Yoga Pratima

Osho Magazine, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United States

Osho,
On behalf of all, I want to thank you that you are showing us every dimension of your being – so casually, so matter-of-fact.
One of the first things I want to ask as a disciple and as a reporter who communicates it to fellow sannyasins, is: in what ways would you like to see us become as ordinary as you are?

One never becomes ordinary; you can become extraordinary, the very process of becoming leads you away from being ordinary. So there is no how as far as being ordinary is concerned. You are ordinary, you don’t have to become. You have to drop becoming, you have to start living. These are the two types of people in the world: those who are continuously becoming and in their very effort of becoming this and that, they are losing being what they are. They are losing time, life, energy, and their becoming is never going to end.

It is just like the horizon – there, looking so close that you can reach it – just a few more miles to go. But as you reach those few miles, you find the horizon has receded again, the distance remains always the same. The person who is caught in the net of becoming wastes his whole life, dies unfulfilled, in tremendous despair, because he can see that the whole life was there for him to live, but because of his desire to become something, someone, he sacrificed all that was freely available to him.

One does not become ordinary, you are ordinary. You are born ordinary, just like everything else in existence: animals, birds, trees. No bird needs to be ordinary, no tree asks, inquires how to be ordinary. But man asks it and this very process of becoming makes you insane.

Drop becoming anybody else. Drop the very idea that you have to be according to some discipline, some scripture, some theology. Forget completely that you have to be like Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira, and suddenly you will find that you are who you are. Live it, joyously, without any guilt. Existence wanted you to be what you are. If existence wanted another Jesus he would have created thousands of Jesuses, there is no problem. He would have made Jesuses on an assembly line. But he makes only individuals. Existence never duplicates, never makes anybody similar to somebody else.

This is the beauty and the glory of existence. This is a blessing – that nobody like you has ever existed and will ever exist again, you are simply unique. Don’t waste this uniqueness in running after some goal, some shadow.