The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 1. THE DARKNESS INSIDE
Let this salutation penetrate deep in you because if you miss the door, you will not be able to
understand me when I start describing the palace. Push aside the male within you, a little. Drop
your aggressive attitude a little. This understanding is not going to come out of intellect, it is going to
rise from your heart. This understanding will not depend on your logic, it will depend on how much
love there is within you.
You will be able to understand this scripture; but this understanding will not be the same as following
a mathematical problem. The understanding will be similar to the one you have from appreciating
poetry. You don’t pounce on poetry. You enjoy poetry leisurely, sip by sip, just as you enjoy drinking
tea. You don’t swallow it just in one shot as if it were some kind of bitter medicine. Rather, you relish
its taste bit by bit; you let its taste dissolve slowly.
In order to appreciate even a single poem you need to read it over and over again... which is not the
case with a mathematical problem. You don’t need to go over it again once you have understood
and solved it – then the problem is done with. Poetry never ends, because the heart is limitless. The
more you love, the more it unfolds.
That’s why in the East we don’t study scriptures – we read them over and over. Scriptures can’t
be studied anyway. To study means: once you have understood, you throw the book away in the
garbage. Now that you have understood it, what is the need to go through it again. So you feel you
are done with it.
Patha, reading over and over means you will need to go over this scripture savouring in unhurriedly
– reading and re-reading. Who knows how many times, but knowingly or unknowingly, you’ll have
to repeat it in your different moods, in different states of mind. Sometimes, when the sun is on
the horizon, or when night covers everything under its darkness, when the mind is cheerful, or
sometimes when the mind is sad. You’ll have to enter this scripture in different moments in different
conditions, only then by and by will its facets become apparent to you. And yet it will remain
inexhaustible.
No scripture can ever be used up. The more it will appear you have found what you were looking
for, the more you’ll realize there is much more left undiscovered. The more you dive deep into it, the
more it grows deeper. No reader can ever exhaust a scripture. Patha, means reading over and over
again – many times.
People in the West fail to understand this. It is beyond them to figure out why people have been
reading the Geeta for thousands of years. They wonder, ”the same man reads the same Geeta
every morning – has he gone crazy or something?” They have no idea that the whole technique
of patha, reading and re-reading is to let the scripture penetrate the heart. It has more to do with
enjoying the taste of it rather than understanding it.
It is not even remotely connected with logic and calculation. It’s main purpose is to dissolve the
distance between the reader and the text. The idea is that eventually the text of the Geeta and the
reader of it should merge into each other. That no distinction be left between the Geeta and its
reader. This is the feminine state. This is the way of surrender. Keep this in mind.
So these sutras of Shiva can be understood if we follow the path of humility. Let them sink in you.
Make no haste in arriving at a conclusion whether they are right or wrong. As far as these sutras are
The Great Path 4 Osho