A Vision Of An Enlightened Master - Osho For New Humanity - Zorba The Buddha

Words of the Enlightened Master, Osho
The Tantra attitude is the very being of Tilopa. You must understand first what the Tantra attitude is, only then will it be possible for you to.. comprehend what Tilopa is trying to say. So something.. about the Tantra attitude -- the first thing: it is not an.. attitude, because Tantra looks at life with a total vision. It.. has no attitude to look at life. It has no concepts, it is not a.. philosophy. It is not even a religion, it has no theology. It.. doesn't believe in words, theories, or doctrines. It wants to.. look at life without any philosophy, without any theory,. without any theology. It wants to look at life as it is, without.. bringing any mind in between -- because that will be the.. distortion. The mind then will project, the mind then will mix -- and then you will not be able to know that which is.
Tantra avoids mind and encounters life face to face, neither thinking, "This is good," nor thinking, "This is bad": simply facing that which is. So it is difficult to say that this is an attitude -- in fact it is a no-attitude.
The second thing to remember, that Tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to everything. It has nothing like "no" in its vocabulary, there is no negation. It never says no to anything, because with no the fight starts, with no you become the ego. The moment you say no to anything, you have become the ego already; a conflict has come in, now you are at war.
Tantra loves, and loves unconditionally. It never says no to anything whatsoever, because everything is part of the whole, and everything has its own place in the whole, and the whole cannot exist without anything missing from it.
It is said that even if a drop of water is missing, the whole existence will thirst. You pluck a flower in the garden, and you have plucked something out of the whole existence. You harm a flower, and you have harmed millions of stars -- because everything is interrelated. The whole exists as a whole, as an organic whole. The whole exists not as a mechanical thing -- everything is related to everything else.
Tantra says yes unconditionally. There has never been any other vision of life which says yes without any conditions -- simply yes. No disappears; from your very being no disappears. When there is no no, how can you fight? How can you be at war? You simply float. You simply merge and melt. You become one. The boundaries are there no more. No creates the boundary. No is the boundary around you. Whenever you say no, watch -- immediately something closes in. Whenever you say yes, your being opens.
One who renounces is not a religious person. In the view of Tantra, one who renounces is an egoist. First he was accumulating things of the world, but his attention was on the world. Now he renounces, but his attention is again on the world and he remains the egoist. The ego has subtle ways of fulfilling itself and coming again and again, in spirals. Again and again it comes back -- with a new face, with new colors.
This is the mind: it persists, it comes in spirals -- again and again to the same thing. You can renounce the world, but you will not become other-worldly; you will remain very worldly. Nobody has ever reached to the divine by saying no to anything.
Tantra says: "You say yes. You say yes to everything. You need not fight, you need not even swim -- you simply float with the current. The river is going by itself, on its own accord, everything reaches to the ultimate ocean. You simply don't create any disturbance, you don't push the river, you simply go with it." That going with it, floating with it, relaxing with it, is Tantra.
If you can say yes, a deep acceptance happens to you. If you say yes, how can you be complaining? How can you be miserable? Then everything is as it should be. You are not fighting, not denying -- you accept. And remember, this acceptance is different from ordinary acceptance.
Ordinarily a person accepts a situation when he feels helpless; that is impotent acceptance. That will not lead you anywhere; impotence cannot lead you anywhere. A person accepts a situation when he feels hopeless: "Nothing can be done, so what to do? At least accept, to save face." Tantra acceptance is not that type of acceptance. It comes out of an over fulfillment, it comes out of a deep contentment -- not out of hopelessness, frustration, helplessness. It comes when you don't say no, it suddenly surfaces in you. Your whole being becomes a deep contentment.
That acceptance has a beauty of its own. It is not forced; you have not practiced for it. If you practice, it will be false, it will be a hypocrisy. If you practice, you will be split in two: on the outside it will be acceptance; deep down, the turmoil, the negation, the denial. Deep down you will be boiling up to explode any moment. Just on the surface you will pretend that everything is okay.
Tantra acceptance is total, it doesn't split you. All the religions of the world, except Tantra, have created split personalities. All the religions of the world, except Tantra, have created schizophrenia. They split you. They make something bad in you and something good. And they say the good has to be achieved and the bad denied, the devil has to be denied and God accepted. They create a split within you and a fight. Then you are continuously feeling guilty, because how can you destroy the part that is organically one with you? You may call it bad, you may call it names; that doesn't make any difference. How can you destroy it? You never created it. You have simply found it -- given. Anger is there, sex is there, greed is there -- you have not created them; they are given facts of life, just like your eyes and your hands. You can call them names, you can call them ugly or beautiful or whatsoever you like, but you cannot kill them.
Nothing can be killed out of existence, nothing can be destroyed.
Tantra says a transformation is possible, but not destruction. And a transformation comes when you accept your total being. Then suddenly everything falls in line, then everything takes its own place; then anger is also absorbed, then greed is also absorbed. Then without trying to cut anything out of your being, your whole being rearranges itself. If you accept and say yes, a rearrangement happens, and whereas before there was a noisy clamor inside, now a melody, a music is born, a harmony comes in.
In noise and in harmony, what is the difference? The same sound waves arranged in a different way. In a noise there is no center; the notes are the same. A madman playing on the piano; the notes are the same, the sound is the same, but a madman playing -- it has no center to it. If you can give center to noise it becomes music, then it converges on a center and everything becomes organic.
If a madman is playing on the piano, then every note is separate, individual; it is a crowd of notes, not a melody. And when a musician plays on the same piano with the same fingers, there comes an alchemical change: now the same notes have fallen into a pattern, the same notes have joined into an organic unity, now they have a center to them. Now they are not a crowd, now they are a family; a subtle love joins them together -- now they are one. And that is the whole art: to bring notes into a loving phenomenon -- they become harmonious.
Tantra says you are a noise right now as you are. Nothing is wrong in it -- simply you don't have a center. Once you have a center, everything falls in line, and everything becomes beautiful.
When Gurdjieff gets angry it is beautiful. When you get angry it is ugly. Anger is neither ugly nor beautiful. When Jesus gets angry it is sheer music -- even anger. When Jesus takes a whip in the temple and chases out the traders, out of the temple, there is a subtle beauty to it. Even Buddha lacks that beauty; Buddha seems to be one-sided. It seems anger has nothing in it to play; the tension of anger, the salt of it is not there. Buddha doesn't taste as good as Jesus. Jesus has a little salt in him, he can get angry -- even his anger has become part of his whole being; nothing has been denied, everything has been accepted.
But Tilopa is incomparable. Jesus is nothing.... The Tantra masters are simply wild flowers, they have everything in them. You must have seen Bodhidharma pictures; if you have not seen, look again -- so ferocious that if you meditate on Bodhidharma's picture in the night, alone, you will not be able to sleep: he will haunt you. It is said of him that once he looked at anybody, that man would have nightmares continuously. He would haunt him; the very look, so ferocious. When Bodhidharma or Tilopa spoke, it is said their speaking was like a lion's roar, a thundercloud, a tremendous waterfall -- wild, fiery.
But if you wait a little and don't judge them too soon, you will find within them the most loving of all hearts. Then you will feel the music, the melody in them. And then suddenly you will realize that they have not denied anything; they have absorbed everything, even ferociousness. A lion is beautiful, even its ferociousness has a beauty of its own. You take the ferociousness out of a lion and he is just a stuffed lion, dead.
Tantra says everything has to be absorbed, everything! -- remember, without any condition. Sex has to be absorbed, then it becomes a tremendous force in you. A Buddha, a Tilopa, a Jesus, they have such a magnetic force around them -- what is that? Sex absorbed. Sex is human magnetism. Suddenly you fall into their love. Once you come across their path, you are being pulled to a different world altogether. You are torn from your old world, and you are being pulled to something new, something that you never even dreamt about. What is this force? It is the same sex which has become transformed; now it has become a magnetism, a charisma. Buddha has anger absorbed; that very anger becomes compassion. And when Jesus takes the whip in his hand, it is because of compassion. When Jesus talks in fire, this is same compassion.
Remember this, that Tantra accepts you in your totality. When you come to me, I accept you in your totality. I am not here to help you deny anything. I am here only to help you to rearrange, to get a center of all your energies, to converge them to a center. And I tell you that you will be richer if you have anger absorbed in it; you will be richer if you have sex absorbed in it; you will be richer if you have hatred, jealousy, absorbed into it -- they are the spices of life, and you will taste.... You will not become tasteless, you will have an enrichment to your taste. You need a little salt. And anger is exactly in the same amount as it is needed. When it overpowers you, then it becomes ugly. If you eat only salt then you will die. Salt has a proportion, and in the proportion it is needed, absolutely needed. Remember this.
On the path you will meet many people who would like to cripple you, to cut you, to dissect you. They will say, "This hand is bad, cut it off! This eye is bad, throw it out! Anger is bad, hate is bad, sex is bad." They will go on cutting you, and by the time they have left you, you are simply paralyzed, a crippled one. You have no life left. That's how the whole civilization has become paralyzed and crippled.
Unless Tantra becomes the foundation of the whole human mind, man will not be complete -- because no other vision accepts man in his totality. But the acceptance, remember again, is of overflowing, it is not of impotence.
One lives one's life, one goes through it: each shade of it has to be lived, and each taste of it has to be tasted. Even the wandering, even going astray is meaningful, because if you never go astray you will not achieve to an enriched enlightenment, you will never be simple. You may be a simpleton, but you will never be simple -- and a simpleton is not simple.
Simplicity needs a very deep and complex experience behind it. A simpleton is simply without experience. He may be a fool, but he cannot be a sage. A sage is one who has lived all the sins of life, who has not denied anything, who has not called anything a sin, who has simply accepted whatsoever has happened, who has allowed it to happen; who has moved with every wave, who has drifted, who went astray, who fell down to the very hell.
Nietzsche has said, "If a tree wants to reach to the sky, its roots need to go to the very hell." He's right. If you want a real flowering into the sky, your roots will need to go to the deepest hell in the earth.
Tantra accepts everything, lives everything. That's why Tantra never could become a very accepted ideology. It always remained a fringe ideology, just somewhere on the boundary outside of society. Civilization has chosen to deny, to say no to many things. Civilization is not courageous enough to accept all, to accept everything that life gives.
The greatest courage in the world is to accept all that life gives to you. And this is what I am trying to help you towards, to accept all that life gives you, and accept it in deep humbleness, as a gift. And when I say this, even those things which society has conditioned you to call wrong and bad. Accept sex, and then there will come a flowering out of it; a brahmacharya will come, a purity, an innocence will come; a virginity will come out of it -- but that will be a transcendence.
Through experience one transcends.
Moving in the dark alleys of life one's eyes become trained, and one starts seeing the light even in darkness. What beauty is there if you can see light while there is day! The beauty is there when there is the darkest night, and your eyes are so trained into darkness that you can see the day hidden there. When in the darkest night you can see the morning, then there is beauty, then you have achieved. When in the lowest you can see the highest, when even in hell you can create a heaven, then, then you have become the artist of life. And Tantra wants to make you the artists of life -- not deniers, but great yea-sayers.
Accept, and, by and by, you will feel the more you accept, the less is there desire. If you accept, how can desire stand there? Whatsoever the case is in this moment, you accept it. Then there is no movement for anything else. You live it moment to moment in deep acceptance. You grow without there being any goal, without there being any desire to go somewhere and be something else or somebody else.
Tantra says, "Be yourself" -- and that is the only being you can achieve ever. With acceptance desires fall. With acceptance, a desirelessness comes into being by itself. You don't practice it, you don't force it upon yourself. You don't cut your desires -- just by accepting, they disappear.
And when suddenly one moment happens that you accept totally and all desires have gone, there is a sudden enlightenment. Suddenly, without doing anything on your part, it happens. That's the greatest gift this existence can give to you.
This is the Tantra attitude towards life. There is no other life than this, and there is no other world than this. This very samsara is the nirvana. Just you have to be a little more understanding, more accepting, more childlike, less egoistic.
Extract from Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, by Osho

-: OSHO :-

OSHO Excerpts

"I have heard a beautiful story - I don't know how far it is correct, I cannot vouch for it.
In paradise one afternoon, in its most famous cafe, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha are sitting and chatting. The waiter comes with a tray that holds three glasses of the juice called "Life," and offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and refuses; he says, "Life is misery."
Confucius closes his eyes halfway - he is a middlist, he used to preach the golden mean - and asks the waiter to give him the glass. He would like to have a sip - but just a sip, because without tasting how can one say whether life is misery or not? Confucius had a scientific mind; he was not much of a mystic, he had a very pragmatic, earthbound mind. He was the first behaviorist the world has known, very logical. And it seems perfectly right - he says, "First I will have a sip, and then I will say what I think." He takes a sip and he says, "Buddha is right - life is misery."
Lao Tzu takes all the three glasses and he says, "Unless one drinks totally, how can one say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, " He drinks all the three glasses and starts dancing!
Buddha and Confucius ask him, "Are you not going to say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, "This is what I am saying - my dance and my song are speaking for me." Unless you taste totally, you cannot say. And when you taste totally, you still cannot say because what you know is such that no words are adequate.
Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle. Lao Tzu has drunk all the three glasses - the one that was brought for Buddha, the one that was brought for Confucius, and the one that was brought for him. He has drunk them all; he has lived life in its three-dimensionality.
My own approach is that of Lao Tzu. Live life in all possible ways; don't choose one thing against the other, and don't try to be in the middle. Don't try to balance yourself - balance is not something that can be cultivated. Balance is something that comes out of experiencing all the dimensions o flife. Balance is something that happens; it is not something that can be brought about through your efforts. If you bring it through your efforts it will be false, forced. And you will remain tense, you will not be relaxed, because how can a person who is trying to remain balanced in the middle be relaxed? You will always be afraid that if you relax you may start moving to the left or to the right. You are bound to remain uptight, and to be uptight is to miss the whole opportunity, the whole gift of life.
Don't be uptight. Don't live life according to principles. Live life in its totality, drink life in its totality! Yes, sometimes it tastes bitter - so what? That taste of bitterness will make you capable of tasting its sweetness. You will be able to appreciate the sweetness only if you have tasted its bitterness. One who knows not how to cry will not know how to laugh, either. One who cannot enjoy a deep laughter, a belly laugh, that person's tears will be crocodile tears. They cannot be true, they cannot be authentic.
I don't teach the middle way, I teach the total way. Then a balance comes of its own accord, and then that balance has tremendous beauty and grace. You have not forced it, it has simply come. By moving gracefully to the left, to the right, in the middle, slowly a balance comes to you because you remain so unidentified. When sadness comes, you know it will pass, and when happiness comes you know that will pass, too. Nothing remains; everything passes by. The only thing that always abides is your witnessing. That witnessing brings balance. That witnessing is balance. "
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO

Existence is hilarious! If you just have eyes to see the hilarious points you will be surprised: in life there is no place to be serious. Everybody is slipping on banana peels - you just need an insight to see.
One just needs a little alertness to see and find out: Life is really a great cosmic laughter.
Those who become silent and happy join in the laughter.
Laughter is my message.
I do not ask you to do prayer. I ask you to find moments, situations, in which you can laugh whole-heartedly.
Your laughter will open a thousand and one roses within you.
Excerpt from "Laughter is my Message" by - OSHO

I teach selfishness. I want you to be, first, your own flowering. Yes, it will appear as selfishness; I have no objection to that appearance; it is okay with me. But is the rose selfish when it blossoms? Is the lotus selfish when it blossoms? Is the sun selfish when it shines? Why should you be worried about selfishness?
You are born - birth is only an opportunity, just a beginning, not an end. You have to flower. Your first and foremost responsibility is to blossom, to become fully conscious, aware, alert; and in that consciousness you will be able to see what you can share, how you can solve problems.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO

Accept yourself. Respect yourself. Allow your nature to take its own course. Don't force, don't repress. Doubt - because doubt is not a sing, it is the sign of intelligence. Doubt and go on inquiring until you find.
One thing I can say: whosoever inquires, finds. It is absolutely certain; it has never been otherwise. Nobody has come empty-handed from an authentic inquiry.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO.

When mind knows, we call it knowledge.When heart knows, we call it love.And when being knows, we call it meditation.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO

No religion has been courageous enough to say, "We know this much, but there is much we don't know; perhaps in the future we may know it. And beyond that, there is a space which is going to remain unknowable forever."
A true religion will have the humbleness to admit that only a few things are known, much more is unknown, and something will always remain unknowable. That "something" is the target of the whole spiritual search. You cannot make it an object of knowledge, but you can experience it, you can drink of it, you can have the taste of it - it is existential.
All these religions have been against doubt. They have been really afraid of doubt. Only an impotent intellect can be afraid of doubt; otherwise doubt is a challenge, an opportunity to inquire.
There is doubt, and doubt is not destroyed by believing. Doubt is destroyed by experiencing.
They say, believe. I say, explore. They say, don't doubt; I say, doubt to the very end, till you arrive and know and feel and experience. Then there is no need to repress doubt; it evaporates by itself. Then there is no need for you to believe.
You have to be again innocent, ignorant, not knowing anything, so that the questions can start arising again. Again the inquiry becomes alive, and with the inquiry becoming alive you cannot vegetate. Then life becomes an exploration, an adventure.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO

Zorba the Buddha is the answer. It is the synthesis of matter and soul. It is a declaration that there is no conflict between matter and consciousness, that we can be rich on both sides. It is a manifeseto that body and soul are together. Existence is full of spirituality - even mountains are alive, even trees are sensitive.
Zorba the Buddha is the end of all religions. It is the beginning of a new kind of religiousness that needs no labels - Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism. One is simply enjoying oneself, enjoying this immense universe, dancing with the trees, playing on the beach with the waves, collecting seashells for no other purpose than just for the sheer joy of it. The salty air, the cool sand, the sun rising, a good job - what more do you want? To me, this is religion - enjoying the air, enjoying the sea, enjoying the sand, enjoying the sun - because there is no other God than existence itself.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO

When the child is born, he is a pagan. Each child is a born pagan, he is happy the way he is. He has no idea what is right and what is wrong; he has no ideals. He has no criteria, he has no judgment. Hungry, he asks for food. Sleepy, he falls asleep. That's what Zen masters say is the utmost in religiousness - when hungry eat, when feeling sleepy go to sleep. Let life flow; don't interfere.
Each child is born as a pagan, but sooner or later he will lose that simplicity. That is part of life; it has to happen. It is a part of our growth, maturity, destiny. The child has to lose it and find it again. When the child loses it he becomes ordinary, worldly. when he regains it he becomes religious.
The innocence of childhood is cheap; it is a gift from existence. We have not earned it and we will have to lose it. Only by losing it will we become aware of what we have lost. Then we will start searching for it. And only when we search for it and earn it, achieve it, become it - then we will know the tremendous preciousness of it.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO.

You have said knowledge is not any use in the process of coming to know ourselves. So please explain what is included in the development of being?
Being never develops. Being simply is. There is no evolution, there is no time involved in it. It is eternity, it is not "becoming." Spiritually, you never develop; you cannot. As far as the ultimate goal is concerned, you are already there. You have never been anywhere else.
Then what is development? Development is only a kind of awakening to the truth that you are. The truth does not grow; only recognition grows, remembrance grows.
That's why I don't talk about the "development of being." I talk about all the hindrances that are preventing your recognition. And knowledge is the greatest hindrance; hence I have talked about it extensively. It is the barrier.
If you think you already know, you will never know. If you think you already know, what is the point of searching? You can go on sleeping and dreaming. The moment you recognize that you don't know, that recognition of ignorance goes like an arrow into the heart, it pierces you like a spear. In that very piercing, one becomes aware - in that very shock.
Knowledge is a kind of shock absorber. It does not allow you to be shaken and shocked. It goes on protecting you, it is an armor around you. I speak against knowledge so that you can drop the armor; so that life can shock you into awareness.
Life is there, ready to shock you every moment. Your being is there inside you, ready to be awakened any moment. But between these two there is knowledge. And the more of it there is, the more your self-awakening will be delayed.
Become unknowledgeable.
And never think of spirituality as a process of growth. It is not a growth. You are already gods, buddhas from the very beginning. It is not that you have to become buddhas - the treasure is there, only you don't know where you have put it. You have forgotten the key, or you have forgotten how to use the key.You are so drunk with knowledge that you have become oblivious of all that you are. Knowledge is alcoholic; it makes people drunk. Then their perception is blurred, then their remembrance is at a minimum. Then they start seeing things that are not, and they stop seeing things that are.
That's why I have not talked about how to evolve your being. Being is already as it should be, it is perfect. Nothing needs to be added to it, nothing can be added to it. It's a creation of existence. It comes out of perfection, hence it is perfect. Just withdraw all the hindrances that you have created.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO.

In this world, it is very difficult to find a happy person, because nobody is fulfilling the conditions for being happy. The first condition is that one has to drop all comparison. Drop all these stupid ideas of being superior and inferior. You are neither superior nor inferior. You are simply yourself! There exists no one like you, no one with whom you can be compared. Then, suddenly, you are at home.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

Be respectful of yourself, and be respectful of others. Be proud of your freedom. When you are proud of your freedom you want everybody else to be free, because your freedom has given you so much love and so much grace. You would like everybody else in the world to be free, loving, and graceful.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

When I say, "Just be yourself," I am saying to you, "Just be unprogrammed, unconditioned awareness."
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO.

All you need is just to be watchful, and nothing will affect you. This unaffectedness will keep your purity, and this purity has certainly the freshness of life, the joy of existence - all the treasures you have been endowed with.
But you become attached to the small things surrounding you and forget the one that you are. It is the greatest discovery in life and the most ecstatic pilgrimage to truth. And you need not be an ascetic, you need not be anti-life; you need not renounce the world and go to the mountains. You can be where you are, you can continue to do what you are doing. Just a new thing has to be evolved: Whatever you do, you do with awareness, even the smallest act of the body or the mind - and with each act of awareness you will become aware of the beauty and the treasure and the glory and the eternity of your being.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO

Everybody is after being extraordinary. That is the search of the ego: to be someone who is special, to be someone who is unique, incomparable. And this is the paradox: the more you try to be exceptional, the more ordinary you look, because everybody is after extraordinariness. It is such an ordinary desire. If you become ordinary, the very search to be ordinary is extraordinary, because rarely does somebody want to be just nobody, rarely does somebody want to be just a hollow, empty space. This is really extraordinary in a way, because nobody wants it. And when you become ordinary you become extraordinary, and, of course, suddenly you discover that without searching you have become unique.
In fact, everybody is unique. If you can stop your constant running after goals for even a single moment, you will realize that you are unique. Your uniqueness is nothing to be invented, it is already there. It is already the case - to be is to be unique. There is no other way of being. Every leaf on a tree is unique, every pebble on the shore is unique, there is no other way of being. You cannot find two identifcal pebbles anywhere on the whole of earth.
Two identical things do not exist at all, so there is no need to be "somebody." You just be yourself, and suddenly you are unique, inconmparable. That's why I say that this is a paradox: those who search fail, and those who don't bother, suddenly attain.
It is said by one of Lao Tzu's great disciples, Lieh Tzu, that once an idiot was searching for fire with a candle in his hand. Said Lieh Tzu: "Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice sooner." He remained hungry the whole night because he was searching for fire but couldn't find it - and he had a candle in his hand, because how can you search in the dark without a candle?
You are searching for uniqueness, and you have it in your hand; if you understand, you can cook your rice sooner. I have cooked my rice and I know. You are unnecessarily hungry - the rice is there, the candle is there, the candle is fire. There is no need to take the candle and search. If you take a candle in your hand and you go searching all over the world, you will not find fire because you don't understand what fire is. Otherwise you could have seen that you were carrying it in your hand.
You need not search for uniqueness, you are unique already. There is no way to make a thing more unique. The words "more unique" are absurd. It is just like the word "circle." Circles exist; there is no such thing as "more circular." That is absurd. A circle is always perfect, "more" is not needed.
There are no degrees of circularity - a circle is a circle, less and more are useless. Uniqueness is uniqueness, less and more don't apply to it. You are already unique. One realizes this only when one is ready to become ordinary, this is the paradox. But if you understand, there is no problem about it, the paradox is there, and beautiful, and no problem exists. A paradox is not a problem. It looks like a problem if you don't understand; if you understand, it is beautiful, a mystery.
Become ordinary and you will become extraordinary; try to become extraordinary and you will remain ordinary.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by - OSHO

A revolutionary is part of the political world; his approach is through politics. His understanding is that changing the social structure is enough to change the human being.
A rebel, as I use the term, is a spiritual phenomenon. His approach is absolutely individual. His vision is that if we want to change the society, we have to change the individual. Society in itself does not exist; it is only a word, like "crowd" - if you go to find it, you will not find it anywhere. Wherever you encounter someone, you will encounter an individual. "Society" is only a collective name - just a name, not a reality - with no substance.
The individual has a soul, has a possibility of evolution, of change, of transformation. Hence, the difference is tremendous.
The rebel is the very essence of religion. He brings into the world a change of consciousness - and if the consciousness changes, then the structure of the society is bound to follow it. But vice versa is not the case, and it has been proved by all the revolutions because they have failed.
No revolution has yet succeeded in changing human beings; but it seems we are not aware of the fact. We still go on thinking in terms of revolution, of changing society, of changing the government, of changing the bureaucracy, of changing laws, political systems. Feudalism, capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism - they were all in their own way revolutionary. They all have failed, and failed utterly, because man has remained the same.
We have to be rebels, not revolutionaries. The revolutionary belongs to a very mundane sphere; the rebel and his rebelliousness are sacred. The revolutionary cannot stand alone; he needs a crowd, a political party, a government. He needs power - and power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Human consciousness has not grown for centuries. Only once in a while someone blossoms - but in millions of people, the blossoming of one person is not a rule, it is the exception. And because that person is alone, the crowd cannot tolerate him. His existence becomes a kind of humiliation; his very presence feels insulting because he opens your eyes, makes you aware of your potential and your future. And it hurts your ego that you have done nothing to grow, to be more conscious, to be more loving, more ecstatic, more creative, more silent - to create a beautiful world around you.
Hence a Gautam Buddha or a Chuang Tzu hurts you because they have blossomed and you are just standing there.
The world has known only very few rebels. But now is the time: if humanity proves incapable of producing a large number of rebels, a rebellious spirit, then our days on the earth are numbered. Then the coming decades may become our graveyard. We are coming very close to that point.
We have to change our consciousness, create more meditative energy in the world, create more lovingness. We have to destroy the old - its ugliness, its rotten ideologies, its stupid discriminations, idiotic superstitions - and create a new human being with fresh eyes, with new values. A discontintuity with the past - that's the meaning of rebelliousness.
These three words will help you to understand: reform, revolution, and rebellion.
Reform means a modification. The old remains and you give it a new form, a new shape - it is a kind of renovation to an old building. The original structure remains; you whitewash it, you clean it, you create a few windows, a few new doors.
Revolution goes deeper than reform. The old remains, but more changes are introduced, changes even in its basic structure. You are not only changing its color and opening a few new windows and doors, but perhaps building new stories, taking it higher into the sky. But the old is not destroyed, it remains hidden behind the new; in fact, it remains the very foundation of the new. Revolution is a continuity with the old.
Rebellion is a discontinuity. It is not reform, it is not revolution; it is simply disconnecting yourself from all that is old. The old religions, the old political ideologies, the old human being - all that is old, you disconnect yourself from it. You start life afresh, from scratch.
The revolutionary tries to change the old; the rebel simply comes out of the old, just as a snake slips out of the old skin and never looks back.
The future needs no more revolutions. The future needs a new experiment, which has not been tried yet. Although for thousands of years there have been rebels, they remained alone - individuals. Perhaps the time was not ripe for them. But now the time is not only ripe....if you don't hurry, the time has come to an end. In the coming decades, either mankind will disappear or a new human being with a new vision will appear on the earth. That new human being will be a rebel.
Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" - by  - OSHO

Osho On Psychoanalysis

Question - BELOVED MASTER, IS IT NECESSARY TO GO THROUGH DREAM ANALYSIS FOR ATTAINING ENLIGHTENMENT?
Osho - Gautami, dream analysis cannot help you to become enlightened, but dream witnessing can certainly help you. That is the difference between psychology and religion: psychology analyzes dreams; religion watches them, helps you to become aware of them. And the moment you become aware of your dreams they disappear; they can't exist for a single moment longer.
They can exist only when you are utterly unaware; for their existence that is an absolute condition. A buddha never dreams, he cannot dream. Even if he wants to dream he cannot. Dreaming simply disappears from his being because even in the night while he is asleep, deep down in his innermost core he is awake. A flame of awareness continues and he knows what is happening. He knows that his body is asleep. Witnessing becomes so ingrained that not only in the day but in the night also it continues. And then dreaming disappears. You dream because you desire; your dreams reflect your desires. Now, you can go on dissecting your desires for lives, and you will not attain to anything. You can go on analyzing your dreams....

There are many systems of analysis. If you go to the Freudians they will analyze your dreams in one way: they will interpret everything as sexuality. Imaginable things, unimaginable things, everything has to be reduced to sexuality. If you go to the Adlerians with the same dreams, they will interpret them according to their ideology. Then every dream is reduced to Adler's idea: will to power. Then everything is nothing but will to power; each dream has to fit with his philosophy. And so is the case with the Jungians and others.

And one thing has been observed again and again -- a very strange phenomenon happens. If you go into psychoanalysis of any kind -- Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian -- you start dreaming in the way your psychoanalyst expects you to dream. If you go to the Freudian, sooner or later you start dreaming according to his idea. People are very obliging; they feel sorry for the poor analyst. And he is making such hard effort to analyze your dreams. First he starts giving you interpretations and then you start dreaming according to his interpretations. Soon you fit with each other -- you are as if made for each other. Then he is happy and you are happy. He is happy because his theories are confirmed and you are happy that you are a good boy, dreaming according to the great expert. And when you see your psychoanalyst happy, YOU feel happy. Seeing you feel happy, he feels happy. It is such a mutual arrangement! And nobody is really helped... dreaming continues.

I have never come across a fully psychoanalyzed person, because according to Freud, a fully psychoanalyzed person is one whose dreaming has disappeared. And that was not true even about Sigmund Freud himself; he continued to dream to his very last. And he was very afraid of psychoanalysis, you will be surprised to know, because he knew his disciples would only prove that all his dreams were sexual.

Once Jung wanted to psychoanalyze Freud. Jung was his most beloved disciple in those days, just as once Judas was one of the most beloved disciples of Jesus. And what Judas did to Jesus, Jung did to Freud. People whose names start with 'J' are dangerous!

Freud and Jung were traveling and they started talking. Jung said, "This idea occurs to me again and again: that I would like to psychoanalyze you. You have not been psychoanalyzed. In fact, nobody who has not been psychoanalyzed should be authorized to psychoanalyze other people. And you are the founder -- you should be psychoanalyzed."

Freud actually started trembling and he said, "No, no, never! That will destroy my prestige."
Jung said, "If that is so, then it has already destroyed your prestige, at least for me. If you are so much afraid to talk about your dreams, that simply shows what kind of dreams you must be having."

There is not a single person in the world who is totally psychoanalyzed. And unless dreams disappear, your mind will remain in a turmoil. Dreams simply say you don't know how to put your mind off; you don't know where the switch exists so that you can put it on and off according to your needs. When you are going to sleep you can't put if off; it goes on chattering. Even if you say to it, "Shut up!" it does not listen to you at all; it does not care. And you know perfectly well it won't listen. You feel so impotent as far as your own mind is concerned that you have to move according to it, it does not move according to you. If it wants to chatter it will chatter; when you fall asleep, still it goes on chattering.

The art of meditation makes you aware where the switch is: it is in witnessing. Witnessing is the switch that can put your mind on or off. You become the master, so when you want to use it you use it and when you don't want to use it you simply put it off and it gives rest to the mind.
Hence the mind of a meditator is far more brilliant, far more intelligent, far more alive, sensitive, than the mind of a nonmeditator, because the mind of a meditator has a few periods of deep deep rest that rejuvenates it. If you see a meditator and he is not intelligent, that simply means he is not a meditator at all. A meditator cannot be stupid, a meditator cannot be mediocre; that is impossible. If he is a meditator, then he will radiate sharpness, intelligence, brilliance. He will be a genius, he will be creative.

In fact, if we can create more and more meditators in the world, in every dimension of life there will be more creativity, more intelligence, less stupidity, less lethargy. But it has not happened down the ages. Just the opposite has happened because in the name of meditation, something else has continued. In the name of meditation people either have been concentrating or contemplating. Both are not meditation.

Concentration is just the opposite of meditation and so is contemplation, in a different way. Concentration means closing your mind, focusing your mind, on a certain point, on a certain object. You are so focused on a certain object that you become unaware of everything else; that is concentration. It excludes everything else; it includes only one thing: the object of your concentration, whatsoever it is.

And meditation means absolute openness. It includes all, it excludes nothing. Hence it is not concentration at all. It is a state of vulnerability, openness, availability. The person who is trying to concentrate can be distracted. He can be easily distracted by anything. Just a dog in the neighborhood starts barking and he is distracted, a child starts giggling and he is distracted, a bird starts singing and he is distracted. Anything will do, as if he is just waiting for anything to distract him; he is tired of focusing his mind. It is a tension, it is a strain.

Meditation is not a tension, it is not a strain. One is never tired of meditation. It is relaxation -- how you can be tired of it? It is deep rest, it is utter restfulness. One is available to everything; nothing can distract you. You can listen to me either as concentration or as meditation. If you listen to me as concentration, then anything can distract. A car passes by... the cuckoo starts calling from the distance -- the chattering of the birds. Anything can distract you, any small thing. Not that the birds are interested in distracting you; they are not concerned with you at all. But you will feel anger arising in you.

That's why so-called religious people become more angry than anybody else. They live almost in rage. If a single person in your house becomes religious, he is enough to create trouble for everybody, because each small thing distracts him and then he takes revenge.

You can listen to me in meditation. Then you are not concentrating on me; you are simply sitting available, open. The birds go on chattering; that too comes to you, but because you are not concentrating it is not a distraction -- it enriches. What I am saying to you is enriched. The singing of the birds becomes a background to it. And you never feel angry and you never feel tense.

Contemplation is also not meditation. Contemplation means thinking. Thinking can be of two types. One is zigzag, in jumps from one object to another, a little crazy; that is ordinary thinking. Anything leads to anything. A dog starts barking and you start thinking about your girlfriend. There seems to be no relationship, but maybe your girl had said once, "I go on barking at you and you don't listen!" Suddenly the dog reminds you. Or maybe she also has a dog who barks at you whenever you go to see her. And then from one thing to another... you will not stay with anything long. The girlfriend reminds you of her mother, and so on, so forth. Nobody knows where you are going to end. When you will look retrospectively you will be surprised: just the dog barking in the neighborhood started the whole process of thought.

Contemplation means remaining concerned with one object, thinking about it and only about it. Thinking has a consistency. If you are thinking about love, then you are thinking about love and all its aspects. You don't jump from one thing to another. Yes, you have a little rope just so that you can move around the subject of love, but you keep moving around it, around and around. You forget the whole world -- love becomes your world for the moment.

Meditation is not contemplation either because it is not thinking at all -- consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts -- trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

You ask me, Gautami, "Is it necessary to go through dream analysis for attaining enlightenment?"

No, not at all. Have you ever heard anybody becoming enlightened through psychoanalysis? Yes, people have become mad, but nobody has become enlightened. Psychoanalysis depends on analysis of the mind, and they don't see anything else in you. The body is taken care of by the physiologists; then all that remains is a constant traffic in the mind either of thoughts or of dreams, memories, imagination, desires.
The psychoanalyst has nothing else to do: he looks into your dreaming process. And why does he choose dreams? -- because if he asks you what you think when you are awake you are never authentic, you are never sincere. You are so deceptive, so dishonest, that whatever you say about your thinking is bound to be managed; it is not going to be true. You will say only that which is worth saying and you will delete many things. You will edit your thoughts. You will not allow the psychoanalyst to look into your thoughts without any censor, without any editing.
You will not allow him the raw material of your thoughts because that will look like you are insane. You can try it. Sit in your room, close all the doors so nobody can come in, and start writing whatsoever is happening in the mind -- whatsoever it is. Just go on writing for fifteen minutes, then read it -- and you will be shocked. This is your mind? All these thoughts are going on in your mind? Are you mad or something? You can't show it to anybody. It is good that people don't have windows in their heads; otherwise the wife will look through the window in the head of the husband and she will find everything. She finds everything anyway, window or no window!
The psychoanalyst has to depend on your dreams because in dreams it is very difficult for you to deceive him. You don't know yourself what your dreams mean so you have to say them as they are, and he can find a few clues about you. But this is not going to make you enlightened. This may help you a little bit to become more normal, but what is normality? Even the people who are normal are not normal -- they are normally abnormal, that's all. So you will be normally abnormal.

There are two kinds of abnormal people in the world: normally abnormal, abnormally abnormal. The work of the psychoanalyst is to bring abnormally abnormal people to the first category: normally abnormal. He helps you to adjust with the society, with people, with yourself, but he can't help you to become enlightened.

You can go on and on analyzing your dreams and you will never come to your witnessing soul through that analysis. How can you come to the witness by analyzing the dreams? One dream will lead you into another dream. Maybe you will become a very skillful dreamer, very artful. Maybe you will start dreaming in a better way, in a more scientific way, but dreams are dreams. They cannot take you to the witness of the dreams which is your reality.

Osho About Joke

Beloved Osho, What is the secret of a Joke?

Osho: The sudden unexpected turn, that is the secret of a joke -- the revelation. You are expecting something and it doesn't happen; what happens is so totally absurd and yet has a logic of its own... it is ridiculous and yet not illogical. That's what suddenly becomes a laughter in you. You see the ridiculousness of it, and also the logic of it. It is unexpected -- if it is expected, then it doesn't bring laughter to you. If you know the joke then it doesn't bring laughter to you, because now you know, everything is expected.
The secret of the joke is that it brings you to a point where you are expecting, expecting, expecting that this is going to happen; then it never happens. And what happens is so sudden... and because you were expecting something you were coming to a tension, and then suddenly something else happens, and the tension has come to such a climax that it explodes. You are all laughter. It is a tremendous release, it is great meditation.

If you can laugh totally, it will give you a moment of no-time, no-mind. Mind lives logically with expectations, laughter is something that comes from the beyond. Mind is always guessing what is going to happen, groping. And something happens which is absolutely contrary to its expectations: it simply stops for a moment. And that is the moment when the mind stops, when laughter comes from your belly, a belly laugh. Your whole body goes into a spasm, it is orgasmic. A good laugh is tremendously meditative.

Question: Why do you tell jokes? And why don't you laugh at your own jokes?
Osho: First, Religion is a complicated joke. If you don't laugh at all you have missed the point; if you only laugh you have missed the point again. It is a very complicated joke. And the whole of life is a great cosmic joke. It is not a serious phenomenon -- take it seriously and you will go on missing it. It is understood only through laughter.

Have you not observed that man is the only animal who laughs? Aristotle says man is the rational animal. That may not be true -- because ants are very rational and bees are very rational. In fact, compared to ants, man looks almost irrational. And a computer is very rational -- compared to a computer, man is very irrational.

My definition of man is that man is the laughing animal. No computer laughs, no ant laughs, no bee laughs. If you come across a dog laughing you will be so scared! Or a buffalo suddenly laughs: you may have a heart attack. It is only man who can laugh, it is the highest peak of growth.

And it is through laughter that you will reach to God -- because it is only through the highest that is in you that you can reach the ultimate. Laughter has to become the bridge. Laugh your way to God. I don't say pray your way to God, I say laugh your way to God. If you can laugh you will be able to love. If you can laugh you will be able to relax. Laughter relaxes like nothing else.

So all jokes to me are prayers -- that's why I tell them.

And you ask: WHY DON'T YOU LAUGH AT YOUR OWN JOKES?
Because I have heard them before.

Source: from book "The Revolution" by Osho

Osho Discourse on New Man

Osho - A new man is emerging. The image of the new man is not yet clear, but the horizon is becoming red and the sun will soon be there. The morning mist is there and the image of the new man is vague, but still a few things are very crystal clear about the new man.
And this is of tremendous importance because since the monkey became man, man has remained the same. A great revolution is on the way. It will be far more deep-going than the revolution that happened when monkeys started walking on the earth and became human beings. That change created mind, that change brought psychology in.
Now another far more significant change is going to happen that will bring the soul in, and man will not only be a psychological being but a spiritual being too. You are living in one of the most alive times ever. The new man has already arrived in fragments, but only in fragments. And the new man has been arriving for centuries, but only here and there.
That’s how things happen. When the spring comes it starts with one flower. But when the one flower is there, then one can be certain: that spring is not faraway – it has come. The first flower has heralded its coming: Zarathustra, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus – these were the first flowers. Now the new man is going to be born on a greater scale.
According to me, this new consciousness is the most important thing that is happening today. I would like to tell you something about this new consciousness, its orientations, and its characteristics, because you are to help it come out of the womb – because you HAVE TO BE IT. The new man cannot come from nowhere, he has to come through you.
The new man can only be born through your womb. You have to become the womb. Sannyas is an experiment to clean the ground so that new seeds can fall in. If you understand the meaning of the new man, you will be able to understand the significance of sannyas too.
And it is because sannyas is concerned with the new man that the old orthodoxies of all kinds are going to be against me and against sannyas, because this will be their end. If sannyas succeeds, if the new man succeeds, the old will have to go. The old can live only if the new man is prevented from coming.
It cannot be prevented now, because it is not only a question of the new man’s coming into existence, it is a question of the survival of the whole earth, of consciousness itself, of life itself. It is a question of life and death. The old man has come to utter destructiveness. The old man has reached the end of his tether.
Now there is no life possible with the old concept of man but only death. The old man is preparing for a global suicide. The old man is piling up atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, in order to commit a collective suicide. This is a very unconscious desire. Rather than allowing the new man to be, the old man would like to destroy the whole thing.
You have to understand, you have to protect the new, because the new carries the whole future with it. And man has come to a stage where a great quantum leap is possible. The old man was other-worldly, the old man was against this world. The old man was always looking to the heavens. The old man was more concerned with life after death than life before death.
The new man’s concern will be life before death. The new man’s concern will be THIS life, because if this life is taken care of, the other will follow of its own accord. One need not worry about it, one need not think about it. The old man was too concerned with God. That concern was out of fear. The new man will not be concerned with God, but will live and love this world, and out of that love he will experience the existence of God.
The old man was speculative, the new man is going to be existential. The old man can be defined in the Upanishadic statement: NETI-NETI, not this, not this. The old man was negative – life-negative, life-denying. The new man will be life-affirming: ITI-ITI, this andthis. The old man’s concern was THAT, the new man’s concern will be this, because out of this that is born, and if you become too concerned with that, you miss both.
Tomorrow is in the womb of today. Take care of today and you have taken care of tomorrow. There is no need to be in any way worried about tomorrow. If you become too worried about tomorrow you have missed today. And tomorrow will come as today – it always comes as today. If you have learned this suicidal habit of missing today, you will miss tomorrow also.
You will go on missing. The old man was continuously missing, was miserable, sad. And because he was sad he was against the world, he blamed the world, he blamed SAMSARA. He said, ’It is because of the world that I am in misery.’ It is not so. The world is immensely beautiful, it is all beauty, bliss and benediction.
There is nothing wrong with the world. Something was wrong with the old mind. The old mind was either past-oriented or future-oriented, which are not really different orientations. The old mind was concerned with that which is not. The new man will be utterly in tune with that which is, because it is God, it is reality: iti-iti, this is it.
This moment has to be lived in its totality. This moment has to be lived in its spontaneity, with no A PRIORI ideas. The old man was carrying ready-made answers. He was stuffed with philosophy, religion and all kinds of nonsense. The new man is going to live life without any A PRIORI conclusion about it. Without any conclusion one has to face existence, and then one knows what it is. If you have already concluded, your conclusion will become a barrier.
It will not allow you inquiry – your conclusion will become a blindfold. It will not allow you to see the truth – your investment will be in the conclusion. You will distort reality to fit your conclusion. That’s what has been done up to now. The new man will not be Hindu, will not be Mohammedan, will not be Christian, will not be communist.
The new man will not know all these ’isms’. The new man will simply be an opening, a window to reality. He will allow reality as it is. He will not project his own mind upon it. He will not use reality as a screen. His eyes will be available; they will not be full of ideas.The new man will not live out of belief, he will simply live. And remember, only those who can simply live, without belief, come to know what truth is.
The believer or the disbeliever never come to know what truth is. Their beliefs are too heavy on their minds. They are surrounded too much by their belief systems. The new man will not know any belief system. He will watch, he will observe, he will see, he will live, and he will allow all kinds of experiences. He will be available, he will be multi dimensional.
The old man lived out of fear – even his GoHe will not carry scriptures in his head, he will carry only alertness awareness. He will be meditative.d was nothing but a creation out of fear. His temples, mosques, GURUDWARAS, churches – they were all out of fear. He was trembling, he was afraid. The new man will live out of love, not out of fear, because fear serves death, love serves life.
And if you live out of fear you will never know what life is, you will only know death again and again. And remember, the person who lives out of fear creates all kinds of situations in which he has to feel more and more fear. Yom fear creates situations, just as your love creates situations. If you love, you will find so many occasions to be loving.
If you are afraid, you will find so many occasions to be afraid. Love is going to be the taste of the new consciousness. Because fear was the taste of the old consciousness it created wars. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars – as if we have not been doing nything else – continuous fighting somewhere or other. This is a very mad state of affairs. Humanity’s past is insane.
The new man will become discontinuous with this insane past. He will believe in love, not in war. He will believe in life, not in death. He will be creative, not destructive. His science, his art – all will serve creativity. He will not create bombs. He will not be political, because politics is out of hatred.

Osho Quotes on Life and Love

 Mind can accept any boundary anywhere. But the reality is that, by its very nature, existence cannot have any boundary, because what will be beyond the boundary - again another sky. That's why I'm saying skies upon skies are available for your flight. Don't be content easily. Those who remain content easily remain small: small are their joys, small are their ecstasies, small are their silences, small is their being. But there is no need! This smallness is your own imposition upon your freedom, upon your unlimited possibilities, upon your unlimited potential. Experience life in all possible ways -- good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don't be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become. Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder. All the Buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact: Be -- don't try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance. You can go on changing the outer for lives and you will never be satisfied; something or other will remain to be changed. Unless the inner changes, the outer can never be perfect. What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness; what is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness - which is a reality. And it is so beautiful to experience it, to feel it, because it is your freedom from the crowd, from the other. It is your freedom from the fear of being lonely.
Self-respect is often mistaken for arrogance when in reality it is the opposite. When we can recognize all our good qualities as well as or faults with neutrality, we can start to appreciate ourselves as we would a dear friend and experience the comfortable inner glow of respect. To embrace the journey towards our full potential we need to become our own loving teacher and coach. Spurring ourselves on to become better human beings we develop true regard for ourselves and our life will become sacred.
You carry your wound. With the ego, your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything. You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? - because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound. He is healthy, healed, whole. This word whole is beautiful. The word heal comes from the whole, and the word holy also comes from the whole. He is whole, healed, holy. Be aware of your wound. Don't help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal; with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things. Just for twenty-four hours, try it - total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it; don't react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before.
When you are alone you are not alone, you are simply lonely - and there is a tremendous difference between loneliness and aloneness. When you are lonely you are thinking of the other, you are missing the other. Loneliness is a negative state. You are feeling that it would have been better if the other were there - your friend, your wife, your mother, your beloved, your husband. It would have been good if the other were there, but the other is not. Loneliness is absence of the other. Aloneness is the presence of oneself. Aloneness is very positive. It is a presence, overflowing presence. You are so full of presence that you can fill the whole universe with your presence and there is no need for anybody.
This has been said again and again, down through the ages. All the religious people have been saying this: "We come alone into this world, we go alone." All togetherness is illusory. The very idea of togetherness arises because we are alone, and the aloneness hurts. We want to drown our aloneness in relationship....That's why we become so much involved in love. Try to see the point. Ordinarily you think you have fallen in love with a woman or with a man because she is beautiful, he is beautiful. That is not the truth. The truth is just the opposite: you have fallen in love because you cannot be alone. You were going to fall. You were going to avoid yourself somehow or other. And there are people who don't fall in love with women or men--then they fall in love with money. They start moving into money or into a power trip, they become politicians. That too is avoiding your aloneness. If you watch man, if you watch yourself deeply, you will be surprised--all your activities can be reduced to one single source. The source is that you are afraid of your aloneness. Everything else is just an excuse. The real cause is that you find yourself very alone.
The heart is like a flower - unless it is open it cannot release its fragrance into the world. The fragrance of the heart is made up of the qualities and virtues of our spirit. Most of us have learned how to keep our heart closed in a world that would trample all over us if we let it. Being open hearted today seems to require tremendous courage. It is a courage which comes only when we realise that no one can hurt us, no matter what they say or do. They may hurt our body, but if we have realised we are spirit, nothing outside can touch us, if we so decide. Little by little, practice opening your heart to those you think have hurt you. Realise it wasn't them that hurt you, it was yourself. And it taught you not to trust and you closed your heart. A closed heart is in need of opening. And when you do, you will have begun to heal yourself.
Turning inwards is not a turning at all. Going inwards is not a going at all. Turning inwards simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration.That each desire brings misery, that there is no fulfillment through desire. That you never reach anywhere, that contentment is impossible. Seeing this truth, that running after desires takes you nowhere, you stop. Not that you make any effort to stop. If you make any effort to stop it is again running, in a subtle way. You are still desiring--maybe now it is desirelessness that you desire. If you are making an effort to go in, you are still going out. Any effort can only take you out, outwards. All journeys are outward journeys, there is no inward journey. How can you journey inwards? You are already there, there is no point in going. When going stops, journeying disappears; when desiring is no more clouding your mind, you are in. This is called turning in. But it is not a turning at all, it is simply not going out.
Controlled persons are always nervous because deep down turmoil is still hidden. If you are uncontrolled, flowing, alive, then you are not nervous. There is no question of being nervous - whatsoever happens, happens. You have no expectations for the future, you are not performing. Then why should you be nervous? To control that mind, one has to remain so cold and frozen that no life energy is allowed to move into your limbs, into your body. If energy is allowed to move, those repressions will surface. That's why people have learned how to be cold, how to touch others and yet not touch them, how to see people and yet not see them. People live with clichés - "Hullo. How are you?" Nobody means anything. These are just to avoid the real encounter of two persons. People don't look into each other's eyes, they don't hold hands, they don't try to feel each other's energy, they don't allow each other to pour - very afraid, somehow just managing, cold and dead, in a straitjacket. A man alone, confined to himself, is ugly. Life is in love, life is in flow, in give and take and sharing... No dead principles can help, but only living consciousness. Be absolutely unprincipled and just follow life. You will need civilisation, culture, education, but don't get identified with them. They are games. One can play them because one has to live in society...Watch so that you don't get identified with them, and whenever they are not needed, be natural.
All that this world needs is a good cleansing of the heart of all the inhibitions of the past. And laughter and tears can do both. Tears will take out all the agony that is hidden inside you and laughter will take all that is preventing your ecstasy. Once you have learned the art you will be immensely surprised.
Unless you drop your personality you will not be able to find your individuality. Individuality is given by existence; personality is imposed by the society. Personality is social convenience. Society cannot tolerate individuality, because individuality will not follow like a sheep. Individuality has the quality of the lion; the lion moves alone. The sheep are always in the crowd, hoping that being in the crowd will feel cosy. Being in the crowd one feels more protected, secure. If somebody attacks, there is every possibility in a crowd to save yourself. But alone? - only the lions move alone. And every one of you is born a lion, but the society goes on conditioning you, programming your mind as a sheep. It gives you a personality, a cosy personality, nice, very convenient, very obedient. Society wants slaves, not people who are absolutely dedicated to freedom. Society wants slaves because all the vested interests want obedience.
A man who lives through conscience becomes hard. A man who lives through consciousness remains soft. Why?--because a man who has some ideas about how to live, naturally becomes hard. He has continuously to carry his character around himself. That character is like an armor; his protection, his security; his whole life is invested in that character. And he always reacts to situations through the character, not directly. If you ask him a question, his answer is ready-made. That is the sign of a hard person--he is dull, stupid, mechanical. He may be a good computer, but he is not a man. You do something and he reacts in a well- established way. His reaction is predictable; he is a robot. The real man acts spontaneously. If you ask him a question, your question gets a response, not a reaction. He opens his heart to your question, exposes himself to your question, responds to it....
We are miserable because we are too much in the self. What does it mean when I say we are too much in the self? And what exactly happens when we are too much in the self? Either you can be in existence or you can be in the self--both are not possible together. To be in the self means to be apart, to be separate. To be in the self means to become an island. To be in the self means to draw a boundary line around you. To be in the self means to make a distinction between this 'I am' and that 'I am not'. The definition, the boundary, between "I" and "not I" is what the self is--the self isolates. And it makes you frozen--you are no longer flowing. If you are flowing the self cannot exist. Hence people have become almost like ice-cubes. They don't have any warmth, they don't have any love--love is warmth and they are afraid of love. If warmth comes to them they will start melting and the boundaries will disappear. In love the boundaries disappear; in joy also the boundaries disappear, because joy is not cold.

         There is no evil and there are no evil forces in the world. There are only people of awareness, and there are people who are fast asleep -- and sleep has no force. The whole energy is in the hands of the awakened people. And one awakened person can awaken the whole world. One lighted candle can make millions of candles lighted without losing it's light. What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness; what is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness which is a reality. And it is so beautiful to experience it, to feel it, because it is your freedom from the crowd, from the other. It is your freedom from the fear of being lonely.
As you move above to the fourth centre - that is the heart - your whole life becomes a sharing of love. The third centre has created the abundance of love. By reaching to the third centre in meditation, you have become so overflowing with love, with compassion, and you want to share. It happens at the fourth centre, the heart. That's why even in the ordinary world people think love comes out of the heart. For them it is just hearsay, they have heard it; they don't know it because they have never reached to their heart. But the meditator finally reaches to the heart. As he has reached to the centre of his being - the third centre - suddenly an explosion of love and compassion and joy and blissfulness and benediction has arisen in him with such a force that it hits his heart and opens the heart. The heart is just in the middle of all your seven centres - three centres below, three centres above. You have come exactly to the middle.
First meditate, be blissful, then much love will happen of its own accord. Then being with others is beautiful and being alone is also beautiful. Then it is simple, too. You don't depend on others and you don't make others dependent on you. Then it is always a friendship, a friendliness. It never becomes a relationship, it is always a relatedness. You relate, but you don't create a marriage. Marriage is out of fear, relatedness is out of love. You relate; as long as things are moving beautifully, you share. And if you see that the moment has come to depart because your paths separate at this crossroad, you say good-bye with great gratitude for all that the other has been to you, for all the joys and all the pleasures and all the beautiful moments that you have shared with the other. With no misery, with no pain, you simply separate.
One moment it was there, another moment it is gone. One moment we are here, and another moment we have gone. And for this simple moment, how much fuss we make! How much violence, ambition, struggle, conflict, anger, hatred, just for this small moment! Just waiting for the train in a waiting room on a station, and creating so much fuss: fighting, hurting each other, trying to possess, trying to boss, trying to dominate - all that politics. And then the train comes and you are gone forever.
This pain is not to make you sad, remember. That's where people go on missing....This pain is just to make you more alert--because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them. Otherwise they don't become alert. When life is easy, comfortable, convenient, who cares? Who bothers to become alert? When a friend dies, there is a possibility. When your woman leaves you alone--those dark nights, you are lonely. You have loved that woman so much and you have staked all, and then suddenly one day she is gone. Crying in your loneliness, those are the occasions when, if you use them, you can become aware. The arrow is hurting: it can be used. The pain is not to make you miserable, the pain is to make you more aware! And when you are aware, misery disappears.The heart is always right-- if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart-- because mind is a creation of the society. It has been educated. You have been given it by the society, not by existence. The heart is unpolluted. The heart knows nothing of the past, nothing of the future; it knows only of the present. The heart has no time concept.
If you are ready to be intimate, you will encourage the other person also to be intimate. Your unpretentious simplicity will allow the other also to enjoy simplicity, innocence, trust, love, openness.
You have to drop all your defences, only then is intimacy possible. We are all hiding a thousand and one things, not only from others but from ourselves.
These three things are to be taken note of: the lowest love is sex - it is physical - and the highest refinement of love is compassion. Sex is below love, compassion is above love; love is exactly in the middle. Very few people know what love is. Ninety-nine percent of people, unfortunately, think sexuality is love - it is not. Sexuality is very animal; it certainly has the potential of growing into love, but it is not actual love, only a potential.... If you become aware and alert, meditative, then sex can be transformed into love. And if your meditativeness becomes total, absolute, love can be transformed into compassion. Sex is the seed, love is the flower, compassion is the fragrance. Buddha has defined compassion as love plus meditation. When your love is not just a desire for the other, when your love is not only a need, when your love is a sharing, when your love is not that of a beggar but an emperor, when your love is not asking for something in return but is ready only to give - to give for the sheer joy of giving - then add meditation to it and the pure fragrance is released. That is compassion; compassion is the highest phenomenon.
Seriousness is a sickness; your sense of humor makes you more human, more humble. The sense of humor -- according to me -- is one of the most essential parts of religiousness.
Life is not a tragedy, it is a comedy. To be alive means to have a sense of humor.
The moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on your heart disappears. All the fear of death, of life, of love - everything disappears. One starts living with a very light weight or almost no weight. So weightless one becomes, one can fly in the open sky. Zen's greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.
The whole effort of a Jesus or a Buddha or a Bodhidharma is nothing but how to undo that which society has done to you.
Life is a continuity always and always. There is no final destination it is going towards. Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life, not reaching to some point, no goal--just dancing and being in pilgrimage, moving joyously, without bothering about any destination. What will you do by getting to a destination? Nobody has asked this, because everybody is trying to have some destination in life. But the implications... If you really reach the destination of life, then what? Then you will look very embarrassed. Nowhere to go...you have reached to the final destination--and in the journey you have lost everything. You had to lose everything. So standing naked at the final destination, you will look all around like an idiot: what was the point? You were hurrying so hard, and you were worrying so hard, and this is the outcome.
To transform breakdowns into breakthroughs is the whole function of a master. The psychotherapist simply patches you up. That is his function. He is not there to transform you. You need a meta-psychology, the psychology of the Buddhas. It is the greatest adventure in life to go through a breakdown consciously. It is the greatest risk because there is no guarantee that the breakdown will become a breakthrough. It does become, but these things cannot be guaranteed. So when you enter into it with your small capacity, of course there is danger. But without facing this danger nobody has ever become integrated, nobody has ever become an individual, indivisible. The dawn is not far away, but before you can reach the dawn, the dark night has to be passed through. And as the dawn comes closer, the night will become darker. Only those who are ready to become nobodies are able to love.
You just look around, look into the eyes of a child, or into the eyes of your beloved, your mother, your friend - or just feel a tree. Have you ever hugged a tree? Hug a tree, and one day you will come to know that it is not only that you have hugged the tree but that the tree also responds, the tree also hugs you. Then for the first time you will be able to know that the tree is not just the form, it is not just a certain species the botanists talk about, it is an unknown God - so green in your courtyard, so full of flowers in your courtyard, so close to you, beckoning you, calling you again and again.

Meditation And Medicine


Meditation is a kind of medicine - its use is only for the time being. Once you have learned the quality, then you need not do any particular meditation; then the meditation has to spread all over your life. Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen. Then what will be the quality? Watchfully, alert, joyously, unmotivated, centred, loving, flowing, one walks. And the walking is sauntering. Loving, alert, watchful, one sits, unmotivated - not sitting for anything in particular, just enjoying how beautiful just sitting doing nothing is, how relaxing, how restful.....After a long walk, you sit under a tree and the breeze comes and cools you. Each moment one has to be at ease with oneself - not trying to improve, not cultivating anything, not practicing anything. Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen. Talking or silent, moving, unmoving, the essence is at ease. The essence is at ease: that is the key word. The essence is at ease: that is the key statement. Do whatsoever you are doing, but at the deepest core remain at ease, cool, calm, centred. To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.
Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach - how you look at things....Not everybody can be a painter - and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live! And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative. Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine. You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don't know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it - whatsoever it is!
Fill your heart with the creative power to accept the past, decorate the present and transform the future.
Postponement is simply stupid. Tomorrow you will also have to decide, so why not today? And do you think that tomorrow you will be wiser than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be livelier than today? Do you think that tomorrow you will be younger than today, fresher than today? Tomorrow you will be older, your courage will be less; tomorrow you will be more experienced, your cunningness will be more; tomorrow death will come closer--you will start wavering and being more afraid. Never postpone for the tomorrow. And who knows? Tomorrow may come or may not come. If you have to decide you have to decide right now. Make up your mind. Don't go on postponing infinitely.
The feminine is more powerful than the masculine, the soft is more powerful than the hard, the water is more powerful than the rock.Millions of people are suffering: they want to be loved but they don't know how to love. And love cannot exist as a monologue; it is a dialogue, a very harmonious dialogue. Do you think the people who were trying to reach to the Everest were not full of doubts? For a hundred years, how many people tried and how many people have lost their lives? Do you know how many people never came back? Not even their dead bodies came back; they got lost, lost forever. But, still, a few courageous people went on and on........But people went on coming from all over the world, risking, knowing that they may not come back ever, they may be lost. But it is worth it -- because in the very risk something is born inside you: the centre. It is born only in the risk. That's the beauty of risk, the gift of risk. In this world, the greatest courage is to drop the mind aside. The bravest man is who can see the world without the barrier of the mind, just as it is. It is tremendously different, utterly beautiful. There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior -- there are no distinctions. Mind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again. No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be. The modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous - because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows. Be less of a judge and you will be surprised that when you become a witness and you don't judge yourself, you stop judging others too. And that makes you more human, more compassionate, more understanding. Any human being who is becoming independent of conditionings, of religions, scriptures, prophets and messiahs, has arrived home. He has found the treasure which was hidden in his own being. Become more and more innocent, less knowledgeable and more childlike. Take life as fun - because that's precisely what it is! Intelligence is a natural phenomenon -- just as breathing is, just as seeing is. Intelligence is the inner seeing; it is intuitive. It has nothing to do with intellect. Never confuse intellect with intelligence, they are polar opposites. Intellect is of the head; it is taught by others, it is imposed on you. You have to cultivate it. It is borrowed, it is something foreign, it is not inborn. But intelligence is inborn. It is your very being, your very nature. Drop the fear. Fear was taken up by you in your childhood, unconsciously. Now consciously drop it and be mature. Then the life can be a light which goes on deepening as you go on growing. The beauty of facing life unprepared is tremendous. Then life has a newness, a youth; then life has a flow and freshness. Then life has so many surprises. And when life has so many surprises boredom never settles in you. Man has lost one quality, the quality of zestfulness. And without zest, what is life? Just waiting for death? It can't be anything else. Only with zest do you live; otherwise you vegetate. Fools laugh at others. Wisdom laughs at itself. Poetry is the whole descending into the part, the ocean disappearing into the dewdrop. Poetry is a miracle. The best teacher is one who can help the last person hearing him, the lowest in intelligence, to understand. Of course the best ones will understand easily, but you have to keep aware of those who are not that intelligent. You come to the master only in deep humbleness, because learning is possible only in humbleness. You have come to surrender, not to perform, not to manipulate, not to impress. Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love - now you are love. All the religions have been teaching, "Renounce the world." I teach you, transform the world. To forget yourself is the only sin. And to remember yourself is the only virtue. Life is closer to music than to mathematics, because mathematics is of the mind, and life throbs in your heartbeats... Once you are free of past a tremendous realization happens: you are free of future also. Life cannot be conquered because the part cannot conquer the whole. It is as if a small drop of water is trying to conquer the ocean. Thinking is the absence of understanding. You think because you don't understand. When understanding arises, thinking disappears... Don't be an interpreter of reality, be a visionary. Don't think about it, see it! Live each moment as if it the last moment. And nobody knows - it may be the last. Life is illogical. It is wild. In life, contradictions are not contradictions but complementaries. The moment ego disappears, all the secrets are open secrets. Life is not like a fist; it is an open hand. Watch the waves in the ocean. The higher the wave goes, the deeper is the wake that follows it. One moment you are the wave, another moment you are the hollow wake that follows. Enjoy both--don't get addicted to one. Don't say: I would always like to be on the peak. It is not possible. Simply see the fact: it is not possible. It has never happened and it will never happen. It is simply impossible--not in the nature of things. Then what to do? Enjoy the peak while it lasts and then enjoy the valley when it comes. What is wrong with the valley? What is wrong with being low? It is a relaxation. A peak is an excitement, and nobody can exist continuously in an excitement. Sex is meaningful only when out of lust, love is born. Love more and you will be more; love less and you will be less. You are always in proportion to your love. Love is not manageable, it is simply something that happens, and the moment you try to manage, everything misfires. Love dispels fear just as light dispels darkness. People say love is blind because they do not know what love is. I say unto you, only love has eyes; other than love, everything is blind. Never sacrifice your life for anything ! Sacrifice everything for life ! Life is the ultimate goal.

Zen Quotes of Osho

Zen is the way of spontaneous - the effortless effort, the way of intuition. Zen is not a philosophy, it is poetry. It does not propose, it simply persuades. It does not argue, it simply sings its own song. Zen is not morality, it is aesthetics. It does not impose a code of morality. It does not give you any commandments: "do this, don't do that." Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskillful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again, how to be here without any mind. Zen is a totally different kind of religion. It brings humanness to religion. It is not bothered about anything superhuman; its whole concern is how to make ordinary life a blessing. Zen is non-serious. Zen has a tremendous sense of humor. No other religion has evolved so much that it can have that sense of humor. Zen is all-inclusive. It never denies, it never says no to anything; it accepts everything and transforms it into a higher reality. Zen people love Buddha so tremendously that they can even play jokes upon him. It is out of great love; they are not afraid. Zen says everything is divine so how can anything be special? All is special. Nothing is non-special so nothing can be special. Zen says: be empty. Look without any idea. Look into the nature of things but with no idea, with no prejudice, with no presupposition. Zen says: Think of all the great words and great teachings as your deadly enemy. Avoid them, because you have to find your own source. You have not to be a follower, an imitator. You have to be an original individual; you have to find your innermost core on your own, with no guide, no guiding scriptures. It is a dark night, but with the intense fire of inquiry you are bound to come to the sunrise. Everybody who has burned with intense inquiry has found the sunrise. Others only believe. Those who believe are not religious, they are simply avoiding the great adventure of religion by believing. Zen says that if you drop knowledge - and within knowledge everything is included; your name, your identity, everything, because this has been given to you by others - if you drop all that has been given by others, you will have a totally different quality to your being: innocence. This will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality, and there will be a resurrection of your innocence. You will become a child again, reborn. Zen has no theory. It is a non-theoretical approach into reality. It has no doctrine and no dogma - hence it has no church, no priest, no pope. Zen is the only religion in the world that teaches sudden enlightenment. It says that enlightenment takes no time, it can happen in a single, split second. - OSHO