I have excerpted some bits (with headings for ease) of Osho’s personal journey to the great moment and his matchless insights.

THE BODY MYSTICAL

“There is one other way to observe the body—from within, through the inner physiology. That's a subtle physiology. The nerves, veins and centers of the body known through that inner physiology are all totally different. You won't find them anywhere in this physical body. These centers are the contact fields between this body and the inner soul, the meeting points for both.

The biggest meeting point is the navel. You may have noticed, if you suddenly get into an accident driving a car, the navel will be the first to feel the impact. The navel will become disordered at once, because here the contact field between the body and the soul is the deepest of all. Seeing death, this center will be the first to become disturbed. As soon as death appears, the navel will be disrupted in relation to the body's center. There is an internal arrangement of the body which has resulted from the contact between this body and the inner body. The chakras are their contact fields.

So obviously, to know the body from within is to know a totally different kind of world altogether, a world we know absolutely nothing about. Medical science knows nothing about it, and won't for some time. Once you experience that the body is separate from you, you are finished with death. You come to know there is no death. And then you can actually come out of the body and look at it yourself from outside.

Questions relating to life and death are not matters of philosophical or metaphysical thought. Those who think about these things never accomplish anything. What I am talking about is an existential approach. It can be known that "I am life;" it can be known that "I am not going to die." One can live this experience, one can enter into it.”

DEATH IS THE ANSWER

“Doesn't every mad scramble end in death? But then, ask yourself what "death" means. Doesn't it just mean there is no higher rung on the ladder? Death is the end of rushing. It is an end to the future; it is the impossibility of any further possibilities. The rushing, racing mind leads a man to great heights, and what is death but the fall from those heights?

Whenever there is a mad race of any kind, death invariably steps in. It makes no difference whether the goal is wealth or religion or enjoyment or renunciation. Wherever there is rushing there is dreaming, but where there is no rushing, racing mind, there is truth. And there is life too—the life that has no death.”

NO VALLEY NO PEAKS
“The desire to be on the peaks is a wrong desire—all desires as such are wrong, and religious desires are far more wrong than any other desires for the simple reason that other desires can be fulfilled. Of course, by their fulfillment you will not go beyond frustration; fulfilled or not fulfilled, frustration is inevitable. If your desire is fulfilled you will be frustrated—in fact, more so, because now you will see you were chasing a shadow; you have got it and there is nothing in it. If your desire is not fulfilled you will be frustrated, because your whole life is wasted and you have not been able to fulfill a single desire. All your hopes are shattered.

Hopes are bound to be shattered. To hope is to hanker for hopelessness, to desire is to breed frustration. But in the worldly things at least there is a possibility of succeeding, failing, attaining, not attaining. But in spiritual matters there is no question of attainment at all because the goose is out! Nothing can be done about it, it is already out. The moment you start enjoying your valley you are on the peak—there is no other peak!
One day I suddenly decided enough is enough. I dropped the idea of the peaks and started enjoying the valley, and a miracle I saw: the valley disappeared. In fact, from the very beginning there had been no valley, I was always on the peak, but because I was searching for a peak I could not see where I was.

Your eyes are focused far away, hence you miss the obvious. It is here, and your mind is there, arrowed into the blue sky. And the reality surrounds you: it is closer than your very heartbeat, it is closer than your breathing, it is closer than the circulation of your blood, it is closer than your very marrow, it is closer than your very consciousness. It is your very core, your very being!”

WHO AM I ?

I used to ask myself, "Who am I?" It is impossible to count how many days and nights I passed in this query. The intellect gave answers heard from others, or born of conditioning. All of them were borrowed, lifeless. They brought no contentment. They resonated a little at the surface, and then disappeared. The inner being was not touched by them. No echo of them was heard in the depths. There were many answers to the question, but none was correct. And I was untouched by them. They could not rise to the level of the question.

Then I saw that the question came from the center but the replies touched only the periphery. The question was mine, but the answers came from outside; the question arose from my innermost being, the replies were imposed from outside. This insight became a revolution. A new dimension was revealed.

The responses of the intellect were meaningless. They had no relevance to the problem. An illusion had shattered. And what a relief it was!
It seemed as if a closed door had been flung open, filling the darkness with light. The intellect had been providing the answers—that was the mistake. Because of these false answers, the real answer could not arise. Some truth was struggling to surface. In the depths of consciousness some seed was seeking the way to break open the ground in order to reach the light. Intellect was the obstruction.
When this was made plain, the answers began to subside. Knowledge acquired from outside began to evaporate. The question went ever deeper. I did not do anything, only kept on watching.
Something novel was happening. I was speechless. What was there to do? I was, at the most, simply a witness. The reactions of the periphery were fading, perishing, becoming nonexistent. The center now began to resonate more fully.
"Who am I?" My entire being was throbbing with this thirst.
What a violent storm it was! Every breath quaked and trembled in it.
"Who am I?" - like an arrow, the question pierced through everything and moved within.
I remember—what an acute thirst it was! My very life had turned into thirst. Everything was burning. And like a flame of fire the question stood forth, "Who am I?"
The surprise was that the intellect was completely silent. The incessant flow of thoughts had stopped. What had happened? The periphery was absolutely still. There were no thoughts, no conditionings of the past.
Only I was there—and there was the question too. No, no— I myself was the question.
And then the explosion. In a moment, everything was transformed. The question had dropped. The answer had come from some unknown dimension.

Truth is attained through a sudden explosion, not gradually.
It cannot be compelled to appear. It comes.
Emptiness is the solution, not words. Becoming answerless is the answer.
Someone asked yesterday—and someone or the other asks every day—"What is the answer?"
I say, "If I mention it, it is meaningless. Its meaning lies in realizing it oneself."

THE SELF IS THE KEY
I tell you from my own experience that there is no easier path than merging with one's own self. The only thing one has to do is stop seeking for the support of anything on the surface of the mind. By catching hold of thoughts you cannot drown and because of their support you remain on the surface.

We are in the habit of catching hold of thoughts. As soon as one thought passes on we catch hold of another—but we never enter the gap between two successive thoughts. This gap itself is the channel to drowning in the depths. Do not move in thoughts—go deep down between them in the gaps.

How can this be done? It can be done by awareness, by observing the stream of thoughts. Just as a man standing on the side of a road watches the people passing by, you should observe your thoughts. They are simply pedestrians, passing by on the road of the mind within you. Just watch them. Don't form judgment about any of them. If you can observe them with detachment, the fist that has been gripping them opens automatically and you will find yourself standing, not in thoughts, but in the interval, in the gap between them. But the gap has no foundation so it isn't possible just to stand there. Simply by being there you drown.

And this drowning itself is the real support because it is through this that you reach the being you really are. One who seeks support in the realm of thoughts is really suspended in the air without support—but he who throws away all crutches attains the support of his own self.

A meditator has to remember not to struggle with the thoughts. If you want to win, don't fight. That is a simple rule of thumb. If you want to win, simply don't fight. The thoughts will be coming as usual. You just watch, hiding behind your blanket; let them come and go. Just don't get involved with them.

The whole question is of not getting involved in any way—appreciation or condemnation, any judgment, bad or good. Don't say anything, just remain absolutely aloof and allow the mind to move in its routine way. If you can manage…and this has been managed by thousands of buddhas, so there is not a problem. And when I say this can be managed, I am saying it on my own authority. I don't have any other authority.
I have fought and have tortured myself with fighting and I have known the whole split that creates a constant misery and tension. Finally seeing the point that victory is impossible, I simply dropped out of the fight. I allowed the thoughts to move as they want; I am no longer interested.

And this is a miracle, that if you are not interested, thoughts start coming less. When you are utterly uninterested, they stop coming. And a state of no-thought, without any fight, is the greatest peace one has ever known. This is what we are calling the empty heart of the buddha.

I remember the days when my mind was in darkness, when nothing was clear inside me at all. One thing in particular I recall about those days was that I did not feel love for anyone, I did not even love myself.
But when I came to the experience of meditation, I felt as though a million dormant springs of love had suddenly begun to bubble up in me. This love was not focused, not directed to anyone in particular, it was just a flow, fluid and forceful. It flowed from me as light streams from a lamp, as fragrance pours from flowers. In the wonderful moment of my awakening I realized that love was the real manifestation of my nature, of man's nature.

Love has no direction; it is not aimed at anyone. Love is a manifestation of the soul, of one's self.
Before this experience happened to me I believed love meant being attached to someone. Now I realize that love and attachment are two completely different things. Attachment is the absence of love. Attachment is the opposite of hatred, and hatred it can easily become. They are a pair, attachment and hatred. They are mutually interchangeable.
The opposite of hatred is not love. Not at all. And love is quite different from attachment too. Love is a completely new dimension. It is the absence of both attachment and hatred, yet it is not negative. Love is the positive existence of some higher power. This power, this energy, flows from the self towards all things—not because it is attracted.”

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR
“Buddha says, 'Fortunate is the man who has found a Master.'
I myself was not as fortunate as you are; I was working without a Master. I searched and I could not find one. It was not that I had not searched, I had searched long enough, but I could not find one. It is very rare to find a Master, rare to find a being who has become a non-being, rare to find a presence who is almost an absence, rare to find a man who Is simply a door to the divine, an open door to the divine which will not hinder you, through which you can pass. It is very difficult .
The Sikhs call their temple the gurudwara, the door of the Master. That is exactly what the Master is—the door. Jesus says again and again, 'I am the gate, I am the way, I am the truth. Come follow me, pass through me. And unless you pass through me you will not be able to reach.'
Yes, sometimes it happens that a person has to work without a Master. If the Master is not available then one has to work without a Master, but then the journey is very hazardous.
For one year I was in the state…. For one year it was almost impossible to know what was happening. For one year continuously it was even difficult to keep myself alive. Just to keep myself alive was a very difficult thing—because all appetite disappeared. Days would pass and I would not feel any hunger, days would pass and I would not feel any thirst. I had to force myself to eat, force myself to drink. The body was so non-existential that I had to hurt myself to feel that I was still in the body. I had to knock my head against the wall to feel whether my head was still there or not. Only when it hurt would I be a little in the body.

Every morning and every evening I would run for five to eight miles. People used to think that I was mad. Why was I running so much? Sixteen miles a day! It was just to feel myself, to feel that I still was, not to lose contact with myself—just to wait until my eyes became attuned to the new that was happening.
And I had to keep myself close to myself. I would not talk to anybody because everything had become so inconsistent that even to formulate one sentence was difficult. In the middle of the sentence I would forget what I was saying in the middle of the way I would forget where I was going. Then I would have to come back. I would read a book—I would read fifty pages—and then suddenly I would remember, 'What am I reading? I don't remember at all.'

By and by they stopped asking me anything, and slowly slowly they started feeling as if I were not there. And I loved it, the way I had become a nothingness, a nobody, an absence. That one year was tremendous. I was surrounded with nothingness, emptiness. I had lost all contact with the world. If they reminded me to take a bath, I would go on taking the bath for hours. Then they had to knock on the door: "Now come out of the bathroom. You have taken enough bath for one month. Just come out." If they reminded me to eat, I ate; otherwise, days would pass and I would not eat. Not that I was fasting—I had no idea about eating or fasting. My whole concern was to go deeper and deeper into myself. And the door was so magnetic, the pull was so immense—like what physicists now call black holes.

They say there are black holes in existence. If a star comes by chance to a black hole it is pulled into the black hole; there is no way to resist that pull, and to go into the black hole is to go into destruction. We don't know what happens on the other side. My idea, for which some physicist has to find evidence, is that the black hole on this side is a white hole on the other side. The hole cannot be just one side; it is a tunnel.

I have experienced it in myself. Perhaps on a bigger scale the same happens in the universe. The star dies; as far as we can see, it disappears. But every moment new stars are being born. From where? Where is their womb? It is simple arithmetic that the black hole was just a womb—the old disappeared into it and the new is born. This I have experienced in myself—I am not a physicist. That one year of tremendous pull made me farther and farther away from people, so much so that I would not recognize my own mother, I might not recognize my own father; so far that there were times I forgot my own name. I tried hard, but there was no way to find what my name used to be.
Naturally, to everybody that one year I was mad. But to me that madness became meditation, and the peak of that madness opened the door. I passed through it. I am now beyond enlightenment—on the other side of the door.”

‘Don’t love sagehood; sagehood is an empty name. There is no special truth but this radiant spiritual openness, unobstructed and free. It is not attained by adornment and cultivated realization. From the buddhas to the Zen masters, all have transmitted this teaching, by which they attained liberation.’

- Te-shan (d. 867)