Virtue

 

 

The real virtue has nothing to do with so-called morality. There is one very profound and pregnant statement of Socrates: he says 'Knowledge is virtue.' By knowledge he means wisdom, knowing, because his whole emphasis was 'Know thyself.' That's what I mean by being conscious, because it is only consciousness that makes you capable of knowing yourself. And the moment you have known yourself you cannot do anything harmful to anybody. It is simply impossible. You cannot be destructive.

 

It is like a man who has eyes, how can you think that he will try to pass through the wall? He as eyes so he knows where the door is -- he will pass through the door. But the blind man can try. He will knock all around, and he can even try to get out through the wall or from the window. He does not know where the door is. He will ask others where the door is. But each moment you are in a different house -- as far as life is concerned -- and each moment the house is changing. Sometimes the door is on the right and sometimes it is on the left, and sometimes it is at the back and sometimes in the front -- no directions from others can be of much help, because the door goes on changing.

 

You need your own eyes. Then there is no need to ask, then there is no need to think about the door whenever you want to get out, you simply look and you know where the door is. That's what consciousness gives you: an insight, a new vision, a way of seeing, a new eye -- in the east we call it the third eye. That is only a metaphor but there are a few fools who try to dissect a dead body to find out where the third eye is. These fools can be great experts, scientists, but that does not make any difference. They have not understood the metaphor, they have not understood the poetry of the word. It is only an expression. The third eye does not exist in the physical body, it is only a way of saying that you have found how to see directly into reality, you have become conscious. And out of that consciousness is virtue.

 

And remember: if virtue is imposed from the outside then it is a regimentation. When it comes from the within it has an individuality. It is not like ready-made clothes, it is made for you, it is made by your consciousness. Its harmony is total with your being.

 

Now Moses wrote the Ten Commandments three thousand years ago, and there are fools who are still following them. They were perfectly good for Moses but they are not good for anybody else. They come out of his consciousness. That's the parable, that they came out of an encounter with god, that's an old way of saying that one has become so conscious that one knows what truth is, what god is. His experience of the ultimate truth gave birth to those Ten Commandments; they were only applicable to him -- and to nobody else,

 

In India, Hindus have followed the rules and the discipline of Manu, who is even farther beck than Moses -- five thousand years old. They may have been perfectly good for Manu but they are not at all adequate for anybody else. And this is my insistence, that each person has to find his own religion, his own morality, his own virtue. Then your virtue has your signature. Then it is alive, breathing, and then you are doing it not for any other reason, but just because that's the right thing to do. Your very heart wants to do it. Then you are not asking for any rewards in heaven, you are not greedy for anything and you are not afraid of hell, of any punishment. You are doing exactly what your insight is tell in; you to do -- whatsoever the result, whatsoever the ultimate consequence. Nobody of deep consciousness ever cares about the consequences. He acts immediately, responds to reality directly -- and that's all. And he enjoys the moment when he acts with reality, with his total being. He enjoys that harmony, that meeting, that merger, that union.

 

-Osho, "The Old Pond ... Plop, #5“