Osho,
Is enlightenment beyond the nature of things?

Enlightenment is “the very nature of things.” But it has never been said that way; on the contrary, people’s minds have been corrupted by creating a goal against nature, giving it beautiful names, “supernature.” And man was caught in this because of a very simple reason:

The nature of things is already where you are.

It is not an excitement and it is not a challenge and it does not call on you to prove your ego. It is not a faraway star. Mind wants for its nourishment something very difficult, something almost impossible. Only if you can achieve the impossible can you feel you are somebody special.

Enlightenment is not a talent. It is not like somebody being born a painter or a poet or a scientist – those are talents. Enlightenment is simply everybody’s very source of life. You have not even to go out of your house to look for it. To go out of your house to look for it, you have missed it, and nobody knows when you will be able to come back home.

Enlightenment is nothing but realizing the fact that “I am that which I have always wanted to be, and I have never been anything else and I cannot be anything else, ever.” The very definition of nature is that you cannot go beyond it. You can make the effort and create misery, anxiety, anguish, but you cannot go beyond it.

It is you.

How can you go beyond yourself?

It is your very life source, your very existence. Wherever you will go, you will be it.

There have been records of people whose first experience of themselves was just a belly laughter. Seeing the absurdity of what they were trying to do…they were trying to be themselves! That is the only impossible thing in the world, because you are already it – how can you try to be it?

But the priests, so-called religious leaders, and all those who have wanted you to be enslaved have given you ideals. They have told you, “Unless you behave in a certain way, you are wrong.” Unless you do the things that they prescribe, you are not good.

Nobody ever asked these people, “Who has given you the authority to decide for others? If you think something is good, do it, but you have no right to tell anybody else to follow you.”

The great corrupters, the great poisoners are the people who have created following, because following simply means you are being put into an absurdity against yourself: you are being told that you have to be somebody else that you can never be. This has created the whole world of tremendous misery.