The Master is needed for many things. He is needed mostly when you are coming very close to enlightenment. Then he is needed very very deeply because he will allow you only so far. Slowly, slowly, in quantities, he will help you to absorb the vastness of the experience. the tremendousness of it. It is a ‘mysterium tremendum’. You are just a drop and enlightenment is like an ocean dropping in you. One has not to be greedy. First the Master pushes you into it and then he holds you and allows you to go into it very slowly.
If a person remains a learner each moment of his life, from birth to death, only then enlightenment comes otherwise not. So never stop anywhere. Somebody asked Buddha ‘What is enlightenment?’ And he said, ‘CHARAIVETI, CHARAIVETI’ — go on walking, go on walking, never stop, become an eternal journey.
Remember, even after enlightenment the uniqueness of the individual remains intact. That uniqueness is so deep that it never leaves you. When a man becomes enlightened his uniqueness blooms rather than disappears. It comes to bloom. A Buddha becomes enlightened in his own way. The enlightenment is the same, the experience of the light is the same, the experience of truth is the same, but the experiencer has an individuality, a unique individuality.
