Modern man is drugged as never before, because modern man is living in great suffering. Without drugs it will be impossible to live in so much suffering. Those drugs create a barrier; they keep you drugged, they don't allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain.

The first thing to do is close your doors and stop any kind of occupation -- looking at the tv, listening to the radio, reading a book. Stop all occupation, because that too is a subtle drug. Just be silent, utterly alone. Don't even pray, because that again is a drug, you are becoming occupied, you start talking to God, you start praying, you escape from yourself.

Atisha is saying: Just be yourself. Whatsoever the pain of it and whatsoever the suffering of it, let it be so. First experience it in its total intensity. It will be difficult, it will be heart-rending. You may start crying like a child, you may start rolling on the ground in deep pain, your body may go through contortions. You may suddenly become aware that the pain is not only in the heart, it is all over the body -- that it is aching all over, that it is painful all over, that your whole body is nothing but pain.

If you can experience it -- this is of tremendous importance -- then start absorbing it.

Don't throw it away. It is such a valuable energy, don't throw it away. Absorb it, drink it, accept it, welcome it, feel grateful to it. And say to yourself, "This time I'm not going to avoid it, this time I'm not going to reject it, this time I'm not going to throw it away. This time I will drink it and receive it like a guest. This time I will digest it."

-Rajneesh

You will have to start first with yourself. This is one of the fundamental secrets of inner growth. You cannot do anything with others that you have not done in the first place with yourself. You can hurt others if you hurt yourself, you will be a pain in the necks of others if you are a pain in the neck to yourself, you can be a blessing to others only if you are a blessing to yourself.

Whatsoever you can do with others, you must have done to yourself before, because that is the only thing that you can share. You can share only that which you have; you cannot share that which you don't have.

-Rajneesh

So think, meditate, feel these instructions, but don't take them in dead seriousness. There are bound to be a few differences. A few things are going to happen on your way which did not happen on Atisha's way. A few things are going to happen on your way which have not happened on my way. There are as many ways in the world as there are people.

Nobody can stand in your place; even those who are standing very close to you are not standing in exactly the same place. Your angle of vision is bound to be a little bit different from the angle of vision of somebody who is standing just by your side holding your hand. No two persons can see the world in exactly the same way, it is impossible.

And everybody has to move from his own place, his own space.

-Rajneesh

Yes, others can communicate how they attained, what pitfalls to avoid, how to go on judging whether you are moving in the right direction or not, what energies to use and what energies to discard, what is helpful and what is a hindrance. They can give you little hints about the path -- and I say "little hints"; they cannot give you a complete map either, because each individual will have to follow a path that is a little bit different, and each individual will come across unique experiences that nobody has come across before and nobody may ever come across again.

Each individual is so unique that no absolute map can be given, only hints, vague hints, indications.

You are not to cling to these instructions. Just understand them, absorb them, and don't be a fanatic.

-Rajneesh

Meditation, if it is true, is bound to overflow into compassion. Just as when a lamp is lit it immediately starts radiating light, it immediately starts dispersing darkness, once the inner light is lit, compassion is its radiation.

Compassion is the proof that meditation has happened. Love is the fragrance that proves that the one-thousand-petaled lotus in the innermost core of your being has bloomed, that the spring has come -- that you are no more the same person you used to be, that that personality has ceased and individuality is born, that you are not living any more in darkness, that you are light.

-Rajneesh