OSHO,
What is more important in your approach ?
to be thyself or to know thyself ?
Do you think they are different?
How can you know yourself if you are not yourself? And vice versa — how can you be yourself if you don’t know who you are? To be thyself and to know thyself are not two separate things, hence the question of choice does not arise. They are two aspects of a single process.
You have to work on both together simultaneously; neither can be neglected. But it is easier to start from being thyself; easier, because you have been distracted from yourself by others. The masks that you are carrying are not your own imposition. Unwillingly, reluctantly, you have been forced to be someone other than you are; hence it is easier to throw it off.
Slavery of any kind is easier to get rid of, because intrinsically who wants to be a slave? That is not in the nature of any being, human or not human. Slavery is against existence; hence it is easier to throw it off. It always remains a burden, and deep down you continue to fight with it, even though on the surface you follow it; deep down nobody can make you accept it. At the innermost core of your being it remains rejected forever; hence it is easier to throw it off.
The process is simple. Whatever you are doing, whatever you are thinking, whatever you are deciding, remember one thing: is it coming from you or is somebody else speaking?
Just knowing that it is not your voice but somebody else’s — whosoever that somebody else is — you know that you are not going to follow it. Whatsoever the consequences, good or bad, now you are deciding to move on your own, you are deciding to be mature. You have remained a child long enough. You have remained dependent long enough. Enough you have listened to all these voices and followed them. And where have they brought you? In a mess.
So once you figure out whose voice it is, say goodbye to it…because the person who had given that voice to you was not your enemy.
His intention was not bad, but it is not a question of his intention. The question is that he imposed something on you which is not coming from your own inner source; and anything that comes from outside makes you a psychological slave.
But before you can come to know yourself you have to be yourself
You have to drop all these personalities like clothes and you have to come to your utter nudity.
And from there is the beginning.
And then the second thing is very simple. The whole problem is with the first thing; the second thing is very simple. When personalities are gone, the crowd has left you, you are alone. Close your eyes, you will see who you are — because there is nobody else. There is only awareness of immense silence, of no object.
The night is over, the sunrise has happened — and a sunrise that is never going to become a sunset.
OSHO: From Ignorance to Innocence, Chapter 13
What is it to be oneself? It means to be one’s positive self. People say: ‘I was born with a bad temper; that is how I am.’ That is exactly not being oneself. To be means to be positive. To be negative means not to be. Negativeness, zero, a minus quantity by definition is not.
A positive force by its very nature gives out. To be ourselves we must give give attention, give interest, give whatever we can at every moment. Then we are ourselves, we have being. First comes respect, then love, then harmony. First we must respect ourselves. Charity begins at home; that means in ourselves. Someone who says: ‘I am stupid, I am vulgar, I am bad’ is blaspheming God, because God is in everyone. It is true that we are all temples of the Holy Ghost. When we realize that we have done something stupid or vulgar or wrong we should say: ‘This is in me; I will take it out of me because it does not belong in me; for my own self-respect, because my real self is not like this, I will not act like this.’ When we act wrongly we are acting, be- having in a way that is not in accordance with what we are. We cannot act rightly; we can only be right, and then our behaviour is in accordance with what we are. We should not try to do things – just be. Be ourselves, love God, be friends with our neighbour. Friendship means being alert to the needs of one’s neighbour and ready to help him. To say: ‘What can I do for my neighbour?’ is to think of oneself. To be, alert, open, loving, is all that is necessary. Then one will act rightly without trying to do right. To be oneself is to obey one’s conscience. Conscience is our alarm-clock.
[Page 13 rodney collin mirror on the light]
First point: to aim to know oneself; second point: to know that one docs not know oneself; third point: to know oneself, to be oneself. To find something that docs not change, that is to find oneself. How to find it? By what we see in other people. That which shocks us in other people is what we have in ourselves; that which we respect in other people we have in ourselves too. If we recognize a quality in someone else, that means we have it ourselves.[15]
thing real and clean to offer to God. Christ said: ‘Leave all you have and follow Me.’ That did not mean that we should leave all the circumstances of our lives. It meant leave the falseness in ourselves and be our real selves. Only the real self can follow Him.[16,17]
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BE-Thyself
Institute for the harmonious development of being
Mission: The Institute for the development of being is dedicated to the enablement of conscious living and dying, personal transformation, the attainment of higher personal consciousness, in service to the vision of a living universe.
BE-Thyself works with individuals to provide tools of service in these areas, to expand perception and awareness, and cultivate high attention and presence.
What We Do
Why do we do
The five ‘being-obligolnian-strivings’ given to us by the Most Most Saintly Ashiata Shiemash is at the very heart of the organization He created for the welfare of humanity. These are the five strivings as He introduced them with the paragraph at the opening of their enumeration:
All the beings of this planet then began to work in order to have in their consciousness this Divine function of genuine conscience, and for this purpose, as everywhere in the Universe, they transubstantiated in themselves what are called the ‘being-obligolnian-strivings’ which consist of the following five, namely
The first striving: to have in their ordinary being existence everything satisfying and really necessary for their planetary body
The second striving: to have a constant and unflagging instinctive need for self-perfection in the sense of being
The third: the conscious striving to know ever more and more concern the laws of World-creation and World-maintenance.
The fourth: the striving from the beginning of their existence to pay for their arising and their individuality as quickly as possible, in order afterwards to be free to lighten as much as possible the Sorrow of our common father.
And the fifth: the striving always to assist the most rapid perfecting of other beings, both those similar to oneself and those of other forms, up to the degree of the sacred ‘Martfotai,’ that is, up to the degree of self-individuality.
(All and Everything by G.I. Gurdjieff, page 385.)