Astrall
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A spiritual search is always a push toward something deep within you, a glimpse of something you have discerned. First, something must happen to you; somehow a ray must enter you... a touch, a breeze... something must come to you for the search to begin. Perhaps in love, perhaps in music, perhaps in nature, perhaps in friendship—it can happen in any union, in any communion. Something happened to you that became a source of bliss, and now it is only a recollection, only a memory. You have not interpreted this; your consciousness is unaware of it.
It could be a memory of satori from childhood, stored deep in the unconscious. It could be a blissful moment of satori in your mother's womb—a memory of a blissful existence without worries, without tensions, in a state of complete mental relaxation. That which pushes you may be a deep, unconscious feeling, a feeling unknown to your consciousness.
Psychologists agree that the entire idea of spiritual seeking originates from the bliss experienced in the mother's womb. It is so blissful, so dark; there is not a single ray of tension, for darkness is complete relaxation. There are no worries, nothing needs to be done. You do not even need to breathe; your mother breathes for you. You exist exactly as existence after achieving moksha is described. Everything simply is... and being is bliss. Nothing needs to be done to reach this state; it simply is. So perhaps within you there is a deep unconscious seed that knows what complete relaxation is.
It could be some childhood experience of aesthetic bliss, a childhood satori. Every childhood has satori, every childhood is full of satori, but we have lost it. Paradise is lost, and Adam is cast out of paradise. But the memory remains—an unknown memory pushing you toward the search...
QUESTION: What preparation is necessary to experience satori?
ANSWER: Satori proves possible for a vast number of people because sometimes no preparation is needed for it. Sometimes it comes by chance. A situation is created, but you are unaware of it. There are so many people who have known satori. They may not have known it was satori; they might not have called it satori, but they experienced it. A great, raging love can trigger satori. Satori is possible even through chemical substances. It can be induced by mescaline, LSD, marijuana, because thanks to chemical changes the mind can open up so much that a glimpse occurs. After all, everyone has a chemical body—the mind and body are chemical compounds—so this glimpse is possible through chemistry.
Sometimes an unexpected danger can strike you so hard that a glimpse becomes possible... sometimes a strong shock can push you into the present moment so forcefully that this glimpse arises. And for those who have aesthetic sensitivity, who have a poetic heart, whose relationship with reality is based on feeling (rather than intellect), this glimpse is possible. For a developed logical intellectual personality, such a glimpse is also possible. Sometimes it can happen to an intellectual person, but only through some concentrated intellectual tension, when suddenly that tension vanishes. This happened to Archimedes. He was in a state of satori when, jumping out of the bath into the street, naked, he began to shout: "Eureka, I have found it!" It was an unexpected release from the constant tension in which he had been while pondering his problem. He solved the problem, and the tension caused by the task suddenly vanished completely. Naked, he ran into the street and shouted: "Eureka, I have found it!"
For an intellectual person, if a great problem that filled their mind and brought them to the limit of "intellectual tension" is suddenly solved, it can lead to satori. But for the aesthetic mind, this is easier.
QUESTION: Do you mean that even intellectual tension can be a way of achieving satori?
ANSWER: It may be, or it may not. If you are intellectually tense during this conversation and the tension does not reach its limit, it will be a hindrance. But if your tension reaches fullness, a limit, and suddenly you understand something—this understanding becomes a liberation, and satori can happen. Or, if this conversation is completely free, if we are just chatting—completely untensed, completely unseriously—even this conversation can be an aesthetic experience. Not only flowers are aesthetic; even words can be aesthetic. Not only trees are aesthetic; human beings can also be aesthetic.
Satori becomes possible not only when you observe floating clouds. It is possible even when you participate in a conversation. But participation is necessary: either completely relaxed or tense participation. You can be relaxed from the very beginning, or relaxation comes when your tension has reached its limit and is then released... When either one or the other happens, then even a talk, a conversation, can become a source of satori. Anything at all can become a source of satori: it depends on you. It never depends on anything else. You are simply walking down the street, a child laughs... and satori can happen. There is a haiku telling of something like this: a monk crosses the street, and from a wall peeks an ordinary flower, a very ordinary flower, the kind you see every day, which is everywhere. He glanced at the flower. For the first time he truly looked at this flower because it is so ordinary, so inconspicuous. You always see it somewhere, so he had never before bothered to look at it truly. He looks at it... and there is satori.
One never looks at an ordinary flower. It is so commonplace that you forget about it. So the monk had actually never seen this flower before. For the first time in his life he saw it, and it shook him. This first encounter with the flower, with this ordinary flower, became a revelation. Now he felt sorry for this flower. It had always been here, waiting for him, but he had never looked at it. He feels guilty toward it, asks its forgiveness... and it happened! And there is the flower, and before it, a dancing monk. Someone asked him: "What are you doing?" He answered: "I saw something unusual in the most ordinary flower. The flower was always waiting. I had never looked at it before, but today the meeting took place." Now it is no longer just a flower. The monk entered into it, and the flower entered into the monk.
An ordinary thing can become the source, even a fragment of stone. For a child, a pebble is a source, but for us it is no longer a source because it has become so ordinary to us. Everything unusual, everything rare, everything that enters your field of vision for the first time can be a source of satori, and if you are reachable, if you exist, if you are present, it can happen. Satori happens to almost everyone. You may not know what it is; you may not know that it is satori, but it occurs. And this occurrence is the cause of all soulful seeking. Otherwise, spiritual seeking would be impossible. How can you seek that which you have never once cast a glance upon?
First, something must happen to you; somehow a ray must enter you... a touch, a breeze... something must come to you for the search to begin. Spiritual search is possible only when something has happened to you without your knowledge. Perhaps in love, perhaps in music, perhaps in nature, perhaps in friendship—it can happen in any union, in any communion. Something happened to you that became a source of bliss, and now it is only a recollection, only a memory. This may not even be a conscious memory; it could be unconscious. It may be waiting, like a seed, somewhere deep within you.
This seed will become the source of seeking, and you will seek and seek that which you do not know. You do not know, but still, somewhere, even unknown to you, some experience, some blissful moment became an integral part of your mind. It became a seed, and now this seed is carving its path, while you seek something you cannot name, something you cannot explain. What are you seeking? If a person of spirit is sincere and honest, they cannot say: "I am seeking God," because they do not know if there is a God. And the word "God" is completely meaningless until you have known. So you cannot seek God or moksha (liberation). You cannot. A sincere seeker will have to return back to themselves. This search is not a search for something external; it is a search for something internal. Somewhere you know something that you caught a glimpse of, which became a seed and which pushes you, forcing you to go toward something unknown. Spiritual search is not an attraction to something external; it is a push from within. It is always a push from within. And if it is an attraction to the external, then such a search is insincere, unauthentic. Then it is nothing other than a search for new types of satisfaction, another turn of your desires! A spiritual search is always a push toward something deep within you, a glimpse of something you have discerned...
Osho
It could be a memory of satori from childhood, stored deep in the unconscious. It could be a blissful moment of satori in your mother's womb—a memory of a blissful existence without worries, without tensions, in a state of complete mental relaxation. That which pushes you may be a deep, unconscious feeling, a feeling unknown to your consciousness.
Psychologists agree that the entire idea of spiritual seeking originates from the bliss experienced in the mother's womb. It is so blissful, so dark; there is not a single ray of tension, for darkness is complete relaxation. There are no worries, nothing needs to be done. You do not even need to breathe; your mother breathes for you. You exist exactly as existence after achieving moksha is described. Everything simply is... and being is bliss. Nothing needs to be done to reach this state; it simply is. So perhaps within you there is a deep unconscious seed that knows what complete relaxation is.
It could be some childhood experience of aesthetic bliss, a childhood satori. Every childhood has satori, every childhood is full of satori, but we have lost it. Paradise is lost, and Adam is cast out of paradise. But the memory remains—an unknown memory pushing you toward the search...
QUESTION: What preparation is necessary to experience satori?
ANSWER: Satori proves possible for a vast number of people because sometimes no preparation is needed for it. Sometimes it comes by chance. A situation is created, but you are unaware of it. There are so many people who have known satori. They may not have known it was satori; they might not have called it satori, but they experienced it. A great, raging love can trigger satori. Satori is possible even through chemical substances. It can be induced by mescaline, LSD, marijuana, because thanks to chemical changes the mind can open up so much that a glimpse occurs. After all, everyone has a chemical body—the mind and body are chemical compounds—so this glimpse is possible through chemistry.
Sometimes an unexpected danger can strike you so hard that a glimpse becomes possible... sometimes a strong shock can push you into the present moment so forcefully that this glimpse arises. And for those who have aesthetic sensitivity, who have a poetic heart, whose relationship with reality is based on feeling (rather than intellect), this glimpse is possible. For a developed logical intellectual personality, such a glimpse is also possible. Sometimes it can happen to an intellectual person, but only through some concentrated intellectual tension, when suddenly that tension vanishes. This happened to Archimedes. He was in a state of satori when, jumping out of the bath into the street, naked, he began to shout: "Eureka, I have found it!" It was an unexpected release from the constant tension in which he had been while pondering his problem. He solved the problem, and the tension caused by the task suddenly vanished completely. Naked, he ran into the street and shouted: "Eureka, I have found it!"
For an intellectual person, if a great problem that filled their mind and brought them to the limit of "intellectual tension" is suddenly solved, it can lead to satori. But for the aesthetic mind, this is easier.
QUESTION: Do you mean that even intellectual tension can be a way of achieving satori?
ANSWER: It may be, or it may not. If you are intellectually tense during this conversation and the tension does not reach its limit, it will be a hindrance. But if your tension reaches fullness, a limit, and suddenly you understand something—this understanding becomes a liberation, and satori can happen. Or, if this conversation is completely free, if we are just chatting—completely untensed, completely unseriously—even this conversation can be an aesthetic experience. Not only flowers are aesthetic; even words can be aesthetic. Not only trees are aesthetic; human beings can also be aesthetic.
Satori becomes possible not only when you observe floating clouds. It is possible even when you participate in a conversation. But participation is necessary: either completely relaxed or tense participation. You can be relaxed from the very beginning, or relaxation comes when your tension has reached its limit and is then released... When either one or the other happens, then even a talk, a conversation, can become a source of satori. Anything at all can become a source of satori: it depends on you. It never depends on anything else. You are simply walking down the street, a child laughs... and satori can happen. There is a haiku telling of something like this: a monk crosses the street, and from a wall peeks an ordinary flower, a very ordinary flower, the kind you see every day, which is everywhere. He glanced at the flower. For the first time he truly looked at this flower because it is so ordinary, so inconspicuous. You always see it somewhere, so he had never before bothered to look at it truly. He looks at it... and there is satori.
One never looks at an ordinary flower. It is so commonplace that you forget about it. So the monk had actually never seen this flower before. For the first time in his life he saw it, and it shook him. This first encounter with the flower, with this ordinary flower, became a revelation. Now he felt sorry for this flower. It had always been here, waiting for him, but he had never looked at it. He feels guilty toward it, asks its forgiveness... and it happened! And there is the flower, and before it, a dancing monk. Someone asked him: "What are you doing?" He answered: "I saw something unusual in the most ordinary flower. The flower was always waiting. I had never looked at it before, but today the meeting took place." Now it is no longer just a flower. The monk entered into it, and the flower entered into the monk.
An ordinary thing can become the source, even a fragment of stone. For a child, a pebble is a source, but for us it is no longer a source because it has become so ordinary to us. Everything unusual, everything rare, everything that enters your field of vision for the first time can be a source of satori, and if you are reachable, if you exist, if you are present, it can happen. Satori happens to almost everyone. You may not know what it is; you may not know that it is satori, but it occurs. And this occurrence is the cause of all soulful seeking. Otherwise, spiritual seeking would be impossible. How can you seek that which you have never once cast a glance upon?
First, something must happen to you; somehow a ray must enter you... a touch, a breeze... something must come to you for the search to begin. Spiritual search is possible only when something has happened to you without your knowledge. Perhaps in love, perhaps in music, perhaps in nature, perhaps in friendship—it can happen in any union, in any communion. Something happened to you that became a source of bliss, and now it is only a recollection, only a memory. This may not even be a conscious memory; it could be unconscious. It may be waiting, like a seed, somewhere deep within you.
This seed will become the source of seeking, and you will seek and seek that which you do not know. You do not know, but still, somewhere, even unknown to you, some experience, some blissful moment became an integral part of your mind. It became a seed, and now this seed is carving its path, while you seek something you cannot name, something you cannot explain. What are you seeking? If a person of spirit is sincere and honest, they cannot say: "I am seeking God," because they do not know if there is a God. And the word "God" is completely meaningless until you have known. So you cannot seek God or moksha (liberation). You cannot. A sincere seeker will have to return back to themselves. This search is not a search for something external; it is a search for something internal. Somewhere you know something that you caught a glimpse of, which became a seed and which pushes you, forcing you to go toward something unknown. Spiritual search is not an attraction to something external; it is a push from within. It is always a push from within. And if it is an attraction to the external, then such a search is insincere, unauthentic. Then it is nothing other than a search for new types of satisfaction, another turn of your desires! A spiritual search is always a push toward something deep within you, a glimpse of something you have discerned...
Osho