Posts from Life is a dream.

Until now, man has lived only a partial life. The worldly man lived a partial life: the worldly man lived a life of love. He tried to comprehend: what is this phenomenon called "love"?

Being in relationships with a wife, children, parents, friends, society — in every possible way he tried to understand what love is. Consciously or unconsciously, all his efforts were directed toward knowing that joy which can occur between two people in deep harmony. Love is harmony between two people, two universes pulsing in a single rhythm, dancing hand in hand, dissolving into one another, merging, becoming a single whole. This is the path of the drunkard.

Just as you become intoxicated by another person like wine, so too does the other become intoxicated by you like wine. But this is only half the truth of your life. You begin to learn more about the other person and completely forget yourself; love requires that you forget yourself and remember the other. The other becomes the center — you gradually disappear into deep darkness, you become secondary. People living such a partial life will sooner or later inevitably be disappointed, because a partial life can never become a realization. When they are disappointed... and the more intelligent a person is, the sooner he is disappointed, because he understands that something is missing, something very essential is missing. You are missing.

You grope for another person, having no knowledge at all of who you yourself are. But how can one find another without even finding oneself? Therefore, you continue only to stumble upon the other. You may call this love, but it is merely a vague search in the dark. There is no understanding, no clarity, no light; everything happens in darkness. But you fear loneliness and therefore seek the company of another person. It is precisely out of fear that your so-called love arises — and love can never arise from fear. This is a fake. The partial is always fake; only the whole is authentic. Meaning is contained only in the whole, never in the part. A part has meaning only in connection with the whole, but never separately from it.

Very many intelligent people became disappointed, and then they decided to move toward the opposite extreme. Such is the way of the mind: if you have failed at one thing, the mind immediately suggests something diametrically opposite. And this attracts you; it seems logical. If love deceived your expectations, if you found yourself unable to enjoy, dance, and celebrate with another person, then it would be logical to conclude that it is better to be alone, to move into solitude, to become a monk. The word "monk" literally means "to be alone." It comes from the same root as words like "monotonicity," "monogamy," "monopoly," "monastery." It comes from the very same root.

A monastery is a place where many people try to remain in solitude. This is the path of the monk, the non-worldly person. But the monk fails in exactly the same way; he is doomed to fail. He chose the other half, and now something will be missing for him again. He will learn what it means to be alone — he will know the path of bliss, he will become blissful, but his bliss will lack something: he will lack the ability to share. And bliss that cannot be shared begins to die, to sour, to turn bitter. Even nectar can turn into poison if it stops flowing. The monk is actually far more blissful than the layman, but the monk's bliss is not a river. It does not move, it does not reach other people. Such a person becomes simply a puddle, a pond, rather than a river — he freezes within certain boundaries, experiencing fear of another person. Just understand what the essence is here: the worldly man fears loneliness and therefore tries to establish contact with another person; in the dark, he calls out to another. But the monk fears the other, because the other may disturb his solitude, may invade his space, may encroach upon that space, that territory which he found with such difficulty. He lives in fear; he lives in a dark, wall-separated, voluntary prison own confinement. He creates walls between himself and others, he eliminates any possibilities for the growth of love. Then his bliss gradually turns into a dead pond with stagnant water, and something begins to be missing for him as well.

There were thousands of Hindu monks who lived in Himalayan caves and never returned back to the world. But these people lose something, something very essential — the ability to share. Life is the opportunity to share, and only by sharing do you achieve realization. Just imagine a sun that keeps itself locked up so that its rays do not go outside. Or imagine a lotus that keeps its petals closed so that its fragrance cannot reach anyone. Imagine a bird that is afraid to sing — for someone might hear it... Then all this Existence would be dead.

This message is for all my sannyasins: you must learn both. You must be fluid, you must be flowing. You must learn to be alone, and you must learn to be together. You must be simultaneously meditative and loving; only then will you be whole people. And in my opinion, to be whole means to be a saint. Until now, man has not been a saint because he was not whole — how can he be a saint? Yes, occasionally some managed to achieve it — Lao Tzu, Zarathustra... Yes, occasionally someone managed to achieve wholeness, but when I look at them, I feel that even the wholeness of Buddha could have been enriched a little more, even the wholeness of Lao Tzu could have become a little greater; something could have been added to it. Even the wholeness of Jesus could have become more multidimensional. Here my efforts are directed toward giving you a multidimensional existence; all dimensions possible for man should be available to you. You must know how to love, and you must know how to experience bliss. By my own experience and by my observations, only a blissful person is capable of loving, and only a person capable of loving is capable of experiencing bliss. These qualities reinforce each other.

You have heard of the vicious circle — when one leads to another, then the other leads back to the first, and you get a vicious circle. But you have not heard of the virtuous circle. I call it virtuous — not vicious, but virtuous — a circle in which one leads to another, and you rise higher and higher, moving toward the highest peaks. You acquire new and new dimensions. The highest thing I can imagine is love joined with your bliss in deep harmony; love and bliss that do not hinder each other, but enrich each other.
Osho

If the teachings of the masters are perfect, then why are they distorted over time?

It is very important to understand this, because it has always happened and will always happen in the future. This will never change. Any teaching will inevitably be distorted; it is in the very nature of things. Just as every child will one day grow old and everyone born will one day die, every teaching, by necessity, will inevitably be distorted. This cannot be avoided. It is not that the great masters made no attempts; they did everything in their power, but it is impossible to go against the laws of nature. No one can go against the laws of nature. There are seven points that must be taken into account. The first is the experience of the master himself. When he experiences the truth, the mind is completely absent. This is a state of no-mind, or, as Dionysius calls it, a state of agnosia—absolute innocence. Not a single thought moves in the mind. Therefore, the memory system does not function; the mind remains in a state of complete standstill. It is frozen; it is absolutely motionless.

This is the moment when the teaching is perfect, but nothing has yet been transmitted to other people. The teaching has not yet become a teaching. Nothing has been said, nothing has been heard. In fact, even the master has not yet realized what happened. Something occurred, but he was so deeply lost in it that there is no possibility for him to realize it himself. Realization implies a division between the observer and the observed—the experience is split. When the experience happens, it is indivisible. There is neither knower nor known, neither subject nor object. All is silent. This is the most perfect teaching. The second stage is when the master realizes what happened, and distortion begins, moreover, within the master. He has not yet spoken a single word, but a vague awareness began to arise within him. The experience is no longer indivisible; it has ceased to be one, it has split in two. It has ceased to be the same; it has ceased to be whole. One part of it became the subject—the knower, the observer, the awareness—and the other part became the object—the known, the experienced. This is the first distortion, and it happens inside the master. Third: the master formulates his experience; he begins to make it clearer, more expressible. Now there are no longer two parts, but three. The One is divided into three: subject, object, and mind, because without the mind, nothing can be clearly formulated. The mind is the expert.

Language must be used; logic must be used. The mind must awaken from its deep sleep; it must be called upon for help. Just as the master once strove with all his might to bring his mind into a deeply frozen state, he now strives with all his might to thaw it, because without it, absolute clarity regarding what happened cannot be achieved. It needs to be conceptualized. However, the moment the ultimate experience becomes conceptualized, the strongest distortion occurs, as that which cannot be expressed in words is forcibly cast into words. And these words are small, while the experience is vast, like the sky—even the sky is not its limit. The limitless must be squeezed into limits.
Naturally, much will be lost. At first, it was the whole sky with all the stars, with all its infinity and eternity. Now it is only a small window in a frame—an artificially created frame. Now you look through the window: it is no longer the whole sky, but only a small piece of it. The fourth point that must be understood is the means of expression.

Out of immense compassion, out of love, the master wants to share what happened with others, because he sees that millions of people are groping in the dark just as he himself once groped. He sees that everyone is groping in the same darkness, experiencing the same confusion, suffering in the same way, while he himself is now in a state where he can help. At the very least, he can point the way; he can show something of the Transcendent. He can trigger some glimmer, he can start some process. The master must use the art of synchronization. He must sing a song so that your song, which remains in an embryonic state, comes into motion, comes alive, emerges from its slumbering state, begins to reach for the sky—so that your seed sprouts, so that your song also develops a strong aspiration. Your heart must be touched. The master speaks.

But as soon as he begins to speak, even more is lost, because it is one thing to create concepts within oneself and quite another to transmit them to someone else. Now he has to look at another person—what can they understand? Only that which can be expressed in words.
He must limit himself to the poorest means of expression, for only then will people be able to understand something. He must use a language that they can understand. Buddha cannot use a language that only other Buddhas can understand. He has reached the sun-drenched peak, but he must return; he must descend again into the darkness of the valley. He must use your language, your means of expression, your way of speaking. And, naturally, almost ninety-nine percent is lost; only one percent becomes expressed, and even this requires a very skilled master.

Many masters were unable to express even this one percent; they remained silent, understanding that they did not possess this skill. When I decided to become a university lecturer, some of my friends who knew what had happened to me asked: "What are you going to do?" I said: "It will be good if I can be a lecturer for a few years; it will help me a lot: it will give me the skill. Right now I have something to express, I have something to share, but I need the skill. The best teacher is the one who can help the very last person among those who hear him understand—the person with the lowest intelligence. Of course, the very best will understand with ease, but it is necessary to always remember those who are not so rational." And humanity, for the most part, is not rational at all. It lives very foolishly, very ordinarily. The consciousness of people is covered by such a thick layer of dust and rust that it has completely lost its ability to reflect like a mirror. It cannot reflect anything; it does not know how to respond to anything. Great art is required to express even

one percent of the experience. And the fifth point is the listener's perception of the experience. Now, once the master has spoken, he is no longer the master of what he said. Now the one who heard it becomes the master; now it is their property. Until now, distortion occurred within the master because he brought his experience up to the level of the mind. Now, when he has spoken, the spoken word enters a mind that is unfamiliar with the experience of the unknown, the Transcendent.
Right at the entrance, almost ninety percent of that one percent is lost. This happens inevitably because everyone understands everything in their own way, according to their conditioning, their past experience, their philosophy, their religion, their ideology. No one listens in a state of silence. If you listen in a state of silence, there is a possibility that you can catch this one percent, and that is enough for your transformation. If a small spark penetrates you, then soon the whole forest will be engulfed in fire. This one percent is enough—it is the genuine fire; it will ignite you.
Osho

"My message is very simple: live life as riskily as possible. Live life fully, intensely, passionately, because there is no god other than life. Friedrich Nietzsche says: “God is dead.” That is not true, because God, first of all, never existed. How can he? Life exists, has always existed, and always will. Allow yourselves... I repeat, allow yourselves to be obsessed with life. The so-called religions of the past told you the exact opposite.

They say: “Renounce.” I say: “Enjoy.” They reject life, I affirm it. They say that life is something wrong, illusory, and they create an abstract idea of God, which is nothing more than a projection of their own minds. And they worship this projection. It is so irrational, so unimaginably foolish, that it is simply amazing how millions of people have come to believe in this utter nonsense.

That which exists is denied in favor of that which is only an abstraction of the mind. God is just a word, but they say that God is real. But life is real! You feel it in the beating of your heart, it pulsates in your blood, it is everywhere—in the flowers, in the rivers, in the stars. And they say that all this is maya, all this is an illusion. They say that it is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of. And they create a god... of course, everyone creates a god according to their own idea, so there are thousands of gods. It is your imagination. You can create a god with four heads, you can create a god with a thousand hands. It is up to you, it is your game. And these people talked about God and poisoned the minds of others. They said: Brahma satya—"God is truth," and jagat mithya—"the world, life is a lie."

I tell you: life is the only truth there is. There is no other god than life. So allow yourselves to be obsessed with life in all its forms and dimensions—in all the colors of the rainbow, in all the musical notes. If you can do this simple thing... It is simple because the whole question is just to allow everything to happen. Don't push the river, let it carry you to the ocean. It is already flowing there. Relax, don't strain, and don't try to be spiritual. Don't create any separation between matter and spirit. Existence is one, matter and spirit are just two sides of the same coin.

Relax, rest, and move with the river. Be players, not businessmen, and you will learn more about God, because the player knows how to take risks. The player is not calculating; he can put everything he has at stake. But the player's excitement, when he puts everything at stake and waits... what will happen now?
At that very moment, a certain window may open. At that very moment, the inner gestalt may change. Be drunkards, intoxicated with life, with the wine of Existence. Don't stay sober. A sober person remains dead. Drink the wine of life. There is so much poetry in it, so much love, so much juice. You can invite spring at any moment. Just call for spring and let the sun, the wind, and the rain enter you. It is because of this message that spiritualists speak out against me, as they think that I deny God. I am not denying God. For the first time, I am bringing God closer to reality, I am making him alive, I am bringing him closer to you, closer than your own heart, because he is your very being. God is not something separate, not something remote, not something up there in the heavens; he is here and now.

I am trying to destroy the very idea of there and then. All my vision is here and now, because there is no other space than here, and there is no other time than now. Spiritualists are against me because they think I am making people materialists. And materialists are against me because they think I am leading people into meditative intoxication. Shankaracharya would not agree with me, as he says: “God is truth, and everything else is false.” I cannot agree with him. And Karl Marx would not agree with me because he says: “Religion is the opium of the people,” he says that religion is something extremely false, that there is no God, no spirit, no life, there is only matter, and what you think of as your consciousness is only a superficial phenomenon, only a byproduct. At the moment you die, everything dies. I tell you: you were born, and you will certainly die, but inside you there is something that existed before your birth and that will remain after your death. And that something is life.

Life is eternal.
Osho

We have learned that you believe all religions are deception. How can you say that? All people have the full right to choose what to believe in and which specific religion to belong to. Everything can be both good and bad. So how can you say that all religions are deception?

I don't believe in anything. I am not a believer at all. I don't need to believe; I know. All religions are deception. This is not my belief, it is simply my experience. I see it – they are deception. The entire history of humanity proves this.

And the moment you say "all religions," you have already gone astray, because there is only one kind of religiosity. There cannot be many religions. Just as science is one, the scientific approach is one, so too is religion one, the religious approach is one.

Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu – they all belong to one kind of religiosity. Of course, they speak different languages – but that is another matter. They necessarily must speak different languages. Lao Tzu will speak Chinese, Christ will speak Aramaic, Buddha will speak Pali, and of course, they will use the peculiarities of the language of their time. But this is a difference in expression, and forms of expression should not confuse you, words should not confuse you, because religion has nothing to do with words. In fact, we do not see this precisely because of the veil of words. It clouds our eyes, it hinders our understanding. Religion is an experience, inexpressible in words. Therefore, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Islam – they are all lies.

Jesus is right, Buddha is right, Krishna is right. But Christianity is not right; it cannot be right. In reality, to be a Christian means to agree to a substitution. You can be Christ – so why be a Christian? To be a Christian means simply to be a shadow. You can drink from the very source of Existence – so why just keep talking about it, thinking about it?

A Christian is one who talks about truth and knows nothing about it. Christ is one who knows about it. He has his own experience. A Christian has no experience of his own; he simply repeats the words of Christ. And repeating others' words is a foolish occupation. This repetition is called faith. Remember: religion has nothing to do with faith. The foundation of religion is vision, not faith. Remember: only the blind believe in light. Those who have eyes do not believe in light, they know! The moment you know something, the need for faith disappears.

But the world is full of believers. This means the world is full of the blind. And how did you come to a particular faith? It is just a coincidence – that you were born into a certain family and your relatives began to impose their beliefs on you. You are a Hindu. You did not choose to be a Hindu; you were forced to be a Hindu by your parents, your society. Or you are a Jew, or you are a Muslim… but you did not choose this, and religion is not such a cheap thing that someone else can impose it on you. It must be an individual's choice.

Religion must be chosen freely. It is not conditioning. Faith is conditioning. Faith means you have been frightened that if you do not believe, you will be punished; hence hell. Hell is for those who do not believe. And for those who believe? For them, all the joys of heaven.

And the exact same psychology permeates schools, colleges, universities, courts. They all think that if you want people to behave in a certain way, the only possibility is to instill fear in you and instill greed. And how can you be religious if you are full of fear and greed – fear of hell and greedy desire to get into heaven? This very trick has been played on you. You have been deceived, you have been used, and you have been given only words – words that mean nothing to you.

When Buddha says something, it is filled with meaning. When Buddhists repeat it, they repeat it like parrots. A parrot can repeat a mantra; it is not difficult; a parrot can be taught this. You only need to apply the same methods that are applied to you: if it learns the mantra, it gets tasty food; if it does not learn the mantra, it is punished, it has to starve, it is not given food. It is forced to learn. This is what psychologists call conditioning.

And there are people like B. F. Skinner who claim that a person can be programmed for any behavior: just provide him with sufficient punishment and sufficient reward – and you can control him, you can change anyone's behavior.

Why do you behave well? Not because you actually want to be good – there is a huge fear that if you are not good, you will have to be punished for it later. All of humanity lives in fear and greed – and you call this religion?

There cannot be religions, only religiosity is possible.

You are too burdened by words.

You say: "We have learned that you believe all religions are deception." You have not even listened to me, you have not even communicated with me. You "have learned…" You heard it from others, and they probably heard it from someone else. This is what you believe. If you had stayed here for a few days, you would have learned that I do not believe in anything.

I know. I have eyes, I can see! What need is there for faith? Faith is for those who lack the courage to open their eyes. Faith is for those whose religiosity is formal, who have not felt life, nor beauty, nor joy, nor love, for whom God is a word, life is a word. They live in words.

– Hey, Paolo! How come I haven't seen you in a long time?

– I have a new business now, but things aren't going well.

– What's your business?

– I'm an underwater worker.

– What the hell kind of underwater worker?

– I have eight girls working for me, and every time they go out and have fun with guys, I make money.

– Idiot! Then you're not an underwater worker – you're a pimp!

– In that case, no wonder business is bad. In the "Yellow Pages," I'm listed under "Underwater Work."

Beware of words. You are listed among the Hindus, among the Muslims, or the Christians. You are none of the above.

Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says that the first and last Christian died on the cross twenty centuries ago – neither before him nor after him were there any other Christians. Only Christ is a Christian in the true sense of the word. He lived and experienced everything through his own experience, and everything he said came from his very core; it was not something borrowed. Everything borrowed is ugly. Beliefs are borrowed, therefore they are ugly. And when you live according to borrowed beliefs, you create chaos in the world. You remain unconscious and keep talking about the Bible, the Vedas, the Gita. And you repeat all this in your sleep. You do not understand a single word.

One Sunday morning, a drunk found himself near a large building. Not knowing it was a church, he entered. The morning mass was going on: the organ was playing, the choir was singing, and there were many people. The priest stood before the congregation, swinging a censer filled with smoking incense.

Suddenly, a cry came from the back rows of the church:

– Lady! Hey, lady! Your purse is on fire!

You are not in your right mind, you have no awareness, you are sleepwalkers. Almost all of humanity suffers from somnambulism, sleepwalking, and while you sleep, the priests catch you. It is a simple accident – whoever happened to be nearby caught you.

If a child born into a Hindu family is given to a Christian family from the very beginning, he will never know that he is a Hindu. Or do you think he will ever find out that he is a Hindu? He will be a Christian.

So what is your religion? Just something forcefully imposed on you by others. Religion at its core is freedom, but your so-called religions are slavery, deception, and humanity has suffered greatly because of this nonsense.

I would like more buddhas to appear, but no more Buddhists – enough already.

In the center of a provincial Australian town stands an old convent. The town around it is growing rapidly. Nuns stand at the windows, watching a new multi-story building being erected across the street.

Around noon, a siren sounds announcing the lunch break, and workers with bronze, sweaty bodies descend the scaffolding to the first floor to have a snack.

The nuns watch as the guys sit in a big circle, take out their lunch boxes and thermoses, and start eating.

– Sister, sister, did you notice that the gentlemen did not thank the Lord for the food? – one nun asks another.

– Yes, yes! – she replies enthusiastically. – We should probably tell the Mother Superior about this.

They run upstairs to tell the Reverend Mother everything. After a moment of silence, the Mother Superior says:

– Bring me a lunch box tomorrow – just like the ones those gentlemen have!

The next day, when the siren sounds, the Mother Superior takes a lunch box, goes downstairs, and crosses the street. She calmly sits down next to the men noisily devouring their lunches, then suddenly raises her hands to the sky and says:

– Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Have you heard about Jesus Christ?

One of the guys stops eating, pushes his hat back, scratches his head, and says:

– Hmm… Christ… Jesus Christ… Hey, Danny, have you heard anything about where this Jesus Christ works? Tell him his mom came and brought him lunch!

Jesus Christ… Twenty centuries have passed. Who cares? Who gives a damn? You must live your life. You must be authentic to yourself. You must discover your individuality. And all these religions are deception because they hinder the search, hinder exploration. They prevent you from knowing the truth. They hinder it in every possible way.

They keep stuffing your head with knowledge, but this knowledge only leads to stupidity. Pandits are the stupidest people in the world because they are parrots. And there are many simple people who even try to live according to the teachings received from others, who try to live… They turn their lives into chaos. Then there is much unnecessary repression in life, because you are not Mahavira, not Buddha, not Krishna.

Just try being Krishna. Stand on the street playing a flute, and the police will take you away immediately! You cannot repeat Krishna. You must only be yourself. No one can repeat anyone else, nor is there any need. This creates repression. You repress your individuality and start acting like someone else, but you are not that other person, and therefore your life becomes hypocritical. That is why I call all these religions deception.

Chandulal got a construction job in another city and asked his guru, Swami Dharmadas Brahmachari, to look after his wife so she wouldn't get involved with anyone.

He must have thought that since his guru Swami Dharmadas Brahmachari had taken a vow of celibacy, his wife would be in safe hands, nothing to fear.

If he had asked me, I would have said: "Entrust the supervision of your wife to someone else. Anyone else would be much better than this so-called brahmachari."

Six months later he returned and found his wife and his guru in bed, doing exactly what he had tried to prevent. He called his wife every name he knew and promised to divorce her.

– And you, you dirty dog! – Chandulal shouted at his guru. – Can you at least stop while I'm talking to you?

Sooner or later, repression bursts out. You are sitting on a volcano.

You say: "We have learned that you believe all religions are deception." Yes, deception. "How can you say that?" Because I know it.

You say: "All people have the full right to choose what to believe in and which specific religion to belong to." There is no specific religion. There is only religiosity. And no one has the right to believe! Everyone has the right to know.

"Everything can be both good and bad." No. If you know, then good is good, and bad is bad. And then white is white, and black is black. If you don't know, then, of course, you are in confusion.

You ask: "So how can you say that all religions are deception?" What can I do? If they are deception, then they are deception. I am simply stating a fact. For me, it is a truth that must be spoken. And the time for this has come.
Osho

"Every child is intelligent, far more intelligent than so-called adults. Adults are only so-called – it is very rare to find a person who is truly adult. The primary quality of a truly adult person is that they still retain the innocence of a child, the surprised eyes of a child, the curious heart of a child. The purity, the clarity of the child remains intact within them. They have conquered society. They have not allowed anyone to destroy their intelligence.

People do not grow up; they only grow old. Growing up is something vertical, while growing old is something horizontal. You remain on the same plane; only time passes. And of course, time helps you accumulate many impressions, knowledge, words, and information, and you begin to think that you know. And this is the greatest misfortune that can befall a person: not knowing and thinking that you know. This means that the doors to knowledge are now closed forever. Socrates was an adult. He said: “I know only one thing: that I know nothing.” His state of being a child is absolutely unpolluted. The time that has passed has not simply become dust accumulated on a mirror. On the contrary, it has helped to sharpen his sword; it has not become rust on that sword.

Knowledge is rust: it destroys your intelligence and gives you poor substitutes. Knowledge is a poor substitute for intelligence. Remember: you can be very intellectual and still be unintelligent. A child is not intellectual. He knows nothing of great philosophers, of great scriptures; he is not a scholar. He knows nothing! But it is from this state of not-knowing that he acts. Therefore, he is always full of wonder and awe; he looks at the world, feeling that the world is a mystery. The more you know, the more you destroy this mystery. The entire function of our so-called schools, colleges, and universities is to deprive the universe of its mystery.

Even scientists boast that they are doing humanity a great service by revealing the mysteries of the universe.

In reality, they are creating more and more boredom in the world. No child is ever bored; he always finds something that is extremely interesting to him. He can be fascinated by anything – a butterfly, a flower, a stone – anything at all. He immediately begins to see something extraordinary in it. This is insight, this is intelligence. If we help children in every possible way to remain as intelligent as they are born, then many adult people will emerge. Right now, the number of adult people in the world can be easily counted on one’s fingers – because everyone has been processed, everyone has been poisoned. For a child to be treated with respect, a completely different society is needed, a completely different view of life. For centuries, we have respected old age: the older a person is, the more we respect them. Why do you respect this old person – only because he has existed for a hundred years? Mere existence is not enough for respect; living a life is something completely different. Existence is very mundane – living a life has a completely different flavor. To live a life means to live from a state of agnosia, to live from a state of not-knowing, to treat life as a mystery.

This is the only way to live it. Other ways are merely existence, other ways are merely survival. An adult person is in deep harmony. His body, his mind, his spirit are always in tune; they move in one direction, together. This does not happen with people who only grow old. Their bodies become older, but their minds lag behind in their development. Psychologists first realized this fact during World War I. Then, for the first time on a large scale, they tried to observe people to determine how many people were truly psychologically adult. And they were astonished, shocked: the average psychological age of people was only twelve years old. The body may be eighty years old, but the mind is far behind. In fact, it looks as if there is no connection between them... a gap of seventy or eighty years. And an eighty-year-old person claims to be knowledgeable, simply because he is eighty years old, although he stopped growing up when he was only twelve. In reality, he should be considered to be only twelve years old, not eighty. And as for the spirit, it may still be in the mother’s womb; it may never have left her womb.

Being in deep harmony, all together – body, mind, and spirit – they create beauty, grace, light, love. When they are all in harmony, life becomes an orchestra. But they are out of tune, and the spirit is almost absent. For this reason, George Gurdjieff said: “I have met very few people who have a soul.” Usually, every person believes that they have a soul, because religions have said for centuries that everyone has a soul. Everyone has only the potential for a soul to exist, but this potential has not been realized. It is still a seed; it has not become a tree. It has not reached the point where spring arrives and flowers bloom, and the person feels fulfilled, satisfied. An adult person blossoms. His life is not divided; his life is an organic unity. He moves in absolute unity; nothing lags behind, nothing goes too far ahead. And this discord that we see in the world has many manifestations. The soul is in a nascent state; the mind, the psyche is stuck somewhere at the age of twelve, and the body is eighty or ninety years old. This is just one manifestation of disharmony; there are many other kinds."
Osho

The head continues to grow larger and larger, while the heart continues to shrink. They have lost all synchronicity. And when the head becomes too large, the person turns into a monster. If you observe, if you look inside yourself, you can see this. I am simply stating a fact.

You won't feel any heart inside you. You will notice that your head is heavy and filled with all sorts of junk, but your heart is just a word. You have read about it in poems, in novels. It seems like a fiction, a myth. In reality, physiologists say that there is no heart. For a scientist, the heart is just a blood-pumping system, and love, as it is believed to originate, does not exist. The beating of your heart has nothing to do with the beating of the heart that poets spoke of, the heart that mystics praised; it is something else. But scientists are right in a way, because the people they study do not have a heart. Researchers have not studied
Buddha or Mira, they have not studied Zhuangzi or Kabir. They have never encountered a person with a heart, so if they know anything, it is only about the lungs. Mystics speak of something else, something that is not yet developed within you. It is something behind your physical heart, something that has not yet begun to function. It only begins to function when you pour a lot of energy into it, when your energy begins to set it in motion. But all your energy goes into the head.
Our education system is such that we avoid the heart. In fact, we try in every possible way to prevent any energy from flowing into the heart, because once the heart begins to function, it becomes difficult for the head to control you.

And society needs heads and hands. That is why society is divided into two types of people: the "heads" – people who work with their minds, the so-called intelligentsia – and the "hands" – the working people. Society does not value the heart because it has no utilitarian purpose. You cannot produce goods with the heart, you cannot make people rich, you cannot build large houses, create complex mechanisms, you cannot reach the moon. What, then, is its purpose? It has a completely different purpose. It is not utilitarian. It brings joy, but society is not interested in joy. Society needs efficient, robotic people. A joyful person is not a robot. Society does not want you to be loving; it wants you to be calculating.
A loving person never calculates; he always takes risks. He is not a good businessman. He lives in a completely different world; he sees things from a different perspective. For him, flowers are much more important than your scientific devices; stars are much more important than your political ideologies; rivers and mountains mean much more than all your churches and temples.

We are familiar with the negative aspect from childhood, but the positive aspect must be discovered. This discovery
continues throughout life; a person must continue to discover it. Meditation is nothing more than a method of discovering the positive aspect of emptiness, its positive quality. Meditation means very consciously letting go of the contents of the mind – when you know that you are letting go of it. And when you have let go of it, you suddenly realize that everything has disappeared, but you are still there, and you are more filled than ever before, because all those thoughts, all that junk that you have been carrying around, simply occupied your space. Now all the space, all the sky is available, and your heart can open its petals. In the East, we call this the "thousand-petaled lotus." Now there is space. If you continue to carry all this junk in your mind, is there room inside you for the thousand-petaled lotus to open?

There is little space inside you. You are so filled with garbage, with junk, that only weeds can grow inside you, but not roses. Roses cannot grow; they need some space. Emptiness is space, and being spacious means being vast. Feeling the emptiness in its positive quality, you feel boundlessness, you feel infinity. You see no limits anywhere; you are limitless. Even the sky is not a limit! This experience makes you enlightened. This experience makes you full of light, life, love – so full that it all begins to overflow; so full that now you are capable of sharing. Only a meditative person can be loving. In the past, people have tried to be either loving or meditative, and both have failed. The entire history of humanity is a history of failures, and the greatest of these failures was that the loving ones failed because they were not meditative. Without meditation, you have nothing to share; in order to share something, you must first have it. And the meditative people failed because, instead of becoming nothing, instead of becoming no one, instead of experiencing the ultimate emptiness, shunyata, they filled themselves with mantras, chants, prayers, constant repetition of some words. They were not Nothing; they were not in a state of emptiness. Perhaps they were not thinking about the worldly, they were not thinking about

money, they were not thinking about politics – but they were thinking about God. It doesn't matter what you think about: thinking itself keeps
you far, very far away from the beautiful experience of emptiness. It doesn't matter if it's mantras or songs from movies – in any case, you are too filled with junk. It doesn't matter if this junk was collected from sacred scriptures or from magazines like Playboy – it is still the same junk. When you are in this beautiful

empty space, you will know what the divine is, what truth is, what freedom is. In fact, when you know this, love will inevitably happen as a shadow of it, as a consequence of it. Meditative people failed because they were not truly meditative; they were doing something else, calling it meditation. They were doing concentration; they were doing contemplation; they were doing prayer; they were doing chanting; and they were doing a thousand other things, but not meditation. In fact, they were avoiding meditation – in religious ways. Ordinary people avoid meditation in worldly ways, and your so-called saints avoid meditation in "spiritual" ways, but it is the same – avoidance.
A person must discover the positive quality of emptiness. He must find enough courage to enter it. By knowing it, you will know everything that is worth knowing. Then you can share. And then you will not only be able to share; you will be able to understand the Quran, the Bible, the Gita, because these books are creations of people who have known the same positive emptiness, the same beautiful Nothing. You cannot understand Christ unless you are Christ, you cannot understand Buddha unless you are Buddha. Until you become a Buddha, you will just be a parrot, repeating the Dhammapada. Until you become Muhammad, you will not be able to understand a single word in the Quran. It is impossible: if you do not have the same awareness and the same connection with the primary source of things, how can you understand Muhammad? No Muslim understands Muhammad, no Christian understands Christ, no Buddhist understands Buddha, no Jain understands Mahavira. They are simply
imitators, repeating like parrots, continuing to act mechanically, and all their striving is to fill the negative emptiness...
OSHO

Does Nothingness have a quality?

Nothingness can be either simply emptiness or an immense fullness. It can be negative, it can be positive. If it is negative, it is like death, like darkness.

Religions called it hell. It is hell because in it there is no joy, no song, no heartbeat, no dance. Nothingness does not bloom, nothingness does not open. It is simply a vacuum. This empty Nothingness created a strong fear in people. That is why—especially in the West—God was never called Nothingness, with the exception of a few mystics such as Dionysius, Eckhart, Böhme; but they were not representatives of the mainstream of Western thought. In the West, Nothingness was always presented in negative terms, and therefore an immense fear arose in connection with it. People continue to be told that an empty mind is the devil's workshop. In the East, they knew about the positive aspect of emptiness; this is a most valuable contribution to human consciousness. Buddha would laugh at the assertion that emptiness is the devil's workshop.

He would say:

≪Only in emptiness, only in the absence of anything does divinity happen≫. But he is speaking of a positive phenomenon. For Gautama Buddha, for Mahavira, for the long tradition of Zen masters and Taoists, emptiness simply means the absence of anything. Everything has disappeared, and because everything has disappeared, pure consciousness remains. Nothing is reflected in the mirror, but the mirror exists. Consciousness is free from content, but consciousness exists. As long as it was filled with content, there was so much in it that you could not know what it actually is. Consciousness filled with content is what we call the mind. Consciousness free from any content is what we call no-mind or meditation. To create emptiness within oneself is the goal of meditation, but this emptiness has nothing to do with the negative representation.

It is full, more than full. It is so full that it begins to overflow. Buddha defined such emptiness as overflowing compassion. The word ≪compassion≫ is beautiful. It comes from the word ≪passion≫*. When passion is transformed, when the strong desire to seek another person disappears, when you are enough for yourself, when you need no one, when the very desire directed toward someone else has evaporated, when you are completely happy, blissful, simply abiding in solitude, then passion becomes compassion. Now you seek another person not because you are empty and lonely; now you seek another because you are too full and wish to share. An enlightened person, just like an unenlightened one, seeks another person, but there is a qualitative difference. The unenlightened person seeks another because he feels a negative emptiness within himself. When he is alone, he does not feel solitude, he feels lonely. Remember: solitude and loneliness** are not synonyms, regardless of what dictionaries say. This is not a question of language; it is something existential. Loneliness is negative—you are lacking something.

Solitude is positive—you have found something. The unenlightened seeks another person because that is his need; he needs them, he craves their presence. He clings to the other person, he grasps them. He is always afraid that they might leave. Husbands fear, wives fear, parents fear, children fear, everyone fears. Even your so-called religious teachers fear that students might leave them, which is why they have to agree with the students and compromise with them. Do you understand the irony of this?

Passion arises from negative emptiness, while compassion arises from positive emptiness. Buddha says that a true person of wisdom can be recognized by only one sign—by his compassion, his love. He will radiate compassion. He will always be ready to help people on the path. People will insult him, people will oppose him in every possible way, people will be angry with him because they are fast asleep, and in order to guide them onto the path, he must wake them up. And nobody likes it when their sleep is disturbed: people dream beautiful dreams, and you shake them, you wake them, you destroy their dreams, and that is all they have. If they don't have this, they are lonely, they are empty. Therefore, they somehow fill their inner space with dreams, projections, imaginary things.

And the function of the master is to destroy all your dreams, to free you from all content. But when you discard all content consciously, voluntarily, you do not feel loneliness—you abide in solitude. Solitude is beautiful, loneliness is ugly. Loneliness is like a wound; solitude is like a flower. Loneliness is painful—Søren Kierkegaard called it the ≪sickness unto death≫, while solitude is life, life in abundance. This is health. The Sanskrit word denoting health is very beautiful. In the English word there is also its own beauty. The word health means that the wound is healed; it comes from the word healing. A person is no longer sick, the wound of negative emptiness is no more. It is healed. This is beautiful, but it does not compare to the Sanskrit word denoting health. The Sanskrit word denoting health is svasthya. It means ≪becoming centered≫.

It means coming to one's own ≪I≫, realizing one's own ≪I≫. Sva means ≪I≫, svasthya means ≪rooting in the "I"≫. People are not rooted in their own ≪I≫, which is why they cling to others. Any clinging is a sign that you are afraid: if you remain alone, you will not be in solitude, you will simply be lonely, miserable. The West has yet to realize this fact of immense importance. Western religions are still limited to prayer. They have not even touched the periphery of meditation for the simple reason that meditation means emptiness, and for them emptiness implies only one thing—loneliness, the absence of anything. And they feel that if you become empty inside, you will begin to fall into an abyss, you will be lost.

But we have tasted a completely different quality of emptiness. We have tasted the divinity hidden within it, we have recognized in it the highest degree of bliss, we have known its blessing. My own experience is such that there is no greater joy than being in solitude; the joy of love is secondary. And the joy of love is possible only if you have known the joy of solitude, because only then do you have something to share. Two beggars who meet and cling to each other cannot be happy. They will make each other miserable, as each will hope—and hope in vain—that ≪this person will make me happy≫. And both expect exactly this from each other... They cannot make each other happy. They are both blind; they cannot help each other.

only one part of you should follow, but when you are intensely, passionately, completely involved in something. You cannot love through the mind; in order to love, you must enter the world of no-mind. This is exactly what meditation is. True learning happens through meditation. Meditation means casting aside the past and exploring the present, establishing direct contact with the here and now, because God is now, God is here. God is always now and always here. The mind

lives in the past because it lives in knowledge. Knowledge is what you have learned, understood, studied. Existence happens now, while the mind abides in then;

Existence is here, but the mind is always there. The mind looks back; it is like a rearview mirror. If you are reversing your car, then the rearview mirror is useful, but if you are driving forward, continuing to look in the rearview mirror is dangerous. If you are fixed on the rearview mirror, you are doomed to have an accident. You are in great danger; you are a suicide. Life always moves forward, there was no reverse gear. Life is exactly like that. The reverse gear was added later, when some experience had accumulated, for before that, if you wanted to return home, you had to make a loop of several miles. Then the thought arose that it would be better... Even if you had driven only a few feet away from your house, you could not go back; you had to travel a long way.
Sometimes you had to drive around the entire city just to return. Then the reverse gear was added. But God has not yet added any reverse gear. In fact, there is no need to move backward. The past disappears—the past does not exist. It leaves traces only in your memory; it exists nowhere else. Existence is always ≪now≫; the past is only memory, and the future is only imagination. There is neither future nor past. That which exists is the only reality, and the mind does not allow you to be in contact with it. How can you learn, how can you gain experience? Your experience cannot be useful or healthy. It will be painful, it will be unhealthy. And this has turned every person almost into a monster.

Your head continues to become larger and larger, while everything else has shrunk so much that it has almost disappeared. People have turned into mere heads, with little legs and arms; they are just heads. This is monstrous. Man has become a monster: he has lost balance, harmony. The head uses you for its own interests. It has destroyed your organic unity; like a parasite, it becomes larger and larger at the expense of your wholeness.
Osho

You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. You are a part of it! You are not an outsider. You didn't come here by chance, you are needed. Remember: the greatest need in life is to be needed, and if you can feel that all of Existence needs you, you will become unimaginably joyful and vibrant, you will be ≪turned on≫! You will experience the most significant experience, you will feel ecstasy if you can feel that all of Existence

needs you, that you will be missed, that a void will arise if you are not here. You are not superfluous, you are not unnecessary; you have immense significance. Therefore, love yourself. You are needed just as much as trees, flowers, birds, the sun, the moon, and the stars. You must be here, and you have the right to be the way you are. Accept yourself as you are, never feel guilty.

Religions have created a sense of guilt in you, and it is through this that they have exploited you. They create a sense of guilt in you, and then you must go to a priest, you must go to church, to the Temple to pray, because you feel guilty, sinful. They continue to assure you that you are a sinner. But why are you a sinner, why does God continue to create sinners? If that is how he works, then it is his mistake! Why did God create Adam and Eve the way he created them? Why did he order them not to eat from the tree of knowledge? If he hadn't ordered them, I don't think they would have found that tree of knowledge; they wouldn't have been able to find it in the vast garden of Eden. By telling them: ≪Do not eat from the tree of knowledge≫, he made them obsessed with this idea. After that, it became very difficult for them not to taste its fruits. God is responsible – no one else.

Therefore, do not judge anyone, let them follow everything that they feel is right for them. There are no two identical people, so no one path, no one hypothesis is suitable for everyone. That is why I am talking here about Jesus, about Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, Dionysius, and Heraclitus. I have spoken about the most diverse mystics. And people think that I am eclectic – no, that is not so. I am simply introducing you to millions of paths to truth, because on each path I see the beauty that other paths lack. Each of them has its own beauty. You will have to choose your own path – you will have to choose. There are millions of options, and it is good that you can choose. When Ford built his first cars, they were all black, and he told customers: ≪You can choose any color, as long as it is black≫. Then what choice remains?
≪...As long as it is black≫. It is good that Existence has so many colors of different shades, different forms, different sizes, with different aromas. This makes Existence multidimensional. ≪...Whatever you imagine it to be≫. Desiderata says nothing to you about God, it simply says: ≪Be at peace with Existence≫. Any hypothesis that helps you to be at peace is good.
Osho

"I do not teach morality, I do not teach virtue — because I know that without awareness it is only pretense, hypocrisy. They make you false. They do not liberate you, they cannot liberate you. On the contrary, they imprison you.

"Only one thing is enough: awareness is the master key. It unlocks all the locks of existence. Awareness means that you live moment to moment, watchful, aware of yourself and everything happening around you, in response, moment to moment. You are like a mirror, you reflect — and you reflect so totally that whatever action is born from this reflection will be right, because it fits with existence and is harmonious with it. In fact, it does not arise in you — you do not do it. It arises in the total context — the situation, you, and everything else involved. From this wholeness action is born — it is not your action, you did not decide to do it that way. It is not your decision, it is not your thought, it is not your character. You do not do it, you only allow it to happen.

It is exactly as if you wake up early in the morning, the sun has not yet risen, and on the path you see a snake — there is no time to think. You can only reflect — there is no time to decide what to do and what not to do — you immediately jump back! Notice the word immediately — without losing a single moment, you immediately jump off the path. Later you can sit under a tree and think about what happened, and how you did it, and pat yourself on the back for how well it turned out. But, in fact, you did not do it — it happened. It happened in the fullness of the context. You, the snake, the danger of death, life's attempt to protect itself… a thousand and one things are involved in this. The whole totality of the situation brought about this action. You were simply a channel.

And this action is appropriate. You do not do it. In religious terms we can say that God did it through you. That is just a religious way of saying it, that is all. The whole acted through the part.

This is virtue. You will never repent of it. And this is a truly liberating action. As soon as it happens, it is over. You are free to act again; you do not have to carry this action in your head. It will not become part of your psychological memory; it will not leave a wound in you. It was so spontaneous that it will leave no trace in you. This action will never become karma. This action will not leave any scratch on you. The action that becomes karma is an action that is not actually an action, but a reaction that comes from the past, from memory, from thinking. You decide, you choose. It does not come from awareness, but from unawareness. Then it is sin…"

A man of awareness is possessed by nothing — there is no obsession in him. He is simply relaxed, calm and quiet, in silence and serenity. From this silence, whatever blossoms is good. It is always good — he lives in choiceless awareness.

Therefore, go beyond the ordinary concept of a good man. You will not be good, you will not be bad. You will simply be alert, conscious, aware, and then whatever follows will be good. In other words, I can say that in total awareness you will acquire the quality of divinity, and goodness is merely a small by-product of divinity.

Religions have taught you to be good so that one day you might find God. This is impossible — no good man has ever yet found the divine. I teach the exact opposite: find the divine, and goodness will come by itself. And when goodness comes by itself, it has beauty, grace, simplicity, humility. It asks for no reward either here or in the hereafter. It is its own reward.
Osho

On Morale:

The foundations of morality are tied to ideals — how you should behave, what you should be. Thus, morality is, in essence, judgmental. You are never the ideal, so you are always judged. Any morality breeds a sense of guilt. You can never become the ideal; you always lag behind. There will always be a gap, because the ideal is impossible, and through morality it becomes even more impossible. The ideal is there in the future, and you are here as you are, but you are constantly comparing. You are never a perfect man; something is always lacking. Then you feel guilty; you condemn yourself.

Condemnation can only breed hypocrisy. Then you will pretend, you will try to show that you are what you are not in reality. Hypocrisy means that you are a real person, not an ideal one, but you pretend, you try to show that you are an ideal person. Then a split occurs within you; you have a false face. An unreal person is born, and tantra is primarily concerned with seeking the real, not the unreal person.

Any morality necessarily breeds hypocrisy. This is inevitable. Hypocrisy will always accompany morality. It is part of it — its shadow. This seems paradoxical, because moralists are the people who condemn hypocrisy the most, yet they are the ones who breed it. And hypocrisy cannot disappear from the face of the earth until morality disappears. They will exist together; they are two sides of the same coin. Morality gives you an ideal, and you are not the ideal; that is precisely why the ideal is given to you. Then you begin to feel that you do not measure up to the ideal and that this non-conformity is natural, that it is inherent in you from the beginning; you are born with it, and you cannot immediately do anything about it. You cannot transform yourself; it is not so easy. You can simply suppress yourself, that is easy.

But you can act in two ways. You can create a false face; you can pretend to be something you are not. This saves you. Then you can exist in society more easily — more comfortably. And inside you must suppress the natural, because the unnatural can be imposed upon you only if the natural is suppressed. So your natural is pushed deep inside, into the subconscious, and your unnatural becomes your conscious. Your unnatural part becomes more dominant, and the natural remains behind. You are split into two parts, and the more you try to pretend, the greater the gap between the two parts will be.

A child is born unified, whole. That is why every child is so beautiful. Beauty is a consequence of wholeness. The child has no gap, no split, no division, no separate fragments. The child is one. There is no natural and unnatural in him. The child is simply natural, truthful. You cannot say that the child is moral. He is neither moral nor immoral. He is simply unaware that there is something moral and something immoral. The moment he understands this, the splitting of the personality begins. Then the child begins to behave in an unnatural way, because being natural becomes more and more difficult.

This happens inevitably, remember, because the family, parents must regulate his behavior. The child must be civilized, educated, with good manners: otherwise it will be impossible for him to advance in society. He must be told: "Do this, do not do that." And when we say, "Do this," the child's nature may not be ready to do it. It may be unnatural; the child may have no natural desire to do it. And when we say, "Do not do this, do not do that," the child's nature may actually enjoy doing it.

We condemn the natural and force the unnatural, because the unnatural will be more useful in an unnatural society, the unnatural will be more convenient. A natural child will have great difficulty with society, because the whole of society is unnatural. It is a vicious circle. We are born into society, but so far there is not a single society on earth that is natural. And this is the perversion! A child is born into society, and society is already there with its fixed rules, instructions, patterns of behavior and morality that the child must learn.

When he grows up, he becomes false. Then he will have children, and he will help make them false — and so it will continue and continue. What to do? We cannot change society. Or, if we try to change society, we will not be here when it changes. It will take an infinite amount of time. What to do?

A person can become aware of this basic split within himself: that the natural is suppressed and the unnatural is imposed. This is pain, this is suffering, this is hell. You cannot get any satisfaction from the unnatural, because only unnatural satisfaction is possible from the unnatural, and that is natural. Only from the natural can natural satisfaction happen. Through the natural you can reach reality; through the natural you can comprehend truth. Through the unnatural you can only get more and more hallucinations, illusions, dreams, and with dreams you can deceive yourself, but you will never be satisfied.

In a dream, for example, you can be thirsty, and you may dream that you are drinking water. This will be useful and convenient so that the sleep is not disturbed. If you do not see in the dream that you are drinking water, your sleep will be disturbed. There is a real sensation of thirst. It will disturb your sleep, you will be troubled. The dream helps; it gives you the feeling that you are drinking water. But this water is false. Your thirst is merely deceived; it is not quenched. You can continue sleeping, but the thirst has been suppressed.

This happens not only in dreams: it happens throughout your entire life. You seek something in the unreal personality, which is not there, which is only a facade. If you do not get what you seek, you will suffer; if you get it, you will also suffer. If you do not get it, the suffering will be less — remember this. If you get what you seek, the suffering will be deeper and greater.

Psychologists assert that because of this unreal personality, we practically never desire to achieve any goal — never desire to achieve, because if we achieve the goal, we will be completely disappointed. We live on hope, in hope we can continue to live. Hope is a dream. You will never reach the goal, so you will never realize that the goal is false.

A poor man's struggle for wealth is happier at the stage of struggle, because in the struggle there is hope. And for the unreal, unnatural personality, only hope brings happiness. If the poor man becomes rich, his hope disappears. And the natural consequence is disappointment. Wealth will be achieved, but satisfaction will not. He will reach the goal, but nothing will happen. His hopes will be shattered. That is why the moment society becomes wealthy, it begins to experience anxiety.

If America is so deeply troubled today, it is because hopes have been fulfilled, goals have been achieved, and now you can no longer deceive yourself. So if in America the young generation rebels against all the goals of the older generation, it is only because of this: that it all turned out to be nonsense.

Here, in India, we are unable to comprehend this. We cannot understand young people who willingly become poor — become hippies. Become poor of their own free will? We cannot understand this. We still have hope. We hope for the future: that someday our country will become rich and there will be paradise here. Hope always involves heaven.

Because of this unreal personality, everything we try to do, everything we do, everything we see — everything becomes unreal. Tantra teaches that truth can happen to you only if you return again to the real, to the natural. But to settle into the real, you must have great courage, because the unreal is comfortable, because the unreal has been instilled too much, because your mind is so conditioned that you will fear everything real.
Osho

"The world teaches that losing one's mind is madness. This is not the whole truth, because no madman has ever lost his mind; in reality, the madman is lost in his mind – his mind has become a jungle, and he cannot find his way out of it, in order to emerge. It is not that he has lost his mind, he is lost in his mind. He is more in his mind than ever before.

There is more mind in a madman than in you. Your mind is not so uncontrolled, not so vast, not so fast; it is ordinary, manageable. The madman is lost in immense, boundless thoughts, passions, dreams.

So that principle that 'losing one's mind is madness' is not true; it needs to be changed. Losing oneself in the mind is madness.
And if you understand this, then health is simply defined: come out of the mind into openness, into silence, where no thought, no desire will disturb you.
You are simply a pool of silence, without even a ripple – that is health.
Osho"

"If you desire a loving relationship, you must forget about all power politics.

You can only be a friend. Just as you shouldn't try to dominate the other, don't allow the other to dominate you. This is only possible if there is some meditative quality in your life. Otherwise, it is impossible.

As for love, it is the most difficult thing for a human being in the whole world, because the moment you express your love, others begin to resort to power pressure. They know that you are dependent on him or her. You can be enslaved – psychologically, spiritually – and no one wants to be a slave. Yet, all your human relationships turn into slavery.

Love needs clarity of vision.

Love needs to be cleansed of all the ugliness that is contained in your mind – jealousy, anger, the desire to dominate."
Osho

No one hears the heart.

And the mind is so talkative, so constantly chattering – babble, babble – that even if the heart sometimes says something, it never reaches you. It cannot reach you. The noise in your head is so loud that it is impossible, absolutely impossible for the heart.

Gradually, the heart stops saying anything. Not heard again and again, ignored again and again, it falls silent.

In society, the head rules everything. Otherwise, we would live in a completely different world, a more loving world, with less hatred, less war, nuclear weapons would be impossible. The heart would never approve of any of the methods of destruction being developed; the heart would never be in the service of death. It is life that pulsates for life; it beats for life.

The path is very simple.

The path is to get out of the mind as many times a day as possible. Whenever you have time, just get out of your mind.

Some things can help you. If you cannot be in silence, just sit; if you feel that you have so much energy to do something, and you are not doing it, then all that energy becomes a game of the mind; it is easier to start with some kind of creation. If you are interested in music, play music and drown in it. If you like to dance, dance, and let the dancer disappear.

Anything – if you know pottery, make beautiful pots, put your energy into it completely. Because when you put your energy completely into something, the mind does not get any energy and becomes silent on its own.

And at first, it is only that you have to do some work to keep yourself busy, so that the energy goes into what you are doing, and the mind remains silent.

Soon you will be able to sit in silence, doing nothing, and the mind becomes absolutely silent.

In those moments, you will know the eternity of life, you will know the beauty of this fleeting existence that surrounds you, and the immense treasure of your own being.


Thinking belongs to the mind. Understanding lies beyond it.

So, the first thing to note is that to reach understanding, you do not need to become a great thinker.

On the contrary, you need to become a non-thinker. In a state of non-thinking, the flower of understanding blooms.

Your thoughts can understand one thing: that you are not interested in them. In the moment when you can reach this point, you will achieve a great victory.

Just observe.

Don't say anything to the thoughts.

Don't judge. Don't condemn.

Don't order them to move.

Let them do whatever they do, let them do any gymnastics; you just observe, enjoy. It is like a beautiful movie.

And you will be surprised: just by observing, the moment comes when there are no more thoughts, there is nothing to observe.
Osho

It is very easy to confirm that you are on the right path: your tension will begin to disappear, you will become more and more calm, you will become more and more unruffled, you will find beauty in what never seemed beautiful before.

The smallest things will acquire great meaning. The whole world will become more and more mysterious with each day; you will become less and less capable of knowledge, more and more innocent – just like a child running after a butterfly, or collecting seashells on the shore.
You will feel that life is not a problem, but a gift, like bliss, like a blessing.
If you are on the right path, there will be more and more evidence of this. If you are on the wrong path, the opposite will happen.

Meditation begins to take you beyond time, because it takes you beyond death.

You will be surprised that in Sanskrit, only one word is used for death and for time – kal. Kal also means tomorrow – tomorrow is only death and nothing more; life is today.
As soon as you become calm... Your tension is your weight. When there is no more tension, you become weightless.
And consciousness, which is your reality, has no space-time limitation.
Your body grows from childhood to youth, to old age, to death – these changes only happen to the body. These are changes in the decoration of the house... the painting of the house, changes in the architecture. But the person who lives in this house – the owner of the house – these things do not affect.
Consciousness is the owner.
Your body is just a house.
In the moment you entered meditation, you touched within yourself something universal – something that has no age, something that has no likeness either in time or in space.
Osho

Love knows no jealousy, love knows no complaints. Love is a deep understanding.

You love someone – but that doesn't mean the other person has to love you too. It's not a deal.
Try to understand the meaning of love.

And you won't be able to understand the meaning of love through your so-called love affairs.
It's strange, but you will understand what love is by delving into meditation, becoming more silent, more whole, more peaceful. You will begin to radiate a certain energy. You will become loving, and you will know the beautiful qualities of love.
Osho

If you cannot laugh, you will miss out on a lot in life; you will miss out on many mysteries. Your laughter makes you a small, innocent child; your laughter connects you with existence – with the raging ocean, with the stars and the silence.

Life is beautiful because there are so many things that cannot be explained. It would be terrible if life consisted only of things that can be explained.
Just think for a moment: if everything could be explained, then there would be no mystery, then there would be no poetry, then there would be no secrets, then everything would be completely boring and tedious.
Life is not boredom because there are dimensions in it that you can continue to explore. And yet you will never be able to explain them. You can experience a lot, and yet even what you have experienced cannot be conveyed in words.

Life is not what it seems. It is much more, immeasurably more.
You just need to turn to face yourself.

The work of the heart and the mind is completely different; and not only different, but diametrically opposed. The mind creates philosophies, theologies, ideologies – all these are questions that have no answer. The heart simply waits. At the right moment, the answer blooms by itself.
The heart has no questions, and yet it receives an answer.
The mind has a thousand and one questions, and yet it has never received a single answer, because it does not know how to receive.

If you want to change the world, don't start by changing the world – this is the wrong path that humanity has been following until now – change society, change the economic structure, change this, change that, but don't change the individual.
That’s why all revolutions have failed. Only one revolution can succeed, something that hasn’t been tried yet – a revolution of personality.
Change yourself.

Be vigilant so as not to bring into the world anything that makes it hell. And remember: you must bring into the world something that makes it paradise.
This is the whole secret of a religious person. And if every person starts doing this, then a revolution will happen without any bloodshed.
Osho