Question – In Being Selfish does one Still remain Aware of others or Not?
Osho – If you are aware of yourself you become aware of others. How can it be otherwise? If you are not aware of yourself, how can you be aware of others? Awareness first must happen within you. The light must be lighted there first. The flame must arise within you; only then can the light spread and envelop others. You live in darkness, unawareness — how can you be aware of others? You go on thinking, you dream — you are not aware of others.
The husband may say, “I am aware of my wife and her feelings.” Simply not possible, because the husband is not aware of himself. He lives in deep darkness and unconsciousness. He does not know from where his anger comes, he does not know from where love arises, he does not know from where comes this existence, flowing. He is not aware of himself — and that is the closest thing you can be aware of — and he says, “I am aware of my wife and her feelings.” Foolishness.
He may be thinking, dreaming that he is aware. Everybody lives surrounded in his own dreams; and hidden behind the dreams, one’s own projections, one goes on thinking: “I am aware.”
Ask the wife; she says, “He is never aware of me.” The wife thinks she is aware of her husband, his needs; but those needs that she thinks she is aware of are not her husband’s needs. That’s what she thinks are his needs. The conflict continues, and both are aware and both feel for each other and both are careful about each other.
Nobody can be careful about anybody else unless one has learned the lesson first in the deeper, inner core of his being. First be careful about yourself. That is the nearest, closest point. Learn awareness there; then you will be aware of others. Then for the first time you will not project. You will not interpret; you will look directly. You will look at the other as he is, not as you would like him to be or as you think him to be. Then you will look at reality.
When dreams drop from your eyes and your eyes are not full of dreams, only then can you be aware. Otherwise your eyes are cloudy; many clouds and much smoke exist there. You look, but you look from behind screens, and those screens pervert everything that you see. They distort. They don’t mirror; they project. When your dreams have disappeared and you are alert — alert, aware, mindful — then your eyes become like the eyes of a camera.
You simply see that which is; you don’t project. You don’t do anything to the reality; you simply allow the reality to be revealed. Your eyes are simple, innocent passages. They simply look. Right now, as you are, you can’t look. Your eyes are filled already with prejudice, ideas, conceptions, beliefs. You cannot look. Your eyes are not empty enough to Look.
How can you be aware of others? Only a Buddha is aware, one who has awakened within himself. But a Buddha is a very selfish man, a Mahavir is a selfish man, a Patanjali, absolutely selfish — but they help millions. They become a benediction to millions. All those who are in need and in search can use their light. But they are lighted. That is the meaning of enlightenment: their flame is burning. You can partake of it. You can light your own inner flame through it. You can become a participant.
Awareness has to be learned within. When you awake inside yourself you awake to the whole world, to the whole existence. Suddenly shrouds fall. Suddenly your eyes are no longer filled… empty, receptive, naked. You see. You don’t project, you don’t interpret. You have nothing to project. You have become just space, an inner emptiness.
Source: from Osho Book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6”