Question – Osho, i go on forgetting your words. what should i do?

Osho – Who has told you to remember my words? That’s how it should be, exactly, precisely. You have to forget my words; you have to remember the essence, not the words. And the essence need not be remembered, it has only to be understood.

If you are listening to me rightly you need not remember what I have said. In fact, if you try to remember it you will miss the whole point. Then the words will be there and the essence will be missing. Go on forgetting the words otherwise you will be burdened by them, and you will lose track.

You just try to understand. When I say ‘try to understand’ I mean just be silently, passively, alertly listening. Don’t judge and don’t argue and don’t decide whether I am saying something which is right or wrong. Just listen silently. If you become too worried whether I am saying something which is right or wrong then you are not listening. I am not saying that you should believe what I am saying, no. Just listen. And this is the beauty of pure listening — if you can listen purely, whatsoever is true will get into your heart and whatsoever is untrue will drop. There is no need to be worried about it. The heart knows.

It is almost natural. It is like if you are being given blood, your blood will refuse it if it is not of its own kind. A certain kind of blood will be needed, the same number of blood will be needed. If you have been operated upon and some skin has been transplanted, just anybody’s skin will not do. Your body will reject it. The body knows. Your owl skin will have to be removed from some other part of the body then the body will accept it.

That’s how it is. Truth is the food of the heart. When the truth is heard the heart simply accepts it. It is not a question of deciding whether it is true or not — this is the way of the mind. The mind is continuously worried about whether it is true or not true, and because of this worry the mind earl never listen. The mild is deaf. It pretends to listen but it never listens. You just put your mind aside, let your heart listen to me, let your heart be diffused into me, let your heart be in tune with me. And if there is something true it will get home. If it is not you need not worry, it will disappear.

You need not be worried about my words. Be worried about me, not about my words. I am not propounding a philosophy here, I am simply giving myself to you.

Source – Osho Book “Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1″

Question – Beloved Osho, i heard you say sometime ago that science is of the head and religion is of the heart. i understand that these qualities, being of a polarity, are mutually dependent. one cannot exist without the other, just as man cannot exist without both head and heart. Would not then a world scientific community bring with it, as a necessary by-product, a world religious community? Is not the vision of a world science and a world religion synthesized in your vision of the new man?

Osho – Man is not only head and heart. There is something more than both in him — his being. So you have to understand three things: the head, the heart and the being. I have said religion is of the heart, because religion is the bridge between head and being. The head cannot jump to the being directly unless it goes through the heart.

Science is confined to the head, reason, logic. The heart is confined to feelings, emotions, sensitivities. But the being is beyond both. It is pure silence — no thinking, no feeling. And only the man who knows his being is authentically religious. The heart is only a stopover.

But you have to understand my difficulty. You are in the head. I cannot talk about the being because the head will not be able to communicate with the being. For the head there is no being; that’s why scientists go on denying the soul. So I have to talk to you about the heart, which is midway.

It is possible for head to understand a little bit of heart, because even the greatest scientist falls in love. His head cannot conceive what is happening — falling in love? He cannot prove it rationally, he cannot find why it happened with a particular man or with a particular woman, what the chemistry is behind it, what the physics is behind it; it seems to be something out of nowhere. But he cannot deny it either; it is there, and it is possessing his whole life.

That’s why I say religion is of the heart. That is only a temporary statement. Once I can persuade you from thinking into feeling, then I can tell you that religion is of the being. Religion is neither thinking nor feeling, it is neither logic nor emotion. It is just pure silence: in one sense utterly empty, because there is no feeling, no thinking, and in another sense overflowing with bliss, with benediction.

Meditation is the way from the head to the heart, from the heart to the being. I would like all the scientists to listen to the heart. That will change the very character of science. It won’t be in the service of death, it won’t create more and more destructive weapons. It will be in the service of life. It will create better roses, more fragrant roses; it will create better plants, better animals, better birds, better human beings.

But the ultimate goal is to move from feeling to being. And if a scientist is capable of using his head as far as the objective world is concerned, using his heart as far as the interpersonal world is concerned, and using his being as far as existence itself is concerned, then he is a perfect man.

My vision of the new man is of a perfect man: perfect in the sense that all his three dimensions are functioning without contradicting each other, but on the contrary, complementing each other. The perfect man will create a perfect world. The perfect man will create a world of scientists, a world of poets, a world of meditators.

My approach is that all these three centers should be functioning in every person, because even a single individual is a world unto himself. And these centers are in the individual, not in the society; hence, my focus is on the individual. If I can change the individual, sooner or later the world is to follow. It will have to follow, because it will see the beauty of the new man.

The new man is not only clever in arithmetic, he can also enjoy and compose music. He can dance, he can play the guitar — which is a tremendous relaxation for his head, because the head is no longer functioning. And the new man is not only of the heart; there are moments when he drops even deeper and simply is.

That source of your is-ness is the very center of your life. To touch it, to be there is to be rejuvenated. All the energies of your heart, of your head, will be tremendously multiplied, because you will be getting newer energy every day, every moment.

Right now, even a great scientist like Albert Einstein uses only fifteen percent of his potential. What to say about ordinary people? They never go beyond five to seven percent. If all the three centers are functioning together, man will be able to function totally, one hundred percent. We can really create a paradise here, on this earth. It is within our hands. Just a little effort, a little courage, and nothing more is needed.

The world has to be scientific for all the technologies, for all the comforts. The world has to be poetic; otherwise man becomes just a robot. The head is a computer. Without poetry and music and dance and song, what your head does can be done by a computer far more efficiently and infallibly. Popes have been declaring they are infallible. They are not. But if they want to be infallible, their brains can be replaced by a computer; then they will be infallible.

The heart is a totally different dimension of experiencing beauty, love, and expressing it. But that is not all. Unless you reach to your very center, you will remain discontented. And a discontented man is dangerous, because he will do anything to get rid of his discontentment.

The person who knows himself and his center is the richest. In fact, that’s where the kingdom of God is. It is your kingdom, there you are a god. Deep down, centered in your being, you become an emperor. Therefore, I say to the whole world that my red empire consists only of emperors. And we have to expand the red empire as quickly and as fast as possible, because the forces of death are coming closer every moment. But I have every hope and certainty that life cannot be defeated by death.

My people are the first people in the whole of history who are life-affirmative. All other religions are life-negative. Their function is finished, they are no longer of any use. Life-affirmative people are needed. And if you are overflowing with life, it is contagious, it starts infecting other people. So wherever you are, rejoice, celebrate. Help your love, your life, your laughter to spread all over the world. It is possible. It has to be made possible. We can do it! And there is nobody else to take the responsibility. We are the only alternative. We are the answer to the questions that are surrounding humanity.

Source – Osho Book “From Death to Deathlessness”

Question – How would you describe your particular path to enlightenment in relationship to other traditional paths such as the various kinds of yoga, sufism, buddhism, zen, christianity, etcetera?

Osho – I HAVE NO particular path. I don’t belong to any path whatsoever, and therefore all paths belong to me. Each path is perfect in itself, but each path can help only a very minor part of humanity. Each path exists for a particular type. It is complete in itself. Nothing is to be added to it — nothing is to be deducted from it. As it is, it is perfect. But it can help only a particular type. Humanity is vast; one path cannot carry the whole of humanity. All paths are needed. In fact, as the human mind changes, more new paths have to be evolved. With the mind changing, many old paths have become by and by useless, or can be used only by a very few individuals.

I use all paths. Whenever I see a seeker, I start looking into him — what type he is and what type of path will be helpful to him. I may not use the name of the path, because those names have become too much loaded. If a Hindu comes to me and I say to him, “Sufism is your path,” he will not be able to understand; he will be immediately closed to it. A Hindu cannot conceive himself on the path of Mohammedans — that’s impossible for him.

I will not talk about Sufism, but whatsoever I will give him will be Sufism. To me the path is not important, but the seeker. Paths exist for you, not vice versa. You don’t exist for any path or any doctrine. All doctrines, all paths, all dogmas, exist for you. If they are helpful, good; if they are not helpful, they have to be thrown on to the rubbish heap.

Man is important, because man carries the potentiality of being God. Paths are just means. Use them, but don’t be used by them. Remain masters, and always remember that you are the end and nothing else is more important than you, than your innermost core. If you remember this, you can use many paths and you can be enriched by many ways.

And this is my understanding, that the more you travel, the more you walk on many paths, the more open you become, the more enriched you are. The whole past of humanity belongs to you. If you are a Mohammedan, don’t say that only Mohammed belongs to you — Buddha is also yours, Christ also. The whole past of humanity is your heritage. Why be poor? Why say, “I am a Hindu and only Krishna belongs to me and Christ is a stranger. I won’t allow him in my house; only Krishna is allowed”? If only Krishna is allowed, then you will have only one door to your house, only one room to your house — then you cannot be multi-dimensional. But if Christ also comes, and Mohammed is also welcomed, then you will have an enrichment; then you have different flowers in your garden; then you will have many types of diamonds in your treasury. Don’t confine yourself Remain open. Welcome everything that has happened on the earth, and that all is yours. Claim it, and use whatsoever you can use for your own growth. Don’t stick and don’t cling, otherwise you will be frozen. My whole effort here is to melt you, so that you can start flowing in many currents.

You are frozen. Somebody is a frozen Christian. Somebody is a frozen Hindu. Somebody is a frozen Jain. Somebody is a frozen Buddhist — all dead. Melt! Become a little warmer! You have become so cold and so closed. Become warm. Allow the sun’s rays to work on you.

And don’t protect yourself Become vulnerable. Melt in a thousand and one currents — unafraid and fearless, start flowing. God comes through a thousand and one ways. And if he comes through a thousand and one ways, let him come that way — let yourself be introduced to God through as many possibilities as possible. Why cling to one form? Why cling to one name? All names are his and all forms are his. And the more you become acquainted that all forms are his, the more possibility there is that you will become aware that he is formless. Otherwise, how can all forms be his? Only the formless can manifest itself in millions of forms. Only the pathless can be travelled through so many paths, and only the gateless can be achieved through so many gates.

Don’t be poor. Become rich, and claim the whole heritage of man! That’s why I go on talking of Christ, Mahavir, Krishna, Patanjali, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. This is nothing but to show-you that the whole of humanity is yours. You are vast! You are not frozen dead particles — you are alive beings, and life is infinite.

I have no particular path. All paths are mine. I am not concerned with paths — I am concerned with you. I look into you because you are important; you are the goal, and nothing else matters. Then I decide what will be suitable for you. Sometimes one path is suitable for you, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes many. It depends how you have grown in your past lives. You may once have been a Mohammedan and you worked a little on that path; you progressed a little on that way. Then you became a Christian, and you worked on that path a little. Then you became a Buddhist. You have lived so many lives. You have forgotten them — I cannot forget them. You can be forgiven if you forget. I cannot be forgiven if I forget.

When I look into you, I don’t look only into your present because in your present all your past is involved: it is there in its totality, layer upon layer; you are an infinite territory… when I look into you, I look at how many ways you have been working upon yourself, a little on this path, a little on that. Then both of the paths will be helpful to you; then in you already a synthesis has happened.

I’m not for synthesis, for any artificial combination — I’m not in favour of it. I’m not in favour of synthesizing Christianity with Hinduism, but what can I do? I am helpless; it has happened in you. You have been once a Mohammedan, then a Hindu, then a Christian. What can I do? It is in your blood, in your consciousness; the synthesis has already happened. I’m not trying to synthesize, but for you a synthetic path in which all the three are involved, will be helpful. It will give you a sudden surge of energy — it will release something within you. You will start flowering in many directions immediately, and many flowers are to come….

When I see that a man has been consistently following one path, then there is no need for synthesis; then he has to follow that path. If one has been for at least seven lives a Buddhist, then there is no need — then it will be confusing for him to give him something else. He has already worked hard on a particular path; now he has to be helped on the same path.

So when YOU come to me, if you are a Buddhist and you have been a Buddhist in your past lives, I am here to make you a greater Buddhist. If you come to me and you have been a Christian in your past lives, I am here to make you a greater Christian. I may not tell you that I am helping you to be a Christian, but don’t be deceived by the appearances. I may not be saying that I am helping you to be a Buddhist, but I am doing that. One day when the light will dawn on you, then you will suddenly realize that I was not a detractor. I have not taken you on another path which you were not on — I have simply helped you on the same path, because all paths are mine. No particular path is mine. In that way I am richer than anybody else who has ever existed in the world. They had particular paths. The same Christ cannot say to you what I am saying. And the same Mahavir cannot say to you what I am saying. They had particular paths — I have none. I claim the whole of humanity.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 3″

Osho – The message is to never think about yourself in any way which condemns. One has to learn to respect oneself; that is the beginning of a great change. We have been taught to condemn, to despise, to hate. We have been told to love others but we have not been told to love ourselves, so we don’t have a good image of ourselves. And without a good image of yourself, you will never be able to know who you are.

One does not want to look at oneself if one is condemned as a sinner. One can enter into oneself only when one feels that one is going into something beautiful. The beginning of love is to love oneself. The beginning of god is to think of oneself as divine. Nobody is a sinner, but if you believe you are a sinner you remain a sinner; it is only a question of belief.

Swayam means self, bhu means existent – self-existent. There are things which are not self-existent; they depend on others’ existence. For example, water is not self-existent, it depends on hydrogen and oxygen; it is a combination. If hydrogen and oxygen disappear from existence, water will disappear. It is a secondary phenomenon, not primary.

Consciousness is a primary phenomenon. It is not a combination of anything else; it is itself. That is the meaning of swayambhu. You cannot disappear from existence. There is no way to destroy you; no death can kill you, no poison can touch you. The innermost core of your being is eternal. It has been always and it will be always. And it cannot be destroyed because it is not a composition, it cannot be destroyed because it is not caused by anything else.

Sam means right, buddho means awareness – right awareness. Awareness can also be wrong. It is wrong when it is cultivated, practised, forced, somehow managed by effort. Then it is wrong. It creates a tension in your being; rather than relaxing you it makes you more tense, it creates stress.

Awareness is right when it is spontaneous, when it is not forced, when it arises not out of effort but out of understanding. Sambuddho means right awareness. Don’t practise it; a practised thing is always false. And when we start practising something we close the doors for the spontaneous; then the spontaneous cannot happen. You become so full of the practised that your very practice hinders it.

If somebody practises love, his love will be false; it will be a practised phenomenon, it will be rehearsed. He will be simply doing an act. He may perform it perfectly but the real will not be in it, the real cannot be in it. The real can never exist in the performed. It can be skilful, the false can be very skilful, very efficient; it can deceive the whole world but it cannot deceive you. You will know all the time that you were just making it, that it was an empty gesture, that you were not behind it, that it was not supported by you, that it had no roots in your being, that it was just a plastic flower. Allow the spontaneous to happen, and the spontaneous happens just by living life intensely.

Whenever you live anything intensely there arises a kind of awareness which is totally different from the practised one. If you are running, are intensely in it, you will find a floating awareness around you. You need not make it, it is there. You are looking at a sunset: you are thrilled and you come to a peak of experience; suddenly there is awareness. It is always there when the peak comes. Just as at the peak it is always sunlit and the darkness disappears, so at any peak moment you are aware, and that awareness arises on its own accord. That is called sambuddho. So live life intensely, totally; live life at the optimum. Put yourself utterly into each and everything that you do; don’t hold.

Then love becomes awareness, walking becomes awareness; then even sleep becomes awareness, because at each peak awareness automatically happens and then it has a beauty of its own. The practised is a poor thing, a poor substitute.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

[A couple of sannyasins who have been running a centre in Goa are going West.]

Osho – Spread my word wherever you go. Now this is the work: every sannyasin has to shout from the housetops, mm? Don’t be shy about it; that time is over: now take initiative. And don’t miss any opportunity.

Whenever you find a receptive heart, put a small seed into it. One never knows: sooner or later the man will be coming. Just a small seed triggers a long process and sometimes small things change the whole of life.

So this is good – travel and help a few people. And there are millions of people who are in need, in great need. They are thirsty but they don’t know what to do and they don’t know where to go. Because of this thirst and there being no possibility of quenching it, great pathology is arising in the world; people are becoming insane. This insanity that is happening now is not an ordinary insanity. This is a very spiritual phenomenon. People want to be more sane than ordinary sanity allows but they don’t know how to be more sane, how to be more healthy and whole.

Not knowing how to be more sane, they get into difficulties. And they cannot adjust to the ordinary sanity. Millions of people around the world are ready to become more sane than humanity allows, and they are groping in darkness. So wherever you are, make it a point to help people….

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

Question – Osho, Don’t you have enough disciples? What is the need for videotapes of you and your commune?

Osho – Devesh, I have got only one hundred fifty thousand sannyasins in the world – that is just a drop in the ocean of humanity. And if you want to transform the consciousness of man it is nothing; it is just the beginning, it is just a seed. We have to go on spreading this new message – new in a sense, because of the so-called religions, and yet the ancientmost, because whenever anybody has known he has known the same truth.

Truth never changes; it is always the same. Who knows it makes no difference, when one knows it makes no difference. Time and space don’t matter. And this is a very special moment in the history of humanity: either man will destroy himself totally or a new man will be born. It has never been so important to transform the consciousness of man, to bring a radical change in the very vision of man as it is today. And we have to do it quickly because time is short. The politicians are piling up atom bombs, hydrogen bombs and whatnot.

Just within ten years the power to destroy man has increased seven hundred times. Ten years ago it was enough to destroy humanity; now it is enough to destroy seven hundred earths of the same size. It seems to be simply mad. What is the point? – because we don’t know any other earths yet. Yes, scientists say there are fifty thousand planets with life, but that is only a hypothesis. We may never reach them – we have only reached the moon.

And those planets are far, far away. The nearest is four light years away; that means if a spaceship goes at the speed of light – which is impossible or next to impossible because the speed of light is immense… Light moves at the speed of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. If we can create a spaceship which can move at this speed, then it will take four years to get there and four years to come back. But it seems not possible to create such a spaceship because when anything moves at such a speed it becomes light; it melts and becomes light. The spaceship will melt and become light and the people traveling in it will become light; they will disappear. At such speed such heat is created that everything becomes light. We don’t know of any metal, not yet, which can resist heat at such a speed.

And those planets which the scientists think have life are thousands of light years away so there seems to be no possibility to destroy them. Then why go on piling up more and more atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, super bombs, death rays? For what? Do you want to kill each human being seven hundred times? Human beings die only one time. They are not Jesus Christs who will resurrect so you have to kill them again and they will resurrect and you have to kill them again – seven hundred times. But politicians make arrangements just in case! In such a mad world where mad politicians are so powerful, meditation can be the only way to defend life on earth.

Devesh, the inner revolution has to be spread as quickly and as fast as possible. Moreover, I am a twentieth-century man – I don’t believe in bullock carts. You can see my Rolls Royce! But even Buddha tried every possible way in order to reach as many people as he could. Of course, there was no other way so he traveled from one village to another; that was the only possible way to reach people. But how many people could he reach? He could never go beyond one single province, Bihar. In fact the name ”Bihar” comes from the fact that he traveled there; the name ”Bihar” means the place where a Buddha travels, where the awakened one has traveled. The boundaries of the province are the boundaries of his travels. But he could not reach all parts of Bihar either; he could reach only the important places and villages on the way.

Forty-two years he traveled; old, ill, but he traveled. He was so old – he died when he was eighty-two – and continuously traveling in the hot climate of Bihar, a physician had to continuously follow him to keep him healthy, to look after him. Why did he travel? For what? – to reach as many people as possible. Mahavira did the same. They each tried in their own ways.

Two monks were talking to each other.
”Do you know why Jesus, after his resurrection, appeared to women?”
”No, I don’t,” replied the other.
”So that the news of his resurrection could spread more quickly!”

I don’t go anywhere; there is no need now – that is out of date. I cannot reach many people by traveling, but now we have the media available. My word can go to the farthest corner of the earth – it is reaching already. Books are also old ways of reaching people; their days are also over. New methods have been evolved.

A videotape is a far better way to reach people because they can hear me the same way as you are hearing me. And just hearing the word without seeing the person is one thing; seeing the person also makes a lot of difference. It is totally different because when you are listening to me on a tape recording or on records you will not be able to see my hand, which says more than I can say with my words. You will not be looking at my eyes, which have much more to say than words can convey. Something will be missing, something of immense value – the person will he missing. You will be hearing only a ghostly voice.

I will use films, television, videotapes, tapes, every modern technique to spread the message. I belong to the twentieth century totally, wholeheartedly. And I love this century; I am not against it. I love science and its technology. It is in the wrong hands, but that always happens. Whenever something significant is discovered it always falls into the wrong hands first for the simple reason that they are very quick people, cunning people.

Even the discovery of atomic energy can be a blessing to the world. But it has fallen into the hands of the politicians. It should be in the hands of mystics; then there would be no need to be afraid of a Third World War. Then we could fill the whole earth with affluence; then poverty could disappear for the first time from the whole earth. Poverty could become a thing of the past. Much illness could disappear. Man’s life could be prolonged to almost impossible limits. Three hundred years would not be a difficult target; each person could live three hundred years very easily because scientists say the body is capable of living far longer than it lives.

People die at the age of seventy just because they have always been dying at that age. It has become a fixed idea in the mind – in the collective mind it has become a fixed idea; it is a kind of auto-hypnosis It can be changed. Even the very program in your cells can be changed; they have the program. When a child is born his cells have the program how long he will live, but that program can be changed. If we can split the atom we can split the living cell and change its inner program; we can give it a new program, we can make it live three hundred four hundred, five hundred years; we can give it a program which will keep it healthy forever, young forever. Old age can disappear. This is possible now.

Science has released tremendous power, but it has fallen into the wrong hands and the right hands are not there. We have to create the right hands; we have to create the right consciousness for that. Hence, Devesh, I will go on working with all the modern media to reach as many people as possible.

I am already reaching. You can see here people from almost every country. There is not a single country in the world now where my sannyasins are not. And they are creating a stir everywhere. They are hound to create a stir, they are bound to create a new kind of revolution – the real revolution. Political revolutions are not revolutions; only spiritual revolutions are revolutions because unless the inner being changes, no outer change is going to help.

And, remember it, I am not an old type of saint: ”Why bother about disciples and why bother about reaching many people? It is not a question of bothering at all – I am enjoying it tremendously! It is not in any way work for me; it is play. And it is urgently needed, too.

I can understand Devesh’s question because he works in the film department in the commune. He is sitting there just behind the video camera. He must the getting puzzled – why? He has written many questions of the same type. Just two days ago when Prem Chinmaya left his body he immediately wrote a question to me: ”Osho, even Prem Chinmaya s departure and the celebration were videotaped. Can’t a sannyasin die in peace?”

But he was already dead! Now you can do whatsoever you want – videotape him, film him… And K.B. was arranging his head for the right position – you can do anything now! Chinmaya must have been around laughing, enjoying. He must be saying to himself, ”Gosh, had I known it before I would have died sooner! They are doing well!” He must have enjoyed it.

And he died in utter peace, he died in absolute peace. And your videotape cannot disturb him. His cancer was not disturbing him, how can your video-tape disturb him? He was in immense pain, but he remained a witness. He died a beautiful death. That’s the way a sannyasin should die. Now Nartan has come. Just yesterday he wrote a letter to me: ”I was fortunate to come and to see Chinmaya s departure and the celebration because I am also suffering from cancer; the doctors have said, ’You have only two years left.’ And I have come to be forever here.” Nartan was happy to see the way Chinmaya died and the way everybody celebrated his death.

I teach you not only to celebrate life but death too, because death is the climax of life, the crescendo. If you have lived your life really you will celebrate your death too. And he died so beautifully, in such deep surrender. Even Nartan was immensely happy to be present. Now his fear of death is gone. In fact, he is looking forward to it. So, Devesh, get ready!

Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 1″

Question – Osho, What is your fundamental teaching to your sannyasins?

Osho – Gourishankar Mehta, It seems you must be a total stranger to this place, otherwise such a question is not possible, because I have got no teaching. I am not a teacher at all; I don’t teach you anything.

Teaching means imparting information. Teaching is basically indoctrination, giving you certain beliefs, conditioning your mind for a certain ideology. I am against all ideologies, I am against all doctrines, because they all help and strengthen your mind. My work here consists to help you to go beyond the mind. You are not supposed to learn something here but to unlearn; you have to go through an unconditioning process.

And I don’t recondition you. That is what is being done by Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans and everybody else. If a Hindu wants to become a Christian he will have to go through two processes: one will be he will have to be unconditioned as a Hindu and then reconditioned as a Christian. But only conditioning changes, nothing else. Your garments change, your consciousness remains the same.

Consciousness is experienced only when you are unconditioned and not reconditioned again, when you are left alone to yourself, utterly innocent. I call it purity. That’s the essence of Ko Hsuan’s Tao. These sutras of Ko Hsuan are called THE CLASSIC OF PURITY. Tao has no doctrines, no teachings. It believes in absolute emptiness of the mind, in nothingness. When you are utterly empty you come in contact with the beyond.

The beyond is not far away, but you are so full of rubbish, so full of junk, that there is no space for the beyond to enter in you. It is like a room is full of furniture. Empty the room of all furniture: on the one hand the room is emptied, all furniture is removed from the room; on the other hand the room is becoming full of emptiness, the sky is entering, the space is entering – the room is becoming more spacious. That’s what happens when your being is unconditioned and left alone.

I don’t want to teach you anything at all. I don’t want you to believe in God because what is the need to believe in God? When God can be experienced, why believe? Belief is a poor substitute. When you can have the real thing why go for plastic flowers? When you can grow the red roses, why hanker for something unreal and synthetic?

All beliefs are unreal. I would like you to be knowers, not believers. I would like you to be seers, not Hindus, not Christians, not Buddhists. Yes, I would like you to be a Buddha, an awakened being. I would like you to be a Christ, but not a Christian. And the difference is tremendous. Friedrich Nietzsche used to say that the first and the last Christian died two thousand years before on the cross. Let me repeat: the first and the last Christian. Friedrich Nietzsche himself was a madman, but sometimes mad people have great insights which the so-called sane go on missing. Nietzsche has many insights. This is one of… very significant statement that he has made.

Be a Christ. Why not be crowneed by the experience of God himself? I don’t teach you about God because all teachings are about. The word ”about” means around. All teachings are about and about around and around; they go in circles. They make you knowledgeable but they don’t make you knowers.

Gourishankar Mehta, I don’t have any teaching to teach. I have certainly a truth but it cannot be taught. Truth can only be caught, it can never be taught. That is the whole meaning of satsanga, of being in the company of a Master. That is the whole purpose of sannyas: being in tune with me.

Truth is a transmission beyond words. Words move from one mind to the other mind. What I am saying to you is from one mind to another mind. What is not said is far more important. Listen to my silences the pauses in between. Listen to the gaps. When you are in tune with me, in deep harmony with me, when there is no fight going on between you and me – no resistance, no conflict no argument… And there is no need of any argument because I am not trying to convince you of anything, I am not trying to persuade you to become followers, to become imitators. My effort is totally different: it is that of communion, not of communication.

When two hearts are beating together in rhythm, in a kind of synchronicity, when they are dancing together hand in hand, in a deep loving embrace, then something is transmitted, something jumps from one heart to the other heart. It is like bringing an unlit candle close to alit candle. when you bring the unlit candle very close to the lit candle; the flame jumps from the lighted candle to the unlit candle. The lighted candle loses nothing, but the unlit candle gains infinity.

I have no teaching. I don’t give any discipline to my sannyasins. I want them to be individuals, I don’t want to make them carbon copies. I would like them to be themselves, authentically themselves. My whole longing is to create individuality in you, not a collective mind. Christianity is creating a collective mind. mohammedans are creating another collectivity, Hindus still another, and so on and so forth.

My trust is not in the collective mind, my trust is in the individual. I am an individualist; I believe in the supreme value of the individual. there is nothing higher than the individual. There is a beautiful saying of a Baul mystic, Chandidas: SAHAR UPAR MANUSATYA. TAHAR UPAR NAHIN. Chandidas says: The highest truth is the individual man, there is nothing higher than that, there is nothing more valuable than that.

The individual is not a means to anything – to communism, to socialism, to Hinduism, to Jainism, to Buddhism, to fascism. And up to now, hitherto, for thousands of years man has been treated always as a means to some end – any stupid end is enough excuse to sacrifice millions of individuals. I don’t want to sacrifice any individual, because there is nothing higher than the individual My respect for the individual is absolute, unconditional. The individual is an end unto himself. I want to help you to support you. so that you can be yourself.

You ask me: WHAT IS YOUR FUNDAMENTAL TEACHING… There is something fundamental, but it is not teaching. It is my love, not my ideology. It is my drunkenness that would like to impart to you, a spark that I would like to ignite your soul with it, a fire.

A dervish, a Catholic priest, and a Rajneesh sannyasin met in a railway station and got round to talking about religion.

”Well,” said the dervish, ”we Sufis are the vital force in Islam. We are the sap that keeps the tree green. We are constantly infusing the old traditions with fresh insights and energy. But, of course, Islam is a very conservative religion, and so we have to put the new wine in old bottles to make it acceptable.”

The priest, who was an American Jesuit, said, ”I can sure understand that. We Jesuits are the dynamic force in the Catholic Church. We are the ones who give it intellectual stature and keep the faith up-to-date with a rapidly changing world. Naturally our Lord’s teachings remain eternally true and valid, but we have to give the Church new forms to deal with modern needs. You might say that we put old wine in old bottles to make it palatable.”

The sannyasin remained silent until the dervish nudged him and asked, ”And what do you do, my friend and this guru of yours?” The sannyasin replied casually, ”Oh, we drink the wine and break the bottles.”

Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 2″

Question – Beloved Osho, What is Religion?

Osho – Milarepa, religion is not what people understand it to be. It is not Christianity, it is not Hinduism, it is not Mohammedanism. Religion is a dead rock. I teach you not religion, but religiousness – a flowing river, continuously changing its course, but ultimately reaching the ocean.

A rock may be very ancient, far more experienced, far older than any RIGVEDA, but a rock is a rock, and it is dead. It does not move with the seasons, it does not move with existence; it is simply lying there. And have you seen any rock with any song, with any dance?

To me religion is a quality, not an organization. All the religions which exist in the world – and they are not a small number, there are three hundred religions in the world – are dead rocks. They don’t flow, they don’t change, they don’t move with the times. And anything that is dead is not going to help you – unless you want to make a grave, and then perhaps the rock may be helpful.

All the so-called religions have been making graves for you, destroying your life, your love, your joy, and filling your heads with fantasies, illusions, hallucinations about God, about heaven and hell, about reincarnation, and all kinds of crap.

I trust the flowing, changing, moving… because that is the nature of life. It knows only one thing permanent, and that is change. Only change never changes; otherwise, everything changes. Sometimes it is fall and the trees become naked. All the leaves fall down with no complaint; silently, peacefully, they merge back into the earth from where they have come. The naked trees against the sky have a beauty of their own, and a tremendous trust must be there in their hearts, because they know that if the old leaves are gone, the new will be coming. And soon new leaves, fresh, younger, more delicate, start coming out.

A religion should not be a dead organization, but a kind of religiousness, a quality which includes truthfulness, sincerity, naturalness, a deep let-go with the cosmos, a loving heart, a friendliness towards the whole. For these no holy scriptures are needed.

In fact, there are no holy scriptures anywhere. The so-called holy scriptures do not even prove that they are good literature. It is good that nobody reads them, because they are full of ugly pornography. One of my friends, when I said this, started working on the HOLY BIBLE, and now he has found five hundred solid pages of pornography. If any book has to be banned from the world, it is the HOLY BIBLE. But that friend does not know that the HOLY BIBLE is just nothing. If you look into the Hindu PURANAS, you will be surprised. They are the ancientmost editions of PLAYBOY. Not only the human beings but even the gods described there are such ugly, dirty old people, it is strange… and they are still worshipped as gods.

For example, the moon is worshipped as a god by the Hindus, by the Jainas, but the story is that the moon was very much sexually interested in a beautiful woman who was the wife of a saint. In India the saints go to take a bath early in the morning before the sun rises, and that was the time when the moon would come – of course, in disguise, because gods can do anything. He would knock on the door and the wife would think her husband was back. The moon would make love to somebody else’s wife and then disappear.

Almost all the so-called Hindu gods are rapists. And they are not satisfied that in heaven they have the most beautiful women – of course not covered with skin, but covered with plastic. But they had no word for plastic in those days, it seems. They say that the heavenly girls – the word is apsara, which you can translate very accurately as a call girl; they are not ordinary prostitutes, but very high class – they don’t perspire.

When I came to know this – that they don’t perspire – I started thinking, How is it possible for a man or woman with skin not to perspire? Plastic seems to be the only alternative. And they remain stuck at the age of sixteen; they never grow up. For centuries they are only sixteen…. And how many saints have enjoyed them? I don’t think they can even remember the number over millions of years.

An authentic religiousness needs no prophets, no saviors, no holy books, no churches, no popes, no priests – because religiousness is the flowering of your heart. It is reaching to the very center of your being. And the moment you reach to the very center of your being, there is an explosion of beauty, of blissfulness, of silence, of light. You start becoming a totally different person. All that was dark in your life disappears, and all that was wrong in your life disappears too. Whatever you do is done with utter totality and absolute awareness.

I know only of one virtue, and that is awareness. If religiousness spreads all over the world, religions will fade away. And it will be a tremendous blessing to humanity when man is simply man, neither Christian nor Mohammedan nor Hindu. These demarcations, these divisions have been the cause of thousands of wars all through history. If you look back at the history of man, you cannot resist the temptation to say that we have lived in the past in an insane way. In the name of God, in the name of church, in the name of ideologies which have no evidence at all, people have been killing each other. Religion has not happened to the world yet.

Unless religiousness becomes the very climate of humanity there will be no religion at all. But I insist on calling it religiousness so that it does not become organized. You cannot organize love. Have you ever heard of churches of love, temples of love, mosques of love? Love is an individual affair with another individual. And religiousness is a greater love affair with the individual directed towards the whole cosmos.

When a man falls in love with the whole cosmos, the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the oceans, the stars, he knows what prayer is. It is wordless…. He knows a deep dance in his heart and a music which has no sounds. He experiences for the first time the eternal, the immortal, that which always remains in every change – which renews its life afresh. And anyone who becomes a religious person and drops Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism – for the first time he declares his individuality.

Religiousness is an individual affair. It is a message of love from you to the whole cosmos. Only then will there be a peace that passeth all misunderstanding. Otherwise these religions have been parasites exploiting people, enslaving people, forcing people to believe. And all beliefs are against intelligence, forcing people to pray words which have no meaning because they are not coming from your heart, but only from your memory.

Source – Osho Book “Satyam Shivam Sundram”

Question – Beloved Osho, Is It really worth putting any energy into improving my personality?

Osho – Anand Tarika, have you ever heard me? I have been constantly telling you that the personality has to be dropped so that your individuality can be discovered. I have been insisting that the personality is not you; it is a mask people have put over you. It is not your authentic reality, it is not your original face. And you are asking me, “Is it really worth putting any energy into improving my personality?”

Put your energy into destroying your personality. Put your energy into discovering your individuality. And make the distinction very clear: individuality is that which you have brought from your very birth. Individuality is your essential being, and personality is what the society has made of you, what they wanted to make of you.

No society up to now has been able to give freedom to their children to be themselves. It seems risky. They may prove rebellious. They may not follow the religion of their forefathers; they may not think the great politicians are really great; they may not trust in your moral values. They will find their own morality, and they will find their own lifestyle. They will not be replicas, they will not repeat the past; they will be beings of the future.

This has created fear that they may go astray. Before they go astray, every society tries to give them a certain direction how to live, a certain ideology of what is good and what is evil, a certain religion, a certain holy scripture. These are ways to create the personality, and the personality functions like an imprisonment. You are asking me, Tarika, that you want to improve this personality. Are you your own enemy?

But this is not only you. Millions of people in the world know only their personality; they don’t know that there is anything more than personality. They have completely forgotten themselves, and they have forgotten even the way to reach themselves. They have all become actors, hypocrites. They have become puppets in the hands of the priests, of the
politicians, of the parents; they are doing things which they never want to do and they are not doing things which they are hankering to do.

Their life is split in such a diametrically opposite way that they can never be at peace. Their nature will assert itself again and again, will not leave them at peace. And their so called personality will go on repressing it, forcing it deeper into the unconscious. This conflict divides you and your energy — and a house divided cannot stand long. This is the
whole misery of human beings — why there is not much dance, much song, much joyfulness.

People are so much engaged in warfare with themselves. They don’t have energy, and they don’t have time to do anything else except fight with themselves. Their sensuality they have to fight, their sexuality they have to fight, their individuality they have to fight, their originality they have to fight. And they have to fight for something which they don’t
want to be, which is not part of their nature, which is not their destiny. So they can pretend to be false for a time — again the real asserts.

Their whole life goes on, up and down, and they cannot figure out who really they are: the repressor or the repressed? the oppressor or the oppressed? And whatever they do, they cannot destroy their nature. They can certainly poison it; they can certainly destroy its joy, they can destroy its dance, they can destroy its love. They can make their life a mess, but they cannot destroy their nature completely. And they cannot throw away their personality, because their personality carries their forefathers, their parents, their teachers, their priests, their whole past. It is their heritage; they cling to it.

My whole teaching is, don’t cling to personality. It is not yours, and it is never going to be yours. Allow your nature full freedom. And respect yourself, be proud of being yourself, whatever you are. Have some dignity! Don’t be destroyed by the dead.

People who have been dead for thousands of years are sitting on your head. They are your personality — and you want to improve on them? So call a few more dead! Graves have to be searched for… bring out more skeletons, surround yourself with all kinds of skeletons. You will be respected by the society. You will be honored, rewarded; you will have great prestige, you will be thought to be a saint. But living with the dead, surrounded by the dead, you will not be able to laugh — it will be so out of place — you will not be able to dance, you will not be able to sing, you will not be able to love.

Personality is a dead thing. Drop it! — in a single blow, not in fragments, not slowly, today a little bit and then tomorrow a little bit, because life is short and tomorrow is not certain. The false is false. Discard it totally! Every real human being has to be a rebel… rebel against whom? — against his own personality.

The Japanese-American was a long-time customer at this Greek restaurant, because he had discovered that they made specially tasty fried rice. Each evening he would come in the restaurant, and he would order “flied lice.” This always caused the Greek restaurant owner to nearly roll on the floor with laughter. Sometimes he would have two or three friends stand nearby just to hear the Japanese customer order his “flied lice.”

Eventually the customer’s pride was so hurt that he took a special diction lesson just to be
able to say “fried rice” correctly. The next time he went to the restaurant he said very
plainly, “Fried rice, please.”
Unable to believe his ears, the Greek restaurant owner said, “Sir, would you repeat that?”
The Japanese-American replied, “You heard what I said, you flucking Gleek!”
How long can you go on pretending? The reality is going to come up some day or other,
and it is better that it comes sooner.

There is no need, Tarika, to improve your diction! Just drop that whole personality thing. Just be yourself. Howsoever raw and howsoever wild it appears to be in the beginning, soon it starts having its own grace, its own beauty. And the personality… you can go on polishing it, but it is just polishing a dead thing which is going to destroy not only your time, your energy, your life, but also the people who are around you.

We are all affecting each other. When everybody is doing something, you also start doing it. Life is very contagious; everybody is improving his personality — that’s why the idea has arisen in your mind. But my people are not doing that. My people are not a herd, not a mob. They are respectful of themselves, and they are respectful of others. They are proud of their freedom and they want everybody else to be free, because their freedom has given them so much love and so much grace. They would like everybody else in the world to be free, loving and graceful.

This is possible only if you are original — not something put together, not something false, but something that grows within you, which has roots in your being, which brings flowers in its time. And to have one’s own flowers is the only destiny, is the only significant way of life.

But the personality has no roots; it is plastic, it is phony. Dropping it is not difficult; it needs just a little courage. And my feeling of thousands of people is that everybody has that much courage, just people are not using it. Once you start using your courage, sources which are dormant become active, and you become capable of having more courage, of more rebelliousness. You become a revolution in yourself. A man who is a revolution unto himself is a joy to see, because he has fulfilled his destiny. He has transcended the ordinary mob, the sleeping crowd.

Source – Osho Book “The Golden Future”

Osho – It is the challenge and a challenge worth accepting because only through that challenge does one grow. Growth is an uphill task and this is the greatest challenge, this is the Everest, the highest climb — dangerous, hazardous, but the more dangerous it is the more enchanting, the more intriguing, the more interesting it is. The more dangerous it is, the more adventure it contains.

It is easy to love without meditation because then love is very ordinary, it is biological. Nothing is required from you as a conscious being — just the chemistry of your body works and you follow the chemistry of the body. It is a chemical phenomenon, it is hormonal. All animals love and man can also love in the same way. Millions of people do love in the same way — they reproduce. When one man falls in love with a woman it is nothing much. People think something great is happening — it is all chemicals, nothing much. Just give him an injection of a few other hormones and the love will disappear. Just take away a few hormones from the woman and the whole story is finished!

But man does not want to see the truth so rather than seeing the truth he fabricates great poetry around it. He says this is something great, something from the beyond; I have not done it, it has happened. But it has happened because of chemistry, not because some god is behind it. God cannot be so foolish as to manage so many stupid love affairs and marriages and divorces; I can’t think of such a stupid god. But chemistry is stupid, chemistry has no intelligence in it.

Ordinary love is a chemical phenomenon. It is easy, very easy. And meditation alone is also very easy, in fact very safe, far safer than love, because in love the other gets involved and there is always trouble. Two persons, however attractive they are to each other, are bound to clash. In fact they are attracted to each other because they are opposite poles, just like negative and positive poles of electricity.

Their very attraction is based on opposition. The farther away they are, the more they feel attracted. But to meet a woman, or a man once in a while, on the beach, in the mountains, in a movie house, is one thing; to live with the same man or woman for twenty — four hours a day, year in, year out, is a totally different phenomenon.

Then the opposition erupts every moment. It starts even before breakfast, it doesn’t even wait for breakfast; in fact breakfast is the right time for it to start. And then it continues to the very end. When you fall asleep, then too it lingers in your dreams: the wife goes on chasing you, the husband goes on chasing you… So people become fed up with such love sooner or later and they start thinking of enjoying their own space.

I receive letters here every day from people who want to enjoy their own space and then within a few days they say that they are fed up with being alone and they want some relationship.’ There is a ripple of laughter through the group. It is like a wheel, it goes on and on. And people are so unconscious, they can’t see that one day they want their own space, another day they feel empty and they want somebody else to share their space, and after a day, again the same game: they want their own space. And this goes on and on!

It is good that Christianity, Judaism and Mohammedanism believe in only one life. Just think of the Buddhists and the Jainas — they believe in eighty — four million lives! It needs some guts… even to think of eighty-four million lives. Then how many million love affairs…? And it is certainly a miracle that we have survived and still the wheel is moving. People go on calling it a merry — go-round, I call it a sorry-go-round!

Both are easy: you become fed up with love, you start meditating; you become fed up with meditation you start moving with somebody — both arc easy. But the real thing is to have a synthesis, to be capable of being alone and at the same time to be capable of sharing your joy, your energies, with somebody.

This synthesis transforms the quality of both love and meditation: meditation becomes more alive, love becomes more conscious. Love becomes more and more free from chemistry, and meditation becomes more and more free from loneliness. Meditation becomes more and more aloneness, solitude — a beautiful space, not negative, not empty, but very full, so full that you really don’t need any love affair, so full that you can live alone for millions of lives — no problem. And love becomes so conscious, so alert, that it can drop all the stupid things which make it miserable.

And this is my vision for my sannyasins: a meditative loving quality, a loving meditative quality. Be great lovers and be great meditators simultaneously. Don’t choose between the two. Choose both and you will attain to a great enriched integrated being.

Source: Osho Book “The Miracle”

Osho – The word ’nija’ has many meanings: one is self, another is individual.When a person is just his own self, when a person has an individuality – when a person lives his way, in his own way, lives his life in his own way, when a person doesn’t try to fit with any mould, with any pattern provided by others, when a person has freedom – then he has individuality. And God loves individuals. God does not love the mass-product at all; he has no joy from people who are carbon copies of others. He wants the original and he has given everybody an original face. He never repeats, he never creates two individuals alike… not even two pebbles alike, not even two leaves alike.

Unique is his love, so those who want to be loved by god should become unique. There is no other prayer: just be unique and your prayer is heard. Just be unique and you need not go to god, god comes to you. By being unique, one earns, one becomes worthy; that too is the meaning of ’nija’.

Sanskrit words are very liquid words: they have many meanings, meaning within meaning. It is a very poetic language, very fluid, flowing. Only when you are an individual are you blissful. The misery is always because we have not been able to assert our being.We have sold it for small things: respectability, ego, prestige, power, money, or security, comfort, convenience. For small things, for trivia, we have sold our individuality – and once individuality is gone, the soul is gone; then man is a mechanism.

My whole approach is individualistic. And my message to my sannyasins is: be unique, be individuals. Live your life the way you feel to live it… be rebels! There is no need to be too ready to fit into any mould. If you choose and if it is your joy it is perfectly good, otherwise there is no need… For no other reason, for no other motive should one fit into anything. If one feels this is the thing that one would like to be, then it’s okay. Then it is no more a slavery; it is freedom.

If you choose even hell out of freedom, you will be happy there, and if you are forced into heaven without your choice, without your will, then you will be unhappy there. So hell and heaven are not places; they are certain spaces within. When one accepts something, welcomes something of one’s own accord, heaven arises. One may remain a beggar, but if one has chosen that, then there is joy. One may become a millionaire and if one has not chosen it of one’s own accord, has been pulled, forced, manipulated, pushed… the parents, the wife, the children; the society, the priests, the politicians – a thousand and one manipulators are there… if one has been pulled like a puppet, one can have all the riches the world can give and one will be unhappy, one will be in hell. So from this moment assert your uniqueness, your individuality, your bliss. Nothing is lacking, all is already there. Good!

Source – Osho Book “The No Book (No Buddha, No Teaching, No Discipline)”