Astrall
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A man is dead if there is no challenge in his life. It is the challenge that confirms you are alive—mere breathing and heartbeat do not prove that you are alive; they only say that the body is alive. But whether you are alive or not, that is another question.
You are alive when distant stars invite you on a journey. An unexplored reality, a truth you have never heard of, an untested beauty... When these become your real world, your life fills with joy, dance, and song.
Everything you know is a small life. And in this small life, you know two things: the misery and pain of life, and the ways and methods to forget this misery and pain. This is what you call your entertainment, your pleasure—going to the cinema, going to the circus. This is your way of forgetting your life. Here, you can spend two or three hours in another world.
It is difficult for you to imagine an enlightened person...
When you think about enlightenment, the problem is that you do not understand that an enlightened person is no longer an ego. You may insult him, but you cannot touch him; you may attack him, condemn him, but there will be no change in his behavior.
You could even kill him, and yet he would remain the same.
It is hard for you to understand how an enlightened person can avoid going to the cinema, the circus, or doing other foolish things.
But so few enlightened ones existed that little is known about them, and what is known is such that until you experience it, you cannot understand it.
For an enlightened person, everything happening around him is a circus. He does not need to buy a ticket—his problem is leaving the circus! He does not want to go into the cinema; he wants to leave it.
More and more people are going mad; more and more people need psychotherapy. More and more people are literally on the edge of a cliff for the simple reason that this is exactly where the ego leads you: you lose your mind, you become insane. When you surrender to Existence, the end result
is that you find yourself in sound mind. In fact, for the first time, you learn what it means to be sane, what wholeness is, what health is. Your wounds are healed. This is a mystery. This is a good beginning. Do not step back. Continue moving into the mysterious. It is the mysterious that will melt you, absorb you like a river flowing into the ocean. It is the mysterious that transforms you and makes your darkness luminous. It is the mysterious that opens your thousand-petaled lotus of awareness. Let it happen. People are very afraid of the mysterious, because the mysterious means the unfathomable—not just the unknowable, but the unfathomable. People fear even the unknowable, let alone the unfathomable.
A religious person must be courageous; religion is only for a few brave souls. Religion is not for cowards. Religion is not a mass phenomenon; it is not for the crowd. The masses can only be Christians, Hindus, Muslims; the masses in no way can be religious. Only very brave people—such as Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Buddha—only very brave people can be religious. This is not for cowards. Cowards create a pseudo-religion for themselves, a toy religion; they continue to play it. Every Sunday they go to church and think that this is enough—a "Sunday" religion! The church is nothing more than a club. Some go to the Rotary Club, some go to the Lions Club, and some go to church. The difference is small—it is a social event. It is something formal. This is good: it acts as a lubricant, making you more adaptable to the crowd. The crowd likes that you belong to it; you like that you belong to the crowd. Church is merely a meeting place where you say sweet trifles—beautiful
words intended only for church. They do not change your life, they do not transform you; in essence, they hinder transformation. Meeting the mysterious is the beginning of religion, the beginning of God.
Osho
You are alive when distant stars invite you on a journey. An unexplored reality, a truth you have never heard of, an untested beauty... When these become your real world, your life fills with joy, dance, and song.
Everything you know is a small life. And in this small life, you know two things: the misery and pain of life, and the ways and methods to forget this misery and pain. This is what you call your entertainment, your pleasure—going to the cinema, going to the circus. This is your way of forgetting your life. Here, you can spend two or three hours in another world.
It is difficult for you to imagine an enlightened person...
When you think about enlightenment, the problem is that you do not understand that an enlightened person is no longer an ego. You may insult him, but you cannot touch him; you may attack him, condemn him, but there will be no change in his behavior.
You could even kill him, and yet he would remain the same.
It is hard for you to understand how an enlightened person can avoid going to the cinema, the circus, or doing other foolish things.
But so few enlightened ones existed that little is known about them, and what is known is such that until you experience it, you cannot understand it.
For an enlightened person, everything happening around him is a circus. He does not need to buy a ticket—his problem is leaving the circus! He does not want to go into the cinema; he wants to leave it.
More and more people are going mad; more and more people need psychotherapy. More and more people are literally on the edge of a cliff for the simple reason that this is exactly where the ego leads you: you lose your mind, you become insane. When you surrender to Existence, the end result
is that you find yourself in sound mind. In fact, for the first time, you learn what it means to be sane, what wholeness is, what health is. Your wounds are healed. This is a mystery. This is a good beginning. Do not step back. Continue moving into the mysterious. It is the mysterious that will melt you, absorb you like a river flowing into the ocean. It is the mysterious that transforms you and makes your darkness luminous. It is the mysterious that opens your thousand-petaled lotus of awareness. Let it happen. People are very afraid of the mysterious, because the mysterious means the unfathomable—not just the unknowable, but the unfathomable. People fear even the unknowable, let alone the unfathomable.
A religious person must be courageous; religion is only for a few brave souls. Religion is not for cowards. Religion is not a mass phenomenon; it is not for the crowd. The masses can only be Christians, Hindus, Muslims; the masses in no way can be religious. Only very brave people—such as Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Buddha—only very brave people can be religious. This is not for cowards. Cowards create a pseudo-religion for themselves, a toy religion; they continue to play it. Every Sunday they go to church and think that this is enough—a "Sunday" religion! The church is nothing more than a club. Some go to the Rotary Club, some go to the Lions Club, and some go to church. The difference is small—it is a social event. It is something formal. This is good: it acts as a lubricant, making you more adaptable to the crowd. The crowd likes that you belong to it; you like that you belong to the crowd. Church is merely a meeting place where you say sweet trifles—beautiful
words intended only for church. They do not change your life, they do not transform you; in essence, they hinder transformation. Meeting the mysterious is the beginning of religion, the beginning of God.
Osho