Enlightenment is not a goal or an achievement, it is a state of no-mind, says Osho
Man has been conditioned down the centuries for goals, destinations, purposes, meanings — that’s how he has lived hitherto, with the goal-oriented ideology. Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Communist, it doesn’t matter — all ideologies are goal-oriented. It is always tomorrow that you have to look to or the next life. It is always somewhere else — the goal, the meaning, the bliss, the paradise — it is never now here.
Because of these ideologies you cannot allow yourself to relax in the moment. They go on goading you — to attain something or to achieve something. Your whole education system is a strategy of poisoning your consciousness; it is a strategy of driving you crazy after goals, it is a strategy of creating ambition in you. And ambition is neurosis. But this has been done for so long that it has become part and parcel of the human mind.
That’s why you go on thinking in terms of goal or destination. It is not you: it is the society that goes on thinking in you, through you. It is your parents, it is your priests, it is your politicians, it is your pedagogues, who go on thinking through you, and you are identified with them. You don’t know that you are separate.
The first thing that you will have to learn is to be a witness to all that goes on in the mind because the mind is a social phenomenon — it is not a God-given gift. It is social exploitation; it is society that makes a mind in you, and through that mind controls you, keeps you imprisoned, chained and reduces you to a slave. You are not the mind, you are the witness who can see the mind very easily. You can see the thoughts moving in your consciousness — those thoughts are the content of the consciousness but they are not consciousness itself. And this is what meditation is all about — creating a distance between you and your mind.
Once the distance is there, you will be surprised that the whole mind structure is your imprisonment — you are free from it because you are separate from it. Once you start enjoying the freedom from the mind all goals will disappear, all destinations will disappear.
Mind can only live in goals because mind can only exist in the future. Mind cannot exist here and now — try to be here and now. You will find it impossible. Either the mind continues, then you are not here and now; or, you are here and now and the mind is no more there. Mind has no present tense at all; either it is past or it is future — it is always in the non-existential. And God is that which exists. God is not a goal, nirvana is not a goal, enlightenment is not a goal, it is not an achievement — just the contrary. Enlightenment is a state of no-mind.
And enlightenment is nothing special. It is the most ordinary, natural phenomenon. It looks special because you make a goal out of it. Buddha is the most ordinary human being — ordinary in the sense that he has no mind, he exists in the sheer present. He has no ego, how can he be specialIJ He cannot compare himself with anybody else, he cannot be inferior o rsuperior.
In the present moment, he is not — but a totally different kind of presence happens, which does not belong to the person; it is only a presence, not a person at all. And how can he be specialIJ Because in the present moment he finds that there is no purpose in life. The whole purpose is mind-imposed.
The trees are there for no purpose at all, and the stars are there for no purpose at all. Purpose is a man-created concept. Rivers are not flowing for any purpose, and the oceans are there not for any purpose. Except for man there is nothing like purpose anywhere else. life or existence is not a mean to some end; it is an end unto itself.