OSHO International Foundation presents
Being in Love & Sharing The Treasures
I am teaching you
to be selfish.
Let me repeat it, because the word
"selfishness"
has been condemned so much
that there is every possibility
you will misunderstand me.
But
the word
is really beautiful.
To be selfish simply means
to be yourself.
I say to you:
don't consider anybody else in the world,
just consider yourself;
and in that very consideration
you will have considered the whole world.
In being selfish
you will find
all the altruism
that you have been seeking and seeking
and not finding,
because
the whole thing
was upside down.
You are told
to love your neighbor --
but you have never loved yourself.
And a person
who has not loved himself,
how can he love the neighbor?
From where
can he get
love?
First you have to
have it.
You are loving the neighbor --
you who knows nothing of love
because you have never loved yourself.
The neighbor is loving you --
he has never loved himself.
Such insanity is happening in the world:
people are loving each other who know nothing of love.
It is like beggars
begging from each other,
thinking
as if the other is the emperor.
Both are thinking in the same way:
the other is the emperor.
Both are beggars.
Sooner or later
the reality
manifests itself;
then there is
misery,
suffering.
Then you think you have been cheated,
this beggar has been
trying to prove himself an emperor.
Now this is absolutely absurd --
you were thinking of him
as an emperor.
The same is the situation from the other side:
the other person thinks you
have been cheating him,
pretending to be an emperor
and you are just a beggar.
When both beggars find
that they are beggars,
what else can they do
other than
be angry,
enraged,
violent to each other,
hating
each other as deeply as possible.
And the love ...?
It was nothing;
they don't know what love is.
To know anything,
you have to begin with yourself.
You have been told
to sacrifice yourself
for some
idiotic ideal.
I want you to be
simply selfish.
And you will be surprised
that if you are selfish
you discover so many
treasures within yourself
that soon you start
sharing them --
because finding a treasure is a lesser joy
than sharing it.
And the treasures that are within you
don't follow the ordinary economics
and its laws.
They are just
the very opposite,
diametrically opposite
to the ordinary economic
structure.
In the ordinary economics
if you give something,
you will have less.
If you go on giving,
soon you will be a beggar.
In the ordinary economic world
you have to snatch as much
from everybody as possible
then you have
more
and more and more.
The treasures I am talking about to you,
follow
a different law:
if you cling to them
they shrink,
if you cling too much
you can even kill them.
If you
want to destroy them
then close all the windows and doors,
become a grave
so nothing can escape
outside you --
but you will be a dead man,
with all your treasures also dead with you;
your truth, your freedom,
your love,your joy.
Everything will be dead with you --
securely dead,
well-insured.
But if you want
to grow your treasures,
share them,
share to all and sundry --
don't bother
whether this is a friend or a foe.
When you are sharing,
the question is of sharing,
it is not with whom.
Whomever it may concern,
you simply give.
Don't be concerned about the address,
you simply go on sending love letters.
Somebody will receive them somewhere.
And
the more you go on sharing,
the more
goes on
entering you from unknown sources.
A man is just like a well ....
Source: 'From Darkness to Light # 22' Copyright © Osho International Foundation, Switzerland. OSHO is a registered TM.
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