Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you know your being, there is no question of becoming. All that you could have ever imagined to become you already are. You are gods who have forgotten who they are. You are emperors who have fallen asleep and are dreaming that they have become beggars. Now beggars are trying to become emperors, in dreams they are making great efforts to become emperors, and all that is needed is to wake up!" Osho
Real spirituality is going through fire. Real spirituality is rebellion against all that is rotten, against all that is past, against all that is being forced on you by others, against all conditionings. Real spirituality is the greatest rebellion there is. It is risky, it is adventurous, it is dangerous. So beware of pseudo spirituality which is always there, available, easily available at the door.
So your life becomes a vital celebration, your relationship becomes a festive thing. Whatsoever you do, every moment is a festival. You eat, and eating becomes a celebration; you take a bath, and bathing becomes a celebration; you talk, and talking becomes a celebration; relationship becomes a celebration. Your outer life becomes festive, there is no sadness in it. How can sadness exist with silence?
Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth—who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage.
The world is slowly, slowly moving towards love relationships; hence there is great turmoil. All the old institutions are disappearing - they have to disappear, because they were based on the I/it relationship. New ways of communication, new ways of sharing are bound to be discovered. They will have a different flavor, the flavor of love, of sharing. They will be nonpossessive; there will be no owner.
Remember one thing: the one who brings unhappiness to others in the end becomes unhappy himself, and the one who brings happiness to others in the end reaches to the heights of happiness. That's why I am saying that someone who tries to give happiness develops the center of happiness inside himself, and someone who tries to bring unhappiness to others develops the center of unhappiness inside himself.
A man of knowing attains to a sense of humour. Let this always be remembered. If you see someone who has no sense of humour, know well that that man has not known at all. If you come across a serious man, then you can be certain that he is a pretender. Knowing brings sincerity but all seriousness disappears. Knowing brings a playfulness; knowing brings a sense of humour. The sense of humour is a must.
Marriage is not a natural phenomenon. It is artificial, arbitrary. And when it disappears you cannot do anything to bring it back. You can pretend, but that pretension makes you a hypocrite. And your pretension cannot deceive the woman, because she has known your love and the pretension cannot become the substitute. The only way is to separate - in friendship, because you have given each other so much.
The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears - there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it.
The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target--you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target--not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things.
The child is born with a Self but not with an ego. The child develops the ego. As he becomes more and more social and related, ego develops. This ego is just on your periphery where you are related with others - just on the boundary of your being. So ego is the periphery of your being, and Self is the center. The child is born with a Self, but unaware. He is a Self, but he is not conscious of the Self.
Idiots are very very clear - clear in the sense that they do not have the intelligence to feel confusion. To feel confusion needs great intelligence. Only the intelligent ones feel confusion; otherwise the mediocres go on moving in life, smiling, laughing, accumulating money, struggling for more power and fame. If you see them you will feel a little jealous; they look so confident, they even look happy.
Compassion goes on giving, but knows no feeling of giving, knows no feeling that "I am the giver." And then existence goes on responding in thousands of ways. You give a little love and from everywhere love starts flowing. The man of compassion is not trying to snatch anything away, he is not greedy. He does not wait for the return, he goes on giving. He goes on getting too, but that is not in his mind.
In reality, everything is within; the outer is just a projection. Fear is within you; it is projected as a hell. Hell is just a projected image on the screen - of the fear that is within you, of the anger, of the jealousy, of all that is poisonous in you, of all that is evil in you. Heaven is, again, a projected image on the screen - of all that is good and beautiful, of all that is blissful within you.
A small child has no ambitions, he has no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment - a bird on the wing catches his eye so totally; just a butterfly, its beautiful colors, and he is enchanted; the rainbow in the sky... and he cannot conceive that there can be anything more significant, richer than this rainbow. And the night full of stars, stars beyond stars... Innocence is rich, it is full, it is pure.
Meditation is making research into yourself, and into the subtler fields of activity. Day after day we culture our minds with the deep silence of our own Being. This is not the silence of a stone, but creative silence. We have to find it for ourselves. We decrease activity until silence becomes creative, and we sit in creative silence and close the gates of perception for insight into the content of life.
Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.
God-realization is the most difficult state to reach. Let no one fool himself, nor think that someone else can "give" it to him. Whenever I fell into a state of mental stagnation, my Master could do nothing for me. But I never gave up trying to keep in tune with him by cheerfully performing whatever he asked me to do. "I have come to him for God-realization," I reasoned, "and I must listen to his advice."
And the greatest calamity that has happened to the human mind is that he is against death. Being against death means you will miss the greatest mystery. And being against death also means that you will miss life itself - because they are deeply involved into each other; they are not two. Life is growing, death is the flowering of it. The journey and the goal are not separate; the journey ends in the goal.
The relaxation should not be a method. You should not relax through a Yoga posture. This very understanding is relaxing, this very understanding is relaxation. You relax, effort disappears. You live your ordinary life - you chop wood and you carry water from the well and you cook food and you eat and you sleep and you love and you live ordinarily with no hankering and no desire for anything extraordinary.
A totally different attitude is needed: the attitude of love. Christ brings love to the world. He destroys law, the very basis of it. That was his crime; that's why he was crucified - because he was destroying the whole basis of this criminal society; he was destroying the whole foundation rock of this criminal world, the world of wars, and violence, and aggression. He gave a totally new foundation stone.
Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you, that is true. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way. Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself, that's what maturity is all about.
Do you know that the words meditation and medicine come from the same root? Meditation is a kind of medicine; its use is only for the time being. Once you have learned the quality, then you need not do any particular meditation, then the meditation has to spread all over your life. Only when you are meditative twenty-four hours a day then can you attain, then you have attained. Even sleeping is meditation.
But we are not interested in death at all: rather, we escape the facts, we are continuously escaping the facts. Death is there, and every moment we are dying. Death is not something far away, it is here and now: we are dying. But while we are dying we go on being concerned about life. This concern with life, this over concern with life, is just an escape, just a fear. Death is there, deep inside - growing.
I love to disturb people, because only by disturbing them you can make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them. People have been consoling them. I am not going to console anybody... Because the more you console them, the more retarded they remain. Shog them, hit them hard, give them challenge. That challenge will bring their full capacities to the climax.
You exist in time, but you belong to eternity- You are a penetration of eternity into the world of time-You are deathless, living in a body of death- Your consciousness knows no death, no birth- It is only your body that is born and dies-But you are not aware of your consciousness-You are not conscious of your consciousness-And that is the whole art of meditation;Becoming conscious of consciousness itself.
Everybody is afraid of death for the simple reason that we have not tasted of life yet. The man who knows what life is, is never afraid of death; he welcomes death. Whenever death comes he hugs death, he embraces death, he welcomes death, he receives death as a guest. To the man who has not known what life is, death is an enemy; and to the man who knows what life is, death is the ultimate crescendo of life.
The first thing I would like to tell you about death is that there is no bigger lie than death. And yet, death appears to be true. It not only appears to be true but also seems like the cardinal truth of life - it appears as if the whole of life is surrounded by death. Whether we forget about it, or become oblivious to it, everywhere death remains close to us. Death is even closer to us than our own shadow.
First become alone. First start enjoying yourself. First love yourself. First become so authentically happy that if nobody comes it doesn't matter; you are full, overflowing. If nobody knocks at your door it is perfectly okay; you are not missing. You are not waiting for someone to come and knock at the door. You are at home. If somebody comes: good-beautiful. If nobody comes that too is beautiful and good.
If one can surrender, if one can trust the Master, one has surrendered to God, one has trusted God. And sooner or later one is bound to come out under the sky. One will remain grateful to the Master forever because without the window there was no sky, there were only walls. But one has to go through the Master and go beyond. One should not cling to the window; the window frame should not become a hindrance.
The longer a person has been dead the greater is the tradition... If Buddha is alive you can barely tolerate him... You cannot believe this man has known the ultimate because he looks just like you... Hungry he needs food, sleepy he wants a bed, ill, he has to rest - just like you... That is why Jesus is worshiped now and yet he was crucified when he was alive. Alive, you crucify him; dead, you worship him.
The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.
Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered; it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.
If you are happy, you are happy; nobody asks you why you are happy. Yes, if you are miserable, a question is relevant. If you are miserable, somebody can ask why you are miserable, and the question is relevant - because misery is against nature, something wrong is happening. When you are happy, nobody asks you why you are happy, except for a few neurotics. There are such people; I cannot deny the possibility.
In your body, there exists a subtle current of electricity, very subtle. But the subtler it is, the deeper it goes. It is not very visible. Scientists say that all the electricity that is in your body, if put together, can be used to light a five-candle bulb. It is not much. Quantitatively it is not much, quantitatively the atom is not much, but qualitatively... If it explodes, it has tremendous energy in it.
When I say this, I don't mean that if you can love more people you will not go into marriage. As far as I see, a person who can love more will not go into marriage only for love. He will go into marriage for deeper things. Please understand me: if a person loves many people, then there is no reason to marry someone only because of love - because he can love many people without marriage, so there is no reason.
So remember, if marriage arises out of intimacy then it is beautiful. That means that everybody should have lived together before they get married. The honeymoon should not happen after marriage, it should happen before marriage. One should have lived the dark nights, the beautiful days, the sad moments, the happy moments, together. One should have looked into each other's eyes deeply, into each other's being.
The moment one starts sharing one`s being without any motive life becomes a sweet fragrance. It is all honey. Then everything remains the same, yet nothing is the same any more. When your heart beats in harmony, in love, in joy, when you are no longer greedy, when there are no desires and no ambitions, and when there are no ego trips any more, one is simply, ordinary, but sweet. That taste is the taste of god.
The habit of quietly absorbing the shocks will be quite a great help to stabilize pure awareness. The technique is: Just feel not disturbed. The disturbing influence could be a blessing of Mother Nature to develop the habit to make best use out of every situation. Every situation is God Sent. With this supreme wisdom of life any situation can be used to our advantage and regarded as a blessing of Mother Nature.
The child is naturally meditative. He is a sort of samadhi; he's coming out of the womb of existence. His life river is yset absolutely fresh, just from the source. He knows the truth, but he does not know that he knows.... His knowledge is not yet aware. It is innocent. It is simply there, as a matter of fact. And he is not separate from his knowledge; he is his knowledge. He has not mind, he has simple being.
Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved.
Just by being aware, thoughts start disappearing. There is no need to fight. Your awareness is enough to destroy them. And when the mind is empty, the temple is ready. And inside the temple the only god worth placing is silence. So those three words you have to remember: relaxation, thoughtlessness, silence. And if these three words are no more words to you but become experiences, your life will be transformed.
My sannyasins have to be creators, not through the mind but through meditation. And it comes of its own accord, one need not even think about it. So I don't teach creativity, I only teach silence. And then out of that silence much creativity comes. One is surprised oneself at how much one was carrying in one's being, unexpressed, at how great was one's potential. When one comes across it one cannot believes it!
Spirituality is not a question of morality, it is a question of vision. Spirituality is not the practising of virtues - because if you practise a virtue it is no longer a virtue. A practised virtue is a dead thing, a dead weight. Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpractised - when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding.
Reality has no security and that is its beauty. Life has no security and that is its beauty. Because there is no security, there is adventure. Because the future is unknown, nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. That's why there is challenge, growth, adventure. If you miss adventure, you miss all. If your life is not that of an adventure, of a search into the unknown, then you are living in vain.
Love can become devotion. Love is the first step; only then can devotion flower. But for us even love is a faraway reality, sex is the only real thing. Love has two possibilities: either it falls into sex and becomes a bodily thing, or it rises into devotion and becomes a thing of the spirit. Love is just in between. Just below it is the abyss of sex, and beyond it is the open sky - the infinite sky of devotion.
You cannot see clearly, because you are so full of expectations, hopes,desires. Your eyes are covered with many layers of dust: you need a deep cleansing of your eyes. That's what meditation is. Let the thoughts disappear, the hopes disappear, the desires disappear. Then you have a clarity, then your eyes are perfect mirrors. Only then, in that silent state of your vision, will you know the secrets of the beyond.
Whenever you are in anger, remember yourself. In that very remembering the focus changes, the gestalt changes. You become more and more centred. Anger remains there just on the periphery of your being, but you know now that it is separate from you. You are not angry, you are only a witness to it. Now it is up to you to choose to be angry or not to be angry. You are no more identified; hence the freedom to choose.
Wherever desire exists ego exists, and wherever ego exists illusion exists because ego is the greatest illusion there is. Even in a beggar who has nothing else you will find the same ego as you will find in Alexander the Great, because desiring is the same. Alexander the Great may have much money and much power, that does not matter; he is still desiring. The beggar may not have anything, but he is also desiring.
Sadness, seriousness are parts of a psychologically sick man - they need causes. So when you are feeling happy, don't start asking, "Why am I happy?" When you are feeling sad ask why you are sad. But strangely, it has become conventional to our minds that when we are sad we accept it as if it is our nature. And when we are joyous even we are surprised; deep inside we even start worrying: "What is happening to me?"