I am teaching you to be selfish.
Let me repeat it, because the word "selfishness" has been condemned so much that there is every possibility you will misunderstand me. But the word is really beautiful.
To be selfish simply means to be yourself.
I say to you: don't consider anybody else in the world, just consider yourself; and in that very consideration you will have considered the whole world. In being selfish you will find all the altruism that you have been seeking and seeking and not finding, because the whole thing was upside down.
You are told to love your neighbor - but you have never loved yourself. And a person who has not loved himself, how can he love the neighbor? From where can he get love? First you have to have it.
You are loving the neighbor - you who knows nothing of love because you have never loved yourself.
The neighbor is loving you - he has never loved himself. Such insanity is happening in the world:
people who know nothing of love are loving each other.
It is like beggars begging from each other, each thinking the other is the emperor. Both are thinking in the same way: the other is the emperor. Both are beggars. Sooner or later the reality manifests itself; then there is misery, suffering. Then you think you have been cheated, this beggar has been trying to prove himself an emperor. Now this is absolutely absurd - it is you who were thinking him an emperor. And the same is the situation from the other side: the other person thinks you have been cheating him, pretending to be an emperor and you are just a beggar.
When both beggars find that they are beggars, what else can they do other than be angry, enraged, violent to each other, hating each other as deeply as possible? And the love ...? It was nothing; they don't know what love is.
To know anything, you have to begin with yourself.
[....]
But during the whole of your life this is happening. You go on forgetting that you don't know what love is. You have never loved yourself, you have never respected yourself, you have never considered yourself.
I teach you to be selfish. Learn swimming first; then perhaps you can save somebody. There is no need to go in search of somebody to save.
That's what the Christian missionary does - he is in search of people to save. They even approach us here - where everybody is saved! They try to convince sannyasins - and our sannyasins enjoy it tremendously. It is really hilarious: trying to save somebody who is saved! On dry land, in a desert, in Oregon, trying to save somebody ...!
Do you think in this dry creek ... even if you try to kill yourself by drowning, it is impossible.
Our sannyasins say to them, "We are saved" - but they don't listen, they go on saying that, "Christ is the savior." But this is strange. If a man is not sick why should he enter your hospital, or drink your medicine? Isn't anybody allowed to be just healthy?
No! According to these religions everybody is born sick, and from your very birth they are trying to save you. And they have created this world where nobody knows what love is, nobody knows what respect is, nobody knows what truth is; nobody knows anything which can make life bliss.
Yes, everybody knows how to create troubles for himself and for others. Everybody is so skilled in creating misery - and the whole cause is that you have been told to be unselfish. You have been told to sacrifice yourself for some idiotic ideal.
I want you just to be simply selfish.
And you will be surprised that if you are selfish you discover so many treasures within yourself that soon you start sharing them - because finding a treasure is a lesser joy than sharing it.
And the treasures that are within you don't follow the ordinary economics and its laws. They are just the very opposite, diametrically opposite to the ordinary economic structure.
In the ordinary economics if you give something, you will have less. If you go on giving, soon you will be a beggar. In the ordinary economic world you have to snatch as much from everybody as possible then you have more and more and more. The treasures I am talking about to you, follow a different law: if you cling to them they shrink, if you cling too much you can even kill them. If you want to destroy them, then close all the windows and doors, become a grave so nothing can escape outside you - but you will be a dead man, with all your treasures also dead with you; your truth, your freedom, your love, your joy. Everything will be dead with you - securely dead, well-insured.
But if you want to grow your treasures, share them, share to all and sundry - don't bother whether this is a friend or a foe. When you are sharing, the question is of sharing, it is not with whom.
Whomever it may concern, you simply give. Don't be concerned about the address, you simply go on sending love letters. Somebody will receive them somewhere. And the more you go on sharing, the more goes on entering you from unknown sources. A man is just like a well ....
It happens in hot countries - in India, in many places - that there are only two wells in the village:
one that belongs to the richest man, in his compound, and the other for everybody, the people.
Certainly the well of the rich man is deeper, bigger; the people's well is as poor as the people are. In summer the people's well will dry out, but they cannot be allowed to use the rich man's well because - this is ordinary economics - if they go on taking the water from his well, his well will dry out too.
It happened in one village, the rich man was so afraid of his well going dry, that not only did he disallow anybody from the town to take water, he disallowed his own family. He simply closed the well, locked it.
His servants brought water from many miles away, from a river. It seemed sane because for three years there had been no rain and there was a danger that his well might dry out; even the river was becoming thinner and thinner every day. So he was saving his well for the last moment when there would be no water anywhere available; at least he would have water in the last moments of the summer.
The river dried out, and he had to open his well. It was full of water, but the water was not drinkable anymore, it had become poisoned.
A well remains drinkable if you go on taking water from it. The more water is taken out, the more water from the hidden sources all around the earth goes on coming into the well; fresh water goes on coming into it. Because the well was closed there was no need for the fresh water to come in, there was no way. So all the sources closed, and the water died; it became poisonous.
The same happens to the person who is afraid of sharing himself. He cannot save his treasures - this is not the way to save them, this is the way to destroy them.
So when I say be selfish, I am really trying to help you to become as unselfish as possible; that's the only way.
Be selfish.
Find out your truth, your love, your compassion - all that you have brought into the world with your birth.
And start giving it to those who need, to those who do not need; to those whom you love, to those whom you don't love. You should not make any distinctions; only then can you expand. When there are no distinctions, no categories, you start expanding.
And that expansion is the truth; That expanding consciousness is the truth.
And it is right this very moment within you, you have not to go anywhere else.
But at least let the question be yours so that I can help you to find the answer which will be yours.
My answer is of no help:
My answer will be only words to you.
You can make holy scriptures of those words, you can worship those words. That's what humanity has been doing for thousands of years. It is time to stop this garbage.
I want you to find your answer, but that is possible only when you start with your question.
So ask, "What is truth?" and don't be so insulting to truth that you ask, "Whatsoever it is, why are people not interested in it?" Don't shift it to somebody else's shoulders. Say sincerely, "Why am I not interested in it?"
This is not a Sunday sermon. I am not a speaker, a lecturer, an orator. I don't know anything about oratory. I am simply talking to you, man to man, human being to human being. It has to be immediate, direct.
I am not somebody sent by God.
I am just born amongst you, just like you.
If there is any difference, this is the difference: I began with my own questions. And that's almost half the journey finished. The first half is the most difficult, the second half is not so difficult.
Accept your ignorance.
In that very acceptance you have taken a wise step; perhaps you have had the first glimpse of wisdom.
Recognize that "I am not interested in truth." In that very recognition there will be a shocking realization; perhaps a door that was closed may open in that shock.
But remember, it is your quest:
It has to be your question.
And I do not want to give you any answer.
I can only show you the way to find your own answer. Truth liberates, but it has to be your own.
Otherwise, if it is somebody else's, truth binds. Jesus Christ's truth, Mohammed's truth, Buddha's truth, have all become prisons. I don't want my truth to become a prison for anybody.
I want my truth to be an inspiration.
I want my truth to trigger something in you which is yours.
My truth simply gives you an assurance that a human being, just like you, can attain to truth.
That will give you immense respect towards yourself. You will not feel unworthy sinners, that somebody has to come to save you - some Christ, some Buddha has to come, and then you will be saved. You don't have to wait for anybody to save you. You are born saved, just a little insight .... If my presence can do that, then my work is finished.
I don't want to become a prison around you.
I want to become a freedom around you, an open sky around you, not a golden cage - so that you can open your wings and feel the joy of flying higher and higher towards the stars.
- Osho, "From Darkness to Light, #22"