The Watcher Is You
Beloved Osho,
What does it mean when you say, "Just be yourself"? How can I be
myself when I don't know who I am? I know many of my preferences,
likings, dislikings and tendencies, which seem to be the outcome of
a programmed biocomputer called the mind. Does just being oneself
mean that one totally lives out the whole content of the mind as
watchfully as possible?
Yes, it exactly means that - to live as an awareness: awareness
of all the programs the mind has been conditioned for, awareness of
all the impulses, desires, memories, imaginations... all that the
mind can do. One has to be not part of it, but separate - seeing it
but not being it - watching it.
And this is one of the most essential things to remember, that
you cannot watch your watchfulness. If you watch your watchfulness,
then the watcher is you, not the watched. So you cannot go beyond
watchfulness. The point that you cannot transcend is your being. The
point that you cannot go beyond is you. You can watch very easily
any thought, any emotion, any sentiment. Just one thing you cannot
watch - and that is your watchfulness. And if you manage to watch
it, that means you have shifted: the first watchfulness has become
just a thought; now you are the second watcher.
You can go on shifting back, but you cannot get out of
watchfulness because it is you: you cannot be otherwise.
So when I say, "Just be yourself," I am saying to you, "Just be
unprogrammed, unconditioned awareness." That's how you had come into
the world, and that's how the enlightened person leaves the world.
He lives in the world but remains totally separate.
One of the great mystics, Kabir, has a beautiful poem about it.
All his poems are just perfect - nothing can be better. One of his
poems says, "I will give back the soul that was given to me at the
time of my birth as pure, as clean, as it was given to me. I will
give it back that way when I die." He is talking about awareness,
that it has remained unpolluted. The whole world was there to
pollute it, but he has remained watchful.
All that you need is just to be watchful, and nothing will affect
you. This unaffectedness will keep your purity, and this purity has
certainly the freshness of life, the joy of existence - all the
treasures that you have been endowed with.
But you become attached to the small things surrounding you and
forget the one that you are. It is the greatest discovery in life
and the most ecstatic pilgrimage to truth. And you need not be an
ascetic, you need not be anti-life - you need not renounce the world
and go to the mountains. You can be where you are, you can continue
to do what you are doing. Just a new thing has to be evolved:
whatever you do, you do with awareness - even the smallest act of
the body or the mind - and with each act of awareness you will
become aware of the beauty and the treasure and the glory and the
eternity of your being.
See also:
- The Inside Mirror
- Witnessing: The Most Simple
- Remaining A Witness
- Witnessing: A Simple Phenomenon
- Awareness a Transforming Force
- Witnessing The Last Frontier
- Bliss Beyond All Duality
- The Observer is not the Witness
- Witnessing Is Not An Experience
- The Fire of Witnessing
- Choicelessness is Bliss
- Witnessing Is So Easy