At this time, Osho is giving very long discourses, up to four hours in length. The silences between his words lengthen. Leading the meditation, he emphasizes 'urgency'.

Nivedano... (Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano... (Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to go inwards.

Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush towards your center of being--with an urgency as if this moment is going to be the last moment of your life. Unless such urgency is there, nobody gets to the center of his being.

Faster and faster... Deeper and deeper...

It all depends on your intensity. The distance is not big.

As you start coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you, almost like soft rain falling. The coolness you can feel.

A little closer, and you start being surrounded by a great peace, what mystics have called the peace beyond understanding.

Just one step more, and you are at the center.

Suddenly you feel drunk with the divine. A great ecstasy arises in you; you become luminous, all darkness disappears. You are no more. You suddenly realize your original face.

In the East we have used Gautam Buddha's face as the original face of everyone. It is only symbolic. You are encountering Gautam Buddha, not from the outside but from his innermost source. You have become his very heart.

Just remember one thing, and that is witnessing. That constitutes Buddha's whole being. Call it awareness, call it total consciousness, call it what Buddha used to call sammasati, right remembering, but witnessing is the most important word out of all these.

Just be a witness that you are not the body. Be a witness that you are not the mind. And finally, be a witness that you are only a witness, nothing else.

At this moment you enter into the secretmost part of your center.

This is the beginning of a long pilgrimage, of disappearing into the cosmos. This is the door opening into the cosmos. We are one with the whole.

Just go on witnessing, and everything becomes deeper, deeper, deeper...

To make the witnessing more clear to you,

Nivedano... (Drumbeat)

Relax.

Let go. But go on being a witness.

As your witnessing becomes more and more clear, you start melting like ice in the ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one consciousness, universal consciousness, eternal consciousness, immortal consciousness, consciousness beyond birth and death.

This is your authentic being.

What has disappeared was only a personality. Now, only the essential, existential, experiential has remained. And this existential consciousness is not only yours, it belongs to the cosmos. You are just dewdrops who have fallen from the lotus leaf into the ocean.

Rejoice in it.

You are the most fortunate people in the world. At this moment, when everybody is concerned with trivia, you are exploring the most majestic, the most splendorous experience; the most divine, sacred space you are entering in.

Collect all these experiences--this blissfulness, this witnessing, this silence... This is it. Get hold of it. And persuade the buddha to come with you.

He is your nature, he is your dharma, he is your ultimate secret.

Bring him with you.

These are the three steps of enlightenment: First, the buddha will come behind you as a presence. You will feel it, it will surround you, it is an energy field; it will change your whole behavior, it will give you a new sense of direction in life. It will give you a new morality, of your own, a spontaneity in existence. It will give you a love for life, a cheerfulness you have not known, and courage. The moment you know you are eternal, all weakness disappears, all inferiority disappears.

On the second step, the buddha comes in front of you--you become the shadow.

On the third step, your shadow withers away. You are no more, only the buddha remains. He is your eternity, he is your truth, he is your beauty, he is your godliness.

Nivedano... (Drumbeat)

Come back. But come back with the same grace, with the same silence, with the same peacefulness. And sit down for a few seconds just to remember the path you have followed inwards. It is a golden path.

The center that you have reached, it is not only your center, it is the center of the whole existence.

At the center we all meet. The birds, the trees, the rivers, the mountains, everyone at the center meets. We are different on the circumference but we are one at the center.

And to know this oneness is enlightenment.

The Buddha Auditorium suddenly has become a lake of consciousness; personalities have disappeared, there is not even a single ripple in the lake.

Sit for a few moments just to recollect the golden path that you have traveled just now.

And in your day-to-day life remember as much as possible--without creating any tension and anxiety, in a relaxed and restful way--that your every act becomes the act of one who is awakened, of one who has tasted his innermost being.

I want thousands of buddhas around the world, and not a single Buddhist.

I teach you the buddha, but not Buddhism. I hate all `isms', all religions. My love is for your eternity, your immortal being.

Meditation heralds the beginning of your buddhahood. Without meditation, you cannot taste anything of religion. You can believe, but belief is always of the ignorant.

I want you to understand absolutely: Never believe in anything. Experiment. Take the belief as a hypothesis but never as a certainty. Unless you experience, no belief can help you.

Can belief in water quench your thirst? Can belief in God herald the dawn? No belief system is of any help. You have to go inwards, alone, as deep as possible.

Meditation is the very essence of all religions.

On 7 January 1989, Osho changes his name to Shree Rajneesh, and indicates he has not long to live

I am living for only my people, whose hearts have melted with me.

These few breaths that are left to be here on the earth,

I have to devote to my own people,

with the hope that they will use this opportunity

to become aflame with joy and blissfulness,

to find their roots in eternity, immortality...

to become in their own right

one with the cosmos,

dancing with the stars