There are two kings of purity, two kinds of virtue, two kinds of morality. One is the cultivated kind, from the outside — you have to practise it. It is a conditioning. Deep down you remain the same but you cover yourself with a beautiful facade. It is a superficial thing that can be scratched very easily and your reality will come rushing towards the surface.

 

You were smiling and you were all grace and somebody insults you; suddenly all grace is gone and all smiling is gone and the animal inside you takes possession. And you start doing things which you would not have ever thought you were capable of. And later on you will repent and you will say ‘How did it happen? — I don’t know.’

 

This cultivated kind of virtue, purity, morality has created a division in man, between the circumference and the centre; and this division is one of the most dangerous situations, because no man can be at ease. It creates tensions. You cannot be yourself because you are two — how can you be yourself? If you decide to follow the circumference, the centre becomes neglected, ignored, rejected; and it takes revenge. If you follow the centre, the circumference is angry, as if you have been programmed by two diametrically opposite programmes. One you have brought from nature and one has been put on you by the society, so you are always in a state of conflict and inner turmoil. This is hell.

 

The second kind of purity, virtue and morality is not the cultivated one. I emphasise the second kind. It comes through meditation, not through cultivation. You simply have to become aware of your innermost core, you have to relax towards your centre. You have to settle at the centre and bring awareness there. You have to be fully alert at the centre, and that very alertness at the centre transforms the centre. Awareness is the greatest transforming agent in the world; nothing has ever surpassed it.

 

It is just like light; you bring the light in the room and all the darkness is gone. When you become aware at the centre your whole being is full of light, and out of that light your circumference acts. Then there is a unity, no conflict; and that unity is true sanity, true health, true wholeness. And that wholeness brings great ecstasy, great benediction.

 

So never follow the circumference because the centre is very powerful. You cannot drag the centre behind the circumference, but if your centre is transformed the circumference follows it naturally, like a shadow. Then there is no problem at all.

 

All the religions have been teaching the first kind of morality — that’s where I differ. I teach a totally different kind of virtue which arises as a natural consequence of centering, grounding, awareness.

 

– Osho, “The Old Pond ... Plop, #18”