Idea of Nirvana/Moksha & ReIncarnation -OSHO

span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; color: #666666; line-height: 28px;"The idea of reincarnation is not a philosophical idea: it is an experience, it is utterly scientific. People have remembered their lives. When you have grown a little deeper into meditation... we are going to do all those techniques here too. But those techniques will require that you be absolutely vegetarian, otherwise you will not be able to go beyond THIS life. Your mind cannot move -- it has to be so light, feather light, that it can simply pass from one existence into another. And the lighter it is, the deeper it goes. It can not only remember that you were a man in the past life -- slowly slowly, you will remember that you have been animals. AND, sometimes, when the depth gross, you will remember that you have been trees, rocks. You have lived for millennia in many forms. And if you remember that once you were a fish, it will become difficult for you to eat fish. Vegetarianism leads you into remembering your past lives. And KNOWING your past lives, you become more and more a vegetarian -- because seeing that all are brothers and sisters, the whole existence, you cannot kill animals. It becomes simply impossible! Not that you have to prevent yourself: it simply becomes impossible. Pythagoras was a REAL adventurer. Alexander the Great also came to India, he also took away many things from India, but they were useless things -- diamonds and emeralds and gold. That's what Alexander the Great took away from India -- useless things. Pythagoras was a real seeker. He gathered real diamonds, real emeralds: diamonds of consciousness, emeralds of consciousness. And these were two tremendously significant, tremendously pregnant approaches -- that of vegetarianism and the idea of reincarnation. Once it happened: Pythagoras saw somebody hitting a dog. He said, "Do not hit him!" to the man who was beating the dog. "It is the soul of a friend of mine. I recognized it when I heard it cry out." Now this looks utterly ridiculous to a Western mind, to the Western scientific attitude. Even in those old days, people must have laughed: "What nonsense he is talking about! -- 'Don't beat the dog because I have recognized a friend.'" He was simply trying to teach the idea of reincarnation in every way possible. And the third thing: he was, again, the first to introduce the concept that life is a wheel -- a wheel of birth and death. The wheel goes on moving and we go on clinging to the wheel. And the wheel is repetitive; again and again it will move on the same track. Nothing new will ever happen. Birth will come, you will become young, you will be full of sex and great desires, and then you will be spent and you will be old, diseased, ill sick, frustrated, tired. And then death... and again birth... and so on and so forth. Each birth brings a death, each death brings a birth. It is a vicious circle, and the wheel goes on moving. In India the word for the world is SAMSARA. SAMSARA means 'the wheel'. Youth or childhood or old age are just spokes of the wheel. and we go on clinging to the wheel and the wheel goes on moving -- as everything else moves in the world. The earth moves around the sun, and the sun also moves around some unknown sun. And the moon moves around the earth, and earth and moon both move around the sun, and the sun around some other sun, and so on and so forth. And all the stars are moving.... And EVERYTHING IS moving in a circle! Seasons move in a circle. Life is a wheel and the wheel is repetitive. You will never reach anywhere if you go on clinging to the wheel. In the East it has been a known fact that we have to jump out of the wheel -- only then are we free. To be free from this wheel of birth and death is to have freedom. Then you simply ARE. Then you are not moving. Then there is no past and no future but only the present. Then NOW IS the only time and here the only space. That is the state of nirvana, MOKSHA -- freedom. That is the real kingdom of God. One simply is... all turmoil gone, all storms finished, and there is absolute silence. In that silence there is a song, in that silence there is music -- unheard music, unstruck music. In that silence is joy, in that silence is bliss. And that bliss is eternal, it never changes. All change is if you are clinging to the wheel. If you drop out of the wheel, all change disappears. Then you are here and always here. That state is the real search of all true seekers: how to get out of this wheel of birth and death, how to enter into life eternal where no birth ever happens and no death either, where nothing begins and nothing ends, where all simply is -- how to enter into this God. Just the other day, I was saying God means 'that which is'... how to enter into that which is? These are the sutras by which to enter into that which is./span