Osho – How can a meditator know that he is going higher and deeper

Question – How can a meditator know that he is going higher and deeper, or if he is stuck somewhere?

Osho – It is very simple. First, there are qualities which grow as meditation deepens. For example, you start feeling loving for no reason at all. Not the love that you know, in which you have to fall — not falling in love. But just a quality of lovingness, not only to human beings. As your meditation deepens, your lovingness will start spreading beyond humanity to animals, to trees, even to the rocks, to the mountains.

If you feel that something is left out of your love — that means you are stuck. Your lovingness should spread to the whole existence. As your meditation goes higher, your lower qualities will start dropping. You cannot manage both. You cannot be angry as easily as you have always been. Slowly, slowly, it becomes impossible to be angry. You cannot deceive, cheat, exploit, in any way. You cannot hurt. Your behavior pattern will be changing with your inner consciousness change.

You will not fall into those sad moments that you usually fall into — frustrations, failures, sadness, a feeling of meaninglessness, anxieties, anguish; all these are slowly, slowly, going to become foreigners. A moment comes when even if you want to be angry, you will find it impossible; you have forgotten the language of anger. Laughter will become easier. Your face, your eyes, will be aglow with some inner light. You will feel yourself that you have become light, as if gravitation does not function as it used to function before. You have lost heaviness, because all these qualities are very heavy — anger, sadness, frustration, cunningness. All these feelings are very heavy. You don’t know, but they are making you heavy-hearted and they also make you hard.

As meditation grows you will feel yourself becoming soft, vulnerable — just as laughter will become easy to you, tears will also become easy to you. But these tears will not be of sadness or sorrow. These tears will be of joy, blissfulness; these tears will be of gratitude, of thankfulness. These tears will say what words cannot; these tears will be your prayers.

And for the first time you will know that tears are not only to express your pain, your misery, your suffering; that’s how we have used them. But they have a far greater purpose to fulfill: they are immensely beautiful when they come as an expression of ecstasy.

And you will find, on the whole, expansion — that you are expanding, you are becoming bigger and bigger. Not in the sense of the ego but in the sense that your consciousness is spreading, that it is taking people within its area, that your hands are becoming bigger and hugging far away people, that distances are falling away, that even far away stars are close, because your consciousness now has wings.

And these things are so clear and so certain that a question or doubt never arises. If a doubt arises that means you are stuck; then be more alert, then put forth your energy more intensively in meditation. But if these things come without any question….

This is a strange world: if you are miserable, if you are suffering, nobody says to you that somebody has brainwashed you, somebody has hypnotized you. But if you are smiling, joyously dancing on the street, singing a song, people will be shocked. They will say, “What are you doing? Somebody has brainwashed you — are you hypnotized, or have you gone mad?”

In this strange world suffering is accepted as natural. Anguish is accepted as natural. Why? Because whenever you are in suffering and whenever you are miserable you make the other person feel happy that he is not so miserable, he is not so unhappy. You give him a chance to show sympathy to you, and sympathy costs nothing.

But if you are so blissful, so happy, then that man cannot feel himself happier than you; you are putting him down. He feels something is wrong with him. He has to condemn you, otherwise he has to think about himself, which he is afraid to do. Everybody is afraid to think about himself because that means changing, transforming, going through some processes.

It is easy to accept people with sad faces, it is very difficult to accept people with laughter. It should not be so. In a better world, in a world with more conscious people, it should not be so, it should be just the opposite — that when you are suffering people will start asking you, “What is the matter, what has gone wrong?” And when you are happy and you are dancing by the side of the road, if somebody passes by he may join you, he may dance with you, or he may at least feel happy seeing you dance. But he will not say you are mad, because dancing is not mad, singing is not mad, joy is not mad; misery is mad. But madness is accepted.

With your meditation developing you have to be aware that you will be creating so many critics around you who will say, “Something is going wrong with you. We have seen you smiling when you were sitting alone. Why were you smiling? This is not sane. “To be sad is sane, but to be smiling, that is not sane.

People will find it hard if they insult you and you don’t react. You simply say `thank you’ and go on your way. This is hard to take because it deeply insults the person’s ego. He wanted to drag you down into the gutter and you refused; now he is alone in the gutter. He cannot forgive you.

So if these things start happening you can be certain you are on the right path. And soon people of understanding, people of experience, will start finding the changes in you. They will start asking you what has happened to you, how it has happened to you. “We would also like it to happen to us.” Who wants to be miserable? Who wants to remain continuously in inner torture?

As your meditation deepens all these things are going to happen: somebody will condemn you, somebody will think you are mad, somebody who has some understanding will ask you, “What has happened to you and how can it happen to me?” You remain centered, rooted, grounded in your being — whatsoever happens around does not matter. You have to become the center of the cyclone. And you will know when you have become the center of the cyclone. There is no need to ask, “How will we know?” How do you know when you have a headache? You simply know.

One of my teachers in school was a very strange man. The first day in his class he said to us, “Remember one thing: headache I don’t believe, stomachache I don’t believe, I believe only things which I can see. So if you want freedom from school any day, don’t make the excuse of a headache, a stomachache, et cetera; you have to bring something real to show me.”

And he was thought to be a very strict man. It was very difficult to get even one hour’s leave. Just in front of his house there were two kadamba trees — very beautiful trees. At evening time he used to go for a walk and it would be almost dark when he was returning.

So the first day I said, “It has to be settled.” I climbed one of the trees and when he came underneath the tree, I dropped a stone on his head. He screamed, shouted. I came down. I said, “What is the matter?”
He said, “It hurts, and you are asking what is the matter”

I said, “You have to show it. Unless you show it to me I am not going to believe it. I am your student! And never mention this to anybody — I don’t want you tomorrow to call me to the principle’s office because you will be in trouble. You will have to show your hurt, you will have to put it on the table, otherwise it is just fiction; you have invented it; it is imagination. Why should I climb the tree in front of your house? I have never done that in my whole life. Suddenly have I gone mad?”

He said, “Listen, I understand what you want me to understand, but don’t tell anybody. If you have a headache I will accept it, but don’t tell anybody because that is my lifelong principle. I am making an exception.”

I said, “That’s okay. I don’t bother about anybody else. Just understand that when I raise my hand, either it is a headache, or it is a stomachache — something invisible. You have to let me go.”

The whole class was surprised: “What is the matter? The moment you move your hand, he simply says ‘Get out! Get out immediately!’ And the whole day you are free from his torture. But what is the significance of that hand movement, what does it mean? And why does he get so affected?”

You will know; it is far deeper than a headache, and far deeper than a stomachache, far deeper than heartache. It is soul-ache; you will know it.

Source – Osho Book “Last Testament Vol 6”