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OSHO - Talks on WHO AM I?
OSHO - Talks on WHO AM I?
“The first foundation of a Real Life is the answer to the Question: WHO AM I?" -OSHO
1. WHO AM I?
“Life is useless if I don’t know who I am, if I don’t know from where I come and if I don’t know to where I am going. I have to know it, because without knowing it whatsoever I am doing is foolish is going to be stupid. Without knowing who I am whatsoever I do is meaningless: Meaning can arise only when I know my nature and start moving according to my nature.
When there is a harmony of me and the existence that Surrounds me, only then can there be joy and bliss.
2. WHO AM I?
The Question is never solved but
The questioner disappears!
I am here not to dissolve you questions but
to dissolve you
And that is going to happen....
That is already on the way.
3. WHO AM I?
DISCIPLE : I did not get the answer to my Question.
My Question was who am I?
OSHO : There is no answer!
Disciple : Other People got answers........ well, They were
happy with their answers.
OSHO:
All answers are created answers, but people feel happy because something..... There is no answer.
To get that - that there is no answer – is to get it but one will not feel very happy because one feels as if one has missed.
We have a constant mind to achieve something-anything but something has to be achieved.
When we achieve something we feel good. If you can get an answer then you feel good. The answer may be just rubbish......... and all answers are rubbish.
The question is not a question that needs any answer. The question is just to destroy all you answers and to show you the futility of all answers. When all answers have been dropped the question goes on resounding, resounding, resounding.......
Then a point comes when you see the whole futility of the question. The question also disappears.
That state – when there is no question and no answer that state of no-mind-is the answer but there is no answer in it.
It is that space, that very space that purity that innocence, that non verbal space where you are not asking and you are not searching for any question.
When there is no search, no enquiry and yet you are perfectly alive and perfectly alive and perfectly alert and aware you have not fallen asleep.
The question is to help you first to drop answers. Second to keep you alert and awake. First answers disappear then the question disappears. Because you cannot go on asking, asking the question when there is no answer coming.
A moment comes when through the sheer futility of it the question also evaporates and you are left empty in a kind of nothingness. But that thingness is virgin. Out of that nothingness is bliss.
But this cannot be said to the people who are doing the who am I technique, because if you say to them that there is no answer from the very first, from the very beginning their question will be just so – so, They will not put energy into it because they know that there is no answer, so why bother?
Then they will never reach this state. So they have to be told again and again that there is an answer; they must go on and on and on. They have to be driven MAD;
They go on questioning, they go on questioning. When your whole energy has been put in to the question and there is nothing else you can do, the question disappears. And you are left for the first time in the Here now.
I am not saying that you attained this space I am not saying that you came to this point where question and answer disappear. Your question remained you didn’t get any answer but your question remained.
The Question was still there.
you had to go into it a little more.......
You had to struggle a little harder.
My feeling is you didn’t put your total energy into it.
Just a part of you asking and another part was thinking it was crazy what are you doing?
A part was asking and one part was thinking that it was just a game you can play it but there is nothing much in it.
All these things remained in the mind.
So you could not get to any answer because there is none. That is the good part.
But you could not get rid of the question;
That is the bad part.
So put your total energy into who am I?
4. Who am I?
Disciple:
It was the question of “Who am I ? “ which was very agonising to me.
OSHO:
It is agonising, because if you go deep into it, it creates the greatest ecstasy possible..... but the way to ecstasy goes through agony. It is agonising because the moment you ask who am I? you become aware that you don’t know. Not knowing is very agonising, it hurts the ego: So I don’t know even myself? This is too much I was always thinking I know everything and I don’t know even myself.
This is unacceptable to the ego. The ego feeds on knowledge information and this is very sad what else to claim you know if you don’t know yourself? What is the point of claiming that you know anything else? The foundation – That you know yourself – is lacking.
The question who am I? is meant to bring you to your right senses.... It is to hit you hard so that you become aware that you don’t know your self. That is the agony of as if you had much, and the question has taken it away from you. You used to think you are this and you are that and this simple question has taken all identities away you are left in a vacuum.
Just to feel that you don’t know yourself, is so maddening. One wants to cling to something – anything name, form, body, mind, soul, some theory, some hypothesis, anything but one wants to cling to something so that one is not lost in this emptiness. That’s why the agony.
But if you persist if you preserve, if you go deep into it and you accept that the agony is okay, by and by you will see that the agony disappeared. The clouds are no more there.... the smoke has gone far away.
You are in a clearance; Things are more clear. Not that you will know who you are. This question is not meant to bring an answer- The answer never comes; it is just a device to destroy the false answers.
The real answer never comes, because a real answer never comes inwards. It is not that some day Suddenly it will bubble up and you will know, Okay so this is who I am’ – No! All knowledge will disappear. You will be so perfectly at ease within yourself, So rooted, so undisturbed, so tranquil and calm. Now there is no answer, you cannot verbalise but you know.
This knowing is totally different from knowledge. It has nothing to do with the mind. It is not of the mind. It is an experience or rather, experiencing. You have encountered your reality face to face; you have seen it.
Not that you can say who you are – nobody has ever been able to. Who so ever has come to the ultimate core of his being has never said who he is. It cannot be said – but it is tremendously blissful to see it, to feel it, to be it. It is not an intellectual answer that arises, but an existential response.
You become a babe of bliss. You become a great blissful state. Old identities disappear and a new identity is not formed. So agony is there and you have to pass through it. That is the price we pay and then there is ecstasy.
If there is no agony in asking who am I? Then you are not asking the question rightly. You are just playing around.... You are not penetrating deep-it is not like an arrow.
But it has been good. You suffered this- this is good. This is a good indication that you worked hard at it. It is painful.
All growth is painful..........!
5. WHO AM I?
The divine question or the divine quest “who am I” is the most important thing. The answer is futile, Foolish, false. The question is real, because behind your question is hidden the real answer. The answer is not going to come from the outside. Nobody is going to give you the answer about who you are... what your life means. Nobody is going to give you the answer nobody can. The answer has to be found deep in the recesses of your own being. The answer has to come from exactly the same source as from where the question is coming.
So the question is tremendously significant, because the question shows the way from where you have to seek the answer. In the east we have never paid any attention to answers, because all answers are childish; only questions are alive.
You can start asking yourself, who am I? And don’t formulate any answer. Your mind will try to formulate who you are; it will immediately supply the answer-that answer is not true. That answer is from the outside. Somebody has told you or you have read somewhere or you have been conditioned for it.
The answer will be Christian, Hindu, mohammedan Communist. The answer may be from Kant, from Hegal from Russel but the answer comes from somewhere else It is somebody else’s answer... and it cannot become your answer. Your answer has to be born within you.
So let the question become a pregnancy-hold it there. There is no hurry to answer. The mind will play in the beginning. Whenever you ask ‘who am I?’ The mind will say ‘you are this’, ‘You are that,’
Those are all; consolations – don’t be befooled by them. Those are just tricks of the mind. That’s why people who listen to those tricks, never go deep..... They remain on the surface. Throw all those answers- /Remember they are rubbish.
How will you know that the real has come ? There is a way to know... First cancel all the answers that come from the memory, from the mind. Let the question remain alone. For a few months only the question will be there and all answers will have gone. Then you are on the right track. Now no answer comes- only the question is there. You ask ‘who am I’? and nothing comes. The mind is completely quiet.
And this will give you the First taste of meditation because that’s what meditation is all about: The quietness of the mind. And you have stilled the mind without making any effort. You were simply asking who am I?
Just sit silently at least once a day for one hour and jusk ask who am I? let the question vibrate inside you..... penetrate like an arrow. Feel the pain of it – it hurts. Each real question hurts became it helps to make a way into your being. It is like digging a hole in the earth. And just as in the earth, somewhere deep down there is a source of water, exactly in the same way, somewhere deep within you is the source of water which will quench the thirst and will answer the question.
And it is not going to be an intellectual answer; it is going to be existential. When it comes you will immediately know that it has exploded in you-as if thousands of suns have entered your being. It will be an explosion of light. It will not be just verbal. There will be no word. It will be an experience.
So use this question who am I? who am I? who am I? as a hammering, and go on. Go on rejecting all the answers-‘This is not’, ‘That is not’-neti-neti; neither this nor that. Go on saying, ‘This is not the answer’.
Let the question remain pure, uncorrupted by all the answers that you know. Then it will start setting deep inside you. Layer upon layer it will go deeper and deeper and deeper and one day out of nowhere suddenly in a single instant, you will find something arising in you, exploding............ tremendously vital, flooding you.
The experience will be of light, the experience will be of great sweetness., and the experience will be tremendous certainly. Not a single lucking doubt will be there, because it is self-evident. You need not have any proof of it. It is your experience-you don’t need any proof. It will simply take you off your ground. You will be in a totally different world – a new dimension has opened.
And this is the answer! This is hiding behind the question! There is only one significant question- who am I? And there is only one significant experience- the experience that comes when you dig this question to its very innermost core. That’s what all mystic have been trying to do.
This enquiry is going to be your path.
Enquiring of yourself. ‘who am I?’
6. WHO AM I?
Who am I? That who cannot be answered because ‘WHO’ is the fundamental mystery of existence. You cannot gobehind it because that will be going behind yourself. To know who you are – you will have to go behind yourself and look at yourself. But that is not possible because you will be behind and what so ever you look at will not be you. So infact the question ‘Who am I?’ is a koan.
Maharshi Ramana used to give that to every disciple to go on thinking who am I? But man is so foolish that those disciples are still repeating who am I? They think that someday the answer is going to come. There is no answer.
That question is such that by asking it continuously again and again you go on getting deeper and deeper into yourself. One day you suddenly see that the question is absurd ‘I am’! and there is no way to answer who you are. All answers are false. Then there comes great relaxation and in that relaxation is knowing.
But I am not saying that you will know who you are “nobody has ever known! no Buddha has ever known who he is”. Then what is the difference between a Buddha and an ordinary man? The Ordinary man thinks he knows who he is and the Buddha is one who knows that there is no way to know who he is, that is the difference.
The Buddha has come to recognise the futility of the question has renounced, the question and is simply happy by being.
He ‘NO’ more asks who am I? The ordinary person believes that he knows or if sometimes his belief is disturbed he is very much confused and he starts searching for the answer.
That’s what every sannyasin has to pass through between the ordinary person and the Buddha is the sannyasin.
The State of a sannyasin is the state of Confusion, chaos. So if you are confused things are happening, something is going on there is no fear. When I see some sannyasin not confused at all I am worried then I see that this man is going to remain ordinary he will not go anywhere.
Simply relax into this confusion. One day this confusion will also disappear. And when the confusion disappeared you will not have the answer Remember.
Just the confusion would have disappeared,
The Question would have disappeared,
An answer never comes.
There is No answer.
Life is a mystery:
Not a problem to be solved but
Mystery to be lived.
7. “WHO AM I?”
Why do people ask useless questions?
To avoid going in.
They pretend that they are great inquirers: they are interested in God, they are interested in the after life they are interested in heaven and hell.
And the real thing is that they are not interested in themselves:
To avoid that,
To avoid seeing this fact, that
I am not interested in my own being.”
They have created all these questions.
These question are their strategies to avoid their Central question “Who am I?”
True religion consists in the inquiry”: who am I And nobody else can answer it.
You will have to go digging deeper and deeper into your being.
One day, when you have reached the very source of your life, you will know.
That day, the real question and the real answer will have happened Simultaneously.
If you know the real question immediately you know the real answer too. They are not two separate things but two aspects of the same coin:
On one side the real question,
ON the other side the real answer.
8. “WHO AM I?”
Buddha has said
“Watch and disconnect yourself from the body. You are not the body.”
And the same has to be done with the mind.
Then watch again-Are you the thoughts?
How can you be the thoughts?
Thoughts come and go and you abide.
Thoughts are like reflections in the mirror; clouds passing in the sky, but the sky is not the clouds.
Desires, Memories. Imaginations they all come and go. you are not your mind either, so say “I am not my mind.” and thirdly
“I am not my heart either”- The feelings, the emotions which are the subtlest. Then who am I?
When you have cut these three identities almost nothing is left.
You have cut the very root of the ego.
Then you cannot even say ‘I am’.
You can only say
‘There is a certain amness but
There is no ‘I’.
‘I’ Consists of body, mind heart.
These are the three components of the body of the ego once these three are dropped eliminated the ego disappears.
Then there is only ‘pure awareness’
The body is a form,
The mind too is a form, and
The heart too is a form,
And the ego is the hold all, the bundle of all the forms
When everything has been taken out
The ego becomes empty and flops.
9. “WHO AM I?” (Technique)
Each day, sit silently, close the doors, put off the phone, and tell everybody that for one hour you are dead to the world-whatever happens: even if the house catches fire you are not going to come out.
Take a shower, have loose clothes if it is too cold to have no clothes on, otherwise be naked, and sit down: relaxed way will be perfectly good.
If this feels a little strenuous and difficult then you can sit on a chair.
To be comfortable is the point, so that you can remain in that posture for one hour at least.
Then close your eyes, relax the body and start destroying your relationships.
Think: If you are not the son of your father,
Then who are you? – disconnect it.
This is part of your identity, that you are the son of a certain man; disconnect it.
Think: If you are not the husband of yours wife
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
If you are not a father to your children,
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
If you are not a friend to your acquaintances
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
If you are not the citizen of the United States,
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
And go on disconnecting whatsoever you can find:
All kinds of connections are there,
All kinds of relationships are there,
You belong to a certain church,
You belong to a certain country,
You belong to this, you belong to that club,
You are a professor
You are a therapist, doctor, this and that go on disconnecting.
For twenty minutes work hard to disconnect all relationship.
You are left floating in the unknown – and then ask who am I?
Now those answers won’t do that you are a son of a certain man or the husband or the father.....
Your job, your education.
We have disconnected them already.....
We are finished with them!
Now there is no way to fall upon those relationships with those relationships has disappeared your so – called identity: The way you have come to know yourself. the way that you have become.
Once that known is destroyed you are suddenly floating in an unknown ocean. Your mind will try to make this unknown ocean known again; it is still not the unknowable.
From the known you have moved to the unknown, your mind says “Yes, you are not this, you are not that-
“You are a soul,
you are consciousness
You are Awareness” but these are again the trap of the mind. So forget all these things also, drop them! you don’t know.
Buddha says you are an awareness, but who knows? – he may be cheating. And these buddhas are not reliable people at all. Somebody has told you that you are a Soul – You are not the body; but you don’t know that yourself.
Unless you know it is not worth anything. Some body has told you that you are an immortal soul and that when you die you will go to god, but this is all rubbish told by others.
It may be so, it may not be so; you cannot be certain about it, it has to be discarded.
We are in search of something indubitable, we are in search of something very foundational and essential which cannot be discarded by any effort.
So First deny the known
Then deny the unknown and then you start entering into the emptiness of the unknown.
It will be frightening for a few days, it will be almost like a death it is called in Zen “THE GREAT DEATH.” - but after a few days, if you go on gathering courage and entering it, within three, four weeks one day it will suddenly be there. Suddenly all has disappeared; you are no more here. You no more the same person; a new gestalt has arisen.
Nothing can be said about it.
You will have to experience it.
Only experience is the proof of it; and
Only by experience one know it;
There is no other way to know it.
Even if for a few seconds that feeling of the unknowable arises, that will do……….
Even if for a single moment in one hour’s time you enter into that world of nothingness of nobodiness of no-self, what zen people call anatta, non-ego.
It is pure emptiness, no boundaries; the drop has simply disappeared into the ocean.
Some times it will be very hard in the beginning. You will start perspiring and your heart will palpitate and you will feel very uneasy and restless.
Don’t be worried within three weeks all that settles and once it has settled things start becoming smooth and something starts flowering inside you.
10. “WHO AM I?”
Who am I? is not a question that can be answered.
It will happen; just keep it inside you. Just go on holding it there: “who am I?” Not that you have to repeat it continuously. No, in some moments simply just once remember “who am I?” and leave it there.
Before you go to sleep in the night, just remember who am I? and fall asleep. In the morning when you are working up just remember who am I?....
and don’t even think that the answer has to come.
It is not that the answer has to come it is not that somebody says ‘You are x,y,z.’ or something. If some answer comes like that, know it is wrong: all answers are wrong. It is not a question to find an answer for.
One day you will suddenly find,” yes, it is there!” You know it..... and in that moment the question disappears. Not that you receive an answer- the answer is never received and the question also disappears, but you have the taste of it.
A disciple come to zen master. He had been meditating for three, four years, and he would come again and again and ask, “Sir, am I not ready yet?”
His question was the same as this who am I? and the master would say, ‘wait’! The answer is to come; go on questioning.’ By the time nine years had passed, one day the question disappeared. He tried to formulate it and he could not remember what it was. For nine years he was asking who am I? and suddenly one day he fell into such a new space that he could not remember what the question was! for nine years he had asked!
Then he knew and he came laughing. The master said, So now, now tell me:
what is the answer?”
And he said, “It is like when you drink water:
You know whether it is cold or hot.”
It is not a question that has to be answered.
It is a question that explodes into no – question.
Go on with it.....
11. WHO AM I?
Who am I? This question makes everybody Afraid. It is nothing exceptional; it is absolutely the case with everybody whoever wants to go deep into the question, into the quest of who am I? is bound to feel fear at a certain point. Why? Because there comes a point where you cross the boundary of the ego and enter into the world of ego lessness. That point is the point of great fear – because it looks like death. And, infact, it is a kind of death:
The ego disappears.
And up to now that has been your identity, up to now that’s what you have been thinking you are. And suddenly it starts evaporating. A great feat grips the heart: “I am dying!” because your identity is dying. You are not really dying; infact, you are being born. It is a rebirth, it is a true birth.
It is like the seed dying into the soil. The seed must be feeling afraid, nervous, trembling. How can the seed trust that once he is gone there will be a great tree and great flowering?
The seed will not be there to witness it;
No seed has even witnessed it,
So how can this seed believe and trust?
And the same happens with the ego; the ego cannot trust that there is anything more than it self. And the ego is dying, and the ego starts breathing its last, and you become afraid.
Many people turn back from that point, rush back out.
This is going to happen to every meditator.
Every meditator has to encounter this situation,
This challenge.
Many times people come to the point from where
They would have entered into God, but they could not
risk, they could not gather courage. They become afraid
scared; they rushed out.
Yes have to take the risk. And I tell you, from my own experience, it is not death. Yes, it is a death to the ego but the death of the ego is the birth of the soul. You will die as a drop, but you will be born as the ocean. It is worth it. You will be dying only as a limited being, as a defined being, and you will be born as undefined, undefinable.
Yes, you will disappear, with all your neurosis, psychosis with all your tensions, anxieties, anguishes; you will disappear with all your problems, worries; you will disappear as you have known yourself upto now.
But your disappearance is only a change of garments and you will be getting closer to your reality, deeper into your reality. You will get more rooted into being.
That’s the whole search!
12. WHO AM I?
Disciple: Osho, when this question arises – who am I? I get very afraid. Is
there something to be said about it?
OSHO: It is natural. It is a good sign that you are coming closer to the boundary. You may be standing exactly one the boundary; that’s why whenever the question arises, immediately you become afraid. Feel blessed that you are so close to the boundary from where a totally new world and a totally new life can have a start. Just one single step.... and you will be a new man, and you will be an original man. Just a single step, and all the garbage that the society has dumped on you will have dropped and you will be just a pure consciousness. You will have wings! Now you are just crawling on the earth..... and then you will be able to soar high towards The Sun.
To be with a Master simply means to learn trust, to learn the art of risking, to learn the ways of adventuring into the unknown. Yes, the sea is uncharted, and it is dangerous to leave the shore, but it is only the people who leave the shore who taste something of immortality.
It is only the people who take the risk of going into danger who really live; others only pass through life, but they really don’t live. Others only vegetate; others only move through empty gestures.
So now this is a very decisive moment for you. You can go back, you can cling to your identity, or you can go ahead, not looking back at all. Be courageous!
I can only say this much: That the same has happened to me, the same fear - it is human. I had also gone back and forth. To cross this line is really difficult. But sooner or later, one decides – because going and coming back does not help. And once you have come so close to the line, you cannot be satisfied
with you ordinary life anymore. So you can go out, but there you will find everything has become meaningless. Now you will be in a dilemma.
And this is the work of a Master: to create the dilemma. The without becomes meaningless, and the within seems to be dangerous. To live the ordinary life again becomes impossible, and to take the jump into the new also seems impossible. But sooner or later, one decides to take the jump because what is the point of clinging to something that has become meaningless, which has last all significance! How long can you cling to it?
The Master waits, the master remains patient. He allows you to go back and forth, he goes on watching that you are shunting in and out. But he knows one thing: that every day the outer will go on losing its significance more and more. One day it will be utterly useless, absurd to be there. And as the outer loses significance, the inner will become more and more magnetic-simultaneously the process happens.
And one day it become irresistible.. One has to cross the line. And that day is the greatest day in a human being’s life, when you drop your old identity and enter into the unknown.
You have encountered Godliness,
You have come Home.
13. WHO AM I?
I would like to talk to you about a very ancient technique; This technique will be of tremendous help. To come to this unknowable host, to come this ultimate mystery of your being, this is the way-One of the very simple ways Buddha has proposed.
Deprive yourself of all possible relationships, and see that you are.
Suppose you are not a son to your parents,
Nor the husband to your wife,
Nor the father to your children, nor a relative to your kindred,
Nor a friend to your acquaintances,
Nor a citizen to your country and so on and so forth,
Then you get you-in-yourself.
Just disconnect. Some time once a day, sit silently and disconnect yourself of all connections. Just as you disconnect the phone, disconnect yourself of all connections.
Don’t think any more that you are a father to your sons – disconnect.
You are no more a father to your son, and you are no more a son to your father.
Disconnect that you are a husband or a wife;
You are no more a wife;
no more a husband,
You are no more a boss,
no more a servant
You are no more black
no more white.
You are no more Indian
no more Chinese,
no more German.
You are no more young,
no more old.
disconnect, go on disconnecting.
A thousand and one connections are there-just go on disconnecting all the connections. When you have disconnected all the connections, then suddenly ask: who am I? And no answer comes-because you have already disconnected all those answers that would have come.
Who am I? And an answer comes,
‘I am a doctor’- but you have disconnected with the patients.
An answer comes, ‘I am a professor’- but you have disconnected yourself from your students.
An answer comes, ’I am a Chinese’- but you have disconnected it.
An answer comes, ‘I am a man or a woman’- but you have disconnected it.
An answer comes, ‘I am an old man’- but you have disconnected it.
Disconnect all. Then you are in yourself. Then for the first time the host is alone and there is no guest. It is very good sometimes to be alone without any guest, because then you can see into your hostness more closely, more carefully. The guests create turmoil, the guests create noise and they come and demand your attention. And they say,
Do this,
and hot water is needed.
and where is the breakfast?
and where is my bed?
and there are bed bugs..... and a Thousand and one things. And the host starts running after the guest. Yes, of course you have to take care of these people.
When you are completely disconnected, no body bothers you – nobody can bother you. Suddenly you are there in all your aloneness - and the purity of aloneness, that pristine purity of aloneness. You are like virgin land, the virgin peak of a Himalaya where nobody has ever travelled.
When you are disconnected.... You– in– yourself. Now ask yourself: what is this ‘you-in-yourself’ you can never answer this question-it is unanswerable because it is cut off from all knowable relationships. This way one stumbles upon the unknowable;
This is entering into meditation.
When you have become settled into it,
Utterly settled it becomes ‘Samadhi’!
14. WHO AM I?
Disciple: Please tell me, who I am.
Osho: ..... My telling you won’t help; you will have to come upon it yourself. Others have been telling you, that is the problem.
You Father has told you, “This is what you are:
You mother has told you, this is what you are.
You teachers and the priests and the politicians
Have told you. The whole world has been telling you who you are; That’s why you are confused
Because of so many voices and so many people and so many ideas, you are lost in them, I’ am not going to tell you who you are, I am going to tell you, how you can find who you are you will have to come to it. You will have to be completely nude of all opinions of others, that is the problem, that others are heavy on the head, that they go on injecting their opinions and ideologies and philosophies. All that has to be burned.
You have to start as if you are the first man. You are Adam and you don’t know who you are. You have to search for it, you have to find it and things will be very easy.
Never ask anybody, ‘who am I?’
It has to be asked inside your being. Ask there ‘who am I? Others will be answering from your head, from your memory. Somebody will say ‘you are a Christian and somebody will say this is your name and somebody will say.
You are a man
a young man, a German, a Hindu, or a Chinese,
Throw out all those answers; those are false answers. Any answers given by anybody are false.
You have to find your own answer; only that will be the truth. Truth cannot be a gift from anybody to you. You have to dig for it inside your being.
I can help you to dig!
I can give you methods to dig but
I cannot give you the answer.
That will be inimical to you, that will be destructive.
Don’t wait for it to come from the outside; it has to come from the inside. So listen more and more, get attuned more and more to your inner being.
15. I used to Ask Myself. WHO AM I?
I used to ask myself, “Who am I?”
IT is impossible to count how many days and nights I passed in this query.
The intellect gave. Answer heard from others, or born of conditioning.
All of them were borrowed, life less.
They brought no contentment.
They resonated a little at the surface, and then disappeared.
The inner being was not touched by them: no echo of them was heard in the depths, There were many answers to the question, but none were correct, and I was untouched by them.
They could not rise to the level of the question.
Then I say that the question came from the Center, but the replies touched only the periphery.
The question was mine, but the answers came from outside;
The question arose from my inner most being the replies were imposed from outside.
This insight became a revolution.
A new dimension was revealed.
The responses of the intellect were meaningless they had no relevance to the problem.
An illusion had shattered, and what a relief it was! It seemed as if a closed door had been flung open, filling the darkness with light. The intellect had been providing the answers- that was the mistake. Because of these false answers, the real answer could not arise. Some truth was struggling to surface. In the depths of consciousness come seed was seeking the way to break open the ground in order to reach the light. Intellect was the obstruction.
When this become clear, the answer began to subside. knowledge acquired from outside began to evaporate. The question went ever deeper. I did not do anything, only kept on watching.
Something novel was happening. I was speechless. What was there to do? I was, at the most, simply a witness. The reactions of the periphery were fading, perishing, becoming non-existent. The centre now began to resonate more fully.
“Who am I?”- my entire being was throbbing with this thirst.
What a violent storm it was! Every breath quaked and trembled in it.
“Who am I?”- like an arrow, the question pierced through everything and moved within.
I remember-what an acute thirst it was! My very life had turned into thirst. Everything was burning. And like a flame of fire the question stood forth, “Who am I?” The Surprise was that the intellect was completely silent. The incessant flow of thoughts has stopped, what had happened? The periphery was absolutely still. There were no thoughts, no conditionings of the past.
Only I was there - and there was the question too. No, no – I myself was the question.
And then, the explosion. In a moment, everything was transformed. The question had dropped. The answer had come from some unknown dimension.
Truth is attained through a sudden explosion not gradually.
It cannot be compelled to appear. IT comes emptiness is the solution, not words.
Becoming answerless is the answer.
Someone asked yesterday, and someone or other asks everyday “What is the answer?”
I say, “If I mention it,
it is meaningless.
Its meaning lies in realizing it for oneself.”
16. Who am I?
I Teach you a totally different kind of religiousness. It is that of Meditation. You are not to worship. You are not to pray; you have to go deep within your own self – a journey of self – discovery. It is not a question of discovering God. Why are you after god? What wrong has he done to you? Forgive him, Forget him!
The first and the only worthwhile enquiry is to know: WHO AM I within this body, mind Mechanism?
what is this consciousness. This miracle of awareness has to be discovered. You have to peel your being as one peels an onion. Go on peeling.... you will find layers within layers. And finally, when all the layers are discarded, eliminated you will find in your hands pure nothingness, emptiness, shunyata. That is your essential core, the center of the cyclone.
Discarding the layers of the onion you have discarded the bottle that was created by you, buy the society, by the culture, by the past, by the tradition and when you have discarded the bottle, the goose is out.
Then you are as infinite, as the universe itself, as eternal as timelessness itself.
You can call it godliness. It is Godliness. It is the highest
The greatest flowering of being. But it is not god somewhere outside you.
you cannot pray to it.
you can be it.
but you cannot pray to it.
because it is not separate.
17. WHO ARE YOU?
Before Consciousness is born,
You are one with the universe. In deep sleep you again fall into that oneness. When there is no dreaming and no thought there is no mind; and when there is no mind there is no Ego. In deep sleep you are no more, because your mind is no more.
Who are you in your deep sleep?
Can you say what your name is?
When you are deeply, dreamlessly asleep,
Who are you?
What is your name?
There is no name, because if there is a name you are not deeply asleep.
There is just a surface Thing.
Who are you?
A Hindu or a Mohammedan?
A Christian catholic or protestant?
Who are you?
Educated, Uneducated,
Poor or rich,
a begger or a king?
Who are you? Man? Woman? Young or old? IN deep sleep you are none of these.
Still you are.
You cannot say that you are absolutely not, you are, but you are not that which You are, when awake.
While dreaming, while awake you are a mind
While deeply asleep
You are a no-mind.
The mind is lost, dissolved,
But the being is.
18. WHO AM I?
Memory is mind.
How to get rid of memory?
It is always there, following you.
In fact, you are the memory.
So how to get rid of it?
Who are you except your memories?
When I ask, “Who are you?”
You tell me your name. That is a memory.
Your parents gave you that name sometime back.
I ask you, “Who are you?
and you tell about your family: your father, your mother that is a memory.
I ask you, “Who are you?”
and you tell me about your education, your degrees that you have done a degree of Master of Arts, or you are Ph.D, or you are an engineer,
or an architect. That is the memory.
When I ask you, “Who are you?”
if you really look inside, your only answer can be ‘I don’t know.”
whatsoever you will say will be the memory’ not you.
The only real, authentic answer can be, “I don’t know” because to know oneself is the last thing.
I can answer who I am,
but I will not answer.
You cannot answer, “who are you”? but you are ready with the answer.
Those who know keep silent about this, because if all the memory is discarded and all the language is discarded then who I am cannot be said. I can look into you,
I can give you a gesture.
I can be with you with my total being.
That is my answer.
But the answer cannot be given in words because whatsoever is given in words will be part of Memory, part of mind, not of consciousness.
How to get rid of the memories?
Watch them, witness them. And always remembers, “This has happened to me, But this is not me.” of course. You were born in a certain family but this is not you; it has happened to you, an event outside of you.
Of course. Somebody has given a name to you. It has its utility, but the name is not you.
Of course you have a form, but the form is not you. The form is just the house you happen to be in.
The form is just the body that you happen to be in- and the body is given to you by your parents.
It is a gift, but not you.
Watch and discriminate.
This is what in the east they call vivek, discrimination. You discriminate continuously.
keep on discriminating-a moment comes when you have eliminated all that you are not:
Suddenly,
in that state, for the first time you face yourself,
you encounter your own being.
Go on cutting all identities that you are not:
the family, the body, the mind.
In that emptiness, when everything that was not you has been thrown out suddenly your being surfaces.
for the first time you encounter yourself.
19. WHO AM I?
Beloved Osho, Who am I?
OSHO: How am I to know?
How can I answer this question?
Except you, nobody else can answer it for you.
I cannot answer it on your behalf.
I know who I am, but how can I say
who you are?
you will have to dive deep within your own self.
And the people who have been answering on
you behalf are your enemies, because
you will start collecting, accumulating
Their answers. You will becomes knowledgeable, and to become knowledgeable is to prevent wisdom from arising.
Yes, thousands of answers are available.
I can also answer very easily:
That you are a soul, eternal, Deathless,
Amirtasya putrah, that you are sons of God,
Sons of immortality. I can say to you all these beautiful things that have been said
down the ages, but they are not going to help. If you cling to them, I have not helped you. I have hindered you. I have not been a master
to you but an enemy not a friend.
I cannot answer it for you.
It is not a question that can be answered by anybody else than yourself.
You have to go into your own self.
You have to search.
You have to ask and inquire, “Who am I?”
It is a question very private, absolutely
private, and only you are capable of
knowing the answer. And not through
Scriptures, remember, but through a deep inquiry into your own being.
That very inquiry is meditation.
Ramana Maharishi used to give only one meditation to his disciples; sit silently and go on inquiry within yourself “Who am I?:
First verbally and then slowly, slowly let the words disappear and let the question become a feeling... Who am I?”.... just a feeling just a question mark deep down in your heart And go on asking. One day even that feeling disappears. There is no question;
Suddenly you are question less.
The question “who am I?” will help you to destroy all other questions, and then finally it commits. Suicides You are left with no question And that is the moment of the answer arising in you. And even if you know, you will not be able to communicate it to anybody else.
It is incommunicable. You ask me, “WHO AM I ?”
You are Sanjaya; This is your name,
You are a man; You have a body of a man.
You are an educated person;
You have a medical degree.
These things can be answered by anybody.
but these are not you.
You are Hindu,
You have lived the life of a so-called
Hindu religious man.
You know the Gita.
You have read it so many times that you can simply repeat it by memory.
And in the Gita, Krishna has answered so many times, “Who are you?”
So you must know those answers too.
Beware of people, who answer such deep questions of yours.
Only superficial questions can be answered by other. If somebody starts telling you about your deepest core, stop him immediately. It is none of his business and he is going to make a mess of you, and what so ever he says to you is going to harm you. It is poisonous.
The real master will not tell you who you are of course, He will shake you and shock you into Awareness.
“The two patients met with each other in the asylum grounds.
“God morning, Fosdike, How are you?”
“I am Fine, Cartwright, but my name is not Fosdike.”
“Mine’s not Cartwright either.”
“Not to worry, we’re probably not ourselves today.”
But this is the situation of the whole world:
the whole earth is almost like a mad house Nobody knows who he is.
People who don’t know who they are go on telling others about their innermost selves. They are simply repeating like parrots. Scriptures, beautiful scriptures, but in their hands all scriptures lose their truth.
When somebody who is awakened says something it has a truth in it, but when unawakened people repeat it, it becomes untrue. Truth repeated by those who have not experienced becomes untrue. Truth borrowed becomes untrue.
Only one thing can be said; that you are in a deep unconsciousness. The Unconsciousness has to be broken. The Ice has to be melted. Once your unconsciousness is broken. Once you have become a little conscious, you will be able to see who you are. You will be the first person to know who you are, see the unfortunate situation that we have to ask others, “Who am I?”
“The captain told the prisoner that he would be released if he fulfilled three conditions:
First you must drink this gallon of kentucky rotgut whiskey without stopping should you survive this, you must go outside to the animal cage where a lion has a bad tooth. You must remove the tooth barehanded, without anesthetic. And finally if you survive the first two conditions, you must go out the back to a tent where a woman who has never, I repeat ‘never’ been sexually satisfied, is waiting
for you, to satisfy her.
If you accomplish all three, I will set you free.”
The prisoner shuddered but feeling that he had no choice agreed to try. First he drank the whiskey turning all shaded of the color spectrum. He then stumbled out the front door. For an hour all that could be heard were screams and roars, shouts and more roars.
Finally the prisoner returned, his clothes in shreds is body covered in blood.
“Okay,” he mumbled. Now where’s the lady with the bad tooth?”
20.WHO AM I?
Beloved Master,
What is the Ego ? It seems a complementary question to “WHO AM I”? and as much a koan
The ego is just the opposite of your real self
The ego is not you, The ego is the deception created by the society so that so that you can continue playing with the toy and never ask about the real thing.
That’s why my insistence that unless you drop the ego you will never come to know yourself.
When you were born you had your authentic self. Then they started creating a false self.
you are Christian,
You are catholic,
You are white,
You are German and
You are chosen race of God,
You are supposed to rule over the world
and so on so forth. They create a false idea who you are. They give you a name and around. The name they create ambitions, Conditionings.
And by and by, because it takes almost one third of your life. They work on your ego through the school.
Through the church, college, university.... By the time you came back home from the university you have forgotten completely your innocent Being. You are now a very big ego with a gold medal first class topping the university. Now you are ready to go into the world.
This ego has all the desires, ambitions wants to be always on the Top of everything. You are exploited by this ego. And this never allows you even a glimpse of your real authentic self, and your life is there, in your real authenticity. Hence this ego only produces misery, suffering, fighting, frustration, madness suicide, murder all kinds of Crime.
A seeker of Truth has to begin from this very point: That whatever you have been told by the society you are, discard it. Certainly you are not it, because nobody can know who you are Except yourself – neither your parents, nor your teachers, nor your priests. Except yourself, nobody can enter into the privacy of your being.
So nobody knows about you whatever they have said about you is all wrong. Pur it aside. Dismantle the whole ego! In destroying the ego you will discover your being. And that discovery is the greatest discovery possible, because it starts a totally New pilgrimage towards ultimate Bliss, towards eternal life.
You can choose:
Either frustration, suffering, misery – Then go on holding the ego, nourishing it or peace, Silence, Bliss – but then you have to recover your innocence.
21. WHO AM I ?
Osho,
Would you please talk about the sadhana based on holding as much as possible to the “I” thought or the sense “I am” and on asking oneself the questions, Who am I? or from where does this I arise?” In what way does this approach to meditation differ from that of watching the gaps between one’s in breath and out- breath? Does it make any difference whether one witnesses the breath focusing on the heart center or on the lower belly center?
It is an ancient method of Meditation, but full of dangers, unless you are alert, the greater possibility is that you will be led astray by the method rather than to the right goal. The method is simple – Concentrating yourself on the concept of I, closing your eyes and inquiring, “WHO AM I”
The greatest problem is that when you ask,” WHO AM I?” who is going to answer you? Most probably the answer will come from your tradition, from your scriptures, from your conditioning. You have heard that: “I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am the soul, I am the ultimate, Brahman, I am God.” you have heard all these kinds of thoughts before. You will ask a few times,” who am I? who am I?” And then you will will say,” I am the ultimate Brahman.” And this is not a discovery; it is simply stupid.
If you want to go into the method rightly then the question has not to be verbally asked. Because as long as it remains a verbal question, you will supply a verbal answer from the head. You have to drop the verbal question. It has to remain just a vague idea, just like a thirst, Not “I am thirsty.” can you see the difference?
If “Who am I?” is an existential question, if you are not asking it in language but instead the feeling of the question is settling inside your center, then there is no need for any answer. The mind is not hear that which is non-verbal, and the mind will not answer that which is non-verbal.
All your scriptures are in the mind, all your knowledge is gathered there.
Now you are entering am innocent space, you will not get the answer., You will get the feel, you will get the taste, you will get the smell. As you go deeper you will be field more with the feeling of being, of immortality, blissfulness, silence – a tremendous benedication.
But there is no answer like, “I am this, I am that.” All that is from the scriptures. This feeling is from you, and this feeling has a truth about it. It is a perfectly valid method.
One of the great masters of this century Raman Maharishi, used only this method for his disciples; “Who am I?” But I have come across hundreds of his disciples and they are nowhere near the ultimate experience. And the reason is because they know the answer already. They said, “We know the answer.”
I said, “If you know the answer then why are you asking? And your asking cannot go on very long – do it two or three times and the answer comes./ The answer was already there, before the question.”
So it is just a mind game. If you want to play it, you can play it. But if you really want to go into it as it was meant by Raman Maharishi, and by all the ancient seers, it is a non – verbal thirst. So if you can avoid the danger of falling into a verbal question, it is perfectly good, you can go ahead.
Not knowing oneself hurts, it is a wound.
Not knowing oneself makes the whole of life meaningless.
You may know everything,
Only you do not know yourself – and that would be the first thing to know.
You have also asked about witnessing, watching the breath and where one should watch. Anywhere – because the point is not where you are watching, the point is that you are watching. The emphasis is on watching, watch-fulness. All those points are just excuses.
You can watch the breath at the tip of the nose where the breath goes in, you can watch it while it is going in, you can watch it when it returns. you can watch it anywhere. You can watch thoughts moving inside. The whole point is not to get lost in what you are watching, as if that is important. That is not important. The important thing is that you are watchful, that you have not forgotten to watch. That you are watching.. watching... watching. becomes more and more solid, stable, unwavering, a transformation happens. The things that you were watching disappear. For the first time, the watcher itself becomes the watched, the observer itself becomes the observed, you have come HOME.
22. WHO AM I?
The beginning is always the question. “WHO AM I?”
And one has to go on asking, when first you ask “Who am I? The muladhar will answer, you are a body! what nonsense! there is no need to ask, you know it already.” Then the second (Svadisthan) will say “You are sexuality.” then the third (manipura) will say, “you are a power trip an ego”- and so on so forth.
Remember, you have to stop only when there is no answer coming, not before it.
If some answer is coming that, “You are this, you are this,” then know well that some center is providing you with an answer. When all the six centers have been crossed and all their answer cancelled, you go on asking “WHO AM I?” and no answer comes from anywhere, it is utter silence. You question resounds in yourself: “WHO AM I?” and there is silence, no answer arises from anywhere from any corner, you are absolutely present, absolutely silent and there is not even a vibration, “Who am I?” and only silence. Then a miracle happens: You cannot even formulate the question.
Answers have become absurd; then finally the question also becomes absurd.
First answers disappears, then the question also disappears because they can live only together. They are like two sides of a coin - if one side has gone, the other cannot be retained. First answers disappears, then the question disappears. And with the disappearance of question and answer, you come to realize: that is transcendental. You know, yet you cannot say; you know, yet you cannot be articulate about it. You know from you’re your being who you are but it….? cannot be verbalized. It is life knowledge; it is not spiritual, it is not borrowed, it is not from others. It has arisen in you.
And with this arising you are a Buddha. And then you start laughing because you come to know that you have been a Buddha from the very beginning; you had just never looked, so deep. You were running around and around outside your being. You had never come home.
1. WHO AM I?
“Life is useless if I don’t know who I am, if I don’t know from where I come and if I don’t know to where I am going. I have to know it, because without knowing it whatsoever I am doing is foolish is going to be stupid. Without knowing who I am whatsoever I do is meaningless: Meaning can arise only when I know my nature and start moving according to my nature.
When there is a harmony of me and the existence that Surrounds me, only then can there be joy and bliss.
2. WHO AM I?
The Question is never solved but
The questioner disappears!
I am here not to dissolve you questions but
to dissolve you
And that is going to happen....
That is already on the way.
3. WHO AM I?
DISCIPLE : I did not get the answer to my Question.
My Question was who am I?
OSHO : There is no answer!
Disciple : Other People got answers........ well, They were
happy with their answers.
OSHO:
All answers are created answers, but people feel happy because something..... There is no answer.
To get that - that there is no answer – is to get it but one will not feel very happy because one feels as if one has missed.
We have a constant mind to achieve something-anything but something has to be achieved.
When we achieve something we feel good. If you can get an answer then you feel good. The answer may be just rubbish......... and all answers are rubbish.
The question is not a question that needs any answer. The question is just to destroy all you answers and to show you the futility of all answers. When all answers have been dropped the question goes on resounding, resounding, resounding.......
Then a point comes when you see the whole futility of the question. The question also disappears.
That state – when there is no question and no answer that state of no-mind-is the answer but there is no answer in it.
It is that space, that very space that purity that innocence, that non verbal space where you are not asking and you are not searching for any question.
When there is no search, no enquiry and yet you are perfectly alive and perfectly alive and perfectly alert and aware you have not fallen asleep.
The question is to help you first to drop answers. Second to keep you alert and awake. First answers disappear then the question disappears. Because you cannot go on asking, asking the question when there is no answer coming.
A moment comes when through the sheer futility of it the question also evaporates and you are left empty in a kind of nothingness. But that thingness is virgin. Out of that nothingness is bliss.
But this cannot be said to the people who are doing the who am I technique, because if you say to them that there is no answer from the very first, from the very beginning their question will be just so – so, They will not put energy into it because they know that there is no answer, so why bother?
Then they will never reach this state. So they have to be told again and again that there is an answer; they must go on and on and on. They have to be driven MAD;
They go on questioning, they go on questioning. When your whole energy has been put in to the question and there is nothing else you can do, the question disappears. And you are left for the first time in the Here now.
I am not saying that you attained this space I am not saying that you came to this point where question and answer disappear. Your question remained you didn’t get any answer but your question remained.
The Question was still there.
you had to go into it a little more.......
You had to struggle a little harder.
My feeling is you didn’t put your total energy into it.
Just a part of you asking and another part was thinking it was crazy what are you doing?
A part was asking and one part was thinking that it was just a game you can play it but there is nothing much in it.
All these things remained in the mind.
So you could not get to any answer because there is none. That is the good part.
But you could not get rid of the question;
That is the bad part.
So put your total energy into who am I?
4. Who am I?
Disciple:
It was the question of “Who am I ? “ which was very agonising to me.
OSHO:
It is agonising, because if you go deep into it, it creates the greatest ecstasy possible..... but the way to ecstasy goes through agony. It is agonising because the moment you ask who am I? you become aware that you don’t know. Not knowing is very agonising, it hurts the ego: So I don’t know even myself? This is too much I was always thinking I know everything and I don’t know even myself.
This is unacceptable to the ego. The ego feeds on knowledge information and this is very sad what else to claim you know if you don’t know yourself? What is the point of claiming that you know anything else? The foundation – That you know yourself – is lacking.
The question who am I? is meant to bring you to your right senses.... It is to hit you hard so that you become aware that you don’t know your self. That is the agony of as if you had much, and the question has taken it away from you. You used to think you are this and you are that and this simple question has taken all identities away you are left in a vacuum.
Just to feel that you don’t know yourself, is so maddening. One wants to cling to something – anything name, form, body, mind, soul, some theory, some hypothesis, anything but one wants to cling to something so that one is not lost in this emptiness. That’s why the agony.
But if you persist if you preserve, if you go deep into it and you accept that the agony is okay, by and by you will see that the agony disappeared. The clouds are no more there.... the smoke has gone far away.
You are in a clearance; Things are more clear. Not that you will know who you are. This question is not meant to bring an answer- The answer never comes; it is just a device to destroy the false answers.
The real answer never comes, because a real answer never comes inwards. It is not that some day Suddenly it will bubble up and you will know, Okay so this is who I am’ – No! All knowledge will disappear. You will be so perfectly at ease within yourself, So rooted, so undisturbed, so tranquil and calm. Now there is no answer, you cannot verbalise but you know.
This knowing is totally different from knowledge. It has nothing to do with the mind. It is not of the mind. It is an experience or rather, experiencing. You have encountered your reality face to face; you have seen it.
Not that you can say who you are – nobody has ever been able to. Who so ever has come to the ultimate core of his being has never said who he is. It cannot be said – but it is tremendously blissful to see it, to feel it, to be it. It is not an intellectual answer that arises, but an existential response.
You become a babe of bliss. You become a great blissful state. Old identities disappear and a new identity is not formed. So agony is there and you have to pass through it. That is the price we pay and then there is ecstasy.
If there is no agony in asking who am I? Then you are not asking the question rightly. You are just playing around.... You are not penetrating deep-it is not like an arrow.
But it has been good. You suffered this- this is good. This is a good indication that you worked hard at it. It is painful.
All growth is painful..........!
5. WHO AM I?
The divine question or the divine quest “who am I” is the most important thing. The answer is futile, Foolish, false. The question is real, because behind your question is hidden the real answer. The answer is not going to come from the outside. Nobody is going to give you the answer about who you are... what your life means. Nobody is going to give you the answer nobody can. The answer has to be found deep in the recesses of your own being. The answer has to come from exactly the same source as from where the question is coming.
So the question is tremendously significant, because the question shows the way from where you have to seek the answer. In the east we have never paid any attention to answers, because all answers are childish; only questions are alive.
You can start asking yourself, who am I? And don’t formulate any answer. Your mind will try to formulate who you are; it will immediately supply the answer-that answer is not true. That answer is from the outside. Somebody has told you or you have read somewhere or you have been conditioned for it.
The answer will be Christian, Hindu, mohammedan Communist. The answer may be from Kant, from Hegal from Russel but the answer comes from somewhere else It is somebody else’s answer... and it cannot become your answer. Your answer has to be born within you.
So let the question become a pregnancy-hold it there. There is no hurry to answer. The mind will play in the beginning. Whenever you ask ‘who am I?’ The mind will say ‘you are this’, ‘You are that,’
Those are all; consolations – don’t be befooled by them. Those are just tricks of the mind. That’s why people who listen to those tricks, never go deep..... They remain on the surface. Throw all those answers- /Remember they are rubbish.
How will you know that the real has come ? There is a way to know... First cancel all the answers that come from the memory, from the mind. Let the question remain alone. For a few months only the question will be there and all answers will have gone. Then you are on the right track. Now no answer comes- only the question is there. You ask ‘who am I’? and nothing comes. The mind is completely quiet.
And this will give you the First taste of meditation because that’s what meditation is all about: The quietness of the mind. And you have stilled the mind without making any effort. You were simply asking who am I?
Just sit silently at least once a day for one hour and jusk ask who am I? let the question vibrate inside you..... penetrate like an arrow. Feel the pain of it – it hurts. Each real question hurts became it helps to make a way into your being. It is like digging a hole in the earth. And just as in the earth, somewhere deep down there is a source of water, exactly in the same way, somewhere deep within you is the source of water which will quench the thirst and will answer the question.
And it is not going to be an intellectual answer; it is going to be existential. When it comes you will immediately know that it has exploded in you-as if thousands of suns have entered your being. It will be an explosion of light. It will not be just verbal. There will be no word. It will be an experience.
So use this question who am I? who am I? who am I? as a hammering, and go on. Go on rejecting all the answers-‘This is not’, ‘That is not’-neti-neti; neither this nor that. Go on saying, ‘This is not the answer’.
Let the question remain pure, uncorrupted by all the answers that you know. Then it will start setting deep inside you. Layer upon layer it will go deeper and deeper and deeper and one day out of nowhere suddenly in a single instant, you will find something arising in you, exploding............ tremendously vital, flooding you.
The experience will be of light, the experience will be of great sweetness., and the experience will be tremendous certainly. Not a single lucking doubt will be there, because it is self-evident. You need not have any proof of it. It is your experience-you don’t need any proof. It will simply take you off your ground. You will be in a totally different world – a new dimension has opened.
And this is the answer! This is hiding behind the question! There is only one significant question- who am I? And there is only one significant experience- the experience that comes when you dig this question to its very innermost core. That’s what all mystic have been trying to do.
This enquiry is going to be your path.
Enquiring of yourself. ‘who am I?’
6. WHO AM I?
Who am I? That who cannot be answered because ‘WHO’ is the fundamental mystery of existence. You cannot gobehind it because that will be going behind yourself. To know who you are – you will have to go behind yourself and look at yourself. But that is not possible because you will be behind and what so ever you look at will not be you. So infact the question ‘Who am I?’ is a koan.
Maharshi Ramana used to give that to every disciple to go on thinking who am I? But man is so foolish that those disciples are still repeating who am I? They think that someday the answer is going to come. There is no answer.
That question is such that by asking it continuously again and again you go on getting deeper and deeper into yourself. One day you suddenly see that the question is absurd ‘I am’! and there is no way to answer who you are. All answers are false. Then there comes great relaxation and in that relaxation is knowing.
But I am not saying that you will know who you are “nobody has ever known! no Buddha has ever known who he is”. Then what is the difference between a Buddha and an ordinary man? The Ordinary man thinks he knows who he is and the Buddha is one who knows that there is no way to know who he is, that is the difference.
The Buddha has come to recognise the futility of the question has renounced, the question and is simply happy by being.
He ‘NO’ more asks who am I? The ordinary person believes that he knows or if sometimes his belief is disturbed he is very much confused and he starts searching for the answer.
That’s what every sannyasin has to pass through between the ordinary person and the Buddha is the sannyasin.
The State of a sannyasin is the state of Confusion, chaos. So if you are confused things are happening, something is going on there is no fear. When I see some sannyasin not confused at all I am worried then I see that this man is going to remain ordinary he will not go anywhere.
Simply relax into this confusion. One day this confusion will also disappear. And when the confusion disappeared you will not have the answer Remember.
Just the confusion would have disappeared,
The Question would have disappeared,
An answer never comes.
There is No answer.
Life is a mystery:
Not a problem to be solved but
Mystery to be lived.
7. “WHO AM I?”
Why do people ask useless questions?
To avoid going in.
They pretend that they are great inquirers: they are interested in God, they are interested in the after life they are interested in heaven and hell.
And the real thing is that they are not interested in themselves:
To avoid that,
To avoid seeing this fact, that
I am not interested in my own being.”
They have created all these questions.
These question are their strategies to avoid their Central question “Who am I?”
True religion consists in the inquiry”: who am I And nobody else can answer it.
You will have to go digging deeper and deeper into your being.
One day, when you have reached the very source of your life, you will know.
That day, the real question and the real answer will have happened Simultaneously.
If you know the real question immediately you know the real answer too. They are not two separate things but two aspects of the same coin:
On one side the real question,
ON the other side the real answer.
8. “WHO AM I?”
Buddha has said
“Watch and disconnect yourself from the body. You are not the body.”
And the same has to be done with the mind.
Then watch again-Are you the thoughts?
How can you be the thoughts?
Thoughts come and go and you abide.
Thoughts are like reflections in the mirror; clouds passing in the sky, but the sky is not the clouds.
Desires, Memories. Imaginations they all come and go. you are not your mind either, so say “I am not my mind.” and thirdly
“I am not my heart either”- The feelings, the emotions which are the subtlest. Then who am I?
When you have cut these three identities almost nothing is left.
You have cut the very root of the ego.
Then you cannot even say ‘I am’.
You can only say
‘There is a certain amness but
There is no ‘I’.
‘I’ Consists of body, mind heart.
These are the three components of the body of the ego once these three are dropped eliminated the ego disappears.
Then there is only ‘pure awareness’
The body is a form,
The mind too is a form, and
The heart too is a form,
And the ego is the hold all, the bundle of all the forms
When everything has been taken out
The ego becomes empty and flops.
9. “WHO AM I?” (Technique)
Each day, sit silently, close the doors, put off the phone, and tell everybody that for one hour you are dead to the world-whatever happens: even if the house catches fire you are not going to come out.
Take a shower, have loose clothes if it is too cold to have no clothes on, otherwise be naked, and sit down: relaxed way will be perfectly good.
If this feels a little strenuous and difficult then you can sit on a chair.
To be comfortable is the point, so that you can remain in that posture for one hour at least.
Then close your eyes, relax the body and start destroying your relationships.
Think: If you are not the son of your father,
Then who are you? – disconnect it.
This is part of your identity, that you are the son of a certain man; disconnect it.
Think: If you are not the husband of yours wife
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
If you are not a father to your children,
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
If you are not a friend to your acquaintances
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
If you are not the citizen of the United States,
Then who are you? Disconnect it.
And go on disconnecting whatsoever you can find:
All kinds of connections are there,
All kinds of relationships are there,
You belong to a certain church,
You belong to a certain country,
You belong to this, you belong to that club,
You are a professor
You are a therapist, doctor, this and that go on disconnecting.
For twenty minutes work hard to disconnect all relationship.
You are left floating in the unknown – and then ask who am I?
Now those answers won’t do that you are a son of a certain man or the husband or the father.....
Your job, your education.
We have disconnected them already.....
We are finished with them!
Now there is no way to fall upon those relationships with those relationships has disappeared your so – called identity: The way you have come to know yourself. the way that you have become.
Once that known is destroyed you are suddenly floating in an unknown ocean. Your mind will try to make this unknown ocean known again; it is still not the unknowable.
From the known you have moved to the unknown, your mind says “Yes, you are not this, you are not that-
“You are a soul,
you are consciousness
You are Awareness” but these are again the trap of the mind. So forget all these things also, drop them! you don’t know.
Buddha says you are an awareness, but who knows? – he may be cheating. And these buddhas are not reliable people at all. Somebody has told you that you are a Soul – You are not the body; but you don’t know that yourself.
Unless you know it is not worth anything. Some body has told you that you are an immortal soul and that when you die you will go to god, but this is all rubbish told by others.
It may be so, it may not be so; you cannot be certain about it, it has to be discarded.
We are in search of something indubitable, we are in search of something very foundational and essential which cannot be discarded by any effort.
So First deny the known
Then deny the unknown and then you start entering into the emptiness of the unknown.
It will be frightening for a few days, it will be almost like a death it is called in Zen “THE GREAT DEATH.” - but after a few days, if you go on gathering courage and entering it, within three, four weeks one day it will suddenly be there. Suddenly all has disappeared; you are no more here. You no more the same person; a new gestalt has arisen.
Nothing can be said about it.
You will have to experience it.
Only experience is the proof of it; and
Only by experience one know it;
There is no other way to know it.
Even if for a few seconds that feeling of the unknowable arises, that will do……….
Even if for a single moment in one hour’s time you enter into that world of nothingness of nobodiness of no-self, what zen people call anatta, non-ego.
It is pure emptiness, no boundaries; the drop has simply disappeared into the ocean.
Some times it will be very hard in the beginning. You will start perspiring and your heart will palpitate and you will feel very uneasy and restless.
Don’t be worried within three weeks all that settles and once it has settled things start becoming smooth and something starts flowering inside you.
10. “WHO AM I?”
Who am I? is not a question that can be answered.
It will happen; just keep it inside you. Just go on holding it there: “who am I?” Not that you have to repeat it continuously. No, in some moments simply just once remember “who am I?” and leave it there.
Before you go to sleep in the night, just remember who am I? and fall asleep. In the morning when you are working up just remember who am I?....
and don’t even think that the answer has to come.
It is not that the answer has to come it is not that somebody says ‘You are x,y,z.’ or something. If some answer comes like that, know it is wrong: all answers are wrong. It is not a question to find an answer for.
One day you will suddenly find,” yes, it is there!” You know it..... and in that moment the question disappears. Not that you receive an answer- the answer is never received and the question also disappears, but you have the taste of it.
A disciple come to zen master. He had been meditating for three, four years, and he would come again and again and ask, “Sir, am I not ready yet?”
His question was the same as this who am I? and the master would say, ‘wait’! The answer is to come; go on questioning.’ By the time nine years had passed, one day the question disappeared. He tried to formulate it and he could not remember what it was. For nine years he was asking who am I? and suddenly one day he fell into such a new space that he could not remember what the question was! for nine years he had asked!
Then he knew and he came laughing. The master said, So now, now tell me:
what is the answer?”
And he said, “It is like when you drink water:
You know whether it is cold or hot.”
It is not a question that has to be answered.
It is a question that explodes into no – question.
Go on with it.....
11. WHO AM I?
Who am I? This question makes everybody Afraid. It is nothing exceptional; it is absolutely the case with everybody whoever wants to go deep into the question, into the quest of who am I? is bound to feel fear at a certain point. Why? Because there comes a point where you cross the boundary of the ego and enter into the world of ego lessness. That point is the point of great fear – because it looks like death. And, infact, it is a kind of death:
The ego disappears.
And up to now that has been your identity, up to now that’s what you have been thinking you are. And suddenly it starts evaporating. A great feat grips the heart: “I am dying!” because your identity is dying. You are not really dying; infact, you are being born. It is a rebirth, it is a true birth.
It is like the seed dying into the soil. The seed must be feeling afraid, nervous, trembling. How can the seed trust that once he is gone there will be a great tree and great flowering?
The seed will not be there to witness it;
No seed has even witnessed it,
So how can this seed believe and trust?
And the same happens with the ego; the ego cannot trust that there is anything more than it self. And the ego is dying, and the ego starts breathing its last, and you become afraid.
Many people turn back from that point, rush back out.
This is going to happen to every meditator.
Every meditator has to encounter this situation,
This challenge.
Many times people come to the point from where
They would have entered into God, but they could not
risk, they could not gather courage. They become afraid
scared; they rushed out.
Yes have to take the risk. And I tell you, from my own experience, it is not death. Yes, it is a death to the ego but the death of the ego is the birth of the soul. You will die as a drop, but you will be born as the ocean. It is worth it. You will be dying only as a limited being, as a defined being, and you will be born as undefined, undefinable.
Yes, you will disappear, with all your neurosis, psychosis with all your tensions, anxieties, anguishes; you will disappear with all your problems, worries; you will disappear as you have known yourself upto now.
But your disappearance is only a change of garments and you will be getting closer to your reality, deeper into your reality. You will get more rooted into being.
That’s the whole search!
12. WHO AM I?
Disciple: Osho, when this question arises – who am I? I get very afraid. Is
there something to be said about it?
OSHO: It is natural. It is a good sign that you are coming closer to the boundary. You may be standing exactly one the boundary; that’s why whenever the question arises, immediately you become afraid. Feel blessed that you are so close to the boundary from where a totally new world and a totally new life can have a start. Just one single step.... and you will be a new man, and you will be an original man. Just a single step, and all the garbage that the society has dumped on you will have dropped and you will be just a pure consciousness. You will have wings! Now you are just crawling on the earth..... and then you will be able to soar high towards The Sun.
To be with a Master simply means to learn trust, to learn the art of risking, to learn the ways of adventuring into the unknown. Yes, the sea is uncharted, and it is dangerous to leave the shore, but it is only the people who leave the shore who taste something of immortality.
It is only the people who take the risk of going into danger who really live; others only pass through life, but they really don’t live. Others only vegetate; others only move through empty gestures.
So now this is a very decisive moment for you. You can go back, you can cling to your identity, or you can go ahead, not looking back at all. Be courageous!
I can only say this much: That the same has happened to me, the same fear - it is human. I had also gone back and forth. To cross this line is really difficult. But sooner or later, one decides – because going and coming back does not help. And once you have come so close to the line, you cannot be satisfied
with you ordinary life anymore. So you can go out, but there you will find everything has become meaningless. Now you will be in a dilemma.
And this is the work of a Master: to create the dilemma. The without becomes meaningless, and the within seems to be dangerous. To live the ordinary life again becomes impossible, and to take the jump into the new also seems impossible. But sooner or later, one decides to take the jump because what is the point of clinging to something that has become meaningless, which has last all significance! How long can you cling to it?
The Master waits, the master remains patient. He allows you to go back and forth, he goes on watching that you are shunting in and out. But he knows one thing: that every day the outer will go on losing its significance more and more. One day it will be utterly useless, absurd to be there. And as the outer loses significance, the inner will become more and more magnetic-simultaneously the process happens.
And one day it become irresistible.. One has to cross the line. And that day is the greatest day in a human being’s life, when you drop your old identity and enter into the unknown.
You have encountered Godliness,
You have come Home.
13. WHO AM I?
I would like to talk to you about a very ancient technique; This technique will be of tremendous help. To come to this unknowable host, to come this ultimate mystery of your being, this is the way-One of the very simple ways Buddha has proposed.
Deprive yourself of all possible relationships, and see that you are.
Suppose you are not a son to your parents,
Nor the husband to your wife,
Nor the father to your children, nor a relative to your kindred,
Nor a friend to your acquaintances,
Nor a citizen to your country and so on and so forth,
Then you get you-in-yourself.
Just disconnect. Some time once a day, sit silently and disconnect yourself of all connections. Just as you disconnect the phone, disconnect yourself of all connections.
Don’t think any more that you are a father to your sons – disconnect.
You are no more a father to your son, and you are no more a son to your father.
Disconnect that you are a husband or a wife;
You are no more a wife;
no more a husband,
You are no more a boss,
no more a servant
You are no more black
no more white.
You are no more Indian
no more Chinese,
no more German.
You are no more young,
no more old.
disconnect, go on disconnecting.
A thousand and one connections are there-just go on disconnecting all the connections. When you have disconnected all the connections, then suddenly ask: who am I? And no answer comes-because you have already disconnected all those answers that would have come.
Who am I? And an answer comes,
‘I am a doctor’- but you have disconnected with the patients.
An answer comes, ‘I am a professor’- but you have disconnected yourself from your students.
An answer comes, ’I am a Chinese’- but you have disconnected it.
An answer comes, ‘I am a man or a woman’- but you have disconnected it.
An answer comes, ‘I am an old man’- but you have disconnected it.
Disconnect all. Then you are in yourself. Then for the first time the host is alone and there is no guest. It is very good sometimes to be alone without any guest, because then you can see into your hostness more closely, more carefully. The guests create turmoil, the guests create noise and they come and demand your attention. And they say,
Do this,
and hot water is needed.
and where is the breakfast?
and where is my bed?
and there are bed bugs..... and a Thousand and one things. And the host starts running after the guest. Yes, of course you have to take care of these people.
When you are completely disconnected, no body bothers you – nobody can bother you. Suddenly you are there in all your aloneness - and the purity of aloneness, that pristine purity of aloneness. You are like virgin land, the virgin peak of a Himalaya where nobody has ever travelled.
When you are disconnected.... You– in– yourself. Now ask yourself: what is this ‘you-in-yourself’ you can never answer this question-it is unanswerable because it is cut off from all knowable relationships. This way one stumbles upon the unknowable;
This is entering into meditation.
When you have become settled into it,
Utterly settled it becomes ‘Samadhi’!
14. WHO AM I?
Disciple: Please tell me, who I am.
Osho: ..... My telling you won’t help; you will have to come upon it yourself. Others have been telling you, that is the problem.
You Father has told you, “This is what you are:
You mother has told you, this is what you are.
You teachers and the priests and the politicians
Have told you. The whole world has been telling you who you are; That’s why you are confused
Because of so many voices and so many people and so many ideas, you are lost in them, I’ am not going to tell you who you are, I am going to tell you, how you can find who you are you will have to come to it. You will have to be completely nude of all opinions of others, that is the problem, that others are heavy on the head, that they go on injecting their opinions and ideologies and philosophies. All that has to be burned.
You have to start as if you are the first man. You are Adam and you don’t know who you are. You have to search for it, you have to find it and things will be very easy.
Never ask anybody, ‘who am I?’
It has to be asked inside your being. Ask there ‘who am I? Others will be answering from your head, from your memory. Somebody will say ‘you are a Christian and somebody will say this is your name and somebody will say.
You are a man
a young man, a German, a Hindu, or a Chinese,
Throw out all those answers; those are false answers. Any answers given by anybody are false.
You have to find your own answer; only that will be the truth. Truth cannot be a gift from anybody to you. You have to dig for it inside your being.
I can help you to dig!
I can give you methods to dig but
I cannot give you the answer.
That will be inimical to you, that will be destructive.
Don’t wait for it to come from the outside; it has to come from the inside. So listen more and more, get attuned more and more to your inner being.
15. I used to Ask Myself. WHO AM I?
I used to ask myself, “Who am I?”
IT is impossible to count how many days and nights I passed in this query.
The intellect gave. Answer heard from others, or born of conditioning.
All of them were borrowed, life less.
They brought no contentment.
They resonated a little at the surface, and then disappeared.
The inner being was not touched by them: no echo of them was heard in the depths, There were many answers to the question, but none were correct, and I was untouched by them.
They could not rise to the level of the question.
Then I say that the question came from the Center, but the replies touched only the periphery.
The question was mine, but the answers came from outside;
The question arose from my inner most being the replies were imposed from outside.
This insight became a revolution.
A new dimension was revealed.
The responses of the intellect were meaningless they had no relevance to the problem.
An illusion had shattered, and what a relief it was! It seemed as if a closed door had been flung open, filling the darkness with light. The intellect had been providing the answers- that was the mistake. Because of these false answers, the real answer could not arise. Some truth was struggling to surface. In the depths of consciousness come seed was seeking the way to break open the ground in order to reach the light. Intellect was the obstruction.
When this become clear, the answer began to subside. knowledge acquired from outside began to evaporate. The question went ever deeper. I did not do anything, only kept on watching.
Something novel was happening. I was speechless. What was there to do? I was, at the most, simply a witness. The reactions of the periphery were fading, perishing, becoming non-existent. The centre now began to resonate more fully.
“Who am I?”- my entire being was throbbing with this thirst.
What a violent storm it was! Every breath quaked and trembled in it.
“Who am I?”- like an arrow, the question pierced through everything and moved within.
I remember-what an acute thirst it was! My very life had turned into thirst. Everything was burning. And like a flame of fire the question stood forth, “Who am I?” The Surprise was that the intellect was completely silent. The incessant flow of thoughts has stopped, what had happened? The periphery was absolutely still. There were no thoughts, no conditionings of the past.
Only I was there - and there was the question too. No, no – I myself was the question.
And then, the explosion. In a moment, everything was transformed. The question had dropped. The answer had come from some unknown dimension.
Truth is attained through a sudden explosion not gradually.
It cannot be compelled to appear. IT comes emptiness is the solution, not words.
Becoming answerless is the answer.
Someone asked yesterday, and someone or other asks everyday “What is the answer?”
I say, “If I mention it,
it is meaningless.
Its meaning lies in realizing it for oneself.”
16. Who am I?
I Teach you a totally different kind of religiousness. It is that of Meditation. You are not to worship. You are not to pray; you have to go deep within your own self – a journey of self – discovery. It is not a question of discovering God. Why are you after god? What wrong has he done to you? Forgive him, Forget him!
The first and the only worthwhile enquiry is to know: WHO AM I within this body, mind Mechanism?
what is this consciousness. This miracle of awareness has to be discovered. You have to peel your being as one peels an onion. Go on peeling.... you will find layers within layers. And finally, when all the layers are discarded, eliminated you will find in your hands pure nothingness, emptiness, shunyata. That is your essential core, the center of the cyclone.
Discarding the layers of the onion you have discarded the bottle that was created by you, buy the society, by the culture, by the past, by the tradition and when you have discarded the bottle, the goose is out.
Then you are as infinite, as the universe itself, as eternal as timelessness itself.
You can call it godliness. It is Godliness. It is the highest
The greatest flowering of being. But it is not god somewhere outside you.
you cannot pray to it.
you can be it.
but you cannot pray to it.
because it is not separate.
17. WHO ARE YOU?
Before Consciousness is born,
You are one with the universe. In deep sleep you again fall into that oneness. When there is no dreaming and no thought there is no mind; and when there is no mind there is no Ego. In deep sleep you are no more, because your mind is no more.
Who are you in your deep sleep?
Can you say what your name is?
When you are deeply, dreamlessly asleep,
Who are you?
What is your name?
There is no name, because if there is a name you are not deeply asleep.
There is just a surface Thing.
Who are you?
A Hindu or a Mohammedan?
A Christian catholic or protestant?
Who are you?
Educated, Uneducated,
Poor or rich,
a begger or a king?
Who are you? Man? Woman? Young or old? IN deep sleep you are none of these.
Still you are.
You cannot say that you are absolutely not, you are, but you are not that which You are, when awake.
While dreaming, while awake you are a mind
While deeply asleep
You are a no-mind.
The mind is lost, dissolved,
But the being is.
18. WHO AM I?
Memory is mind.
How to get rid of memory?
It is always there, following you.
In fact, you are the memory.
So how to get rid of it?
Who are you except your memories?
When I ask, “Who are you?”
You tell me your name. That is a memory.
Your parents gave you that name sometime back.
I ask you, “Who are you?
and you tell about your family: your father, your mother that is a memory.
I ask you, “Who are you?”
and you tell me about your education, your degrees that you have done a degree of Master of Arts, or you are Ph.D, or you are an engineer,
or an architect. That is the memory.
When I ask you, “Who are you?”
if you really look inside, your only answer can be ‘I don’t know.”
whatsoever you will say will be the memory’ not you.
The only real, authentic answer can be, “I don’t know” because to know oneself is the last thing.
I can answer who I am,
but I will not answer.
You cannot answer, “who are you”? but you are ready with the answer.
Those who know keep silent about this, because if all the memory is discarded and all the language is discarded then who I am cannot be said. I can look into you,
I can give you a gesture.
I can be with you with my total being.
That is my answer.
But the answer cannot be given in words because whatsoever is given in words will be part of Memory, part of mind, not of consciousness.
How to get rid of the memories?
Watch them, witness them. And always remembers, “This has happened to me, But this is not me.” of course. You were born in a certain family but this is not you; it has happened to you, an event outside of you.
Of course. Somebody has given a name to you. It has its utility, but the name is not you.
Of course you have a form, but the form is not you. The form is just the house you happen to be in.
The form is just the body that you happen to be in- and the body is given to you by your parents.
It is a gift, but not you.
Watch and discriminate.
This is what in the east they call vivek, discrimination. You discriminate continuously.
keep on discriminating-a moment comes when you have eliminated all that you are not:
Suddenly,
in that state, for the first time you face yourself,
you encounter your own being.
Go on cutting all identities that you are not:
the family, the body, the mind.
In that emptiness, when everything that was not you has been thrown out suddenly your being surfaces.
for the first time you encounter yourself.
19. WHO AM I?
Beloved Osho, Who am I?
OSHO: How am I to know?
How can I answer this question?
Except you, nobody else can answer it for you.
I cannot answer it on your behalf.
I know who I am, but how can I say
who you are?
you will have to dive deep within your own self.
And the people who have been answering on
you behalf are your enemies, because
you will start collecting, accumulating
Their answers. You will becomes knowledgeable, and to become knowledgeable is to prevent wisdom from arising.
Yes, thousands of answers are available.
I can also answer very easily:
That you are a soul, eternal, Deathless,
Amirtasya putrah, that you are sons of God,
Sons of immortality. I can say to you all these beautiful things that have been said
down the ages, but they are not going to help. If you cling to them, I have not helped you. I have hindered you. I have not been a master
to you but an enemy not a friend.
I cannot answer it for you.
It is not a question that can be answered by anybody else than yourself.
You have to go into your own self.
You have to search.
You have to ask and inquire, “Who am I?”
It is a question very private, absolutely
private, and only you are capable of
knowing the answer. And not through
Scriptures, remember, but through a deep inquiry into your own being.
That very inquiry is meditation.
Ramana Maharishi used to give only one meditation to his disciples; sit silently and go on inquiry within yourself “Who am I?:
First verbally and then slowly, slowly let the words disappear and let the question become a feeling... Who am I?”.... just a feeling just a question mark deep down in your heart And go on asking. One day even that feeling disappears. There is no question;
Suddenly you are question less.
The question “who am I?” will help you to destroy all other questions, and then finally it commits. Suicides You are left with no question And that is the moment of the answer arising in you. And even if you know, you will not be able to communicate it to anybody else.
It is incommunicable. You ask me, “WHO AM I ?”
You are Sanjaya; This is your name,
You are a man; You have a body of a man.
You are an educated person;
You have a medical degree.
These things can be answered by anybody.
but these are not you.
You are Hindu,
You have lived the life of a so-called
Hindu religious man.
You know the Gita.
You have read it so many times that you can simply repeat it by memory.
And in the Gita, Krishna has answered so many times, “Who are you?”
So you must know those answers too.
Beware of people, who answer such deep questions of yours.
Only superficial questions can be answered by other. If somebody starts telling you about your deepest core, stop him immediately. It is none of his business and he is going to make a mess of you, and what so ever he says to you is going to harm you. It is poisonous.
The real master will not tell you who you are of course, He will shake you and shock you into Awareness.
“The two patients met with each other in the asylum grounds.
“God morning, Fosdike, How are you?”
“I am Fine, Cartwright, but my name is not Fosdike.”
“Mine’s not Cartwright either.”
“Not to worry, we’re probably not ourselves today.”
But this is the situation of the whole world:
the whole earth is almost like a mad house Nobody knows who he is.
People who don’t know who they are go on telling others about their innermost selves. They are simply repeating like parrots. Scriptures, beautiful scriptures, but in their hands all scriptures lose their truth.
When somebody who is awakened says something it has a truth in it, but when unawakened people repeat it, it becomes untrue. Truth repeated by those who have not experienced becomes untrue. Truth borrowed becomes untrue.
Only one thing can be said; that you are in a deep unconsciousness. The Unconsciousness has to be broken. The Ice has to be melted. Once your unconsciousness is broken. Once you have become a little conscious, you will be able to see who you are. You will be the first person to know who you are, see the unfortunate situation that we have to ask others, “Who am I?”
“The captain told the prisoner that he would be released if he fulfilled three conditions:
First you must drink this gallon of kentucky rotgut whiskey without stopping should you survive this, you must go outside to the animal cage where a lion has a bad tooth. You must remove the tooth barehanded, without anesthetic. And finally if you survive the first two conditions, you must go out the back to a tent where a woman who has never, I repeat ‘never’ been sexually satisfied, is waiting
for you, to satisfy her.
If you accomplish all three, I will set you free.”
The prisoner shuddered but feeling that he had no choice agreed to try. First he drank the whiskey turning all shaded of the color spectrum. He then stumbled out the front door. For an hour all that could be heard were screams and roars, shouts and more roars.
Finally the prisoner returned, his clothes in shreds is body covered in blood.
“Okay,” he mumbled. Now where’s the lady with the bad tooth?”
20.WHO AM I?
Beloved Master,
What is the Ego ? It seems a complementary question to “WHO AM I”? and as much a koan
The ego is just the opposite of your real self
The ego is not you, The ego is the deception created by the society so that so that you can continue playing with the toy and never ask about the real thing.
That’s why my insistence that unless you drop the ego you will never come to know yourself.
When you were born you had your authentic self. Then they started creating a false self.
you are Christian,
You are catholic,
You are white,
You are German and
You are chosen race of God,
You are supposed to rule over the world
and so on so forth. They create a false idea who you are. They give you a name and around. The name they create ambitions, Conditionings.
And by and by, because it takes almost one third of your life. They work on your ego through the school.
Through the church, college, university.... By the time you came back home from the university you have forgotten completely your innocent Being. You are now a very big ego with a gold medal first class topping the university. Now you are ready to go into the world.
This ego has all the desires, ambitions wants to be always on the Top of everything. You are exploited by this ego. And this never allows you even a glimpse of your real authentic self, and your life is there, in your real authenticity. Hence this ego only produces misery, suffering, fighting, frustration, madness suicide, murder all kinds of Crime.
A seeker of Truth has to begin from this very point: That whatever you have been told by the society you are, discard it. Certainly you are not it, because nobody can know who you are Except yourself – neither your parents, nor your teachers, nor your priests. Except yourself, nobody can enter into the privacy of your being.
So nobody knows about you whatever they have said about you is all wrong. Pur it aside. Dismantle the whole ego! In destroying the ego you will discover your being. And that discovery is the greatest discovery possible, because it starts a totally New pilgrimage towards ultimate Bliss, towards eternal life.
You can choose:
Either frustration, suffering, misery – Then go on holding the ego, nourishing it or peace, Silence, Bliss – but then you have to recover your innocence.
21. WHO AM I ?
Osho,
Would you please talk about the sadhana based on holding as much as possible to the “I” thought or the sense “I am” and on asking oneself the questions, Who am I? or from where does this I arise?” In what way does this approach to meditation differ from that of watching the gaps between one’s in breath and out- breath? Does it make any difference whether one witnesses the breath focusing on the heart center or on the lower belly center?
It is an ancient method of Meditation, but full of dangers, unless you are alert, the greater possibility is that you will be led astray by the method rather than to the right goal. The method is simple – Concentrating yourself on the concept of I, closing your eyes and inquiring, “WHO AM I”
The greatest problem is that when you ask,” WHO AM I?” who is going to answer you? Most probably the answer will come from your tradition, from your scriptures, from your conditioning. You have heard that: “I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am the soul, I am the ultimate, Brahman, I am God.” you have heard all these kinds of thoughts before. You will ask a few times,” who am I? who am I?” And then you will will say,” I am the ultimate Brahman.” And this is not a discovery; it is simply stupid.
If you want to go into the method rightly then the question has not to be verbally asked. Because as long as it remains a verbal question, you will supply a verbal answer from the head. You have to drop the verbal question. It has to remain just a vague idea, just like a thirst, Not “I am thirsty.” can you see the difference?
If “Who am I?” is an existential question, if you are not asking it in language but instead the feeling of the question is settling inside your center, then there is no need for any answer. The mind is not hear that which is non-verbal, and the mind will not answer that which is non-verbal.
All your scriptures are in the mind, all your knowledge is gathered there.
Now you are entering am innocent space, you will not get the answer., You will get the feel, you will get the taste, you will get the smell. As you go deeper you will be field more with the feeling of being, of immortality, blissfulness, silence – a tremendous benedication.
But there is no answer like, “I am this, I am that.” All that is from the scriptures. This feeling is from you, and this feeling has a truth about it. It is a perfectly valid method.
One of the great masters of this century Raman Maharishi, used only this method for his disciples; “Who am I?” But I have come across hundreds of his disciples and they are nowhere near the ultimate experience. And the reason is because they know the answer already. They said, “We know the answer.”
I said, “If you know the answer then why are you asking? And your asking cannot go on very long – do it two or three times and the answer comes./ The answer was already there, before the question.”
So it is just a mind game. If you want to play it, you can play it. But if you really want to go into it as it was meant by Raman Maharishi, and by all the ancient seers, it is a non – verbal thirst. So if you can avoid the danger of falling into a verbal question, it is perfectly good, you can go ahead.
Not knowing oneself hurts, it is a wound.
Not knowing oneself makes the whole of life meaningless.
You may know everything,
Only you do not know yourself – and that would be the first thing to know.
You have also asked about witnessing, watching the breath and where one should watch. Anywhere – because the point is not where you are watching, the point is that you are watching. The emphasis is on watching, watch-fulness. All those points are just excuses.
You can watch the breath at the tip of the nose where the breath goes in, you can watch it while it is going in, you can watch it when it returns. you can watch it anywhere. You can watch thoughts moving inside. The whole point is not to get lost in what you are watching, as if that is important. That is not important. The important thing is that you are watchful, that you have not forgotten to watch. That you are watching.. watching... watching. becomes more and more solid, stable, unwavering, a transformation happens. The things that you were watching disappear. For the first time, the watcher itself becomes the watched, the observer itself becomes the observed, you have come HOME.
22. WHO AM I?
The beginning is always the question. “WHO AM I?”
And one has to go on asking, when first you ask “Who am I? The muladhar will answer, you are a body! what nonsense! there is no need to ask, you know it already.” Then the second (Svadisthan) will say “You are sexuality.” then the third (manipura) will say, “you are a power trip an ego”- and so on so forth.
Remember, you have to stop only when there is no answer coming, not before it.
If some answer is coming that, “You are this, you are this,” then know well that some center is providing you with an answer. When all the six centers have been crossed and all their answer cancelled, you go on asking “WHO AM I?” and no answer comes from anywhere, it is utter silence. You question resounds in yourself: “WHO AM I?” and there is silence, no answer arises from anywhere from any corner, you are absolutely present, absolutely silent and there is not even a vibration, “Who am I?” and only silence. Then a miracle happens: You cannot even formulate the question.
Answers have become absurd; then finally the question also becomes absurd.
First answers disappears, then the question also disappears because they can live only together. They are like two sides of a coin - if one side has gone, the other cannot be retained. First answers disappears, then the question disappears. And with the disappearance of question and answer, you come to realize: that is transcendental. You know, yet you cannot say; you know, yet you cannot be articulate about it. You know from you’re your being who you are but it….? cannot be verbalized. It is life knowledge; it is not spiritual, it is not borrowed, it is not from others. It has arisen in you.
And with this arising you are a Buddha. And then you start laughing because you come to know that you have been a Buddha from the very beginning; you had just never looked, so deep. You were running around and around outside your being. You had never come home.
Monday, 1 August 2011
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