The Way Beyond Any Way: Talks on Sarvasar Upanishad

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Osho calls the Sarvasar Upanishad "the secret of secrets, the mystery within all the mysteries, the essence of essences." It is one of the most ancient texts of the rishis, the seers, of India.

In life, many things can be learned without the person under- going any inner transformation: he can remain the same and just go on accumulating knowledge and skills. But in the realms of the inner search unless the person is ready to change and transform through a deep and sincere inquiry, he will never understand and find the essence within.

In The Way beyond Any Way Osho describes, step by step, how to search for this essence. But he cautions, "I warn you in advance that to involve oneself in the teachings of an Upanishad is like playing with fire. An Upanishad cannot be understood without also becoming transformed."

Osho's unique contribution to the understanding of who we are defies categorization. Mystic and scientist, a rebellious spirit whose sole interest is to alert humanity to the urgent need to dis- cover a new way of living. To continue as before is to invite threats to our very survival on this unique and beautiful planet.

His essential point is that only by changing ourselves, one individual at a time, can the outcome of all our "selves" - our societies, our cultures, our beliefs, our world - also change. The doorway to that change is meditation.

Osho the scientist has experimented and scrutinized all the approaches of the past and examined their effects on the modern human being and responded to their shortcomings by creating a new starting point for the hyperactive 21" Century mind: OSHO Active Meditations.

Once the agitation of a modern lifetime has started to settle. "activity" can melt into "passivity," a key starting point of real meditation. To support this next step, Osho has transformed the ancient "art of listening" into a subtle contemporary method- ology: the OSHO Talks. Here words become music, the listener discovers who is listening, and the awareness moves from what is being heard to the individual doing the listening. Magically, as silence arises, what needs to be heard is understood directly, free from the distraction of a mind that can only interrupt and interfere with this delicate process.

Man is born with a self, but not with an ego. The ego is a social construct, a later growth. The ego cannot exist without relationship. You can exist, the self can exist, but the ego cannot exist in itself. It is a by-product of being related to others. So ego exists between "I" and "thou." It is a relata. The child is born with a self but not with an ego. The child develops the ego. As he becomes more and more social and related, ego develops. This ego is just on your periphery where you are related with others - just on the boundary of your being. So ego is the periphery of your being, and self is the center. The child is born with a self, but unaware. He is a self, but he is not conscious of the self.

The first awareness of the child comes with his ego. He becomes aware of the "I," not of the self. Really, he becomes aware first of the "thou." The child first becomes aware of his mother. Then, reflectively, he becomes aware of himself. First he becomes aware of objects around him. Then, by and by, he begins to feel that he is separate. This feeling of separation gives the feeling of ego, and because the child first becomes aware of the ego, ego becomes a covering on the self.

Then ego goes on growing, because the society needs you as an ego, not as a self. The self is irrelevant for the society; your periphery is meaningful. And there are many problems. The ego can be taught and the ego can be made docile and the ego can be forced to be obedient. The ego can be made to adjust, but not the self. The self cannot be taught, the self cannot be forced. The self is intrinsically rebellious, individual. It cannot be made a part of society.

So the society is not interested in yourself. The society is interested in your ego - because something can be done with the ego, and nothing can be done with the self. So the society helps to strengthen the ego, and you go on living around your ego. The more you grow, the more you become social, educated, cultured, civilized, the more polished an ego you have. Then you begin to function from the ego, not from the self, because you are not aware of it at all.

So your essence goes on into the unconscious, into inner darkness, and a false construct, a social construct - the ego- becomes your center. Now you identify yourself with your ego - with your name, with your education, with your family, with your religion, with your country. These are all just part of your ego, not of yourself, because the self doesn't belong to your par- ents, the self doesn't belong to your country, the self doesn't belong to any religion, the self doesn't even belong to yourself. It doesn't belong.

The self is a freedom. It is total freedom. It exists in its own right. It doesn't belong to anything else, it doesn't depend on anything else. It is.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages