One is either enlightened or not, there is no other possibility. Because it has to be total, it means that it is already there. If it had to grow, it would have been gradual. No growth can be sudden. Every growth is gradual – a child becomes a young man, the young man becomes old, a small plant becomes a big tree. But everything that grows is gradual.

Enlightenment does not grow and does not decline. It is already there in you. It needs only a recognition and recognition can be sudden. It just needs a total quest and a turning in – and suddenly you are no more what you used to be. You are a buddha. It will be very difficult for you to tell anybody. It will be very difficult for you even to accept that you are a buddha. But whether it is difficult or impossible, it does not make any difference to the reality: you are a buddha.

Sometimes you forget and sometimes you remember. Forgetting, remembering, forgetting, remembering – a point comes when remembrance becomes so solid that you don’t forget. But it is a sudden phenomenon. It is the only sudden phenomenon because it is not of this world.

Outwardly still, while inwardly moving, like a tethered colt, a trapped rat – the ancient saints pitied them, and bestowed upon them the teaching. According to their delusion, they called black as white.

When erroneous imaginations cease, the acquiescent no-mind realizes itself.

The realization of no-mind is just like a lake which had waves moving on it. Now the winds are gone and the waves have become silent. It was the same lake while it was in a turmoil, it was just our delusion that it had changed. It is the same consciousness when it gets identified with things. Our nature does not change any more than the lake’s nature is changed by waves. Soon the winds will be gone and the waves will disappear from the lake and the lake will become just a quiet mirror. It is the same lake. It is the same consciousness which is in delusion, disturbed. It is the same consciousness which in enlightenment is undisturbed. The only difference is of disturbance. So find out what causes the disturbance in your consciousness. Drop those causes and the disturbance will disappear.

Enlightenment is not some achievement. It is simply the absence of all causes of disturbance. When the lake becomes silent, a mirror, it simply means that the winds have gone home, the cause of the disturbance is no more there.

What is the cause of your disturbance? The one cause is identification: my body, my mind, my religion, my country, my race…There are thousands of examples but always there is identification. Drop all identifications because they are simply mind projections, they don’t have any reality.

What do you mean, to say that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian? You were not born a Christian, you were not born a Hindu. Your parents may have believed in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Christianity, but their belief cannot enter into the child that is born.