Inner or Outer !

People are asking each other. Nobody knows how they are doing, they are looking into each other’s eyes, gathering information about themselves from others.

That’s why the opinion of others has become so important.

If somebody says you are a fool, you become angry. Why? Or you become
sad. Why? You are shattered.

You were thinking you are a wise man, because others had told you
that you are wise. It was the opinion of others that you depended on.

Now somebody else says you are a fool. He can easily shatter your wisdom, very easily. He has thrown a stone and you had made a palace with playing cards. Now all is shattered.

That’s why one becomes so angry, so enraged,so violent, and one becomes so worried, anxious.

You are continuously looking for what others are thinking, because you know only that which others think about you, you don’t know anything about yourself.

Now what kind of situation is this?

If I cannot know about myself, who else can know about me? From the outside nobody can watch me, I am not available that way.

From the outside only my body can be watched. From the inside I can know my consciousness.

Even when you stand before a mirror you see only your body, you cannot see your consciousness in the mirror. Even you cannot see it in the mirror – your own consciousness.
You have to see it directly.

It is never mirrored, it is never reflected in anything; it is invisible.

You have to close your eyes and be it. And that is the only way of knowing it.

But people live so unconsciously. They simply live by the opinion of others.

What others say becomes their soul. Others can take it away any moment. People remain beggars.

Have you known anything about yourself directly? Have you ever encountered yourself directly without bringing the opinion of others into it?

If you have not done it, you have not yet lived.

Life starts only by encountering oneself, by seeing oneself directly, immediately. Life exists only when you are capable of seeing yourself as you are, not as others think about you.

What can they think about you? What can they say about you? They can watch your behaviour, they cannot watch you.

If you want to watch yourself, only you can do that, nobody else. It cannot be done by servants. It cannot be delegated to somebody else. It cannot be done by the experts either.

But we are so much interested in others’ opinions because we are absolutely absent – there is nobody awake inside.

Deeply asleep, we are snoring inside.

OshO 
CHAPTER 1. ANIMUS AND ANIMA
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1