Osho on Satori, Osho Satori Quotes
- Satori is not such a thing. Satori is a miniature experience of samadhi, but once you get into it, you cannot get out of it. That’s the real test and the criterion. Anything that comes and goes is of the mind; it is imagination. Anything that comes and remains, even in spite of you, even if you want it to go it is impossible to get out of it… Satori is forever. Samadhi is just like the total opening of the lotus, and satori is the beginning of the opening of the petals. Satori is the beginning, samadhi is the climax. But you don’t get out of it. It is one-way traffic; nobody has come out of it.
- Satori is samadhi and yet not samadhi. It is a glimpse, and a glimpse in the very ordinary of the extraordinary: samadhi happening in ordinary moments. A sudden thing also — it is not gradual, you don’t move in degrees. It is just like water coming to boiling point, to one hundred degrees — and then the jump, and the water becomes vapor, merges into the sky, and you cannot trace where it has gone. Up to ninety-nine degrees it is boiling and boiling and boiling, but not evaporating. From the ninety-ninth degree it can fall back, it was only hot. But if it passes the hundredth degree, then there is a sudden jump.
- Whenever the gestalt changes you attain a glimpse. That glimpse is satori. It is not final, you will lose it again. You will not become a buddha by satori; that’s why I say it is a samadhi and yet not a samadhi. It is an ocean in a teacup. Ocean, yes, and yet not the ocean — samadhi in a capsule. It gives you a glimpse, an opening… as if you are moving in a dark night, in a forest, lost; you don’t know where you are moving, where the path is, whether you are moving in the right direction or not — and then suddenly there is lightning. In a moment you see everything! Then the light disappears.You cannot read in lightning, because it lasts only a moment. You cannot sit under the sky and start reading in lightning. No, it is not a constant flow. Samadhi is such that you can read in its light. Satori is like lightning — you can see a glimpse of the whole, all that is there, and then it disappears. But you will not be the same again. It is not final enlightenment, but a great step towards it. Now you know. You have had a glimpse, now you can search for more of it. You have tasted it, now buddhas will become meaningful.
- Satori is the sample of Patanjali’s samadhi. And it is beautiful that the sample is possible, because unless you taste it how can you move towards it? Unless you smell it a little, how can you be attracted and pulled towards it? The glimpse will become a magnetic force. You will never be the same again. You will know something is there and ‘whether I find it or not — that is up to me.’ But trust will arise. Satori gives trust and starts a movement, a vital movement in you, towards the final enlightenment that is samadhi.
- Satori is only a glimpse of samadhi — a faraway glimpse. For example, you can see the Himalayan peaks from hundreds of miles away, but to see the peak when sitting on it, is a totally different experience. Satori is only a faraway vision of samadhi; a glimpse, beautiful in itself but not equivalent to samadhi.
- One day it happens that your witness has become so perfect that the screen remains empty, nothing passes — no thought, no desire. That day you have attained to the first state of samadhi, the first satori. And the first satori is the beginning; it triggers many satoris in you, culminating ultimately into samadhi, into nirvana.
- When you overdo a certain thing, anxiety is created; when you overdo a certain thing, inner turmoil is created. You are unbalanced, you cannot be at peace, and satori happens only when you are at home. In fact, satori happens only when you are really relaxed.