Rajneesh Quotes

Joy is not dependent on circumstances; it is your own. It is not a titillation produced by things; it is a state of peace, of silence-a meditative state. It is spiritual.

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.

I have been misunderstood perhaps more than anyone else ever, but it has not affected me, for the simple reason that there is no desire to be understood. It is their problem if they don't understand, it is not my problem. If they misunderstand, it is their problem and their misery. I am not going to waste my sleep because millions of people are misunderstanding me.

All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation. When it comes out of meditation, creativity is sharing the joy, sharing the blissfulness that you have. Mind has no joy - it is really a wound, very painful.

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.

And you can put your total energy for the inner eye. The outside eyes are wasting eighty percent of energy - it is the major part. Man has five senses, eighty per cent is taken away by the eyes and only twenty per cent is left for the other four senses. They are very poor people, those four. Eyes are very rich, they have monopolised the whole thing; hence it is good - eighty per cent energy is saved - and that can be immediately used for witnessing, for seeing your inner world. hence in the East we call a person who is blind 'pragyanshakshu' - this word is untranslatable.

Remember, character is not of much value. What is valuable is consciousness - not conscience but consciousness. Conscience is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely that these are not your ideas.

Don`t allow the fear to overpower you, allow love to overpower you. Love comes from the center, fear always comes from the periphery; don`t allow this periphery to be dominant. And what have you got to lose? Even if there is no rebirth - there is rebirth - but I say even if there is no rebirth and you simply die, what have you got to lose? What will be lost?

Meditation is a state of no-mind! You can not find meditation through the mind .. because mind will perpetuate itself! You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind.

You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sadness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue - blissful, but still sad. The very word sad gives you wrong connotations - that something is wrong. This is your interpretation. To me, life in its totality is good.

The terrorism is not in the bombs, in your hands; the terrorism is in your unconscious.

All the buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact: Be — don´t try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance." Osho

When I say that you are gods and goddesses I mean that your possibility is infinite, your potentiality is infinite.

If you are unconscious, unaware, you are living only in the body, the mortal. And a person who lives for the body, in the body, and only for the body, lives in sin.

The ego does not, cannot live in the present, because the present is real and the ego is false - they never meet.

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new." and so in you the child your mother lives on and through your family continues to live... so at this time look after yourself and your family as you would your mother for through you all she will truly never die.

Once you are afraid of death you are bound to be afraid of life. That`s why I am talking about this Hasidic approach. The whole approach consists of methods, ways and means of how to die - the art of dying is the art of living also. Dying as an ego is being born as a non `ego; dying as a part is being born as a whole; dying as man is a basic step towards being born as a God.

Even towards yourself you have to be tremendously loving, because you too are god's form. One has to love oneself, one has to love all. Love is prayer. And the more you love, the more you will feel your consciousness expanding, becoming bigger - because whomsoever we love becomes part of our being, we include him. Mm? A bird on the wing, and we look at the bird with great love - suddenly we are not two: the bird is inside us and we are inside the bird.

With me, meditation is the only essential religion. And everything that follows it is virtue, because it comes of its own accord. You don't have to drag it, you don't have to discipline yourself for it. I have nothing to do with vegetarianism, but I know that if you meditate you are going to grow new perceptivity, new sensitivity, and you cannot kill animals.

Why wait for reasons to laugh? Life as it is should be reason enough to laugh. It is so absurd, it is so ridiculous. It is so beautiful, so wonderful! It is all sorts of things together. It is a great cosmic jokе.

Every moment you are different because you are not-- and unless you are, the divine cannot happen to you. To whom can it happen? You are not there.

To be present is to be prayerful.

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

It is your attachment that creates hell.

This word 'individual' is beautiful; it means indivisible. Right now as you are, you are divided. You are only many fragments clinging together anyhow without any center being there, without any master in the house, with only servants. And for a moment any servant can become the master.

You cannot force meditation, you can only create the situation. And if the situation is created rightly, then meditation happens automatically.

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.

Creativity has nothing to do with creating something, creativity is simply the presence of God. Those who are fortunate enough to come in contact with a buddha`s silence will be transformed; they will know what creativity is. He has not done a thing and miracles have happened. He has not uttered a word and the message has been heard. He has not moved, but he has transformed you. He has not even touched you, and you are no longer the same.

So if you are seeking something else in the name of creativity, then drop the idea of being creative. At least consciously, deliberately, do whatsoever you want to do. Never hide behind masks. If you really want to be creative, then there is no question of money, success, prestige, respectability. Then you enjoy your activity; then each act has an intrinsic value. You dance because you like dancing; you dance because you delight in it.

Truth needs meditative eyes. If you don't have meditative eyes, then the whole life is just dull dead facts, unrelated to each other, accidental, meaningless, a jumble, just a chance phenomenon. If you see the truth, everything falls into line, everything falls together in a harmony, everything starts having significance.

Freedom is the basic thing. Consciousness grows in freedom and starts dying, becomes paralyzed and crippled, when things are forced. And up to now, this has been done. This is the greatest crime that parents have always committed against children. They go on forcing the child.

By meditation we try to slow down the mechanism of projections. If the mechanism is slowed down and even for a single moment you begin to be aware of the gap - imageless gap of the screen - you have the glimpse. Suddenly you know that you have lived in the dreams of your own creation; and whatsoever you have known as the world was not the world really, it was YOUR world.

As meditation flowers, you find that on one hand truth has revealed to you all its mysteries and on the other blissfulness is showering all its treasures on you.

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find.

Meditation is to attain to a no-mindness, to a state of no-thought. In that opening of no-thought, in that kind of space, suddenly you become pure, innocent, uncorrupted. You have never been like that before nobody has ever been like that before nobody is going to be like that again. Unique. And to know that is to realize one's self. To know that is to know all. If you have not known that, whatsoever else you know is just rubbish, garbage.

Your question makes it clear that you have not understood what I mean when I say, 'Don't surrender to a person, surrender to love.' And love is never a relationship; this is your problem. Relationship is bound to be a bondage. In relationship either you have to surrender or the other has to surrender.

Life in its infinite forms exists as one organic unity. We are part of it: the part should feel reverence for the whole. That is the idea of vegetarianism. It simply means: don't destroy life. It simply means: life is God - avoid destroying it, otherwise you will be destroying the very ecology.

Remember, meditation will bring you more and more intelligence, infinite intelligence, a radiant intelligence. Meditation will make you more alive and sensitive; your life will become richer

I want my people to understand that because only man is capable to laugh, that means laughter is the highest point of consciousness, the highest point of understanding, the highest point of evolution. That's why I have started calling laughter "the prayer time."

My whole effort here is to keep you as non-serious as possible, for the simple reason that meditation, all kinds of meditation, can make you too serious and that seriousness will create a spiritual disease and nothing else. Unless a meditation brings you more laughter, more joy, more playfulness, avoid it. It is not for you.

When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don't know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.

You are not accidental. The world needs you. Without you, something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it.

Be contented with whatsoever is; never ask for more. The moment you ask for more you have asked for hell. The moment you ask for more you have asked for misery. The desire for more creates misery.

There is no possibility of relaxation if you have a mind and an ego; the ego is the center of the mind. You will be tense, you will remain tense. How to relax? Is there any way to relax? There is no way unless understanding is there. If you understand the nature of the world, the nature of the very existence, then who are you to worry, and why be in a worried state continuously?

But then you become closed. Then you start dying as far as your intelligence is concerned because intelligence needs the open sky, the wind, the air, the sun in order to grow, to expand, to flow. To remain alive it needs a constant flow; if it becomes stagnant it becomes slowly slowly a dead phenomenon.

All hopes are lies, all expectations of the future are lies.

Be very cautious about your object of love because that is going to decide your destiny

These tenses-past, present and future-are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past.