Man is infinite if looked inside, yet very tiny compared to outside.
There have been only two taboos in the world, sex and death. Don't talk about sex because sex is bound to bring up the question of death sooner or later. And the second taboo is death.
On July 16, 1980 Osho was initiating a person into living life as a sannyasin and gave them his message with following :-
Osho: So let your initiation into sannyas be a great decision, the greatest of your life. From this moment onwards withdraw your energies from all that is non-essential. Yes, the essential has to be done and fulfilled, but that is not much. It is the non-essential that destroys life. Withdraw your energies from the non-essential and put that energy into the inner search. And it is a promise that once you go totally into it there is no reason why one should fail; nobody has ever failed. Without any exception, those who have entered inwards with intensity, with passion, have always reached to their innermost core. And there, light explodes. One suddenly comes to know that this is what life is for, this is the meaning of life.
Meditation is the only possibility of knowing that you are deathless. The body dies but not you, the body is born but not you. Y ou have been before birth and you will be there after death. Hence life is not just an episode between birth and death, on the contrary, there are many births and many deaths in a long, long eternity of life. Birth and death are just small events, just like bubbles in the river, waves which come and go, but the river remains ... and the river goes on and on.Unless this becomes your experience one cannot live life joyously because the fear of death contaminated everything. We may not be conscious of it but it is always there like a shadow following us.
We may not think about it at all, in fact we don't want to think about it -- people avoid the subject of death as much as they can. Even if it comes up in certain situations, they change the subject as quickly as possible; nobody wants to discuss it.
There have been only two taboos in the world, sex and death. Don't talk about sex because sex is bound to bring up the question of death sooner or later. And the second taboo is death. Don't talk about it, because people start becoming afraid, they know that it concerns them and they escaping it in many ways. Even the word 'death' is not used. When somebody dies we have beautiful words to describe it: 'He has become a beloved of god.‘ We will not say that 'He has died' but 'He has become a beloved of god'. ‘He has gone to the other shore.‘
We have expressions in every language to avoid the word 'death', but whatsoever we do, it is there. And everybody knows that it is there. From the very moment a child is born death follows him. Every day it is with you, and one has to encounter it, and one has to see it face to face and one has to come to terms with it.
The only way is meditation. Meditation means becoming aware of 'Who am I? Am I the body or the mind or am I something more, something different?'
Meditation means becoming aware inside your being, becoming alert, watchful, witnessing. And then those things are very simple: you can see that you are not the body, because one day the body was a small child, then it became a young person, then it became old -- and you are the same. The body has been going through a thousand and one changes and you are exactly the same, nothing has happened to you. That's why if you close your eyes you cannot exactly say how old you are. It is in looking in the mirror that you become aware that you are becoming old,' otherwise with closed eyes you cannot feel any age. Nobody can feel it, nobody can see any change inside; consciousness remains unchanging.
'Hence the changing is not me and cannot be me.‘
And the mind is even more changing than the body. Even the body stays the same for a few days, a few months, even a few years, but the mind is very momentary. One moment there is anger, another moment there is no anger, one moment there is sadness, another moment there is joy -- it is continuously changing.
You are a witness of it all, and the watcher cannot be the watched. You are the subject and all these things are the objects.
As this becomes your deep experience a realisation, a great freedom arises in you. The body is there and it has to be used; it is a beautiful house to live in. The mind is there and it has to be used; it is one of the most beautiful mechanisms given by nature to you -- use it to its fullest capacity. But remember, don't get identified with any, neither the body nor the mind. Remaining unidentified one becomes aware of eternity, of deathlessness. That is amrit, that is nectar. To taste it, even just a drop of it, is enough and your whole life takes on a totally different perspective, a different vision. Suddenly you are transported. men you live in the same world yet you are no more the same.
That's what sannyas is: being in the world yet being in such a totally different way. Being in the world as a witness -- that defines sannyas precisely.
In your remaining unidentified with everything that goes on, remaining centred in your consciousness, unwaveringly centred, slowly slowly it becomes a crystallised phenomenon. Then even when death really happens you will be able to see it happening. You will be able to see that the body is dropping; just like a dead leaf dropping from the tree, the body is dropping from you.
The greatest experience of life is to see death clearly, alert, aware. It is the greatest experience, because one who can see it happening is never born in the body again. Then he becomes part of the eternal flow of consciousness, of the universal consciousness, then he becomes part of god.
Unless this experience happens you will have to come back again and again into the body. The body is just like a school: if you fail you have to go back; if youpass then there is no need to go back.
My observation is that everyone can pass in this experience, everyone has the potential, we just never try to actualise it. Now this has to be your goal.
A man who has never known meditation goes on thinking about himself as a very small phenomenon.
From the outside man looks very small -- the body is a small thing, compared to the earth it is so small. The earth itself compared to the sun is very small. The sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, so compared to the sun we are just like such small dust particles, almost invisible. But the sun is not very big really. There are stars with which in comparison this sun is just a dust particle.
So what are we as far as the body is concerned? -- so small that it is impossible even to conceive that things can be smaller than we are. We are almost like electrons: invisible, just hypothetical, nobody has seen them.
There is a beautiful story written by Bertrand Russell -- he has written a few stories, and when a man like Bertrand Russell writes a story it is not an ordinary story.
A great theologian dies, and of course in his heart he thinks that he will be welcomed by god. He reaches the doors of heaven but he is very shocked: the door is so big, he cannot completely see where it ends. He goes on knocking and knocking and he feels,
'On such a vast door -- I cannot see where it starts or where it ends -- my knocks are like a small ant knocking on the church door.
Millions of years pass, then a janitor opens a window in the door and looks down. He searches very carefully to see who is knocking at the door and then he finds this tiny theologian. The theologian thinks he is god, and he says, ‘My father, have you recognised me or not?' But he is very afraid whether or not his voice can be heard by this man -- he is so far away. He shouts as loudly as he can.
The janitor says,
'Excuse me -- I am not god the father, I am just the janitor. As far as god the father is concerned, I have not seen him. He is so big and I am so tiny in comparison to him, I have not seen him yet.
I have not even seen anybody who has seen him, because the people who haveseen him are very big. They have millions of eyes.
'I ask admission' said the theologian, because I am a good man and devoted my life to the glory of god.
'Man?' said the janitor.
'What is that? And how could such a funny creature as you do anything to promote the glory of god?'
The theologian is astonished.
'You can't be ignorant of man. You must be aware that man is the supreme work of the creator.’
'I am sorry to hurt your feelings,' said the janitor, 'but what you're saying is news to me. However, since you seem distressed you shall have a chance of consulting our librarian.‘
The librarian is huge, like a mountain, and has ten thousand eyes. 'This,' says the janitor, 'says that it is a member of a species called man which lives in a place called earth. It has some odd notion that the creator takes special interest in this place and this species.‘
'Perhaps you can tell me where this place is that you call earth,' says the librarian.
'It is part of the solar system' says the theologian.
'And what is the solar system?' asks the librarian.
'The solar system is part of the Milky Way' says the theologian.
'And what is the Milky Way?' asks the librarian.
'The Milky Way is one of the galaxies' replies the theologian.
The theologian was losing all hope. He thought he would be welcomed and god himself would be waiting at the door. More inquiries are made and a clerk concerned with the galaxies is called in. Several years later he returns with more information about this particular galaxy. At this point it is all such a shock to the theologian that he wakes up. He had not really died, he was dreaming. He wakes up, he is completely perspiring, and from that day he forgets all about his religion. That dream shattered all his religion, his spirituality.
Now he knows, 'All that is nonsense, my own creation, my own imagination.' It is a beautiful story....
Man is very small, but only from the oustide. If you look at man from the inside, he is as vast as the whole existence itself. But we have never looked from the inside, that's why everybody suffers from some kind of inferiority complex.
Meditation frees you from an inferiority complex. And except for meditation, nothing can make you free from an inferiority complex, no psychological analysis can help. At the most psychologists can help you to create another fiction -- that is the superiority complex. But it is as stupid as the first one, in fact more stupid than the first one. The first one has some reality about it; the superiority complex is simply fiction, pure fiction.
A meditator neither feels inferior nor superior, he simply feels he is no more, only the vast existence is, the whole space is. He becomes part of it, he is immersed in it, he becomes oceanic. And to feel that vastness is the greatest bliss in life. It is also freedom from fear, it is also the ultimate truth.
So put all your energies into meditation, into awareness, so that you are able to look at yourself from the inside. Meditation is the mirror,,the real mirror which will give you your original face.
- Osho, The Golden Wind, #16 Copyrights Osho International Foundation, Pune, India