I say to you life is not a jail; it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it. Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you don’t enjoy. It will be against existence if you don’t beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant.

Osho,
As a disciple of your mystery school, I want to ask you the following question: when I heard you say that you were beyond enlightenment now, it felt like a relaxation in my heart. That very moment a picture arose in me showing me that you are even closer to us now, and it feels to me as if I can somehow understand “beyond enlightenment” better than enlightenment itself.
Can you please say something about this?

It raises a few fundamental questions. First, if you cannot understand enlightenment, how can you understand that which is beyond it? You are misunderstanding. Your misunderstanding is that perhaps beyond enlightenment means below enlightenment. And you are feeling happy, but I cannot feel happy with your happiness. I feel sorry for it. You are feeling happy that I have come close to you. You should feel happy when you come close to me.

Just think: if I say that I have dropped even “beyond enlightenment,” that it was all fiction – enlightenment, beyond enlightenment; I am just one of you who had a few imaginative, fictitious ideas – you will feel even happier. Now there is nothing for you to worry about, nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, you are perfectly okay.

Your question makes me understand why Gautam Buddha remained with enlightenment – although he was seeing it, the stars beyond were calling him. He was the first man to see beyond enlightenment, but he didn’t go beyond; he remained at the stage of enlightenment. Perhaps it was for people like you, because you will not be able to understand the person who goes beyond enlightenment, in a way he will become almost ordinary, and there is the danger. Your ordinariness and his ordinariness are poles apart – but both are ordinariness, and the danger is that you will misunderstand. He has come back home. You have not even started the journey.

It is almost like meeting someone on a staircase – you are both standing on the same step; one is going, one is coming. Both are on the same step – in a way equal – but one is going up, one is going down. Hence, they are not equal; their equality is illusory.