The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 3. MAXIMS OF YOGA: A SENSE OF WONDER
you move outside, there is science. If you move inwards – sense of wonder, meditation, gratitude. It
is a totally different method.
The sense of wonder will bring you inwards because the whole world will appear mysterious. And
then only one question will seem to be important: who am I? This is the foundation of sense of
wonder: who am I? As long as I do not know this ’I’, this journey of knowing myself cannot be
complete. How can I know these trees, how can I know you, how can I know the other if I myself am
unknown to me, if I am myself ignorant; when I do not know who I am.
Therefore ’who am I’ is the great mantra. And don’t rush the answer because the answer is ready
inside you. ”Who am I” – and you answer from within: I am the soul. This answer won’t help. You
know it already. This has not changed your life. Knowledge is fire; it will burn you. When you ask:
”Who am I” and an inner voice replies, it is your mind that is talking – the scriptures hidden inside the
mind, the memory. When you say: ’I am the soul’, it is useless, it is of no value because this answer
has not transformed you. This is not fire, this is ash. There may have been an amber in it some
time, for some sage, but for you it is ash. The person who possessed this amber, has departed from
this world, now you are just carrying the ash.
You go on asking: Who am I? And do not give a borrowed answer. Whenever the borrowed answer
will come, you say: ”This is not my answer. I have not known it, how can it be mine? Only that which
I know, can belong to me.” That which you have earned through your own effort, is your treasure.
Knowledge can neither be stolen nor can it be begged. You cannot steal it. You cannot beg it. Here,
you have to create yourself by your own efforts.
The second maxim: TO BE ESTABLISHED IN ONESELF IS STRENGTH.
The moment a sense of wonder is born, move inwards, sink within and try to be established in the
self. When you ask: ’Who am I’, when will you get an answer? If you want the answer, you will have
to be established within. We have called it health: to be established in the self. And one is able to
see only when one is established within. If you are running, how will you be able to see?
Your situation is somewhat like this: you are sitting in a speeding car, you happen to see a flower,
through the window. You have barely enquired about it, and the car has zoomed forward. You
are speeding fast. And no vehicle is faster than your desire. If one has to reach the moon, even
the spaceship takes time. Your desire does not even require this much time, it reaches this very
moment. Desire has the fastest speed. And one who is full of desire shows that there is no depth in
him. He is running, racing. And your pace is such that even if you ask: who am I, there is no room
for an answer.
You will have to give up this running race and be established in the self. You will stop all the desire,
all the running around, all the journey. But the moment one desire is fulfilled you create a number
of new desires. You barely finish one journey, and various new avenues open up. And you start
running again! You do not know how to sit down. You have not stopped for many lifes.
I have heard that one emperor employed a very intelligent man as his prime minister. But the prime
minister was dishonest and within no time he stole millions of rupees from the treasury of the empire.
When the emperor came to know about it, he called the prime minister and said: ”I don’t want to say
The Great Path 53 Osho