Swami Chaitanya Keerti
In an interview with Hindustan Times, the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, in Chandigarh University Convocation, said: I never feel I have arrived, though I have come to the journey’s end. He is 85 and still waiting for his arrival. The existential question is: who arrives and where does one arrive? When we are born, we appear to have arrived on earth. Then, the question arises: from where did we come?
I remember when Osho’s father attained to his enlightenment, he declared something known to the meditators of the Jain religion: I came from Nigod and I will return to Nigod? Happy Ho organizes best Meditation and Tarot classes in Noida and Delhi NCR area in India.
Many of us do not what Nigod is, leave aside the experience or realisation. According to Jainism, all the souls of the universe can be broadly classified into the following three categories, as Ravindra Jain, Author of Gyan Mukta, writes in his book on Jainism:
Liberated souls (Siddha), Vyavahar Rashi souls (worldly souls in the four Gatis). Avyavahar Rashi souls (perennially Suksham Nigod souls)
All souls are said to begin their journey from Avyavahar Rashi in the form of Suksham Nigod (infinite souls sharing one body), travel through the four gatis in Vyavahar Rashi and ultimately end their journey in moksha (Siddha Shila).
It is said that when one soul attains liberation, another soul comes out of Avyavahar Rashi into Vyavahar Rashi. Then it gets into the cycle of birth and death in the four Gatis as per its karma and after shedding all karma (in the life of human) attains moksha and abides in Siddha Shila eternally.
Swami Om Prakash Saraswati, the founder of Osho Rajyoga Centre in New Delhi, once wrote to the Master: Beloved Osho, “while listening to the discourse yesterday, I felt I was not of this earth but was a small particle of light in the free and infinite sky. After discourse, an experience of lightness and aloneness continued and I wanted to keep wandering in this sky. I do not know what knowledge, karma, and devotion are, but in aloneness, I wish to remain immersed in this state. Still, the feeling sometimes arises that this may be madness, that this may be a trick of the ego. Kindly shed light on my path.”
Osho responded: We are on this earth, but in fact, we cannot be on this earth, and we are not. We feel it: we are strangers to this earth. We have made a home in our body, but our body is not our home. It is as if someone settles abroad and forgets his homeland. Suddenly in the market one day he meets someone who reminds him of home, who speaks his own language. For a moment the foreign country will vanish and his homeland will be present.
This is the significance of scriptures. This is the real purpose of the words of the masters. After listening to them, for a moment we are no longer here. We go where we belong. We flow in their music. The situations which had completely involved us vanish and that which was very far away comes near.
Osho added: Where we are is like an inn, not a home. No matter how much we may insist it is a home, still an inn remains an inn. Try to explain it away, to forget it; it makes no difference. The thorn goes on pricking us, the memory keeps on coming. And sometime, if we happen to encounter such a truth that pulls us, and like a magnet would show us another world, then we feel we are not part of this earth.
It is good: “While listening to the discourse yesterday, I felt that I was not of this earth.” There is no one who is of this earth. We appear to be of it, we feel as if we are: in reality, we exist in the sky. Our nature is of the sky.
Being means the inner sky. Body means the earth, the body is made of earth. You are made of sky. These two have met within you.
You are the horizon where the earth seems to be meeting the sky. But has it ever met it? Far away the horizon appears – sky touching earth. Start walking towards it, expecting to reach it in a minute or two. Continue walking for life afterlife – you will never reach a place where the sky touches the earth. It is only a mirage. It always appears that you can touch it a little further on, just a little further.
Osho explained this phenomenon: The one who has asked – Swami Om Prakash Sarasvati – I know him. His mind is far away from logic, far away from doubts and arguments. Those days are gone. He may have made logical arguments once, may have raised doubts. Now he has ripened from the experiences of life. Now that childishness is not in the mind. This is why it could happen. He was simply listening, sitting, not doing anything – he just went on sitting and it happened.
The Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and all of us who feel a certain quest in our heart about who we are and where is our real home, Osho shows us the way to find out in deep meditation–Zazen.
Osho explains: Zazen means: sit, and just sit, nothing else. There is no doing on the part of the body, no doing on the part of the mind. It’s a state of non-doing. That does not mean that you are fast asleep, because sleep is a doing. That does not mean that you are dead, because if you are dead you cannot just sit. That simply means that you are tremendously alive, intensely alive, a fire of being, but not moving anywhere – a reservoir of energy in a deep awaiting. You are just waiting for something to happen, not even expecting, because expectation will again create a ripple of thought and the mind will start functioning. Everything is suspended. You breathe, and that’s all that you do. But that is not a doing, because breathing goes on its own accord. You have not to do anything but just sit silently.
OSHO: Come Follow to You – vol.4 – chap. 5
