You have been told to have faith in the scriptures, faith in the words of God, faith in the religious teachers. I don't say this at all. I say: have faith in yourself. It is only by knowing yourself that you can know what there is in the scrip¬tures, what the words of God are. One who has no faith in himself finds all his other beliefs meaningless. Can you stand on someone else's feet if you cannot stand on your own? Buddha has said: "Be a light unto yourself. Be your own refuge. There is no right refuge except the refuge of one own self." I say the same thing. <…>
Someone once asked a monk, "What is meditation?" He replied, "To be in that which is near is meditation."
What is near you? Except for your self, isn't everything else at a distance from you? Only you are near your self. But by deserting yourself, you are always somewhere else — you are always somewhere in the neighborhood. But you are not to be in the neighborhood, you are to be in yourself. That is meditation. When you are nowhere and your mind too is nowhere, even then you are somewhere. That being somewhere is meditation.
When you are nowhere, you are in your self. And that is not being in the neighborhood: that is not being away. That is inwardness; that is nearness, intimacy. Only by being there does one awaken into the truth. It is by being in the neighborhood that you have lost everything and it is by being in your self that it all can be regained.
I don't ask you to renounce the world, I ask you to transform yourself. By denying the world you will not change, but when you have changed, the world ceases to be the world for you. True religion is not world-rejecting, it is self-transforming. Don't think of the world but of your outlook in relation to the world. You have to change that. It is because of your outlook that there is the world and there is bondage. It is not the world, but your outlook that is the bondage. Once your outlook is changed, the whole existence changes for you. There is no fault in the world. The fault lies in you and your outlook.
The science for transformation of life is called meditation. Through analysis, physical science reaches the atom and atomic power, but meditation reaches the soul and soul power. Through the former, the mystery hidden in matter is discovered; through the latter, the universe hidden within the self is revealed. But the latter is more important than the former because there is nothing in existence more important than one's own self.
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| A human being, like a tree, essentially needs to find a balance | |
Man has lost his balance because he knows a lot about matter but nothing about himself. He has learned how to dive into the unfathomable depths of the ocean and how to fly into the amazing heights of space but he has completely forgotten how to enter into his own self. This is a suicidal state. This is exactly our misery. Meditation can free you from this imbalance. It needs to be taught. Only through meditation can the birth of a new man in the true sense take place and can the foundations of a new humanity be laid.
* excerpt from OSHO.The Perfect Way
Updated on 06-05-2014
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