Osho's deep wisdom words on life,religion,religiousness,enlightenment

If knowledge of the soul does not penetrate you, and if the flame within does not get its fuel, then dreams arise in your life; then desires arise, and your life loses its way and staggers there in the darkness. Then you live in illusion, in desires; then you merely keep thinking and weaving webs of fantasy.

I asked Nasruddin, ”Mulla, where do you intend to go for your vacation this year?”
”I only go on vacation every three years,” he replied.
”What do you do in the remaining two years?”
”One year we spend in musing over the previous vacation and reliving it in our minds, and one year we spend in planning the next vacation.”

At least Nasruddin goes on a trip every three years, but you do not go at all! Half your life is spent in thinking of the past and the other half in thinking about the future. The journey never begins. Either you roam around the byways of your memory, which is a dead dream, or you wander in your imagination which is a dream of the future, which is still to come. You are divided in these two. The present is in the middle, and that is where life is – but you miss it!

Knowledge, awareness, will awaken you, here and now, to this very moment. Knowledge will bring you into the present. The past will fade. It has in fact faded. It is you who senselessly persist in carrying the ashes. The future is yet to be. You cannot make it happen. It comes when it comes, but the present is now. That which is present is reality, truth. To dream is to wander in that which is not present.

Remember the sutra: WHEN KNOWLEDGE IS DESTROYED THE DREAM IS SEEN. When knowledge is absent, when the soul is not awakened, you are lost in dreams. The past and the future become everything for you, and the present has no meaning; but in fact it is the present that is everything. As you begin to awaken, the past and the future will get less and less and the present will begin to have more and more meaning for you. The day you are fully awakened there will be
only the present. Then there is no past, no future. When there is no past and no future all diseases of the mind, all its repetitions and circles, are destroyed. Then you are here in the present, pure, immaculate, innocent, fresh like the morning dew. Then you are here in the present, like the lotus flower. If you are present in your entirety at any given moment, that moment you are God.

Because you are not present in this moment you are the mind and the body but not the soul. Meditation is an effort to drag you from the past and future into the present. You have to go neither backward nor forward; you have only to be here. To be here and now totally peaceful and aware is meditation! Through this is born knowledge and through knowledge you reach the highest peak and attain the bliss of the final samadhi. He who loses this, loses all! He who attains this, attains all!

Source – Osho Book “The Great Path”

Knowledge borrowed from others is untrue, knowledge gathered from the outside is untrue. It hides your ignorance but it does not make you wise. It covers up your wounds but it does not heal. In a way it is very dangerous because one tends to forget one’s wounds, and the wounds go on growing inside; they can become canceric.

It is better to know them. It is better to open them to the winds, to the rains, to the sun. Hiding them is protecting them, and they are your enemies. It is better to let them be exposed — nature heals. Hence the first step of true knowledge is to know “I know nothing”; that is exposing your ignorance. And from that moment a turning happens, a great change happens: one starts looking inwards.

True knowledge has to happen within you. It can’t come through thoughts, it has to come through a thoughtless space within you. It cannot come through studying, it comes through meditation. It comes only when the mind becomes absolutely contentless, so utterly empty and pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted, that your own inner sources start flowing because all the hindrances have been removed.

The ego is cowardice. Cowardice is not an essential part of the ego, it is the whole of the ego. And it is bound to be so, because the ego lives in constant fear of being exposed: it is empty within, it is non-existential; it is only an appearance, not a reality. And whenever something is only an appearance, a mirage, the fear is bound to be there at the very center of it.

In the desert you see the mirage from far away. It looks so real that even the trees standing by its side are reflected in the water, which does not exist. You can see the trees and you can see the reflection; you can see the waves in the water and also the reflections shimmering with the waves – but it is all from a distance. As you come closer, the mirage starts disappearing. There has never been anything; it was just a byproduct of the sunrays being reflected by the hot sands of the desert.

In this reflection and the sunrays returning, the mirage of an oasis is created. But it can exist only when you are far way; it cannot exist when you come close. Then, there are only hot sands, and you can see the rays of the sun being reflected back.

It will be easier to understand in a different context. You see the moon, you see its beauty, you see its cool light. But the first astronauts were shocked, because as they came closer to the moon, there was no light. The moon was just a flat, barren piece of earth – no greenery, no life – a dead rock. But standing on the moon, when they looked at the earth they were amazed: the earth was radiant with beautiful light.

In comparison to that light, the moon and its beauty is nothing, because the earth is eight times bigger than the moon; its light is eight times more intense, all silver. And the astronauts knew that it was all false, but they were seeing it. It is not there… but a strange thing: when they were on the earth, they were seeing the beautiful silver light shimmering from the moon. Now they were on the moon, and it was just a dead rock, and the whole beauty was radiating from the earth. And they knew the earth, they have lived their whole lives on the earth; they had never seen anything of the sort. To see the reflection of the sunlight, you need a distance.

The earth is also radiating: when the sunlight comes, some of it is absorbed by the earth, but most of it is reflected back. That reflected light can be seen only when you are far away from the earth; otherwise you cannot see it. The ego is a non-existential phenomenon – the people who are farther away from you can feel it, can see it, can be hurt by it.

Your only concern is that they should not come too close. Everybody is keeping everybody else at a distance, because to allow people to come too close means opening the doors of your emptiness. The ego does not exist. And you are so identified with the ego that the death of the ego, the disappearance of the ego feels as if it is your death. It is not so; on the contrary, when the ego is dead then you will know your reality, your essential being. The egoist is going to be a coward. He cannot allow anybody closeness of any kind – friendship, love, even companionship.

Adolf Hitler never allowed anybody to sleep in his room. He always slept alone, locking the door from within. He never got married for the simple reason that if you are married then you have to allow the woman inside the room – not only inside the room, but in the bed. This is too close and too dangerous.

He had no friends. He always kept people as distant as possible; there was not a single person in his whole life who had ever put a hand on his shoulders – this much closeness he would not allow. What was the fear? Why was he so afraid? The fear was that the moment he allowed anybody such closeness, his greatness – ”the great Adolf Hitler” – would disappear. You would find a very tiny and pygmy creature, nothing of greatness – that was all on the posters, that was all part of a great propaganda.

The more egoist a person is the more he has to remain lonely. And to be lonely is miserable, but one has to pay. You have to pay for a non-existential ego to appear real – with your misery, with your pain, with your anguish. And anyway, even if you succeed in not allowing anybody to be close to you, you yourself know perfectly well that it is just a soap bubble – a small pinprick, and it will disappear.

Source – Osho Book “The Osho Upanishad”

A meditator enters into his mind and starts watching how the mind functions. Just the very fact of watching the mind makes him aware that he is not the mind, and he is not anything that belongs to the mind. He is a faraway entity, qualitatively different, just a pure watching, in other words: just a pure mirror which only reflects the reality but is not imprinted by any reality.

If the ugly face comes in front of it, without any judgment it shows the ugly face in its full detail, without any condemnation. And when the beautiful face appears, there is no appreciation and no evaluation either. It shows the ugly face and the beautiful face with the same detached, faraway reflective witnessing.

The moment you become a witness there will be no need to leave your ego outside the gate. In fact, the ego will have left you; even if you run after it you cannot catch hold of it. So the right process has to be understood. The ego is not something like your umbrella and your shoes and your raincoats that you leave outside the gate.

The ego is hidden inside your mind. Of course you cannot leave your head outside, and the ego comes along wherever you go. The ego has to be understood. In that understanding it disappears. Only a witness knows that the ego is a false entity and you need not fight with any false entity.

Do you ever fight with darkness? When you find darkness in your room, do you struggle with it to throw it out? Do you wrestle with it? Do you start taking out your sword to cut off the head of darkness? If you do any of these stupid things, you will simply show your unintelligence. You will not be able even to touch it – the darkness that is in your room. You cannot put it into bags and take the bags our and throw them into the neighbor’s yard.

With the negative nothing can be done directly. If you want to do anything with the negative, do something for the positive. When you don’t want darkness in the room you bring the light, you don’t bother about the darkness. Your whole approach is totally different. You bring the light in and the moment the light is in you don’t find any darkness.

The same is true about your ego. It has no existence of its own; it is a false substitute that has been given to you so that you can go on playing with it and completely forget the search for the real self. And the demands of this false ego are immense, never fulfilled. It will demand money, it will demand respect, it will demand power, and you go on fulfilling it but it will always remain empty.

You cannot make an egoist contented. The ego is always like an open wound; It goes on growing bigger. The more you try to fill it the more you find it is empty and the more demanding it becomes. You become almost a slave to a false entity. Your whole life is wasted in ambitions created by the ego.

The ego is the most dangerous invention that society has managed to create. So when you want to drop… don’t think in terms of dropping it, because even the word ‘drop’ gives you the idea that it is something. It is nothing. You cannot drop it, you cannot put it out of doors. You have to look into the reality of it.

In deep meditations you have to become a witness of all the functioning of the mind, because the ego is the combined by-product of your mind’s functioning. Its thoughts, its desires, its ideologies, its prejudices, its politics, its philosophy, its religion – everything contributes in some way to create a certain ego in you.

I had a professor, Doctor Das, a very famous philosopher not only in India but in almost every country. He had been teaching around the world, and he had come back to India to his home just to retire. He was my teacher for only three months; after those three months he went into retirement. But those three months were of great revelation to me and to him.

The first day when he entered the classroom I was sitting in his chair. He looked so embarrassed standing by my side and I was so relaxed in the chair – the students started laughing and he said, ”What is going on?”

I said, ”Nothing is going on. I find this chair more comfortable than the other chairs; and I am not a stupid person, I can choose what is right for me.”

He said, ”You seem to be a very strange person. This chair is for the teacher.”
I said, ”Then there is no problem. I will teach. What is the problem? – if this chair is for the teacher, then the teacher is sitting in it. You can find some other chair and sit down.”

He was an old man, a world-famous philosopher, and his ego was immensely hurt. He said, ”You don’t understand with whom you are talking.”
I said, ”I understand perfectly well. You don’t understand with whom you are talking.”

But I did not leave the chair. I told him that whatever he wants to do, he can do. He can go to the vice-chancellor, he can bring the vice-chancellor… ”I am going to remain in this chair.”
He said, ”What is the purpose of all this mess?”

I said, ”The purpose is to show you that it is not my sitting in the chair that is hurting you, it is your ego. If you accept it I will leave the chair. If you don’t accept, then you can bring anybody to help you… but as far as I know the students, nobody is going to help.”

He waited a minute. There was utter silence in the class. Everybody was afraid that if the vice-chancellor came and the proctor came, there was going to be trouble for me. They would immediately expel me. I had already been expelled from so many places, but I always continued to do strange things. What was the need to sit in his chair?

But Doctor Das was certainly an intelligent man. He did not go out. He said, ”Perhaps you are right. It is my ego that is hurting, it is not a question of the chair.”

I said, ”Then I can leave it. But remember, before you retire you have only three months more in this university. It will be good if you retire but don’t take your ego away with you. Leave it here in this chair for somebody else to use.”

I left the chair, and he was in such confusion that he told the students, ”Today it will not be possible for me to teach.” And to me he said, ”I would like you to come with me to my home. I want to discuss some important matters with you.”

He was an unmarried man. He had written many beautiful books, and before encountering him I had read everything that he had written. He took me in his car to his home. On the way he said, ”I am sorry that I did not understand your purpose. You are the first man in my life who has pointed out my ego. I certainly have a very big ego and it went on becoming bigger and bigger as I became more and more respected in the world of philosophy. You will have to help me to get rid of it. I am also feeling the torture of it, I am also feeling the burden of it, but I don’t know what to do with it.”

He had never thought about meditation. Philosophers never meditate; their whole approach to life is intellectual. They think about and about everything, but never become a witness of any experience – particularly the experience of their inner thought processes.

Shantideva, if you really want to get rid of the ego, you will have to go so deep into your meditations that you can create a distance between you and your mind. Immediately you will see the phoniness of your ego, and the moment you have seen it, it is dropped. Not that you can drop it – but your seeing it, your understanding it, your witnessing it and it drops on its own accord.

Source – Osho Book “Satyam Shivam Sundram”

KILL OUT DESIRE FOR SENSATION. We live for sensations, we hanker for sensations. We go on seeking newer and newer sensations; our whole life is an effort to obtain new sensations. But what happens? The more you seek sensations, the less sensitive you become. Sensitivity is lost.

It looks paradoxical. In sensations, sensitivity is lost. Then you ask for more sensations and the ’more’ kills your sensitivity more. Then you ask for even more, and finally a moment comes when all your senses have become dull and dead. Man has never before been so dull and dead as he is today. He was always more alive before, because there were not so many possibilities to fulfill so many sensations.

But now science, progress, civilization, education, have created so many opportunities to move further and further into the world of sensation. Ultimately, you turn into a dead person; your sensitivity is lost. Taste more foods – stronger tastes, stronger foods – and your taste will be lost. If you move around the world and go on seeing more and more beautiful things, you will become blind; the sensitivity of your eyes will be lost.

Change your love object every day – your girlfriend or boyfriend, your wife or husband. If you change them every day, your sensitivity to love will die. You are moving in a dangerous terrain. You will never move in depth; you will only be moving on the surface, the periphery. The more things you experience, the less your capacity to experience becomes. And then in the end, when everything around you has gone dead, you ask for the divine, you ask for bliss, you ask for truth. A dead man cannot experience the divine.

To experience the divine you need total sensitivity;. you need aliveness. Remember, only the similar can bring out the similar. If you want the divine – ’the divine’ means the most alive, the ever-alive, ever-young, ever-green – if you want to meet the divine, you will have to be more alive.

How to do it? KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION. Don’t seek sensation; seek sensitivity, become more sensitive. The two are different. If you ask for sensations, you will ask for things; you will accumulate things. But if you ask for sensitivity, the whole work has to be done on your senses, not on things. You are not to accumulate things. You have to deepen your feelings, your heart, your eyes, your ears, your nose.

Every sense should be deepened in such a way that it becomes capable of feeling the subtle. We cannot even feel the gross, and we must become capable of feeling the subtle. The world appears to be gross only because we cannot feel the subtle. The invisible is hidden in the visible. Look at these trees. You look at the gross: the body of the tree. You never look, you never feel, the life within. The growth! The tree itself is not growing: the tree is just a body. Something else – the invisible – is growing in it.

And because of it, the tree grows The inner is growing and, because of it, the outer is growing. But you look only at the tree, so only the outer is seen. Look around you. Look into your friend’s eyes. You only look at the eyes, not at the one who sees through them. Touch your friend’s body. You touch only the gross; you never feel the subtle within.

Only the body, the external, is felt; because your eyes (your senses) have become so dull that they cannot feel the inner, the invisible. More sensitivity is needed. Ask for less sensations and grow in sensitivity. When you touch, become the touch. When you see, become the eyes. When you hear, your whole consciousness must come to the ears. Listening to a song, or listening to the birds, become the ears. Forget everything else so it is as if you are only the ears. Come to the ears with your total being. Then, your ears will become more sensitive.

When you are looking at something – a flower or a beautiful face or the stars – become the eyes. Forget everything else, as if the whole rest of your body has gone out of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you will become capable of looking at the invisible also. The invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating eyes to see it.

KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION, and grow in sensitivity. Think about the world less and about your senses more. Purify them. When you don’t ask for sensations they become purified. When you ask for more and more sensations, you are killing your senses.

The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses are totally alive. to their maximum capacity Then it is not only that you can see the divine. You can taste the divine. you can smell the divine. The divine can enter in you through any of the senses. Only when the divine enters you from all the senses does the ultimate realization happen. If you can only see the divine. it is just a partial realization. Then you are not really enlightened. You are only partially enlightened if you cannot touch the divine. if you cannot taste it.

To use such words looks illogical. To taste God? Is he a food? Yes he is everything. You can taste him, but then you need a very subtle capacity to taste. Your very food will become divine. Through food, the divine will be felt. The Upanishadic rishis have said that food is brahma. ”Anna is brahma.” They must have tasted him, they must have eaten him.

We go on thinking that God is a logical problem so we go on arguing about, and about, for or against. We go on arguing whether God exists or not. It is irrelevant. God is not a question of argument, of logic, of reasoning. God is really a question of sensitivity. If you don’t feel him, become more sensitive. No logical thinking will be of any help. Become more sensitive! If you are sensitive, he is there. He has always been there, but you are not sensitive. Things make you dull, sensations make you dull. Kill out desire for sensation.

Source : from Osho Book “The New Alchemy To Turn You On”

Maidan mai aayega bhi nahi

Truth, to me, has not been a fragment, it has not come to me as a fragment. Truth has revealed itself to me as a total, organic unity.
I have not added anything to it. I have not edited out anything from it. And because I am not a theologian, I am not interested in making a theology; hence I can give it to you in simple words, in ordinary language, without any trouble.
My open secret is that I am not bringing in big words and theories and dogmas so that you have to be very intellectual and very sharp, no. All that you have to be is just as ordinary as I am.
All those people who have been claiming to be messiahs, avataras, paigambaras, tirthankaras, prove only one thing: they had a small fragment but they knew that they still had an inferiority complex. That small fragment cannot destroy your inferiority complex.
Unless you know the truth in its totality, your inferiority complex remains. So they had a fragment and they bragged about the fragment. And they had an inferiority complex still, so they projected some superiority; they are the only begotten son of God, they are the messiah, they are the messengers, they are the reincarnations of God — or things like that.
All those claims simply indicate an inferiority complex deep down. Anybody who tries to prove that he is superior to others, superior to everybody, is suffering, is sick. They were all sick with an inferiority complex.. They could not say, not a single one of them was able to say, “I am just a human being as you are, and this is my secret.”
I am the first who is saying to you that I am just a human being as you are — absolutely ordinary. If you can drop your desire to be superior, if you can accept your humanity just as it is, with no desire to change it — if you are not trying to improve upon yourself — with that desire dropping, your inferiority complex will disappear. Improving upon yourself is just like trying to pull yourself up by holding your legs.
You may try to jump; maybe for a second you will be in the air, but next moment you will be flat on the earth, deeper in the Big Muddy Ranch, from where even to get out is very difficult. It is better not to jump. Because I have no projection of superiority, I have no sickness of inferiority.
And truth is everybody’s birthright. It is not something that only a few people are entitled to get: you are born with it. Just because you go on running after other things, you don’t have time to look.

Source: from Osho Book “From Personality to Individuality”