verlichting (iii)

To each individual it will happen differently.

And the same is true àfter enlightenment. The expréssion of enlightenment will be different.

That has created a great difficulty!...  For example, if I am going to make a religion, then this will be a basic thing in it: that anybody who becomes enlightened first will have to go through a nervous breakdown, then he will have a breakthrough.

That is how all the religions are made: individuals imposing their experience on the whole humanity, without taking in consideration the uniqueness of every individual. And then after enlightenment, the same problem.

Mahavira remained naked... Hence, the followers of Mahavira for twenty-five centuries, who have gone to the final stage of following him, have remained naked. To be naked became absolutely necessary.

Jainas don't think that Buddha is enlightened - 'because he is not naked!'... A personal phenomenon becomes now a universal criterion... That too is false!

Neither before, nor after.

-

What happened to Mahavira...

was HIS individual flowering in that way.

He remained naked, but this is not necessarily a stage that every enlightened person has to go through. Buddha never became naked. Lao Tzu never became naked. Kabir never became naked.


~osho~
the last testament iii
(1986) - ch.29