Question 2

OSHO, LAST NIGHT YOU MENTIONED THE CASE OF A MAN WHO SAW VISIONS OF KRISHNA AND THOUGHT HE WAS ADVANCED, WHILE YOU SAID HE HAD NOT YET TAKEN THE FIRST STEP.

HOW DOES ONE KNOW HOW FAR ALONG ONE IS? ARE NOT VISIONS AND OTHER PSYCHIC PHENOMENA SUPPOSED TO BE INDICATIONS OF HIGH SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT? IF NOT, THEN WHAT ARE SOME OF THE INDICATIONS?

There can be visions, and they can be indicative of advanced states. But with one condition: the more advanced you are, the less you feel that you are advanced. The more you move towards being Enlightened, the less there is the ego which says, "I am enlightened." Spiritual advancement is a very humble progress.

So one thing: visions can be indicative of higher states, but only if you feel more humble. If you begin to feel that you are advanced, that shows another thing: that those visions are not spiritual but simply projections of the mind. So this is the criterion. If you have really seen Krishna in visions, you will be no more if this is authentic. If really this is a realization, you will be effaced completely. You will say, "Krishna is and I am not."

But if you are strengthened by this vision, you are not effaced. If, on the contrary, you become stronger and now you say, "I am an adept, an advanced soul -- I am no ordinary man," that shows that it was not an authentic vision but only a projection of the ego.

The ego is strengthened by its own projections. Otherwise, it is destroyed. A spiritual vision destroys the ego completely. A projected vision, your own imagination, your own dream, strengthens you. It becomes a food; your ego is more vitalized.

The Upanishads say, "Those who say they know, they know not. Those who claim that they have realized, they are far from it." So when I said that a certain man came to me and said, "I am a very advanced soul, I am an adept. I have this vision and that," when he related his vision it was as if someone was relating his riches or degrees, his academic degrees, as if someone was carrying his diplomas.

This is impossible. His visions were just created visions, created with his own mind. If your mind is creating your visions, your mind will be strengthened. If visions are coming from beyond, your mind will be destroyed. The visions are not of the same sort.

But in the beginning you cannot decide this difference in the visions. You cannot decide whether you have really seen Krishna or whether it was just your dream. you cannot make out any difference -- because if you have seen the real, you will not see the dream; if you have seen the dream, you will not see the real. So how can you compare? You cannot compare. But one thing is certain: you will show what type of thing you have seen. If this vision strengthens your ego, then it was a projection. If it effaces you completely, destroys you completely  and you are no more, then it was authentic and real. Only this is the criterion.

So with a religious person, if he becomes more egoistic as he advances in his religiousness, it shows that he is on a false path -- he is imagining things. And if the more he advances, the more he withers away, feels himself no more, if he feels to be a non-entity and ultimately a nothingness, if he becomes just a void, that shows that he is progressing.

Visions can show, but they always show something only in reference to you, not independently. If you ask whether a vision of Krishna is real or not, I cannot say anything. I will ask, "Real to whom?" To Meera it was real: it effaced her completely; she was no more. Someone was asking me, "When Meera w2as poisoned, why did the poison not affect her?" I said to him, "Because she was no more."

Even poison needs someone to be effective. It killed socrates -- Socrates was not Meera. Socrates was a philosopher, not a sage; Socrates was a thinker, not a Buddha. Socrates thought, contemplated, argued. He was a great intellect, but not an enlightened One. If he should argue with Buddha he would win; Buddha would be defeated. He was a rare genius. So when you think about socrates, intellectually he is incomparable, but existentially he is nothing before a Buddha. A Buddha will laugh about this arguments and a Buddha will say, "You go around and around, and you will never reach the center. And  whatsoever you are talking is just talk. You argue. you are a logical man and you argue better than me," a Buddha will say, "but you are wasting your life in arguments."

Socrates is not a person who has gone beyond his ego. He is a rare man with a rare, penetrating mind. Even if he talks about ego, that understanding is intellectual. He is not an existential, experienced man. So because of Socrates, the whole West has come to an intellectual climax -- because of three men: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The originator is Socrates. Socrates was the teacher of Plato and Plato was the teacher4 of Aristotle. These three have created the whole Western mind. This whole science, logic, philosophy of the West, belongs to these three men. They are the creators.

Buddha belongs to a totally different dimension. Socrates is an intellectual giant, but Buddha would have just laughed at him. He would have said, "You are a giant amidst children. You have reached a climax in intellect, but intellect is a barrier. You have touched the ultimate in intellect, but intellect leads nowhere."

Socrates is different, Meera is different. Meera is a surrendered soul -- totally surrendered, totally effaced. When the poison is given to her, she is not drinking it. Krishna himself is drinking it. There is no difference now, no distinction. And if this trust is there, poison will become useless. This seems miraculous, but it is not so miraculous. In hypnosis, if a deeply hypnotized person is there and you give him poison telling him that this is not poison, it will not affect him. What happens? If you give him ordinary water and say, "This is poison," he will die. This is total acceptance. Even in hypnosis this can happen.

In 1952 they had to make a law in America -- an anti-hypnosis law. you cannot hypnotize anybody now in America. It is illegal, because one student died in a university. Four students were hypnotizing him. They were just students of psychology, so they stumbled upon books on hypnotism. They just tried it as a game. They hypnotized one boy -- their partner -- in a room, and they suggested many things and he followed them. They said, "Weep! Your mother is dead!" and he wept. They said, "Laugh and dance! Your mother has arisen again!" and he laughed and danced. And then one boy said, with no ulterior motive, "You are dead." and the boy fell down dead. Then they tried in every way to tell him, "Now awaken! Now you are alive!" But then there was no one to listen. He was already dead.

This is total acceptance, and they had to make a law against hypnosis because of it. Only a practitioner -- a psychologist6, a psychiatrist, or someone who is doing research, a doctor -- only these can now practise hypnosis.

If in hypnosis this can happen, why not with a Meera? A Meera has surrendered her conscious mind -- the same which is surrendered in hypnosis. She has surrendered it totally. now she is no more; only Krishna is. If there is not a single doubt when she is taking the poison and her hands are not trembling, if she is not thinking that "This is poison and I may die," if even this thought is not there, she will not die. She takes it as a gift from her beloved, from her Krishna. That is also a gift. Everything is from him, so she takes it as a gift. She drinks it, feels good, begins to dance. The poison has disappeared.

Even to work, the poison needs your mind. If there is no mind, it is very difficult for it to have any effect. A Meera can escape; Socrates cannot escape. He was a logical man. He knows that poison will kill him. Meera was illogical -- absolutely illogical.

I will relate to you the death scene of socrates. The poison is being made outside. Socrates is lying on his bed and his disciples are there. He says to one disciple, "Now it is time. At six the poison must be given." He is a very mathematical man, so he says, "It seems they have not prepared it yet. Go and ask them why it is so late. The time has come and I am ready."

Then the poison comes. He takes the poison. Then he says, "My legs are feeling numb. It seems the poison has begun to work. Now the poison is coming up." He goes on relating. He is a keen intellect. Even in death he is experimenting./ He is a scientific thinker. He says, "Now the poison is coming up. Now half of my body is dead." He is a rare man. He is not ordinary.

The disciples are weeping, so he says, "Stop! You can weep later on. Look at this phenomenon, this progressing poisoning. Soon. I think, my heart will be affected. And I wonder if, after my heart is affected, my mind will work. So now it will be decided whether the heart is the main center or the mind." He is a very keen mind, and he is observing, relating.

When his heart is affected, he says, "I feel that my heart is sinking, going down. Soon I think I will feel, but I will not be able to relate anything because my tongue is getting numb, dead. Friends, now there will be an experience which I will be able to experience but which I will not be able to relate. It will be inexpressible because my tongue is going dead."

Even up to the last, his eyes were saying something, relating something. In the last moment someone asks him, "Socrates are you not afraid of death?" He doesn't say, "I am not afraid because I am immortal" -- no! He doesn't say, "I am not afraid because I am going to meet the Divine" -- no! He doesn't know any Divine and his mind cannot believe in any Divine.

He says, "I am not afraid for two reasons." This is a logical mind. He says, "For two reasons I am not afraid. One: either Socrates is going to die completely; then there will be no one to be afraid. Or, Socrates is not going to die at all and the soul will live, so why be afraid? These are the two reasons why I am not afraid. Either I will die, really, as atheists say. Materialists say that there is no soul, and they may be right. If they are right, then why be afraid? I will be dead completely, and no one will be there to suffer death, no one will be there to be afraid of anything. Socrates will be no more, so why be afraid?

"Or, it may be that religious persons are right" -- this is the "or"; this is logic -- "they may be right! Then only the body will die and Socrates will live, so why be afraid? If only my body is going to die and I will be there, why waste time in fear? Let me go and see."

But he is not in an experience of what is going to happen. He is a perfectly logical mind. His fearlessness is not that of a Buddha or that of a Mahavir or that of a Meera or even that of a Charvak. His fearlessness is not like that of a Charvak because Charvak said, "It is decidedly so that I am going to die totally, so I am not afraid." this is a decisive conclusion. A Mahavir knows, "I am not going to die, so there is no question of fear." But this again is a decision, a concluded thing. Mahavir knows.