Osho – How can one be oneself if one is not oneself?

Question – Your teaching seems to be: to be absolutely oneself. This is beyond me. How can one be oneself if one is not oneself?

Osho – Let me ask you another question: how can you not be yourself? You can believe it, but you cannot be anything other than yourself. You can think that you are somebody else, you can imagine that you are somebody else, but all the time you are just yourself, nothing else.

So whether you believe you are yourself or not is irrelevant. You remain, all the time, yourself. You can go on running and chasing shadows, but one day or the other you will have to realize that you have just been doing an absurd thing. How can you be other than yourself7 How? You ask me how one can be oneself. I ask you how one can be other than oneself — and in my questioning is the answer. Nobody has even been other than himself; nobody can ever be other than himself. To be oneself is the only way to be, nothing can be done about it.

You can believe…. It is just like you sleep at night in Poona and you dream that you are in Philadelphia. That doesn’t make any change in reality. You remain in Poona — here, somewhere in Mobo’s. You remain in Poona; Philadelphia remains just a dream. In the morning you will not wake up in Philadelphia, remember. You will wake up in Mobo’s, in Poona. Howsoever miserable, but it is the case! Nothing can be done about it; at the most you can again dream of Philadelphia.

You are gods. That is your reality. You can believe… you have believed in many things. Sometimes you believed you were a tree — many trees are still believing that. Sometimes you believed you were an animal: a tiger, a lion. There are a few people who belong to Lion Clubs — Lion Bhabhutmal Sanghvi. They are not satisfied in being men — lions! Sometimes you believed that you were a lion, and then you WERE a lion: a dream. Sometimes you believed that you were a rock and you WERE a rock: a dream. You have been changing your dreams.

Now the time has arrived. Wake up! I’m not giving you another dream, remember. You hanker for it, you would like me to give you another dream, but I am not going to give you another dream. That’s why to be with me is difficult and arduous — because I am insisting that you wake up. Enough is enough. You have dreamed a lot; since eternity you have been dreaming. You have just been changing dreams. When you get fed up with one dream, you start changing it; you dream another dream. My whole effort is to shake you, to shock you — to wake you.

It is not a question of achieving any new thing. It is already your being. Just opening the eyes, just dropping the dreams, just dropping the clouds and the vision. It is a question of clarity and understanding, that’s all. Between you and Jesus, between you and me, between you and Buddha, there is no difference of being — nothing. You are exactly the same. The difference, at the most, is that you are asleep and Jesus is not asleep, that’s all.

So don’t ask me how to be oneself; you cannot be otherwise. Just ask me how to be awake. You are yourself ALL THE TIME! Just become a little more alert, just bring a new quality of waking consciousness — just watch. Don’t try to be anything because that will again be a dream. Just watch: whosoever you are, wheresoever you are, just watch and be… and allow it. Then the happening, the sudden happening, can come any moment. The heavens can open and the spirit of God, like a dove, can enter in you.

In fact, this is just a way of saying something that cannot be said. It can be said in just the opposite terms also. Let me say it: that when John the Baptist initiated, baptized, Jesus — Jesus opened and the spirit of God, like a dove, was released from him and flew into the infinite sky. That is also exactly the same truth. It is just a way of saying it from two polarities.

You are gods and you have never been anything else. That’s why I am not worried if you want to sleep a little longer. Nothing is wrong; the choice is up to you. You can have a little more sleep — turn over and have a little more sleep; snore a little longer — nothing is wrong. But don’t try to improve, don’t try to achieve anything. Don’t try to become anything because you are already that which you can become! The being is your only becoming, you carry your destiny within yourself. Relax… and be.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 1″