Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
THANKS OSHO
IS EFFECT OF THE KUNDALINI SHORT LIVED
QUESTIONER: IS THE EFFECT OF SHAKTIPAT SHORT-LIVED OR DOES IT LAST LONG? AND IS A SINGLE EVENT OF SHAKTIPAT ENOUGH TO TAKE US TO OUR JOURNEY'S GOAL OR IS MORE THAN ONE NEEDED?
The fact is that a lasting effect stems from your own kundalini; shaktipat is only an aid. Shaktipat can never form your base; it can never become your basic structure. What happens within you is more important; it is basic, fundamental. That is your real wealth. That alone is your basic wealth. Shaktipat will not add to your wealth, but it will certainly step up its capacity to grow. This difference should be properly understood. With shaktipat your wealth will not multiply, but what is called its growth rate, its rate of expansion undoubtedly will be intensified with shaktipat.
So shaktipat is not your own riches. It is like this: you are running and I am after you with a gun in my hands. Now my gun is not going to add to your power of running, but it will surely make you run faster. It is you who will run in any event; it is your energy that is going to be spent in running. But because of the gun you will bring into use even the energy that was lying unused in you. The gun does not provide you with any extra energy; nor does it lose even an iota of its own energy in the game.
If you examine the gun later on, you will find it is the same as before; it has lost nothing. But the impact of the gun will quicken your running, the intensity and the speed of your running. Where you were walking leisurely before, you will now run and run fast.
So shaktipat does not add to your wealth of energy, but it undoubtedly steps up its capacity to grow and expand.
Shaktipat works like a flash of lightning. A flash of lightning does not light your path, it does not serve you as a lamp in your hand; it only gives you a flash, a glimpse of the road ahead and its surroundings. But this single glimpse is very precious; now your feet are firm, now your will is strong, now your resolve to reach your destination is hardened. You have seen the road and you know it is there and that you are not wandering aimlessly. One flash of lightning and you get a glimpse of the road you have to pass, and of the temple which is your journey's destination. And soon the light is lost and you are again engulfed in jet black darkness; but now you are a different person, although you are standing on the same spot you were before the lightning happened. Now you are confident, and you know you are going to go ahead. Now you know the road is there and the temple, although invisible, is at hand. Now you feel assured. Now you have confidence and trust, which fortifies your will and resolve.
So the effect of shaktipat is indirect, and therefore you need it time and again. Once is not enough; a second flash of lightning will benefit you the more, and a third still more. What you may have missed the first time will be seen with the second and the third flashes. They will, at the least, strengthen your confidence; they will reinforce your will.
So you cannot achieve your ultimate goal through shaktipat; it is you who will have to walk your way to destiny.
You can reach even without shaktipat, but then it will take more time; you will reach late. For lack of the flash of shaktipat you will be less confident and you will need more courage and strength. Doubt and fear will grip you now and then; you will not be so sure of your path and its destiny. All this will happen; nonetheless you will reach your goal.
But shaktipat is a help indeed. I would like, if you make some progress, that shaktipat happens to a large group of persons, instead of one or two individuals at a time. Why confine it to one or two individuals? It can happen collectively to ten thousand people standing together; there is no difficulty in the matter. Because it takes the same time whether it is done with a single person or ten thou sand persons. It makes no difference whatsoever.
Question 3
QUESTIONER: IN CASE A CONTACT WITH THE MEDIUM IS NOT MAINTAINED, DOES THE EFFECT OF SHAKTIPAT WEAR OFF?
The effect is bound to decline.
In fact, every effect wears off gradually. Effect itself means that it has been caused by an outside agency, and so it will decline. But the energy rising from within you is going to stay, because it is your own. Energy coming from without is bound to diminish and disappear. But what comes from your inside is not going to diminish; it will stay. Also that energy will stay which rises under the impact of shaktipat. Your basic capital does not wear off, but the effect does.
Question 4
QUESTIONER: IS THERE NO DANGER THAT OUR BASIC CAPITAL OF ENERGY WILL WEAR OFF EVEN IF WE KEEP BAD COMPANY? SHALL WE NOT THEN FALL DOWN FROM OUR HIGH PLACE?
There is no way to fall down or go downward. This thing really needs to be understood clearly. It is very interesting to know that there is no way to go downward or backward. You can be helped to go higher up from the place you have reached, even your rise from there can be obstructed; but there is no way to pull you down from that place. There is a reason to it. In the course of your ascent, your upward rise, you have changed, and you have grown, and even an inch of growth cannot he canceled or reversed. Retreat or regression is not possible in life.
It is like this: We can help a child in being promoted from grade one to grade two; a tutor can be engaged to help him in the matter. But you cannot find a tutor who can make the child forget what he has already learned in grade one.
It is, however, possible that after going to grade two he falls into the company of some foolish friends and in that event he is detained in his grade over and over again. But it is never possible that foolish friends will make him go back to grade one. Is not it so? It is also possible that he is kept in grade two for all his life, that he is never allowed to move to grade three, but it is impossible to bring him down to grade one. He will get stuck; that is all.
In spiritual life there is no going back; it is always a matter of going forward or getting stuck. And this getting stuck is what you call downfall or regression. But really regression does not happen; the worst that happens in spirituality is stagnation.
Question 5
QUESTIONER: IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHAKTIPAT AND GRACE?
The difference is great, really great. In fact, there is a great difference between shaktipat and grace.
Shaktipat is a kind of technique which can be planned and managed. Shaktipat has to be planned and manipulated. It cannot be brought about anytime and anywhere. Do you understand what I mean? For shaktipat to happen, it is very necessary that the seeker is in a right state to receive it and that the medium is a right medium. And when both these conditions are fulfilled and they synchronize, shaktipat happens. This is a matter of technique.
Grace comes uninvited, it comes in the dark. You cannot call for it, you cannot have it on order. Neither can it be planned, manipulated and managed. It is an event that happens once in a great while, and happens on its own.
The difference between shaktipat and grace is the game as it is between the electricity in your home and the lightning in the skies. You push a button here and there is instant light; but the lightning of the skies is quite different. Lightning happens on its own, you cannot have it on order, although elementally it is the same energy that works in both electricity and lightning. While your home electrically is technologically managed -- it is controlled by an instrument and a technique -- we have no control over lightning. Grace is like lightning of heavens. It happens at some unexpected and rare moment. And if the seeker is in a right state of receptivity at that moment, grace can happen to him. And then it is certainly not shaktipat. Although it is elementally the same as shaktipat, yet it is grace -- very different from shaktipat.
There is another difference -- that no medium is needed to receive grace; grace will dawn on you direct. It does not need a mediator to reach you; it will come straight to you. And grace is always a sudden happening. And it is rare, it does not happen often. And it cannot be planned and manipulated like shaktipat
I can say that if you come the next day at a fixed time after making certain preparations, shaktipat will happen. But all this is irrelevant in the case of grace. It may happen, it may not happen. It is not in our hands; it just cannot be managed, manipulated.
With this difference, grace is the same as shaktipat.
Question 6
QUESTIONER: HOW CAN SHAKTIPAT BE PLANNED IF IT HAPPENS ONLY IN AN EGOLESS STATE?
Planning can be done in an egoless state; ego has nothing to do with planning. Egoless planning is absolutely possible. Ego is a different thing; it is a different thing altogether. For instance, we plan that with certain necessary preparations we will sit for shaktipat tomorrow at five in the morning. In this planning the seeker is not required to be egoless, but the medium must be so.
Egolessness is not a transient state that now you are egoless and now you are not. If you are egoless, you are; if you are not egoless, you are not. If I am egoless, I am; if I am not egoless I am not. It is not that tomorrow at five I will be in an egoless state. It is ridiculous. How can it be? There is no way to be so. If I am egoless right now, then only I will be egoless tomorrow at five. And I will be so, irrespective of whether I plan or do not plan, whether you turn up or do not turn up, whether I am awake or asleep at that moment. If I am egoless, I am it.
If I am not egoless I am not it.
Egolessness is not a matter of degrees like body temperature, although we are used to thinking about everything in terms of degrees. All our thinking is like this. If somebody's body temperature is ninety eight degrees fahrenheit, we say that he is okay. But if his temperature rises to ninety nine degrees we say that he has a fever, he is running a temperature. Ninety eight degrees is also fever, but we call it normal fever. At ninety-nine degrees it becomes abnormal; back again at ninety eight it is normal. Ninety eight degrees is also fever but because everybody has it, so it is called normal. A slight deviation from the normal causes trouble.
Ordinarily it is the same with our ego; it is our fever. If somebody has ego in the same measure as all others have it, we say that he is a modest person, a good man. A slight deviation from the normal ninety eight degrees -- if he touches the ninety-ninth degree of ego, we say at once he is an egoist, he is arrogant. And in case somebody comes down to ninety seven degrees, we call him an absolutely humble man, a full mahatma, a very great soul.
Ego and no ego are different things altogether; they are different states as such. They are not concerned with degrees, with quantities. They are not like states of fever and non-fever; they are not to be measured as ninety-eight and ninety-nine degrees.
In fact, only in regard to a dead man can we say that he has no fever. As long as there is body heat, whether normal or abnormal, it is fever. It is fever with the difference that ninety eight degrees is normal and ninety-nine is abnormal. And the abnormal heat causes us physical trouble; we experience disease because of it.
Then there is another angle to the ego. If some one's ego hurts our ego, we think him to be an egoist. And if somebody else's ego comforts our ego, flatters and placates our ego, we say the man is egoless. But what is the measure, the criterion to know it? If a per son comes to me in an arrogant manner wanting to make his importance felt on me, we will call him an egoist. But if the same person comes and touches my feet, we will say he is so humble, so good. What criterion is there to test it? We have only one test for ego: to us ego is that which disturbs our own ego. If somebody hurts our ego, he is an egoist, and if he placates our ego, he is a saint, a humble man. But it is always our ego which serves as the measure. It is our own ego with which we judge if the other is an egoist or otherwise.
That is why we fail to know the real state of non ego. How can we know it? We know how to measure ego in degrees, whether it is more or less. But where the degrees are absent altogether, we find ourselves in great difficulty to know it, to know the no ego.
But in the matter of shaktipat the medium must be egoless. Egoless is not the right word, so I will say that only a no ego should be the medium. And bear it in mind that such a person is a recipient of grace, that grace is showering on him all the twenty-four hours of the day. He will manage it that you too have a taste of it, but so far as he is concerned, the nectar of grace rains on him day in and day out. That is how he can see to it that when you are open for a moment or two, a few drops of that nectar enter you through that opening.
=====================================================
Question 7
QUESTIONER: IS THE EFFECT OF DIRECT GRACE ON ONE WHO RECEIVES IT EVERLASTING? AND CAN IT LEAD ONE TO THE ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT?
Direct grace is only received on ultimate attain ment and not before. It is only when your ego disappears that grace descends on you. Ego is the only hurdle in the way of attainment. And attainment is the ultimate state after which nothing more remains to be attained.
END
OSHO
QUESTIONER: IS THE EFFECT OF SHAKTIPAT SHORT-LIVED OR DOES IT LAST LONG? AND IS A SINGLE EVENT OF SHAKTIPAT ENOUGH TO TAKE US TO OUR JOURNEY'S GOAL OR IS MORE THAN ONE NEEDED?
The fact is that a lasting effect stems from your own kundalini; shaktipat is only an aid. Shaktipat can never form your base; it can never become your basic structure. What happens within you is more important; it is basic, fundamental. That is your real wealth. That alone is your basic wealth. Shaktipat will not add to your wealth, but it will certainly step up its capacity to grow. This difference should be properly understood. With shaktipat your wealth will not multiply, but what is called its growth rate, its rate of expansion undoubtedly will be intensified with shaktipat.
So shaktipat is not your own riches. It is like this: you are running and I am after you with a gun in my hands. Now my gun is not going to add to your power of running, but it will surely make you run faster. It is you who will run in any event; it is your energy that is going to be spent in running. But because of the gun you will bring into use even the energy that was lying unused in you. The gun does not provide you with any extra energy; nor does it lose even an iota of its own energy in the game.
If you examine the gun later on, you will find it is the same as before; it has lost nothing. But the impact of the gun will quicken your running, the intensity and the speed of your running. Where you were walking leisurely before, you will now run and run fast.
So shaktipat does not add to your wealth of energy, but it undoubtedly steps up its capacity to grow and expand.
Shaktipat works like a flash of lightning. A flash of lightning does not light your path, it does not serve you as a lamp in your hand; it only gives you a flash, a glimpse of the road ahead and its surroundings. But this single glimpse is very precious; now your feet are firm, now your will is strong, now your resolve to reach your destination is hardened. You have seen the road and you know it is there and that you are not wandering aimlessly. One flash of lightning and you get a glimpse of the road you have to pass, and of the temple which is your journey's destination. And soon the light is lost and you are again engulfed in jet black darkness; but now you are a different person, although you are standing on the same spot you were before the lightning happened. Now you are confident, and you know you are going to go ahead. Now you know the road is there and the temple, although invisible, is at hand. Now you feel assured. Now you have confidence and trust, which fortifies your will and resolve.
So the effect of shaktipat is indirect, and therefore you need it time and again. Once is not enough; a second flash of lightning will benefit you the more, and a third still more. What you may have missed the first time will be seen with the second and the third flashes. They will, at the least, strengthen your confidence; they will reinforce your will.
So you cannot achieve your ultimate goal through shaktipat; it is you who will have to walk your way to destiny.
You can reach even without shaktipat, but then it will take more time; you will reach late. For lack of the flash of shaktipat you will be less confident and you will need more courage and strength. Doubt and fear will grip you now and then; you will not be so sure of your path and its destiny. All this will happen; nonetheless you will reach your goal.
But shaktipat is a help indeed. I would like, if you make some progress, that shaktipat happens to a large group of persons, instead of one or two individuals at a time. Why confine it to one or two individuals? It can happen collectively to ten thousand people standing together; there is no difficulty in the matter. Because it takes the same time whether it is done with a single person or ten thou sand persons. It makes no difference whatsoever.
Question 3
QUESTIONER: IN CASE A CONTACT WITH THE MEDIUM IS NOT MAINTAINED, DOES THE EFFECT OF SHAKTIPAT WEAR OFF?
The effect is bound to decline.
In fact, every effect wears off gradually. Effect itself means that it has been caused by an outside agency, and so it will decline. But the energy rising from within you is going to stay, because it is your own. Energy coming from without is bound to diminish and disappear. But what comes from your inside is not going to diminish; it will stay. Also that energy will stay which rises under the impact of shaktipat. Your basic capital does not wear off, but the effect does.
Question 4
QUESTIONER: IS THERE NO DANGER THAT OUR BASIC CAPITAL OF ENERGY WILL WEAR OFF EVEN IF WE KEEP BAD COMPANY? SHALL WE NOT THEN FALL DOWN FROM OUR HIGH PLACE?
There is no way to fall down or go downward. This thing really needs to be understood clearly. It is very interesting to know that there is no way to go downward or backward. You can be helped to go higher up from the place you have reached, even your rise from there can be obstructed; but there is no way to pull you down from that place. There is a reason to it. In the course of your ascent, your upward rise, you have changed, and you have grown, and even an inch of growth cannot he canceled or reversed. Retreat or regression is not possible in life.
It is like this: We can help a child in being promoted from grade one to grade two; a tutor can be engaged to help him in the matter. But you cannot find a tutor who can make the child forget what he has already learned in grade one.
It is, however, possible that after going to grade two he falls into the company of some foolish friends and in that event he is detained in his grade over and over again. But it is never possible that foolish friends will make him go back to grade one. Is not it so? It is also possible that he is kept in grade two for all his life, that he is never allowed to move to grade three, but it is impossible to bring him down to grade one. He will get stuck; that is all.
In spiritual life there is no going back; it is always a matter of going forward or getting stuck. And this getting stuck is what you call downfall or regression. But really regression does not happen; the worst that happens in spirituality is stagnation.
Question 5
QUESTIONER: IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHAKTIPAT AND GRACE?
The difference is great, really great. In fact, there is a great difference between shaktipat and grace.
Shaktipat is a kind of technique which can be planned and managed. Shaktipat has to be planned and manipulated. It cannot be brought about anytime and anywhere. Do you understand what I mean? For shaktipat to happen, it is very necessary that the seeker is in a right state to receive it and that the medium is a right medium. And when both these conditions are fulfilled and they synchronize, shaktipat happens. This is a matter of technique.
Grace comes uninvited, it comes in the dark. You cannot call for it, you cannot have it on order. Neither can it be planned, manipulated and managed. It is an event that happens once in a great while, and happens on its own.
The difference between shaktipat and grace is the game as it is between the electricity in your home and the lightning in the skies. You push a button here and there is instant light; but the lightning of the skies is quite different. Lightning happens on its own, you cannot have it on order, although elementally it is the same energy that works in both electricity and lightning. While your home electrically is technologically managed -- it is controlled by an instrument and a technique -- we have no control over lightning. Grace is like lightning of heavens. It happens at some unexpected and rare moment. And if the seeker is in a right state of receptivity at that moment, grace can happen to him. And then it is certainly not shaktipat. Although it is elementally the same as shaktipat, yet it is grace -- very different from shaktipat.
There is another difference -- that no medium is needed to receive grace; grace will dawn on you direct. It does not need a mediator to reach you; it will come straight to you. And grace is always a sudden happening. And it is rare, it does not happen often. And it cannot be planned and manipulated like shaktipat
I can say that if you come the next day at a fixed time after making certain preparations, shaktipat will happen. But all this is irrelevant in the case of grace. It may happen, it may not happen. It is not in our hands; it just cannot be managed, manipulated.
With this difference, grace is the same as shaktipat.
Question 6
QUESTIONER: HOW CAN SHAKTIPAT BE PLANNED IF IT HAPPENS ONLY IN AN EGOLESS STATE?
Planning can be done in an egoless state; ego has nothing to do with planning. Egoless planning is absolutely possible. Ego is a different thing; it is a different thing altogether. For instance, we plan that with certain necessary preparations we will sit for shaktipat tomorrow at five in the morning. In this planning the seeker is not required to be egoless, but the medium must be so.
Egolessness is not a transient state that now you are egoless and now you are not. If you are egoless, you are; if you are not egoless, you are not. If I am egoless, I am; if I am not egoless I am not. It is not that tomorrow at five I will be in an egoless state. It is ridiculous. How can it be? There is no way to be so. If I am egoless right now, then only I will be egoless tomorrow at five. And I will be so, irrespective of whether I plan or do not plan, whether you turn up or do not turn up, whether I am awake or asleep at that moment. If I am egoless, I am it.
If I am not egoless I am not it.
Egolessness is not a matter of degrees like body temperature, although we are used to thinking about everything in terms of degrees. All our thinking is like this. If somebody's body temperature is ninety eight degrees fahrenheit, we say that he is okay. But if his temperature rises to ninety nine degrees we say that he has a fever, he is running a temperature. Ninety eight degrees is also fever, but we call it normal fever. At ninety-nine degrees it becomes abnormal; back again at ninety eight it is normal. Ninety eight degrees is also fever but because everybody has it, so it is called normal. A slight deviation from the normal causes trouble.
Ordinarily it is the same with our ego; it is our fever. If somebody has ego in the same measure as all others have it, we say that he is a modest person, a good man. A slight deviation from the normal ninety eight degrees -- if he touches the ninety-ninth degree of ego, we say at once he is an egoist, he is arrogant. And in case somebody comes down to ninety seven degrees, we call him an absolutely humble man, a full mahatma, a very great soul.
Ego and no ego are different things altogether; they are different states as such. They are not concerned with degrees, with quantities. They are not like states of fever and non-fever; they are not to be measured as ninety-eight and ninety-nine degrees.
In fact, only in regard to a dead man can we say that he has no fever. As long as there is body heat, whether normal or abnormal, it is fever. It is fever with the difference that ninety eight degrees is normal and ninety-nine is abnormal. And the abnormal heat causes us physical trouble; we experience disease because of it.
Then there is another angle to the ego. If some one's ego hurts our ego, we think him to be an egoist. And if somebody else's ego comforts our ego, flatters and placates our ego, we say the man is egoless. But what is the measure, the criterion to know it? If a per son comes to me in an arrogant manner wanting to make his importance felt on me, we will call him an egoist. But if the same person comes and touches my feet, we will say he is so humble, so good. What criterion is there to test it? We have only one test for ego: to us ego is that which disturbs our own ego. If somebody hurts our ego, he is an egoist, and if he placates our ego, he is a saint, a humble man. But it is always our ego which serves as the measure. It is our own ego with which we judge if the other is an egoist or otherwise.
That is why we fail to know the real state of non ego. How can we know it? We know how to measure ego in degrees, whether it is more or less. But where the degrees are absent altogether, we find ourselves in great difficulty to know it, to know the no ego.
But in the matter of shaktipat the medium must be egoless. Egoless is not the right word, so I will say that only a no ego should be the medium. And bear it in mind that such a person is a recipient of grace, that grace is showering on him all the twenty-four hours of the day. He will manage it that you too have a taste of it, but so far as he is concerned, the nectar of grace rains on him day in and day out. That is how he can see to it that when you are open for a moment or two, a few drops of that nectar enter you through that opening.
=====================================================
Question 7
QUESTIONER: IS THE EFFECT OF DIRECT GRACE ON ONE WHO RECEIVES IT EVERLASTING? AND CAN IT LEAD ONE TO THE ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT?
Direct grace is only received on ultimate attain ment and not before. It is only when your ego disappears that grace descends on you. Ego is the only hurdle in the way of attainment. And attainment is the ultimate state after which nothing more remains to be attained.
END
OSHO
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