Within

 

 

It is one of the greatest mysteries of life that we are born with perfect bliss in our being and we remain beggars because we never look into our selves. We take it for granted, as if we already know all that is within. That is a great idiotic idea, but it prevails all over the world. We are ready to go to the moon to seek and search for bliss, but we are not ready to go inside ourselves for the simple reason that we already think without ever going in, 'What is there inside?'

 

We somehow go on carrying this notion, that we know ourselves. We don't know ourselves at all.

 

Socrates is right when he says: Know thyself. In those two words the whole wisdom of all the sages is condensed, because in knowing thyself all is known and all is fulfilled and all is achieved.

 

We are not to become perfect, we are born perfect. And we are not to invent bliss, we have only to discover it. Hence it is not such a difficult matter as people think; it is a very simple process of relaxing, resting, and slowly slowly getting centred.

 

The day you stumble upon your centre, suddenly there is all light; you have found the switch. It is just like groping in a dark room: you go on groping and then you find the switch and it is all light. But one can sit in darkness for the whole night, crying and weeping just underneath the switch. And that's actually the situation; we are unnecessarily crying and weeping.

 

Hence those who have known have a very strange feeling about people. They feel great compassion and also great laughter because they can see the stupidity -- that you have already got it but you are running hither and thither for no reason at all. And because of your running you go on missing. And they have great compassion also because you are suffering -- that is true, although your suffering is simply foolish. It is like a man who has seen a rope as a snake and now is running away and falls on a banana skin, and breaks a few bones and may be hospital. You know that he was simply a fool -- there was no snake at all! He may have even died from a heart attack... And without any snake; just a rope did the whole trick. This is the rope trick!

 

And that is the situation of man.

 

Initiation means that you have to change the situation. This absurd, ridiculous life pattern has to be changed completely. Look within, and if you cannot find anything there, then look outside. But I say categorically that nobody who has looked within has ever missed it, so there is no reason for your to miss it. Nobody is an exception, it is an absolute law: one who goes within, finds it -- finds the kingdom of god, the perfect bliss, the absolute truth. And with it comes freedom and great fragrance. Life becomes a dance, a poetry, a constant ecstasy; moment-to-moment it goes on growing.

 

One is bewildered at how much ecstasy is possible, and 'Can I contain any more?' But one can contain infinite ecstasy. And it goes on becoming more and more. Unbelievable it is, because you think 'Now this is the limit, more is not possible,' but next day you discover that there is still more possible, and you go on discovering. It never comes to an end. There is a beginning in this journey but no end.

 

-Osho, "The Golden Wind, #25"