I've read in a couple of sources that "99%" of enlightened people cannot retain hold of the body at the moment of enlightenment.

This obviously doesn't seem to hold up here or in any Buddhist circles.

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfxpfEYUv9g&feature=g-vrec

and

"Most of the people who have become enlightened have died either immediately or within a few minutes or a few hours. The experience is so great, and the shock to the system of the body is unabsorbable. Out of thousands, perhaps a few have survived. And there are reasons why they survived." - Osho

Is this due to practicing a different practice than the Buddhist methods? What are the reasons for this in these particular practices?

How do they know if these guys got enlightened before dying?

If this is true, it's probably a different meaning to the word enlightenment than what's commonly used here.

lol, not true buddy

questioning the fallibility of enlightened people seems to crop up occasionally on here....

Enlightened can make mistakes, even big ones

Even respected attained people will occasionally say things that are off.

Here's an enligthened person who commited adultery against the, enlightened beautiful women next to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fNOJlroz4M

-d

Even in matters concerning enlightment?

O.o

Enlightenment is not a matter of concern.

I don't doubt that what they are saying is true in the specific practices they are familiar with. I asked the question because I was curious why these practices work the way they do. However, it's obvious that nobody on this forum knows what these practices are or how they work.

I think it goes like this:


Enlightenment to these people IS death, and it is a rare few who get to experience that death while remaining alive in the organic sense.

So its not that 99% of people die on enlightenment, its that 99% of people dont get enlightenment until the moments of dying.

One man's thoughts.

I don't think that's what Sadhguru is saying in the video.

He states "if your energies raise beyond a certain pitch than this physical body cannot hold them anymore.... Only people with mastery of the physical system can hold onto the body."

This might have significance on this forum if someone decides they're going to get "actually free" and then dies after a few years because they cannot retain hold of the body, but nobody warned them (not that they would care). Or if someone decides they're going to sit in nirodha for a couple days and then can't hold onto the body anymore as a result of sitting in too much cessation.

Indeed, this might have significance if this is the case.

However I find this claim highly questionable.
His reasoning might sound right, but consider this:
It is not easy to verify if a person is "enlightened" or not normally, so how can it be verified after they are dead?
Of course I know he isn't claiming an exact percentage, when he says 99% he mean "very few", but even so...

We have to laugh, I suppose. These fake guru's pop up everywhere, if only they knew what the body was, they'd never talk such twaddle.

When folks are in darkness, any voice becomes a guiding voice, but what if that voice is leading to a deep endless hole? Not coming out of, leading to. Get thee behind me, sayth the guru.

What is this pitch, he talks of? The body has no pitch whatsoever. Sure there are many frequencies dancing around the music of other frequencies, but these all work in harmony and there certainly aren't “higher” or “lower”.

Does the mind have pitch? Incompatible with the body?
Does the self have pitch? Incompatible with the body?

Obviously not.

If what this guru guy is saying was true, would babies be able to hold it together? We’d have a hell of a lot of still births, that’s all I can say.

I’ve also spoke with advanced practitioners of Kriya yoga, and they know a lot less of the body than the average Western MD/GP. So again doubt is thrown upon Sadguru’s words.

"Most of the people who have become enlightened have died either immediately or within a few minutes or a few hours. The experience is so great, and the shock to the system of the body is unabsorbable. Out of thousands, perhaps a few have survived. And there are reasons why they survived." - Osho

Here Bhagwan Osho reveals yet more nonsense to his willing little lapdogs.

Electric shock of a certain voltage will kill the body, extreme emotional shock can kill the body.

Can you see the clue there?


















































It’s not “can”, it is “shock”.

Enlightenment is not a shock to the system. Neither to mind nor body. Actually is has a very beneficial effect upon the body… and yes it even boosts libido, so come on down get it on special offer by superguru near you.

Reaction results in shock.

The reaction of high voltage raw electric upon the watery fluidic nervous system. The deeply destructive emotional reaction of being told your only beloved child has just died. Yep, attachment has an atrophying effect, sometimes immediately terminal.

So why, oh why, would enlightenment result in a deeply destructive emotional reaction?

Enlightenment is when all lights are turned on, darkness no more. What is seen is seen. No problemo.

If the human body could not sustain an on-going enlightened status there would be no enlightened human beings. Although it has been recently anncounced that evolutionary theory suggests that our brains are about to get an expansive cortex to accommodate such godly goodness.

He is not taking about those who become enlightened using meditation. He is talking about the vast majority that follow non-meditation path to moksha/salvation/liberation.

In Hinduism/Vedantic traditions, there are 4 ways to get moksha/final liberation from samsara.
1) Raja Yoga (meditation, yoga asanas),
2) Karma Yoga(Disipline of wholesome actions without attachment to the results),
3) Bhakti (Devotion) Yoga,
4) Jnana(Wisdom/knowledge) Yoga.

Those who follow Raja Yoga get enlightened via meditation and acheive mokhsa at the time of death, if they have reached the final path/stage.

The others, who follow Karma, Bhakti, Jnana yoga, based upon their efforts and accumulation of good deeds/parmis in buddhism, in this life term, may achieve enlightenment and moksha at the time of death. In such cases, full enlightenment happens a few seconds prior to death and moksha/liberation, immediately at the time/after death. Sadguru is talking about people from this category, which makes up a majority of enlightned people.

At least in India, most people follow what is easy, which is Bhakti Yoga - devotion to god, in a form of your choice. A few combine two or all three of these paths.

Metta,

I have the same question.. And the replies don't really answer the question..

Both Sadhguru and Osho are not fake gurus.. Having read a lot of their books, having seen their videos and having seen the glimpes of truth by following their advice, I have been perfectly convinced that they are enlightened. And I don't think they made a mistake because both of them have said this many times.. So, I feel that there might be some truth to this.

Also, they say that the karma (both sanchita and prarabdha) is completely dissolved at the time of the enlightenment and the enlightened beings have to consiously create karma to maintain their body. Both of them quote Ramakrishna Paramhamsa's obession over food as an example for consiously created karma.

But in Vedanta, it says that enlightenment only dissolves the Sanchita karma and not Prarabdha.. The enlightened person has to burn out their prarabdha slowly by living their rest of the life until their death. I find these two contradicting.

I would like to ask Sadhguru directly about this but there is no way to get a chance. Even in a satsang with sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, getting a chance to ask him a question is like winning the lottery. Someone who is close to Sadhguru and has a chance to interact with them can probably ask him this question and get it answered..

Can anybody throw some clarity on this contradiction with some reliable authority to support the answer? I am going to write a post in my blog http://nellaishanmugam.wordpress.com if I get some good explanation regarding this.

LOL

You are asking this on the wrong forum, lots of people consider themselves enlightened to some extent here and they are very much alive. It's the modern enlightement-lite school, you are asking advice from. So their answer would be, "what are they talking about ?"

Your' guys are talking about  old school Hindu/Jain Absolute Trance Samadhi, which is like fasting to death ( in effect). This is more along the lines of the Hindu Yoga System as someone else mentioned and Jains routinly fast to death ( in a samadhi-like state). In the old systems there did seem to be an expectation of death following supreme ascent via yogic practice. 

Osho died prior to the advent of the modern enlightenment school and is probally more popular now than when alive. He did seem to have a certain useful wisdom on some subjects. Very poetic and romantic in many ways. He did contradict himself often and regularily, so don't expect gospel there.

Sadguru, he is more your popular modern bullshit yogi type and has a huge following. Full of 'it', would not know his ass from his elbow. If you are offended by this, don't be.    

Edit ( toned down for decorum)

I am not offended because it is human nature for many people to come to a quick conclusion without doing too much research. I am curious to know how you came to the conclusion that he is full of 'shit'.. I have watched a lot of videos of him and read many books. While many of them are too dramatic for people to believe, a whole lot of what he says makes sense. If you look at him as a normal human being, keeping his enlightenment stories aside, he seems to be very logical and genuine.

There are many interpretations of enlightenment and many people claim to be enlightened. The word doesn't have just one definition. So, It is not surprising to me that many people claim to be enlightened according to their own definition of enlightenment. 

I can say many things about what you have said but I really don't want to go into all that.. I really dont feel like typing a lot right now..

But I am a huge fan of Osho and he has mentioned a lot about people dying at the time of enlightenment. But it is not fasting to death, definetely not the way you might have understood it. There is a whole lot of information about enlightenment in India based on thousands of scriptures. So, unless you have been brought up in the same situation that I was brought up, it is going to be very hard for us to understand what each one of us are talking about.

May be I am in the wrong forum, but in the future there might be someone who finds this forum via a Google search like I did, and might throw some light on the question that I have. Once you post something online, it stays there for ages.

The tale of a nitrous huffing cult leader and his 93 Rolls Royces

What a reliable source of information!

Thank you. Jesus died moments after his enlightenment. He thought that god had abandoned him on the cross but before he took the last breath, he commended his Spirit into the Father's arms. There is one old Indian story of a man becoming enlightened and then jumping into the Ganges and drowining. Even Kate Chopin's marvelous work, "The Awakening" **hint hiny** ends with the newly enlightened protagonist drowning herself in the ocean.

My guess is that there is just no need to keep the body once enlightened. The metaphorical 1% are the real bodhisattvas like Siddharth, Mahavir, Osho, Trungpa Rinpoche, etc.

I know the OP's sources cite an explosion or some burst of energy that the body can't handle, I don't think that's the case (pure speculation). I think anyone who "becomes" enlightened would be very familiar with their own body's energies and unlikely to be overpowered by them.

I really do think it's just that the path is so f**ing long and like Osho says, it's understandable to decide not to teach. Shakyamuni himself took 7 days to decide. I think that much compassion (obviously staying in the body predicates lots of suffering) is just super rare. 

I'm interested in what others think, though. Cool website.

Well, putting on my sceptical analytic thinking cap ...

The first Buddhist council had 500 arhats a few months after Buddha's death.  So if they are the surviving 1%, that would suggest 50,000 arhats of whom 500 survived. Surely that death rate would have been recorded in the suttas? People would have been tripping over 45,000 dead arhats everwhere!  On the alms round, on the way to the toilet, in the meditation hall. But I haven't come across any such accounts in the suttas. Instead arhats tended to meet their ends due to mundane causes like robbers and angry cows.

Or, as another test, if Osho was a great teacher whose word is to be followed on this, presumably he led many to enlightenment. So were there dozens or hundreds of unexplained deaths among his senior disciples? Again, I suspect not ... It seems more likely that the claim is just a way to keep the disciples in line, or that it is talking about something completely different to the enlightenment found in Buddhism.

This is one of the reasons I like the Buddhadharma.  There was no "This is a mystical state that you can never experience or even understand, but if you are lucky you can wash my feet", but rather it was "You have doubts?  Good attitude!  Why don't you try it out and see for yourself." 

I can only add that when I woke up I did pee just a tiny bit   

This and Chris’s comment following it just made my day.

Too funny!

I gotta agree with this lol.