“Being” in human seem to have been lost its meaning in the modern sense of the term. Rather it is “doing” that can be related to the human of today. The individual or individuality has been replaced by personality, a false projection borrowed from others. Osho has beautifully brought out the meaning of individuality as one’s own that cannot be borrowed or copied. Osho says “When a person takes upon himself the personality of someone else, it is an imitation, and he ceases to be original. His authentic originality is lost.” It is the biggest stealing, says Osho, to follow others, by ignoring the “one” who is within. Then the authentic self is no longer there. It becomes a life of falsehood.“Life is a network of interconnected relationships. An individual is required to be interrelated. Even an interrelationship is a relationship between two individuals. But two individuals are necessary for a relationship to establish. So life when seen from outside is interrelated; but along with it life is also interrelated from within. If that individual is not there, all the interrelationships become false. Love is a relationship but the individuality of the lover is most necessary, and if that individuality is a borrowed one, it is not an individuality. Individuality is always one's own, it cannot be borrowed. Otherwise it is a deception. That borrowed one is a put on face to show others. Under that face, there is nobody. It has no individuality, neither of life-zest, or originality. What we ordinarily call an individual is, in fact, not an individual but a personality. That what we ordinarily call an individual is not original, but it is a collection of clothes which are put on. It is like an onion. If someone goes on removing the layers of an onion, it appears he will get the onion after each layer. But he gets only layers and never the onion. Similarly we are like a bundle in which all borrowed things have been collected. No matter how deep we go in this borrowed individuality we shall get nothing at the end. If there is no soul, no originality, the whole life becomes a false thing.The biggest stealing in life is copying or, following. If an individual is only interested in becoming like someone else, he becomes a thief in the real sense of the term. When a person takes upon himself the personality of someone else, it is an imitation, and he ceases to be original. His authentic originality is lost. This does not mean that we should not accept ideas coming from others or stop relating with others. We should certainly be connected with others, but we should preserve our individuality -- the 'self'. Currents of thoughts come from others to be accepted.
Accept them by all means, and not only as currents, but you should be yourself -- above and beyond them always. There should stand 'someone' who is aloof and untouched, behind those currents. And he who is so saved from all exchange, is really outside, untouched by exchange. There is a word in the English language called 'Ecstasy'. We have a word called samadhi, Those who translate samadhi into English, use the word 'Ecstasy' for samadhi. 'Ecstasy 'means to stand outside. The meaning of 'Ecstasy' is to remain out and yet being in all the currents of life constantly.
Together with being amidst the worldly life, that which remains within us away from the world, is our originality, this is becoming oneself. If we are totally immersed in life and there is nothing left with us except our outer relationships, then it means we have lost our soul. The meaning of the soul -- self -- is this that there should be everything and yet there is something within, which is untouched and aloof from the outer world. While you are walking on the road, there should be something within you which does not walk. When you are angry, there should be someone within you who sees that anger. When you are eating your food, there should be someone within you who does not eat but who if aware that the food is being eaten. At every moment in this interrelated net of life, if we can save that 'someone' within us, that 'someone' who is saved, who is 'the remaining' is our original self. One who does not own this 'original self', that person has no right to be called a man, a human being. He has no soul, he has lost it.
Very, very few persons among us have a soul in this context. We are simply a collection of layers, a collection of clothes, there is nothing else beneath them. I call this also stealing. It is stealing. To steal someone's wealth is not a big stealing, but to assume someone's personality is a very great stealing. To steal someone's clothes is not a very big theft but to lose ourself in trying to imitate someone else is a very great stealing. I don't say that to take someone's house by force is not stealing. but it is not as big as losing our 'self', being a shadow of someone else.
I have heard a story that some God was displeased with a certain man, and he cursed him. It was a strange curse. That man would lose his shadow from that day onwards. The man laughed when he heard this, and said, 'What use is the shadow to me? When I am saved, how will t he absence of my shadow effect me? I have never cared uptil now whether I have a shadow or not. Are you not mad in cursing me thus? And if you are really displeased, this is no great curse.' Hearing this the God laughed. The God was wiser than that man. The man returned to his town laughing and thinking that the God was crazy. What did he lose by losing his shadow? But when he went to the town he realised the God was not mad because he got into great trouble. Whoever saw that that man had no shadow, was afraid of him and ran away from him. His wife closed the doors against him. His father said, 'Get out of here, don't ever come before me. What are you? Are you a ghost, a spirit?' His friends shut their doors when They saw him. Customers stopped going to his shop.
When he was walking on a road, people called their children indoors. He had no shadow. It became difficult for him to live in the town. Finally the town people who had never heard of a person without a shadow, thought he was very dangerous, and drove him out of the town. Then he realized how much he had lost by losing his shadow. But let us leave this man alone, we are simply shadows. We have lost the soul-self. It is very difficult to assess, to comprehend how much we have lost.
That man only lost his shadow, and ran into such a great difficulty. But we have lost our soul. If a shadow is lost, others will know about it, but if the soul is lost, only the self can know about it, others cannot know about it, because losing of the soul is not an outside incident. So to understand correctly the meaning of non stealing one should constantly ask oneself: 'Have I got anything with me which I can call my own -- my originality; which I had brought with my birth and which I have not learnt in life? Have I got anything which was my own even before the birth?'
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 have 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 I 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 haven t 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 film. Leave it alone, if this question comes before a man's life, man will begin to be free from stealing, if not today, tomorrow. His individuality begins to evolve, he begins to laugh in his own way.”
[Osho - The Perennial Path : The Art of Living, # 4, Non Stealing]
