Paradise

 

 

 

This whole existence is the Garden of Eden! There is no other place, there is no other space, there is no other time. The whole universe is divine, so wherever you are you are in the Garden of Eden. The only thing that CAN be is: the idea has been implanted in man that you have to reach the Garden of Eden. You are in the Garden, and the idea that you have been thrown out of the Garden and you have to get back to the Garden is creating your trouble, your whole misery, your whole anguish. Not recognizing where you are, you are hankering for something which is not possible, because this is the place. [....]

 

There is no other Buddhahood and there is no other Lotus Paradise. The word "paradise" comes from the Persian Firdaus; Firdaus means a garden -- the same story, the Garden of Eden. Everybody is searching for a paradise. You can give it different names -- Nirvana, Enlightenment, Samadhi, kingdom of God, ultimate truth -- you can go on giving it different names, but you will still be missing -- missing not because you have been thrown out of the Garden, but missing because you are in the Garden and you have fallen in a deep dreamlike state. The dream consists of your desires to reach somewhere else, to the peaks.

 

My insistence is that you are already there. Just sit silently and look around, sit silently and look within. You have never been anywhere else! AIS DHAMMO SANANTANO -- this is the nature of things -- you cannot be anywhere else. [....]

 

The way you are is the only way you can be. Accept it -- not only accept it but rejoice in it, love it, and the peak will start opening up within your very heart, and suddenly you will find you are awake in the Garden of Eden, immediately. It is not a question of going anywhere, just of being here.

 

-Osho, "The Goose is Out, #3, Q1"

 

 

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Paradise is not somewhere else. Paradise is not geographical. It is not above the clouds in the heavens it is within you. And it is not in some other time, after death. It is in you right now, you are made of it, so there is no need to seek and search anywhere else. All that is needed is to relax and to be in one's self, to dive into one's own being deeply, so deeply that the whole world disappears as if it did not exist for the moment, so that your consciousness is all that exists. All existence becomes non-existential, just your life is all... and the purity of it, because it is uncontaminated by anything. Nothing is reflected in your mirror. Your consciousness is simply pure, without any ripple, without any waves. In that moment one comes to know what paradise is.

 

We have not lost it somewhere else, we have not been driven out of paradise. It already exists inside us, it has always existed inside us, but we never look within ourselves.

 

We go on looking outwards, hence we go on missing our own treasures, our own kingdom of god.

 

-Osho, “Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones, #17”

 

 

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The search for paradise is the search for your childhood again. Of course your body will no more be a child’s, but your consciousness can be as pure as the consciousness of the child. This is the whole secret of the mystical path: to make you a child again, innocent, unpolluted by any knowledge, not knowing anything, still aware of everything that surrounds you, with a deep wonder and a sense of a mystery that cannot be demystified.

 

-Osho, “Satyam Shivam Sundram, #1, Q1”

 

 

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"Paradise is nothing – paradise is a capacity to enjoy yourself right here and now.

 

"You are in paradise, but still you have lost it because you cannot enjoy here and now. You are thinking, planning for the future, somewhere when you become like gods, then you will enjoy it.

 

"Knowledge creates future. Knowledge creates desire. Knowledge creates becoming. Knowledge is sansar, the wheel. When you are in the wheel you go on round and round and round reaching nowhere.

 

"Knowledge is the world. When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world," he means the world of becoming. He does not mean this world of the trees and the birds singing and the rain falling, and the sky and the clouds, no – he does not mean by “this world," this world that surrounds you. He means the world that surrounds your mind and your being, the world of becoming, desire – what Buddha calls tanha. The desire to be something other than you already are.

 

"And that is impossible. You are going to be in a constant hell. You can be only that which you are already, nothing else is possible. You are simply trying to do something impossible.

 

"You cannot be anything else. How can you be? A roseflower trying to become a lotus flower, a lotus flower trying to become something else...but they are not so stupid, they are still part of paradise. The rosebush just by your side is still in paradise but you are not. The child sitting by your side may be still in paradise but you are not. I am just here before you, am in paradise, but you are not. So paradise is not a question of geography, it is a question of inner space."

 

-Osho, “Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3”