Osho – Do not search for religion; search for yourself. Religion will then automatically come to you.

Does religion exist in scriptures?
No. Religion does not exist in scriptures.
Scriptures are dead and religion is a living entity.
Now can that be found in the scriptures?
Does religion exist in sects?

No. Religion does not exist even in sects. Sects are based on unions and religion has an absolutely independent identity of its own. For that it is not necessary to go outside; but you have to move inside.

Religion exists in every breath of the self. All that we lack is the sight to uncover and see it. Religion exists in every drop of blood of the self. We lack the courage and determination to search it out. Religion is here like the sun; but you have to open your eyes. Religion is life; but you have to rise above the graveyard of the body. Religion is not lifeless. Therefore, do not sleep. Wake up and move. He who sleeps loses it. He who moves on reaches it. He who is awake finds it.

A king was in search of the highest religion of the world. He had grown from youth to old age. But his research had not been completed. How could it have been completed? Life is short and such research is foolish. Even if life were endless the highest religion could not be searched; because in fact religion is religion and that is one.

For this reason, what could be high and low, what could be worst and best, about it? Because religions are not many, the search for the highest could not be successful. Where there are not many, there is only one, there is no scope for comparison or weighment. Nor is there any method for doing so. That king was searching for the highest religion but living in the lowest irreligion. When he could not find the true religion, the question of taking life in its direction did not arise. Could anyone ever move in darkness and in the unknown? Nobody asks this question about the opposite of religion; but about religion there will hardly be anybody who does not ask it. Nobody ever thinks or makes a search about irreligion. That has to be lived while religion has to be searched.

Probably this so-called search is a way to live in the opposite of religion and avoid living in religion itself. Nobody ever told the king about it. The learned, the saints and the philosophers of different religions used to come to him. They quarrelled with one another. They used to show one another’s faults. They used to prove that the others were in ignorance. The king used to be pleased with it. In this way, religion itself was an illusion and ignorance in his eyes and he could find support for living in the opposite of it. It was difficult to win over that king on the side of religion. Because whoever took sides were themselves not in favour of religion. Groups, sects and religious institutions are always on their own sides. They have nothing to do with religion. They could not have. Only he who gives up all sides can belong to religion. Without giving up sides it is difficult to belong to religion. Religious sects are ultimately enemies of religion and friends of its opposite.

But the king did not stop his research. It had become a play for him; and even the Opposite of religion began to bring to him pain, cares and misery. As death started approaching and the harvest time of life came near, he became restless. But he was not prepared to accept anything except the highest, internally faultless and the complete religion. He was adamant; and until perfect religion was clear to him he was determined not to move even one step of life towards it. Years after years went by, and on his own he was getting himself deeper in the mud. At last, his death came close at doors.

One day a young beggar came to his door and asked for alms, and finding the king extremely worried, depressed and perturbed, asked him the reason. The king told him: “What could you do even after knowing it? The big, big scholars, saints and mendicants have not been able to help me”.

That beggar said: “It is possible that their bigness itself was a handicap for them, and then the scholars have never been able to do anything. Are the saints and mendicant, who are identified only by their clothes, really the saints and mendicants who matter?” The king looked at that beggar with attention. The king had in his eyes something which was not in the eyes of the beggar. That something can be seen only in the eyes of the king. In the meantime, that beggar spoke again: “I can do nothing. In fact, I do not exist. But he who exists can do a lot”. What he said was really wonderful. He was entirely different from the thousands who came to convince the king. The king started thinking who this man was in this poor dress, but outwardly he said: “I want to search out the highest religion and make life religious; but this has not been possible and, therefore, I am very unhappy now towards the end of my life.

Which religion is the highest?” That beggar started laughing loudly and said: “Oh king! You wanted to put the cart before the horse, and therefore you are unhappy. Life does not become religious after searching out religion; is found out only after life becomes religious religion. And what madness was it that you wanted to search out the highest religion? Even the search of religion itself was enough. It is only religion that exists. Highest religion? I have never heard of it. These words are meaningless. Nothing remains to be added to qualify religion. There is only a circle. There is nothing like a full circle; because what is not a full circle is not a circle at all. Its being a circle implies its fullness. The very existence of religion implies the truth of its being impartial and faultless. And those who come to you to prove the highest religion are either not less mad than you are or they are hypocrites. He who knows knows only religion and not the religions.

The king was deeply moved and touched the beggar’s feet. The beggar said: “Kindly leave my feet. Do not bind them. I have come here to free your feet also. Please come to the other side of the river outside your kingdom. There itself I can point my finger to the religion.” Both of them went to the river-bank. The best boats of the capital were called out but that beggar would show one fault or the other in each one of them. At last the king became worried. He said to the beggar: ‘Oh, great soul! we have to cross only a small river. This can be crossed even by swimming. Let us forget these boats. Let us go and swim it over. Why should we waste our time?”

As if the beggar was waiting for it, he said to the king: “Oh king! I also want to say the same thing. Why are you worried about the boats of religious sects? Is it not desirable that we should swim over ourselves to God? In fact, there is no boat of religion. Boats are named only for the profession of the boatmen. The only way is self-swimming. Truth can be found out only by self-effort. Nobody else can give it. One has to swim in the sea of truth by himself. There is no other support. Those who look out for support get drowned near the coast itself, and those who take up courage to swim for themselves cross it over even after a little drowning.

Source – Osho Book “The Earthen Lamps”

Question : You have spoken of the need for Courage. Where does Courage come from? Is there any way to stimulate people’s Courage?

Osho – Everything that is valuable comes from your own innermost being. It may be love, it may be intelligence, it may be creativity, it may be courage, it does not matter what. Anything of value comes from your own innermost being. Many dimensions open up with your experience of yourself.

Yes, courage is needed, and for that you will have to go to the same source. It is in a way a very simple phenomenon. There is nothing complex in it because there is only one source for every great value. So by achieving one thing, you achieve all great values simultaneously.

You ask me, “Is there some way to stimulate courage?” That’s what the commune is for. Everything in human life is contagious, because no man is an island. We are all part of one infinite continent. So anything that is happening in me, if you are available it immediately starts happening in you. Something is triggered. Carl Gustav Jung has coined a new word for it: synchronicity. It is a beautiful word. And everybody experiences it. For example, here… silence is your synchronicity. Everybody is so silent that you are surrounded from everywhere by a pool of silence.

The same is true about love, about sadness, about blissfulness. Just sit with a few people who are sad, miserable, and soon you will find that something in you is becoming sad, something in you is becoming miserable. And when you leave this company of miserables, you will feel sucked, tired, as Lf your energy has been exploited.

Everybody in the world once in a while has experienced the other polarity, too. You may be sad, but you meet a few friends who are laughing, joking, enjoying, dancing, and you forget all about your sadness, all about your worries. Something overpowers you. Their energy is much bigger than your misery.

Your misery simply slips out of you. You start dancing, singing, your face changes, and afterwards you will feel so much nourished, so much stronger that even though those people have left, the misery cannot enter you again. Now you are far stronger and far more nourished. Misery needs a certain weakness, certain loopholes, a certain readiness on your part to be miserable.

But we are living in a kind of human ocean which we cannot see — just like the air which we cannot see, but which surrounds us all. What is my breath this moment may become your breath in the next moment. It is changing its place every moment. You are inhaling, exhaling; everybody is inhaling, exhaling. Everybody is inhaling from somebody else; everybody is exhaling into somebody else. In the same way, you are continuously inhaling and exhaling all other inner values, which are even more subtle than the air. There is a constant exchange, uninterrupted even in your sleep.

I have made thousands of experiments about everything before I have said anything about it For example, I have tried to make a sleeping man miserable or happy in his sleep. He does not know what is happening, he is fast asleep. But in the darkness, twelve meditators are sitting, projecting sadness, misery. Soon the person starts moaning, may have nightmares that somebody is killing him, that something really terrible is happening to him. He starts grinding his teeth. He really wants to get out of it. We have observed his hands, holding his blanket as a last resort. Perhaps he is drowning, or who knows what.

And we have changed the same person by changing our projection. We have projected love, joy, rejoicing, dancing, laughter. Just a thought being projected towards the man by twelve people who have a certain capacity of meditation, and the moaning stops. His hands get relaxed on the blanket. His face is no more distorted. Soon he starts giggling. You cannot believe it when you see a sleeping person behaving in this way. He is smiling. You have never seen his face so beautiful as he is looking at this moment.

This is the function of the commune, where so many people are just happy for no reason at all, where life is just fun, every moment of it. We can radiate from this commune for miles around.

New people coming from some other country outside America have reported to me that the moment they enter Rancho Rajneesh something in the air changes. Suddenly they feel as if they have come home, and they have never been here before. Perhaps never in their millions of lives — I don’t think they have been born in the Big Muddy Ranch, but suddenly they feel at home, as they have never felt even in their own home. And as they come closer to the commune, a great joy starts arising in them for no visible reason.

We have not only created an oasis in the desert, we have created an oasis of consciousness, too, which is far deeper, far more powerful, far more significant. And soon, as our other communes in the world will be becoming more mature….
My idea is to make a belt of energy around the world, so in fact we become one commune as far as the energy belt is concerned.

So all the communes may be far away from each other in space, but in the inner world they are all together. You don’t have only five thousand people’s strength, you have the strength of one million sannyasins, wherever they may be. And each commune has one million sannyasins’ support. So if we have two hundred communes, the inner logic and arithmetic is that we have already 200,000,000 sannyasins — that much energy, the quality, the quantity. And that is going to transform the world.

Never before has any experiment of this kind been made, so ordinarily nothing is known about it. But I have been experimenting on small scales until I have become absolutely certain of something. I have not tried to make any effort for expansion. We are in perfectly good shape — it could not be better — to do the job that we have chosen.

We can be so full of bliss that we can fill the whole universe with our bliss, our rejoicing our dance, our laughter. And to me, this is revolution, an absolute psychological change in the atmosphere of the world.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 2″

Question – Osho, Would yoi please say something about Sincerity?

Osho – Yoga Punya, MAN can live in two ways: either he can live according to the dictates of others — the puritans, the moralists — or he can live according to his own light. It is easy to follow others, it is convenient and comfortable, because when you follow others they feel very good and happy with you.

Your parents will be happy if you follow their ideas, although their ideas are absolutely worthless because their ideas have not made their lives illumined, and it is so apparent. They have lived in misery, still they want to impose their ideas on the children. They cannot see a simple fact: that their life has been a failure. that their life has not been creative, that their life has never tasted of bliss, that they have not been able to discover truth. They have not known the splendor of existence, they have no idea what it is all about. Still their egos insist that the children should be obedient, they should follow their dictates.

The Hindu parents will force the child to become a Hindu, and they will not even think for a single moment what has happened to them. They have followed those same ideas their whole life and their life is empty; nothing has flowered. But they enjoy the idea that their children are obedient and they are following them. They have lived in misery, in hell, and their children will live in misery and hell, but they think they love their children. With all good intentions they destroy the future of their children.

The politicians try in every possible way that the society should live according to their ideas, and of course they pretend to others and to themselves that they are doing public service. All that they are doing is destroying freedom of people. They are trying to enforce certain superstitions which were enforced on them by their parents, by their leaders, by their priests.

The politicians, the priests, the pedagogues, they are all trying to create a false humanity; they are creating insincere human beings. They may not have intended to do so, but that’s what has happened. And a tree is to be judged by fruits; it does not matter what was the intention of the gardener. If he was sowing seeds of weeds and hoping, intending, desiring that roses will come out just because of his good intentions, roses are not going to come out of the weeds. He has destroyed the whole field. To impose a certain structure of character on anybody is to make him insincere, is to make him a hypocrite.

Sincerity, Yoga Punya, means to live according to y our own light. Hence the first requirement of being sincere is to be meditative. The first thing is not to be moral, is not to be good, is not to be virtuous: the most important thing is to be meditative — so that you can find a little light within yourself and then start living according to that light And as you live it grows and it gives you a deep integrity. Because it comes from your own innermost being there is no division.

When somebody says to you, “Do it, it SHOULD be done,” naturally it creates a division in you. You don’t want to do it, you wanted to do something else, but somebody — the parents, the politicians, the priests, those who are in power — they want you to follow a certain route. You never wanted to follow it so you will follow it unwillingly. Your heart will not be in it, you will not be committed to it, you will not have any involvement with it. You will go through it like a slave. It is not your choice, it is not out of your freedom.

The first disciples of Jesus had chosen him; it was THEIR choice and they had chosen a very risky path — to be with Jesus was dangerous. It has always been so: to be with anybody who gives you freedom is dangerous because he will make you so independent that you will continuously be in a fight with the society, with the establishment, with the vested interests. You will be in a constant struggle your whole life. Of course, that struggle is worth and it is not a curse, it is a blessing, because only through that struggle you grow, you expand. Your consciousness becomes more and more clear; it becomes a peak. You have to pay for it; it is not cheap. Hence the risk.

The few people who followed Jesus were taking a dangerous path: they could have been crucified, and they were tortured in many ways. But today to be a Christian has no risk, hence it is bogus.

The people who followed Buddha were living dangerously, and to live dangerously is the only way to live. But they were sincere people: they followed their own inner voice against the whole society, against the whole tradition, convention. They followed a rebel and became rebels in their own right. Buddhists were burned alive just as early Christians were burned alive, thrown to the lions and to the wild animals, tortured in every possible way. But still they attained to the ultimate experience of godliness — they paid for it. But to be a Buddhist now is very convenient there is no problem about it, anybody can be a Buddhist. And the same is true about all religions.

Right now to be with me is dangerous. You will be continuously in trouble; wherever you will go you will be opposed. You will be opposed by the Christians, by the Hindus, by the Mohammedans, by the Jains, by the Buddhists. You will be tortured, you will be condemned, you will not be accepted anywhere. But you will become sincere, you will have some authenticity. And you will suffer all these tortures joyfully because you have chosen them.

Even to choose hell is beautiful, rather than to be forced to live in heaven. If you are forced to live in heaven it is hell, and if you choose hell it is heaven — because it is your own choice. It brings your life to its highest peak.

Sincerity means not living a double life — and almost everybody is living a double life. He says one thing, he thinks something else. He never says that which he thinks, he says that which is convenient and comfortable, he says that which will be approved, accepted. he says that which is expected by others. Now what he says and what he thinks become two different worlds. He says one thing, he goes on doing something else, and then naturally he has to hide it. He cannot expose himself because then the contradiction will be found, then he will be in trouble. He talks about beautiful things and lives an ugly life.

This is what, up to now, humanity has done to itself. It has been a very nightmarish past. The new man is an absolute necessity now because the old is utterly rotten. The old is continuously in conflict within himself; he is fighting with himself. Whatsoever he does he feels miserable. If he follows his own inner voice he feels he is going against the society, against the powerful people, against the establishment. And that establishment has created a conscience in you; that conscience is a very tricky procedure, a strategy. It is the policeman inside you, implanted by the society, who goes on condemning you that: “This is wrong, this is not right. You should not do it, you should feel guilty for it — you are being immoral.”

If you follow your voice your conscience is at daggers with you; it will not give you any rest, it will torture you, it will make you miserable. And you will become afraid — afraid that somebody may find it out. And it is very difficult to hide because life means relationship — somebody is bound to know, somebody is bound to discover. You are not alone.
That’s why the cowards escaped to the monasteries, to the Himalayan caves, just for a single reason: that there they will not be found out at all. But what kind of life you can live in a cave? You have already committed suicide. To be in a cave is to be in a grave — and alive! If you are dead and in a grave, that seems right — where else you can be? But alive AND in a grave — it is real hell!

In the monasteries people are living a miserable life; that’s why they have such long faces — not that they are religious. Those long faces are a simple outcome of a cowardly life. If you are in the world living with people you cannot hide for long; you can deceive a few people for a time being, but not forever. And how can you deceive yourself? Even if you are not found out by others you know that you are living a double life — and the guilt…

And everybody is guilty, and the priests want you to be guilty because the more guilty you are, the more you are in the hands of the priests. You have to go to them to get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Ganges to take a bath, you have to go to Mecca, to Kaaba, so that you can get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Catholic priest to confess so that you can get rid of the guilt. You have to do fasting and other kinds of penances and other kinds of austerities so that you can punish yourself These are all punishments! But how can you be happy? How you can be cheerful and blissful? How can you rejoice in a life where you are constantly feeling guilty and punishing yourself, condemning yourself?

And if you choose NOT to follow your inner voice and follow the dictates of others — they call morality, etiquette, civilization, culture — then too that inner voice will start nagging you, it will continuously nag you. It will say you are being untrue to your nature. And if you feel that you are being untrue to your nature then your morality cannot be a rejoicing; it will be only an empty gesture.

This is what has happened to man: man has become schizophrenic. MY effort here is to help you to become one. That’s why I don’t teach any morality, any character. All that I teach is meditation so that you can hear your inner voice more clearly and follow it, whatsoever the cost. Because if you follow your inner voice without feeling guilty, immense is going to be your reward, and looking backwards you will find that the cost was nothing. It looked very big in the beginning, but when you have arrived at the point where sincerity becomes natural, spontaneous, when there is no more any division, no more any split in you, then you will see a celebration is happening and the cost that you have paid is nothing compared to it.

You ask me, Yoga Punya: WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SINCERITY?

Sincerity is the fragrance of meditation.

Source – from Osho Book “I am That”

Osho – The only difference between men and other animals is that of values. No animal lives according to values; he lives blindly, not knowing why. His life force is unconscious of itself. Many men also live in the same way. They only look like men, but they have not yet transcended the animal. The transcendence of the animal is indicated by the values.

But values can be of two types: one that is imposed upon you from the outside, thou shalt; and one that arises in your own being, I will.

The first kind of value is just a hypocrisy. It is a strategy to make you believe that you have transcended the animals; but in fact you have even fallen below the animals. The animals are at least natural; you are not even natural. Your values distort your nature, distort your simplicity, distort your innocence – but they give you a false notion that you are a man.

The second kind of values are the authentic values. But for them, you have to avoid any kind of imposition from the outside, and you have to allow your own inner being and its still, small voice. The beginning of man is in the trust that he shows in his own inner voice.

Osho – Ninety-nine percent of your illnesses are your own working. Be alert and watch. If you are stupid, you are stupid. This is the first ray of intelligence that has happened to you: that you feel that you are stupid – perfectly beautiful.

To understand that one is stupid is to already be intelligent. To understand that one is blind and cannot see light, one is already on the way. Now something is possible. But a blind man goes on imagining that he knows what light is. He dreams about light, he dreams about the eyes. And if somebody says that he is wrong he is ready to protect himself, defend, rationalize, argue.

Look at the bare fact. Whatsoever it is, to accept it is good. You are blind – everybody is born blind. Nobody comes with eyes. If you have eyes, there is no need to come. You come only to learn how to be able to see. And from the very beginning, you start thinking that you have eyes.

You come here to be enlightened. Life is a process of enlightenment. If you live it truly, Buddhahood is bound to happen. It is not some accident; you carry the seed within you. Just give the right soil and the seed will sprout, and a Buddha will flower in you.

Buddhahood is not accidental, is not only for the chosen few – it is everybody’s destiny. Delay you can, but when you attain, there is nothing to brag about. I will repeat: Delay you can, but when you attain it, there is nothing to brag about. It is very ordinary. It has to be so. It is your intrinsic being. It is your essence. Only the personality has to be dropped. Personality is the falsification. Watch. And always be true. Whatsoever you say about yourself, be true, and you will never be a loser.

In the beginning it will seem that if you say that you are stupid, everybody will know – but stupidity is not such a thing that you can hide it. Everybody already knows Everybody already knows. Only you are deceived. Drop all deceptions, because finally, eventually, you will discover that nobody else was deceived, only yourself. And nobody is a loser for it. You lose. Drop all codes. Drop all falsifications. And when I say ’drop,’ I don’t mean that any effort is needed.
Just see, and they drop. Seeing is dropping.

Source : from Osho Book “The True Sage”

Osho – Jealousy is jealousy…. If you cannot have all, at least you can stop anybody else having it. Jealousy becomes destructive, jealousy becomes violence. And jealousy is the shadow of desire. Desire always compares and, because of comparison there is suffering. People waste their lives in desiring, in being jealous, in comparing, and the precious time is simply lost. Even if God gives you three wishes, you will do the same as Goldstein — because the Jew exists in everybody. Only a buddha is not a Jew; otherwise everybody else is.

The nature of desire is Jewish. It wants more, it is mad for more. And those who live in desire are bound to be victims of death. Only the person who understands the foolishness of desiring, of greed, of constantly longing for more, of jealousy, of comparison, one who becomes aware of all this nonsense and drops it, goes beyond death. He becomes unseen.

Osho – There is only one thing which you can take with you, and that is true wealth. Buddha calls it meditation, awareness, watchfulness, mindfulness, consciousness. If you become more and more conscious, you can take that consciousness with you. But you are living a very very unconscious life. Your whole life is mechanical, you simply go on repeating. You are not really living, you are being lived by unconscious desires.

Buddha says: Meditation is the only wealth, because you can take it beyond death. In fact he says this is the criterion: if something can be taken beyond death it is true wealth. If it cannot be taken beyond death, it is untrue wealth, it is a deception. And not only that you are deceiving others, you are deceiving yourself. And when death will knock at your door, you will weep, you will cry, but then nothing can be done.