Unless you come to know who you are, all that you seek is futile, because you don't know the seeker. Without knowing the seeker how can you move in the right dimension, in the right direction? It is impossible. The first things should be considered first.
So these two things are very important: first, make it absolutely clear to yourself what your object is. Don't just go on stumbling in darkness. Focus your attention on the object - what you are really searching for. Because sometimes you want one thing and you go on searching for something else, so even if you succeed you will not be fulfilled. Have you seen people who have succeeded? Can you find bigger failures anywhere else? You have heard the proverb that nothing succeeds like success. It is absolutely wrong. I would like to tell you: nothing fails like success. The proverb must have been invented by stupid people. Nothing fails like success.
It is said about Alexander the Great that the day he became the world conqueror he closed the doors of his room and started weeping. I don't know whether it really happened or not, but if he was even a little intelligent it must have happened.
His generals were very disturbed. What has happened? They had never seen Alexander weeping. He was not that type of man, he was a great warrior. They had seen him in great difficulties, in situations where life was very much in danger, where death was very imminent, and they had not seen even a tear coming out of his eyes. They had never seen him in any desperate, hopeless moment. What has happened to him now - now when he has succeeded, when he is the world conqueror?
They knocked on the door, they went in and they asked, 'What has happened to you?
Why are you crying like a child?' He said, 'Now that I have succeeded, I know it has been a failure. Now I know that I stand exactly in the same place as I used to be in when I started this nonsense of conquering the world.And the point has become clear to me now because there is no other world to conquer anymore - otherwise I could have remained on the journey, I could have started conquering another world. Now there is no other world to conquer, now there is nothing else to do, and suddenly I am thrown to myself.'
A successful man is always thrown to himself in the end and then he suffers tortures of hell because he wasted his whole life. He searched and searched, he staked everything that he had, now he is successful - and his heart is empty and his soul is meaningless and there is no fragrance, there is no benediction.
So the first thing is to know exactly what you are seeking. I insist upon it because the more you focus your eyes on the object of your search, the more the object starts disappearing. When your eyes are absolutely fixed, suddenly there is nothing to seek; immediately your eyes start turning towards yourself. When there is no object for search, when all objects have disappeared, there is emptiness. In that emptiness is conversion, turning in. You suddenly start looking at yourself. Now there is nothing to seek, and a new desire arises to know this seeker.
-Rajneesh
