Just before 21st March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort, You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening, You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose - out of nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees ahd in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air - it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close. Just because I was seeking I had become incapable of seeing the near. Seeking is always for the far, seeking is always for the distant - and it was not distant. I had become far-sighted, I had lost the near-sightedness. The eyes had become focussed on the far away, the horizon, and they had lost the quality to see that which is just close, surrounding you. The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving.

The phenomenon of the ego, of the self, is not a thing, it is a process. It is not a substance sitting there inside you, you have to create it each moment. It is like pedalling a bicycle. If you pedal it goes on and on, if you don't pedal it stops. It may go a little because of the past momentum, but the moment you stop pedalling, in fact the bicycle starts stopping, It has no more energy, no more power to go any where. It is going to fall and collapse. The ego exists because we go on pedalling desire, because we go on striving to get something, because we go on jumping ahead of ourselves, That is the very phenomenon of the ego - the jump ahead of yourself, the jump in the future, the jump in the tomorrow. The jump in the non-existential creates the ego. Because it comes out of the non-existential it is like a mirage. it consists only of desire and nothing else. It consists only of thirst and nothing else. The ego is not in the present, it is in the future. If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing.

The day I stopped seeking... and it is not right to say that I stopped seeking, better will be to say the day seeking stopped. Let me repeat it: the better way to say it is the day the seeking stopped. Because if I stop it then I am there again. Now stopping becomes my effort, now stopping becomes my desire, and desire goes on existing in a very subtle way. You cannot stop desire; you can only understand it. In the very understanding is the stopping of it. Remember, nobody can stop desiring, and the reality happens only when desire stops. So this is the dilemma. What to do? Desire is there and Buddhas go on saying desire has to be stopped, and they go on saying in the next breath that you cannot stop desire. So what to do? You put people in a dilemma. They are in desire, certainly. you say it has to be stopped - okay. And then you say it cannot be stopped. Then what is to be done? The desire has to be understood. You can understand it, you can just see the futility of it. A direct perception is needed, an immediate penetration is needed. Look into desire, just see what it is, and you will see the falsity of it, and you will see it is non-existential. And desire drops and something drops simultaneously within you. Desire and the ego exist in cooperation, they coordinate. The ego cannot exist without desire, the desire cannot exist without the ego. Desire is projected ego, ego is introjected desire. They are together, two aspects of one phenomenon.

The day desiring stopped, I felt very hopeless and helpless. No hope because no future. Nothing to hope because all hoping has proved futile, it leads nowhere. You go in rounds. It goes on dangling in front of you, it goes on creating new mirages, it goes on calling you, 'Come on, run fast, you will reach.' But howsoever fast you run you never reach. That's why Buddha calls it a mirage. It is like the horizon that you see around the earth. It appears but it is not there. If you go it goes on running from you. The faster you run, the faster it moves away. the slower you go, the slower it moves away. But one thing is certain - the distance between you and the horizon remains abdolutely the same. Not even a single inch can you reduce the distance between you and the horizon. You cannot reduce the distance between you and your hope. Hope is horizon. You try to bridge yourself with the horizon, with the hope, with a projected desire. The desire is a bridge, a dream bridge - because the horizon exists not, so you cannot make a bridge towards it, you can only dream about the bridge. You cannot be joined with the non-existential.

The day the desire stopped, the day I looked and realized into it, it simply was futile. I was helpless and hopeless. But that very moment something started happening. The same started happening for which for many lives I was working and it was not happening. In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you. It is waiting. When it sees that you are working on your own, it does not interfere. It waits, It can wait infinitely because there is no hurry for it. It is eternity. The moment you are not on your own, the moment you drop, the moment you disappear, the whole existence rushes towards uou, enters you. And for the first time things start happening. Seven days I lived in a very hopeless and helpless state, but at the same time something was arising. When I say hopeless I don't mean what you mean by the word hopeless. I simply mean there was no hope in me. Hope was absent. I am not saying that I was hopeless and sad. I was happy in fact, I was very tranquil, calm and collected and centered. Hopeless, but in a totally new meaning. There was no hope, so how could the be hopelessness. Both had disappeared. The hopelessness was absolute and total. Hope had disappeared and with it its counterpart, hopelessness, had also disappeared. It was a totally new experience - of being without hope. It was not a negative state. I have to use words - but it was not a negative state. It was ablolutely positive. It was not just absence, a presence was felt, Something was overflowing in me, overflooding me. And when I say I was helpless, I don't mean the word in the dictionary-sense. I simply say I was selfless. That's what I mean when I say helpless, I have recognized the fact that I am not, so I cannot depend on myself, so I cannot stand on my own ground - there was no ground underneath. I was in an abyss...bottomless abyss. But there was no fear because there was nothing to protect. The was no fear because there was nobody to be afraid.

Those seven days were of tremendous transformation, total transformation. And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light and new delight, became so intense that it was almost unbearable - as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness, The new generation in the West has the right word for it - I was blissed out, stoned. It was impossible to make any sense out of it, what was happening, It was a very non-sense world - difficult to figure it out, difficult to manage in categories, difficult to use words, languages, explanationd, All scriptures appeared dead and all the words that have been used for this experience looked very pale, anaemic. This was so alive, It was like a tidal wave of bliss. The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me, I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing. Mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away. It was difficult to catch hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away, and there was no urge to keep it close. I was simply indifferent about it all. It was okay. There was no urge to remain continuous with the past. By the evening it became so difficult to bear it - it was hurting, it was painful. It was like when a woman goes into labour when a child is to be born, and the woman suffers tremendous pain - the birth pangs, I used to go to sleep in those days near about twelve or one in the night, but that day it was impossible to remain awake, My eyes were closing, it was difficult to keep them open. Something was very imminent, something was going to happen. It was difficult to say what it was - maybe it is going to be my death - but there was no fear. I was ready for it.

Those seven days had been so beautiful that I was ready to die, nothing more was needed, They had been so tremendously blissful, I was so contented, that if death was coming, it was welcome. But something was going to happen - something like death, something very drastic, something which will be either be a death or a new birth, a crucifixion or a resurrection - but something of tremendous import was around just by the corner. And it was impossible to keep my eyes open, I was drugged. I went to sleep near about eight. It was not like sleep. Now I can understand what Patanjali means when he says that sleep and samadhi are similar, Only with one difference - that in samadhi you are fully awake and asleep also. Asleep and awake together, the whole body relaxed, every cell of the body totally relaxed, all functioning relaxed, and yet a light of awareness burns within you.. clear, smokeless. You remain alert and yet relaxed, loose but fully awake. The body is in the deepest sleep possible and your consciousness is at its peak. The peak of consciousness and the valley of the body meet.

I went to sleep. It was a very strange sleep. The body was asleep, I was awake. It was so strange - as if one was torn apart into two directions, two dimensions; as if the polarity has become completely focused, as if I was both the polarities together... the positive and the negative were meeting, sleep and awareness were meeting, death and life were meeting. that is the moment when you can say 'the creator and the creation meet.' It was weird. For the first time it shocks you to the very roots, it shakes your foundations. You can never be the same after that experience; it brings a new vision to our life, a new quality. Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened - I has not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration - almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality.

That's why when Buddha and Shankara say the world is maya, a mirage, it is difficult for us to understand. Because we know only this world, we don't have any comparison. This is the only reality we know. What are these people talking about - this is maya, illusion? This is the only reality. Unless you come to know the really real, their words cannot be understood, their words remain theoretical. They look like hypotheses.

That night for the first time I understood the meaning of the word maya. Not that I had not known the word before, not that I was not aware of the meaning of the word. As you are aware, I was also aware of the meaning - but I had never understood it before, How can you understand without experience? That night another reality opened its door, another dimension became available. Suddenly it was there, the othe reality, the separate reality, the really real, or whatsoever you want to call it - call it god, call it truth, call it dhamma, call it tao, or whatsoever you will. It was nameless. But it was there - so opaque, so transparent, and yet so solid one could have touched it. It was almost suffocating me in that room. It was too much and I was not yet capable of absorbing it.

A deep urge arose in me to rush out of the room, to go under the sky - it was suffocating me. It was too much! It will kill me! If I had remained a few moments more, it would have suffocated me - it looked like that. I rushed out of the room, came out in the street. A great urge was there just to be under the sky with the stars, with the trees, with the earth... to be with nature. And immediately as I came out, the feeeling of being suffocated disappeared. It was too small a place for such a big phenomenom. It is bigger than the sky. Even the sky is not the limit for it. But then I felt more at ease. I walked towards the nearest garden, It was a totally new walk, as if gravitation has disappeared, I was walking, or I was rynning, or I was simply flying; it was difficult to decide. There was no gravitation, I was feeling weightless - as if some energy was taking me, I was in the hands of some other energy. For the first time I was not alone, for the first time I was no more an individual, for the first time the drop has come and fallen into the ocean. Now the whole ocean was mine, I was the ocean. There was no limitation. A tremendous power arose as if I could do anything whatsoever. I was not there, only the power was there. I reached to the garden where I used to go every day. The garden was closed, closed for the night. The gardeners were fast asleep. I had to enter the garden like a thief, I had to climb the gate, But something was pu lling me towards the garden, It was not within my capacity to prevent myself. I was just floating. That's what I mean when I say again and again 'float with the river, don't push the river'. I was relaxed, I was in a let-go. I was not there. IT was there, call it god - god was there.

I would like to call it IT, because god is too human a word, and has become too dirty by too much use, has become too pollluted by so many people. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, priests and politicians - they all have corrupted the beauty of the word, So let me call it IT. IT was there and I was just carried away...carried by a tidalwave.

The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place - the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time - their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful. I looked around. One tree was tremendously luminous - the maulshree tree. It attracted me, it pulled me towards it self. I had not chosen it, god himself has chosen it. I went to the tree, I sat under the tree. As I sat there things started settling. The whole universe became a benediction. It is difficult to say how long I was in that state. When I went back home it was four o'clock in the morning, so I must have been there by clock time at least three hours - but it was infinity. It had nothing to do with clock time. It was timeless. Those three hours became the whole eternity, endless eternity. There was no time, there was no passage of time; it was the virgin reality - uncorrupted, untouchable, unmeasurable.

And that day something happened that has continued - not as a continuity - but it has still continued as an undercurrent. Not as a permanency - each moment it has been happening again and again. It has been a miracle each moment. That night... and since that night I have never been in the body. I am hovering around it. I became tremendously powerful and at the same time very fragile.

I became very strong, but that strength is not the strength of a Mohammed Ali. That strength is not the strength of a rock, that strength is the strength of a rose flower - so fragile in her strength... so fragile, so sensitive, so fragile in his strength...so fragile, so sensitive, so delicate. The rock will be there, the flower can go any moment, but still the flower is stronger than the rock because it is more alive. Or, the strength of a dewdrop on a leaf of grass just shining; in the morning sun - so beautiful, so precious, and yet can slip any moment. So incomparable in its grace, but a small breeze can come and the dewfrop can slip and be lost forever. Buddhas have a strength which is not of this world, Their strength is totally of love...like a rose flower or a dewdrop their strength is very fragile, vulnerable. Their strength is the strength of life not of death. Their power is not of that which kills; their power is of that which creates. Their power is not of violence, aggression; their power is that of compassion.

It was said when Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, god descended in him, or the holy ghost descended in him like a dove. Yes, that is exactly so, when you are not there peace descends in you...fluttering like a dove...reaches in your heart and abides there forever, and abides there forever.

You are your undoing, you are the barrier. Meditation is when the meditator is not. When the mind ceases with all its activities - seeing that they are futile - then the unknown penetrates you, overwhelms you. The mind must cease for god to be . Knowledge must cease for knowing to be. You must disappear, you must give way. You must become empty, then only you can be full. That night I became empty and became full. I became non-existential and became existence.

That night I died and was reborn. But the one that was reborn has nothing to do with that which died, it is a discontinuous thing. On the surface it looks continuous but it is discontinous. The one who died, died totally; nothing of him has remained. Believe me, nothing of him has remained, not even a shadow. It died totally, utterly. It is not that I am just a modified form, transformed form of the old. No, there has been no continuity.

That day of March twenty-first, the person who had lived for many, many lives, for millennia, simply died. Another being, absolutely new, not connected at all with the old started to exist. Religion just gives you a total death. Maybe that's why the whole day previous to that happening I was feeling some urgency like death, as if I am going to die - and I really died. I have known many other deaths but they were nothing compared to it, they were partial deaths. sometimes the body died, sometimes a part of the mind died, sometimes a part of the ego died, but as far as the person was concerned, it remained. Renovated many times, decorated many times, changed a little bit here and there, but it remained, the comtinuity remained. That night the death was total. It was a date with death and god simultaneously.

From The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2 Copyright © Osho Foundation