Rajneesh Quotes

It cannot be, because the way man has treated woman has been basically wrong. Only between two equal persons is there a possibility of relationship, because fear is not there - one can be open, one can be true, one can be honest. Only between two equal persons, when there is no fear, is there love. Love arises when fear has left you. When fear is there, love cannot enter: they are never together.

The man who has lived his life totally, intensely, passionately, without any fear - without any fear that has been created in you by the priests for centuries and centuries - if a person lives his life without any fear, authentically, spontaneously, death will not create any fear in him, not at all. In fact, death will come as a great rest. Death will come as the ultimate flowering of life. He will be able to enjoy death too; he will be able to celebrate death too.

Enlightenment will be now the beginning, not the end. Beginning of a non-ending process in all dimensions of richness.

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

If you are a meditator, as your meditation goes on becoming more and more luminous, your intelligence will be growing to the last breath of your life. Not only that, even after the last breath your intelligence will continue to grow - because you are not going to die, only your body will be dying. And the body has nothing to do with intelligence, mind has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is the quality of your awareness - more aware, more intelligent. And if you are totally aware, you are as intelligent as this whole existence is.

Zen is the only religion in the world that teaches sudden enlightenment. It says that enlightenment takes no time, it can happen in a single, split second.

Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny--he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally--you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you.

If you find a saint who has no sense of humour, then he is not a saint at all. Impossible. His very seriousness says that he has not achieved. Once you have some inner experiences of your own you become very playful, you become very innocent, childlike.

First examine what is constantly there in your mind, what is being repeated again and again. You don't have many thoughts. If you examine minutely you will see that you have only a few thoughts repeated again and again - maybe in new forms, new colors, new garments, new masks, but you have only a very few thoughts.

Marriage has become a battlefield where two persons are fighting for supremacy. Of course, the man has his own way: rough and more primitive. The woman has her own way: feminine, softer, a little more civilized, more subdued. But the situation is the same. Now psychologists are talking about marriage as an intimate enmity. And that's what it has proved to be. Two enemies are living together pretending to be in love, expecting the other to give love; and the same is being expected by the other. Nobody is ready to give - nobody has it. How can you give love if you don't have it?

Rajneeshism is creating a Noahs Ark of consciousness, remaining centered exactly in the middle of the cyclone. You can only escape within, and thats what I teach. I do not teach worship of God or any other ritual but only a scientific way of coming to your innermost core.

NOW is the only reality. All else is either memory or imagination.

I love this world because it is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that's why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead.

All this knowledge of the objective world is of no value in comparison to having a little glimpse of the inner sky and its beauty - its sunrises and sunsets, its days and nights, its blue sky and its stars. The outer then looks only a pale reflection of the inner. The inner becomes more real and the outer becomes just a shadow.

When you have emptied all content - thoughts, desires, memories, projections, hopes - when all is gone, for the first time you find yourself, because you are nothing but that pure space, that virgin space within you. Unburdened by anything, that contentless consciousness, that's what you are! Seeing it, realizing it, one is free. One is freedom, one is joy, one is bliss.

The meditative person can transform his sexuality without any antagonism. without any conflict. He is in deep friendship with all his energies, sexual or others; he is not in any fight. Why fight with your own energies? Love them, rejoice in them, and help them to transcend the lower forms, the animal forms. Let them move from the body towards the turiya, the fourth.

No ideology can help to create a new world or a new mind or a new human being -- because ideological orientation itself is the root cause of all the conflicts and all the miseries. Thought creates boundaries, thought creates divisions and thought creates prejudices; thought itself cannot bridge them. That's why all ideologies fail. Now man must learn to live without ideologies religious, political or otherwise. When the mind is not tethered to any ideology, it is free to move to new understandings. And in that freedom flowers all that is good and all that is beautiful.

Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered; it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.

In the moment of deep creativity you disappear, God again starts functioning.

You simply pour, it will come. And if it is not coming, nothing to be worried about - because a lover knows that to love is to be happy. If it comes, good; then the happiness is multiplied. But even if it never comes back, in the very act of loving you become so happy, so ecstatic, who bothers whether it comes or not? Love has its own intrinsic happiness. It happens when you love. There is no need to wait for the result. Just start loving. By and by you will see much more love is coming back to you. One loves and comes to know what love is only by loving.

An intelligent man, a man who has a little meditative consciousness, can make his life a beautiful piece of art, can make it so full of love and full of music and full of poetry and full of dance that there are no limitations for it. Life is not hard. It is man's stupidity that makes it hard.

The ego and the personality have to be dropped, then you will find individuality arising...a feeling of uniqueness. Yes, you are unique. Everybody else is also unique. In this world only unique people exist, so comparison is just stupid, because you alone are like yourself. There is nobody like you, so how to compare?

By 'Love' people mean a certain kind of monopoly understanding a simple fact: that the moment you possess a living being you have killed him.

`Freedom` means freedom from the mind. Then you are simply in a silence, and in that silence you melt, you merge with the whole. And to melt and merge with the whole is to be holy. Not by fasting, not by torturing, but by becoming one with the whole, one becomes holy.

Repentance can become a very, very deep phenomenon in you if you understand the responsibility. Then even a small thing, if it becomes a repentance-- not just verbal, not just on the surface; if it goes deep to the roots, if you repent from the roots; if your whole being shakes and trembles and cries, and tears come out; not only out of your eyes but out of every cell of your body, then repentance can become a transfiguration.

Drop envy and jealousy, otherwise there is no possibility - because love cannot exist where envy and jealousies exist. Then your search is only for a certain type of power: that in the name of love you are just trying to fulfill the ego. And it is arduous to drop, because love exists only when all the negative elements of the mind are dropped. It is very arduous.

Love cannot be taught, it can only be caught.

If whatsoever you have been living can be conveyed by words, that means you have not lived at all.

All expectations belong to the mind, all disciplines belong to the mind, all so-called saintliness and so-called sin belong to the mind. When there is no mind, there is no sinner and no saint, and the gift simply showers on you.

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method that cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being.

God is the very creative energy of existence - creativity rather than a creator. He is not the poet but the poetry, not the dancer but the dance, not the flower but the fragrance.

The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears - there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it.

You say that in heaven there is eternal beauty. The eternal beauty is here and now, not in heaven.

How can one become enlightened? One can, because one is enlightened - one just has to recognize the fact.

Wherever there is desire and ambition, you are in bondage.

Eat, drink, and be merry is perfectly good in itself; nothing is wrong in it. But it is not enough. Soon you will get tired of it. One cannot just go on eating, drinking, and merrying. Soon the merry-go-round turns into a sorry-go-round - because it is repetitive. Only a very mediocre mind can go on being happy with it.

Objective art is just the opposite. The man has nothing to throw, he is utterly empty, absolutely clean. Out of this silence, out of this emptiness, arises love, compassion, and out of this silence a possibility for creativity. This silence, this love, this compassion, these are the qualities of meditation.

There is no god, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man.

In the space of no-mind, truth descends like light

This moment! - this here-now - is forgotten when you start thinking in terms of achieving something. When the achieving mind arises, you lose contact with the paradise you are in.

I live my life based on 2 principles. One, I live as if today was my last day on earth. Two, I live today as if I am going to live forever.

Be creative in that sense and your creativity will become an offering to God. God has given you so many gifts, Garima; something HAS to be done just in deep thankfulness. But remember: with no motive, not as a means but as an end unto itself. Art for art's sake, and creation for creation's sake, and love for love's sake, and prayer for prayer's sake.

First the husband tried to make the wife his possession, and once she is a possession he loses interest. There is some hidden logic in it: his whole interet was to possess; now that is finished, and he would like to try some other woman so he can again go on another trip of possesion.

If you move in the present moment, the whole eternity is in your hands.

Marriage is a formality, a legal bondage. Love is of the heart; marriage is of the mind. That's why I am never in favor of marriage.

Learn to listen and trust your inner voice

Only man has become an outsider - and because of his own efforts. On his own, he has separated himself from existence.

What you eat is not the goal. What you are is the goal.