Osho Quotes on Enlightenment

1. Just as nature abhors vacuum, god abhors vacuum too. When the disciple has come to the point of being empty, utterly empty, grace descends; one is fulfilled. That is god-realisation or enlightenment or nirvana; that’s what Jesus calls ‘the kingdom of god’. And the kingdom of god is within you, but you are the barrier to it. You have to disappear, you have to give way. The kingdom of god does not arise from anywhere else. It wells up within you. Once the rock of the ego is removed, the spring starts flowing.
2. Love so much that the song arises in your being — the song of gratitude. Be grateful and sing the song of gratitude so that you can become more and more capable of love. This is how one reaches higher and higher peaks, and one day, your love and your song have become one. That day is the day where one disappears as a wave and becomes the ocean. That is called samadhi, satori, enlightenment, the kingdom of god — different names for the same thing. But nobody has reached god through logic. And all those who have reached to god have reached through love.
3. From this moment start watching. There is no need to strain — just in a very relaxed, calm, quiet way, start watching. Slowly you will become aware that the mind is an activity that surrounds you, but you are beyond the activity. just hovering above it. You are a mirror that reflects everything; you are consciousness. The deeper this experience goes, the less miserable one becomes. Then anger comes but it does not stay long because there is nobody to receive it, there is nobody to cling to it, there is nobody to get attached to it. It comes and goes. Its visitations will become less and less, far and few in between. And so will be the case with so many things that one was constantly surrounded by. And one day it starts happening: moments pass and there is nothing to reflect. The mind is utterly silent… not even a ripple of thought. Those are the great moments, the first glimpses of samadhi, of enlightenment.
4. Love is the only light in life; all else is darkness. You can have money and you will live in darkness; you can have power and you will live in darkness. You can be famous, you can have much respectability, but you will live in darkness. Unless you have light, unless you have love, you will not have light at all. It is only love that makes life a light phenomenon. That is the meaning of the word ‘enlightenment’. It is love that brings enlightenment. So meditate on love, and not only meditate: act on love. Never be afraid of love, and whenever love knocks on the door don’t hesitate to open it. Go with love, take all the risks. You will never be a loser.
5. Slow down, relax, and let these thoughts disappear. Slowly slowly they disappear. If you remain alert that they have to be dropped, you stop co-operating with them, you stop identifying with them, one day it happens: you are there, god is there, and there is no barrier of thought between you and god, no screen. And that is what is called enlightenment. Suddenly all is light and all is joy and all is eternal life.
6. Let this be the key: whatsoever you are doing, go on bringing your consciousness to it again and again. It will slip again and again, that’s natural. Don’t be worried about it, don’t be troubled by it and don’t start feeling frustrated by it. It takes months, sometimes years, but it is worth it. And slowly slowly, for a few moments, it will start happening. Even those few moments will bring so much joy to you, more than you have ever known, even dreamt about. Even if for a single moment your body and being are welded, are in tune, you will see what-bliss means. You may not be able to tell anybody what it is, but you have tasted it. In that moment you fell into the ocean of god. In that moment you were showered on by divine energy. Slowly slowly more and more moments will be coming and one day it happens that this becomes your very life. It becomes a crystallised thing. That state is called enlightenment.
7. Enlightenment means to live life without any hankering for meaning. Then whatsoever is, is good, and whatsoever is not, that too is good. Then each moment becomes so radiant, so luminous, so fun of fragrance, but still there is no meaning.
8. Enlightenment can happen either through love or through meditation; there are two doors to enlightenment. Meditation means being alone, utterly alone, and love means being totally with someone, so totally that the two-ness disappears and one-ness arises. And these are the two ways. Fifty percent attain through meditation and fifty percent through love; that is a balance.
9. If one can attain enlightenment through love it is one of the most beautiful experiences, far more beautiful than to attain enlightenment through meditation because meditation is a single note, solo, there is no orchestra in  it. Love is an orchestra, two beings playing together. It is far richer.
10. Nirvan means enlightenment, the state of ultimate realisation, the experience of one’s innermost core, the actualisation of all the potential that one has carried all along, the seed turning into the flower.
11. One of the greatest steps towards inner enlightenment is to drop the idea of being known to others. That is an ego-trip, and a sheer wastage of time, energy, opportunity — and an opportunity that is tremendously meaningful. If you can use it, if you can turn in, you can be utterly contented. Life has so much to give, but it gives only to those who turn inwards. And the person who is after fame never turns in, because his whole point is to catch the attention of others. He is really childish, still saying ‘Daddy, Mummy, look at me, pay attention to me.’ He is still searching for somebody to pat him, appreciate him. Deep down he feels he is nothing; he wants to be patted, appreciated, so that he can feel some worth. But even if the whole world pats you and the whole world appreciates you, you will remain the same. This is not the way to attain to worth.
12. Sat means true, bodhi means enlightenment — true enlightenment. There is a possibility of an untrue enlightenment. The ego can play the last trick: the ego can start pretending ‘I am enlightened.’ And it is so subtle that it is almost impossible for others to detect it, because you can talk like enlightened people very easily. Scriptures are available, you can cram them; you can repeat the Upanishads, the Bible, the Koran. You can analyse in such a subtle way, with such philosophical acumen, that it can be easily proved to others that you have attained. You can live a life according to people’s expectations of how an enlightened person should live. If they expect that you should live naked, you can live naked. If they expect that you should kiss lepers, you can kiss lepers. If they expect that you should serve the poor and the ill, you can serve the poor and the ill. It is easy to manage. That is the last trick that the ego can play upon oneself. One has to be very very aware at that moment, otherwise one slips back to the original place, one again falls to the same ground from where one was trying and trying hard to rise.
13. How to decide whether it is true enlightenment or untrue? The only decisive factor is: the absence of I. In true enlightenment, the idea of I simply disappears, it is not found. There is nobody to claim ‘I am enlightened’, there is simply nobody to claim anything. It is a pure nothingness, full of light, full of joy — very spacious, it can contain the whole sky, but the ‘I’ is found nowhere, not even a trace of it. Then it is satbodhi, then it is true enlightenment.
14. The ultimate enlightenment means the ultimate dissolution of the ego, the ultimate disappearance of the individual.
15. In India we have three names for enlightenment; they come from three traditions. The hindu tradition calls it ‘moksha’; it means freedom, absolute freedom: you will be there, absolutely free. The second name is ‘kaivalya’; that comes from the jaina tradition. It means absolute aloneness: you will be there but absolutely alone, purely alone. And the third name is nirvana; it comes from the buddhist tradition. It is the most difficult of all the three and the most meaningful of all the three. It means cessation of the self.
16. Nirvana means utter cessation, all disappears, there is simple emptiness. In that emptiness there is tremendous consciousness, fulfillment, but no centre to be fulfilled. To know it, it has to be experienced….
17. Remember this — that by and by one has to drop all distinctions of good and bad, moral, immoral, what should be done and what should not be done. The very idea of ‘ought’ has to be dropped slowly, slowly, so only ‘is’ remains and there is no ‘ought’. When there is pure ‘isness’ one is free. That pure ‘isness’ we call enlightenment. It is not an achievement, you are already that. These clouds that surround you just have to disappear.

Osho Quotes on Enlightenment

1. Meditation will not give you enlightenment, remember. No technique can ever give you enlightenment; enlightenment is not technical. Meditation can only prepare the ground. meditation can only open the door. Meditation can only do something negatively; the positive will come. Once you are ready, it always comes. Please don’t try to do anything. Just be.
2. Enlightenment is not something like an achievement; one cannot achieve it. One has to disappear for it to happen. It is a happening and it happens only in the absence of the ego. And whenever you are doing something the ego becomes more and more strengthened. The ego is a doer, and enlightenment happens in a state of nondoing. It is simply the realization of who you are; it is not a question of achievement. You are already it! Just an awakening, just a turning in!
3. Enlightenment does not mean any ambition. If it is an ambition, then again you will start fighting for it. Enlightenment simply means being in a state of let-go. Enlightenment simply means undoing what the society has done to you. What your parents have imposed upon you, throw it away; what the society has conditioned you to be, put it aside. Reassert your being. Love yourself and respect yourself, and try to be just yourself.
4. Enlightenment is not a desire, is not a goal, is not an ambition. It is a dropping of all goals, a dropping of all desires, a dropping of all ambitions. It is just being natural. That’s what is meant by flowing.
5. Enlightenment is possible, but it will be possible only when you are ready to lose yourself. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying when he says, “If you lose, you will gain. If you don’t lose, you will lose.” In losing is the gain. In forgetting is the remembrance. In dissolving, you become crystallized.
6. In a single moment, in one stroke, you can become enlightened. It is not a gradual process, because enlightenment is not something that you have to invent. It is something that you have to discover. It is already there. It is not something that you have to manufacture. If you have to manufacture it, of course, it will take time; but it is already there. Close your eyes and see it there. Be silent and have a taste of it. Your very nature is what I call enlightenment.  Enlightenment is not something alien, outside you. It is not somewhere else in time and space. It is you, your very core.
7. The idea of enlightenment is to remain in the present moment. I call it meditation — not to go into the past, which is no more, not to go into the future, which is not yet — because if you go into past and future, you are going to miss the present moment, which is the only reality. Just be here, now. And if you are here and now, enlightenment comes of its own accord. It is not a goal that you have to reach. It is not somewhere far away, so that you have to travel a path to it. It comes to you, you never go to it. It is not your doing, it is a happening.
8. One enlightened being can share his enlightenment and many can become lighted. But his enlightenment is not diminished; on the contrary, it increases. The more he gives, the more he is. A moment comes when he gives himself totally. And that is the moment when he becomes a master. Then those who are ready to take, who are open, available, can take as much as they want.
9. It is not a certain sequence of causes that brings enlightenment. Your search, your intense longing, your readiness to do anything — altogether perhaps they create a certain aroma around you in which that great accident becomes possible.
10. Existence has allowed enlightenment in so many different ways to people, all that we can say is that certain qualities — not very particular methods, but certain qualities — when they come to meet within you, function not as a cause, but something happens because of their presence. This is what in science is called a catalytic agent. They function as a catalytic agent.
11. I can suggest only that you can create the catalytic situation, and then wait. And have patience; you cannot force enlightenment to happen. You can manage the catalytic atmosphere, that’s all that is within your hands — then wait. Be patient.
12. Existence is impartial. Whenever the time is ripe, you will suddenly be aflame. All the old will be burned and something new, absolutely new, that you could not have even thought about, dreamed about, will have happened. It is possible, but nobody can guarantee it. It is going to happen if you can manage the catalytic atmosphere and wait. One never knows: it may happen today, it may take the whole life — but it will happen. Just wait. Wait with deep trust in existence. But whenever it happens, it will come as a great surprise to you, because it is accidental.
13. After enlightenment, nobody is born again. It is impossible. There is no way to be back in the cage. Experiencing the expanse of the whole sky, experiencing all the stars moving within you, sunrises within you, sunsets within you – all that is, is contained within you. Who would like to enter a cage and destroy the beautiful experience of continuous expansion?
14. After enlightenment nobody is born again. After enlightenment, to keep oneself in the body becomes more and more difficult. The reason is very simple. Enlightenment is exactly what the word means, as if a lightning has fallen upon you. Your being and your body are no longer bridged. You are in the body but your connections with the body are destroyed. That lightning destroyed all connections with the body.
15. But nobody’s approval can make anything real. Even if the whole world denies your enlightenment you will still be enlightened, there will be no difference. Or vice versa: even if the whole world approves your enlightenment and you are not enlightened, all that approval is not going to make you enlightened.
16. My religion is nothing but the art of living, the art of loving. And if you can manage two things — total life, total love — the third thing, enlightenment, will come of its own accord. You have earned it. You need not seek it, you deserve it. It is a reward from existence to those people who have respected life, loved, lived, danced, enjoyed.

Osho quotes on enlightenment

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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’?
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.

Osho Quotes on Enlightenment

1. Enlightenment is pure silence, the silence of no-mind.

2. Enlightenment is simply becoming aware of your transcendence of chemistry and physics, biology and physiology, knowing yourself to be the eternal, non-physical energy. It is pure light, and nobody can enforce it, it is absolutely in your hands to remain ignorant or to become enlightened.

3. Enlightenment is not a state of ecstasy, it is beyond ecstasy. Enlightenment has no excitement in it; ecstasy is a state of excitement. Ecstasy is a state of mind — a beautiful state of mind, but still a state of mind. Ecstasy is an experience. And enlightenment is not an experience, because there is nobody left to experience. Ecstasy is still within the ego, enlightenment is beyond the ego. It is not that you become enlightened: you are not, then enlightenment is. It is not that you are liberated, it is not that you remain in that liberation, liberated: it is a liberation from yourself.

4. When a man of enlightenment looks at a roseflower there is no division between the knower and the known; he becomes the very heart of the roseflower. When he looks at the sunrise he becomes the sunrise, when he looks at a white cloud, he becomes the white cloud. It is not by any effort. He has just become a mirror, so clean that everything that comes before it is reflected in it. He becomes it.

5. Enlightenment means exactly that: when meditation has become natural. You are meditative — not that you sit sometimes in meditation, not that you have a few hours of meditation every day — your whole time is meditative You move in meditation, you walk in meditation, you sit in meditation, you eat in meditation, you love in meditation, you do your businesses in meditation. Your whole life becomes surrounded by a new kind of energy. It is not NECESSARY, it is simply natural.

6. A man of enlightenment, feeling one with existence, needs no morality, needs no ethics, needs no teachings about what is right and what is wrong. He is so in tune with existence that everything that happens through him is bound to be just right. There is no possibility of anything going wrong. Meditation is an art of bringing you closer to the heartbeat of existence. The deeper you go within you … you will find the very heartbeat of existence. Then there is no morality for you; all that you do is beautiful.

7. Self-realization is a process of sudden enlightenment. If one can relax totally in the moment, if one can put the mind aside and just BE… silent, aware… one can become self-realized at the last moment of life too.

8. Self-realization is not difficult at all. It appears to be difficult because we never try to get in tune with our own being. We have forgotten the language, that’s all, but it can be remembered.

9. Truth is only the one that happens when the mind stops functioning; that is the truth of enlightenment. When you are in absolute silence, not a thought moves and the lake of your consciousness is absolutely rippleless, then you become a mirror and then the whole is reflected in you; that is the truth of enlightenment. That’s what happened to Buddha under the bodhi tree… that was what Jesus was calling ‘the kingdom of god’.

10. Nirvana means the ultimate enlightenment, the state when the ego disappears, when man is no more separate from existence — not even a thin curtain separates him, not even a transparent glass separates him — when all separation disappears. That meeting with the total, that merger with the whole, that melting into the absolute, is called nirvana.

11. Whenever there is enlightenment, god takes possession of the enlightened person, because the enlightened person is not a person at all; he is just emptiness. And only in that emptiness can god take possession. So whenever there is this emptiness, whenever the ego disappears, god immediately appears. These are two aspects of the same phenomenon: the ego disappearing and god appearing; the death of the ego is the birth of god.

12. The awakening is called enlightenment because it is an experience of being full of light, overflowing with light.

13. Enlightenment is not attained by striving for it — no. Striving itself is the greatest impediment. You don’t attain it by making effort; you attain it by relaxing all efforts. It happens. It is not an attainment really, it is not an achievement… and the achiever’s mind never reaches it. It is a relaxation: when you are not striving for anything, not thinking to achieve anything, not even thinking about enlightenment, then it happens. It takes you always unawares: when you are really looking for it hard, it goes on eluding you. That is not the way to get to it. It is very elusive, mercury-like.

14. Watch desire… just watching, observing, seeing the ways of the desire and the subtle, cunning strategies of it and how it always comes. It even starts thinking “How to drop desire?” — it starts desiring the state of no-desire too. See this whole game, and seeing it one day, suddenly one is sitting alone and there is no desire, no desire around — in that very moment suddenly one finds oneself at home. That’s what enlightenment is, and that’s what the experience of God is.

15. Enlightenment can happen through anything, but the most potential situation is love. Enlightenment is possible in any kind of situation, in any state of mind; sometimes it has happened in very absurd situations.