The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 5. THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IS SELF KNOWLEDGE
set out to find the elixir, the nectar, your goal is suicide. You want to fulfill some earthly desire or
other, even through religion.
Go to the temples and listen to the prayers of people. You will find that their demands are all
worldly: someone’s son needs a wife, another person’s son needs a job, someone wants peace in
his household. Even in the temple you ask for worldly objects. One would think your temples were
supermarkets where everything is sold. You have no idea what a temple should be. Your priests are
no more than shopkeepers. The people who go to the temples are buyers of worldly goods. You will
always avoid the real temple.
Once I was a guest at the house of a dentist friend. One day, while I was sitting in his drawing
room, a small boy who looked scared, entered. He looked around furtively. I could almost see him
trembling inside. Then he asked me, ”Could you tell me if the doctor is in?” I told him that he had
just gone out. The child’s eyes lit up with joy.
”My mother sent me to have my teeth checked,” he said. ”may I ask when he will be out again?”
Such is your condition. If you come across a genuine temple you will run away as fast as you can.
You can bear the toothache, but you are not ready to bear the pain that the dentist gives you. We
are all like small children.
You can bear all the pain the world inflicts on you, but you are not prepared to undergo any pain for
religion. And religion is bound to give you pain. Actually it is not the religion that gives you pain.
Your teeth have decayed so badly that the pain is inevitable.
Religion causes no pain. Religion is the supreme bliss. But you have always lived in pain. You have
accumulated so much pain around you that all your teeth are filled with pain and suffering. Truly you
will have trouble pulling them out, so you would rather live with this pain and suffer. The poison is
spreading all over of your body. Your life is going topsy turvy but this pain is familiar to you. these
pains are familiar to you.
Man is ready to bear the familiar suffering. Ready to go through the unfamiliar suffering. These teeth
are yours and the pain is yours. You have known them for millions of lives, but you are unaware of
the fact that once these teeth are removed, this pain disappears, the doors of bliss will open for the
first time in your in your life.
Even if you go to the temple you ask the priest when God will next go out? – when can I come? You
go and you do not want to go. It is difficult to assess the games you play with yourself.
Observing you and your problems over a period of time, I have come to the conclusion that your
problem is only one. You do not know exactly what it is that you want. You are not sure that you
want to meditate, but you are upset if you cannot meditate. Now if your mind is not entirely made up
whatever you do, will be half-hearted. Nothing is ever attained in a half-hearted way. The worthless
needs no effort; it continues by its own momentum. That which is meaningful in life demands that
you stake your life on it.
This sutra says: THE YOGI CAUGHT IN ATTACHMENTS MAY ATTAIN OCCULT POWERS BUT
NOT SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
The Great Path 92 Osho