Man lives in fear, that’s why he becomes hard. It is fear that creates hardness. In fear we close up; we close all doors and all windows. We start living in a very small, dark hole. Our life already becomes death. And we create an armor around ourselves, hard, steel armor, so that we are protected, safe, secure.

 

This is not a way to live life; this is a way to commit suicide. This is real suicide. This is already entering into your grave, because this type of closed existence will not be able to know anything of truth, of beauty, of love, of bliss, of God. If nothing is allowed in, how can you know what surrounds you? And if you don’t know what surrounds you, you will never be able to know yourself. One can know oneself only in reference to the other. First you have to know the ”thou”, then you can know ”I”.

 

Psychologists say the child first becomes aware of the others: the mother, the father, the brothers, sisters, the family, the things that surround him, the room, the walls, the toys. Then slowly slowly he comes closer and closer… then he becomes aware of his body. And then one day he starts feeling himself as a separate individual. First he becomes aware of the other, and then in reference to the other he becomes defined. The other gives the definition. A person who lives in possessions will not know his real self, because he lives surrounded in things and things can only define you as a thing; they cannot define you as a soul.

 

So only in deep love does one become aware of one’s soul, because in deep love one becomes aware of the other’s soul, and the other’s soul creates a response in you, creates a resonance in you. Suddenly you are aware of a new dimension, of something which is beyond time and space. The ”thou becomes the mirror to know one’s own face. Love is the best mirror to show you who you are.

 

The closed person never knows who he is, he cannot know. And all that he knows about himself is false; he lives with a false identity. He thinks he is his name and his money and his power and his prestige, and that is all nonsense: he is none of those things. He is something divine, something that exists before birth and that will exist after death… but he will not be aware of it.

 

One has to become soft, vulnerable, open. One has to become almost like a sponge, so that the sun and the rain and the wind are all allowed, invited, accepted, welcomed, so that existence can penetrate you. And one has to allow existence to reach to one’s deepest core, because that is the only way – if existence goes deep into your being – that you will become aware of your depths. If it penetrates to the very core, you will become aware of your center. And that’s what is meant by self-knowledge.

 

But one has to learn how to be soft, how to drop all armor, how to open the doors and windows, how to cling no more with fear; how to be in love with the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people… because love is the key that unlocks your doors. You open to somebody only when you are in love, because then fear disappears, you are no more afraid. You can allow the other to reach you, you can trust. You know he will not hurt you.

 

The day one trusts the whole existence, that ”It is not going to hurt me because I am part of it – how can the whole hurt the part? Because my pain will be its pain, my misery is going to be its misery…” When you are miserable, a part of God is miserable. When you are crying, God is crying because your tears are his tears. All eyes are his eyes and all hands are his hands. He has no other eyes and no other hands. So when your eyes are full of tears and your heart full of pain, God is full of pain and full of tears. How can the whole hurt, wound, the part? It is impossible! It is an unnecessary fear.

 

The only thing that I teach is: drop this fear. It is absolutely unnecessary. And it is crippling you, paralyzing you. It is a slow kind of poison that kills people, destroys people. They live and yet they live not, they only die. They die over a long period of time: seventy years, eighty years, slowly slowly, part by part. They don’t commit suicide in a single moment, hence it is not known as suicide – but it is suicide.

 

My observation is that ninety-nine percent of people commit suicide. It is a very rare person who lives, who really lives. That person has to be courageous enough to open himself, to be open to all kinds of experiences, to be open unconditionally. Become just a welcome to existence: that’s what sannyas is. And when one is soft, one is divine, because one starts soaking up divinity from every dimension and direction. And when one is soft and divine, one is great; there is no other way of being great.

 

Greatness is never a projection of the ego. Ego always remains mean, tiny, small, and suffers deep down from an inferiority complex. The ego can never be great. It can pretend, it can pose, but all those postures are false, and one knows deep down. Others may be deceived, but how can one be deceived by one’s own projections?

 

The real greatness happens only when you have known yourself as part of God, when you are no more an island but have become part of the continent of this great existence. Then you are also great, because out of the great only the great can come, and if the whole is great the part is bound to be great.

 

- Osho, “The Rainbow Bridge, #6”