Finding the Miraculous

It was a full moon night in July 1985. I got up to go to my regular morning Osho Dynamic meditation at the Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon. It was still dark outside. The morning chill filled the thin desert air and penetrated deep into my bones. It was a glorious full moon with thousands of flickering stars scattered all around the dark sky. There was a heightened sense of fullness and grandeur everywhere I looked. It felt magical and surreal standing on the Earth and being surrounded by all the moons, planets, and stars aimlessly floating within the limitless universe.

I slowly made my way to Buddha Hall [Rajneesh Mandir, Ed.], feeling physically and mentally exhausted with searching for enlightenment and not knowing what it is supposed to feel like. All I knew was that I had reached a point of absolute exhaustion. I thought to myself, “If my body drops dead, I will not resist. I would welcome death with open arms.” I was prepared to surrender everything, including my quest for enlightenment, and say goodbye to the world. There was nothing holding me back. I had no material possessions to worry about, and no attachment to anyone. I knew that if I were to die, my ex-husband would take care of my daughter and the community would take care of my body.

I don’t know how the first phase of the meditation, the chaotic breathing, started. I remember observing myself breathing, and felt my body becoming increasingly lighter. Then the breathing started happening on its own, without any effort on my part. As the music changed and the second phase of the meditation began, my body started vibrating with the music. Waves of energy started moving up through the body into my head and turning into a radiant white light as they reached the third eye. Then came an enormous explosion of light, which illuminated my entire body, turning it into a bright ball of light. I was literally standing in light! The light was blinding but cool. It was as though thousands of suns suddenly arose from inside every cell of my body and transformed it into pure light. It seemed like the entire universe with all its suns and solar systems had suddenly jumped into my body.

Everything disappeared except for the all-observing consciousness, which was the Truth itself. I disappeared as a person and became the universe. I felt a sense of overwhelming Joy that I can only describe as Absolute Ecstasy. Our worldly happiness seemed like a faint light compared to this Joy. This was the Joy of Creation that permeates the entire Universe. I suddenly saw that everything within the Universe vibrates with Joy. I realized that Joy is the true essence of everything in existence – an outcome of never-ending creation that spontaneously arises from within the empty belly of the Universe. We refer to this creation as God.

In a microsecond the entire fabric of the universe was revealed to me. For the first time I truly understood that consciousness is the only true reality there is. It is eternally present in the here and now, abiding within the empty core of everyone and everything in existence, regardless of its form. Consciousness is within our being that like a thread connects all moments between life, death, and re-birth.

If I hadn’t practiced grounding my awareness in my body for years, I would have probably died from the intensity and magnitude of such a grand experience, and would have not been able to contain it in my body. I quickly moved my awareness into my center, then into my feet and into the Earth. Just like the Bodhi tree that had helped the Buddha anchor his awakening experience and stay in his body, the Earth helped me to stay in mine.

Uproarious laughter at the ridiculousness of my search for something that was already inside of me welled up as I stood witnessing the ignorance of my ego-mind. I saw how my mind had been keeping itself alive by focusing on the goal of attaining enlightenment somewhere there and preventing me from knowing the truth of what is already here in this moment. I realized that my entire search had been an illusion. I was in the same place where I had always been from the beginning of time. I was looking for enlightenment somewhere outside myself so my mind could remain needed. All my questions suddenly dissolved, melting away the inner turmoil created by the search.

I finally understood, first-hand, what the mystics down the ages have been saying about the pilgrimage being the goal. I realized that life is simply a series of moments without an end. I had finally understood that existence is an eternal mystery that can never be solved, only lived moment to moment. I also understood that the universe is and would always remain unknowable. We can only see what it is ready to manifest into a tangible form, but when and how this will happen can never be known. And once the manifested has fulfilled its purpose, everything would once again return back into emptiness, the void, until something new is again ready to materialize. Having found what I had been searching for over many lifetimes left me with nowhere to go and nothing more to look for. I had finally come home.

The intensity of this experience faded with time, but the consciousness it evoked remained permanently ingrained deep within my cells. Having had this experience did not mean that my life was now over and I had nothing else to learn. I went on with my life, thinking of it as just another experience. There was one big difference, however, I now had a sense of peace and wholeness within myself independent of what was happening in my life on the outside. I felt something inside me had radically changed. My inner tension of looking to attain something outside of myself had suddenly dropped. My self-imposed stress of having to achieve something was no longer there. I felt the Joy of my aloneness even stronger. I continued with my usual daily life of “chopping wood and carrying water from the well” as the Zen saying goes, but with a newly heightened awareness.

Chapter called ‘Finding Enlightenment’ from: In Search of the Miraculous: Healing into Consciousness by Jivan Mada
Picture of the Rajneesh Mandir by Satyam Thomas

Jeevan Mada (Eliza Mada Dalian) discovered Osho in 1978. After taking sannyas she was part of the communes in Pune and in Oregon. Thanks to her many questions we heard Osho speak about Gurdjieff, and her question on “Let Go” became an all time video best-seller! In the 1997, she developed a method, out of her own experience, to help people move from psychological and physical pain and suffering into health and consciousness. Mada travels internationally, giving talks, workshops and private sessions. She is currently finishing her second book. www.MadaDalian.com – www.HealingIntoConsciousness.com