Osho – Only self knowledge can make you master of your inner powers. Only self knowledge fills your life with light, knowledge and splendor. The day you become capable of awakening, or becoming aware, you will realize that you were always a king. You will wonder. You will laugh at your foolishness in considering yourself a beggar for so long! you will be shocked that you ‘remained in the nightmare of sorrow for so long; for that is what life is without awareness.
Sometimes while asleep you put your hand on your chest; then you dream that someone is sitting on your chest, or that someone has placed a huge boulder on you, or that you are being crushed under an avalanche. You will begin to perspire and your sleep will be interrupted. When you wake up you will find that it is only your hand, your own hand. Dreams are such exaggerations that your own hand turns into a mountain! If the hand falls over the edge of the bed you think that you have fallen into an abyss!
Try a few experiments. You can induce dreams in a person who is asleep. Place a small fire at his feet. He will dream that he is in a desert and his feet are burning in the sand and he is dying of thirst. He burst into a sweat. Or touch his feet with ice; then he will dream that he is climbing Everest, that his feet are frost-bitten, and he is dying of cold. Or put a pillow on his chest and he will see Satan riding on him; or put his hand around his neck and he will dream he is being hanged. But all this can be verified only on awakening. Dreams are much exaggerations. He is bound to laugh when he awakens. How much he has suffered – and for no reason at all! A slight gesture and the mind swings into action, the imagination running wild!
You never suffer nearly as much as you imagine you suffer. You never suffer the illnesses you most dread nor the miseries that you fear. Ninety percent of your suffering is psychological; only ten percent is real. If the ninety percent, the imaginary ills, were to be eliminated, the real ills would be easily overcome. There is a way to overcome them. There is a way to step outside of them and be freed from all ills. It is you who magnify them so much that you become small; then you tremble and think you can do nothing.
As soon as the ray of knowledge awakens and the flame within is lighted, you become the master of all your energies, which is in fact the very source of your knowledge. Knowledge is the ultimate happening. Knowledge means the inner eye, the ability to see, the ability to see through and beyond. Then life has no more sorrows, and there is bliss, and bliss alone. All sufferings are caused by your own blindness. Your sleep turns your dreams into nightmares. Consciousness knows no ills; it knows bliss, and only bliss.
Sourcr – Osho Book “The Great Path”