you've seen the beauty of individuality, now see the beauty of its disappearance

1.

You have to disappear. The world has to be left behind, the body has to be left behind, the mind has to be left behind; And then you have only one thing to lose -- yourself. You have enjoyed everything. You have enjoyed the purity of individuality; now you have to enjoy the disappearing of individuality. You have seen the beauty of individuality; now you have to see the disappearance and its beauty, and the silence that follows, that abysmal serenity that follows.

This way, each individual will go on moving into nothingness. And one day, the whole existence moves into nothingness and a great peace, a great night, a deep, dark womb, a great awaiting for the dawn.. And it has been happening always, and each time you are always born on a higher level of consciousness.

2.
Try to be so wakeful that you don't fall asleep again. Remain so alert that the future is not allowed to deceive you again as you had allowed it before. What has become past is nothing, but once it is your future then you get deceived by it. Now it is past; now another future is arriving. Every moment future is arriving, and future can deceive you only if you are asleep. Then again it will become past. Now let me tell you one thing: if you remain alert and you don't allow the future to deceive you in the present, the past disappears. Then there is no memory left of it, no trace of it. Then one is just a clean slate, a sky without any clouds, a flame without smoke.

That's what the state of enlightenment is -- so alert that only the witness is real and everything else is nothing but ripples on the surface of the water. Everything is passing, everything is a flux. Only one thing remains and remains and remains, and that is your consciousness, your awareness.

3.
After enlightenment, you have to disappear. The world is left behind, the body is left behind, the mind is left behind; just your consciousness, as individuality, is still there. To go beyond enlightenment is to go beyond individuality and to become universal. This way, each individual will go on moving into nothingness. And one day, the whole existence moves into nothingness and a great peace, a great night, a deep, dark womb, a great awaiting for the dawn.. And it has been happening always, and each time you are always born on a higher level of consciousness.

Enlightenment is the goal of human beings. But those who are enlightened cannot remain static; they will have to move, they will have to change. And now they have only one thing to lose - themselves. They have enjoyed everything. They have enjoyed the purity of individuality; now they have to enjoy the disappearing of individuality. They have seen the beauty of individuality; now they have to see the disappearance and its beauty, and the silence that follows, that abysmal serenity that follows.

4.

The experience of enlightenment is also beyond description, but it has been described by all who have experienced it. They all say it is beyond description and still they describe it - that it is full of light, that it is full of joy, that it is the ultimate in blissfulness. If this is not description then what is description? I am saying it for the first time: for thousands of years the people who have become enlightened have been saying that it cannot be described, and at the same time have been describing it, have been their whole lives singing it. But beyond enlightenment you certainly enter into a world which is indescribable. Because in enlightenment you still are; otherwise who is feeling the blissfulness, who is seeing the light? Kabir says, "... as if thousands of suns have risen." Who is seeing it?

Enlightenment is the ultimate experience - but still it is experience, and the experiencer is there. Going beyond it, there is no experiencer.

5.
You have to understand one thing: that enlightenment is not an escape from pain but an understanding of pain, an understanding of your anguish, an understanding of your misery -- not a cover-up, not a substitute, but a deep insight: "Why am I miserable, why is there so much anxiety, why is there so much anguish, what are the causes in me that are creating it?" And to see those causes clearly is to be free from them. Just an insight into your misery brings a freedom from misery. And what remains is enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that comes to you. It is when pain and misery and anguish and anxiety have been understood perfectly well and they have evaporated because now they have no cause to exist in you -- that state is enlightenment.

6.
Enlightenment is the ultimate peak of sanity - when one becomes perfectly sane, has come to a point where silence, serenity, consciousness are twenty-four hours his, waking or sleeping. There runs a current of tranquility, blissfulness, benediction which is a nourishment, food from the beyond. Eastern psychology accepts mind as the lowest part of human consciousness - dismal and dark. You have to go beyond it. And enlightenment is not the end, because it is only individual consciousness. Individuality is still like two banks of a river. The moment the river moves into the ocean, all banks disappear, all boundaries are annihilated. You have gone beyond enlightenment.

7.

With thought the mind has boundaries. But without thought the mind is just infinite space.
That is why in thoughtless awareness one stops to be a drop and becomes oceanic. And then there is great energy.
This energy wipes out everything which is dead. It wipes out the whole Karmic past. And, with no effort at all.
The greater absorbs the lesser and remains untouched.

- Osho