Your search… will take you to the last

So these are the seven bodies and the seven chakras, and within them lie all the means as well as the barriers. There are no barriers outside. Therefore, there is not much reason to inquire outside. If you have gone to ask someone or to understand from someone, then do not beg. To understand is one thing, to beg is another. Your search should always continue. Whatever you have heard and understood should also be made your search. Do not make it your belief or else it will be begging.

You asked me something; I gave you an answer. If you have come for alms you will put this in your bag and store it away as your treasure. Then you are not a meditator but a beggar. No, what I told you should become your quest. It should accelerate your search; it should stimulate and motivate your curiosity. It should put you into greater difficulty, make you more restless and raise new questions in you, new dimensions, so that you will set out on a new path of discovery. Then you have not taken alms from me, then you have understood what I said. And if this helps you to understand yourself, then this is not begging.

So go forth to know and understand; go forth to search. You are not the only one seeking; many others are also. Many have searched, many have attained. Try to know, to grasp, what has happened to such people and also what has not happened; try and understand all this. But while understanding this, do not stop trying to understand your own self. Do not think that understanding others has become your realization. Do not put faith in their experiences; do not believe them blindly. Rather, turn everything into questioning. Turn them into questions and not answers; then your journey will continue. Then it will not be begging: it will be your quest.

It is your search that will take you to the last. As you penetrate within yourself you will find the two sides of each chakra. As I told you, one is given to you by nature and one you have to discover. Anger is given to you; forgiveness you have to find. Sex is given to you; brahmacharya you have to develop. Dreams you have; vision has to evolve.

Your search for the opposite will continue up to the fourth chakra. From the fifth will start your search for the indivisible, for the non-dual. Try to continue your search for that which is different from what has come to you in the fifth body. When you attain bliss try to find out what there is beyond bliss. On the sixth plane you attain the Brahman, but keep inquiring, “What is there beyond the Brahman?” Then one day you will step into the seventh body, where being and nonbeing, light and darkness, life and death, occur together. That is the attainment of the ultimate… and there are no means of communicating this state.

This is why our scriptures end with the fifth body, or at the most they go up to the sixth body. Those with a completely scientific turn of mind do not talk about what is after the fifth body. The cosmic reality, which is boundless and unlimited, begins from there, but mystics like the Sufis talk of the planes beyond the fifth. It is very difficult to talk of these planes because one has to contradict oneself again and again. If you go through the text of all that one Sufi has said you will say this person is mad. Sometimes he says one thing and sometimes something else. He says, “God is,” and he also says, “God is not.” He says, “I have seen him,” and in the same breath he says, “How can you see him? He is not an object that the eyes can see!” These mystics raise such questions that you will wonder if they are asking others or asking themselves.

Mysticism starts with the sixth plane. Therefore, where there is no mysticism in a religion, know that it has finished on the fifth body. But mysticism also is not the final stage. The ultimate is the void – nothingness. The religion that ends with mysticism ends with the sixth body. The void is the ultimate, nihilism is the ultimate, because after it there is nothing more to be said.

So the search for adwaita, the nondual, starts with the fifth body. All search for the opposites ends with the fourth body. All barriers are within us and they are useful, because these very obstacles when transformed become your means to go ahead.

A rock is lying on the road. As long as you do not understand it will remain an obstacle for you. The day you understand it will become a ladder for you. The rock is lying on the road: as long as you did not understand you shouted, “The rock is in my way. How can I go ahead?” When you have understood you will climb over the rock and go ahead, thanking the rock with the words, “You have blessed me very much, because after climbing over you I have found myself on a higher plane. Now I am proceeding along on a higher level. You were a means and I took you to be a barrier,” you will say. The road is blocked by this boulder. What will happen? Cross over it and know. In this way, overcome anger; cross over it and reach forgiveness which is on a different level. Cross over sex and attain brahmacharya which is an entirely different plane. Then you will thank sex and anger for being the stepping stones.

Every rock on the path can be a barrier as well as a medium. It depends entirely on what you do with it. One thing is certain: Do not fight with the rock, because then you will only break your head and the rock will not be helpful. If you fight with the rock, the rock will bar your way, because wherever we fight we stop. We have to stop near the person or thing we fight with; we cannot possibly fight from a distance. That is why if someone fights sex he has to be involved with sex just as much as another who indulges in it. In fact, many times he is closer to sex, because the one who indulges in it can get out of it someday, can transcend it. But the one who fights cannot get out of it; he keeps going around and around.

If you fight anger you will become angry yourself. Your whole personality will be filled with anger and each fibre of your body will vibrate with it. You will emanate anger all around you. The stories we read of sages and ascetics like Durwasa being very angry happen because they fought with anger; thus, they could think of nothing but cursing. The personality of such a person turns into fire. These are people who have fought with rocks and are now in difficulty. They have become what they struggled against.

You will read of other rishis that celestial maidens descended from heaven and corrupted them in a moment. Strange! This is only possible if a man has fought with sex; not otherwise. He has fought and fought and thus weakened himself. Then sex is secure in its own place; it is just waiting for him to break down. This sex can now burst forth from anywhere. There is little possibility of an apsara actually coming down from heaven – are such maidens on contract to harass rishis and munis? When sex is suppressed with a heavy hand, an ordinary woman becomes a celestial being. The mind projects dreams at night and thoughts in the day and it becomes completely filled with these thoughts. Then a thing which is not at all fascinating becomes bewitching.

So the seeker has to beware of the tendency to fight. He should try his utmost to understand, and by trying to understand is meant understanding that which is given to him by nature. Through that which has been given to you, you will attain that which is yet to be attained. This is the starting point. If you run away from that which is the very beginning it is impossible to reach the goal. If you run away from sex in fright how will you ever reach brahmacharya? Sex was the opening given by nature and brahmacharya is the quest that has to be undertaken through this very opening. If you see in this perspective there is no need to beg from anywhere; understanding is what is required. All of existence is there for the purpose of understanding. Learn from anybody, hear everyone, and, finally, understand your own self within.

Osho, In Search of the Miraculous, Vol 2, Ch 4 (translated from Hindi)

Read the whole discourse: Seven Chakras