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

Man is unconscious, Although he believes he is conscious. That very belief protects his unconsciousness. Man is ignorant, although he believes he knows. That very belief keeps the ignorance intact. Man is just the opposite of what he thinks he is. To understand this is the beginning of a great revolution.

To see where you are, what you are in actuality, needs courage. It is nice to believe in beautiful ideals. All ideals function only for one thing: they hide your reality; that’s why we go on creating beautiful ideals. Not that we are really interested in those great ideals; our real interest is how to hide the ugly facts.

People go on talking about non-violence, and all that they do in their lives is violence, sheer violence and nothing else. The more violent they are, the more they talk about non-violence. The talk about non-violence becomes a camouflage. This country has talked about non-violence for centuries, and it has not happened; and it is not going to happen because the very talk creates an illusion. And slowly slowly, you are not only capable of deceiving others, you start deceiving yourself. When you have talked for centuries about non-violence you start thinking that you have become non-violent. That is really the purpose of talking about non-violence.

A conscious person has no ideals at all. A conscious person lives through his consciousness. He is one; his inner and outer are not divided. But all kinds of idealism divide the outer and the inner. It does not allow you to be natural, spontaneous; it forces you to be something other than you are. It gives you shoulds – you should do this, you should do that. Because of those shoulds you start believing that you are aspiring very high, that you are soaring very high: ”Look what beautiful ideals I have got”and behind that empty talk your reality is just the opposite. The greedy person wants to become non-greedy. The angry person wants to become compassionate. The unloving person has the ideal of love. All the religions talk about love, and all that they do on the earth is create hate. All the nations of the world talk about peace, and all that they do is prepare for war. See it. This is what we have become: pseudo, hypocrites.


The violent person wants to become non-violent: what is he going to do? He has been violent with others, now he will become violent with himself. That’s what you call asceticism? Asceticism is basically masochism: it is a joy in torturing yourself. And these people become great mahatmas, they are worshiped, but all that has happened is that their violence has turned inwards. You torture others, they torture themselves; but the torture continues, and the pleasure in torturing continues. The man who lies on the bed of thorns – do you think he is religious? What is religious in it? He is simply torturing his body, but you will find people worshiping him. He is neurotic, but he will be thought of as a mahatma.

If it is cold and snow is falling and somebody is standing naked under the skies, what is he doing? He is simply torturing the body, but people will think, ”What a great soul.” He simply needs a few electric shocks; he is psychiatrically ill, he is mad, he is suicidal. It is very easy to catch hold of the murderer, it is very difficult to catch hold of the person who is suicidal, but both are murderers. They both enjoy violence.

That’s why Mahatma Gandhi’s violence is not visible. He is as violent as Adolf Hitler; the only difference is of direction. Mahatma Gandhi’s violence is very invisible: he tortures himself. If you keep somebody else hungry for many days, that will be violence, but if you keep yourself hungry and call it upavas, fasting, then this is something religious. It is not. It is the same game, and more dangerous, because when you keep somebody else in a state of torture he at least can defend, but when you start torturing your own innocent body, the body cannot defend. There is no defence possible, your own body is utterly helpless.

If you are violent with others the law can defend, the police can defend, but if you are violent with yourself there is no law against it. In fact even the magistrate and the lawyer and the policeman will come and worship you: you are doing something beautiful. Man has remained in darkness because of such stupid ideas.

The first thing to be remembered is: the violent man cannot become non-violent by any effort. Then is there no possibility? Yes, there is a possibility, but it is not through effort, not through will, not through practising being other than you are. The possibility is by becoming aware.

Rather than trying to be non-violent, become aware of your violence, of how your violence functions. See the roots of it. Go deep into it, into how it arises, into how it permeates your being and your activities. Watch violence, and in the very watching, becoming aware of it, you will be surprised: it starts disappearing.

Nobody can be consciously violent: this is a fundamental law, the secret. Nobody can be consciously violent; so all that is needed is to bring consciousness, to become more conscious, to become more meditative. Nobody can be meditatively angry; that is not possible. At the most, yoU can act.

That’s what Jesus did when he took a whip and went into the temple and threw out the moneychangers, started beating those money-changers, turned their tables. That’s what he was doing – acting. It was just an act, a put-upon act. A meditative person cannot be angry; that is impossible. Meditation means you are so conscious of whatsoever you are doing; in that very consciousness the quality of doing changes. You need not have ideals. Ideals are simply postponing the revolution, the mutation.

Just a few days before somebody was asking me, ”I feel I am stupid. What can I do to become intelligent?” Now, I had to tell him that if a stupid person tries to become intelligent, he will remain stupid. At the most he will become an intellectual, but never intelligent.

That’s how intellectual people are: hiding their stupidity behind words, knowledge, information. If a stupid person tries to be intelligent, how can he become intelligent? In the first place, he will be doing everything oUt of his stupidity; and when you do something out of your stupidity your stupidity is going to be strengthened. But he can do one thing: he can gather information, he can gather knowledge, he can start having an illusion of knowing through knowledge. That’s how people become pundits, scholars, learned professors; that’s how it happens, but the stupidity remains there. In their very foundation, the stupidity goes on remaining as an undercurrent. They just have a good show on the outside; deep down they are still stupid.

Then what to do? How to get out of stupidity? The only way is, watch your stupidity. Go into its working, its mechanism. Go into how yoU act, go watchfully into it. See it, how it is there, how it affects your behavior. Watch it in its multidimensional reality, and in that very watching you are becoming intelligent – because watching is intelligence.

And if you become really alert about your stupidity, the one who has become alert is no longer stupid. Stupidity is left out. You have become awareness, you have become a witness; and out of this witnessing another kind of life arises which has beauty, which has benediction, which has a grace of its own. But it is arduous to be watchful; it is easier to have ideals.

Drop all ideals. Don’t try to become somebody that you are not. On the contrary, just watch whatsoever you are. Watch the fact, don’t create a fiction against it; otherwise you will always be divided. You will remain the fact and you will start believing in the fiction – that’s the meaning of hypocrisy. Your reality goes on persisting in the same way, and just on the surface you have a painted mask. That is not going to help; that has not helped humanity up to now.

The new man is possible only if we drop all kinds of idealisms. Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Communist, Gandhian – all kinds of idealisms have to be dropped. The moment you drop all kinds of idealism, suddenly you have dropped your schizophrenia; you are not two, you are one. You are simply whatsoever you are. Then you have the innocence of a tree, the innocence of an animal, the innocence of a bird, and something more: the consciousness of a human being. And the meeting of the innocence of a bird and the consciousness of a human being creates the Buddha. Buddhahood is nothing but innocence plus consciousness.

But the man who carries great ideals can never be simple and innocent; it is impossible. He is always cunning, trying to be somebody, trying to reach somewhere. All that he can do is pretend. And when I am saying this, I am saying it to you: my sannyasins have to drop all kinds of idealisms; that’s the revolution I am initiating you into. You have to forget the future, you have to forget what should be. You have to only watch that which is; and that can be done right now, you need not postpone it. At any moment you can watch what you are. Don’t condemn, because if you condemn then you cannot watch. Don’t judge; if you judge you have already taken a prejudice. Don’t be in a hurry to conclude. Life never comes to a conclusion; it cannot, because there is no death. It goes on and on, it is an eternal process, it never comes to a conclusion. Only stupid people come to conclusions.

The intelligent person goes on moving, flowing, growing. There is no end to it; even the sky is not the limit. The intelligent person goes on learning. He is a learner, and a learner forever. He never becomes knowledgeable.

Source – Osho Book “The Secret”

Question – Is the only purpose in Life Self-Realization?

Osho – No, 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.

Source – Osho Book “This Very Body the Buddha”