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Chapter 10 - Enlightenment is not an experience
you are moving and for what. You go on living because everybody else is living, but without any consciousness.
Why? Why should you wake up tomorrow morning and still go on breathing? Your whole past proves that it has been nothing but an exercise in futility, and you know perfectly well you will be repeating it as long as you are alive -- unless by accident, you come across a man who is awake. And the awakened people have become so few, as centuries have passed, that it is almost improbable that you will come across an awakened person.
But only the awakened person can wake you up, shake you up; can give you a little consciousness of what you are doing: This is not life. This is only a slow death which will be completed in seventy or seventy-five years' time. You are dying every day, every moment.
The great masses of the world only know slow death.
Only very few people who have become awakened have known the tremendous tidal wave of life.
Just as the unconscious goes on dying, the conscious goes on becoming more and more alive. The unconsciousness only grows old; the conscious grows up, becomes mature, reaches heights of consciousness. It is in its seed in everybody, but the problem is how to challenge the seed, how to call to the seed: "Don't remain dormant!" Only the awakened person can create the presence in which your seed inside starts waking up.
It was a good experience, Shahid. You remained aware in the moment of death. Now don't take it for granted. You have to be aware each moment in life.
Sometimes, particularly in accidents, people become aware because the accident is such a shock that the unconsciousness disappears. But if they survive, the unconsciousness again starts gathering around them like a dark cloud and they start living a life which is meaningless, imitative, not knowing why.
Goldstein got a job in the sports section of a large department store. On his first day there, the store manager overheard him with a customer: "Look," said Goldstein, "these fish hooks are fifty cents each. But I can sell you three for a dollar."
"I will buy them!" exclaimed the customer.
"Now, you have fish hooks but you need a fishing line. This excellent nylon line normally costs two dollars for a hundred yards but I can give you two hundred yards for three dollars,"
said Goldstein.
"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.
"Now you have fish hooks and a line, but you need a rod. Here is a rod -- normally costing one hundred dollars, but I can sell it to you for only seventy- five dollars," said Goldstein.
"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.
"Now you have fish hooks, a line and a rod but you need a fishing boat. Here is a boat normally costing eight thousand dollars but it is yours for five thousand dollars."
"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer.
"Now you have fish hooks, a line, a rod, and a boat but you need a trailer to carry the boat on. Normally, this one costs two thousand dollars but it is yours for eighteen-hundred dollars."
"I will buy it!" exclaimed the customer. Osho - The Hidden Splendor
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