These are the sutras achieved by ultimate wisdom. They are deep and sometimes very complex, even contradictory, but they are the ultimate flowering of wisdom.

 

When a Buddha becomes a Buddha or a Christ becomes a Christ, these sutras are revealed. If you can understand them, even understanding will transform you. If you can feel the reality hidden in them, you will be a different man altogether. So try to understand them very deeply.

 

The first sutra:

 

Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior.

 

He is thyself, yet thou art but finite and liable to error. He is eternal and is sure. He is eternal truth. When once he has entered thee and become thy warrior, he will never utterly desert thee, and at the day of the great peace he will become one with thee.

 

Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. We are in a constant fight with ourselves. The struggle continues night and day. The whole life is a battlefield, but you reach nowhere. You are neither defeated totally nor are you victorious. The struggle continues, and life energy is dissipated unnecessarily. You just waste yourself and your existence. What is the cause? Why are you never victorious? Why does the struggle never end?

 

You fight with sex, you fight with anger, you fight with greed. You fight with everything, but you still remain in the grip of those things you are fighting. The more you fight sex, the more you are in its grip and the more you feel you have to fight more. It is a vicious circle. You fight more and then sex becomes more attractive; sex becomes more magnetic. You take many decisions not to be angry, but every decision is a failure. And the total result is this: that in the end you feel you are guilty, inferior; in the end you feel that you are not capable of doing anything, you feel an inner defeat.

 

This has happened to the whole of humanity. Humanity is so sad now not because of anything else that has happened in this age but only because so many ages of religious fight, so many centuries of continuous religious struggle, have proven to the human mind that nothing can be achieved. The human mind feels a deep failure. This creates sadness and depression.

 

Hope has become hopeless. There seems to be no way out of it. You can struggle, but everything is futile, a wastage; no one achieves anything. This has happened not because the human mind is not capable of victory. This has happened because the base of the struggle is wrong, the whole effort of the struggle is wrong. Why? Because you are fighting with yourself. How can you win?

 

If I create a conflict between my two hands, left and right, I can go on fighting but there will be no victory and no defeat, because both hands belong to me. The urge for sex belongs to me and the urge to go beyond sex also belongs to me; they are both my hands. I can go on fighting, I can go on changing from one to the other – sometimes siding with the right hand, sometimes with the left – but nothing is going to happen because I am within both. How can there be defeat or victory? For defeat and victory at least two are needed and I am alone, fighting with myself. This whole fight is a shadow fight, nonsense.

 

Then what to do? This sutra gives you the key: Stand aside in the coming battle and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. Stand aside. Be a witness.

 

Remember this word ‘witness’. This is one of the key words in the search for spirituality. If you can understand this word and practice it, you don’t need anything else. Even this one key will open all the doors of paradise. This is a master key. Any lock can be opened by it. What does it mean to stand aside?

 

When sex arises in you, you get identified with it. Then, when you have moved through the sex act, depression sets in, because you hoped so much and nothing has happened. You longed too much, you expected too much, and nothing has happened. The whole thing has just been a fraud. You feel betrayed, deceived. Then repentance sets in and you start thinking in anti-sex terms. You start thinking how to be brahmacharya, how to be a celibate. You think in terms of how to be a monk; you go against sex. Then you get identified with that ‘anti’ attitude.

 

Witnessing means that when sex arises, stand aside and look at it. Don’t get identified. Don’t say, “I have become sex.” Say, “Sexual desire has arisen in me. Now I must observe it.” Don’t be for it and don’t be against it. Remain quiet and calm – just an observer.

 

That doesn’t mean to suppress it, because suppression will not allow you to know what it is. Don’t suppress it. Suppression means that you are identified with the ‘anti’ attitude. Remember this: if you suppress, you are identified with the ’anti’ attitude. Don’t suppress, don’t get identified. Allow it to happen. Don’t be afraid; just wait and watch.

 

Move in the sex act but with a watchful eye, knowing well what is happening and allowing it to happen. Not disturbing it, not suppressing it – allowing it to become manifest in its totality, but standing aside as if you are watching someone else.

 

The act will move to its peak. Go with it, but always standing by the side. Know whatsoever is happening in detail. Be alert; don’t lose awareness. Then, from the peak, you will start falling down and the ‘anti’ attitude will set in. Be alert again. Don’t get identified with the ’anti’ attitude. Look at what is happening: the wave has gone up to a peak; now the wave is falling down. Sex is the wave arising. brahmacharya, the ‘anti’ attitude toward sex, is the wave falling down.

 

Be aware, be alert. Don’t be for or against; don’t condemn; don’t make any judgement. Don’t be a judge; just be a witness. Don’t say, “This is good. That is bad.” Don’t say anything. Just be alert and watch what is happening. Be true to the facts; don’t give any interpretation. That’s what witnessing means.

 

If you can be a witness to sex, and to the anti-sex attitude, you will come to a great understanding. That understanding will tell you that sex and anti-sex are two poles of one wave. They are not really opposite to one another. They are just the rising and falling down of the same wave. They are one, so there is nothing to choose. If you choose one you have already chosen the other, because it is part of it, the hidden part of it. If you choose one you have already chosen the other because the other cannot be separated from it. They are one, so there is no choice. Then, choicelessness happens to you.

 

That choicelessness is the path of victory. Now you don’t choose; there is nothing to choose. And a miracle happens: when you don’t choose, both fall down. Sex and brahmacharya both disappear and for the first time you are not in their clutches, for the first time you are not in the hold of the opposites.

 

Witnessing is the beginning, and witnessing is the end. The first step and the last step are one. Witnessing is the means and witnessing is the goal. Then the fight goes on, but you are not the warrior. Now the fighting is on a different level. What is that level?

 

Now, sex and anti-sex are both present to you simultaneously. This simultaneous presence of the opposites is the fight. They fight with each other, and you remain a witness. Because they are opposites, anti-poles, they destroy each other completely and both disappear. They are of the same strength and the same energy. They cut each other, they negate each other.

 

This is the fight. But you are not the warrior; you are just a witness. You are just looking from without: a watcher on the hills. Down in the valley the fight will go on, but now you are just a watcher on the tower. You just look down and you know they are fighting; the opposites are fighting. But they negate each other, because they are of the same strength.

 

Remember this: only a very deeply sexual person can become a brahmacharya. Much sexual desire can be converted into brahmacharya. If you are just ordinarily sexual you cannot become a brahmacharya because to become a brahmacharya much energy is needed. And the opposite energies are always equivalent, so only very deeply sexual persons become brahmacharyas. Ordinary persons, with ordinary, natural sex, never move to that extreme. They cannot. The energy to move comes from sex. Opposite energies are equivalent.

 

You need not fight; you need not take part from this side or that side. That is the way of defeat. Just remain aside, get out of the circle – be a witness.

 

It is difficult, because the mind wants to choose; the mind always chooses. Mind is the chooser because, without choosing, there will be no mind; you will fall out of the mind. That’s why it is so difficult not to choose.

 

Even what I am saying . . . Many of you may choose to follow what I am saying, but you will choose to do so for a reason. People come to me and when I say, “Be a witness,” they immediately ask, “If I become a witness will sexuality disappear?” Then they cannot become a witness because they have already chosen. They ask, “Will sexuality disappear if I become a witness?” They are even ready to become a witness if sexuality will disappear!

 

But they have made a choice. They have decided that sexuality is bad and brahmacharya is good. They ask me, “If I become a witness will I become brahmacharya, will I become celibate?” They are missing the whole point. I am saying, “Don’t choose,” and they have already chosen. They want to use witnessing as an instrument for their choice. But you cannot use witnessing that way.

 

One man came to me. He was a seeker, a serious seeker. But stupid. There are many stupid seekers: serious. And when I say stupid I mean this: they can’t understand what they are doing.

 

The man was suffering from sex. Everyone is suffering because of sex. The suffering has gone so deep that you don’t only suffer because of your own sexuality; you suffer because of others’ sexuality also. This seems to be madness. You suffer because of your own sexuality and you suffer because of others’ sexuality also, because of what others are doing.

 

Enough misery can be created by your own sexuality. Why be concerned with others? But that misery doesn’t seem to be enough for you so you go on collecting what others are doing: who is doing wrong and who is being good. Who are you to decide? From where have you been given the right? Who are you to become a policeman?

 

The man who came to see me was a policeman. He was suffering because of what everyone else was doing. But I told him, “Don’t be worried about others. The real problem must be within you. You have not yet come to terms with your sexuality, that is the problem. Why suffer because of others? Why create other problems? Just to escape from your own problems? Just to be occupied? Who has appointed you to be a policeman? Why waste your life? You must be deeply sex-obsessed; that’s why you are concerned with others.”

 

So he said, “You have touched the right wound. I am now sixty-five, and I am still suffering. As I become older, I suffer more. It seems that sexuality is growing with my age. The energy is less, but the sexuality is more. As death is coming near, I feel to be more and more sexual. My whole mind, for twenty-four hours, is obsessed with sex.”

 

I told him, “You have been fighting sex continuously.” He is a great seeker. He has remained with so many saints, so many gurus. I told him, “They have destroyed you. You have reached nowhere. Whatsoever you have been doing is wrong. Now, don’t fight sex anymore.”

 

The man became afraid. He said, “I have been fighting sex. And this is the reason: even with fighting I am so sexual. Now you say, ‘Don’t fight it!’ Then I will become completely mad.”

 

So I told him, “You have tried fighting. Now try the other. You have reached nowhere. Now, don’t fight!”

 

“Then what,” he asked, “am I supposed to do?”

 

I told him, “Be a witness.”

 

He asked, “Will sexuality disappear then?”

 

I told him, “If you become a witness with a partisan view – for brahmacharya, against sex – you cannot become a witness. And if you cannot become a witness, sexuality cannot disappear. Become a witness. Sexuality will disappear, but remember, brahmacharya will also disappear with it.” There is no need of brahmacharya when sexuality disappears. It is part of the same game. When the disease has disappeared, what is the use of the medicine? You will throw the medicine with the disease. So I told him, “Brahmacharya will also disappear. But remember not to choose.”

 

He said, “I will try.”

 

After three months – I told him to come back after three months – he came and he said, “But sex has not yet disappeared.” This is what I call stupidity. “Sex has not yet disappeared, and I have been practicing witnessing for three months.”

 

The unconscious choice remains: sex must disappear. Then you cannot be a witness. Witnessing means no choice, choiceless awareness. This is one of the most fundamental keys for all the diseases of the human mind. If you can become a witness, the opposites fight against each other, kill each other, and both are dead, both disappear. But if you choose one thing over the other, you cannot be a witness.

 

The second sutra:

 

Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee.

 

. . . Look for him, else in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest pass him; and he will not know thee unless thou knowest him. If thy cry meets his listening ear, then will he fight in thee and fill the dull void within.

 

Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee. Don’t be the warrior; there is no need. The warrior is this phenomenon: presenting to your consciousness both of the opposites simultaneously.

 

Ordinarily, only one is present. When sex is present? you are not thinking of brahmacharya. When brahmacharya is present, you are not thinking of sex. One is present and the other is hidden. This is the misery.

 

Bring out the other simultaneously and this will become the warrior for you. Bring them out simultaneously. When you are filled with anger, bring in repentance immediately. You always repent – but later on. When you are angry, you are angry. When the anger has done its devastation, then repentance comes in and you start taking oaths that you are not going to be angry again. But the anger and the repentance never meet. Allow the opposites to meet. They will negate each other.

 

If you go on moving from one opposite to another, you will never be victorious. You have wasted many lives like this, and you can waste infinite lives. But this is the secret: bring the opposites out simultaneously; allow them to be present before you simultaneously. Don’t follow one. If you follow one, the other is waiting for you. When you are bored, when you get fed up with one, the other will catch hold of you.

 

If the opposites cannot meet, they cannot negate each other. You need not do anything. This is the miracle; this is the inner chemistry. Bring the opposites together and just watch them. They will fight; allow them to fight. You need not get involved in it; just remain by the side. They will disappear together. Once they are present together, they will not persist; both will disappear.

 

So a Mahavir is not a brahmachari. Sex and brahmacharya have both disappeared. He is just innocent; he’s just like a child. A Buddha has not become nonangry; anger and non-anger both have disappeared. He is innocent; both are not there. A Krishna is neither a sansari nor a sannyasi; he neither belongs to the world nor belongs to the other anti-world of renunciation. Both have disappeared; he is innocent. The perfection, the wholeness of consciousness, is in innocence.

 

And when I use the word ‘innocence’ I mean absence of the opposites. Absence of the opposites is the purity. If you have chosen one, you are not pure. The other is hidden in the unconscious; both are there.

 

Both will be there if one is there. The other cannot be separated; it can only be hidden. And if the one is not there, the other cannot be there. Both will disappear; the whole field of opposites disappears. Then you are innocent. That innocence is liberation, that innocence is divine, that innocence is nirvana.

 

The third sutra:

 

Take his orders for battle and obey them.

 

Obey him not as though he were a general but as though he were thyself, and his spoken words were the utterance of thy secret desires, for he is thyself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself.

 

Find out the witness and then obey him. First find the witness and then obey him, because to find the witness means to find one’s own innermost core.

 

We live on two layers, two levels. One is the periphery: the world of action. The other is the inner being, the world of no-action: the world of existence, not of doing.

 

All that we do is on the periphery and all that we are is at the center. We have to continuously move from the center to the periphery to do some thing. Whenever you are doing something, you are on the periphery. Whatsoever you are doing, you are on the periphery. When you are non-doing, not doing anything, then you are at the center.

 

Witnessing is a non-act. Meditation is a non-act.

 

We are doing meditation here. For thirty minutes you are on the periphery doing something: breathing, catharsis, the hoo mantra. You are doing something; you are on the periphery. When I suddenly say, “Stop!” I mean: now be in the non-act, in non-doing. When you suddenly stop you are thrown from the periphery to the being, to the innermost center, because when you are not doing anything, you are not needed on the periphery. You need to be on the periphery only while you are doing something. Now you are thrown back to your center. That center is your witness.

 

Once you know this center, once you recognize this center, once you have felt this center – follow the orders. You will be directed; you have found your master. Now follow whatsoever is said to you from the center and don’t listen to the periphery. The periphery is cultivated by others and your center is untouched, virgin; it is from the divine.

 

The periphery comes from the society. That’s why we say that a sannyasin goes beyond society. Not against society, beyond society. Now he follows his own innermost center; he’s not following anyone else. All orders from others are meaningless now.

 

You have found your own inner being, and now that being can direct you. That being is infinitely stronger and wiser than thyself. The ‘you’ on the periphery is a weakling; the ‘you’ at the center is infinitely potent. The ‘you’ on the periphery is just a worldly thing; the ’you’ at the center is God himself.

 

But first find out:

 

Jesus has said, “First seek ye the kingdom of God. Then all else will follow.” Don’t bother about other things. First find out the innermost core of the kingdom of God. Then you need not worry about anything; all else will follow.

 

Just follow the inner voice. But how? You don’t know what the inner voice is, you don’t know what the inner is. Society has confused you deeply. It goes on saying that its own voice is your inner voice. The society has placed many voices in you just to control you from within.

 

It is a social need. Society controls you in two ways. One, by outer arrangements: the policeman on the street, the court, the judge, the law, the government. This is the outer arrangement, but it is not enough. You can deceive the law, you can manipulate the court. And the policeman, of course, is just another human being. So that arrangement is not enough. You can do whatsoever you like and you can play tricks with the law; you can find loopholes because human-made laws can be violated by other humans very easily. All that is needed is more intelligence, more intelligence than the law makers. Then you can deceive it. So society cannot rely on the outer law because there are intelligent people, more intelligent that law-makers. They will find loopholes, and they will be illegal in a legal way, and you cannot do anything. And the more laws you create, the more loopholes.

 

Then society tries another way – and that is a more effective thing. It creates a conscience in you: the inner policeman, the inner court. It gives you a feeling “This is wrong” – and from the very childhood it goes on reinforcing it: “This is wrong. Don’t do this. Don’t be a thief. Don’t deceive your wife. Don’t love another’s wife,” it goes on saying.

 

This becomes an inner conditioning, so whenever you feel an attraction toward another’s wife, the inner voice . . . This is not the inner voice. This is society’s voice playing within you. The voice comes: “This is wrong, this is a sin!” and you start trembling. This is the social trick: the policeman outside and the policeman within.

 

I am not saying to and love someone’s wife – I am not saying that. I am simply saying that this is a social mechanism, a social device to make you a slave through yourself. And it is more successful, remember. It is more successful.

 

Today’s world has become less moral because this “inner voice” is not so strong; society has become incapable of reinforcing it. The outer law is greater, more complex, but the inner law has weakened for many reasons: when people, societies lived aloof and along it was easy to create the inner conscience. Now, the whole earth has become a village, with many societies, many inner voices conflicting. Now no one can rely on . . . Every child knows that whatsoever you say is “good” in India is “bad” in Pakistan.

 

What is good for a Hindu may not be good for a Jain. No matter what you say is true, the contradictory is also true somewhere; it is not absolute. Now we have become aware of the whole complexity of the human conscience, we know that your conscience is just a social product.

 

So many societies exist together that the hold has become weak. Human societies are less moralistic now because the inner policeman is dead, almost dead. You know that what it says means nothing: don’t bother about it. Just observe the outer law . . . and try to find a way around it. What I’m saying is that the voice of the inner policeman is not your voice. Find out the witness. Only then will you find out the inner voice.

 

The inner voice will direct you. Its directions will be absolutely different from what society says – absolutely different. But for the first time you will become religious, not simply moral. You will be moral in a much deeper sense.

 

Morality will not be a duty; it will not be something imposed upon you. It will not be a burden; it will be spontaneous. You will be good, naturally good. You will not become a thief – not because society says, “Don’t be a thief,” but because you cannot be. You will not kill because it is impossible. You love life so much now that violence becomes impossible. It is not a moral code; it is an inner direction.

 

You affirm life, you revere life. A deep reverence comes to you, and through that reverence everything follows. That is what Jesus says. “Find out the kingdom of God first, and then everything will follow.”

 

Find the inner voice, and then everything will follow.

 

-Osho, “The New Alchemy: to Turn You On, #10”