Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 20. BASE YOUR RULE ON THE RULE
If there is any obstruction in the way of meet. ing and merging, it is from the side of the devotee, not
from God.
A sthitaprajna is a devotee who has disappeared, who has become nothing. Now he does not even
cry for God, because there is no one who will cry. Now he does not pray, because who will pray to
whom? Or we can say, in the words of Kabir, that whatever he does now is worship, whatever he
says is prayer. We can say it both ways: he is nothingness and he is all. A sthitaprajna is a man
who has become God-like.
A devotee is one who has set himself on God’s path, who is a pilgrim, but he yet remains a man; all
his hopes and aspirations are those of a man. Meera’s songs are a case in point. She cries for God,
she dances for God. Her songs are superb in the sense that they are so human. Her cries are the
cries of a lover, a devotee. She says, ”I have made a beautiful bed for you, please come and grace
it. I have opened the door and I have been waiting long for you.” These are all human feelings. So a
devotee is one who is yet human aspiring to be God, to melt in him, be lost in him.
A sthitaprajna, one steadied in his intelligence, has ceased to be a man, an ego. He has ceased to
be a pilgrim; he has stopped all movements. He is not going anywhere. Now the question of going
anywhere does not arise; he is where he is. Now he knows God is everywhere and only God is. He
knows God is eternal, he is eternity itself. But unless we become as invisible as he is, unless we
become nobodies, we cannot find him. Jesus says, ”He who saved himself will be lost; he who loses
himself will be saved.” The sthitaprajna has lost himself, and he is saved, he has arrived.
A devotee is only an aspirant, a seeker. So he is yet an ego, his ego is intact. By and by, his ego will
be burnt in the fire of experience and understanding. Kabir says, ”As I wandered around searching
for God I lost myself.” This is the miracle of the spiritual search: the day one loses himself the search
is complete. As soon as the seeker disappears, God, the sought, appears.
In fact, the seeker is the sought. Lao Tzu’s words in this context are of tremendous significance.
He says, ”Seek and you will not find. Do not seek and you will find, because Tao is here and now.”
One really misses God or truth or whatever you call it, just because he seeks him. How can you
seek something which is here and now? Seeking means that what you seek is not here, it is there,
somewhere else. Because of seeking you drift away from reality.
Someone goes to Kashi, another goes to Mecca, some others go to Gaya, Jerusalem and Kailas;
one can even come to Manali. But they are all deviating, drifting away from reality or truth, which
is here and now. But so long as a seeker goes on seeking and searching, he also goes on losing
himself. And the day he is dead tired, the day he loses himself completely and falls down to the
ground, he finds he is in reality; It does not matter whether he falls down in Manali or Mecca, in
Kashi or Jerusalem, in Girnar or Gaya – wherever he falls he finds him present. God is ever-present,
he is present everywhere, but our own presence prevents us from meeting him. The moment the
seeker becomes absent, God or truth is present. God is always present, he is eternally present.
The devotee is one who is present, who is an ego. The sthitaprajna is not, he is absent as an ego,
a self.
It has to be clearly understood: so long as the devotee is present, God is absent. For this reason the
devotee creates a substitute God, a proxy God. He makes a statue of God, or he builds a temple of
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 390 Osho