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.
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.
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 Question : What is Love?
OSHO : It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will bediametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.
At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination.And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated.
You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation.
If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes astate of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return.
Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable ofpartaking, can partake.
Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.
Nancy was having coffee with Helen.Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?""He takes out the garbage every morning.""That's not love. That's good housekeeping.""My husband gives me all the spending money I need.""That's not love. That's generosity.""My husband never looks at other women.""That's not love. That's poor vision.""John always opens the door for me.""That's not love. That's good manners.""John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair.""Now, that's love."- OSHO
At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination.And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated.
You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation.
If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes astate of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return.
Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable ofpartaking, can partake.
Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.
Nancy was having coffee with Helen.Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?""He takes out the garbage every morning.""That's not love. That's good housekeeping.""My husband gives me all the spending money I need.""That's not love. That's generosity.""My husband never looks at other women.""That's not love. That's poor vision.""John always opens the door for me.""That's not love. That's good manners.""John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair.""Now, that's love."- OSHO
OSHO on Enlightenment
Enlightenment is finding that there is nothing to find. Enlightenment is to come to know that there is nowhere to go. Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that this is it. Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go. You are already there -- you have never been away. You cannot be away from there. God has never been missed. Maybe you have forgotten, that's all. Maybe you have fallen asleep, that's all.
Maybe you have gotten lost in many, many dreams, that's all -- but you are there. God is your very being. So the first thing is, don't think about enlightenment as a goal, it is not. It is not a goal; it is not something that you can desire. And if you desire it you will not get it. In desiring a thousand and one things, by and by you come to understand that all desire is futile. Each desire lands you in frustration; each desire again and again throws you into a ditch. This has been happening for millions of years but again you start hoping, again you start thinking that this new desire that is arising, sprouting in you, will maybe lead you to paradise.
That this will give you what you have longed for, that it will fulfill you. Again and again hope arises. Enlightenment is when all hope disappears. Enlightenment is disappearance of hope. Don't be disturbed when I say that enlightenment is a state of hopelessness -- it is not negative. Hope arises no more; desire is created no more. Future disappears. When there is no desire there is no need for the future. The canvas of the future is needed for the desire. You paint your desires on the canvas of the future -- when there is nothing to paint, why should you carry the canvas unnecessarily? You drop it.
When there is nothing to paint, why should you carry the brush and the color tubes? They come from the past. The canvas comes from the future and the color and brush and technique, and all that, comes from the past. When you are not going to paint you throw away the canvas, you throw away the brush, you throw away the colors -- then suddenly you are here now. This is what Buddha calls chittakshana -- a moment of awareness, a moment of consciousness. This moment of consciousness can happen any moment.
There is no special time for it, there is no special posture for it, there is no special place for it -- it can happen in all kinds of situations. It has happened in all kinds of situations. All that is needed is that for a single moment there should be no thought, no desire, no hope. In that single moment, the lightning....
One day Chikanzenji was mowing down the weeds around a ruined temple. When he threw away a bit of broken tile it clattered against a bamboo tree. All of a sudden he was enlightened. Whereat he sang:
Upon the clatter of a broken tileAll I had learned was at once forgotten.Amending my nature is needless.Pursuing the task of everyday lifeI walk along the ancient path.I am not disheartened in the mindless void.Wheresoever I go I leave no footprintFor I am not within color or sound.Enlightened ones everywhere have said:"Such as this is the attainment."
This poor monk, Chikanzenji, had been working for at least thirty years. He was a hard seeker; he was a very, very honest and sincere and serious seeker. He practiced all that was told to him, he visited many masters, he lived in many monasteries. He did all that was humanly possible. He practiced yoga, he practiced zazen, he did this and that -- but all to no avail. Nothing was happening; in fact, his frustration was growing more and more. The more the methods failed, the more and more frustrated he became.
He had read all the Buddhist scriptures -- there are thousands of them. It is said about this Chikanzenji that he had all these scriptures in his room, and he was constantly reading, day and night. And his memory was so perfect he could recite whole scriptures -- but still nothing happened.
Then one day he burned his whole library. Seeing those scriptures in the fire he laughed. He left the monastery, he left his guru, and he went to live in a ruined temple. He forgot all about meditation, he forgot all about yoga, he forgot all about practicing this and that. He forgot all about virtue, sheela; he forgot all about discipline, and he never went inside the temple to worship the Buddha.
But he was living in that ruined temple when it happened. He was mowing down the weeds around the temple -- not a very religious thing to do. Not anything specific, not anything special, just taking the weeds out. When he threw away a bit of broken tile, it clattered against a bamboo tree -- in that moment, chittakshana, the moment of awareness, happened. In that very clattering of the tile against the bamboo, a shock, a jerk happened and his mind stopped for a moment. In that very moment he became enlightened.
How can one become enlightened in one single moment? One can, because one is enlightened -- one just has to recognize the fact. It is not something that happens from the outside, it is something that arises from the inside. It has always been there but you were clouded, you were full of thoughts.
Chikanzenji burned all the scriptures. That was symbolic. Now he no longer remembered anything. Now he had forgotten all search. Now he no longer cared. Unconcerned, he lived a very ordinary life -- he was no longer even a monk. He had no pretensions anymore, he had no ego goals any more. Remember, there are two kinds of ego goals: the worldly and the otherworldly. Some people are searching for money; some people are searching for power, prestige, pull. Some people are searching for God, moksha, nirvana, enlightenment -- but the search continues. And who is searching? The same ego.
The moment you drop the search, you drop the ego also. The moment there is no seeking, the seeker cannot exist. Just visualize this poor monk -- who was no longer a monk -- living in a ruined temple. He had nowhere else to go, he was just clearing the ground -- maybe to put some seeds there for vegetables or something. He came across a tile, threw it away, and was taken unawares. The tile clattered against the bamboo tree and with the sudden clattering, the sudden sound, he becomes enlightened.
And he said: Upon the clatter of a broken tile. All I had learned was at once forgotten. Enlightenment is a process of unlearning. It is utter ignorance. But that ignorance is very luminous and your knowledge is very dull. That ignorance is very alive and luminous, and your knowledge is very dark and dead. He says, All I had learned was at once forgotten. In that moment he knew nothing. In that moment there was no knower, in that moment there was no observer -- just the sound. And one is awakened from a long sleep.
And he says, Amending my nature is needless. That day he felt that he was just struggling unnecessarily. Amending my nature is needless. You need not amend yourself, you need not improve yourself -- that is all just tommyrot! Beware of all those who go on telling you to improve yourself, to become this or to become that, to become virtuous. Who go on telling you that this is wrong, don't do it; that this is good, do it; that this will lead you to heaven and this will lead you to hell.
Those who go on telling you to amend your nature and improve upon yourself are very dangerous people. They are one of the basic causes for your not being enlightened. Nature cannot be amended; it has to be accepted. There is no way to be otherwise. Whosoever you are, whatsoever you are, that's how you are -- that's what you are. It is a great acceptance. Buddha calls it tathata, a great acceptance. Nothing is there to be changed -- how can you change it, and who is going to change it? It is your nature and you will try to change it?
It would be just like a dog chasing its own tail. The dog would go crazy. But dogs are not as foolish as man. Man goes on chasing his own tail, and the more difficult he finds it the more he jumps and the more he tries and the more and more bizarre he becomes. Nothing has to be changed, because all is beautiful -- that is enlightenment. All is as it should be, everything is perfect. This is the most perfect world, this moment lacks nothing -- the experience of this is what enlightenment is.
Maybe you have gotten lost in many, many dreams, that's all -- but you are there. God is your very being. So the first thing is, don't think about enlightenment as a goal, it is not. It is not a goal; it is not something that you can desire. And if you desire it you will not get it. In desiring a thousand and one things, by and by you come to understand that all desire is futile. Each desire lands you in frustration; each desire again and again throws you into a ditch. This has been happening for millions of years but again you start hoping, again you start thinking that this new desire that is arising, sprouting in you, will maybe lead you to paradise.
That this will give you what you have longed for, that it will fulfill you. Again and again hope arises. Enlightenment is when all hope disappears. Enlightenment is disappearance of hope. Don't be disturbed when I say that enlightenment is a state of hopelessness -- it is not negative. Hope arises no more; desire is created no more. Future disappears. When there is no desire there is no need for the future. The canvas of the future is needed for the desire. You paint your desires on the canvas of the future -- when there is nothing to paint, why should you carry the canvas unnecessarily? You drop it.
When there is nothing to paint, why should you carry the brush and the color tubes? They come from the past. The canvas comes from the future and the color and brush and technique, and all that, comes from the past. When you are not going to paint you throw away the canvas, you throw away the brush, you throw away the colors -- then suddenly you are here now. This is what Buddha calls chittakshana -- a moment of awareness, a moment of consciousness. This moment of consciousness can happen any moment.
There is no special time for it, there is no special posture for it, there is no special place for it -- it can happen in all kinds of situations. It has happened in all kinds of situations. All that is needed is that for a single moment there should be no thought, no desire, no hope. In that single moment, the lightning....
One day Chikanzenji was mowing down the weeds around a ruined temple. When he threw away a bit of broken tile it clattered against a bamboo tree. All of a sudden he was enlightened. Whereat he sang:
Upon the clatter of a broken tileAll I had learned was at once forgotten.Amending my nature is needless.Pursuing the task of everyday lifeI walk along the ancient path.I am not disheartened in the mindless void.Wheresoever I go I leave no footprintFor I am not within color or sound.Enlightened ones everywhere have said:"Such as this is the attainment."
This poor monk, Chikanzenji, had been working for at least thirty years. He was a hard seeker; he was a very, very honest and sincere and serious seeker. He practiced all that was told to him, he visited many masters, he lived in many monasteries. He did all that was humanly possible. He practiced yoga, he practiced zazen, he did this and that -- but all to no avail. Nothing was happening; in fact, his frustration was growing more and more. The more the methods failed, the more and more frustrated he became.
He had read all the Buddhist scriptures -- there are thousands of them. It is said about this Chikanzenji that he had all these scriptures in his room, and he was constantly reading, day and night. And his memory was so perfect he could recite whole scriptures -- but still nothing happened.
Then one day he burned his whole library. Seeing those scriptures in the fire he laughed. He left the monastery, he left his guru, and he went to live in a ruined temple. He forgot all about meditation, he forgot all about yoga, he forgot all about practicing this and that. He forgot all about virtue, sheela; he forgot all about discipline, and he never went inside the temple to worship the Buddha.
But he was living in that ruined temple when it happened. He was mowing down the weeds around the temple -- not a very religious thing to do. Not anything specific, not anything special, just taking the weeds out. When he threw away a bit of broken tile, it clattered against a bamboo tree -- in that moment, chittakshana, the moment of awareness, happened. In that very clattering of the tile against the bamboo, a shock, a jerk happened and his mind stopped for a moment. In that very moment he became enlightened.
How can one become enlightened in one single moment? One can, because one is enlightened -- one just has to recognize the fact. It is not something that happens from the outside, it is something that arises from the inside. It has always been there but you were clouded, you were full of thoughts.
Chikanzenji burned all the scriptures. That was symbolic. Now he no longer remembered anything. Now he had forgotten all search. Now he no longer cared. Unconcerned, he lived a very ordinary life -- he was no longer even a monk. He had no pretensions anymore, he had no ego goals any more. Remember, there are two kinds of ego goals: the worldly and the otherworldly. Some people are searching for money; some people are searching for power, prestige, pull. Some people are searching for God, moksha, nirvana, enlightenment -- but the search continues. And who is searching? The same ego.
The moment you drop the search, you drop the ego also. The moment there is no seeking, the seeker cannot exist. Just visualize this poor monk -- who was no longer a monk -- living in a ruined temple. He had nowhere else to go, he was just clearing the ground -- maybe to put some seeds there for vegetables or something. He came across a tile, threw it away, and was taken unawares. The tile clattered against the bamboo tree and with the sudden clattering, the sudden sound, he becomes enlightened.
And he said: Upon the clatter of a broken tile. All I had learned was at once forgotten. Enlightenment is a process of unlearning. It is utter ignorance. But that ignorance is very luminous and your knowledge is very dull. That ignorance is very alive and luminous, and your knowledge is very dark and dead. He says, All I had learned was at once forgotten. In that moment he knew nothing. In that moment there was no knower, in that moment there was no observer -- just the sound. And one is awakened from a long sleep.
And he says, Amending my nature is needless. That day he felt that he was just struggling unnecessarily. Amending my nature is needless. You need not amend yourself, you need not improve yourself -- that is all just tommyrot! Beware of all those who go on telling you to improve yourself, to become this or to become that, to become virtuous. Who go on telling you that this is wrong, don't do it; that this is good, do it; that this will lead you to heaven and this will lead you to hell.
Those who go on telling you to amend your nature and improve upon yourself are very dangerous people. They are one of the basic causes for your not being enlightened. Nature cannot be amended; it has to be accepted. There is no way to be otherwise. Whosoever you are, whatsoever you are, that's how you are -- that's what you are. It is a great acceptance. Buddha calls it tathata, a great acceptance. Nothing is there to be changed -- how can you change it, and who is going to change it? It is your nature and you will try to change it?
It would be just like a dog chasing its own tail. The dog would go crazy. But dogs are not as foolish as man. Man goes on chasing his own tail, and the more difficult he finds it the more he jumps and the more he tries and the more and more bizarre he becomes. Nothing has to be changed, because all is beautiful -- that is enlightenment. All is as it should be, everything is perfect. This is the most perfect world, this moment lacks nothing -- the experience of this is what enlightenment is.
Osho on Ego
OSHO,I KNOW YOU WANT US ALL TO RID OURSELVES OF OUR EGOS AND MINDS, AND IN MY CASE, I KNOW THAT THIS IS VERY NECESSARY, BUT FOR THOSE OF US WHO WILL BE RETURNING TO THE WEST, WOULD NOT A TOTAL ABSENCE OF MIND OR EGO MAKE LIFE MUCH MORE DIFFICULT?
Prem Joyce,WHEN I SAY, "DROP THE EGO, DROP THE MIND," I don't mean that you cannot use the mind any more. In fact, when you don't cling to the mind you can use it in a far better, far more efficient way, because the energy that was involved in clinging becomes available. And when you are not continuously in the mind, twenty-four hours a day in the mind, the mind also gets a little time to rest.Do you know? -- even metals need rest, even metals get tired. So what to say about this subtle mechanism of the mind? It is the MOST subtle mechanism in the world. In such a small skull you are carrying such a complicated biocomputer that no computer made by man is yet capable of competing with it. The scientists say a single man's brain can contain all the libraries of the world and yet there will be space enough to contain more.And you are continuously using it -- uselessly, unnecessarily! You have forgotten how to put it off. For seventy, eighty years it remains on, working, working, tired. That's why people lose intelligence: for the simple reason that they are so tired. If the mind can have a little rest, if you can leave the mind alone for a few hours every day, if once in a while you can give the mind a holiday, it will be rejuvenated; it will come out more intelligent, more efficient, more skillful.So I am NOT saying that you are NOT to use your mind, but don't be USED by the mind. Right now the mind is the master and you are only a slave.Meditation makes you a master and the mind becomes a slave. And remember: the mind as a master is dangerous because, after all, it is a machine; but the mind as a slave is tremendously significant, useful. A machine should function as a machine, not as a master. Our priorities are all upside-down -- your CONSCIOUSNESS should be the master.So whenever you want to use it, in the East or in the West -- of course you will need it in the marketplace -- USE it! But when you don't need it, when you are resting at home by the side of your swimming-pool or in your garden, there is no need. Put it aside. Forget all about it! Then just be.And the same is the case with the ego. Don't be identified with it, that's all. Remember that you are part of the whole; you are not separate from it.That does not mean that if somebody is stealing from your house you have simply to watch -- because you are just part of the whole and he is also part of the whole, so what is wrong? And somebody is taking money from your pocket, so there is no problem -- the other's hand is as much yours as his! I am not saying that.Remember that you are part of the whole so that you can relax, merge; once in a while you can be utterly drowned in the whole. And that will give you a new lease of life. The inexhaustible sources of the whole will become available to you. You will come out of it refreshed; you will come out of it reborn, again as a child, full of joy, inquiry, adventure, ecstasy.Don't get identified with the ego, although, as far as the world is concerned, you have to function as an ego -- that is only utilitarian! You have to use the word "I" -- use the word "I," but remember that it is only a word. It has a certain utility, and without it life will become impossible. If you stop using the word "I" completely, life will become impossible. We know names are only utilitarian, nobody is born with a name. But I am not saying to drop the name and throw your passport into the river. Then you will be in trouble! You NEED a name; that is a necessity because you live with so many people.If you are alone in the world, then of course there is no need to carry a passport. If you are alone...for example, if the third world war happens and Joyce is left alone, then there will be no need to carry a passport; you can throw it anywhere. Then there will be no need to have any name. Even if you have one it will be useless -- nobody will ever call you. Then there will be no need to even use the word "I" because "I" needs a "thou"; without a "thou" the "I" is meaningless. It has meaning only in the context of others.So don't misunderstand me. USE your ego, but use it just like you use your shoes and your umbrella and your clothes. When it is raining, use the umbrella, but don't go on carrying it unnecessarily. And don't go to bed with the umbrella, and don't be afraid that in a dream it may rain.... The umbrella has a utility, so use it when it is needed; but don't become so identified with the umbrella that you cannot put it aside. Use the shoes, use the clothes, use the name -- they arc all utilities, not realities.In the world, when so many people are there, we need a few labels, a few symbols, just to demark, just to make sure who is who.
You ask me: I KNOW YOU WANT US ALL TO RID OURSELVES OF OUR EGOS AND MINDS....
I am not saying to "get rid"; I am simply saying to be master of your minds. I am not telling you to be mindless; I am only saying: don't just be minds -- you are far more. Be consciousnesses! Then the mind becomes a small thing. You can use it whenever needed, and whenever not needed you can put it off.I am using my mind when I am talking to you. The mind has to be used; there is no other way. But the moment I enter my room, then I don't go on using it -- there is no point. Then I am simply silent. With you I am using the language, the words, but when I am with myself there is no need for any language, for any words. When I am settled into myself and there is no question of communication, language disappears. Then there is a totally different kind of consciousness.Right now my consciousness is flowing through the mind, using the mechanism of the mind to approach you. I can reach for you with my hand, but I am not the hand. And when I touch you with my hand, the hand is only a means; something else is touching you through the hand. The body has to be used, the mind has to be used, the ego, the language, and all kinds of things have to be used. And you are allowed to use them with only one condition: remain the master.
Ah This Chapter 2 Question
Prem Joyce,WHEN I SAY, "DROP THE EGO, DROP THE MIND," I don't mean that you cannot use the mind any more. In fact, when you don't cling to the mind you can use it in a far better, far more efficient way, because the energy that was involved in clinging becomes available. And when you are not continuously in the mind, twenty-four hours a day in the mind, the mind also gets a little time to rest.Do you know? -- even metals need rest, even metals get tired. So what to say about this subtle mechanism of the mind? It is the MOST subtle mechanism in the world. In such a small skull you are carrying such a complicated biocomputer that no computer made by man is yet capable of competing with it. The scientists say a single man's brain can contain all the libraries of the world and yet there will be space enough to contain more.And you are continuously using it -- uselessly, unnecessarily! You have forgotten how to put it off. For seventy, eighty years it remains on, working, working, tired. That's why people lose intelligence: for the simple reason that they are so tired. If the mind can have a little rest, if you can leave the mind alone for a few hours every day, if once in a while you can give the mind a holiday, it will be rejuvenated; it will come out more intelligent, more efficient, more skillful.So I am NOT saying that you are NOT to use your mind, but don't be USED by the mind. Right now the mind is the master and you are only a slave.Meditation makes you a master and the mind becomes a slave. And remember: the mind as a master is dangerous because, after all, it is a machine; but the mind as a slave is tremendously significant, useful. A machine should function as a machine, not as a master. Our priorities are all upside-down -- your CONSCIOUSNESS should be the master.So whenever you want to use it, in the East or in the West -- of course you will need it in the marketplace -- USE it! But when you don't need it, when you are resting at home by the side of your swimming-pool or in your garden, there is no need. Put it aside. Forget all about it! Then just be.And the same is the case with the ego. Don't be identified with it, that's all. Remember that you are part of the whole; you are not separate from it.That does not mean that if somebody is stealing from your house you have simply to watch -- because you are just part of the whole and he is also part of the whole, so what is wrong? And somebody is taking money from your pocket, so there is no problem -- the other's hand is as much yours as his! I am not saying that.Remember that you are part of the whole so that you can relax, merge; once in a while you can be utterly drowned in the whole. And that will give you a new lease of life. The inexhaustible sources of the whole will become available to you. You will come out of it refreshed; you will come out of it reborn, again as a child, full of joy, inquiry, adventure, ecstasy.Don't get identified with the ego, although, as far as the world is concerned, you have to function as an ego -- that is only utilitarian! You have to use the word "I" -- use the word "I," but remember that it is only a word. It has a certain utility, and without it life will become impossible. If you stop using the word "I" completely, life will become impossible. We know names are only utilitarian, nobody is born with a name. But I am not saying to drop the name and throw your passport into the river. Then you will be in trouble! You NEED a name; that is a necessity because you live with so many people.If you are alone in the world, then of course there is no need to carry a passport. If you are alone...for example, if the third world war happens and Joyce is left alone, then there will be no need to carry a passport; you can throw it anywhere. Then there will be no need to have any name. Even if you have one it will be useless -- nobody will ever call you. Then there will be no need to even use the word "I" because "I" needs a "thou"; without a "thou" the "I" is meaningless. It has meaning only in the context of others.So don't misunderstand me. USE your ego, but use it just like you use your shoes and your umbrella and your clothes. When it is raining, use the umbrella, but don't go on carrying it unnecessarily. And don't go to bed with the umbrella, and don't be afraid that in a dream it may rain.... The umbrella has a utility, so use it when it is needed; but don't become so identified with the umbrella that you cannot put it aside. Use the shoes, use the clothes, use the name -- they arc all utilities, not realities.In the world, when so many people are there, we need a few labels, a few symbols, just to demark, just to make sure who is who.
You ask me: I KNOW YOU WANT US ALL TO RID OURSELVES OF OUR EGOS AND MINDS....
I am not saying to "get rid"; I am simply saying to be master of your minds. I am not telling you to be mindless; I am only saying: don't just be minds -- you are far more. Be consciousnesses! Then the mind becomes a small thing. You can use it whenever needed, and whenever not needed you can put it off.I am using my mind when I am talking to you. The mind has to be used; there is no other way. But the moment I enter my room, then I don't go on using it -- there is no point. Then I am simply silent. With you I am using the language, the words, but when I am with myself there is no need for any language, for any words. When I am settled into myself and there is no question of communication, language disappears. Then there is a totally different kind of consciousness.Right now my consciousness is flowing through the mind, using the mechanism of the mind to approach you. I can reach for you with my hand, but I am not the hand. And when I touch you with my hand, the hand is only a means; something else is touching you through the hand. The body has to be used, the mind has to be used, the ego, the language, and all kinds of things have to be used. And you are allowed to use them with only one condition: remain the master.
Ah This Chapter 2 Question
Is marriage really the end of love?
Socrates had a quarrelsome wife but when disciples asked him whether they should marry, he always advised them to. "If you are fortunate you'll get a good wife. If you get a wife like mine, you'll still be fortunate as she will help you become Socrates!" But people like Socrates are rare. Most men cannot handle the misery, and either escape or get frustrated. The same goes for women as well. In her marriage, a woman may find the most terrible person who makes life hell for her. In fact, in most Indian marriages, women suffer more than men. What is the way out of this misery? German politician Gabriele Pauli recently proposed that marriage contracts should be valid for seven years; after that couples who didn't feel the proverbial itch could renew them, else walk away. This may sound radical but it isn't. People are divorcing faster today and most of the marriages in the so-called first world don't last more than three years. Those that last have little life in them. Love is like a real flower. It doesn't live longer than it's meant to. But when love is converted into marriage, it starts to lose its tenderness. It acquires a plastic nature; plastic lives for as long as you wish it to but doesn't pulsate with life. Love, like life, is always insecure. It cannot promise to be forever. That's why it is really very precious. One moment of real love is more valuable than an eternity of plastic life. But most people with deep insecurities go for a plastic marriage rather than wait for the real throbbing life of love, for they are scared to live alone. Osho calls marriage the ‘coffin of love'. He says: "They all say that love is eternal, never dies. Absolutely wrong. Real love dies sooner than unreal love. Unreal love can live long; it is unreal, how can it die? If you are pretending, you can pretend as long as you want to." Osho also tells us: "Love needs only one thing, and that is courage. Courage to die into the other, to drop your own identity, your ego. Millions have decided not to love, but then life is misery, life is hell." "If one really wants to live, one must be ready for insecurity, and love brings the greatest insecurity in the world because love cannot promise tomorrow. Love is of the moment, for the moment, in the moment. Love can only speak for this moment, not for the next; the next remains open, vulnerable, insecure." "Love may be, may not be. Love has no guarantee whatsoever. Which is why people choose marriage over love. Marriage is secure and safe, guaranteed by the law and the government and the society and the church-something they can depend upon. But in that very choice they commit suicide for they will never really live." "Life itself is insecure. Life knows nothing of security. Death is very secure, so those who are cowardly choose death instead of life. They choose the false and the plastic instead of the real. And those who are courageous, they choose the real. They go with it, wherever it may lead. They surrender to it. They are ready to go into the uncharted and the unknown and the unseen." And they truly live...
well-known people on osho
"I found No Water, No Moon one of the most refreshing, cleansing and delightful books I could imagine. It is a book which will never cease to be a comforting companion."Yehudi Menuhin
"These brilliant insights will benefit all those who yearn for experiential knowledge of the field of pure potentiality inherent in every human being. This book belongs on the shelf of every library and in the home of all those who seek knowledge of the higher self.
"Deepak Chopra, Author of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind;
Quantum Healing and Unconditional Life
"Osho is a mystical giant, a flowering of a unique intelligence and one of those rare humans ex-pressing himself with joy."
Paul Reps, author of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
"Osho is the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ... He's obviously a very effective man, otherwise he wouldn't be such a threat. He's saying the same things that nobody else has the courage to say. A man who has all kinds of ideas, they're not only inflammatory-they also have a resonance of truth that scares the pants off the control freaks."
"Wit and playfulness are a tremendously serious transcendence of evil, and this is one thing that Osho understood better than any contemporary teacher that I can think of. Gurdjieff had an element of that in his teachings, but certainly in the past fifty years there has not existed a teacher in the world who understood the value of playfulness and wit quite so well as Osho.
"Tom Robbins,
author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,
Still Life with Woodpecker and Jitterbug Perfume and others.
"Osho is an enlightened master who is working with allpossibilities to help humanity overcome a difficult phase in developingconsciousness."The Dalai Lama
"When we wrote and prepared for shooting Vanilla Sky, I constantly checked in with Osho's insides. It is not so easy to present the unconscious mind with images and a story. Osho is the only one who can perfectly explain it all, the inner and the outer and that helped me and my team immensely"
Tom Cruise, actor
"I've been charmed from reading his books."Frederico Fellini
"I really got into Osho's books. I have always loved hisbooks. They were top notch.
"Marianne Williamson, author
"Within a few years from now his Osho's message will be heard all over the world. He was the most original thinker that India has produced: the most erudite, the most clear-headed and the most innovative. And in addition he had an inborn gift of words, spoken and written. The like of him we will not see for decades to come...He has to be judged as a thinker, and as a thinker he will rank amongst the giants."
"It is a religion for the irreligious, for the agnostic, for the unbeliever, for the rationalist."
Khushwant Singh,
former editor of The Times of India;
author and historian
"Osho is not trying to purvey information but a truth that bypasses conscious thought and all that belongs to it, just as the most important activities of human beings bypass the mind."
Bernard Levin, Journalist, commentator and writer
"A great mystic, a great philosopher.... In his own way Osho captured the essence of ancient wisdom, related it to contemporary needs, tempered it with the modern times and became a powerful messenger of eternal Indian thought and Indian wisdom."
Dr. Manmohan Singh,
former finance minister of India,
"Enlightened people like Osho are ahead of their times. It is good that more and more young people are now reading his works."
K. R. Narayanan, president of India
"Few people have understood India like Osho. It was an understanding at many levels. The philosophical, the historic, the purely emotional - and even the political and the literary, the wanton and the spiritual. His was a holistic understanding. An understanding that went beyond words, into the uncharted terrain of true love. For love was at the core of everything tht Osho believed in. It was the ultimate message he left for us. To discover, experience, savour life through love."
"He had provided us a rare insight into our lives and times. He has ridiculed us, pushed us...hurt us, and thereby, made richer human beings out of us. He made us think for ourselves; forced us to reject him, and by that act of rejection, brought us closer to him -and in a strange kind of way, closer to ourselves."
Pritish Nandy, JAIN TV presenter;
former editor, and publisher of The Illustrated Weekly, India
"I read all his books."
Shirley MacLaine
"Osho’s books inspire me to meditate. They give me peace of mind."
Kapil Dev, cricketing super-star from India
"I have read most of [Osho's] books and listened to tapes of his talks, and I am convinced that in the spiritual tradition, here is a mind of intellectual brilliance and persuasive ability as an author."
James Broughton, poet, and author
"Osho gave his country and the world a vision, which one can be proud of."
Chandra Shekhar, former Indian prime minister
"He discourses with eloquent familiarity on virtually all the world's great mystics - Zen masters, Hassids, Sufis, Bauls, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Jesus. Though he "knocks the mind," Osho is an intellectual's guru, and his message is aimed not at spiritual sheep but at rebels and risk takers - people who consider themselves intelligent, adventurous, andindependent, and want to be more so."
Annie Gottlieb, author of Do You Believe in Magic?
"Osho is a fountain of wisdom that never goes dry. This centuryís most original mind has created a new world for us humans to revel in, enjoy and remain ourselves through the pathway of love. Here is the quintessence of the wisdom of ages, the pure nectar of essential knowledge for mortals to acquaint with immortality."
Mr. V. N. Narayanan, editor-in-chief, Hindustan Times
"He is the rarest and most talented religionist to appear this century."
Kazuyoshi Kino, professor of buddhist studies, Hosen Gakuen College, Tokyo, Japan
"I have heard Shree Rajneesh and have been inspired by his talks. His works are sublimne and seek to liberate the soul of humans. Indeed his presentation is unique, his goal is great and his success in liberating each person from the mafia surrounding the soul is rewarding reading. The message that he had to deliver must reach everywhere. Ultimately salvation comes when one attains freedom from oneself. That, I believe, is the consummation which exposure to Osho may help."
Shri. V.R. Krishna Iyer, former supreme court judge
"Osho is one of Indiaís greatest mystics.... I see him as one of the worldís great teachers, thinkers, philosophers and guides of our times. I have enormous respect for his world vision and the kind of International Communities he is building. I have always felt his influence in my life."
Kabir Bedi, international film star
"I have never heard anyone so beautifully and playfully integrate and then dissolve the psychological problems which, for generations, have sapped our human energies."
Rev. Cain, chaplain, Churchill College Cambridge
"Today the messenger isn't there, and people are listening to the message: the message is something intelligent, useful. People find that it makes sense. So I think that's the real thing and people are actually listening to what he said."
"Here is somebody who fuses everything and makes it understandable to people, and it makes sense. And he also challenges very fixed beliefs, challenges religions which have tradition and ritual and so forth."
Aroon Purie, editor of India Today
"I fell in love with Osho's vision, when I visited the Osho Commune a few years ago. Osho's words have helped me when I was going through a difficult phase. Since then I was looking for an opportunity to pay my tribute.""
Jasbir Jassi, Punajabi Pop Star
"As a result of reading The Golden Future (and many other works by Osho) I would like to let you know that I completely and heartily support the vision of Osho. As a writer I hope that his words will reach the hearts of those who need them most. I have every faith in this result, because the words of Osho are loaded with the power of love."
Douwe de Groot, writer
"These books are really what people are looking for...they are even more relevant now than when they were spoken."
Michael Mann, chairman of Element Books
"He Osho is the greatest incarnation after Buddha in India. He is a living Buddha."
Lama Karmapa, late head of the Kargyupta, (or Red Hat) Sect of Tibetan Buddhism
"No one is more qualified to introduce the mystics than Osho, a man who stands out even in their exalted company. He speaks from his own experience, bringing his mystic predecessors to life, making them his contemporaries."
John Lilly
"Never before or after have I encountered anybody having such a harmonious and immensely creative view encompassing art, science, human psychology and religiousness. Certainly we would lack substantially without his vision of the new man."
Dr. A. Schleger, Ph.D., Institute of Technology, Switzerland
"With Osho, words flow endlessly. Provocatively. Challengingly. In a hundred years more copies of Osho's works will have been printed than the Bible itself, till now the outstanding best-seller."
M. V. Kamath, former editor of The Illustrated Weekly, India
"His incredible taped discourse lectures and books have inspired me, and millions of others, on the path of self-evolution... He is like a great bell tolling, Awaken, Awaken, Awaken!"
James Coburn, actor
"Osho makes you free from the existing mind set...he is inclusive, not exclusive."
Mr. Nair, The High Commissioner for India to Singapore
"As you savor the chapters, you'll discover that Osho is like a Zen archer. Almost poetically he circles his target, surveying it over and over again from many positions before he draws back his bow and lets the arrow fly."
"Osho is one of the most important educators and philosophical and religious leaders in the late 20th century...I firmly believe that hundreds and thousands...would be thrilled, delighted and gain a new perspective on life by reading his books."
Robert Rimmer, author The Harvard Experiment & Proposition 31
"Indian mystic Osho has been one of the most successful mixers of Eastern philosophies with Western therapeutic techniques."
Russel Chandler, author of Understanding the New Age
"The Upanishads talk about ultimate wisdom, Osho tells you how to live it"
R.E. Gussner, professor of religion, University of Vermont, USA
"The teachings of Osho, in fact, encompass many religions, but he is not defined by any of them. He is an illuminating speaker on Zen, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy... and also a prolific author."
Nevill Drury, Dictionary of Mysticism and the Occult, USA
"Osho has a unique identity of his own. Our worldly life can become more fruitful through meditation and people can evolve towards a better society with the help of Osho's wisdom."
Rt. Hon'ble Shri Girija Prasad Koirala, prime minister of Nepal
"Treatises on Buddhism are often dry and reverential, if not tediously scholastic, and if Osho's treatment is not canonical, it compensates by throbbing with life, humor, penetrating insight and the continual provocation to think for oneself."
Guy Claxton, author of Noises from the Darkroom
"Osho speaks the language of today's Yug Bhasha. His message is for the whole world."
Shri Krishnakant, vice-president of India,
"Osho is such a vision that stands for the welfare of the whole of humanity, transcending the narrow boundaries of religions. Though today's man is so caught up in his myriad problems, all of Osho's books and discourses suggest simple and easy ways for man's liberation."
Lokendra Bahadur Chand, the former prime minister of Nepal
"Trough my friend Deepak Chopra I came across Osho's books which gave me an other deeper shift in my life. I regret I did not met him in person, and I feel sorry the US Government missed such an opportunity back in 86."
Madonna, Singer and Performer,
"I was inspired by Osho's wisdom when I wrote the song 'How fragile we all are'; Reading his books gave me hope for humanity. It is a must for everybody to have a look into his words ....."
Sting, Singer and Preformer,
"These brilliant insights will benefit all those who yearn for experiential knowledge of the field of pure potentiality inherent in every human being. This book belongs on the shelf of every library and in the home of all those who seek knowledge of the higher self.
"Deepak Chopra, Author of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind;
Quantum Healing and Unconditional Life
"Osho is a mystical giant, a flowering of a unique intelligence and one of those rare humans ex-pressing himself with joy."
Paul Reps, author of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
"Osho is the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ... He's obviously a very effective man, otherwise he wouldn't be such a threat. He's saying the same things that nobody else has the courage to say. A man who has all kinds of ideas, they're not only inflammatory-they also have a resonance of truth that scares the pants off the control freaks."
"Wit and playfulness are a tremendously serious transcendence of evil, and this is one thing that Osho understood better than any contemporary teacher that I can think of. Gurdjieff had an element of that in his teachings, but certainly in the past fifty years there has not existed a teacher in the world who understood the value of playfulness and wit quite so well as Osho.
"Tom Robbins,
author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,
Still Life with Woodpecker and Jitterbug Perfume and others.
"Osho is an enlightened master who is working with allpossibilities to help humanity overcome a difficult phase in developingconsciousness."The Dalai Lama
"When we wrote and prepared for shooting Vanilla Sky, I constantly checked in with Osho's insides. It is not so easy to present the unconscious mind with images and a story. Osho is the only one who can perfectly explain it all, the inner and the outer and that helped me and my team immensely"
Tom Cruise, actor
"I've been charmed from reading his books."Frederico Fellini
"I really got into Osho's books. I have always loved hisbooks. They were top notch.
"Marianne Williamson, author
"Within a few years from now his Osho's message will be heard all over the world. He was the most original thinker that India has produced: the most erudite, the most clear-headed and the most innovative. And in addition he had an inborn gift of words, spoken and written. The like of him we will not see for decades to come...He has to be judged as a thinker, and as a thinker he will rank amongst the giants."
"It is a religion for the irreligious, for the agnostic, for the unbeliever, for the rationalist."
Khushwant Singh,
former editor of The Times of India;
author and historian
"Osho is not trying to purvey information but a truth that bypasses conscious thought and all that belongs to it, just as the most important activities of human beings bypass the mind."
Bernard Levin, Journalist, commentator and writer
"A great mystic, a great philosopher.... In his own way Osho captured the essence of ancient wisdom, related it to contemporary needs, tempered it with the modern times and became a powerful messenger of eternal Indian thought and Indian wisdom."
Dr. Manmohan Singh,
former finance minister of India,
"Enlightened people like Osho are ahead of their times. It is good that more and more young people are now reading his works."
K. R. Narayanan, president of India
"Few people have understood India like Osho. It was an understanding at many levels. The philosophical, the historic, the purely emotional - and even the political and the literary, the wanton and the spiritual. His was a holistic understanding. An understanding that went beyond words, into the uncharted terrain of true love. For love was at the core of everything tht Osho believed in. It was the ultimate message he left for us. To discover, experience, savour life through love."
"He had provided us a rare insight into our lives and times. He has ridiculed us, pushed us...hurt us, and thereby, made richer human beings out of us. He made us think for ourselves; forced us to reject him, and by that act of rejection, brought us closer to him -and in a strange kind of way, closer to ourselves."
Pritish Nandy, JAIN TV presenter;
former editor, and publisher of The Illustrated Weekly, India
"I read all his books."
Shirley MacLaine
"Osho’s books inspire me to meditate. They give me peace of mind."
Kapil Dev, cricketing super-star from India
"I have read most of [Osho's] books and listened to tapes of his talks, and I am convinced that in the spiritual tradition, here is a mind of intellectual brilliance and persuasive ability as an author."
James Broughton, poet, and author
"Osho gave his country and the world a vision, which one can be proud of."
Chandra Shekhar, former Indian prime minister
"He discourses with eloquent familiarity on virtually all the world's great mystics - Zen masters, Hassids, Sufis, Bauls, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Jesus. Though he "knocks the mind," Osho is an intellectual's guru, and his message is aimed not at spiritual sheep but at rebels and risk takers - people who consider themselves intelligent, adventurous, andindependent, and want to be more so."
Annie Gottlieb, author of Do You Believe in Magic?
"Osho is a fountain of wisdom that never goes dry. This centuryís most original mind has created a new world for us humans to revel in, enjoy and remain ourselves through the pathway of love. Here is the quintessence of the wisdom of ages, the pure nectar of essential knowledge for mortals to acquaint with immortality."
Mr. V. N. Narayanan, editor-in-chief, Hindustan Times
"He is the rarest and most talented religionist to appear this century."
Kazuyoshi Kino, professor of buddhist studies, Hosen Gakuen College, Tokyo, Japan
"I have heard Shree Rajneesh and have been inspired by his talks. His works are sublimne and seek to liberate the soul of humans. Indeed his presentation is unique, his goal is great and his success in liberating each person from the mafia surrounding the soul is rewarding reading. The message that he had to deliver must reach everywhere. Ultimately salvation comes when one attains freedom from oneself. That, I believe, is the consummation which exposure to Osho may help."
Shri. V.R. Krishna Iyer, former supreme court judge
"Osho is one of Indiaís greatest mystics.... I see him as one of the worldís great teachers, thinkers, philosophers and guides of our times. I have enormous respect for his world vision and the kind of International Communities he is building. I have always felt his influence in my life."
Kabir Bedi, international film star
"I have never heard anyone so beautifully and playfully integrate and then dissolve the psychological problems which, for generations, have sapped our human energies."
Rev. Cain, chaplain, Churchill College Cambridge
"Today the messenger isn't there, and people are listening to the message: the message is something intelligent, useful. People find that it makes sense. So I think that's the real thing and people are actually listening to what he said."
"Here is somebody who fuses everything and makes it understandable to people, and it makes sense. And he also challenges very fixed beliefs, challenges religions which have tradition and ritual and so forth."
Aroon Purie, editor of India Today
"I fell in love with Osho's vision, when I visited the Osho Commune a few years ago. Osho's words have helped me when I was going through a difficult phase. Since then I was looking for an opportunity to pay my tribute.""
Jasbir Jassi, Punajabi Pop Star
"As a result of reading The Golden Future (and many other works by Osho) I would like to let you know that I completely and heartily support the vision of Osho. As a writer I hope that his words will reach the hearts of those who need them most. I have every faith in this result, because the words of Osho are loaded with the power of love."
Douwe de Groot, writer
"These books are really what people are looking for...they are even more relevant now than when they were spoken."
Michael Mann, chairman of Element Books
"He Osho is the greatest incarnation after Buddha in India. He is a living Buddha."
Lama Karmapa, late head of the Kargyupta, (or Red Hat) Sect of Tibetan Buddhism
"No one is more qualified to introduce the mystics than Osho, a man who stands out even in their exalted company. He speaks from his own experience, bringing his mystic predecessors to life, making them his contemporaries."
John Lilly
"Never before or after have I encountered anybody having such a harmonious and immensely creative view encompassing art, science, human psychology and religiousness. Certainly we would lack substantially without his vision of the new man."
Dr. A. Schleger, Ph.D., Institute of Technology, Switzerland
"With Osho, words flow endlessly. Provocatively. Challengingly. In a hundred years more copies of Osho's works will have been printed than the Bible itself, till now the outstanding best-seller."
M. V. Kamath, former editor of The Illustrated Weekly, India
"His incredible taped discourse lectures and books have inspired me, and millions of others, on the path of self-evolution... He is like a great bell tolling, Awaken, Awaken, Awaken!"
James Coburn, actor
"Osho makes you free from the existing mind set...he is inclusive, not exclusive."
Mr. Nair, The High Commissioner for India to Singapore
"As you savor the chapters, you'll discover that Osho is like a Zen archer. Almost poetically he circles his target, surveying it over and over again from many positions before he draws back his bow and lets the arrow fly."
"Osho is one of the most important educators and philosophical and religious leaders in the late 20th century...I firmly believe that hundreds and thousands...would be thrilled, delighted and gain a new perspective on life by reading his books."
Robert Rimmer, author The Harvard Experiment & Proposition 31
"Indian mystic Osho has been one of the most successful mixers of Eastern philosophies with Western therapeutic techniques."
Russel Chandler, author of Understanding the New Age
"The Upanishads talk about ultimate wisdom, Osho tells you how to live it"
R.E. Gussner, professor of religion, University of Vermont, USA
"The teachings of Osho, in fact, encompass many religions, but he is not defined by any of them. He is an illuminating speaker on Zen, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy... and also a prolific author."
Nevill Drury, Dictionary of Mysticism and the Occult, USA
"Osho has a unique identity of his own. Our worldly life can become more fruitful through meditation and people can evolve towards a better society with the help of Osho's wisdom."
Rt. Hon'ble Shri Girija Prasad Koirala, prime minister of Nepal
"Treatises on Buddhism are often dry and reverential, if not tediously scholastic, and if Osho's treatment is not canonical, it compensates by throbbing with life, humor, penetrating insight and the continual provocation to think for oneself."
Guy Claxton, author of Noises from the Darkroom
"Osho speaks the language of today's Yug Bhasha. His message is for the whole world."
Shri Krishnakant, vice-president of India,
"Osho is such a vision that stands for the welfare of the whole of humanity, transcending the narrow boundaries of religions. Though today's man is so caught up in his myriad problems, all of Osho's books and discourses suggest simple and easy ways for man's liberation."
Lokendra Bahadur Chand, the former prime minister of Nepal
"Trough my friend Deepak Chopra I came across Osho's books which gave me an other deeper shift in my life. I regret I did not met him in person, and I feel sorry the US Government missed such an opportunity back in 86."
Madonna, Singer and Performer,
"I was inspired by Osho's wisdom when I wrote the song 'How fragile we all are'; Reading his books gave me hope for humanity. It is a must for everybody to have a look into his words ....."
Sting, Singer and Preformer,
