PROVOCATIONS INTO CONSCIOUSNESS

Osho, The Magic of Self-respect
235 pages, Pb. & DVD with Osho talk: "The Magic of Self-Respect," from the series From Ignorance to Innocence
 euro 21.50 - order here

So much of the experience of everyday life, says Osho in this insightful guide, is shaped by religious and social conditioning — and we are not even aware of the fact. We are constantly being pulled away from the unique nature that is our birthright. In place of that original and unique self, a false self called the “ego” is constructed that eventually gains control of our creativity, our ideas about what it means to be successful, our relationships, and our very experience of who we are. At the same time, he argues, the collection of egos known as “society” shapes our political, educational, and religious institutions, which in turn combine to force the same old patterns onto new generations.

Discarding the old trinities we all know from the past, Osho introduces us to a new trinity - of watchfulness, awareness, and alertness.

´Once upon a time you knew the real self. Before you became part of a society, a culture, a civilization, you knew it. It is not a coincidence that people go on thinking that their childhood was the most beautiful part of their life. It is a long-forgotten memory, because there have been days in your life, the earliest days, which you cannot remember exactly; only a vague feeling, a kind of fragrance, a kind of shadow is there.
If you re-spect, if you look again and go deep into your existence, you are going to find the place from where you started losing yourself and gaining the ego.
That moment is a moment of illumination.`

The DVD discourse is titled "The Magic of Self-Respect," from the series From Ignorance to Innocence, and is another living experience of a contempory mystic at work.

And the magic of self-respect is that the moment you start searching for yourself, you will come across many shadowy selves, all phony. And it is not difficult to see what is phony because anything that you come across is phony. A simple criterion: anything that you find within you and think, "This is my self" know well that it is phony.
It is the finder who is the true one, not the found.
The found is just the object that you have achieved and accumulated.
Discard all those selves that you go on finding within you: "This is the self... No -- this is the self. Go on discarding them. A simple criterion, there cannot be a more simple criterion: anything that you find as your self is not your self
Go on discarding, and a moment comes when you cannot find any self anywhere. You cannot find anything -- all is empty.
And that is the moment of awakening.
Suddenly the seer is seen.
You are awakened to your own awareness.