Questline, CJOR Radio, Vancouver, Canada

Glad to see you.

Osho,
Good evening.
In one of the talks I heard, you were talking about a merging of Zorba and buddha, an aligning of the spiritual and the material. Can you please define enlightenment for me?

It simply means becoming aware of yourself. Ordinarily, a man is awake to everything around him, but is not aware who is awake and aware of all the things around. So we remain on the periphery of life, and the center remains in darkness. To bring light to that center, consciousness to that center, is what enlightenment is.

It is just being absolutely centered in yourself, focusing all your consciousness upon yourself, as if nothing else exists. Only you are.

Your own enlightenment came at the age of twenty-one?

Right

And you likened it to an atomic explosion. You said it was like a light that never left you. How would your perception then, being enlightened, differ from people that have not awakened to their own enlightenment?

Just as, when a person is asleep, how are you going to define the difference between the person who is asleep and the person who is awake? The person who is asleep is dreaming, or not dreaming, but one thing is certain, he is not aware that he is asleep. The man who is awake, whatever he is doing one thing is certain, he is aware that he is awake.

This is the only difference on the spiritual level, too. A spiritually asleep person is not aware that he is asleep. And a spiritually awakened person is aware that he is awake. And, of course, he is aware of all those who are asleep.

The awakened person has two definite positions: first, that he is aware; second, that all others who are around him are asleep. But the sleeping person has neither of these two. He is not aware that he is asleep, and he is not aware that others around him are asleep.