The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 1. THE DARKNESS INSIDE
Mulla Nasruddin was fond of hunting deer. When he reached the lodge on his third hunting trip and
opened his suitcase, he found a large photograph under which his wife had written, ”Mulla, this is
how a deer looks.” Mulla loved to hunt, but had no idea how a deer looked like. His wife wanted to
make sure he didn’t kill any odd thing and bring it home as a deer, hence the photograph.
You have missed at every instance, and that’s the cause of your misery. And the only reason why you
have missed is that, you are not aware. I say, therefore, whatsoever you do, do it with awareness.
Walk with awareness, talk with awareness.
Mahavira has said, ”Remain alert when you walk, when you sit, when you take your food, when you
speak, even in sleep.” When Mahavira was asked who is a sadhu, who is a holy man, he said, ”One
who is aware.” When asked who is a non-sadhu, he replied, ”One who is unaware.” A man who lives
as if asleep is the non-sadhu; one who lives in full consciousness is the sadhu.
This is exactly what Shiva is saying: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SOUL. Raise your consciousness
and by and by you are bound to see the glimpse of soul in your life.
The second sutra is: KNOWLEDGE IS BONDAGE. This is a very strange sutra. ’Knowledge’ has
many meanings. One, as long as you are filled with the knowledge that ”I am”, you will remain in
ignorance, because, the very sense of the ”I”, the ego, is ignorance. The day you are filled with the
soul, the ’am-ness’ will remain but the ’I-ness’ will disappear. From ”I am”, the ’I’ will drop and simply
’am’ will remain.
You can experiment with this. Sometimes sit quietly under a tree and look within yourself, see where
is the ’I’? You won’t find it anywhere. The ’am’ you will of course find everywhere in the existence,
but never the ego. The ego is your creation, it is of your making, it is false, untrue. There is nothing
more unauthentic than the ego itself. It comes out handy.
Although it is required in the world, as such it nowhere has any place in truth.
So, there is this knowledge that ’I am’, which is the cause of bondage. The awareness that I have of
the ’am-ness’ is pure and limitless. When you say ’am’, can there be any distinction between your
’am-ness’ and the am-ness of a tree? Would there be any difference between your am-ness and
my am-ness? When you only are, then you, the rivers, the mountains, the trees all become one.
However, as soon as you say ”I”, you become separate from the whole. The moment you say ”I”,
you break away, you alienate yourself, you disconnect yourself from the existence.
Am-ness is Brahman and ”I” is man’s state of ignorance. When you know simply that you are, then
there is no separate center within you. Then you become one with the existence. Then you become
like a wave which is lost in the ocean. Right now you are like the wave which frozen into ice, which
has broken itself away from the ocean.
Gyanam bandaha So the first thing is: KNOWLEDGE IS BONDAGE – the knowledge that ”I am.”
The other kind of bondage is all the knowledge that you have gathered from outside, which you
have stolen from the scriptures, the knowledge which you have borrowed from the great Masters,
the knowledge which is stored in your memory – all of this is bondage. You won’t be able to free
yourself from it. That’s why you cannot find a man more enslaved than the pundit.
The Great Path 17 Osho