Osho – Dhyan means meditation. Pathik means pilgrim, a traveler. Meditation is an inner journey. It is moving from your circumference to your own center. We live on the circumference and we have lived on the circumference for so many lives that we have become completely oblivious even of the fact that a center exists.
A man living on the circumference is a man without soul, is a man without roots, is a man who remains a victim of accidents. His life is at the mercy of a thousand and one accidental causes; his life has no intrinsic value. He is just like driftwood — he knows not where he is going, he knows not from where he is coming, he knows not where he is.
I have heard that once a great politician lost his way while he was driving — he had gone for a pleasure drive. He asked an old man who was sitting under a tree, “Where is the way to the capital?”
The old man said, “I don’t know.”
Then he asked, “Where does this way lead to?”
And the old man said, “I don’t know.”
Of course the politician became very angry. He said, “You don’t seem to know anything at all. Are you some kind of idiot or what?”
The old man laughed and said, “But I am not lost! I know where I am and you don’t know even that! So who is an idiot?”
It is very rare to find a man who knows where he is. People are somewhere, certainly, but absolutely in a state of sleep — like zombies they go on moving. Sannyas means making a deliberate effort to become conscious. That’s what meditation is all about — a great effort to create the fire of awareness in you. It is there; it has just to be discovered, helped, nourished, nurtured. The center is there.
Once we have found it, we are centered, we are rooted. Suddenly we have a soul, we know where we are, and we know who we are. And that is the greatest moment in a man’s life. There is nothing else greater than that — to know “Who am I?” With that, the doors of the ultimate mystery open up. Then God becomes available in all its splendor and beauty. Then life is no longer a drag, it becomes a dance! Then life is no longer momentary, it becomes eternity. Than there is no death.
Then you live beyond time and beyond space, and that is true life. Jesus calls it life in abundance, overflowing life, life in spring, in a state of celebration. And that’s my whole teaching here — how to make your life a celebration.
Source – Osho Book “No Man is an Island”