Shree Rajneesh Quotes

Osho Bhagwam Shree Rajneesh
"Life begins where fear ends." osho ~ Sushil Singh

In every relationship, you can always see the ego of the other, but you cannot see your own – and the other one goes on seeing your ego. ~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Desires are very cunning and complex. You are frustrated, but not because of needs. You are frustrated because of desires. And if desires take too much of your energy you will be unable to fulfill your needs also, because who is there to fulfill them? You are moving into the future; you are thinking of the future; your mind is dreaming. Who is there to fulfill ordinary needs of the day? You are not there. And you would like to remain hungry but reach the horizon. You would like to postpone needs so that the whole energy moves towards the desire. But in the end, you find that the desire is not fulfilled, and because needs have been neglected, in the end you are just a ruin. And the time that is lost cannot be regained; you cannot go back. ~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

I am an anarchist in a totally different category from that of all anarchists who ever lived on the face of the earth.
I am a category consisting of myself, because my focus is completely different.
I am not against the government, I'm against the need for government.
I am not against the courts, I am against the need for courts.
Someday, sometime, I see the need for man to be able to live without any control - religious or political - as it will be a discipline in itself. ~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

178. "Your original wonder must be recaptured; just like a child like sense of wonder, where nothing is known and everything becomes a mystery. ~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

We will be entering the beautiful world of a Zen master's no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him- this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence- it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no more a part of our madness. So it is as it should be.
Ch. 1: The Great Way Is Not Difficult ~ Osho

When somebody comes with a conclusion, then he looks through that conclusion and chooses only things which support his position.
Logic is a prostitute.
It can help anybody - for or against, it has no problem. ~ Osho

Don't help anybody's expectation of you to grow. Don't even give them a hint that you will fulfill it. Whatsoever suffering you pass through, be ready to pass through it, but don't allow others to have expectations about you. Otherwise the world will close you in and there will be imprisonment. Once you nod yes to doing something, then you are closed in. You are in the tunnel already, and now with every step, every new act, you will fall into a new misery, new unfulfillment, new lies, new failures. Drop fulfilling others' expectations, and drop expecting others to fulfill yours. Remember, if you suffer, you suffer because of you; if others suffer, they suffer because of them. Nobody suffers because of others – remember that deeply. Only then will you be able to be really sincere to your inner self; and that sincerity is religiousness. ~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

There is a story told of one old wise man, whose name was Mencius. He was a follower of Confucius and he died when he was very, very old. Somebody asked him: If you were given life again, how will you start it? Said Mencius: I will pay more attention to my needs and less attention to my desires. And this realisation will come to you also. But it always comes very late and then life is no more in your hands. If you were given life again.... ~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Become alert about desire and non-attachment begins to appear. This is not to be made to happen, it follows naturally from awareness of attachment. Each one of us has to become aware of his attachments, and keep being so! Nothing should be done unconsciously. ~ Rajneesh

Laughter is the real religion. Everything else is just metaphysics. ~ Rajneesh

You can succeed only with God, never against him. You can succeed only with the whole, never against it. ~ Rajneesh

The ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation; logic is more important than love; mind is more important than heart; power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy. ~ Rajneesh

The first thing is love: love deeply. If you have been with a person for a few years, in deep love, and you have experienced all the joys and all the miseries, and still you decide to be with the person, then marriage is okay. Because marriage is only a legal arrangement, it cannot make anything more beautiful than it is. It can only make it ugly, it cannot beautify it. Once it is settled legally, once you start taking each other for granted, things will start going down rather than rising high. ~ Rajneesh

Devotion means for the total; it is never for Rama, never for Krishna. Of course, Rama and Krishna are implied in the total, but it is never for a chosen one. Love is always for the chosen one, devotion is for the whole. So you cannot be a devotee of Rama. If you are for Rama, you are only a lover; and when you are a lover, then competition is bound to be there. Then Krishna will be a competitor, and Christ will be a competitor, and the same jealousies, the same conflicts, and all the same nonsense will follow. It has followed. ~ Rajneesh

Don't swim against the current. Stay in the river, become the river; and the river is already going to the sea. This is the great teaching. ~ Rajneesh

Marriage is an effort to legalize love. It is out of fear. It is thinking about the future, about the tomorrows. Man always thinks of the past and the future, and because of this constant thinking about past and future, he destroys the present. And the present is the only reality there is. One has to live in the present. The past has to die and has to be allowed to die ... ~ Rajneesh

Concentration is not the approach towards God. Concentration is a mind approach. God is everywhere, so you have to relax, you have to be meditative. ~ Rajneesh

A buddha laughs too, but his laughter has the quality of a smile. His laughter has the feminine quality of grace. When an ignorant person laughs, his laughter is very aggressive, egoistic. The ignorant person always laughs at others. The contented person, the person who knows life a little, laughs at himself - at the whole play of life itself. It is not addressed to anybody in particular. He just laughs at the absurdity of it all ... the impossibility of it all. ~ Rajneesh

Man is afraid, the world is a strange world, and man wants to be secure, safe. In childhood the father protects, the mother protects. But there are many people, millions of them, who never grow beyond their childhoods. They remain stuck somewhere, and they still need a father and a mother. Hence God is called the Father or the Mother. They need a divine Father to protect them; they are not mature enough to be on their own. They need some security. ~ Rajneesh

The most fundamental message of Gautama the Buddha is not God, is not soul ... it is freedom: freedom absolute, total, unconditional. He does not want to give you an ideology, because every ideology creates its own slavery. ~ Rajneesh

Sinners live in a sort of hell, and saints imagine themselves in a sort of heaven. And the sage? - for him it is moksha, for him it is the absolute freedom. He is freed from all duality. The secret key, and the only key, is awareness. ~ Rajneesh

Your ecstasy is a movement towards the height and your meditation is a movement towards the depth. And once you have both, your life becomes a celebration. ~ Rajneesh

It has happened, women have helped their husbands, sacrificed their whole lives, never thought about themselves. Their surrender, their devotion to their lovers has been total. In this totality, they have achieved before their lover has. ~ Rajneesh

Each obsession is a knot in your being. Once it is opened, great energy is released ~ Rajneesh

When sex becomes conscious it is love, it is no longer lust. Love brings freedom, and lust simply creates prisons for you. ~ Rajneesh

Buddha says: Life should be simple, not complex. Life should be based on needs, not on desires. Needs are perfectly okay: you need food, you need clothes, you need a shelter, you need love, you need relationship. Perfectly good, nothing wrong in it. Needs can be fulfilled; desires are basically unfulfillable. Desires create complexity. They create complexity because they can never be fulfilled. You go on and on working hard for them, and they remain unfulfilled, and you remain empty. ~ Rajneesh

To remain absolutely free is what a true and authentic life is. So never gather any character - remain characterless. ~ Rajneesh

Meditation is the alchemy of transforming. The unconscious into the conscious. It gives you a tremendous power, Far greater than anger, greed and lust. ~ Rajneesh

When a man is able to be alone he is also able to love. And his love has a totally different quality, a different beauty, a different fragrance to it. It is something divine, it is something of the beyond. It is deeply fulfilling. It brings great contentment. ~ Rajneesh

This is the fear: death will come and we have not lived yet. We are just preparing to live. Nothing is ready; life has not happened. We have not known the ecstasy which life is; we have not known the bliss life is; we have not known anything. We have just been breathing in and out. We have been just existing. Life has been just a hope and death is coming near. And if life has not yet happened and death happens before it, of course, obviously, we will be afraid because we would not like to die. ~ Rajneesh

To me a man of meditation is bound to be immensely loving. ~ Rajneesh

Meditation is not doing something. But you cannot take a jump immediately into non-doing. So I suggest that you make your doing total. Move into it so deeply, and so totally that suddenly the doing drops, and you alone are left, just existing. ~ Rajneesh

Put your whole energy into meditation. Once you are centered in your being, once you know the inner path, then wherever you are you can manage to go to the center without any difficulty. Even when you are dying, it will not make any difference. You may be sick, it will not make any difference. ~ Rajneesh

Each child is made neurotic by the parents, by the society; and we know that we are doing it, and we know that others have done the same to us. Stop doing it to yourself and stop doing it to others. Become alert. Just be real. I emphasize reality more than truth. Because truth has been used by the anti-life people so much, it has wrong associations. Be real. If you are real, one thing will start disappearing from your heart, and that is guilt. ~ Rajneesh

There is a fixation in the human mind for structures, because in a structured life one feels secure, one knows where one is, one knows where one stands in relationship to the other. It seems that because man is born in the womb of the mother and for nine months remains in a structure, that continues deep down in the psyche - and man is always trying to find a structure somewhere. ~ Rajneesh

The Earth is beautiful. If you start living its beauty, enjoying its joys with no guilt in your heart, you are in paradise. If you condemn everything, every small joy, then the same Earth turns into a hell. It is a question of your own inner transformation. It is not a change of place, it is a change of inner space. Live joyously, guiltlessly, live totally, live intensely. And then heaven is no more a metaphysical concept, it is your own experience. ~ Rajneesh

Enjoy simple things with total intensity. Just a cup of tea can be a deep meditation. ~ Rajneesh

Transcendence of sex is a totally different phenomenon from the suppression of it. But suppression can give you the feeling that you have transcended. ~ Rajneesh

The outer is easier, and the outer is objective. For example, one man, Thomas Alva Edison, discovers electricity and the whole of humanity uses it; there is no need for everyone to discover it again and again. Inner growth is a totally different phenomenon. A Gautama Buddha may become enlightened, but that does not mean that everybody else becomes enlightened. Each individual has to find the truth for him or herself. ~ Rajneesh

All duality is a mind creation, all duality is created by the clinging and attached mind. When there is no attachment there is no duality. ~ Rajneesh

When I use the words 'inner journey', I simply mean that you have looked at one aspect of the journey in your life called 'outer', now try to look at another aspect of the journey called 'inner'. You have been running after money, now run after meditation. You have been running after power, now run after God. Both are running. Once you start running after meditation then one day I will tell you, 'Now drop meditation too. Now stop running.' And when you stop running then real meditation happens. ~ Rajneesh

Only very few people are born with awareness. Those are the people who die in awareness. If the death was conscious, then the birth will be conscious, because the death is the one side and the birth is the other side of the same coin. ~ Rajneesh

The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable. ~ Rajneesh

This is what I call understanding. If you understand, insecurity is an intrinsic part of life - and good that it is so, because it makes life a freedom, it makes life a continuous surprise. One never knows what is going to happen. It keeps you continuously in wonder. Don't call it uncertainty - call it wonder. Don't call it insecurity - call it freedom. ~ Rajneesh

You will have to go deep into man. From where comes this violence? From where comes this exploitation? From where come all these ego-trips? From where? They all come from unconsciousness. Man lives asleep, man lives mechanically. That mechanism has to be broken, man has to be re-done. That is the religious revolution that has not been tried. ~ Rajneesh

The word 'sin' is beautiful; it comes from a root which means 'forgetfulness'. You may not be able to see the connection between forgetfulness and sin, but there IS a connection: forgetfulness means unawareness, unconsciousness. ~ Rajneesh

Be loving towards yourself, then you will be able to love others too. ~ Rajneesh

So the patient went to the mountains, and do you know what? Next day a telegram arrived for the psychiatrist. The patient said in the telegram, 'I am feeling very happy - why?' ~ Rajneesh

Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something. ~ Rajneesh

Objects must cease, mind must become just a pure mirror - a mirroring, not mirroring anything - just a mirror without any object in it, a pure mirror. By dhyan, this purity of the mind is indicated. So first, no object should be in the mind. Mind must remain alone without thinking about anything - with no thought, just a consciousness, just an awareness, just an alertness. This alertness without any object is meditation. ~ Rajneesh

Mind is elusive, you cannot hold it in your hand. You cannot force it into a test-tube. The only way to know it is to know it from within, from your witnessing self. The more you become aware, the more you can watch your mind - its subtle functioning. The functioning is tremendously complex and beautiful. Mind is the most complex phenomenon on the earth, the most subtle flowering of consciousness. If you want to really understand what the mind is, then you will have to detach yourself from your mind, and you will have to learn how to be just a witness. That's what meditation is all about. ~ Rajneesh

LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness. Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others - the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being. Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. ~ Rajneesh

One has to love unconditionally - the trees and the rocks and the sun and the moon and the people. ~ Rajneesh