Primal Spirit

The real saint is not concerned with others at all. He knows who he is. Even if the whole world says that he is not a saint, that doesn’t matter. His understanding is inner. His encounter is directly with himself. His experience is immediate and existential. He knows his essence. And to know one’s essence is the first step in knowing God, in becoming immortal, in going beyond death.

Henri Bergson spoke at the beginning of this century. He said, “The addition to the body brought by technology calls for a corresponding addition to the soul.”

The modern man looks more soul-less than in any other age, and the reason is: science and technology have added much to the body. The body has become stronger, lives longer. The brain has become stronger, has become more knowledgeable. Compared to the body and the brain – and the brain is part of the body – the soul has remained very very poor. It is almost neglected, ignored. Nobody cares about it. Who thinks about one’s own essence?

Going to the church or to the temple is not going to help. You will have to go within yourself. You will have to put off your shoes. You will have to go into your naked essence. Only then will you be able to reconnect yourself with the cosmos. It is from there that you can be bridged again with reality.

[…] Master Lu-tsu said: Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

What I have been telling you about essence, Master Lu-tsu calls the primal spirit. The primal spirit is your essential soul, that which you have brought from God, untaught, unconditioned – as you were in your mother’s womb. How did you exist in your mother’s womb? Nothing was taught to you, you had no mind, you existed in a state of no-mind, hence the blissfulness of it.

Psychologists say that because of the experience of the mother’s womb, those nine months, man has been searching for God – because of that nine months’ experience. The memory haunts him. Those nine months were the most beautiful that you have known. Maybe you have forgotten consciously, but deep down in the very cells of your body, in the very fibres of your being, those days are still pulsating. Those days are still carried by your existence. They may not be conscious in your mind, but they are there. Just as when in the night you fall into deep sleep, you don’t know where you go and what happens to you, but in the morning you feel the relaxation, the freshness, the joy. Life has again happened to you. All the dust that you had gathered has disappeared. You are again fresh, you are rejuvenated.

Your body carries the feeling. Your body is calm and quiet and remembers something. The remembrance is not in the brain; you don’t know what happened exactly – where you had gone. Only a Buddha knows where he goes in his deep sleep, because even in his deep sleep he remains alert. You are not alert even when you are aware, the so-called awareness. You are not alert when you are in that so-called wakeful state. Your eyes are open, but your mind goes on weaving and spinning a thousand and one thoughts. The inner talk continues, the inner noise continues. You see and yet you don’t see and you hear and yet you don’t hear, because deep inside there is a wall of thoughts – dreams continuously floating in the sky of your consciousness. You are not alert even when you are awake. The Buddha is alert even when he is fast asleep. Only he knows where he goes.

Where does he go? He goes to the essence, to the source, to the primal spirit. And even if for a few moments at night you fall into the primal source, you are rejuvenated. The man who cannot fall into deep sleep is really in hell. He goes to bed tired, exhausted, bored with life, and gets up in the morning even more tired, more bored, more exhausted. His life is hell.

In deep sleep you simply slip back into the primal source of your being. That primal source is always there; you have not lost it, you have only forgotten it. And that primal source is beyond all dualities. It is neither the life nor the death that you know, it is transcendental. It is beyond all kinds of dualities. It is God.

Osho, The Secret of Secrets Vol 1, Ch 3 (excerpt)