Q: Bhagwan, in your own life, your enlightenment was preceded by a year of what you have called 'nervous breakdown' and 'breakthrough'... when you were surrounded by nothingness and had lost all contact with the world...
Does that state happen to everyone before enlightenment? And are there other stages that one passes through?... Or can one live a rather normal seeming life, and one day just become enlightened, with no warning?
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A: Enlightenment is a very individual process.
Because of its individuality, it has created many problems.
First, there are no fixed stages through which a person necessarily passes. Every person passes through different phases. Because every person in many lives has gathered different kinds of conditionings.
So it is not the question of enlightenment, it is the question of the conditionings, that will make your way. And everybody has different conditionings, so no two persons' paths are going to be the same.
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That is why I insist - again and again - there is no superhighway. There are only footpaths. And that too not ready-made. Not that you find them already there. And you have just to walk on them. No.
As you walk, you make them.
Your very walking makes them.
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It is said, that the path of enlightenment...
is like a bird flying in the sky.
It leaves no footprints behind it. Nobody can follow the footprints of the bird. Every bird will have to make its own footprints. But they disappear immediately as the bird goes on flying.
The similar is the situation.
That is why there is no possibility of a leader and a follower.
That is why I say, these people... who say that 'You just believe me and follow me,' don't know anything about enlightenment. If they had known, then this statement was impossible.
Because anybody who has become enlightened...
knows that he has not left any footprints behind.
So saying to people 'Come and follow me'...
is just absurd.
~osho~
the last testament iii
(1985) - ch.29
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