Osho - Discovering Your Center: Your Natural Essence Versus Your False Personality

your natural essence versus your false personality

ISBN: 978-0-88050-719-6

Copyright 19 ,2016 OSHO International Foundation,

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Discovering Your Center , by Osho

From a series of OSHO Talkstitled: Unio Mystica, Vol. 1, Chapter #2, Questions 1, 2 and 4

Discovering Your Center is also available as an originalaudio recording, spoken by Osho

Published by

OSHO MEDIAINTERNATIONAL

an imprint of

OSHOINTERNATIONAL

www.osho.com/oshointernational

ISBN: 978-0-88050-719-6

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Today I looked at you and I felt myself so shallow and phonyand false. There doesnt seem to be anything deeper inside of me. Do thesefeelings show that I dont have a center yet? It also shocks me that this seemsto be my face at the moment.

Nobody can exist without a center. Life is impossible without acenter. You may not be aware of it, thats another matter. It has not to becreated but only rediscovered. And remember, I am not saying discovered, I amsaying rediscovered.

The child in the mothers womb remains perfectly aware of thecenter. The child in the mothers womb is at the center, vibrates at thecenter, pulsates at the center. The child is the center in the mothers womb,he has no circumference yet. He is only essence, he has no personality yet.

Essence is the center, that which is your nature, that which isgiven by existence. Personality is the circumference, that which is cultivatedby society; it is not given by existence. It is by nurture, not by nature.

As the child comes out of the womb, he comes for the first timein contact with something outside of himself. And that contact creates thecircumference. Slowly, slowly, the society initiates the child into its ownways. The Christian society will make the child a Christian; and the Hindu, aHindu, and so on and so forth. Then layer upon layer of conditioning is imposedon the child.

Basically, if you enter a well-developed personality you willfind these three things. First, a very thin positive layer positive butphony. That is the layer which goes on pretending; that is the layer where allyour masks are contained. Fritz Perls used to call that layer the Eric Bernelayer where you play all kinds of games.

You may be crying within, but on that layer you go on smiling.You may be full of rage, you may like to murder the other person, but you go onbeing sweet. And you say, How good of you to come. I am so happy. Glad to seeyou. Your face shows gladness that is phony.

But to exist in a phony society you will need a phony layer;otherwise you will be in as much difficulty as Socrates was, Jesus was, I am.That phony layer keeps you part of the phony society. You dont fall apart. Itis a false world, what in the East we have called maya. It is illusory, it isall false and phony.

The other person is also smiling falsely as you. Nobody issmiling. People are carrying wounds, but they have decorated their wounds withflowers, they are hiding their wounds behind flowers.

Parents are in a hurry to give this layer to the child. They arein a hurry because they know the child has to exist as a member of a falsesociety. It will be difficult for the child to survive without it; it functionsas a lubricating agent.

This is a very thin layer, skin-deep. Scratch anybody a littleand suddenly you will find flowers have disappeared, and rage and hatred andall kinds of negative things are hidden behind it. That is the second layer,negative but still false.

The second layer is thicker than the first. The second layer isthe layer where much work has to be done. Thats where psychotherapies come in.And because there is a great negative layer behind the positive, you are alwaysafraid to go in. Because to go in means you will have to cross that uglyphenomenon, that dirty rubbish that you have gathered, year in and year out,your whole life.

Where does the second layer come from? The child is born as apure center, innocence, with no duality. He is one. He is in the state of uniomystica; he does not yet know that he is separate from existence. He livesin unity, he has not known any separation. The ego has not arisen yet.

But immediately the society starts working on the child. It says,Dont do this. This will not be acceptable to the society repress it. Do thisbecause this is acceptable to the society, and you will be respected, loved,appreciated.

So a duality is created in the child; on the circumference aduality arises. The first layer is the positive that you have to show toothers, and the second layer is the negative that you have to hide withinyourself.

The child is innocent. He is innocent in his love; he is innocentin his anger. He does not make a distinction. When he is in love he is in love,and he is totally in love. And when he is angry he is totally angry, he is justpure anger, hence the beauty of the child. Even when he is angry he has asuperb beauty, grace even in his anger, because the totality is there.Grown-ups, even when they are in love, are not so beautiful because thetotality is missing.

We create a division in the child, each child. Our society haslived up to now in a kind of schizophrenia. The real humanity has not yet beenborn. The whole past has been a nightmare, because we divide the person intotwo: the positive and the negative; yes and no; love and hate. We destroy histotality.

These two layers are our split. The first layer is positive andfalse; the second layer is negative and false. They are false because only thetotal can be real. The partial is always false because the partial deniessomething, rejects something, and the denied part makes it false. Only in totalacceptance does reality arise.

The center is there in you, but you will have to go diggingthrough these two layers, the positive and phony, and the negative and phony.And then you will fall into that oceanic oneness, the total, the whole. Thensuddenly great bliss arises that is satori. It is not to be created, it isalready there. It is not even to be discovered, it has only to be rediscovered.You had known it before, hence the search. Otherwise the search was impossible.

Why do people go on searching for bliss? because they must haveknown it. Somewhere deep down, the memory still persists of those sweet momentsin the mothers womb when all was quiet, still, when all was one, when therewas no worry, no responsibility, when there was no other. It was paradise. Itis the meaning of the symbol of the Garden of Eden. The womb is the Garden ofEden.

But you cannot live in the womb forever; sooner or later you haveto come out of the womb. And the moment you come out of the womb, the societyis bound to educate you. The society and the education are not yet human. It isneurotic, it is very primitive because it does not help the child to grow inhis center. It does not help the child to grow remaining alert of the center.On the contrary, it tries in every way so that the child forgets the center andbecomes identified with a false personality that the society is providing tothe child.

The society is not interested in the child; the society isinterested in maintaining its own structure. The society is not interested inthe individual; it is against the individual, it is all for the collective. Andthe collective has been neurotic, and the collective has been ugly. But thesociety is past oriented and the individual is future oriented. The individualhas to live in the future, and the society knows only the past in which it haslived. The society has no future; the society consists of the past. It goes on imposingthat past on the child.