Questioner: I had the experience of the oneness of all thing, and also in Zazen the experience of emptiness. How can I intensify and deepen those experiences so as to integrate them into my everyday life?
Osho: The moment you ask “how,” it will become more and more difficult. This is one of the most fundamental problems for the seeker to encounter and to settle with. Once you experience something a natural desire to experience it again and again arises — not only to experience it but to experience it on deeper levels, higher levels. And it is a natural desire — I am not finding fault with it, it is absolutely natural. But then it becomes the barrier, because the first time the experience happened you were not expecting it. That was the basic condition of its happening: it could happen because you were not expecting it. It took you unawares, it came as a surprise. Now you are clever about it, knowledgeable about it. Now you have known it. Now deep down you are demanding that it should be given to you again, that it should come not only as it had come before but even in a better way. All these demands in the mind and desires in the mind will destroy the very possibility; they will not allow the space for it to happen again.
So the seeker has to learn a great thing: experience things and forget all about them. Don’t carry them with you, don’t let them hang around you. Good that you experienced something; be thankful to God and be finished with it. Don’t let it become a psychological memory otherwise it will not allow you to go even to the same depth again — to say nothing about going higher or deeper.
And the more it is not happening, the more you will be desiring, and the more tense you will become, and more and more angry: “Why is it not happening? When it has happened once, then why not now, why not again and again?” You will make it impossible. Forget about it! It was beautiful — thank God and be again as if it had not happened.
This is the whole art of the meditator: to always function from the state of not-knowing. Never function from the state of knowledge. Never allow your past experience to encumber you, to burden you. Never allow the past experience to become a screen between you and the reality. Go on dying to the past each and every moment.
When something beautiful happens thank God, say “Amen” and be finished. That is the meaning of amen: that now this is the full stop. I close this chapter here and now. I will never ask for it again. And it will happen again and again. It happens only in that context of not-knowing, of that space called innocence.
Your experience has contaminated you. It has destroyed your innocence. When it happened you were innocent; naturally it had a totally different quality. Since then you have become experienced. Now you have to become unexperienced again — that is the how.
Forget about it! And many more times many more things will happen; always remember to forget them. Remain open, available, expectant but without any expectation. Mm? It is a very subtle distinction — expectant but without any expectation: alert, watchful so nothing is missed, not asleep, awake, waiting, patiently waiting, but not demanding, not putting conditions on reality, not asking that it should be like this, like that, it should be higher, deeper. No, that is not for us to do.
Leave it to God. It is always a grace. It happens only when you are innocent. It certainly happens, and it will happen many more times and each time it will go deeper. But each time you will have to learn to become more and more innocent because the deeper it goes, the greater a natural longing to expect will arise. Hence as the person deepens in his inner search more and more problems have to be faced, greater problems with each new experience.
The ordinary person is in a state of blessedness because he has very ordinary problems to solve, mundane: money, power, prestige. They can be solved; it is not a big deal. But if you start on the interior journey greater and greater problems are waiting for you. And this is one of the greatest problems: how to get rid of a beautiful experience. It hurts; even to think about forgetting it hurts.
It does not look right; it seems ungrateful. One wants to remember it again and again. It is such a fulfillment, it gives you joy to remember it.
But it makes you past-oriented, it makes you past-possessed. It takes you away from the present and it closes you to the future.
Forget about it, die to it and things are going to happen far bigger than you have ever imagined, ever experienced.
Osho