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 There is no purpose in life 

- All search for purpose is bound to fail.

To live purposelessly is the way of being religious -

"Life begins where fear ends."

- Unauthentic

"Life begins where logic ends."

-Osho, "Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy, #13, Q5"

"Life is a mystery: not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived."

-Osho, "Don't Bite My Finger, Look Where I'm Pointing, #5"

"Life is purposeless. Don′t be shocked. 

 The whole idea of purpose is wrong" 

-Osho, "Zen: Zest Zip Zap and Zing, #11, Q2"

"Remember it is a very fundamental law.

You may not get something that you want,

but you always get that which you need.

Somehow the universe goes on fulfilling your needs;

you may understand, you may not understand."

- Osho, “The Passion for the Impossible, #17”

"Respect life, revere life.

There is nothing more holy than life,

Nothing more divine than life."

-Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #29"

"These are the 'three L's' of my Philousia: life, love, laughter.

Life is only a seed, love is a flower, laughter is fragrance.

Just to be born is not enough,

one has to learn the art of living; that is the A of meditation.

Then one has to learn the art of loving; that is the B of meditation.

And then one has to learn the art of laughing; that is the C of meditation.

And meditation has only three letters: A,B,C."

-Osho, "Zen - Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, #15"

 I can only give you a direction 

"I am not going to give you a destination. I can only give you a direction - awake, throbbing with life; and unknown, always surprising, unpredictable. I'm not going to give you a map. I can give you only a great passion to discover. Yes, a map is not needed; great passion, great desire to discover is needed. Then I leave you alone. Then you go on your own. Move into the vast, into the infinite, and by and by, learn to trust it. Leave yourself in the hands of life, because life is God."

-Osho, "The Beloved, Vol 1, #6, Q1"

 My Message is very simple. 

 Live life as dangerously as possible 

Question :

Osho,

What is your Message?

My Message is very simple. Live life as dangerously as possible. Live life totally, intensely, passionately, because except for life there is no other God. Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead. That is wrong because God has never been there in the first place. How can he be dead? Life is, always has been, will always be. Allow yourself… and I repeat again, allow yourself to be possessed by life.

The so-called religions of the past have been telling you just the opposite. They say, “Renounce.” I say, “Rejoice.” They negate life, I affirm it. They say life is something wrong, illusory, and they create an abstract idea of God which is nothing but a projection of their own minds. And they worship that projection. It is so unintelligent, so utterly stupid that one wonders how millions of people have believed in such sheer nonsense.

That which is, is denied for that which is only an abstraction of the mind. God is only a word, but they say God is real. And life is a realit. You feel it in your heartbeat, it pulsates in your blood, it is all over the place — in the flowers, in the rivers, in the stars. And they say this is all MAYA, all illusion. They say that it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of.

And they create a God — and of course, everybody creates a God in his own image. So there have been thousands of gods. It is your imagination. You can make a God with four heads, you can make a God with a thousand hands. It is up to you, it is your game. And these people have been telling an poisoning the minds of others. They say, “BRAHMA SATYA” — God IS true, and “JAGAT MITYA” — the world, life is untrue.

I say to you, life is the only truth there is. There is no other God than life. So allow yourself to be possessed by life in all its forms, colors, dimensions — the whole rainbow, all the notes of music. If you can manage this simple thing… It is simple because it is only a question of let-go. Don’t push the river, let the river take you to the ocean. It is already on the way. You relax, don’t be tense and don’t try to be spiritual.

Don’t create any division between matter and spirit. Existence is one, matter and spirit are simply two sides of the same coin. Relax, rest, and go with the river. Be a gambler, don’t be a businessman, and you will know more of God because the gambler can risk. The gambler is non-calculative, he can put all that he has at stake.

But the thrill of the gambler when he stakes every thing and waits;… what is going to happen now? In that very moment a window can open. That very moment can become a transformation of the inner gestalt.

Be a drunkard, drunk with life, with the wine of existence. Don’t remain sober. The sober person remains dead. Drink the wine of life. It has so much poetry and so much love and so much juice. You can bring the spring any moment. Just give a call to the spring and let the sun and the wind and the rain enter into you.

It is because of THIS message that the spiritualists are against me because they think I am denying God. I am not denying God. For the first time I am bringing God into a real perspective, I am making him alive, I am bringing him closer to you, closer than your very heart. Because he’s your very being, nothing separate, nothing far away, nothing there in the sky, but herenow. I am trying to destroy the very idea of there and then.

My whole vision is of HERE AND NOW because there is no other space than the here, and no other time than the now. The spiritualists are against me because they think I am making people materialists. And the materialists are against me because they think I am taking people into meditative drunkenness.

The Shankaracharya would not agree with me because he says, “God is true and everything else is false.” I cannot agree with him. And Karl Marx will not agree with me because he says, “Religion is the opium of the people,” that religion is something utterly false, that there is no God, no spirit, no life except matter, that what you think is your consciousness is an phenomenon — just a by-product. The moment you die everything dies.

I tell you you are born and you will certainly die but something in you was before your birth, and something in you is there which will remain after your death. And that something is life. Life is eternal. [....]

-Osho, "Guida Spirituale, #8"

 I Teach Celebration 

"It(life) is no more a celebration. It should be a celebration. If nature is allowed to take its own course, it is bound to be a celebration."

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom,#21"

"I want to remind you that whether I am here or not the celebration has to continue. If I am not here, then it has to be more intense and it has to spread around the world.

Celebration is my religion.

Love is my message.

Silence is my truth."

-Osho, "Nansen: The Point of Departure, #10"

"Life should be a continuous celebration, a festival of lights the whole year round. Only then you can grow up, you can blossom. Transform small things into celebration."  

-Osho, "Beyond Enlightenment, #28"

 
"I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to SAMADHI -- everything is divine!"

-Osho, "Come, Yet Again Come, #2"

"That's my whole teaching, celebration; not worship but celebration. When you worship, you start making a hierarchy; the lower and the higher. When you worship you put something on top of other things. When you worship, something becomes sacred and something becomes profane. When you worship you divide, you split existence. Then something is praised but in the wake of it, something is condemned too. So worship is not religious. The god of the worshipper is not the true god, because to exist it needs a devil. Without a devil the god will not be possible. The more you praise the god, the more you have to condemn the devil. Then the world is tom apart into two enemy forces, and when you divide the world, you are also divided in it, you become split and schizophrenic. A part of you becomes evil and a part of you becomes holy, and then there is constant conflict, repression, and all joy is lost. A worshipper is basically ill-at-ease; he is dis-eased.

Celebration is a totally different dimension. When you celebrate, you celebrate all, you don't divide. For a celebrator, prayer is as beautiful as drinking tea. The tea is not profane and prayer is not separate; all is one. The church, the temple, the mosque and the pub are all one. Making love to a woman or a man or praying to a god is the same.

Celebration does not divide. It unites, it brings things together; it creates a togetherness in the world. The duality disappears and there is unity, and with unity there is joy because there cannot be any conflict. There is no struggle, nothing has to be overcome. All is overcome in the celebration itself. The worshipper has a goal; he has to attain it. The celebrator has no goal; he has attained it already. Worship is always future-oriented; celebration is present-oriented. You celebrate this moment, you worship some other moment."

-Osho, "The Sun Behind the Sun Behind the Sun, #12"

"Live as love, because that is the only way to live. The deeper your love, the deeper is your life. Think of love and life as synonymous. Remember that the quality of your love is going to be the quality of your life. If your love is shallow, your life is shallow. If your love is mean, your life is mean. If your love is great, unconditional, without demands, undominating, non-possessive, non-jealous, if your love is great, your life is great. It cordially becomes a song of joy."

-Osho, "Don't Let Yourself Be Upset by the Sutra, rather Upset the Sutra Yourself, #41"

"When I say celebrate -- because this life is a gift of existence to you.... You have not asked for it, you have not paid for it. You, in fact, don't deserve it. Still, existence is overflowing towards you, sharing all its joys. But you turn out to be such an idiot that when the sun is rising and the sky is full of colors -- a time to dance, to sing -- you are sitting in a dark church, gloomy, before a cross.

My people worship, but not in a church. They worship the beauty of existence.

A bird flying, a cloud wandering in the sky, the moon, the stars... Outside you can see the whole existence is in celebration, but you have closed your eyes to it. With closed eyes you are saying, "Ave Maria, Ave Maria," and you go on saying it.

Yes, all the religions are against me because I teach celebration, because I teach joy, because I teach comfort, I teach luxury, I teach richness."

-Osho, "From the False to the Truth, #4, Q1"

"That’s my whole teaching, celebration; not worship but celebration. When you worship, you start making a hierarchy; the lower and the higher. When you worship you put something on top of other things. When you worship, something becomes sacred and something becomes profane. When you worship you divide, you split existence. Then something is praised but in the wake of it, something is condemned too. So worship is not religious.

The god of the worshipper is not the true god, because to exist it needs a devil. Without a devil the god will not be possible. The more you praise the god, the more you have to condemn the devil. Then the world is tom apart into two enemy forces, and when you divide the world, you are also divided in it, you become split and schizophrenic.

A part of you becomes evil and a part of you becomes holy, and then there is constant conflict, repression, and all joy is lost. A worshipper is basically ill-at-ease; he is dis-eased. Celebration is a totally different dimension. When you celebrate, you celebrate all, you don’t divide. For a celebrator, prayer is as beautiful as drinking tea. The tea is not profane and prayer is not separate; all is one. The church, the temple, the mosque and the pub are all one. Making love to a woman or a man or praying to a god is the same.

Celebration does not divide. It unites, it brings things together; it creates a togetherness in the world. The duality disappears and there is unity, and with unity there is joy because there cannot be any conflict. There is no struggle, nothing has to be overcome. All is overcome in the celebration itself. The worshipper has a goal; he has to attain it. The celebrator has no goal; he has attained it already. Worship is always future-oriented; celebration is present-oriented. You celebrate this moment, you worship some other moment.

You worship Christ; now two thousand years have passed. You worship the past -- Krishna, Mohammed, Rama -- or you worship the future -- heaven, god -- which is going to happen. But the celebrator worships this moment, he lives this moment. That is his worship; he lives it totally."

- Osho, “The Sun Behind the Sun Behind the Sun, #12”

Become both love and meditation. Allow that synthesis to happen in you.

The old religions are religions of renunciation. They teach people anti-life attitudes, they are life-negative. they encourage people to renounce life, to escape to the monasteries, to the mountains, to the deserts.

My religion is a religion of celebration, festivity. I teach not renunciation, but deep rejoicing. Rejoice in life because life is synonymous with god. There is no other god than life. I am life-affirmative. I am a total yes-sayer to life and to all that it implies, from the very ordinary things to the very extraordinary. The whole spectrum has to be accepted with gratitude -- loved, lived, gone through, transcended, but not renounced.

Yes, There comes a moment of transcendence, but that comes through living it, experiencing it, going through it. That transcendence comes of its own accord, not through any effort. when you force something you become ugly. that's why your old so-called saints are ugly. they don't have the grace, the beauty, the joy, the splendour of the divine. they are like parrots: repeating, reciting scriptures, torturing themselves. In the name of religion they are really practising masochists, and teaching others also to torture themselves.

The whole of religion up to now has remained pathological, sado-masochistic: torture yourself and teach others to torture themselves. The more you torture yourself, the greater a saint you are, the more holy you are; the less you torture yourself of course, the smaller a saint you are. You will also have a place in heaven but just near the gate, not very close to the palace of god -- that is impossible. Around him will be real torturers.

He must be getting tired of these people, unless he himself is a sadist and enjoys all this torture: people fasting, lying down on a bed of nails, hitting their own body with spears, wounding themselves, creating as many wounds as possible in the body and never allowing those wounds to heal. Just think of a go surrounded by these people -- this god must be a sadist! [....]

God is not a sadist and the mahatmas need not be masochists. They are ill and pathological people. My sannyasins have to be whole; they have to live as totally, as intensely, as passionately as possible. They have to rejoice in life.

Bliss is our goal, bliss is our ultimate truth, and we are going to find it dancing, celebrating. We will celebrate life, we will celebrate even death – we will celebrate everything!

Celebration is the keyword if somebody want to understand me and my philosophy, my religion, my way of life.

-Osho, “The Imprisoned Splendor, #29”

 God never gives you anything cheap - 

 because given without any effort on your part, 

 you will never be able to rejoice in it. 

Life is possible only through challenges. Life is possible only when you have both good weather and bad weather, when you have both pleasure and pain, when you have both winter and summer, day and night. When you have both sadness and happiness, discomfort and comfort.

Life moves between these two polarities.

Moving between these two polarities you learn how to balance.

Between these two wings you learn how to fly to the farthest star.

If you choose comfort, convenience, you choose death. That's how you have missed real happiness: you have chosen convenience instead. It is very convenient to follow the parental voice, convenient to follow the priest, convenient to follow the church, convenient to follow the society and the state.

It is very easy to say yes to all these authorities — but then you never grow.
You are trying to get life's treasure too cheap. It requires that you have to pay for it.

Be an individual and pay for it. In fact, if you get something without paying for it, don't accept it — that is insulting to you. don't accept it; that is below you.

Say: "I will pay for it — only then will I accept it." In fact, if something is given to you without your being ready for it, without your being capable for it, without your being receptive for it, you will not be able to possess it for long. You will lose it somewhere or other. You will not be able to appreciate its value.

God never gives you anything cheap — because given without any effort on your part, you will never be able to rejoice in it.

Choose the hard way. And to be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you.

Nobody wants you to be on your own. Hence, you go on missing happiness, you go on missing direction, and, naturally, meditation has become impossible, concentration seems to be almost non-existent. You cannot concentrate, you cannot meditate, you cannot be with anything for more than a split second. How can you be blissful?

Choose your own destiny. I cannot show it to you, what your destiny is — nobody else knows it, not even you. You have to sense it, and you have to move slowly.

First, drop all that is borrowed on your being and then you will be able to feel. It always leads you to the right place, to the right goal. The thing that you call conscience right now, it is not your conscience.

It is a substitute — pseudo-conscience, fake, counterfeit. Drop it! and by its very dropping, you will be able to see hidden behind it your real conscience which has been waiting for you. Once that conscience comes into your consciousness your life has a direction, meditation follows you like a shadow.

-Osho, "A Sudden Clash of Thunder, #7"

 There is no purpose in life 

Life is purposeless. Don′t be shocked. The whole idea of purpose is wrong - it comes out of greed. Life is a sheer joy, a playfulness, a fun, a laughter, to no purpose at all. Life is its own end, it has no other end. The moment you understand it you have understood what meditation is all about. It is living your life joyously, playfully, totally, and with no purpose at the end, with no purpose in view, no purpose there at all. Just like small children playing on the sea beach, collecting seashells and colored stones - for what purpose? There is no purpose at all.

-Osho, "Zen: Zest Zip Zap and Zing, #11, Q2"

You have to come to the understanding that there is no meaning as such in life and cannot be. Life is a meaningless energy and there is no need to find any meaning because all meanings are false, projected, man-made, do they are all lies.

This is very difficult to accept because it is very shattering. But once you understand it, many problems will disappear and you will be clear about your life.

Life is purposeless, meaningless. It is not going anywhere. There is nothing to be achieved. One has to live moment to moment but of sheer delight.

There is no need to connect one moment to another moment by a certain imposed meaning, because there is none. Meaning is a lie. Somebody is living to impress people, somebody is living for political power. Somebody is living for money, somebody is trying to achieve God. And somebody is going to work out his liberation.

-Osho, "Beloved of My Heart, #20"

There is no purpose in life. All search for purpose is bound to fail. To live purposelessly is the way of being religious; religion is not a purpose. Politics is a purpose, business is a purpose; religion is not a purpose. What is the purpose of a rose flower? What is the purpose of a song? So is the case with religion: it has no goal. Life is not goal-oriented. Logic is goal oriented. Your problem is not that you don't have a purpose in life; your problem is that you want to have a purpose in life.

That is your problem: you cannot allow this non-purposiveness of life; you want to enforce some purpose on it. You can't allow this directionless flow. You are a coward! Cowards always want to narrow things down into a certain purpose, into a certain direction, into a certain goal, then they are at ease. It needs great bravery to live without purpose, it needs great heart to live without any direction, just to live for no reason at all, to live without any motivation, for the sheer joy of living!

If you search for purpose then this is not the place for you. But one thing you should keep in mind: there are many people around the world who will say 'We will give you purpose', but you will be deceived again and again.

... Because what can they do? They are promising something which is against life. Not that they are deceiving; they may just be trying to help you. They may be good people, they may not be cheats, charlatans; I am not saying that. They may be do-gooders, but they do harm... not that they intend to but they do, because they keep on helping your illusions. This is a place where we destroy illusions. I don't give you any hope, because there is no hope possible. I can only make you alert enough to live without any hope and then there is great joy, because with hope comes future. with future comes anxiety. With hope you start losing the present and you start postponing life. And this whole idea that there has to be a purpose is utterly meaningless. Even if somebody says 'This is the purpose,' then again the problem will arise, 'What is the purpose of this?' Somebody says 'To attain to god is the purpose'; but why? What is the purpose of attaining to god? The question remains the same; ad infinitum. A thousand and one answers can be given but the question is not solved. You simply go on pushing the question a little further away, but it is there and sooner or later you will be encountering it. Why not encounter it right now? Why waste time? There is no purpose in life, and that's why life is beautiful. If there were purpose, life would be American and would not be beautiful at all! (some laughter) It would be a business.

-Osho, “The Sun Behind the Sun Behind the Sun, #27”

Life is neither. It is neither meaningful nor is it meaningless. If really there is no meaning, how can life be meaningless? If there is no purpose, how can life be purposeless? For life to be purposeless there must be a purpose. For life to be meaningless, for even the word 'meaningless' to be meaningful, there must be a meaning.

Life is neither. It simply is there in sheer beauty, with no purpose. Look at the trees. Look at the sunlight. Just... it is. What is the purpose of the sun rising every day in the morning? What is the purpose of trees blossoming? What is the purpose of birds singing? No purpose. I don't say purposelessness; I simply say no purpose. It is.

Drop your search for meaning, because that search either will destroy your whole life and you will live in misery, or, one day if you become aware, then another anguish will surround you -- the anguish of meaninglessness. [....]

Life is not a home, but it is not homelessness either. It is. Simply it is. Enjoy it. Celebrate it. It is not going to become a home for you, but it is not homelessness either. The very search for a home makes life look as if it is homelessness. Drop the search.

-Osho, “Nirvana - The Last Nightmare, #1”

 Life in itself has no Meaning, 

 Life is an opportunity to create meaning. 

"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. Meaning is a dance, not a rock. Meaning is music. You will find I only if you create it. Remember it.

Millions of people are living meaningless lives because of this utterly stupid idea that meaning has to be discovered. As if it is already there. All that you need is to just pull the curtain, and behold! meaning is here. It is not like that. So remember: Buddha finds the meaning because he creates it. I found it because I created it. God is not a thing but a creation. And only those who create find."

- Osho, "The Perfect Master, Vol 2, #4"

"Life in itself is not meaningful. It is meaningful only if you can sing a song of the eternal, if you can release some fragrance of the divine, of the godly, if you can become a lotus flower -- deathless, timeless. If you can become pure love, if you can beautify this existence, if you can become a blessing to this existence, only then does life have significance; otherwise it is pointless. It is like an empty canvas: you can go on carrying it your whole life and you can die under its weight, but what is the point? Paint something on it!

Meaning has to be created in life; meaning is not given already. You are given freedom, you are given creativity, you are given life. All that is needed to create meaning is given. All the essential ingredients of meaning are given, but meaning is not given, meaning has to be created by you. You have to become a creator in your own right. And when you became a creator in your own right, you participate with God, you become a part of God.“

- Osho,  "The Book of Wisdom, #17"

There is no need for another world - this is more than enough. This is too beautiful, it cannot be improved upon - enjoy it! And in enjoying it you will find god. The old religions were telling people to renounce life. I say rejoice in life because god is life; if you rejoice only then will you find him.

- Osho, "Going All the Way, #16"

“To me, religion simply means a dimension of love. I am here to show you the beauty of life, the grandeur that surrounds you. From that very grandeur you will have your first glimpses of God.

I am here to seduce you into a love of life; to help you to become a little more poetic; to help you die to the mundane and to the ordinary so that the extraordinary explodes in your life.“

- Osho, "The Art of Dying, #8"

 Life exist through duality 

"Life exists through duality. The very process of life depends on polar opposites. Life is like a river: for the river to exist, two banks are needed. The river cannot exist without two banks to support it, just as the bird cannot fly without two wings and you cannot walk without two legs.

Life needs duality. Everywhere you will find it, till the ultimate arrives. The ultimate, the absolute, or call it God, transcends duality. But then life disappears. Then you become invisible. Then you have no form, no name; then you have gone beyond. That is nirvana.

These two things have to be understood: life cannot exist without polar opposites. Life is a dialectical process -- between man and woman, between darkness and light, between life and death, between good and bad. Life cannot exist without this duality; manifestation is not possible without duality.

Hence, another vision becomes possible to be understood: if duality disappears, life as you know it disappears. Life in time and space disappears. Then another door opens. You move to another plane: the plane of the invisible, the plane of the mysterious, the plane where there is no form, no name. All remains, but unmanifest. That is called nirvana, moksha: the ultimate state of samadhi where all disappears.

If duality is the way of life, then nonduality is the way of religion -- because religion is nothing but an art of transcending the manifested form and going into the unmanifest, going to the original source from where we come and for which we long. Because we belong there."

- Osho,  "Unio Mystica, Vol 1, #5"

 Easy is right and right is easy 

"Remember Chuang Tzu's statement, "Easy is right and right is easy." And when you forget both, what is right and what is easy, you have arrived at the ocean.

The ocean is not far away, Leena. But your ego is a frozen block -- it needs melting. Love melts it, fear makes it more frozen, trust melts it. All that the people who are trying to find themselves have to do, is remain melted and allow the river to move on its own. You should not be the guide; the river needs no guide. Its very nature is to reach to the ocean. It is not an effort, it is its intrinsic quality. [....]

Be at ease, have your coffee. And there is no need to run towards the ocean. Just slowly enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the people, having a trust in your heart that every river has always reached the ocean. And you cannot be the exception. Existence does not allow any exceptions. You will also reach the ocean."

- Osho, “The Razors Edge, #18"

 Mistakes are immensely necessary. 

"My whole effort here is to make you aware that the people who cause perversions are not the people who are going to help you out of them. They are living respectable lives – rabbis, sages, popes, bishops, cardinals – on your guilt. Let the guilt disappear from humanity and you will see all the religions disappearing so quickly…. It is just as when the early morning sun rises, and you can see that in the cool night, drops of water have accumulated on the petals of roses, on the leaves of trees. They are there, but as the sun rises they start evaporating; just within a few minutes they are gone.

Once guilt is dropped religions will simply evaporate; they cannot remain on the earth even a single moment more. It is guilt that keeps giving them food, sustenance; hence, the idea of accepting yourself arose. It is a humanitarian idea. It has come from those people who have been thinking, ”How has man become unnecessarily miserable? He has made himself miserable just by fightingagainst himself.” They created the idea of accepting yourself. It was good for its time, but it is notenough. It is the minimum that you can do. But when you can do the maximum, why stop at the minimum? When you can dance to abandon, then why go on just moving your body a little, as if under compulsion, ashamed: ”What am I doing?” Accepting yourself is just like that: smiling, and yet still feeling, ”What am I doing?…”

Something is negative in ”accepting” yourself. The very word, acceptance, means there has been rejection before, a denial, and now you are trying to cover that denial, that rejection, with acceptance. No, I don’t want this kind of idea to be implanted in you.

My whole vision is of a human being, totally alive, intensely alive, enjoying everything that life makes available, and enjoying it with grace, with gratitude towards existence. And that’s what loving yourself means.

It means that you have thrown all the garbage of religious rejection, repression. You have dropped all the ideals that they have given to you; you are now standing on your own as if you are Adam and Eve. No priest has been there before, no religion has been there before; you are uncorrupted, unspoiled, clean.

Start like Adam and Eve – just think of the idea!

Why bother about the past? Forget about it. You are the first man.

Start living as if you don’t know how to live. Nobody is there to teach you, no guidelines exist. No books exist which say how to do this, how to do that. You are just left alone on an island.Everything is available: Intelligence is within you, instinct is within you, intellect is within you, intuition is within you.

Now start moving. Yes, perhaps you may commit a few mistakes – there is no wrong in it, that’s how one learns. Perhaps a few times you may fall – nothing to be worried about. You can get up again; and next time you will be walking more carefully, more alert, so you have gained something out of that fall. Out of each mistake, each error, you are constantly gaining something.

Errors are valuable. Mistakes are immensely necessary. If you are somehow protected from committing mistakes and errors, you will never grow, you will never learn a thing, you will never mature. So behave as if you are the first here. The whole world is available to you to explore. And in exploring it you will be surprised that simultaneously your inner world is being explored too, because as you explore the outer world your insight becomes deeper, your intelligence becomes sharper, your awareness becomes keener. And a perfectly fulfilled man is one who explores both the outer and the inner, and who, at the moment of death, can have a smile on his face: he lived totally, he is happy that he lived totally, he burned his life’s candle from both ends together.

When you can burn your candle from both ends together, why be miserly and burn just one end?When you can enjoy double the light and two flames together, enjoy it – because enjoyment is not simply enjoyment. Every joy is growth and brings you closer to blissfulness, to ecstasy.

And unless you have attained to a state of ecstasy where you can say, ”I have arrived, I am fulfilled…. The purpose of existence in me is completed. If now death comes, it is welcome. Now that is the only thing that I don’t know.” A man who can say, ”Death is now the only thing that I don’t know – life I have known,” will be enthusiastic about death, will be eager to meet it, would like to have a plunge into it.

And this is the paradox of life:

One who is ready to die, never dies.

One who is himself ready to jump into death, for him death disappears.

Death is only for cowards.

Death is only for those who have not lived, who have really remained dead their whole lives.

Death is not for the living.

The more alive you are, the farther away is death.

If you are totally living, there is no death:

Death exists not.

Then there is only life, life eternal."

- Osho, “From Misery to Enlightenment, #10”

 Every mistake is a part of learning.   

“Never ask anybody what is right and what is wrong. Life is an experiment to find out what is right, what is wrong. Sometimes you may commit what is wrong, but that will give you the experience of it, that will make you aware of it that is has to be avoided. Sometimes you may do something good and immensely you will be benefited. The rewards are not beyond life, in heaven and hell. They are here and now.

Each action brings its result immediately. Just be alert and watch. I call the man mature who has watched and found himself what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad. And by finding it by himself, he has a tremendous authority. He knows it absolutely. The whole world may say something else, it makes no difference to him. The whole world may be against him -- it is not a question of voting. He has his experience and that is decisive. One thing.

Second thing: the man who has found maturity by his own experiments -- and life gives you so many opportunities, every moment they are available. Don't miss any opportunity. Good or bad, don't decide beforehand. Go through the experience and let the decision come afterwards. Let the experience be your conclusion. This will help you to know one thing more that `don't interfere with others'. This will give you the insight that `help others to be themselves'. Tell them to experiment, tell them it is not wrong to commit mistakes. Because every mistake is a part of learning. [....]

Each individual's way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation. You loose originality. So whoever asks you, "What vision your master has given to you?", tell them that he has given freedom to us. And he has provoked and challenged us to find our original face. And that is possible only if you do not imitate."

- Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 6, #12"

 I Celebrate Myself, and 

 I want you also to Celebrate Yourself, 

"My sannyasins celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my way of living - not renunciation but rejoicing. Rejoice in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of Existence.

The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word "God" exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you -- in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life.

I teach love for life.

I teach the art of living your life totally, of being drunk with the divine THROUGH life. I am not an escapist. All your old religions have been teaching you escapism -- they were all in a certain sense hip. The word "hippie" has to be understood. It simply means one who escapes from the battle of life, who shows his hips...! All your old religions are hippie! They have shown their hips. They could not accept the challenge of life, they could not confront and encounter life. They were cowards; they escaped to the mountains, to the monasteries.

But even if you escape to the mountains and to the monasteries, how can you leave yourself behind? You are part of life. Life pulsates in your blood, life breathes in you, life is your very being! Where can you escape? And all those efforts to escape, considered correctly, are suicidal. Your monks, your nuns, your mahatmas, your so-called saints, were all suicidal people; they were trying gradual suicide. Not only were they suicidal, they were cowards too -- cowards because they could not even commit suicide in a single blow. They were committing suicide gradually, in installments; by and by, slowly they were dying. And we have respected these unhealthy people, these unwholesome people, these insane people. They were against God because they were against life.

I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to SAMADHI - everything is divine!"

-Osho, "Come, Come, Yet Again Come, Talk #2"

 Live dangerously 

- Life begins where fear ends -

Life is basically insecure. Only death is secure. Life insurance is a contradiction in terms; there can be only death insurance. Life is an adventure, unpredictable. Hence one has to live it arduously. Life is dangerous; only death is safe. So the people who want to live safely die before their death, and the people who want to live without any danger don't live at all.

Life means danger, life means risk. Life means going always from the known to the unknown, from one peak to another peak, always climbing peaks which have not been climbed before, always moving into the uncharted sea with no maps, with no guidelines. Only then you live ecstatically, and only then you know what life is.

Through living dangerously one becomes integrated. Through living a life of insecurity one passes through fire and becomes pure gold.

The only way to become a master of oneself is to go into the unknown, unafraid or in spite of all the fears. Buddha invites you for an arduous life. That's what sannyas is all about.

- Osho, “The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 9, #7”

Living dangerously means whenever there are alternatives, beware: don't choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable, the honorable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart. Choose something that you would like to do in spite of any consequences. The coward thinks of consequences.

- Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #30"

To live dangerously means to live life as if each moment is its own end. Each moment has its own intrinsic value. And you are not afraid. And you know death is there and you accept the fact that death is there, and you are not hiding against death. In fact, you go and encounter death. You enjoy those moments of encountering death — physically, psychologically, spiritually.

Enjoying those moments where you come directly in contact with death, where death becomes almost a reality, is what I mean when I say live dangerously. Love brings you face to face with death. Meditation brings you face to face with death. Coming to a master is coming to your own death. Facing somebody who has disappeared, is entering an abyss in which you can be lost, and you can become an anagamin.

Those who are courageous, they go headlong. They search all opportunities of danger. Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies. Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer. And not only in the outside seas they surf; they surf in their innermost seas. And not only on the outside they climb Alps and Himalayas; they seek inner peaks. But remember one thing — never forget the art of risking, never never.

Always remain capable of risking. And wherever you can find an opportunity to risk, never miss it, and you will never be a loser. Risk is the only guarantee for being truly alive.

- Osho, "The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2, #4"

Don't try to understand life. Live it! Don't try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know -- and that knowing will come out of your experiencing. That knowing will never destroy the mystery: the more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known. Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved. experienced.

- Osho, "The Art of Dying, #8"

Only the eagle knows the aloneness of the heights, the silence of the heights, the dangers of the heights. But without knowing dangers, one never grows. Zarathustra's basic teaching is: live dangerously. Follow the eagle to faraway skies; don't be afraid, because your inner self is immortal. Those who are afraid of danger are the people who don't know their immortal self. Their fear shows their ignorance and nothing else.

- Osho, "Zarathustra - The Laughing Prophet, #1"

To become enlightened means to live this moment without any hesitation, without being half-hearted. Put everything at stake. Be a gambler! Risk everything, because the next moment is not certain. So why bother? Why be concerned?

Live dangerously! Live joyously! Live without fear, live without guilt; live without any fear of hell or any greed for heaven. Just live! Death is not creating any illusion for you, it is your mind. Put this mind aside, so that it cannot disturb your dance, your song, your music.

- Osho, "From the False to the Truth, #28"

 That is the most miserable life: 

 where there is no peak, no valley. 

Question :

The peaks are getting pretty wonderful, but the valleys are deeper and darker than ever. finding balance seems impossible. what to do?

There is no need to do anything. You are not to find balance, balance will find you. You simply move. When the valley comes, you go into the valley. When darkness surrounds you, enjoy it, feel blissful in the velvety touch of it. Move into it, into the infinite magnificence of it. Darkness has a soothing quality which no light can have. The valley is a rest: like the night, like death.

No need to try to find balance. The balance will find you. You simply move into the valley. When the valley comes, you accept it. You not only accept it, you welcome it. You enjoy it, you delight in it — darkness is beautiful. And when the valley goes and you move towards the peak, that too is perfectly beautiful. That is beautiful: the light, the morning, the sun.

But don’t cling to either. Clinging creates trouble; through clinging, anguish comes. If you cling to the peak and you say, “I would not like to go to the valley again,” then you will be in trouble. Then at the very peak you have created the valley. Then, already, the suffering has started. You are afraid: fear has entered, the agony is already there. You are no longer happy. You have destroyed the peak.

When you are in the valley you will suffer that “now the valley has come.” You will suffer the valley, and you will not be able to enjoy the peak. This is the ordinary situation.

When you are happy, you become afraid. Is this happiness going to stay or will it be gone? Now fear eats away at your happiness like a worm and poisons it. You are happy and yet you are not happy. Something is already dead: you have become apprehensive of the future. When you are unhappy, of course, you are unhappy. When you are happy you cannot be happy, so how can you be happy when you are unhappy? The whole life becomes a vicious circle of unhappiness.

Now, listen! When you are at the peak, dance. I know, and you know, that the peak is not going to last forever. There is no need. If it lasts forever, it will be such a tension that you will not be able to tolerate it. It will be such an excitement that you will not find any rest in it. It will be dangerous, it will kill you. No need for it to last forever.

But while it lasts, dance, enjoy, sing — knowing well that it is going to he lost again. Knowing it, one has to enjoy it even more before it is lost. And remember, this is the miracle: when you enjoy it more it lasts longer. When you are happy in it and dancing, it forgets to go away from you. It lingers with you. When YOU don’t cling to it, it clings to you. This is the whole secret.

And when it is gone, then too it is not gone. It has given you such a deep blissfulness that now you go into the valley and you can rest in darkness. Then the valley becomes relaxation and the peak becomes enjoyment. Then the peak becomes the day and the valley becomes the night: then the peak becomes activity and the valley becomes passivity.

One has to enjoy the night also. That is the only way to enjoy the day. And if you enjoy the day, a great night comes with great rest. It refreshes you, rejuvenates you.

Always remember: the greater the peak, the greater will be the valley. Otherwise how can the peak be greater? If you go to the Himalayas you will find that the greater the peak the greater the valley. If you are afraid of the valley, then don’t ask for the peaks. Then move on plain ground. There will be no peak and no valley.

That is the most miserable life: where there is no peak, no valley. One simply vegetates. It is not a life. One simply drags. It is a monotony. It is not a dialogue; it is a monologue. A dialogue needs duality, a dialogue needs contradiction, a dialogue needs polarity, a dialogue needs paradox. And within the paradox, you move from one pole to another.

Don’t be worried about balance. Balance will seek you; I will see that balance seeks you. You simply do this much: while on the peak, dance; while in the valley, rest. Accept the valley; accept the peak. Both are parts of the one whole and you cannot deny one part. They are two aspects of the same coin.

Remember, one who enjoys more is bound to suffer more because he becomes very sensitive. But suffering is not bad. If you understand it rightly, suffering is a cleansing. If you understand it rightly, sadness has a depth to it which no happiness can ever have. A person who is simply happy is always superficial. A person who has not known sorrow and has not known sadness, has not known the depths. He has not touched the bottom of his being; he has remained just on the periphery. One has to move within these two banks. Within these two banks flows the river.

And I tell you, balance will seek you if you accept both and you live both. Whatsoever happens, you welcome it. Suddenly. one day you will see that balance has come. And when balance comes to you, it is something totally different than that balance which you can force upon yourself.

If you force the balance, it will be a.sort of control. A control is always artificial, a control is always ugly. Control has a violence in it. It is forced, artificial. When balance comes to you, it is a happening. Suddenly it descends on you. Heavens open and the spirit of God, like a dove, descends in you.

All that is great always comes. All that YOU make is always small, petty. It is never great. All that you do is going to be lesser than you. All that is great — you have to allow it. Balance will find you. God will find you. You just be ready. And this is readiness: to accept whatsoever comes, to accept it with gratefulness. Even sorrow, even sadness. even the valley… dark.

– Osho, “Come Follow to you, Vol 2”

 Open all the doors, all the windows. 

One should not become attached to one colour, to one way of life. One should remain flexible, available to all the possibilities. One should keep all the doors open. One should not be afraid to commit errors. That fear cripples many, paralyses many, so they only open a small door of their life, afraid that if they open all the doors they may not be able to manage. Maybe so many things will start happening and they will not be in control. There is no need for you to be in control. Open all the doors, all the windows. Let the sun and the rains and the wind come. Let God come in as many ways as he wants: through music, through poetry, through dance, through song, through love, through meditation, through work, through play. Let all the doors be open.

There are people who are too much in the world; there are people who have left the world and have become ascetics. Both lack balance. One should be able to fast and to feast both. One should be able sometimes to be an ascetic and sometimes, licentious, indulgent. One should not become fixed. Fluidity is the quality of life, and if you can have all the colours, why choose a few? Why choose one? When all the dimensions are possible, why become one-dimensional?

One-dimensional man is ugly, sad, miserable, One-dimensionality is what hell is. Multi-dimensionality is what heaven is. Heaven is a rainbow!

-Osho, "The Open Door, #3"

 Experience life in all possible ways 

Experience life in all possible ways -- good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don't be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become. Search for all possible alternatives, move in all directions, be a wanderer, a vagabond of the world of life and existence. And don't miss any opportunity to live.

Don't look back. Only fools think of the past -- fools who do not have the intelligence to live in the present. And only fools imagine about the future, because they don't have the courage to live in the present. Forget the past, forget the future, this moment is all. This moment has to become your prayer, your love, your life, your death, your everything. This is it.

And live courageously, don't be cowards. Don't think of consequences; only cowards think of consequences. Don't be too result-oriented; people who are result-oriented miss life. Don't think of goals, because goals are always in the future and far away, and life is herenow, close by.

And don't be too purposive. Let me repeat it: don't be too purposive. Don't always bring in the idea, "What is the purpose of it?" because that is a strategy created by your enemies, by the enemies of humanity, to poison your very source of life. Ask the question, "What is the purpose of it?" and everything becomes meaningless.

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, #14, Q1"

 Life is a Mystery. 

 It can be Lived but it cannot be Solved. 

Question :

Why is this life, which has no end and no beginning, so mysterious? please explain.

Now, not only do I give you absurd answers, you have started asking absurd questions. Why is this life so mysterious? How am I supposed to know? It is so! It is simply a fact, I am not talking about theories. I'm not saying that it is my theory that life is mysterious -- then you could ask why. It is simply so. The trees are green. You ask why. The trees are green because they are green. There is no question of why. If you can ask why and the question can be answered, then life will not be a mystery. If the why can be answered, then life cannot be a mystery. Life is a mystery because no why is relevant.

Why is this life, whic has no end and no beginning, so mysterious?

Now you make me feel guilty, as if I am responsible for life having no beginning and no end. It should have. I agree perfectly with you, but what to do? It has no beginning and no end.

[....]

Try to understand life and you will become a mess. Forget all about understanding. Just live it and you will understand it. The understanding is not going to be intellectual, theoretical; the understanding is going to be total. The understanding is not going to be verbal; it is going to be non-verbal. That is the meaning when we say life is a mystery. It can be lived but it cannot be solved.

You can know what it is, but you cannot say what it is. That is the meaning of mystery.

When we say that life is a mystery, we are saying that life is not a problem. A problem can be solved. A mystery is that which cannot be solved. Insolubility is unbuilt. And it is good that life cannot be solved, otherwise what would you do then? Just think of it. If life is not a mystery and somebody comes and explains it to you -- then what will you do? There will be nothing left except to commit suicide. Even that will look meaningless.

Life is a mystery; the more you know it, the more beautiful it is. A moment comes when suddenly you start living it, you start flowing with it. An orgasmic relationship evolves between you and life, but you cannot figure out what it is. That's the beauty of it, that's its infinite depth.

And yes, there is no beginning and no end. How can there be any beginning to life and any end to life? Beginning will mean that something came out of nothing, and end will mean that something was there and went into nothing. That will be an even bigger mystery. When we say life has no beginning we simply say it has always been there. How can there be a beginning? Can you mark a line and say that at this moment life started, as Christian theologians used to say? Just four thousand years before Jesus Christ, they say, life started on a certain Monday. Of course, it must have been in the morning. But how can you call it Monday if there was no Sunday before it? And how can you call it morning if there was no night before it? Just think of it.

No, you cannot make a mark, that is foolish. It is not possible to mark a line because even to mark a line something is needed. Something is needed to precede it, otherwise demarcation is not possible. You can mark a line if there are two things, but if there is only one thing how can you mark a line? The fence around your house is possible because there is a neighbour. If there is no neighbour, nothing beyond your fence, the fence cannot exist. Just think of it. If there is absolutely nothing beyond your fence, your fence will fall down into nothing. How can it exist? Something is needed beyond the fence to hold it.

If on a certain Monday life started, a Sunday is needed to precede it. Otherwise the Monday will fall, topple down and disappear. And in the same way there is no possibility of any end. Life is, life simply is. It has been, it will be. It is eternity. And don't start thinking about it. Otherwise you will be missing it, because all the time that you waste in thinking about it, is simply waste. Use that time, use that space, use that energy to live it.

- Osho, "The Art of Dying"

Life is not a problem but a mystery. For science life is a problem, but for religion it is a mystery. A problem can be solved, a mystery cannot be solved - it can be lived but it cannot be solved. Religion offers no solutions, no answers. Science offers answers; religion has none.

This is the basic difference, and before you make any effort to understand what religion is, this basic difference in the very approach of a religious mind and a scientific mind is to be deeply understood.

When I say that science looks at life as a problem, as something which can be solved, the whole approach becomes intellectual. Then the mind is involved, not you. You are out of it. The mind manipulates, the mind tackles, the mind penetrates and analyses. The mind argues, doubts, experiments, but you as a totality are out of it. Hence this very puzzling phenomenon: a scientist may be a very keen intellectual as far as his own department of research is concerned, but in ordinary life he will be just as ordinary a human being as anyone else - nothing special, just ordinary. In his own branch of knowledge he may be a genius, but in life he is just ordinary.

- Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Vol 2, #25"

Life is not a problem. If you are trying to solve it you will miss it. The door is open, it has never been locked. If the door was locked, then scientists would find the solution. If the door was locked, then philosophers may find a system to open it. But the door is not locked, so only faith can go -- without any solution, without any readymade answer. Push the door open and get out.

Life is not a riddle to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. It is a deep mystery, so trust and allow yourself to enter into it. No debate can be of any help -- with somebody else, or with yourself inside the mind -- no debate. All debates are futile and stupid.

- Osho, "No Water, No Moon, #2"

Life is in living. It is not a thing, it is a process. There is no way to attain to life except by living it, except by being alive, by flowing, streaming with it. If you are seeking the meaning of life in some dogma, in some philosophy, in some theology, that Is the sure way to miss life and meaning both.

Life is not somewhere waiting for you, it is happening in you. It is not in the future as a goal to be arrived at, it is herenow, this very moment -- in your breathing, circulating in your blood, beating in your heart. Whatsoever you are is your life, and if you start seeking meaning somewhere else, you will miss it. Man has done that for centuries.

Concepts have become very important, explanations have become very important -- and the real has been completely forgotten. We don't look to that which is already here, we want rationalisations.

[....]

Nobody can give you the meaning of your life. It is your life, the meaning has also to be yours. Himalayas won't help. Nobody except you can come upon it. It is your life and it is only accessible to you. Only in living will the mystery be revealed to you.

- Osho, "The Art of Dying, #1"

 Life is not static  - it is a dance 

Life is not static — it is a dance; it is dynamic, it is movement. Not even for a single moment does anything remain the same; everything goes on changing. Change is absolute. The mind wants things not to change, and that’s how the mind and life are in conflict. The mind wants things to be static, because only that which is unchanging can be controlled; that which remains the same can be controlled because you will be in the know about it.

The mind is very afraid of the new because with the new it is incapable; it is not ready to face the new. With the old it is very efficient. It knows what to do, how to do, but only with the old. The new simply makes it look utterly stupid. The mind can function only within the known; the unknown is beyond it. Hence the tendency of the mind is that everything should remain static. The mind is very orthodox and life is revolution, literally revolution, because it goes on revolving, changing, moving.

The movement is very fast; that’s why you cannot see it. Otherwise languages would not have any nouns, only verbs. You cannot say ‘The tree is’, because the tree is never in a state of isness; it is always growing, becoming. You can only say ‘The tree is tree-ing.’ There is no state in which it is; it is a river.

Heraclitus is right when he says ‘You cannot step in the same river twice.’ And I say to you ‘You cannot step in the same river even once because the river is changing and you are changing, the sun is changing, the wind is changing, the sky is changing, the earth is changing and all is constant change’. And that is the beauty of life. But the mind is very afraid of this change. Hence wherever the mind suspects change, it kills, dissects, destroys. It transforms love into marriage. Now, love is constantly flowing, changing. Marriage is a static institution — dull, dead, insipid. But the mind is very happy with marriage; with love it is very much afraid, apprehensive.

My approach to life is that whatsoever you do, change cannot be stopped. So the best way is to start loving this change, understanding this change. And it is a beautiful dance once you are not afraid of it. It is aliveness. And because something new is happening each moment life remains an adventure, a constant exploration.

Think of life as dance, as movement, and become more and more in tune with this moving existence. Never hanker for anything static. Only death is static. The mind is a dead thing and to get out of the mind is to get into the open and under the sky and under the stars, in the rains, in the winds. And then the vastness is available to you — even the sky is not the limit.

– Osho, “Hallelujah!, #29”

Respect life, revere life.

There is nothing more holy than life,

Nothing more divine than life.

I would like you to remember: Live, and try to know what life is.

Don't be bothered about death, heaven and hell, and this goddammed God. You simply remain with the life that is dancing in you, breathing in you, alive in you. You have to come closer to yourself to know it. Perhaps you are standing too far away from yourself. Your concerns have taken you far away. You have to come back home.

So remember that while you are alive it is so precious -- don't miss a single moment. Squeeze the whole juice of it, and that juice will give you the taste of the existential, and that will be a revelation of all that is hidden from you and will remain hidden from you.

Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life. And life does not consist of big things. Those religious fools have been telling you, "Do big things," and life consists of small things. The strategy is clear. They tell you, "Do big things, something great, something that your name will be remembered for afterwards. Do something great." And of course it appeals to the ego. The ego is the agent of the priest. All the churches and all the synagogues and all the temples have only one agent, and that is the ego. They don't use different agencies. There are not other agencies. There is only one agency, and that is the ego -- do something great, something big.

I want to tell you, there is nothing big, nothing great. Life consists of very small things. So if you become interested in so-called big things, you will be missing life.

Life consists of sipping a cup of tea, of gossiping with a friend; going for a morning walk, not going anywhere in particular, just for a walk, no goal, no end, from any point you can turn back; cooking food for someone you love; cooking food for yourself, because you love your body too; washing your clothes, cleaning the floor, watering the garden... these small things, very small things... saying hello to a stranger, which was not needed at all because there was no question of any business with the stranger.

The man who can say hello to a stranger can also say hello to a flower, can also say hello to the tree, can sing a song to the birds. They sing every day and you have not bothered at all that some day you should return the call. Just small things, very small things....

And I am not talking about going to the synagogue -- that is a big thing; going to the church -- that is a big thing. Leave all that to fools. There are many. And they also need some kind of engagement, occupation; those synagogues, and churches and temples provide it. But to you, existence, nothing but existence, is the only temple.

Nothing but life is the only God I teach you.

Respect your life. Out of that respect you will start respecting life in others.

Many times I am asked why our commune is vegetarian. Just for a simple reason.... There is no motivation as in Jainism. Their motivation is that if you are vegetarian you will go to heaven; if you are not you will fall into hell. My people are vegetarian not for any motivation. They are not going to cash in on it somewhere after death. They are not putting it in their bank balance in the other life. It is just that if you respect life, you will start finding it difficult even to pluck a flower. You will enjoy the flower, you will love the flower, you can touch the flower, you can kiss the flower -- but plucking it up, you are destroying it and you are hurting the plant, which is as alive as you are.

Respect for life, reverence for life, makes my commune vegetarian -- otherwise there is no problem. How can you eat meat? Just for your taste you can go on destroying life? Just the idea is nauseous.

-Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #29"

 Possessiveness shows simply one thing: 

 that you can't trust existence 

This whole existence is one cosmic unity. Out of this understanding comes nonviolence.

The second is non-possessiveness. If the whole existence is one, and if the existence goes on taking care of trees, of animals, of mountains, of oceans -- from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star -- then it will take care of you too. Why be possessive? Possessiveness shows simply one thing: that you can't trust existence; you have to arrange separate security for yourself, safety for yourself. You cannot trust existence.

Non-possessiveness is basically trust in existence.

There is no need to possess, because the whole is already ours.

-Osho, "Beyond Psychology, #28, Q1"

 Don't possess anything. Nothing belongs to us. 

Don't possess, don't become owners of persons or things; just use them as a gift of the universe. And when they are available, use them; when they are not available. enjoy the freedom. When you have something, enjoy it; when you don't have it, enjoy not having it -- that too has its own beauty.

If you have a palace to live in, enjoy! If you don't have, then enjoy a hut and the hut becomes a palace. It is the enjoyment that makes the difference. Then live under a tree and enjoy it. Don't miss the tree and the flowers and the freedom and the birds and the air and the sun. And when you are in a palace don't miss it -- enjoy the marble and the chandeliers...

Go on enjoying wherever you are, and don't possess anything. Nothing belongs to us. We come empty-handed in the world and we go empty-handed. The world is a gift, so enjoy while it is there. And remember, the universe always gives you that which you need.

A Sufi mystic used to say every day in his prayers, "Thank you, God, for all that you go on doing for me. How can I repay? I feel so grateful!"

Once it happened that he was traveling and for three days they were refused shelter because they were thought to be heretics, they were thought to be anti-religious, rebellious. They were not given food, not even water, and no shelter. For three days, hungry, thirsty...

And the third day when he was praying, again he was saying to God, "Thank you! How I can repay you? I feel so grateful! "

Now it was too much His disciples said, "It is time to say something!" They said, "Wait -- just a moment! For what you are thanking? For three days we have been hungry, thirsty, no shelter, in the desert, at the mercy of wild animals. For what you are being thankful?"

And the Sufi laughed and he said, "You don't understand -- this is what I must have needed for these three days! God always gives to me whatsoever I need. This must have been my need, otherwise he would not have given it to me. I am thankful for it. He always takes care. He does not bother what I desire; he always gives what he feels is right. I am thanking him... three days fasting, three days no shelter, three days the open sky with stars in the desert, sleeping in the desert, and no wild animal has attacked us. And why you are looking so sad? It must have been our real need!"

This is trust, and this is the joyful attitude. This is real sannyas!

-Osho, "I Am That, #1"

 Osho Five Requests 

To me religion begins with psychological freedom.   I cannot give you commandments, but I can give you a few requests. Nobody has done it before, so it may look a little outlandish, but what can I do? I can give you a few invitations.

My first request or invitation is: Don't let your doubt die.

That is the most precious thing you have got, because it is doubt that one day is going to help you discover the truth.   And all these people say, "Believe!" Their first effort is to destroy your doubt. Start with faith, because if you don't start with faith on each step you will raise questions. Hence I would like it to be my first request to you: doubt until you discover. Do not believe until you come to know yourself. Once you believe, you will never be able to know on your own. Belief is poison, the most dangerous poison there is; because it kills your doubt. It kills your inquiry. It takes away from you your most precious instrument.

Whatsoever science has achieved in three hundred years is through doubt. And in ten thousand years, religion has achieved nothing because of its belief. You can see, anybody who has eyes can see, that in three hundred years science has achieved so much, in spite of all the hindrances created by the religious people. What has been the basic power of science? It was doubt.

Doubt, and go on doubting until you come to a point that you cannot doubt anymore. And you cannot doubt anymore only when you come to know something on your own. Then there is no question of doubt, there is no way to doubt. So this is my first request.     

My second request: Never imitate.

The mind is an imitator, because imitation is very easy. To be someone is very difficult. To become someone is very easy -- all that you need is to be a hypocrite, which is not much of a problem. Deep down you remain the same, but on the surface you go on painting yourself according to some image.

The Christian is trying to become like Christ -- that's what the word Christian means. You would love to be like Christ. You are on the way, maybe far away, but moving slowly. A Christian means a person trying slowly to become a Christ, a Mohammedan means a person trying to become Mohammed. But unfortunately this is not possible; this is not in the very nature of the universe. It only creates unique beings. It has no idea at all of carbon copies, duplicators, cyclostyled material; existence has no idea -- just the original. And each individual is so unique and original that if he tries to become Christ, he is committing suicide. If he tries to become a Buddha, he is committing suicide.

So the second request is: Don't imitate. If you want to know who you are, please avoid imitation, that's a way of avoiding knowing yourself

I have always loved one of Friedrich Nietzsche's statements, and in many different contexts I have found it mysteriously true -- again in this reference. Nietzsche says, "The first and the last Christian died two thousand years ago, on the cross." The first and the last.... Now, all others are just dodos. They are trying in every way to be Christians, and it is not possible at all. It is not allowed by existence and its laws.

You cannot change the universal laws.

You can only be yourself, and nothing else.

And it is beautiful to be yourself.

Anything original has beauty, freshness, fragrance, aliveness. Anything that is imitated is dead, dull, phony, plastic. You can pretend, but whom are you deceiving? Except yourself you are not deceiving anybody. And what is the point of deceiving? What are you going to gain?   These same religious people, Moses, Mahavira, Buddha -- these same religious people have been telling you, if you imitate exactly along the lines prescribed by them you will attain to great pleasure in heaven, in paradise. They have all been somehow reinforcing your greed, lust. They talk of desirelessness -- and for what? Can you see the contradiction of all these religions? They say, "Drop desiring, so that you can attain to paradise." And what is this, if not desiring? This is the greatest desire. What other desires are you dropping for it? Wearing beautiful clothes -- drop it. Having a beautiful house -- drop it. Eating good food -- drop it. These are desires. These small things... and what are you going to gain in return? The whole paradise is yours.

These people are not teaching you desirelessness. On the contrary, they are giving you a great desire as a bargain -- if you can drop your small stupid desires. And because of that great desire you are ready to imitate, because that's the only way to reach there. You are ready to imitate. Thousands of people are living, even today, along the guidelines of Buddha. They may have been good for Gautam Buddha, he may have enjoyed it; I have no quarrel about it. But he was not imitating anybody; that you don't see at all. Is Christ trying to imitate anybody? If you have just a little intelligence, a very little intelligence, that will do; it is not that you need genius to understand the simple fact. Whom has Christ imitated? Whom has Buddha imitated? Whom has Lao Tzu imitated? Nobody. That's why they have flowered. But you are imitating.

The first thing to learn is that non-imitation is one of the fundamentals of religious life. Don't be a Christian and don't be a Mohammedan and don't be a Hindu -- so that you can discover who you are. Before discovering, you start covering yourself with all kinds of labels, and then you go on reading those labels, and thinking this is you -- you are a Mohammedan, you are a Christian.... And those are labels glued upon you by yourself or by your parents, by your well-wishers. They are all your enemies. Whosoever tries to distract you from your being is your enemy.    

This is my definition: whosoever helps you to remain - determinedly, whatsoever the cost, whatever the consequence - to remain yourself, he is your friend.

I am not a messiah and I am not a prophet. I am only a friend, and a friend cannot do what you are asking me to do. What commandments can I give you? No, none. I cannot tell you what to do and what not to do. I can only explain to you that either you can be yourself or you can try and pretend to be somebody else. That trying and pretending is easier, because you are just acting.

Now, in this film of Richard Attenborough's, "Gandhi," the man who was acting as Gandhi -- what do you think? He is doing perfectly well; he looks like Gandhi. Attenborough had to go around the world to find a man who looked like Gandhi. It was very difficult, and this man simply walked into his office and he said, "What! I have been searching all over...." He was just a poor actor in some small drama company. He looks like Gandhi, he wears clothes like Gandhi, he walks like Gandhi, he talks like Gandhi: what more do you want? But do you think he has become Gandhi? Sometimes he can manage even to be better than Gandhi, because Gandhi was doing it for the first time, he is doing it for the second time. He can drop all the mistakes and faults. He can improve upon it. It has happened....

Charlie Chaplin's friends, on his fiftieth birthday, had a special arrangement to celebrate. All over England people were invited to play the part of Charlie Chaplin. From villages they were chosen. Then there was a competition on another level, the district; then there was another competition, higher. And then the final competition was in London. Charlie Chaplin was a joker, and he said, "This is a good time to play a joke." So by the back door he entered the competition. But the joke turned upon him -- he came second! Somebody else came first. Judges were not aware that Charlie Chaplin himself was playing; it became known only later on that he had come second -- as Charlie Chaplin. Somebody else had gone farther in being Charlie Chaplin.

So it is possible that a Christian may go a little ahead of Christ, a Buddhist may go a little ahead of Buddha. But it is still acting, you are only doing it; it is not your being. Keep the distance between being and doing. You can do things against your being, there is no problem. The being is very patient, very calm and quiet; it won't disturb you. If you want to play somebody else's role, it will allow you.

Now, this man who came better than Charlie Chaplin still knows that he is not Charlie Chaplin. His being is his being; it was just acting. And when he discovered that he had gone farther in being Charlie Chaplin than Charlie Chaplin himself he could not believe it. He apologized to Charlie Chaplin, "Forgive me, I had no idea that you were in the competition."

Charlie Chaplin said, "I was thinking to play a joke, but I became a laughingstock myself. But you have revealed a great truth, that acting and being are two separate things."

But in ordinary life, you are not playing a role of being a Christian, you start thinking you are a Christian. Slowly, slowly, slowly, conditioned by the society, by the parents, by the education, you become a Christian. You completely forget that you were not born as a Christian. And you completely forget what your potential is. You have moved away in a direction which may not have been your potential. You have gone far away; you will have to come back.

When I say this to people, it hurts. But I cannot do it in any other way. It is going to hurt. You have gone miles away in being a Christian; you have to come back miles, and it is going to be a hard task. And unless you come back to the point from where you deviated, you will never be able to discover yourself -- and there is all that has to be discovered.

My third request is: Beware of knowledge.

It is so cheap to become knowledgeable. Scriptures are there, libraries are there, universities are there; it is so easy to become knowledgeable. And once you become knowledgeable you are in a very sensitive space, because the ego would like to believe that this is your knowledge -- not only knowledgeability, it is your wisdom. The ego would like to change knowledge into wisdom. You will start believing that you know.

You know nothing. You know only books and what is written in the books. Perhaps those books are written by people just like you. Ninety-nine percent of books are written by other bookish people. In fact, if you read ten books, your mind becomes so full of rubbish that you would like to pour it down into the eleventh book. What else are you going to do with it? You have to unburden yourself.   Books go on growing. Each year each language goes on producing thousands and thousands of books. Never before was the danger so great as it is today, because never before was knowledge so easily available to you -- through all kinds of media. Now the book is not the only thing; you can get it from the newspaper, from the magazine, from the radio, from television, and these sources will be becoming more and more available. The danger will become even stronger.

I have been a professor in two universities, and I have watched hundreds of professors. That is the most snobbish tribe in the whole world. The professor thinks himself to be a different species altogether -- because he knows. And what does he know? Just words, and words are not experience. You can go on repeating the word love, love, love, millions of times; then too it won't give you the taste of love. But if you read books on love -- and there are thousands of books on love, novels and poetries, stories, treatises, theses -- you can come to know so much about love that you may forget completely that you have never loved, that you don't know what love is all about... and you know all about love that is written in the books.

So the third thing is to beware of knowledge, to be so alert that whenever you want, you can put your knowledge aside and it will not block your vision. It will not come between you and reality. You have to go to reality utterly naked. But if there are so many books between you and reality, then whatsoever you see will not be the real. It will be distorted by your books in so many ways, by the time it reaches you it may have no connection at all with the reality.

The fourth thing... I will not say "pray" because there is no God to pray to.

I cannot say, like all the religions, that prayer will make you religious; it will give you a bogus religiousness. So in my religion the word prayer has to be completely dropped. God is not there, hence talking to the empty sky is utterly foolish. The danger is, you may start hearing voices from the sky; then you have gone beyond the limit of normality. Then you are abnormal. Then you are no more capable of doing something, you will need psychiatric treatment. So before that happens -- before God answers you -- please don't ask. That is within your power, not to ask, not to pray. God cannot force you to pray and to ask. If you pray and ask and you insist, he may answer -- that is the danger. And once you hear the answer, then you are not going to listen to anybody. Then you have to be forced to go for psychiatric treatment, otherwise you are going insane.

My word for prayer is love. Forget the word prayer, replace it with love.

Love is not for some invisible God. Love is for the visible -- human beings, animals, trees, oceans, mountains. Spread your wings of love as far and wide as you can.

And remember, love needs no belief system. Even the atheist loves. Even the communist loves. Even the materialist loves. So love is something intrinsic to you -- nothing imposed from outside, that only a Christian can love, or a Hindu can love -- it is your human potential. And I would like you to depend on your human potential rather than these bogus conditionings of Christian, Jewish, Hindu.... You don't bring them with you, but love you bring with you; it is part and parcel of your being. Love without any inhibition, without any taboos.

All these religions have tabooed love. You can understand their strategy. The strategy is that if your love is tabooed, then your energy of love will start moving towards prayer. That's a simple way: you block the passage of love, it will find some other way. Now you have blocked it from reaching to the real, it will try to reach to the unreal. You have blocked the human possibility; now it will try something imaginary, hallucinatory.

All the religions are against love because that is the danger: if a man moves into love he may not bother about the church and the temple and the mosque and the priest. Why should he bother? He may not think at all of prayer because he knows something more substantial, something more nourishing. He knows something more existential, why should he go into dreams?

Just see it this way: fast one day, and next morning remember what you dreamed. You will certainly dream of food, a feast -- it's absolutely certain. Just fast one day and you will dream in the night. What happened? You dropped the real but your whole being wants it. If you drop the real, then the only way possible is to have the substitute, the unreal. Whatever you dream, keep a check on it: that dream indicates what you are missing in reality. A man who lives in reality, his dreams start disappearing. There is nothing for him to dream. By the time he goes to sleep he is finished with the work of the day. He is finished, he has no hangover that moves into dreams.

Sigmund Freud, Jung, Adler -- all these people have been working on dreams. They should have looked at least into one person's life where dreams have disappeared, and that would have given them the clue. But these people are just as stupid as you are. Freud was so much afraid of ghosts that you cannot believe it. You are not that afraid of ghosts.

Jung was thrown out of the psychoanalytic movement for the simple reason that he believed in ghosts. And one day, when Sigmund Freud and Jung were sitting in Freud's sitting room, Jung started talking about ghosts. He was very interested in ghosts. Just as he started talking about ghosts there was a great explosion in the cupboard. Freud fell from his seat, and he said, "I have told you again and again: talk of the devil and he is there -- but you don't listen." Even Jung was shaken. They opened the cupboard; there was nothing. How come so much noise, as if a bomb had exploded? He closed the cupboard and they sat again. Again they started talking about the ghost, because how can you stop so suddenly after such an experience? And again there was an explosion! And that was the end. After that, Freud never saw Jung.

Freud was so afraid of death that you could not talk about death. His disciples were made aware, particularly the new ones, never to mention the word death. Twice it had happened, people had mentioned something about death and he fell on the ground in a fit, he became unconscious. He was so much afraid of death, even the word death was enough to make him unconscious. And these people are giving you psychoanalysis, these are your great scientists of the mind!

Jung was afraid of dead bodies. And this is the natural law: whatsoever you are afraid of you are fascinated by too. So he wanted to go to Egypt to see the ancient mummies, those dead bodies which have been preserved in the pyramids and now are in the museums of Egypt. He wanted to go many times. The tickets were booked, sometimes he even reached the airport, but became nervous, so nervous, so feverish, that he came back again -- canceled the trip. He never managed to reach Egypt. But he tried a dozen times, and always he became nervous. Just the idea of seeing a three, four, five thousand year old dead body and something inside him just freaked out.   These people have not known a single person whose dreams have disappeared. For example, I cannot dream even if I want to; there is no way. I have tried and failed. I have tried many ways, invented them because there is no book which says how to create dreams, so I invented my own ways. I will go into sleep thinking of something, visualizing something, so that, as I am going into sleep, whatsoever I am visualizing may remain in the sleep and it will become a dream. But as sleep comes, what I was visualizing disappears. Sleep is there, but what I was visualizing is not there.

If you live your real life authentically, sincerely, totally, dreams are finished. If you love, you will never think of prayer because you know the real thing -- so why should you go after the pseudo? And all these religions were aware of that: stop the real so you have to go to the pseudo.

The fifth thing I would like to say to you: Live moment to moment.

Go on dying every moment to the past. It is finished. There is no need even to label it good or bad. The only thing to know is: it is finished, it is no more. It is going to be no more... gone and gone forever; now why waste time about it?

Never think of the past, because you are wasting the present, which is the only real thing in your hand. And never think of the future, because nobody knows how tomorrow is going to be, what tomorrow is going to be, how it is going to turn out, where you are going to land -- you cannot imagine.   Do you think about what happened to our commune? Had you ever thought that we were going to land up in Oregon, in America? I don't think anybody, howsoever dreaming and imaginary and hallucinatory, had thought of Oregon. But we landed here. This goes on happening every day -- you don't take note of it -- that yesterday you wasted so much time thinking for this day, and it has not turned out to be according to your ideas and your plans and this and that. And now you are worried why you wasted that time -- again you are wasting it.

Remain in the moment, true to the moment, utterly herenow, as if there has been no yesterday and there is going to be no tomorrow -- only then can you be herenow totally.   And that totality of being in the present joins you with existence, because existence knows no past, no future. It is always herenow.

Existence knows only one tense, that is the present tense. It is language which creates three tenses, and creates three thousand tensions in your mind. Existence knows only one tense, and that is present: and it is not a tension at all, it is utterly relaxing. When you are totally here, no yesterdays pulling you back and no tomorrows pulling you somewhere else, you are relaxed.

To me, to be in the moment is meditation, to be utterly in the moment. And then it is so beautiful, so fragrant, so fresh. It never gets old. It never goes anywhere.

It is we who come and pass; existence remains as it is. It is not time that passes, it is we who come and pass. But it is a fallacy: rather than seeing that we are passing, we have created a great invention, the clock -- time passes.

Just think, if there is no man on the earth will there be any time passing? Things will be all there, the ocean will still be coming to the beach, crashing its waves on the rocks. The sun will rise, the sun will set, but there will be no morning, there will be no evening. There will be no time as such. Time is a mind invention, and basically time can exist only with yesterdays and tomorrows; the present moment is not part of time.

When you are simply here, just now, there is no time. You are breathing, you are alive, you are feeling, you are open to everything that is happening all around.

When your every moment starts becoming meditation, you are religious.   ... So these five requests for you.    

-Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #28

 There is no purpose in life, life is purposeless. 

Question 3

Is the only purpose in life self-realization?

No sir, not even that. Even self-realization is not the purpose. Somehow, you cannot live without purpose. You have an obsession with purpose, some purpose HAS to be there. Now if there is no other purpose, let it be self-realization. And you will feel good, you will feel very good -- at least there is some purpose: self-realization. Again you have settled, again you have started thinking in terms of means and ends. Again desire will flower, you have to attain to self-realization. Again the future enters in, again you can dream.

Before, it may have been money, power, prestige. It may have been God, moksha, nirvana, the kingdom of God. Now it is self-realization. But you have to keep some goal there. And Hakuin says all is here. You want to have something on the other shore. And Hakuin says this is the only shore. The other shore is hidden in THIS shore. You are not to go anywhere, you are not to seek and search, it is already the case. You have just to be here, for a single moment be here, and...THIS VERY BODY THE BUDDHA.

Now you are creating another...Can't you live without problems? Can't you drop the goal-oriented approach? Can't you be in the present? Can you only be in the future? And to be in the future is to be false, because the future has not come yet. People know only two ways to be: either they are in the past or in the future. Their identity comes either from the past or from the future. In the present they feel very shaky because in the present the identity disappears the self disappears. In the present there is nothing like ego.

Just look into it, this very moment. You are utterly here, not a single thought stirring, silence all around: where are you? In this silence, how can you exist? It effaces you, you become a tabula rasa, you become a child again.

To hold to identity, either you have to look to the past...it supplies identity. You have a Ph. D. from a university, you are a doctor or an engineer, a scientist, a poet, you have written so many books. Or you belong to a royal family, or this and that. You have done these things and those things -- all those accumulated acts, they become the sum total of your being.

And you are not the sum total of your acts. There is another man hidden behind your acts -- the real man, the essential man. The essential man has never done a thing. It is simply there, it is not a doer.

But you will cling to the identity. You have been appreciated, you will ding to it. Even if you have been condemned you will ding to it. The saints cling to their past, and so ding the sinners. The good man dings to the past, so dings the bad man, because they both need identity. And people prefer to have a bad identity than no identity. At least one knows who one is: 'I am a prisoner, I have been put in the prison for twenty years, I am a thief or a murderer. At least I know something about myself.' Then somebody else is a saint and he has renounced the world and he fasts every month and he eats only once a day. He sleeps only three hours, thousands of people worship him, his paradise is certain, he has so many virtues. But both are clinging to identity. And both are in the same boat, the sinner and the saint.

Or you start gathering identity from the future. You are going to do this, you are going to BE this -- you will become the president of a country, or you will become very famous, or you will write a book soon and you are going to win a Nobel prize. You go on thinking of the future, and that gives you a feeling who you are.

But both are false. The true is only the present. Time knows no past, no future; past and future are mind things. Time knows only one tense, and that is the present. But to be in the present means to destroy all goals, to have no future-involvement. Otherwise your energy will be flowing in that direction.

Now you say: IS THE ONLY PURPOSE IN LIFE SELF-REALIZATION?

I go on repeating every day that there is no purpose in life, life is purposeless. Hence it is beautiful. Purpose makes everything business-like. Life is poetry, it is not business. Now you have found a word -- you must have thought I would like this word, 'self-realization'. All nonsense; there is no self to realize. Nothing has to be realized. The real is real -- what are you going to realize! The real is already real and the unreal is unreal. 'Realization' means something is not real yet and you are going to make it real. How can you make something which is unreal real somewhere in the future? How can you transform a lie into a truth? A lie will remain a lie, and truth has always been truth. Nothing has to be realized.

Then what has to be done? The question arises again and again in your mind. In fact nothing has to be done, you have only to see the futility of doing. In that seeing, action stops, mind stops. And that which has been with you for ever, you come to feel it, to know it. Not that you realize it, you simply recognize it. A forgotten thing is remembered again, that's all.

-Osho, “This Very Body the Buddha, #7, Q3”