Panch Mahavrat or The Perennial Path The Art of Living

Author(s): Osho Rajnish
Publisher: Osho Rajnish

Page 33

CHAPTER 4. NONSTEALING
If you remember this thing which is with you, and which was with you even before birth, then you can understand that there will remain something with you even after your death. But if you think that that is all that you have got after birth then death will snatch away everything. But if you ha;e got at least something before birth, which you feel is not learnt during;ng life time, nor is it taken or obtained from life, but the nature you were born with, them there is no cause for you to be afraid of death, because death cannot snatch away that which you have not obtained from life.
But we are all afraid of death, not because it is fearful, but because there is nothing in us, what we life, which can be saved – which can remain with us from death. All that we have obtained from life and others, death will snatch away. It may be fame, wealth, knowledge or personality. That which we have accumulated from others, what we have stolen. Such stealing is not detected in the courts. It is related to that Great Law called religion. It is in the Court of God where this stealing is detected.
Have we got any such thing which we can call 'unlearnt', or not obtained from anyone? If not so, the life which we live is one of stealing. A revolution begins to take place in my life if even once remember that I have no property which is my own. Therefore, don't think you haven't stolen even a cowrie don't think you havent stolen anything from someone else's house. What relation has such a theft with religion? Such a theft has relation only with man-concerned with a special kind of theft which is beyond the grips of law, which cannot be decided by courts, which is beyond the scope of judges. Religion is concerned with that stealing which is related to dignity and honour, which is a theft of individuality, it is a theft of faces; and all of us live with stolen - borrowed - faces. The way we live we are not ourselves but someone else.
I had said in this context that nonstealing is the road for achieving one's own individuality, man's soul, and stealing is the highway to losing man's soul. This stealing can manifest itself at the sentimental level, the thought level, the body-physical level. Even our walk our gait, we learn from others. We do not even think in our own way, we learn even to think from others. We do not even feel in our own way, we learn, even how to feel from others.
For example, take the case of a man who reads newspaper in the morning, and talks about some news or the other the whole day with others. It does not even strike him that what he is talking about contains nothing of his own. He reads the Gita, and then goes on repeating it throughout his life, and never looks back to see that there is nothing of his own in what he speaks. All our activities, namely, speaking, thinking, moving here and there, etc. are learnt from others. There cannot be rains of joy in such a life. We cannot find a drop of nectar in such a life. Such a person is like a dry desert, because streams always flow where there is greenery.
One who lives on borrowed springs, lives like a person who considers others' buildings as his own, considers others' eyes as his own, considers others' thoughts as his own and takes himself to be a man of discretion, and who collects bits of information from the scriptures and thinks he has got knowledge. Such a person lives in a delusion and passes his whole life uselessly. We waste it in such a manner. But if this question, 'Am I not a thief' comes before us once, then this question will dog us for ever. And if this question begins to dog us, we shall often see that the act of laughing which I was doing now was learnt by me from the lips of someone else, we shall also see that the tears I was shedding were not true ones, and also my action of bowing to others did not contain the soft sound of my sincerity, and my love-making had not at all love in it, I had learnt it from some drama, and also my love talk with my beloved was simply a repetition of a dialogue heard in a certain
The Perennial Path: The Art of Living
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Osho