The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 1. THE DARKNESS INSIDE
his mind and your mind. Take a look for yourself. You all think the wife is a trouble. Can you find a
single husband who can say the wife is not a pain? But please don’t ask him in front of his wife, ask
him when he is alone, confidentially.
Mulla Nasruddin said to me, ”Once I was a happy man too. But this I came to know only later – after
I got married. It was too late by then, the happiness had already slipped through my hands.”
If you probe deeply, you may hardly come across a single husband who may not have thought of
killing his wife, who may not have dreamed killing his wife. He may even wonder in the morning what
a ridiculous dream he had, but deep in the unconscious his desire was indeed that. It’s a simple
logic, the mind wants to destroy the cause of trouble. But the truth is, the other is never the cause of
trouble.
Who can stop you if the wife was indeed the cause of your trouble? If that were the case, all of you
would have escaped to the Himalayas by no. The wife is not the source of your troubles. Because
even in the Himalayas you’ll find a wife for you. The trouble is within you. You can’t live alone. You
need the other. You are scared when left to yourself, but when someone else is around, you feel
safe and confident. Why? The presence of the other makes one feel assured that in the time of
need there will be someone, in life or death there will be someone he can rely upon. But the fact is
that aloneness is one’s nature. And one who has realized that only the soul belongs to him, he has
indeed experienced his aloneness.
So there is no need to escape. Once you stop running away, the trouble disappears on its own.
Remain wherever you are, there is no need to make even the slightest change. But be alone inside
you. Experience the aloneness within you; feel you are alone without any friend or companion. But
please don’t repeat this, there is no need to repeat every morning, ”I am alone, I have no friends, no
companions.” This won’t help at all. Such repetition will only show that you haven’t got it yet. Please
understand this.
You are alone is a fact. The problem is in having an understanding of it – that is the real tapascharya,
the real spiritual practice. It does not mean standing under the hot sun. Except man, all other
animals and birds live under the sun – none of them is on the way to moksha. Also, spiritual practice
does not mean abstaining from food, going on fast; as it is, half of the world is starving to death.
Fasting does not lead anyone to moksha. Nothing will come out of tormenting, torturing the body –
it is self-destruction and the greatest sin ever. Only stupid people enter into such sins. Those who
possess even a little bit of awareness would not do such foolish things.
If forcing the other to starve is wrong, how can starving oneself to death be right? If torturing the
other is violent, how can self-torturing be a non-violent act? Violence is in the very act of torture –
it makes no difference who the victim is. Those who are courageous, they inflict pain on the other;
while those who are weak, hurt themselves. Causing pain to the other is risky, he can take revenge.
No such risk is involved in inflicting pain on oneself – who will avenge it? Hence, the weak torture
themselves.
Has it ever occurred to you, when the man gets upset he beats his wife, but when the wife gets upset
she beats herself. The wife symbolizes the monks. So the helpless hurts himself – what else can
he do? The powerful hurts the other. One who is powerless always faces the danger as to how the
The Great Path 12 Osho