Thursday 7 March 2013

A magic key


First be one with yourself. This is the first step of Unio Mystica: be one with yourself. And then the second step, and the last, is: be one with existence. The second is easy. The first has become difficult because of so much conditioning, so much education, and so many civilizing efforts. The first has become difficult.
If you have taken the first step of just accepting yourself and loving yourself as you are, moment to moment.... For example, you are sad. This moment you are sad. Your whole conditioning says to you “You should not be sad. This is bad. You should not be sad. You have to be happy.” Now the division, now the problem.
You are sad: that is the truth of this moment.
And your conditioning, your mind says, “You should not be like this, you have to be happy. Smile! What will people think of you?”
Your woman may leave you if you are so sad, your friends may desert you if you are so sad, and your business will be destroyed if you remain so sad. You have to laugh, you have to smile, and you have to at least to pretend that you are happy. If you are a doctor your patients will not feel good if you are so sad. They want a doctor who is happy, jolly, healthy, and you are looking so sad. Smile — even if you cannot bring a real smile, bring a false smile, but smile. At least pretend, act.
This is the problem: you pretend, you act. You can manage to smile, but then you have become two. You have repressed the truth, you have become phony.
And the phony is appreciated by the society. The phony becomes the saint, the phony becomes the great leader, and the phony becomes the mahatma. And everybody starts following the phony. The phony is your ideal.
That’s why you are unable to know yourself. How can you know yourself if you don’t accept yourself? You are always repressing your being. What has to be done then? When you are sad, accept the sadness: this is you. Don’t say, “I am sad.” Don’t say that sadness is something separate from you. Simply say, “I am sadness. This moment, I am sadness.”
Live your sadness in total authenticity.
And you will be surprised that a miraculous door opens in your being. If you can live your sadness with no image of being happy, you become happy immediately, because the division disappears. There is no division any more. “I am sadness” and there is no question of any ideal to be anything else. So there is no effort, no conflict. “I am simply this” and there is relaxation. And in that relaxation is grace, and in that relaxation is joy.
All psychological pain exists only because you are divided. Pain means division. and bliss means no-division. It will look paradoxical to you: if one is sad, accepting one’s sadness how can one become joyous? It will look paradoxical, but it is so. Try it.
I am not saying try to be happy; I am not saying that, “Accept your sadness so that you can become happy” — I am not saying that. If that is your motivation then nothing will happen; you are still struggling. You will be watching from the corner of your eye: “So much time has passed and I have accepted even sadness, and I am saying ‘I am sadness”, and joy is still not coming. “It will not come that way.
Joy is not a goal, it is a by-product.
It is a natural consequence of oneness, of unity. Just be united with this sadness, for no motivation, for no particular purpose. There is no question of any purpose. This is how you are this moment, this is your truth this moment. And next moment you may be angry: accept that too. And next moment you may be something else: accept that too.
Live moment to moment, with tremendous acceptance, without creating any division, and you are on the way towards self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not a question of reading the Upanishads and sitting silently and reciting, “Aham Brahmasmi, I am God.” These are all foolish efforts. Either you know you are God, or you don’t know it. You can go on for your whole life repeating, “Aham Brahmasmi, I am God.” You can waste your whole life in repeating it, but you will not know it.
If you know it, there is no point in repeating it. Why are you repeating it? If you know, you know. If you don’t know, how can you know by repetition? Just see the whole stupidity of it.
But that’s what is being done in this country and in other countries also, in monasteries and ashrams. What are people doing? Parrot-like repetition.
I am giving you a totally different approach. It is not by repetition of the Bible or Vedas that you will become a knower, no. You will only become knowledgeable. Then how does one come to know oneself?
Drop the division: the division is the whole problem. You are against yourself. Drop all ideals, which create this antagonism in you.
You are the way you are: accept it with joy, with gratitude.
Suddenly a harmony will be felt. The two selves in you, the ideal self and the real self, will not be there to fight any more. They will meet and merge into one.
It is not really sadness that gives you pain. It is the interpretation that sadness is wrong that gives you pain, and that becomes a psychological problem. It is not anger that is painful; it is the idea that anger is wrong that creates psychological anxiety. It is the interpretation, not the fact. The fact is always liberating.
Jesus says, “Truth liberates.” And that is of tremendous import. Yes, truth liberates, but not knowing about truth. Be the truth, and it liberates. Be the truth, and there is liberation. You need not bring it, you need not wait for it: it happens instantly.
How to be the truth? You are already the truth. You are just carrying false ideals; they are creating the trouble. Drop the ideals: for a few days be a natural being. Just like trees and animals and birds, accept your being as you are. And a great silence arises. How can it be otherwise? There is no interpretation: then sadness is beautiful, it has depth.
Then anger too is beautiful it has life and vitality. Then sex too is beautiful, because it has creativity.
When there is no interpretation, all is beautiful.
When all is beautiful, you are relaxed.
In that relaxation you have fallen into your own source, and that brings self-knowledge. Falling into one’s own source is what is meant by “Know thyself.” It is not a question of knowledge, it is a question of inner transformation.
And what transformation am I talking about? I am not giving you any ideal that you have to be like; I am not saying that you have to transform from what you are and become somebody else. You have simply to relax into whatsoever you are, and just see.
Have you heard what I am saying? Just see the point: it is liberating. And a great harmony, a great music is heard. That music is of self-knowledge. And your life starts changing.
You then have a magic key, which unlocks all the locks.
If you accept sadness, sadness will disappear. How long can you be sad if you accept sadness? If you are capable of accepting sadness you will be capable of absorbing it in your being; it will become your depth.

Osho




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