Have You Forgotten Your Center, Your Origin?

Organic unity of a man, his origin is immortal. It has no beginning and no end.

“You make a car engine; you can purchase parts from the market and you can fix those parts, and the engine starts functioning like a unity. Or you can purchase parts of a radio from the market and you can fix them, and the radio starts functioning like a unity. Somehow it comes to have a self. No part in itself can function as a radio; all parts together start functioning like a radio – but still the unity is mechanical, forced from the outside.

“Then you throw seeds into the ground, and those seeds die into the soil and a plant arises. This unity is organic; it is not forced from outside – it was in the seed itself. The seed goes on spreading, goes on gathering a thousand and one things from the earth, from the air, from the sun, from the sky – but the unity is coming from within. The center comes first and then the circumference. In a mechanical unity the circumference comes first and then the center.

Man is an organic unity. You were a seed one day, like any tree; in the soil of your mother’s womb you started gathering your circumference. Center came first, center preceded circumference.

“And now you have forgotten the center completely. You live on the circumference and you think this is your whole life. This circumference, and continuously living on it, creates a sort of self, a pseudo-self, which gives you a feeling that yes, you are somebody. But it is always trembling because it has no organic unity in it.

Hence, the fear of death. If you know your real Self you will never be afraid of death-there is no question, because the organic unity never dies. Organic unity is immortal.

“Only mechanical unities are put together and die. That which is put together, one day will fall apart. Mechanical unity has a beginning and an end. The organic unity has no beginning and no end – it is an eternal process.

Organic Unity – Do You Know It?

“Do you know your center? If you don’t know it then you will be continuously afraid. Hence, self-consciousness is always afraid, always trembling. And you always need support from others – somebody to appreciate you; somebody to clap; somebody to say how beautiful you are or how intelligent. But see the point: you depend on others.…

“That’s why you are more graceful when you are alone – because you are not worried. You are more innocent when you are alone. That’s why people are so much afraid of others. Alone, there is no anxiety.”

To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Talk #5 – To Know the Real Self Is Not Cheap