Health Is Only a Problem If You’re Sick

A healthy man does not feel continuously that he is healthy, only sick people become interested in health. The moment that you have become healthy...coming out of your sickness, you will feel health but when it becomes your natural experience of every day, every moment, you don’t have any contrast of sickness to compare it with.

You don’t know your head unless you have a headache — have you observed it? Do you become aware of your head? You become aware of your head only when you have a headache. A headache gives you the idea — people who have not experienced headaches, don’t know what it is to have a healthy head without any headaches.

All our experiences depend on their opposites. If you cannot taste the bitter, you cannot taste anything sweet either — they go together. If you cannot see darkness, you cannot see light. And if you are continuously in one state, you start forgetting about it.

That’s what I call going beyond enlightenment — the day you start forgetting that you are enlightened, the day it becomes just the natural course of your life, ordinary, nothing special. The way you breathe, the way your heart beats, the way your blood runs in the body, enlightenment also becomes part of your being. You forget all about it.

When you ask about enlightenment, I am reminded that yes, there is an experience called enlightenment. But when I am sitting alone I never remember that I am enlightened, that would be crazy! It has become such a natural, ordinary experience.

First go beyond mind. Then go beyond enlightenment too. Don’t get stuck anywhere until you are simply an ordinary part of the existence, with the trees, with the birds, with the animals, with the rivers, with the mountains. You feel a deep harmony — no superiority, no inferiority.

Gautam Buddha had some glimpses of going beyond enlightenment. He mentioned it, that there is a possibility of going beyond enlightenment. He did not say that he had gone beyond it, but he recognizes the fact that there should be a state when you forget all about enlightenment. You have been so healthy, you have forgotten all about health; only then have you come home. Finally even enlightenment is a barrier — the last barrier.

Osho, The Invitation