The Life of Osho

[Bob Michael]

One could just as easily make the case that the more life experiences "under the belt", the more one becomes a collector of them, attached to the memories and status one has assigned to them, or wearing them as scalps to prove how seasoned a warrior one has become, thereby closing the mind to anything fundamentally challenging.

All this child's play has to go first if one doesn't want to become a living dead stumbling block on the road for everyone and oneself. If a mind would be so inclined, awakening and development could just as well happen in a closet-sized universe.

I agree. I should have made myself more clear and said: the more life experiences a genuinely enlightened person has under his belt the better value he will be to others in their own awakening and spiritual development.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I should have made myself more clear and said: the more life experiences a genuinely enlightened person has under his belt the better value he will be to others in their own awakening and spiritual development.

Perhaps so. But all life does is generating experiences. A man is bathing in their light, forming as their shadow. In that sense every experienced person will generate value, assuming some basic learning capacities are in place. It's very enlightening to talk to people with lots of experience and listen to (and witness) what they distilled from it personally.

But what I see as enlightenment in the spiritual sense is knowledge about experience itself. This is not something that can be added to, only subtracted. Once this is understood, life experiences become very relative and bringing as much good as bad to the wise and the ignorant alike. What ends up remaining is some winding way, or nature in all its dumbfounding complexity and simplicity.

[Bob Michael]

But what I see as enlightenment in the spiritual sense is knowledge about experience itself. This is not something that can be added to, only subtracted. Once this is understood, life experiences become very relative and bringing as much good as bad to the wise and the ignorant alike. What ends up remaining is some winding way, or nature in all its dumbfounding complexity and simplicity.

Most people go through their entire lives never becoming any wiser in a genuine spiritual or life-enhancing manner as a result of their many life's experiences. For instance, a man or a woman may have been married 6 times and yet wind up not being one iota wiser after the 6th experience than they were in the 1st one. Hence they'll be of no value in helping others to find a marriage that's full of genuine love, happiness, contentment, and harmony. Including their own children in the event they had some. And after 6 marriages they'll most likely be totally done for so far as being able to give anything at all of value back to life. They've grown too soon old and too late smart. Which is the case with the bulk of mankind due to his 'fallen' nature, which is to say he has no understanding of himself or his true human nature or potential. So the key to it all here is understanding, which must begin first with self-understanding. Without which there'll be no understanding of God, one's fellows, or life.