"The first layer of your personality is the most superficial — the
layer of formalities, socialites. It is needed; nothing is wrong in it. You meet a person on the road, you know the person, if you don't say
anything, and he also doesn't say anything, no social formality is
fulfilled, you both feel embarrassed. Something has to be done. Not that
you mean it, but it is a social lubricant; so the first layer I call:
THE LAYER OF THE LUBRICANT. It helps smoothness. It is the layer of:
Good morning; How are you? Great! Fine! Nice weather! Well, be seeing
you; this layer. This is good! Nothing is wrong in it. If you use it, it
is beautiful. But if you are used by it, and you have become frozen in
it, and you have lost all contact with your innermost being, you never
move beyond this, then you are stuck, you are sick-minded.
The
second layer is of roles and games. The first layer has no contact with
life, the second layer sometimes can have glimpses. In the second layer
are: I am the husband, you are the wife; or, I am the wife, you are the
husband; I am the father, you are the child; I am the President of the
United States, the Queen of England, or Chairman Mao Tse tung, Adolf
Hitler, Mussolini, all the politicians of the world — they live on the
second, the layer of role playing.
It is a play; one has to
play many roles but one need not become fixed in any role. And, one
should remain always free of all roles; roles should be like clothes —
you can any time jump out of them. If that capability is retained, you
are not stuck, then you can play a role — nothing is wrong in it. As far
as it goes it is beautiful, but if it becomes your life and you don't
know anything beyond, then it is dangerous. Then you go on playing a
thousand and one games in life and you never come in contact with life.
Fritz Perls calls it the layer of BULLSHIT.
Then there is a
third layer: the layer of chaos. Because of this third layer people are
afraid to move inwards; that's why they get stuck in the second layer.
In the second layer everything is clean, clear. The rules are known,
because every game has its rules. If you know the rules, you can play
the game. Nothing is mysterious in the second layer. Two plus two always
make four in the second layer — not so in the third. The third is not
like the second, it is chaos: tremendous energy, with no rules! You
become afraid. The third layer gives you fear.
That's why when you
start meditating, and you fall from the second layer to the third, you
feel chaos. Suddenly, you don't know who you are! The world of who is
who, is the second, the bullshit layer. If you want to know about the
second go and consult the book WHO'S WHO? They are published all over
the world. The names of the people there are of the second layer.
In
the third layer suddenly you become aware that you don't know who you
are! Identity is lost, rules disappear, tremendous chaos, a vast ocean
in-a storm; beautiful if you can understand. If you cannot understand:
very very terrible. This third layer, if understood well, and if you can
remain mindful in it, will give you the first glimpse, the first vital
glimpse of life. Otherwise you will go neurotic.
If one can
remain alert in the third layer, aware, meditative — that chaos turns
into a cosmos. It is chaos because you are not centered, not aware. If
you are aware it becomes a cosmos, an order; and not the order of human
rules — the order of Tao, the order of what Indians have called the
DHARMA, DHAMMA, RIT; the ultimate order, not man made.
And, if you
remain alert, the chaos is there but you are not in the chaos, you
transcend it — awareness is a transcending phenomenon. You know all
around is chaos, but deep within you there is no chaos. Suddenly you are
above it, you are not lost in it.
Then, there is the fourth
layer. If you pass the third, only then can you enter the fourth. If you
have faced chaos, if you have faced the anarchy of the inner world,
then you become capable of entering the fourth.
The fourth is the death level, the death plane. After the chaos one has to face death — the chaos prepares you.
On the fourth, if you reach, you will have a sudden feeling of dying —
you are dying. In deep meditation when you touch the fourth you start
feeling that you are dying. Or — because meditation is not such a
universal experience — in deep sexual orgasm also you feel that you are
dying.
The fifth is the layer of life. Energy becomes
absolutely free, with no blocks. You are free to be whatsoever you want
to be. To move, not to move: to act, not to act; whatsoever; you are
absolutely free. Energy becomes spontaneous.
These are the
five layers. You have to go backwards, to the original source. That's
what Patanjali calls PRATYAHARA, coming back to the original state.
That's what Mahavir has called PRATIKRAMANA, coming back, falling back
to your originality. That's what Christ has called CONVERSION; becoming
again a child.
Then, when all layers of your onion are peeled off —
it is an arduous thing; even to peel an ordinary onion is difficult,
tears will come to your eyes, and when you peel the onion of your own
personality, many tears will be there; it is hard, it is arduous, but it
HAS to be done, otherwise you live a false life, and you live a sick
life."
— OSHO, Tao - The Three Treasures, Vol 4, Chapter #5
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