The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 5. THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IS SELF KNOWLEDGE
People come to me and say,”We try to meditate but slip up again and again. We meditate for two
days, but then it stops. Then after a few days we remember again, then again it stops.
This is not the case with your desires and passions. You have never forgotten to be angry and you
have never forgotten to be greedy, but you have to remind yourself to meditate. Try to understand
this fact, because meditation has to be actively practiced. It slips away again and again. It is a seed
that has to be sown and taken care of. Rubbish grows by itself; weeds come up by themselves.
Know that whatever happens by itself is worthless. As long as you live that way you will attain
nothing. At the time of death you will find yourself leaving empty-handed, just as you came in
empty-handed. And it is this blindness, this lack of discrimination that is maya, illusion. This is
the state of unconsciousness where you cannot discriminate between what is useful and what is
useless.
Shankara has defined knowledge as the discrimination between the meaningful and the
meaningless. In life both exist – the flowering shrubs as well as the weeds. You will have to
distinguish one from the other by your own experience. If your attention gets fixed not on the
meaningful but on the worthless, you wander in illusion.
You do not know who you are, nor where you are going, nor do you know where you come from.
You have got yourself entangled with the rubbish by the side of the road. You have made a home by
the side of the road, and you are so filled with worries and anxieties-just because of this worthless
trash, which is there whether you take care of it or not. You have no cause to worry about it.
Indiscrimination is maya. Indiscrimination means the inability to distinguish the diamond from the
pebble. You have to become the jeweller of life because that alone leads to the birth of discrimination.
You possess life. Now look inside it. The test of your search is to know all that happens by itself is
worthless, and that which refuses to happen in spite of your efforts, is worth attaining. This is the
test. The day you find that that which was so difficult to bring about has begun to happen, then know
the flowers are about to bloom. And the day all that used to grow by itself stops growing, know that
maya has ended.
THE YOGI CAUGHT IN ATTACHMENTS MAY ATTAIN OCCULT POWERS BUT NOT SELF-
KNOWLEDGE.
The meaningless rubbish has become so significant for us that when we set out to accomplish the
meaningful we end up accomplishing only the worthless.
I am astonished by the motives of the people who come here to meditate. They desire only the
worthless even through meditation. They come to me and say, I want to meditate to get rid of
physical ailments. Can you assure me that they will disappear by meditation? It would be better
for them to go to a doctor. When they come to a spiritual physician it is only to cure their physical
disorders. Meditation is no more than medicine to them, just medicine for the body.
People come to me and say: My financial condition is very bad. Will meditation improve things? This
cover of attachments is so dense and thick that even when you seek nectar it is only for the poison.
Isn’t this amazing? You come for the elixir – but only want to commit suicide by drinking it! But you
cannot commit suicide with the elixir of life. Once you drink it you become immortal, but when you
The Great Path 91 Osho