Osho - From Childhood to Enlightenment, The Birth of a New Man

Osho : My early childhood passed at the house of my maternal. Grandparents and I had great love for them. I did not stay with my mother and father in my childhood but with my maternal grandparents. My mother was their only child. They were feeling very lonely, so they wanted to bring me up. Therefore, up to seven years of age, I stayed with them. I had taken them as my mother and father. They were very rich and had all possible conveniences. Therefore, I was brought up like a prince. I came in touch with my father and mother only after the death of my maternal grandparents.

Their passing away and the manner in which it happened became the first valuable memory for me because I had loved only them and received love only from them. Their passing away and the manner in which it happened became the first valuable memory for me because I had loved only them and received love only from them. Their passing away was very strange. The village in which they were staying was about thirty-two miles away from any town. Neither was there any doctor nor any vaidya, one who practices ayurvedic medicine. In the very first attack of death upon my grandfather, he lost his speech. For twenty-four hours we waited in that village for something to happen. However, there was no improvement.

I remember a struggle on his part in an attempt to say something, but he could not speak. He wanted to tell something, but could not tell it. Therefore, we had to take him toward the town in a bullock cart. Slowly, one after the other, his senses were giving way. He did not die all at once, but slowly and painfully. First his speech stopped, then his hearing. Then he closed his eyes as well. In the bullock cart, I was watching everything closely, and there was a long distance of thirty-two miles to travel. Whatsoever was happening seemed beyond my understanding then. This was the first death witnessed by me, and I did not even understand that he was dying. But slowly all his senses were giving way and he became unconscious.

While we were still near the town, he was already half dead. His breathing still continued, but everything else was lost. After that he did not resume consciousness, but for three days he continued breathing. He died unconsciously. This slow losing of his senses and his final dying became very deeply engraved in my memory. It was he with whom I had my deepest relationship. For me, he was the only love object, and because of his death, perhaps, I have not been able to feel attached to anyone else so much.

Since then, I have been alone. The facticity of aloneness took hold of me from the age of seven years on. Aloneness became my nature. His death freed me forever from all relationships. His death became for me the death of all attachments. Thereafter, I could not establish a bond of relationship with anyone. Whenever my relationship with anyone would begin to become intimate, that death stared at me. Therefore with whomsoever I experienced some attachment, I felt that if not today, tomorrow that person could also die.

Once a person becomes clearly aware of the certainty of death, then the possibility of attachment is lessened in the same proportion. In other words, our attachments are based on the forgetfulness of he fact of death. With whomsoever we love, we continue to believe that death is not unavoidable. That is why we speak of love as immortal. It is our tendency to believe that whomsoever we love will not die. But for me love invariably became associated with death. This meant that I was not able to love without being aware of death. There can be friendship, there can be compassion, but no infatuation over anything could catch me.

Very deeply did death touch me – and so intensely that the more I thought of it, the more and more clear did it become to me each day. Thus, the madness of life did not affect me. Death stared at me before the thrust into life began. This event can be considered as the first which left a deep impact and influence on my mind. From that day onwards, every day, every moment, the awareness of life invariably became associated with the awareness of death. From then onwards, to be or not to be had the same value for me. At that tender age, loneliness seized me.

Sooner or later in life – in old age – loneliness seizes everyone. But it seized me before I knew what company meant. I may live with everyone, but whether I am in a crowd or a society, with a friend or an intimate, I am still alone. Nothing touches me; I remain untouched. As that first feeling of loneliness became deeper and deeper, something new began to happen in life. At first that loneliness had made me only unhappy, but slowly it began changing into happiness – because it is a rule that when we become attached to anyone or anything, in one way or the other we turn from facing ourselves.

Actually, the desire for attachment to someone or something is a device for escaping from one’s own self. And as the other goes on becoming more and more important to us, to the very same extent he becomes the center for us and we become the periphery. Therefore, the other could not become important to me in the sense that it could save me from my own self. So I had to live with my own self only. At first this seemed to give me unhappiness, but slowly it began giving me the experience of happiness. Thereafter, I did not suffer any unhappiness Thus, in the very first experience, I became so badly disappointed from the other that I did not try again. That direction was closed for me, and so thereafter I never became unhappy.

Then a new type of happiness began to be experienced which can never come from the other. Happiness can never come from the other; what is created is only a hope for future happiness. Actually, only the shadow of happiness is received. So, to me, being thrown upon oneself begins the journey toward the spiritual I do not remember that I ever cultivated any friendship, though there were many who wanted to be my friends. Many persons made friends with me, and they enjoyed making friendship with me because it was not possible to make me an enemy. But I do not recall that I have ever gone of my own accord to anyone in order to make any friend. If someone threw himself on me, it was a different matter.

It is not that I never welcomed friendship. If someone made a friend of me, I wholeheartedly welcomed it. But even then I could not become a friend in the ordinary sense. I have always remained aloof. In short, even while studying in school, I remained aloof. Neither with any of my teachers, nor with any fellow student, nor with any other, could I develop such a relationship as would drown me or break my being an island. Friends came and also stayed with me. I met many people as well; I had many friends. But from my side there was nothing that could make me dependent upon them or which would cause me to remember them.

It is very interesting to note that I do not remember anyone. It has never happened that I would sit pondering over someone with the feeling that if I would meet him it would be very pleasant. If someone does meet me, it makes me very happy, but I do not become unhappy due to not meeting someone. For the state of ultimate joy, I believe that only my grandfather’s death was responsible. That death threw me back to myself permanently. I have not been able to revert back from the center. Due to this condition of being an outsider, a stranger, I have seen a new dimension of experience.

It is a condition in which, although I am amidst everything, I continue to remain outside. I became a universe unto myself. This new experience – and a strange one at that – gave me a sort of pain, although it was a joyous pain. It was like this: that at that young age I began to feel and experience a sort of maturity and elderliness. In this experience there was no ego involvement, but an individuality was still there, and that placed me in some embarrassing situations. For example, I could not accept anyone as my teacher though I was always ready to be a student. But I did not find anyone whom I could call my master.

Everyone I found was very much involved in and with life. No one who had not seen death could ever become my teacher. I wanted to respect, but I could not. I could respect rivers, mountains and even stones, but not human beings. This was a very embarrassing situation, and it put me in great difficulties. I met no such teacher whom I could spontaneously respect, because I never felt that there was anything which anyone knew which was such an absolute truth that without it life could have no meaning. Many times I have felt that various teachers were saying and doing things which looked childish – which even I, at that age, would not say or do.

Therefore, I had never felt that I was a small child and that I should remain under someone’s protection and guidance. Not that I did not go to anyone: I did go to many people, but I always returned empty-handed and felt that all which was imparted I also knew. There was nothing which could be learned from them. Therefore, a difficulty arose in that many a time others felt that I was egoistic. It was natural for them to feel that way because I was not able to respect and honor anyone or to obey anyone’s command. Everyone felt that I was an immodest and seditious rebel.

Up to a particular age, to my teachers, to my elders and to everybody, I have been a discourteous, rebellious, seditious and egoistic person, and they had no hope that I would ever be of any use to anyone in life.In whatsoever they had put simple faith I could not put any faith at all, and that which they never doubted, I always doubted. To whatsoever they had always stood with head bowed down in pranam, I could not even join my hands. I never felt to do so. I never tried to deceive myself, nor did I learn any hypocrisy. If I had no trust, it was so: I could not help it, I did not try to show off anything which I did not believe to be true.

Therefore, this created some difficulties, but it also had its advantages. I was thrown back upon myself from another direction as well, because I never believed or felt that the truth could be learned from others. There was only one way to learn – to learn from myself only. I therefore never knew anyone to be my guru. I was my guru and my disciple as well. If I could not follow anyone blindly, the only alternative left was to search in my own way. There was no one to show me a way that I might follow. I had to walk by myself. The most valuable result of this was that I had to pave my own way, follow my own discretion, and in every matter make my own decisions.

There was no question of taking anyone’s help. This being thrown back again and again upon myself proved very valuable. This does not mean that I distrusted everyone or that I showed any contempt or disrespect to anyone. I simply could not respect anyone, and the natural result of all this was that my doubts became stronger and stronger. I doubted everything. This attitude also became useful when I began to read and write. Whether I studied the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, or whether I studied Buddha or Mahavira, that doubting instinct was always with me. It never happened that I would keep Krishna a little above the other gods and kill all my doubts. Doubt always remained with me.

Therefore, no fanaticism, no blindness, no following or devotion to only one particular religion could result. The ultimate result of all this was that I remained without any conclusions, full of questions and questions and doubts. There was no final answer about anything. Whatever answers were there belonged to others, and I could not trust anyone else’s answers. Others’ answers did only one thing for me, and that was to give birth to ten more questions. No one else’s answers could become mine.

So from the very first this condition was dangerous, because to live without any aim was very insecure. I was not even sure of what was just one inch ahead, because that I could come to know only from others. About the path up to where one has traveled one can know positively, but about what lies ahead on the path one has not traveled, one can only know from others. Therefore, for me there was no clear path.

It was all darkness. Every next step for me was in darkness – aimless and ambiguous.My condition was full of tension, insecurity and danger. All my relatives and intimates thought that I was a rebellious and seditious person because of this condition.

Slowly people began thinking that I might become mad, such was the situation. In every small matter there was doubt and nothing but doubt. Only questions and questions remained without any answer. In one respect I was as good as mad. I was myself afraid that anytime I might become mad. I was not able to sleep at night. Throughout the night and the day, questions and questions hovered around me. There was no answer to any question. I was in a deep sea, so to speak, without any boat or bank anywhere. Whatever boats had been there I had myself sunk or denied. There were many boats and many sailors, but I had myself refused to step into anyone else’s boat.

I felt that it was better to drown by oneself rather than to step into someone else’s boat. If this was where life was to lead me, to drowning myself, then I felt that this drowning should also be accepted. My condition was one of utter darkness. It was as if I had fallen into a deep dark well. In those days I had many times dreamed that I was falling and falling and going deeper into a bottomless well. And many times I awakened from a dream full of perspiration, sweating profusely, because the falling was endless without any ground or place anywhere to rest my feet.

Except for darkness and falling, nothing else remained, but slowly I accepted even that condition. Many times I felt that I might have agreed with someone, I might have held on to something, I might have accepted some answer. But this did not suit my nature. I was never able to accept anyone else’s thoughts. Inevitably, it so happened that there was no longer any place within me for any thoughts. Now I realize that all answers are nothing but thoughts. If there are only questions, then a person can become thoughtless. A conclusion is a thought. If there is no conclusion, then automatically a vacuum is created.

I did not know this at the time, but a sort of emptiness, a void, came about of its own accord. Many questions circled around and around. But because there was no answer, they dropped down from exhaustion, so to speak, and died. I did not get the answers, but the questions were destroyed. One day a questionless condition came about. It is not that I received the answers – no. Rather, all the questions just fell away and a great void was created. This was an explosive situation. Living in that condition was as good as dying. And then the person died who had been asking questions. After that experience of void, I asked no questions.

All matters on which questions could be asked became non-existent. Previously, there was only asking and asking. Thereafter, nothing like questioning remained. Now I have neither any questions nor any answers. If someone raises a question, that answer which comes from my inner void is the answer. I cannot say that the answer is mine because I never have any prior thought about it. The answer is not ready in advance. I too hear the answer for the first time when my listener is hearing it. Just as he is hearing it for the first time, I am also. It is not that I am the speaker and he is the listener, nor is it that I am the giver and he is the taker. The answer has come, and both of us are listeners and takers.

Therefore, if my answer is different tomorrow from what it was today, I am not responsible for it because I had not given the answer at all. The same void from which it has come is responsible for changing it. I am helpless. Therefore, you will find that I am very inconsistent. I can be consistent only if ”I” am answering. If there is any inconsistency, it is due to that void within me. I have no knowledge of it. Whatever answer comes is not given by me. Since that experience, neither have I asked any question, nor have I sought any answer. In that explosion, the old man of yesteryear died.

This new man is absolutely new. Now I do not think from my side. If someone asks something, just as you have done, then I speak. I do not even think; I just speak directly. As far as memory goes, there also I do not think that it is mine. It seems that it belongs to someone else. What I mean is that those things about which I am telling you which happened in the period before the explosion are not mine; they even appear to belong to someone else. It is just as if they were simply heard by me or read in some novel or seen in some drama or somewhere.

Here, so many people request me to write my autobiography. It is very difficult because the one about whom I would write is not me. Whatever I am now has no story. There is no story after that explosion; there are no events after it. All events are before the explosion. After the explosion there is only void. Whatever was before is not me or mine. When a person writes about himself, it is an autobiography; when a person writes about someone else, it is a biography. If I write a biography, it will not be mine. It cannot be an autobiography, because the ”I” is no more there.

It can be a biography of a person whom I once knew, but who now is no more. It can be about a person whom I once used to be, but who has now ceased to be. Also, it would be like writing about someone whom I have known or heard about, whom I used to see, but who is now dead.

Source: Dimensions Beyond the Known - Osho