Panch Mahavrat or The Perennial Path The Art of Living

Author(s): Osho Rajnish
Publisher: Osho Rajnish

Page 92

CHAPTER 8. PERFECT KNOWLEDGE
there are only two ways, the third is not there. In being a witness, we add the third person. I should always be a third person and not a second person, under all circumstances.
As this third corner becomes clearer both the other corners seem fit to be laughed at - the person who abuses and the person who was abused. Ram was in New York. So the people threw stones at him, some abused him. Having returned to his room he told his friends. Ram was caught in a great difficulty today, people began to abuse him and some people threw stones at him, It was great fun. Those friends said, 'What are you saying? You yourself were abused.' Ram replied, 'How can they abuse me? because I myself do not know my name, how can they know it? They were abusing Ram. The friends asked him was he not Ram? Ram replied, if I were Ram, I would have returned much afflicted and unhappy. I was standing and watching some people abusing and poor Ram taking it. I was telling myself today Ram got caught in a great difficulty.
Now this third person is made to manifest itself. To be a witness is the first step for a Sadhak. It is easy. 'The witness' is the easiest word of all the three words. Always try to see it. When you are eating your food, see that the food is being eaten. The person whom you know as 'I' till now is eating. Now wait at a corner of the table and see. You are not eating, food is being eaten.
Somebody is eating and you are watching it.
As this manifests itself, your interest in life becomes less and less, because a witness cannot act harassed, only the doer gets harassed. When you think I am eating my food, you can be made unhappy. When you say, I am making love, you can be troubled. But when you say, one person is making love and other being loved, you are the third person witnessing it, then you cannot be troubled. You are not anxious worried. If you remember to act as a witness five to ten times a day, you will stop dreaming at night because he dreams who remains a doer throughout the day, he remains the doer during the night also.
How can the habit of doing - being a doer - the whole day be given up at once during the night? If a person runs a shop during the day, he also does the same at night. If I am quarreling in a court the whole day, T stand up in the court at night also. He who remains a doer during the day, becomes a doer during the night also. Contrary to this, one who is a witness during the day also becomes a witness during the night.
Now this is a very interesting thing - if you become a witness during the day, your shop will not stop functioning. But the shop within you will be closed, because a shop in a dream is not a real shop, it is only an idea. When you become a witness. it disappears. The shop outside will go on working but the shop of the dreams will disappear. There is no possibility of cares and worries when you become a witness. So, cares and worries go on increasing in that country in the same proportion as the idea that I am the doer is increasingly prevalent.
Today America is the most worried country, because the notion that I am doing is the strongest there. Whatever is done, 'I' is always standing behind it. There were not too many cares and worries in the past in the ancient world. The reason is not this that the people were travelling in bullock-carts and not in airplanes. It was altogether different. Why were there less worries in the past?
The third corner of a witness along with the doer was there in the past, and they always tried to develop this idea. He saw things were happening, I am not doing them. He used to look at it in
The Perennial Path: The Art of Living
92
Osho