Hi, I’m reading “The Great Secret: Talks On The Songs Of Kabir” by Osho, and wanted to share this quote with you.
You may prefer to listen, in US English, to this post from my podcast show “ Philosia “ on Spotify, Google podcasts, Apple Podcasts and Pocket casts too.
“Kabir says no one is greater than you, but you will only achieve that greatness when you surrender totally.
In this sadhana, in this journey, the paradox is that no one is greater than you – even Ram is not greater than the one who knows Ram – but you will only attain to this greatness when you become the smallest of the small.
You will become the Gourishankar, the Everest, only when you become a deep chasm, a deep abyss.
When you surrender, when you become smaller than a particle of dust, you become as great as God.
To be humble, to surrender, to give up the ego is to achieve the highest possible greatness.
If you remain egoistic, you remain insignificant. The ego is mean, inconsequential. If you hold on to it, you will be no more substantial than a grain of sand.
It is absolutely essential to be free of it; the ego is the only impediment to your greatness. You are insignificant only because of it.
When it is no more, no one is higher than you. Then you are the sovereign sound of existence, then you are the supreme music.
And this is the answer to all your problems. The whole problem exists simply because you have been unable to come to know what you really are.
And your innermost desire is to know that, to be that. This means you have been trying to achieve greatness with the help of something utterly insignificant.
You are like a certain king of Egypt the Sufis tell about.
The king loved a certain fakir very much, and the fakir used to go to the palace whenever he was sent for.
Many times the king said to the fakir, “I wish to come to your cottage,” but the fakir always said, “No. There is nothing worthy of you there. Whenever you want me I shall come to you.”
This reply aroused the king’s curiosity. It instilled a desire in him to visit the fakir’s cottage, and so one day he went there without warning.
The fakir’s wife was at home, but the fakir was working in the fields. The wife said, “Please sit down here. I will just fetch him.” But the king kept pacing up and down in front of the cottage.
The wife thought, “He is pacing up and down because there is nothing to sit on,” so she brought an old torn carpet from the hut and spread it upon the ground.
She then requested the king to sit on it, saying she would go and fetch the fakir. The king said, “Yes, go and fetch him,” but did not sit on the carpet. He simply continued to pace up and down.
The woman was a bit surprised, but went to get her husband anyway. On the way back she said to him, “The king seems to be a very strange person indeed. I asked him to sit down several times. At first I thought he wouldn’t sit down because there was no rug, so I spread the carpet out but he still wouldn’t sit on it.”
The fakir replied, “You made a mistake. We don’t have a place fit for him. That is why I never invited him here. If we press him to sit down on that old torn carpet, he will become impatient to leave rather than sit on it for any length of time. You should not have asked him to sit down.”
When they arrived at the cottage the fakir began to talk to the king, walking up and down with him at the same time.
When he noticed this the king was somewhat surprised – the fakir’s wife had asked him to sit down several times and the fakir did not invite him to sit down even once.
So when the time came for him to depart, the king inquired, “Why did you not ask me to sit down, not even once, when your wife asked me so many times?”
The fakir said, “My wife is a simple woman. She knows nothing about court etiquette. We don’t have a place suitable for you. You are used to sitting on a royal throne. You would have been very uneasy on an old torn carpet. It would have been very difficult for you.”
Although this is a Sufi story, it is also about you.
You will always be uneasy as long as you remain less than God.
And your ego is no better than that old torn carpet. Your ego is dirty all over. Your ego is false. Its claims have no meaning; they are undisciplined and wanton.
You know this too, but your problem is that you are unable to see the royal throne. (So you have accepted the formed up carpet(ego) as substitute but start behaving as if it is your choice! Even you try to prove to others and when enough power gained people even try to bow down others in front of the carpet as if it is a throne).
My observation.
So you have accepted the formed up carpet(ego) as substitute but start behaving as if it is your choice! Even you try to prove to others and when enough power gained people even try to bow down others in front of the carpet as if it is a throne
The royal throne that is not visible to you is that about which Jesus says that ‘You will enter the Kingdom of God as a King’ but only those will enter into it who are childlike means egoless.
How long can you go on pacing up and down?
So you become willing to sit down on the old torn carpet and then you try to persuade your mind that it is not an old rug but a royal throne.
If you do not persuade your mind thus, imagine how long you will have to go on pacing up and down!
So you make the false assumption that the old torn carpet is a royal throne.
If someone notices it and asks what you are sitting on, you will exclaim, “What are you saying? Are you blind? This is a royal throne!”
The whole world sees you are sitting on an old torn carpet, only you are unable to see it.
And the one who points this out to you becomes your enemy, you think he is trying to snatch your throne away from you.
Your ego’s claim, your claim that you are God, is bogus.
There is no need whatsoever to make such a claim – that is what you already are.
The problem is the old torn carpet.
You keep on claiming it is a throne. And if I were to place a throne before you, you would protest. “What is the point of this?” you would ask. “I am already sitting on a throne,” you would insist.
From birth to birth, through countless lives, you have convinced yourself that the old torn carpet is a royal throne, that there is no seat higher.
That is why you experience great difficulty when an awakened master, a satguru, asks you to give up your ego.
He says to you, “Look, I am giving you a throne,” but you are incapable of seeing the throne he is offering.
You can only see your old torn carpet. You feel at least you have something to hold on to as long as the carpet is in your hands, but when you listen to the master you feel the carpet slipping from your grip.
And you do not know whether the throne he is offering you is truly a royal throne or not.
You will only be able to see that the throne is really you when you are able to set your ego aside.
Then your dream about the old torn carpet, about sansara, about the world, will end.
And then you will begin to experience the existence of God.”
(from “The Great Secret: Talks On The Songs Of Kabir” by Osho)
Start reading it for free on Kindle
Or
Read on the go for free – download Kindle for Android, iOS, PC, Mac and more
Herman Hesse, A German Nobel Laureate lived in India in 1910, and observed this phenomenon in local people.
So his book is a real story about the journey of a person who decided to leave the torn rug and enthroned himself on the inner throne. Just he remained observing nature with totality and performed his job in hand with totality.
Osho developed a meditation on it, “Meditation by observing the nature”. Osho completed many such half left works of other Mystics to full circle.
Where the writer Harman Hasse left to inspire people, Osho begun by developing meditation on it and let people experience it actually so that they can decide, whether it is right meditation for them or not?
In English free pdf of the ebook ‘Sidhartha’ by Herman Hesse is made free available by a project of Gutenberg press. A movie ‘Siddhartha’ was also made in Bollywood in 1972 starring Shashi Kapoor and Simmy Grewal.
हिंदी भी में यही किताब amazon पर मिल रही है।
Awareness meditation (Osho guiding about meditation on YouTube) is the way worked for me, may be you too find it suitable otherwise Dynamic meditation is for most of the people. You may wish to know that the state of meditation is our natural state and “How meditation affects us?”.
There are 110 other meditation techniques discovered by Indian Mystic Gorakhnath about 500years before and further modified by Osho that one can experiment and the suitable one could be practiced in routine life.
My experiences may be of your help in taking only one step in deciding to add value to life. Because everyone has to move forward alone, this is the nature of this journey.
In my life mindfulness or awareness meditation (My experiences shared through a post) helped miraculously. Along with meditation living a simple, authentic and totality in life is very helpful. It is helful even when we are serving people around us with great love and care without discrimination.
Hi ….. I write my comments from my personal experiences of my inner journey and how I add value to life by living consciously. This post may include teachings of Mystics around the world which from my personal experience I found worth following even today. For more have a look at my linktree website for getting regular updates through social media lor subscribe to YouTube channel or listen to the podcasts etc.
For references of content on Osho, Copyright © OSHO International Foundation, An MP3 audio file of many discourses can be downloaded from Osho(dot)com or you can listen or watch most of his discourses @ OSHO International channel of YouTube where you can get subtitles in language of your choice or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library. Many of Osho’s books are available online at Amazon.
My suggestions:-
Osho International Online (OIO) provides facility to learn these Osho discovered Dynamic Meditations for new generation from your home, through Osho Meditation Day @€20.00 per person. You can learn Dynamic meditations from disciples of Osho. OIO rotate times through three timezones NY,Berlin and Mumbai.