The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 1. THE DARKNESS INSIDE
So atman means: one’s own. But the moment we think in therms of ”mine”, the other comes in.
”Mine” in itself means, ”Someone else who belongs to me.” It never occurs to you that except your
own self, there is no one who can be yours. And the longer you will remain swayed by the idea that
the other belongs to you, the greater will be the loss of time on your part, you will have wasted that
much life. That much time you gave in for dreaming. You could have awakened in the meantime –
you could have attained moksha. But all that time you only collected garbage.
So this is the first sutra: you are all by yourself; that means, there is nothing by way of either
relationship or possession that you can claim as yours. No one and nothing except yourself belongs
to you really. This is indeed a very revolutionary sutra. It goes against the very nature of society.
Because the society exists on the very premise that others are mind – the caste people are mine, the
countrymen are mine. A whole array of possessive attitudes in on display: my country, my caste, my
religion, my family. The society survives on the concept of ”mine”. Religion is essentially antithetical
to society – it is a freedom from society, it is a freedom from the ”other”.
According to religion, there is no one you can claim as ”mine” except your own self. If seen
superficially this statement looks selfish. Because, if I alone am for myself then one immediately
surmises this as a selfish attitude. But there is nothing selfish in it. The truth is, this feeling alone
will cause the attitude of altruism and universal goodness to arise in your life. Because one who has
not yet become aware of the fact that essentially only his being is his own, cannot follow altruism,
When you call others as ”mine”, what do you do really? You exploit them. Your ”mine” is nothing
but a part and parcel of your exploitation of them. Whosoever you identify as ”mine”, you turn that
person into a slave. You convert the person into one of your possessions. You say, ”my wife, my
husband, my son, my father...”, what goes on behind the backdrop of this ”my-ness”? What is the
basis of your relationship made evident by calling someone as yours? You exploit the other, you
take advantage of the other, you take the other for a ride. And if this is what you call as altruism then
you are indeed carrying a false notion.
An emperor had three sons. As he grew old he became concerned as to which of the three sons
would be worthy of inheriting his kingdom. Because all three of them were equally capable and
qualified, and that made the choice very difficult. One day he called his sons and said, ”Tell me
about the greatest act you may have done the whole of last year.”
The eldest son reported, ”Before leaving for a pilgrimage, the richest man of this city left with me his
precious diamonds and jewelry worth millions of rupees without counting them or making a list of
them with his signature on. He asked me to save them until his return. If I had wished I could have
seized all his treasure, for the man had neither made any documents nor were there any witnesses
to prove the treasure belonged to him. Since the man had not kept any count, I could have easily
saved at least a few diamonds for myself. But instead, I handed him over the pouch left in tact.”
The father said, ”You did right, but let me ask you this, wouldn’t you have been besieged with the
feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment if you had kept some of the diamonds for yourself?” The
son replied, ”Indeed I would have.”
Then the father said, ”You can’t call this an altruistic act. What you did was nothing but simply saving
yourself from your own feeling of shame and guilt. What good did it do? Since saving diamonds
The Great Path 7 Osho