Aloneness and Self-Discovery - Part 2

March 5, 2005

And what you have done is fooled yourself and created a façade.

So, Su what does Osho say next in the book?

Su: "The moment your aloneness is complete, your experience of it will become your enlightenment."

Corky: Wow! That is a powerful sentence. What do you think Cami? Once your aloneness is complete, it will become your enlightenment. Not many people want to be alone do they? Why?

Cami: Not normally, because it is frightening. Because you have to be with yourself, and it is frightening to look at yourself.

Corky: Yes, but what he is really saying is there is only one person. And what you have done is fooled yourself and created a façade. He said all girls and boys are the same didn't he? It is sort of true. You created this façade and you put different features on it and everything to make it look different than the rest of them. But you tried to look the best out of all of them, so that the rest of them would be attracted to it, more than the others. Why do they do that? Why does one person try to make theirs better than the rest, when everybody is a nobody? Do you think that the harder they try to make it the best and better and different than the rest, the more insecure they are about who they really are? They don't really know who they really are, so they try harder to create something, anything. And so it is a sign of the greatest insecurity, and the greatest lack and the greatest emptiness. It is a paradox; the greatest beauty is the greatest ugliness because it is so empty and so shallow.

That is a powerful sentence that Osho just said. He just said that the more you try to put on, the greater you expose your vulnerability. Once you realize how nothing you are in the depths of your essence, you try to pile more on.

It was funny earlier this morning I saw Martha Stewart on TV in her 60 million dollar estate, feeding her horses and everything after she got out of the prison she was in for the last six months. She was gently trying to put back on Martha Stewart. The thing that is really interesting about it, they said the corporation itself is bleeding blood, bleeding money and the stock is going up. The only reason it is going up is that she is putting it back on, but the reason it is losing so much money is that the people that are buying the facade are going to be the ones that are totally buying clear clothes and going to be naked in the end because they are worthless, those clothes.

No matter how much real estate you can buy, or material things, or plastic surgeries, or transplants or whatever, you always end up naked in the depths of Nothingness. Everybody does. The only thing you can really put your attention on is your essence, and if you are able to put your attention on your essence you are able to evolve. You are able to go in that direction of dropping all the propensities of the world and go into the clear light with the clear Buddha and become. When you join with the clear Buddha you become it, you become the Buddha. It is not that you just join with it. You become it, you are it. But to be able to let go of everything to become it, just to become nothing, become clear, is sometimes a real project.

It is like sometimes I go in the house and I have so many clothes on because it's so cold out here and I try to get them all off, and just get warm in 65 degrees. It is hard isn't it? We have so many clothes on, and to get it all washed off. Is there anything on you that you have to wash off Cami?

Cami: Yes. Everything.

Corky: All those things; Smells? Feelings? Pictures? Moods? Expressions? Sometimes it is really hard to wash them off, no matter how much you wash. You don't mind being here right now though do you?

What did Osho say next?

Su: "Enlightenment is not something that comes from outside, it is something that grows within you. To forget yourself is the only sin and to remember yourself in its utter beauty is the only virtue, the only religion."

Corky: How could he say such wonderful things? Was it clean, clear, what he just said? He always speaks in an undressing way. He is always taking things off of everyone, rather than putting them on people. He is always taking off your clothes, he is always making you naked. That is a dangerous thing to do in today's society. People get pissed at you. Don't you think you need a good costume over there at Memorial Group Ron? I'm not saying that is bad Ron, I am just saying that is the way life is, right? It is the same thing over there at Larkin. You have to have the right costume, you have to have the best limo. The better the limo the more the dollars roll in. The greener the grass the more cemetery spots you can sell, or the location and stuff like that. The right sales lady, or a lady in the right position.

Ron: I've seen that before yeah. Thank god I don't have any of that going on right now.

Corky: And what does he say next Su?

Su: "You need not be a Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian. All that you need to be religious is to be yourself. And in fact we are not separate, even now, nobody is separate. The whole existence is one organic unity.

Corky: Oh no! There is only one person! God. That is dangerous to say that, people think you are nuts, they think you ought to be locked up if you say that. Because it's logical, there is Bernie over there, there is Shad and Su, and Steve and Chris, there are billions of people and it is not very logical to say there is only one person. It does not make any sense. What would you say Ron?

Ron: I would agree. It is not logical. There are just too many people and too many numbers, and if you add it all up it would all come full circle.

Corky: And the sum of the total is one right? One total. And he says next?

Su: "The idea of separation is because of our forgetfulness. It is almost as if every leaf of the tree started thinking it is separate, separate from other leaves, but deep down they are nourished by the same roots. It is one tree, the leaves may be many. It is one existence, the manifestations may be many. Knowing oneself one thing becomes absolutely clear, no man is an island. We are a continent, a vast continent, an infinite existence without any boundaries. The same life runs through all, the same love fills every heart, the same joy dances in every being. Just because of our misunderstanding we think we are separate. The idea of separation is our illusion. The idea of oneness will be our experience of the ultimate truth. Just a little more intelligence is needed and you can come out of the misery, the gloom, the hell."

Corky: Our idea of the oneness is the ultimate truth. You can come out of the illusion how? Just a little tiny bit of surrendering. I am changing it to be surrender. Just a little tiny bit of letting go of your position, your way, your propensities. Just a little tiny bit of the appropriate gesture. Sometimes it starts out as a confrontation and then it takes a couple of movements, careful movements and then, a gesture. Then you let the gesture go and the gesture is felt. Then it is possible for the other to realize that it is not an other, it is with you and it is the same feeling as you. And then you can meld or mold it into that same gesture and you can become one.

Cami: But it takes a surrender.

Corky: It always begins there doesn't it? Read some more Su.

Su: "The secret of coming out of this hell is remembering yourself."

Corky: He called it a hell huh? I would say so. It sounds like logic to me. I think most people are in hell. They are in their own living hell. What would you say a living hell is like Ron?

Ron: Realizing we don't have all of the answers, realizing that you have been wrong all along in your life.

Corky: I thought it was the right answer, I thought it was the answer that it happened exactly like this, this person did this and that person did that, and if you change the story then there is a wrong answer, and then there was a right answer.

Ron: It is always the right answer.

Corky: But you just said a second ago that having the right answer is the problem.

Ron: Yeah, but it is always the right answer. That is the paradox. Because it does not make a difference who you are or what you believe, you did not come to whatever position you have in life, whatever conclusions you have in life, whatever you think is right or wrong, whether it is a religion or a country, you came to be there by all of the right reasons.

Corky: Your right reasons. But they are not necessarily right for everybody, it is the paradox, there is no right answer.

Ron: Yeah, your individual right reasons. That is why it is hell, because no matter how ludicrous your position is to the rest of the world you didn't get there on your own. I mean you lived your life, you ferreted out your path, made your decisions based on your propensities, your genetics, your heritage, your geographical location and what was going on in that culture, and you arrived at the right position. And for you to think anything other than the fact that you didn't spend your whole life getting there and then you are wrong, it is ludicrous. I mean we all think we are right or we wouldn't be on that path we are on. We wouldn't be doing what we are doing, we would be doing something else. So we are all right from our position, I mean we have to be right from our position or we wouldn't be there.

So you automatically fix yourself as the Buddha says on a spool of a wheel and the wheel has an infinite number of positions, and once you fix yourself it is automatically in an argument with all the other positions. You can't help but be there. So, I mean I understand the nothing and I understand that Osho has a lot of nice words and it sounds really good and if I rub on him maybe he'll rub off on me, and I understand the logic of it to be perfectly honest with you. I have no argument with it in the fact that it sounds all really good, to drop into the nothing and do away with all of that, to not be prideful, is a point of losing everything that you have held on to.

Corky: Is it an emancipation? Would it be a liberation?

Ron: It would be. Yes it would be.

Corky: What is the purpose of Summum Bernie?

Bernie: To emancipate and liberate.

Corky: What does he say next Su? Very good Ron.

Su: "You have to recognize, howsoever painful it is in the beginning that I am alone and I am in a strange land. This recognition the first time is painful, it takes away all of our illusions which were great consolations. But once you have dared to accept the reality, the pain disappears and just hidden behind the pain is the great blessing of the world, you come to know yourself. You are the intelligence of existence. You are the consciousness of existence. You are the soul of existence. You are part of this immense godliness that manifests in thousands of forms: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in human beings. But it is the same consciousness in difference stages of evolution. And the man that recognizes in himself that the god he was searching and looking for all over the world resides within his own heart comes to the highest point of evolution. There is nothing higher than that. It makes your life for the first time, meaningful, significant, religious. But you will not be a Hindu, you will not be a Christian, you will not be a Jew, you will simply be religious. In being a Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian or a Jaina or a Buddhist, you are destroying the purity of religiousness, it needs no adjectives."