From Orange Sunshine to Meditation

In early fall of 1968 a good friend of mine, Michael and I rented a house in a predominately African-American neighborhood of Kansas City, MO east of Prospect on the corner of 69th St. and College. Before we rented it, the house had been used as a neighborhood church. It had a big front room, which had been the meeting room, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a small kitchen and a room that was used as a living room. The house was painted pink and had a somewhat flat roof, hence we called it the Pink Flat.

Immediately the house started gathering a commune within its walls. Michael and I would go around to building sites after dark and pick up discarded plywood, two by fours and whatever else we could find and bring it back to the house. We then constructed a loft around the perimeter of the big room so that there were two levels of sleeping spaces and it began to fill.

We all made an effort to keep the house neat and tidy. Sometimes that required posting reminders. Some would remind us to wash our dishes, others would remind us to keep the bathroom clean. And all in all it remained remarkably clean considering the number of people who lived there.

Sometime in late spring or early summer of 1969 the extremely pure form of LSD, Orange Sunshine, appeared on the scene in Kansas City. Orange Sunshine was unlike any LSD that had preceded it.

One evening I took a dose of Orange Sunshine at the Pink Flat. It turned out to be my most significant LSD experience and laid the groundwork for a lifetime with meditation at the center.

Once the LSD started affecting me I left the house and walked around the neighborhood alone. I was a couple of blocks away from the house in some neighbor’s yard when I started to experience hallucinations and paranoia. This was unusual for me, it was rare for me to experience paranoia and I was not prone to hallucinations. But on this occasion it was happening. At some point it clicked that I was the one who was creating the hallucinations and the paranoia. And immediately with that realization the energy being projected from the mind started to go in reverse. It was literally as if I was reeling in the mind. And when all the energy that had been projected out returned home there was peace, a clarity, an At Homeness that I had never experienced so profoundly before. I was experiencing Being. I was at home, the ground of being.

It also became clear through this experience that I had had this realization as a result of taking the LSD but the truth of the experience of At Homeness was because of an ending of mental projection. The seeing of this was enabled by the heightened state of consciousness from the LSD but the realization that took place was beyond the chemistry. I had seen, quite literally, how the projecting mind works.

This new found at homeness lingered for weeks, perhaps even a month or more because I found I could return home by stopping the journey away from home. And the summer of 1969 continued to be a summer of awakening.

Most everyone in our Pink Flat commune began selling copies of The Kansas City Free Press, the local underground newspaper, on street corners as a means of income for the house. While I was creating a sales chart for our house sales I experienced the “witness” as I watched myself (from beyond the me) draw the columns.

A couple of months later after we had closed the house and everyone dispersed I was on The Country Club Plaza in Kansas City selling the Free Press on a street corner when a man named Charlie walked up and introduced me to Meher Baba. And through Meher Baba I was introduced to Tratak meditation.

Seven years later, in 1976, I would find myself being initiated by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) in the city that Meher Baba had been born and grown up in, Poona, India. And through Osho a much wider world of meditation opened before me.

If I remember correctly I took LSD one more time in that seven years after the Orange Sunshine experience and before I arrived in Poona and that was, as I saw it, some kind of self-check-up.

It is only within the last year that I came to know that the creator of Orange Sunshine, Nicholas Sand, also went to Poona, India in 1978 and was initiated by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) and became Deva Pravasi. Ironically his sannyas darshan with Osho is recorded in the darshan diary titled Turn On, Tune In and Drop the Lot.  Our paths crossed a few times at Rajneeshpuram  but I didn’t know that he hadbeen the creator of Orange Sunshine.

I am extremely grateful to Pravasi and his gift of chemistry for giving me a glimpse of the workings of the mind and that first experience of no-mind which helped propel me to meeting my Master, Osho.

Osho introduced me to the Meditation of watching the mind and by and by I discovered that the heightened state of consciousness that I had experienced with Orange Sunshine was none other than my “natural state”. I discovered that this “natural state” is clouded with mind, with desire, with thought, with identity and that it is possible to come clear of the clouds by watching directly the comings and goings of the mind. But the important ingredient to this watching is watching without grasping or rejecting, watching without judging, watching without jumping into the fray. And as one watches without interference the energy that is involved in thought begins to return home and the mind is reeled in, not by any effort and not by chemistry, but by no longer being a party to the creation of the me.

Of course as long as there are impressions remaining within the mind one is drawn out again and again but also it becomes easier and easier to return. This is the gift of meditation and this is the gift of Osho.


For more info see:

Osho News story on Pravasi

Osho – The Attraction for Drugs is Spiritual

The documentary: The Sunshine Makers available on Netflix

Osho – LSD, A Shortcut to False Samadhi

NY Times story: Nicholas Sand, Chemist Who Sought to Bring LSD to the World, Dies at 75

All Experiences are False – Osho

God is beyond all experience. You cannot experience God because he is not separate from you. You can live God, you can be God, but you cannot experience him. We can experience things only when they are separate from us. You cannot see yourself, and God is your innermost core — you cannot see God either.

So people who search for God as if God is an object are on a wrong journey from the very beginning. They will be frustrated, and out of frustration they can start creating hallucinations too. Because when one has worked for thirty years and meditated and prayed and has gone to the monasteries and remained celibate and has wasted one’s whole life and sees frustration, then the mind starts giving consolation prizes: the mind gives you hallucinatory experiences.

If you are a Hindu you see Krishna standing before you, and that is just an hallucination. If you are a Christian you see Christ. The Christian never sees Krishna, the Hindu never sees Christ; the Mohammedan is blissfully unaware of both. You see only that which you are projecting. Because down the ages God has been thought of as a person, hallucinations become possible. Because he was thought of as something that can be experienced, people went on wrong journeys and wasted their lives.

God cannot be experienced, cannot be searched for, cannot be seen, because you are it. You are already it, so what is needed is not search; all that is needed is to start celebrating. You are God! There is no need to postpone your celebration even for a single moment, because in the next moment also you will be God, as much as you are right now. Yesterday also you were as much a God as you are right now or will ever be. You are the same God always. Just a little daring is needed to celebrate it, a little daring to accept this tremendous truth of “I am God!”

It is very difficult because the so-called saints have been teaching you that you are a sinner, that you are unworthy, that you will be thrown into hellfire — that’s where you belong. How can you suddenly believe that you are a God? It seems outrageous, outlandish, but it is the truth, and truth is always outlandish. Lies are conventional, truth is always outlandish. People live in lies; they accept lies because lies are very consolatory. Truth is very shattering.

To recognize yourself as God does not mean that you are God and others are not God. To recognize yourself as God means that everything is divine, even your enemy. Not only is Jesus God but Judas too! That is very shattering… that is very difficult. Not only is the beautiful person God, but the ugliest, he too is God because nothing else exists. God is synonymous with existence.

So never search for experiences. All experiences are false and of the mind. It makes no difference whether you go into an experience through a drug or through yoga — it makes no difference, basically there is no difference. One can get high through LSD, marijuana, or, if one is conventional, through alcohol; one can get high through certain postures, through certain breathing exercises, standing on one’s head. These are also ways to change your inner chemistry, subtle ways to change your chemistry.

LSD does it in a gross way, yoga does it in a subtle way, but both are changing your body chemistry. Fasting also does it in a subtle way: it changes your chemistry, certainly, because you stop taking food which was always needed. Your chemistry inside has to change; it has to adjust to your non-taking of food. A few elements disappear, a few elements gather too much; the old balance is lost. After a thirty-day fast you can be as high, as stoned, as on any drug. These are conventional drugs but the search is the same. The person who is in drugs is searching for experiences and the person in yoga is also searching for experiences.

My approach is that we are not searching for experiences here. We are trying to know the one who experiences all experiences. Our search is for the witness. Who is this observer? Who is this consciousness? Sometimes it feels sad, sometimes it feels happy; sometimes it is so high, flying in the sky, and sometimes so down. Who is this watcher of all these games? — high and low, happy, unhappy, in heaven and hell. Who is this watcher?

To know this watcher is to know God. And you are already it — just a little awakening is needed… no search but only awakening.


From God’s Got a Thing About You, Chapter 14

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation



The Attraction for Drugs is Spiritual – Osho

Drugs are as old as humanity itself, and they certainly fulfill something of immense value. I am against drugs, but my being against drugs is for the same reason as for thousands of years people have been addicted to the drugs.

It may look very strange. The drugs are capable to give you a hallucinatory experience beyond the mundane world. That is the experience that is being searched through meditation.

Meditation brings you to the real experience, and drug gives you just a hallucination, a dream-like experience but very similar. To meditate is difficult. The drug is cheap. But the attraction for drugs is spiritual.

Man is not satisfied with his mundane existence. He wants to know something more. He wants to be something more. Just the ordinary life seems so flat, so meaningless, that if this is all then suicide seems to be the only way out of it. It gives no ecstasy, no joy. On the contrary, it goes on piling you up with more and more misery, anxiety, disease, old age and, finally, death.

From the cradle to the grave, the ordinary life is just a drag. People go on living it because they are cowards. Otherwise they will commit suicide. They don’t have the courage enough to commit suicide. But this is not something one can rejoice in.

You can drag on but you cannot call it living. There is no dance in it, no color in it. It is just a vast desert spreading as far as you can see, with no oasis anywhere. I am reminded of one of the dreams of Leo Tolstoy. It is a rare dream. It is also unique that it went on repeating continuously almost his whole life. As long as he could remember, the dream was happening. And the dream is very strange. In his dream he sees a vast desert and two gumboots without anybody in them, just the two gumboots without any feet inside them, are walking. They go on walking and they go on walking, and there is no end to this walk. The desert is endless. And he always woke up perspiring, his heart beating louder, gripped with great fear.

Without going to any psychoanalyst, he knew the meaning. He himself was a genius. He knew that this is his life, this is not a dream. It is not even symbolic. It is exactly his life. Where he is going? Wherever he goes he will end into the grave. Who is going he does not know. The gumboots are empty.

He is unaware of anybody inside. He is unacquainted of the person who is wearing the gumboots. He is invisible. All that is visible is the gumboots and the desert, and the tedious journey, pointless, meaningless.

This is the reason that drugs have attracted man since the very beginning. And they have at least given him a temporary relief. Only few people tried meditation. And my own understanding is, these people also tried meditation because drugs at a point become useless. You become immune.

In the beginning they give you tremendous experiences, but soon they become almost part of your body chemistry. Then if you don’t take them you are in trouble. Your whole chemistry wants them. If you take them, you gain nothing. You go on increasing the doses.

In India where the experiments with drugs must have been the oldest, because the oldest scripture in the world is Rigveda, the religious source book of the Hindus, it talks about a certain drug, Somras. Because of this Somras, Aldous Huxley has called the ultimate drug one day, when LSD is refined and there is no side effect, it will be called Soma. The name is from Rigveda.

Rigveda according to Hindus is ninety thousand years old, and nobody has been able to prove that they are wrong because their arguments for its old age are almost irrefutable. They are not logical, otherwise it would have been easy. They are astronomical.

In Rigveda there is a description of a certain combination of stars that had happened according to modern astronomers also ninety thousand years before. Now there is no way for the people who were writing Rigveda to describe it in absolute detail unless they have seen it.

Now this is such an evidence that you cannot do anything about it. The astronomers say for ninety thousand years that combination has not been again in the sky. So certainly whoever was writing it was fully aware of the combination of stars at that time.

For ninety thousand years Hindus have accepted drugs almost as part of their religious ceremonies. It was only under British regime that drugs created trouble, but because they were part of a religious ritual, which is the ancient most religion in the world, even the British government was afraid to interfere with it. It continued. Even in my childhood all drugs were available in the market. There was no question of any illegality. And every school of Hindu religion was using drugs, but they were using it in a very scientific way.

They will give the drug in a certain quantity, create a certain experience in the man, and then when he will come out of it will tell him that, “This was only an illusion. It was simply because of the drug, because of the chemistry, your mind experienced.

“Would you like to experience it in its reality? If the illusion is so beautiful, you can think how much more the reality would be. And the experience created by the drug lasts for a few hours, and again you are back to the same old rotten world. But if the experience is real, it is yours forever. You never lose it. It is not something that has happened to you, it is something that was already in you; you have discovered it.”

So I don’t see that it was wrong to use drugs in this way. In fact, this should be the approach around the world for the modern man.

And now we have more advanced drugs, synthetically made, and we are capable to purify them more. We can make drugs which have no bad effects at all. We can make drugs which are not addictive. And we can have in every hospital, in every university, a certain department which teaches people how to move from drug to meditation.

Just to talk about meditation remains simply verbal. There is no way through the words to give you any experience. But drugs are immensely useful. The words can explain to you what meditation is, the drug can give you an hallucinatory experience of it. And then you can be initiated into a method. And now you will not be moving in darkness. Now you know that something… if an ordinary drug can do so much, then there must be some way to find an authentic transformation, to experience it without any dependence on anything.

So the drug simply opens up a door and helps you to understand that man’s life and his experience need not be confined to the ordinary mundane world – he can fly high towards the stars — that he is capable of knowing things which are not ordinarily available.

Under proper guidance — medical, meditational — drugs can be of immense help. I said I am against drugs because if they become addictive then they will be the most destructive for your journey towards the self. Then you become enchanted into hallucinations. And because it is cheap — no effort has to be done, just you have to go on taking bigger and bigger doses….

In India it came to a point…. Still today there are monasteries where they keep poisonous snakes because the people had become so addicted to all kinds of drugs that no drug has any effect on them. They can take any dose and they will remain normal. The only thing that gives them a little experience is a bite on their tongue by a cobra. That will be death to anybody, but to them it is a beautiful drug experience.

Sometimes it has happened that these people become addicted even to cobra bites. Their whole bloodstream becomes poisonous. And it is on record, and once it happened in front of me, that a cobra was brought to bite. The cobra did it perfectly well on the tongue, and died.

The man had become so poisonous… because the cobra is not poisonous in his whole body. He has simply a small gland which has poison, and that gland is just in his mouth. So whenever the cobra bites someone, he immediately turns upside down, because the gland in his mouth has the opening up. He will bite; that is not dangerous. That is simply making your blood available. And then he will turn over to pour the poison on your blood.

The bite is not really poisonous. The poison comes from the gland which hangs above his tongue in the mouth. It has to hang that way, otherwise the poison cannot remain in it. So he turns upside down. The poison starts flowing out of the gland into the wounds that he has made by his bite. But before he could do that, biting the man was enough to get poisoned himself.

For thousands of years people have been using drugs. Moralists, religious people, governments have been trying prohibition absolutely unsuccessfully. And I don’t see that they can ever succeed.

The only way to succeed is what I am suggesting. Rather than prohibiting drugs, let the scientists find out better drugs which give deeper and more psychedelic, more colorful, more ecstatic experiences and without any side effects, and without any addiction. And these should be available in the universities, in the colleges, in the hospitals — wherever some kind of guidance is possible, that the person is not prohibited, is allowed total freedom to use anything that he wants. And we use his experience to help him grow towards some authentic process so that he can start experiencing something far greater than any drug can give.

And only then he can compare that the first one was just a dream, and this is a reality, and the first one was just cheating myself through chemistry, ‘And the first one was not helping me in my spiritual growth. It was in fact preventing the growth, keeping me addicted and retarded’. The second one goes on growing, and now he starts gathering courage to explore more.

He was never aware that these experiences are possible, that these experiences are not just fiction.

So drug can be used in a very beneficial way, to make the person realize that this is hallucination, and the hallucination is so satisfying, would not you like to try the real? We have the real drug also. I call it meditation. And it takes you to the uttermost blissful experience possible.

Then only drugs become useless for you.

If we want humanity to get free of drugs, then meditation is the way. But before we can get free of them, they are very important and can be used to introduce people to meditation.

So this paranoia about drugs is not helpful to humanity. You can make drugs illegal, it makes no change. In fact, they become more attractive, more exciting. Particularly to the youth they become a challenge.

I am amazed sometimes, is man going ever to learn even the ABC of human psychology? The same stupidity goes on which God did with Adam and Eve: prohibition. Don’t eat the fruit of this tree. But that becomes an invitation. That becomes a challenge.

And thousands of years have passed, but the authority figures are still in the same mood: don’t use the drug, otherwise imprisonment for five years, seven years. And nobody bothers that drugs are being made available in jails. Just you have to pay a little higher price. And the people who come out of the jail are not cured. They go back again because … the reason is the drug gives them something which your society is not giving.

They are ready to destroy their health, their body, their whole life becomes a mess, but still that drug gives them something which your society does not give. So rather than preventing them, create a society which gives something which is better.

I have been fighting in India with one of the most idiotic prime ministers India had, Morarji Desai. He is absolutely fanatic, is not ready to listen to any reasonable argument. Alcohol has to be prohibited. He prohibited the alcohol. That does not make any change. People start making alcohol but that proves dangerous. Thousands of people died because the alcohol they drank was poisonous, was not made rightly. The people who were making it had no idea what they are making.

And this has been happening around the world. Once in a while some idiot comes in and tries to prohibit, but nobody asks why people drink alcohol.

Your life gives them nothing. You suck them of their blood and in return what they get? No joy, just anxieties upon anxieties. Safe alcohol makes them relax for few hours, sing a song or have a little dance — or a fight in the pub.

But for few hours they are transported from your world. The very attraction proves that your society is wrong, not that alcohol is wrong.

Your society should help people to dance, to sing, to rejoice, to love. The alcohol will disappear. The other drugs are far better than alcohol.

There are many drugs which have less bad after-effects, particularly synthetic drugs taken in a right atmosphere, in a right mood, for example, LSD. It simply enhances your mood, it does not do anything to you. If you are in a despair the LSD experience will become a nightmare. But if you are feeling a well-being, that is the time to take LSD. Then it can give you a really positive ecstatic experience, although it will be hallucinatory.

But if you don’t know the real, it looks almost the real. Even a man like Aldous Huxley, one of the most intelligent men of this generation, thought that through LSD he has achieved the same experience as Gautam Buddha, Kabir, Ramakrishna.

If you don’t know the real, naturally you cannot call it hallucinatory. It is so real. Huxley had no experience of meditation. He has really no right to say such a thing. You can say such a thing only when you have experienced both, that it is the same experience as Kabir.

Kabir never used any drug. His experience was purely of meditation. On what grounds Huxley can say it is the same experience? He does not know the experience of Kabir. I can understand that he has been through a tremendously beautiful experience, but that experience disappears as the effect of the LSD goes out of the system.

But Kabir’s experience remains twenty-four hours, day in, day out, his whole life. Once it happens, it is always there.

This is a simple criterion. But he was so much fascinated by the experience, and he corrupted almost a whole generation. They thought that if a man like Huxley says that LSD can give you samadhi, then what is the need of going into so much trouble for meditation with no guarantee whether you will be able to succeed or not?

I am against drugs because they can become addictive and they can prevent your spiritual growth. You can start thinking that you have achieved what you were seeking, and your hands are empty. You are just dreaming.

But, on the other hand, I am a very scientific mind. On the other hand, I would like drugs to be used, not to be prohibited — but used under proper guidance as a stepping-stone towards meditation.

And governments should pay more attention for improving the drugs rather than preventing people. If improved drugs are available, then other drugs will already be out of the market. There is no need to prohibit anything in the world. Just produce something better — something better, cheaper, legal. Then who is going to bother about marijuana, hashish, heroin — for what? There is no reason. Something better is available with the medical store, without prescription. Even in the hospital you can book a place for yourself that doctors can look after you while you are in the drug experience. Meditators can help you to understand what has happened to you. And this is possible very easily through meditation.

One thing more, that if something even hallucinatory happens to a person, meditation becomes easier. Something in him becomes certain. Something in him is now perfectly guaranteed that meditation is not just fiction.

And the hallucinatory experience also opens some doors.

The guidance can be of very much importance. For example, when somebody is under LSD and is having an ecstatic joy, that is the moment to teach him the method of meditation, because he is very sensitive, very clean and clear as he is not ordinarily. He is dull and cloudy. Now the whole sky is a clarity. You can teach him meditation more easily in this moment than you can teach him when he is in an ordinary state. He seems to listen but he only hears. It does not go deep. His sleep is thick.

But in certain moments under LSD he is very close to awakening. Under a right guide he can be introduced to the technique of meditation. He can be given what is called post-hypnotic suggestions for which he is absolutely vulnerable. He can be told that, “This meditation, you will be able to do it when you are out of LSD experience.” You can go on repeating it that, “You are going to succeed in it.” It is a simple method and there is no problem in not succeeding in it. Just one or two sessions with a guide will be enough. The man can be moved towards meditation. And once he moves towards meditation, drugs have no importance at all.

All the efforts of scientists and the government should be to understand that if a certain thing has been so attractive for the whole history of man, and no government has ever been successful to prohibit it, then there must be certain need that it fulfills. And unless that need is fulfilled in some other way, drugs are going to remain in the world. And they are destructive.

And the more governments are against them, more destructive they are, because nobody can make any refinements on them, nobody can make any experiments on them, nobody is even allowed to say what I am saying.

But I can say it because I am against drugs. But that does not mean they cannot be used. They can be used as a means, they are not the end.

And if we can hope a future free of drugs, if man becomes naturally meditative…. And that is possible. If a child finds his father is meditating, his mother is meditating, everybody is meditating, he will start being curious about it. He also wants to meditate. And that is the age when meditation is very simple because he is not yet corrupted by the society. Yet he is innocent.

And if everybody around him is doing something and enjoying in doing it, he cannot remain behind. He will sit with them with closed eyes. First they may laugh at him, that it is not possible for children. But they do not understand. It is more possible for children than for the so-called grownups.

Just the atmosphere of meditation in schools, in colleges, in universities — wherever the person goes he finds that atmosphere which nourishes his own meditativeness.

I would love to see that no drugs are needed in the world. But not through prohibition, but through creating something better, something real. Drugs will be defeated without any difficulty, but these idiotic governments go on giving importance to drugs and they go on destroying the youth around the world.

The most precious time of life is wasted in hallucinations, and by the time they realize what they have done to themselves, perhaps it is too late. They cannot come back to a normal state. Their body has become accustomed to have certain chemicals in it. Then even unwillingly they have to go on injecting themselves with all kinds of poisons.

Or if somebody has not been on hard drugs, returns back, then he finds life very much dull, more dull than you find it because he has seen something beautiful. It always remains a comparison.

He has made love under the impact of drug and he had felt at the very top of the world. And now he makes love and finds that it is nothing but a kind of sneeze. It feels good; you sneeze and it feels good, but it is not something that you live for. Nobody can say that, “I am living here for sneezing.”


From The Last Testament, Vol. 4, Chapter Six

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation




LSD: A Shortcut to False Samadhi – Osho

An interview with Acharya Rajneesh by Ma Ananda Prem Instructor, Sivananda Ashram, New York, U. S. A. on 25th, October 1970, Bombay (India)

Ma Ananda Prem: Acharayaji, before asking a question I would like to tell you my experience in meditation with special reference to controlled LSD-experimentation I underwent.

In New York I used to study psycho-analysis. As a result of that, I became a subject in a Government sponsored experiment to study the effects of LSD. In this experiment, I was given seven small doses of LSD, over a period of two years, in a controlled situation. I had learned how to use it to awaken the Kundalini and bring meditation.

Three times I had a certain experience, which I am sure was Samadhi – of the variety with seed, in the sixth body, where I became the whole existence. I would like to describe the experience to you to get your opinion on whether or not what I experienced was true cosmic consciousness.

I sat in a meditative asana, after taking the drug, and meditated. Shortly, thereafter, the Kundalini began coming up the Sushumna from the Muladhara. I concentrated on Agna Chakra, and all the energy flowed there. From Agna, some flowed down to Anahat, releasing various tension knots there. All was very blissful.

I was aware of four colours: the colour saffron, like my clothes, was the main one, and I seemed to be enveloped in it. This was mixed with a yellow colour. Under the yellow was white, still more subtle. And beyond the saffron, without, was a deep blue. Everything seemed to be mainly saffron though.

Suddenly, the Kundalini shot up the spine, very fast and powerful, and there was an explosion in the Agna Chakra. As a result of this, I felt that I became the whole existence, and was one with everything. Or rather, that I had dissolved completely, and the universe, was all there was. This I experienced with complete awareness and clarity such as I never had before.

This state was completely desireless, as all the cravings and desires had melted away. The feeling was one of perfect harmony. There was nothing to be desired, as everything was therein one vast present. It was as if a fog had lifted, and that the curtain of subjectivity called ego, that usually coloured my view of the outer reality, (thus separating me from it), was no longer there. All barriers and separateness between the inner and the outer were gone.

At that point, I stopped meditating because it felt as if I had reached the end of meditation and of bliss. It was thus no longer possible to meditate. My spine seemed melted down to zero tension level. Everything was perfect love, so there was no longer any craving for love. For the first time, love was not the result of any ego need, as I had no desires or needs any longer. All creation seemed to be a joyous, blissful lighthearted prank. It seemed as if the creation wanted to have fun with itself through its multitudes of energy atoms.

I then got up and walked about, but though my body was walking, it was very clear that I was not the body but the universe. The body seemed to move in front of me and all identity with it was gone.

I remained this way some twelve hours during each of the three experiences. Then the body tensions returned, drawing me back to my former way. However, I had a lot of Kundalini and very blissful meditation for two months after each experiment, such as I have never gotten with any yoga practice. When I do yoga and the usual meditation, it feels as if these practices are taking me in the same direction as these LSD experiences. I see no difference. Also, these experiences seem to match all descriptions of Samadhi with seed, or the Jivanmukta state, that I have ever read.

My questions then are:

1. In your opinion was the experience genuine Samadhi, as I feel it was? If not, how does genuine Samadhi at the sixth body level differ, other than it being permanent?

2. Is there any harm in occasionally using LSD only for spiritual purposes, in a controlled situation, to help meditation?

3. Is permanent self-realization possible with the help of a chemical like LSD?

4. What do the colours mean?

Acharya Rajneesh: It was not genuine. It was not Samadhi, but a chemical change. The mind can project anything it likes to project – even an unconscious desire of Samadhi! So whatsoever you have known about Samadhi and have read about it, will be projected through the chemical help of LSD. LSD or any other chemical drug is nothing but a help to make the mind more projective. All the hindrances, all the ordinary hindrances are withdrawn. The ordinary reason and conscious mind are withdrawn. You are completely in the hold of the unconscious. But the unconscious itself will not bring Samadhi through LSD. It can only be possible, if the unconscious has been fed with conceptions, colours and vital experiences. Everything that has been put into it can be projected.

If you have not known anything about Kundalini, it is impossible to feel it through LSD. A person who is suffering from any Phobia will project his phobia. A person who is under some suppressed fear will feel the actual phenomenon to take place. So LSD will bring different experiences to different persons.

LSD can only be a help to project whatsoever is in the seed form of your unconscious mind. If it is love, then love will be projected – if it is hatred, then hatred will be projected. LSD is an expanding drug; whatsoever is in the seed form will be expanded into a tree. You could feel Kundalini, you could feel Chakras, and you could feel harmony or the totality, only because these are the seeds already in your unconscious mind. If they are not there, then LSD will not project these.

The projection is because of LSD, but this is not Samadhi. Samadhi comes from your unconscious longing. If you have longed for it then LSD will help you. LSD can be a help to anything unconscious, to be psychically realised, but it is not a spiritual revelation. What you have seen is something which you wanted to realize, projected on the psychic canvas, so it is not Samadhi and it is not genuine. It is neither; and it is nothing else than dreaming. It is just a dreaming phenomenon.

In the night you dream because the conscious barriers are withdrawn. So whatever in your mind is suppressed, desired, longed for, begins to take shape and form and begins to be imagined. But when you are in a dream, you never know that it is a dream. It is so lifelike, it is so real. It seems so authentically real, that you can never conceive within a dream that you are dreaming. LSD is a chemical way of dreaming. It is not a natural way of dreaming, but a chemical way of dreaming.

So you can see things which you have never seen, know things that you have not known, realise things that you have never realised. But all these realisations are only apparent realisations. They are not real. They are beautiful; they have their own charm, just like nice dreams. But LSD can project a nightmare also. It depends on you, not on LSD. If your mind is hallucinating and is suffering from some untoward images, these will be projected. So there are persons who have seen hell in their LSD trip, and there are persons who have seen demons. It depends on persons. All that chemical drugs can do is to project whatsoever is there to be projected.

So do not mistake it for samadhi and do not cling to such experiences, otherwise they will be obstructions in meditation. You have felt so much in LSD dreams that, when you go in real meditation it is faint. It is not so vital that the feeling is not of such a great upsurge. Compared to your dream experiences meditation will look faint. This will create a depressive mood. You will feel something is being lost. You have known something and this something is not coming through meditation. Then the mind will say, “LSD is better”. And if you go on taking LSD your mind will become less and less meditative. And meditation and its experiences will go on becoming fainter and fainter. So don’t take LSD again.

Ma A. P.: It was just an experiment.

Acharya Rajneesh: Yes it was, but it has made an impact on your mind. And the impact is dangerous because you will always be comparing. The comparison will always be there.

The real meditation will seem unreal because unreal has appeared to you as authentic.

Ma A. P.: I can’t find the real difference?

Acharya Rajneesh: There are so many things. First, the comparison can never be accurate. It can never be right; because what you have seen in your LSD trip you cannot remember exactly when you are awakened. You cannot remember a dream exactly when you are out of your dream. The dream is again imagined. You add much to it. It is not the same; because when you are out of LSD, you cannot remember it exactly as it was. Only a faint feeling of blissfulness will be there. And now you will imagine the whole experience again. This is not exactly the experience that it was. It can never be. You have a feeling that you have known something. That feeling is illusory and you will again imagine what you have seen, what you have known in the experience itself. But there will be a blissfulness, because of revelation through the chemical drugs.

You are totally relaxed. Your tensions at that moment are withdrawn. They are not  nonexistential; they are awaiting you to come back. But they are not in focus, so you are relaxed totally. The revelation is so great; you will have a blissful feeling afterwards. You will feel it. The hangover bliss will be there. In this bliss you will imagine again what you have seen, what you have known.

Now this is all imaginary – 90% of it will be imagination and the greater the distance between the experience and the remembrance, the more beautiful, the more blissful, it will look to you. It will become a cherished memory. Now each time in meditation you will compare it. Meditation will be a faint thing in comparison because it is real. It is not a dreamland. The progress is step by step. It is not so sudden. It will never overtake you. You will always be prepared in-between, and the progress is very slow. It will seem slow because now in the real world, there is time; but in LSD experiences or in ordinary dreams, there is no such time, as it exists in our waking hours. So you can dream in a single moment, a dream that will take years together in reality to pass. So in LSD, the thing is sudden. It is so sudden that it overwhelms you. It shatters your total memory. All the tensions are non-existential for the moment. You are relaxed and the cosmic harmony is felt. The barriers are not there. You do not exist as an I; and the world and you have become one. This is so sudden and blissful that you will have a cherished memory of it afterwards. And you will go on adding to it each time you compare it with reality. It will become more and more beautiful, and the reality will become fainter. So don’t compare it.

Firstly, you cannot compare it, because you are in two states of mind and the memory cannot be brought from one state to another. It cannot be brought. Only faint remembrances are there. Secondly, when you compare retro-spectively, it is the same mind which has projected these experiences of LSD, the same unconscious mind, the same medium. You have taken LSD and you are meditating. All the time the unconscious seeds are there which you can project in your meditation. The second thing to be remembered is, don’t conceive any pre-formulated, readymade conceptions. What is to be the result? Don’t think about it. To go in meditation is to go in an uncharted sea. You can’t know beforehand what is going to happen, and if you know already what is going to happen, it will begin to happen; and it will still be a projection.

You can project in LSD. You can project in meditation also, because the unconscious is the projector. So all the knowledge about Kundalini, all the knowledge of Chakras, all the knowledge that you have of knowing must be thrown out; because your ordinary mind can also project it.

When you are meditating, you can project the same thing. The process will be slow because there is no chemical help. It will take longer time but the phenomena is the same. I am not saying that kundalini is not. I am not saying that chakras are not. I am not saying that there are no experiences. There are, but you must not know beforehand, otherwise you will project them.

You must be completely unknowing. You must be ignorant. There’s a basic condition to proceed further, you must not know beforehand. Each thing must be known directly, must be experienced, not taken for granted. Information should not be made knowledge. So throw away all information. Cease to know things and proceed as a vacuum. Proceed in ignorance – you don’t know. So everything will be a surprise, everything must be a surprise. If it is not a surprise then you say, “Yes, I have known it, this has happened before.”

There is a great possibility of self-delusion, for the mind is deceptive. And the unconscious goes on playing tricks! It is not only in LSD that the deception is possible, even in ordinary meditation, the deception is possible. The unconscious is the same. You must change it. You must make it vacant. It must not be a knowing unconscious. It must be openly vulnerable, ready to face the unknown. Meditation is going into the unknown. So you need a purge, you need a cleansing, you need a complete overhaul.

The unconscious must be cleaned. It must not be pre-burdened – it must not have seeds.

Sabeej Samadhi is a Samadhi with seeds. A Samadhi with seeds means a Samadhi with your projections. It is not a Samadhi at all. It is just a name-sake. There is another term – Nirbeej Samadhi, a Samadhi which is seedless. Only a seedless Samadhi is Samadhi, which is authentic because there is nothing to be projected. It is not that you are projecting – something has come to you. You have encountered something. You have known something new, completely fresh, absolutely unknown before, not even imagined; because whatsoever you can imagine you can project.

So knowledge is a hindrance in Samadhi and a person who is a ‘knowing-person’, can never reach Samadhi. You must not go burdened with knowledge. You must reach the door of Samadhi completely empty handed, naked, vacant, only then the authentic thing happens. Otherwise, you are meditating with the projections. You have been projecting in meditation, and you have been projecting in your LSD experiences. Both are projections.

You must unburden yourself. You must understand this. Forget all that you have known.

Don’t conceive Samadhi in any way. Do not conceive, do not conceptualize, just go like a child in an unknown country. The language is not known, there is no one acquainted, everything is new and you have no guide book with you. Only in this way things will begin to happen, which are authentic. Otherwise this will take a long time, and you will go on, encircling yourself and the projection will go on. In this way LSD will be more forceful. LSD will be more vital. LSD will be an experience and meditation will be something faint compared to it. But if you unburden your knowledge, forget all these names – ‘Kundalini’, ‘Chakras’, etc., everything, put it aside and proceed just like a child, only then meditation will happen. Otherwise meditation too will be imaginary and a dream.

The difference is very subtle. It is really difficult to know what the difference is, although there is a difference. But one thing could be understood correctly and that is, if things are happening according to your knowledge, then you must not take them seriously; because they can never happen according to your knowledge. They happen to each individual so differently, that no scripture, no ‘Guru’, can exactly say what will happen. Everything that is being said is just a generalization. To no one it happens exactly like that. The seven Chakras or the ‘Kundalini’ or the passage, are so different, that they are bound to be different in each individual. So, if things are happening according to a pattern, you must not take them seriously. You are imagining. Things will be different for you. They will never be the same to anyone else. The happening is individual and there are no generalizations.

Everybody’s experiences are different and incomparable, and all these things which are being said are generalizations. Generalizations never happen. We are twenty persons here. We can calculate the average age of all here, but no one will be exactly of that age. Average is a myth.

It is a generalization. We can have the average height; but no one will correspond exactly with it. We can have average knowledge, but no one may possess it. All the generalizations are myths. They help to formulate things but they don’t help to be life-springs. They help to make systems, they help to make scriptures, and they help to make maps. But you can never take a map as a country. You must not. You must have seen the map of India; but nowhere in India will you find it. The map is there, with its formulation. When you enter India, you will never encounter it. It is just a generalization – it helps formulation, but it never helps experience. Rather, it becomes obstructive. So knowledge can be gathered without knowing that knowledge is dangerous. If it is concerned with outward information, it is all right, it makes no difference; but if it is inner experience, it makes a lot of difference. Because the mind projects. It makes a lot of difference.

So you begin your meditation as if you have never heard anything about ‘kundalini’, ‘Chakras’ – just be without this information. Make it a point – a first condition to enter meditation – that you are not supposing anything, that you do not know anything, that you are ready and open to anything that happens. You have nothing to compare. First, your information (your preconceived ideas) must go. You must not cling to them. If you do not cling to them they will go – die. The seed will die. It will burn. But if you cling to it, it will seem like knowledge, it will seem as a help, it will seem as a guide. So don’t cling to them and they will become redundant. Then it will not be a living seed. It will not project itself.

Secondly, forget your LSD experiences as dreams, otherwise they will be coming between you and your meditation and comparison will go on. That comparison will be suicidal. It must not be compared, otherwise meditation will cease; and you will lean over to LSD. Any chemical help can only create psychic phenomena. It can never be an authentic realization. Realisation is something to which you have happened. Realisation is not something which has happened to you. Realisation is something in which you have jumped. It is not that something has penetrated into you.

In LSD you go nowhere; you are just where you were. Something happens to you because of chemical changes; because your ordinary mind is not functioning. It has been de-functioned.

The ordinary reasoning, the ordinary checks are numbed. They are put off and the unconscious is put on. This has been done through a chemical agent. You are not the controller but the chemical agent is the controller. You are under its influence. You are not a free agent – now LSD is free in you and LSD will work something in you. It is not that you are working, but you are being worked upon and something will happen to you – not that you have happened to something. Realisation means you have happened to something – you have jumped, you have encountered, you have gone! You are not where you were. You have changed. This change is a conscious change, with full awareness; and the change is your effort. Because you have done it, you have traveled, you have gone to some peak, you can be on the Everest. There are two ways:

1. That you are on the Everest but you will be in your bed. You have gone nowhere; and

2. You can go and the very going is the change.

The very struggle to go upward will change you and the peak will not only be a peak of

Everest; but will also be a peak of your efforts. When you have reached the Everest, you have reached the Everest of your will power. In your dreams you have gone nowhere, you exist in the same state, in the same time, only something has happened to you. A dream has come to you. This dream can come in two ways – you can create it through LSD. That is why they look similar. Both ways you are creating it. The unconscious must not be a burden – the unconscious with seeds, with projections, with longings. Only then meditation is possible.

Another difference: when you have taken LSD, your conscious mind has gone to sleep and your unconscious mind begins to work over you. But in meditation, your unconscious is not asleep; rather your conscious is expanding and making your unconscious also conscious. The light of the conscious is going into the unconscious, and a time comes when your whole mind is one. Then meditation has happened. But in LSD the conscious goes to sleep and your unconscious takes charge of you.

Ma A.P.: What do the colours and their sequence mean?

Acharya Rajneesh: They have some meaning but the order is always different for each individual. The order is never the same. But they do have meaning. Colours, perfumes, sounds – everything has a meaning. The first thing that is to be noticed is, the moment you go deep inwards, your each sense has got a corresponding inner organ. We have got an outer sense just like eyes. They see what is without; but when we close our eyes they can see what is within. Every outward experience is stored inward also. The essence of it is stored.

So all your senses have reservoirs of experience in your mind. When you travel inwards, these reservoirs will be met. When you come to the reservoir of colours, you will see beautiful colours which you have never seen with your eyes. But these are essences of all the past experiences – just like a painter painting a beautiful woman. This is not any particular woman. He has seen so many women. This is the essence of them all. All that he has seen, all that he has known, is being depicted in this one figure. Something is from somewhere and something is from somewhere else. This particular figure is nowhere to be met. It is not imaginary and yet, it is nowhere to be found. It is authentic because it has been taken from experiences and yet, it is just an image. It is real and unreal both.

Our senses have stored all the experiences, not only of this life, but of all the lives that have been lived. These are certain essences in us. The eyes have stored colours, light, etc. Ears have stored sounds, harmonies, silences, etc. All the essences have their store-rooms. Now even Science confirms this. They say that if you can touch a particular brain cell with an electrode, then that particular brain cell will explode. A person falling down may see stars. The shock may create stars, if particular brain cells which store light-experiences are being touched. With an electrode, your memories can be touched. If with an electrode I touch a cell which conserves your memory of childhood, you will again become a child and everything will be replayed on the canvas of the mind.

So when you go inwards, these essential essences will explode; and you will know many things which are unknown in such sure form in the outward world. Outward world is always impure with substances, but the inward experiences are pure essences. There is no impurity of matter. They are just electrical phenomena. As phenomenon is just energy, it is pure, and nothing obstructs it. It is transparent. Don’t take these experiences seriously. They are only meaningful as indications that you are going deep down. But it is only the way, it is not the destination.

When you really reach deep down, and in, there will be no experiences – neither of light, nor of sound, nor of anything. Unless all these experiences cease, you cannot transcend the mind. It is the psyche which is displaying its experiences, conserved through endless lives. So first, each person will feel different things because each one is differently oriented, as far as his senses are concerned.

Just two days back someone came, who had no sense of taste; had never known what taste means, so he cannot feel in his inner experiences any feeling of taste. There are persons who are blind, or colour-blind. One person in twelve is colour-blind. A colour-blind person means he cannot see a particular colour. He sees everything else but only a particular colour is not seen by him. Bernard Shaw could not see yellow. He could not make any difference between yellow and green. So he was colour blind as far as yellow was concerned. He could never see yellow in his inner experiences. There was no reservoir of yellow colour. There was no essence of yellow. He had never seen it.

To him it was non-existential. We do not see all the colours. These seven colours are not all the colours. We see only up to these seven colours. Beyond them, we are colour-blind. Below these seven and beyond these seven, there are infinite ranges of colours. We have not seen them, so we will not feel them in our inward journey; because all that is felt in the store-room, is of the without. So, if a musician goes in meditation, he will know sounds which we can ever know. A painter will know colours, which we can never know. If Van Gogh goes into meditation, we cannot conceive what colours he will see, what new combinations he will know! So this too will differ from individual to individual. There can be no order. One thing is certain, when you go deep down in your inner path, things will begin to happen. You will have experiences of colours, sound, perfumes, smells. These are all stored experiences. The whole mind is a storehouse. Every cell is a bundle of experiences ready to explode. Go on, touch it and it will explode! This is meaningful as far as it indicates inwardness. But it will become a hindrance if you cling to it. As the feeling is lovely, the mind will long to cling to it, to repeat it. Then it will be a hindrance to further progress.

A state of mind is to be reached where there is no experience. Rather you say – state of mind with no experience; or you can say – a state of mind with experience of nothingness. Experience itself is the last barrier. One must come to the point where one IS, and there is no experience. Experience has ceased. Only when experience has ceased, duality ceases. When you are experiencing something, duality is there. You are there, so the experience is there. Something without is there. Even if you experience oneness with the world, this experience is duality.

So in meditation, there will be no experiences. When meditation takes its full flowering, there will be no experience at all. YOU WILL BE – and just being is the experience. Nothing is, except just your being – your existence only. And when the experience is not, the experiencer explodes; because it can exist only as a second polarity to experience. When the object is not, the subject explodes itself. There is no subject, no object. Only then the existential is achieved – only then you can say

God IS. You are not, and the World is not – GOD IS. The very ISNESS is God. So these experiences will come, they will come.


Taken from the booklet LSD: A Shortcut to False Samadhi

You can read the entire book at:


The Seven C’s of Jesus – Osho

Remember these seven words. Christ means to me these seven words, and this is his whole alchemy. First: catalytic; second: catalepsy; third: catharsis; fourth: catastrophe; fifth: cross; sixth: conversion; and seventh: Christ-consciousness. This is his whole alchemy, how he used to transform people. His work is different from Buddha’s; his methodology is different; different from Krishna’s, different from Mohammed’s. He is a unique Master.

First: catalytic. Jesus’ work is that of a catalytic agent. He wants people to be in contact with him, what Hindus call Satsang. To be in contact with the Master, to be in the presence of the Master – the very presence functions. Jesus does not give methods to people, that is not his way. Patanjali’s way is to create devices, methods; that is the way of Gurdjieff too – to create methods and devices so people can start growing. Jesus’ way is that of Satsang. He transforms people just by his touch. He overpowers people, he surrounds them. His energy starts dancing around them. He starts pulsating his being, and in his pulse – that powerful pulse of Jesus – the other person also starts pulsating. In the beginning, hesitant, afraid, not knowing where he is going, but slowly, slowly he gains momentum. It is like a dancer. Have you not watched when a dancer is dancing and the music is on, something of the dancer starts happening in you? Your feet start moving, you start tapping the chair with your hand, your head starts nodding. You are filled with it. Some pulsation has reached you.

Jesus’ methodology is to pulsate people through his pulse, to magnetise people through his magnetism; to be with them. And the best way to be with them is when they are very, very relaxed.

Hence Jesus was always ready to go to people, to drink with them, to eat with them, because that is the most relaxing moment in people’s lives. Buddha has never done that – that was not his way. When people are eating, they are relaxed.

Have you not watched it? Even businessmen like to take you for lunch, because then things are easier. You are more positive, you are more relaxed, you say yes more easily. So if the salesman wants to sell the car to you, he takes you for lunch. When your belly is feeling good and you are feeling very contented, and the aroma of the food and the joy of the food, and you are feeling really satisfied… it is very difficult to say no. It is easier for the salesman to sell something to you. And Jesus is the greatest salesman. It is not just accidental that his religion has become the greatest religion as far as numbers are concerned, the greatest salesman ever.

He would go to people to take food with them or to drink with them, and that was the moment when he would try to infiltrate their being with his presence. That was his catalytic, magnetic power. When people are drinking… You have drunk a little bit – you become more relaxed. Then things are more easy, you are less defensive.

Gurdjieff used to do that – that was his everyday work. Just as every day I go on talking to you, every day he used to invite his disciples for food. That was the greatest thing. Every day, every night. And it was not an ordinary dinner. It used to continue for five hours, six hours, seven hours, almost half the night. And then drinking… and he would force you to eat and drink, and he himself would be serving and it would be difficult to say no; eating, drinking, laughing, you would be less defensive. And he would be telling jokes, and people would become very, very relaxed. The atmosphere would become very homely – utterly homely. They would forget who Gurdjieff was and who they were. They would relax into his being, and his work would start.

That’s exactly what I am doing I go on talking to you. That is a kind of feast, a feast of words. You become involved in the words; you become utterly involved with the words, and my work, the Real work starts. That is indirect.

So the first thing, the first word to be understood about Christ is ’catalytic’. He is not a great philosopher like Buddha. He is not a great scientist like Patanjali. He is not a singer like Krishna is. But he has his own method and that method is of the catalytic agent.

In the East there have been many Masters like that, but Jesus is the ultimate in Satsanga: just being with people.

The catalytic agent means that nothing is done to you, but something happens to you. The catalytic agent does not go into you, and does not do anything in you. But just the presence, just the very presence provokes you, inspires you, and something starts growing in you. Just as scientists say, if you want to make water, hydrogen and oxygen are needed; but they cannot meet unless electricity is present as a catalytic agent. It does not enter into them, it remains aloof, but its very presence helps them to meet. That is very miraculous. Science has not yet been able to know how the catalytic agent works, because nothing goes out of it, it is simply there. But you can understand it.

Sometimes I am simply here, and something becomes silent in you. And this can happen even when you are far away if you remember me. If you remember totally, immediately you will find something has changed. The vibe around you is no more the same; something has fallen quiet, silent. The turmoil of the mind is a little far away, not so close by. You are settled and centered.

Just the other day somebody asked the question ‘While I am here listening to you and to your words, much is happening to me. But when I go back, will it continue to happen when I will be listening to your tapes or reading your books?’

It depends on you. It can’t depend on books, on tapes, but it depends on you. If in those moments of listening to the tapes or reading the books you can feel my presence, you can visualise my presence, you can think of me and remember me, it will go on happening. There will be no problem. Distance does not make much difference.

For the first time it is needed to be close. Once the contact has happened, then you can call me anywhere. And when I say you can call me anywhere, I mean you can simply fall into my presence anywhere, you can just remember me. Calm and quiet, remember me, be full of my presence, and suddenly it will be there, and it will function as a catalytic agent.

A catalytic agent is a miraculous thing. This is Jesus’ real miracle. Tao has a word for it, they call it Wei-Wu-Wei, action without action. The Master does not Do anything to you, he does not interfere in your being, he simply is there. But he is pulsating and his pulsation is strong; his pulsation is vital.

He is like a great wind which goes on blowing, surrounding you. You are like a fragile tree; you start swaying in the wind and something starts happening to you – the dance. The wind is invisible, and in fact the wind is not doing anything to you, it is simply blowing on its own way. But it can give you the thrill, it can wake you up! This is what acid people call a ’contact high’.

It happens sometimes when somebody has taken LSD and is really deep into it, gone, and you are just taking care of the person. You have not taken LSD, you are just taking care of the person because it is dangerous to leave him, and suddenly you start feeling that something is turning on in you. This is now a universal experience, because so many people in this generation have taken LSD, marijuana, psilocybin and things like that. This is a universal experience now, that sometimes just by being in the presence of somebody who has gone deep in his LSD trip, you start feeling high. Something starts moving in you. Wings grow, and you start flying. And you have not taken anything! Then what is happening? Because that man’s pulsation is so powerful in this moment, that man is blowing like a great wind, he takes you with him unawares. You are pulled by him, you are taken by his stream of consciousness.

This is a new experience in the West, but in the East it is very ancient. And this is nothing, because LSD is LSD – such a small quantity you take. But a Jesus is pure LSD – just LSD and nothing else! He is made of the stuff LSD. A Buddha is absolute marijuana. Each single cell of his body is marijuana. It is not chemical, it is spiritual. It is such a vital force that there is no other force which is more vital. The only question is if you become available to it – then it turns you on.

The second word is catalepsy – the suspension of your old being. When you are in contact with a Christ or a Buddha, your old being is immediately suspended out of the very shock; you cannot function as you used to function before. The very presence of the Christ is such a shock that everything is suspended. For a moment all thoughts stop, all feelings disappear. For a moment you may miss a heartbeat. That’s why it happens that around great Masters you will see many people who look like zombies. They are in a kind of suspension.

Just the other day Divyananda came to me. He works in my garden. And he said ‘What is happening to me? I have become almost like a zombie, and I am afraid. Should I go and do something else?’ And I told him ‘You be a zombie. Be a perfect zombie, that’s all. You continue your work.’  Now something immensely valuable is happening, but he cannot understand it yet. This is what is happening: catalepsy. He is open to me, and working in my garden he has become even more open to me. He is in shock; he is forgetting who he is. He is losing his old identity, he is paralysed! Why paralysed? – Because the old cannot function and the new has yet to be born. So he is in the interval.

This is going to happen to many. Don’t be afraid when it happens! It will go, it is not going to remain, but it is on the way. It happens. This is a state of not knowing: you don’t know what is what, all your knowledge is lost; all your cleverness is gone. You become idiotic. You look like an idiot. People will say that you have become hypnotised or something, that you are no more your old self. That is true. But it is a kind of shock, and good, because it will destroy the past, it will make you discontinuous with the past, and it will bring the fresh, the new. It will allow something original to happen. But before the original happens, the past has to go.

You are like a pot in which there has been poison for a long time, for many years, for many lives. Now before something can be poured into it, the poison has to be thrown out and the pot has to be cleaned, utterly cleaned. Even if a little bit of poison remains hanging around, it will destroy the new that is coming, it will kill it.

That is the whole meaning of sannyas and disciplehood: that your past has to be completely washed away; your memory, your ego, your identity – all have to go. When you are just an empty pot, then something more is possible. That is the third state: catharsis. When your head is in shock, your heart becomes free, because the head is not allowing the heart to be free. It is keeping the heart as a prisoner. When the head has stopped in shock… And each Master beheads you, cuts your head mercilessly; destroys your reason, destroys your logic; brings you down from the head. And the only way is to cut the head completely.

This is the third state: catharsis. When the head is no more functioning, its control is lost and the prisoner is free, then the heart starts throbbing again – maybe after many, many lives.

And for many lives you have been repressing your emotions, feelings, tears, love – they all flood you. That’s what catharsis is – the appearance of the heart. The repressed explodes and the emotional bursts out – a kind of earthquake or a heartquake, a volcanic situation. You are flooded by the unconscious and the irrational. That’s why a real disciple always passes through a kind of insanity around a Master.

The fourth state is catastrophe. When reason is gone and the heart goes mad it is catastrophe.

And then the ego starts falling into pieces, because the ego is nothing but control. The control of the head over the heart is creating the ego. When the head is no more functioning, it is in shock, catalepsy, and the heart is in catharsis. The ego disappears because the ego is no more there. It cannot be there, the control is gone. And when the ego falls it looks like catastrophe. All is lost, chaos arises and now one feels that one has really gone mad. It is not just a temporary madness. It looks now as if it is going to remain there forever. One cannot look beyond it.

This is what Christian mystics call ’the dark night of the soul’: a kind of hopelessness arises. One is utterly lost and there seems to be no possibility of getting out- of it. One is drowned and drowning. And the powers that are drowning you are so vast that there seems to be no hope that you can get over them. The shores are no more visible; you are in the middle of the ocean.

And then comes the fifth: the cross. The ego dies on the cross.

In the fourth state it simply disintegrates, but goes on lingering in fragments, clinging here and there. In the fifth it dies, the ego completely dies – no more identity with body or mind, a state of negation, death, emptiness. Great trembling, fear… one is on the verge of the abyss called God. That’s where Jesus found him – on the cross. That cross has to come to everybody. Jesus says everybody has to carry his cross on his shoulders.

Then comes the sixth: conversion. Only when you are dead does God become alive in you. Only when the seed dies does it become a tree, only when the river disappears into the ocean does it become one with the ocean: conversion.

Conversion is a beautiful word very badly used by Christians. They think that if somebody is a Hindu and becomes a Christian, this is conversion. This is not conversion. A Hindu becoming a Christian, this is nothing. He has simply changed one prison for another, one priest for another, one book for another. But there has been no real change, no transformation. A Christian can become a Hindu; Hindus think this is conversion. This is not conversion. Conversion happens only when the ego dies and God is born in you. Conversion is when the human becomes divine, not when a Hindu becomes Christian or a Christian becomes Hindu. But when the human becomes divine, when Jesus becomes Christ, then there is conversion; when Gautama becomes Buddha, then there is conversion.

In the fifth, the cross, the ego dies. In the sixth, the self is born – the supreme self, the Atman, your real self. For the first time you know who you are. Mountains are again mountains, rivers are again rivers. All confusion gone… clarity arises. Your eyes become transparent, you can see things. Now there are no more any prejudices, no more any ideologies. One is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor communist, nor fascist. One simply is… a purity of isness. This is where what Hindus call Satyam, Shivam, Sunderam is felt. Satyam means truth, Shivam means good, and Sunderam means beauty. Not before that.

Before that, what you call beauty is nothing but lust. What you call good is nothing but conditioned morality. What you call truth is nothing but correspondence between you, your statement and things.

It is like you say ‘In the room there are three chairs.’ And somebody goes and finds three chairs, so it corresponds, it is ’true’. This has nothing to do with truth, it is just correspondence, a true statement. But what about truth? What is truth? – Three chairs? If there are two chairs, it is untrue. This is only linguistic and logical truth.

Truth means that which is hidden behind the trees and the mountains, hidden behind people, hidden behind everything. That ’hidden’ becomes unhidden, then you come to truth.

Truth… and then you come to Shivam; your life becomes good. Not in the sense of being a moral person, a Pharisee, a puritan, no; your life becomes spontaneously good. Not that you try to do good. But whatsoever you do is good. You cannot do bad! The bad is impossible, because you cannot think of yourself as separate from others. How can you do bad? You cannot hurt anybody because now hurting anybody is hurting yourself. Your ego is gone. You hurt somebody and you are hurt. You kill somebody and you are killing yourself. You steal from somebody and you are stealing from your own pocket. Now goodness is just natural – not imposed – spontaneous.

And Sunderam. And only then, when you have known what is and you have become spontaneous, can you know what beauty is. Beauty is not only poetry, it is the vision of truth, it is the vision of God.

But one step more. It is like you are one thousand miles away from the Himalayas in the early morning and you see in the clear sky no clouds, and the Himalayan peaks are standing there.

Those virgin snows shining like gold in the morning sun… but you are a thousand miles away. It is beautiful, it fills you with awe, but you are still distant.

So in conversion: Satyam, Shivam, Sunderam.

And then the seventh state is Christ-consciousness. You are no more away from the peaks, you have become the peaks! You are no more away from those virgin snows, you are those snows. You are not seeing sunrays reflected on the snow, you are those sunrays. Christ-consciousness is born: one becomes one with the whole. One becomes that which one really is. One becomes one with God. Buddha calls it Nirvana, Christ calls it ‘kingdom of God’, Hindus call it Satchitananda. Now again another trinity arises.

First in the sixth: Satyam, Shivam, Sunderam – truth, good, beauty.

In the seventh: Sat – being, Chit – consciousness, Ananda – bliss.

Remember these seven words and meditate on them.


I Say Unto You, V.2

Excerpted from I Say Unto You, Vol 2, Chapter Five

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

