You are the world
Beloved Osho,
When you say that you want us to raise the consciousness of the world, it puzzles me. I feel I need all my energy to get my own feet off the ground. And I am in a way totally forgetting ‘that world’, and glad to be able to let go and disappear in this buddhafield of drunken bliss, dance and silence. So what is it that we need to do in order to fulfill this vision?
Prem Turiya, all that is needed from you to raise the consciousness of humanity, is just to raise your consciousness to its fullest peak. You don’t have to do anything else. So there is no puzzle at all – the puzzle is created by your mind; because mind always separates, divides: you, and the world. And then the problem arises: if you have to put energy into raising the consciousness of the world, what about yourself? Your own consciousness is still not on the wing.
But as far as I am concerned – and it should be remembered by all, it is not only Turiya’s question – you are the world. There is no division. The moment you are raising your consciousness higher, you are raising the world’s consciousness higher. If you can become enlightened, you have done everything that was possible, within your capacity, to raise the world’s consciousness. No extra effort is needed. In fact, every extra effort will be a hindrance. You should concentrate totally on your own being and its blossoming.
There is a secret law of life: just as water tries to be on one level, consciousness also tries in the same way to be on one level. If one person’s consciousness reaches a high peak, soon many people will find explosions happening within them. It is also a well-known fact that if you are awakened, your very awakening triggers processes around you.
It is not by your action, not by any doing – but just by being awake: suddenly all around you, sleep starts disappearing. Just as when you bring light into a dark room: you don’t ask, when we have brought the light into the dark room, now, how are we going to dispel the darkness? Do you think some extra effort will be needed? Just the light itself will dispel the darkness.
Become a light unto yourself, and you have done all that was possible within the capacity of a human being to raise the whole world’s consciousness.
It is perfectly right: be totally drunk, be totally blissful, be totally silent, and dance so intensely that the dancer disappears and only dance remains – and your very dance… with such intensity and such totality, will make thousands of hearts suddenly dance. They may never know who is the source; they may never know who has triggered the process… you may never know how many people you have transformed. But that is unimportant; your drunkenness will become the drunkenness of many; your dance will drown many into the same blissfulness; your song will be sung on many lips, and your silence will resound in thousands of hearts. You just change yourself.
I repeat again: you are the world.
Osho, The Rebellious Spirit, Ch 13, Q 1