Rajneesh quotes

God happens only when you have moved out of the way and left yourself totally empty, spacious. It is a very strange phenomenon: The guest only comes inside the house when the host disappears.

Remember that hate is not the opposite of love as people think. Hate is love standing upside down; it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely. In love one disappears; hence there is no question of loneliness at all. Love is when you have known your inner sky. There is no higher religion than love

In love the other is important; in lust you are important

Seriousness is a sickness... Existense is pure playfulness

Getting love is a very small experience. It is the experience of beggar.

Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I.

Have you not watched it yourself? Whenever you are total in something there is celebration.

The only thing that matters in life, is your own opinion about yourself.

Each child is poisoned by the society through teaching him ambition. Ambition is a poison far more dangerous than any alcohol can ever be, far more dangerous than marijuana or LSD, because ambition destroys your whole life. It keeps you moving in a false direction. It keeps you imagining, desiring, dreaming, it keeps you wasting your life. Ambition means a subtle creation of the ego, and once the ego is created you are in the grip of darkness. And the whole social structure depends on ambition.

You have to put aside your ideology. Howsoever beautiful it looks, howsoever systematic it looks, howsoever philosophical you have made and decorated it, you have to put it aside and see within. That's the whole method of meditation, awareness, watchfulness.

The mind lives through more, and the more cannot be fulfilled; that is impossible. IT ENDS IN TEARS. Every desire ends in frustration, because every expectation is the beginning of frustration. Why does every desire end in frustration? There are only two alternatives: either you achieve your object of desire or you don`t achieve it, but in both cases it will end in tears. If you achieve it you will see the utter futility of it all.

ordinary is the door for extraordinary.

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

A man becomes a Buddha the moment he accepts all that life brings with gratitude.

Every answer will make more questions

Drop the idea that attachment and love are one thing. They are enemies. It is attachment that destroys all love.

The only authentic responsibility is towards your own potential. Values have not to be imposed on you. They should grow with your awareness, in you.

Mind is just in the middle. You are nothing but a mess. If you can go beyond it, intelligence grows in you; if you go below it, any intelligence that you had disappears.

Discover yourself, otherwise you have to depend on other people's opinions who don't know themselves.

The total absence of desire brings happiness. It also brings freedom and liberation, because whenever something is lacking there are both limits and dependency. Only when nothing at all is lacking is there the possibility of total freedom. Freedom brings happiness. And happiness is salvation.

I don't teach vegetarianism; it is a by-product of meditation. Wherever meditation has happened, people have become vegetarian, always, for thousands of years.

You can change your attachment from this to that, but you will be in misery. Attachment creates misery.

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

Freedom means the capability to say yes when yes is needed, to say no when no is needed, and sometimes to keep quiet when nothing is needed - to be silent, not to say anything. When all these dimensions are available, there is freedom.

If you really want to create peace on the earth, create peace in your heart, in your being. That is the right place to begin with... and then spread and radiate peace and love.

Tomorrow never comes.

Ambition is violence, the very effort to succeed in the world is violent.

There are things which happen through effort, and there are things which happen only through effortlessness. There are things which will never happen through effort, and there are things which will never happen through effortlessness. All that is mundane happens through effort; all that is worldly happens through effort. And all that is sacred, other-worldly, happens through effortlessness.

You exist in time, but you belong to eternity.

Once the ego is not there, there is no expectation, frustration, no desire, no despair. Suddenly one finds oneself falling into a deep harmony with the cosmos. And that harmony is God; that harmony is nirvana; that harmony is tao.

You must be a deeply anxiety-ridden person, otherwise chain-smoking is not possible; chain-smoking is a by-product. You must be so concerned about a thousand and one disturbances inside, you must be carrying such a big load of worries on your heart, on your chest, that you don't even know how to forget them. You don't know how to drop them - smoking at least helps you to forget about them.

Future is your projection of unfulfilled desires. The more unfulfilled you are, the bigger a future you have. The more unfulfilled is your being, the richer the dreams you have of the future. But it is just in your mind.

Fearlessness is not the absence of fear, fearlessness is the total presence of fear with the courage to face it.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars-and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.

You cannot live with expectations because life has no obligation to fulfill your desires. You can live with an open heart, but you cannot live with expectations. The more expectations you have, the more frustrated you will be.

Attachment is not love. Where there is attachment there is exploitation.

People are not things, you cannot have ownership.

When a man thinks about a woman he thinks about love, he never thinks about marriage. When a woman thinks about a man, she thinks about marriage. Love is secondary, security is first. She lives in a different kind of world - maybe in the future she may not, but in the past the only problem for the woman was how to be secure.

Why do we cling to life and why are we afraid of death? You may not have thought about it. The reason why we cling so much to life and why we are afraid of death is just inconceivable. We cling to life so much because we do not know how to live. We cling to life so much because really we are not alive. And time is passing and death is coming nearer and nearer. And we are afraid that death is coming near and we have not lived yet.

The desire to rule over others, the will to power, is one of the greatest crimes that man has committed.

You become angry because something or someone has done something against your expectations.

Remember, frustration is out of expectation, and ego is always expecting. The ego is a beggar.

Find the light and it will show you the path. The path that is shown by your own light is the only path that is right.

Look at the flowers-for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

Everybody is trying to be perfect. And the moment somebody starts trying to be perfect, he starts expecting everybody else to be perfect. He starts condemning people, he starts humiliating people.

You can come to know the truth only when you are in love. But love never argues. There is no argument in love, because there is no aggression.

All our attachments are outward oriented and hence this illusion.

Every child is born sane, and then, slowly slowly, we civilize him - we call it the process of civilization. We prepare him to become part of the great culture, the great church, the great state to which we belong. Our whole politics is stupid, and then HE becomes stupid. Our whole education is ugly. Our politics means nothing but ambition, naked ambition - ambition for power. And only the lowest kind of people become interested in power.

Just be yourself, it means to be beautiful.

The only thing that matters in life is your own opinion about yourself, nobody can destroy your dignity then, because it is not dependent on anybody's opinion.

Deep love creates deep fear. It looks like death because the I disappears, the you disappears - and it is a sort of death. And when you die, only then do you enter into the divine.

Relaxation is one of the most complex phenomena - very rich, multidimensional. All these things are part of it: let-go, trust, surrender, love, acceptance, going with the flow, union with existence, egolessness, ecstasy. All these are part of it, and all these start happening if you learn the ways of relaxation.

Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth.

Indifference looks like detachment, but it is not; indifference is simply no interest. Detachment is not absence of interest - detachment is absolute interest, tremendous interest, but still with the capacity of non-clinging. Enjoy the moment while it is there and when the moment starts disappearing, as everything is bound to disappear, let it go. That is detachment.

Meditation is a death - death of all that you are now. Of course there will be a resurrection, but that will be a totally new, fresh original being which you are not even aware is hidden in you.

Always go with the river of life. Never try to go against the current, and never try to go faster than the river. Just move in absolute relaxation, so that each moment you are at home, at ease, at peace with existence.

Courage Is a Love Affair with the Unknown

One has to love unconditionally - the trees and the rocks and the sun and the moon and the people.

Life is a balance between rest and movement.

The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude.

Love means the art of being with others. Meditation means the art of being with yourself. Both are two aspects of the same coin.

That is one of the great secrets of life, that life is a movement. And if you are stuck somewhere you lose contact with life.

Don't try to understand life. Live it! Don't try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know - and all that knowing will come out of your experiencing. The more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known.

Anybody who says that love is a hindrance on the path of self-realization is not a sage.

Whatever you are doing, if there is contentment and a feeling that this whole existence is nothing but the manifestation of godliness, that we are traveling on holy earth, that whomever you are meeting, you are meeting God - there is no other way; only faces are different, but the inner reality is the same - all your tensions will disappear. And the energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty.

The innocence of children is their wisdom, the simplicity of children is their egolessness. The freshness of the child is the freshness of your consciousness, which never becomes old, which always remains young.

Don't analyze, celebrate it.

Without possessions, success, fame; who are you?

Love knows how to forgive. Love cannot hurt and cannot be violent.

Only silence communicates the truth as it is.

Everything that is of authentic value in life has arisen out of meditation. There is no other way. Meditation is the mother of art, music, poetry, dance, sculpture. All that is creative, all that is life-affirmative, is born out of meditation. All that is life-negative - hate, anger, jealousy, violence, war - is born out of the mind. Man has two possibilities: mind and meditation.

And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that's what meditation is all about.

A life of both sadness and blissfulness is multi-dimensional; it moves in all dimensions together. Watch the statue of Buddha or sometimes look into my eyes and you will find both together - a blissfulness, a peace, a sadness also.

The dance of the flower in the wind, in the sun, in the rain, cannot be understood by the head; the heart has to be open for it.

The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.

Love is the ultimate, the end. You love for love's own sake. It is not a means to anything else, it is its own end.

We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love. Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.

The world is not a problem; the problem is your unawareness.

Be realistic: Plan for a miracle

Paradise is within you, in your state of no-mind. And hell is also within you, in your very mind.

Meditation is a process of getting rid of the whole past, of getting rid of all diseases, of getting rid of all the pus that has gathered in you. It is painful, but it is cleansing, and there is no other way to cleanse you.

Paradise is not somewhere else... it is within you. And it is not in some other time, after death... It is in you right now.

Watch,witness,observe your thoughts-without any judgement,without any condemnation or evaluation.

Existence is only in the present. Mind is never in the present. In fact, the moment you are in the present, there is no mind in you, there is great silence. The whole sky of your inner being is without thoughts, without clouds. I call this the state of no-mind. Only in this state of no-mind do you meet existence. And that meeting is the ultimate ecstasy. Once you have tasted it, you will never bother about the future.

The idea of vegetarianism is of immense value; it is based on great reverence for life.

Eyes which have lost their tears have lost their most beautiful, their most glorious treasure.

Where does the ego get its energy? The ego feeds off your desire to be something else. You are poor and you want to be rich - the ego is absorbing energy, its life-breath. You are ignorant and you want to become a wise one - the ego is absorbing energy. You are a wretched nobody and you want to become powerful - the ego is absorbing energy.

Beware: don't choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart.

Forget about getting, simply give; and I guarantee you, you will get much.

Man is busy desiring to find something which only he can do so that his ego acquires importance.

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

The mind is constantly involved in thinking, in judging, in evaluating. Its whole function seems to be to keep you involved in thoughts, which are nothing but soap bubbles - or perhaps soap bubbles have more substance to them than your thoughts.

Existence has no personality. No question of personalities, it simply is whatsoever it is. To experience existence as it is, is to know the truth.

God is not a person at all. You cannot worship God. You can live in a godly way but you cannot worship God - there is nobody to worship. All your worship is sheer stupidity, all your images of God are your own creation. There is no God as such, but there is godliness, certainly - in the flowers, in the birds, in the stars, in the eyes of the people, when a song arises in the heart and poetry surrounds you... all this is God. Let us say `godliness` rather than using the word `God` - that word gives you the idea of a person, and God is not a person but a presence.

Life is happiness and unhappiness. Life is day and night, life is life and death. You have to be aware of both.

Accept the responsibility of being yourself as you are, with all that is good and with all that is bad, with all that is beautiful and that which is not beautiful. In that acceptance a transcendence happens and one becomes free.

Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing. If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing. You cannot have heaven and hell together, you can have only one. It is your choice.

The ego can exist only if you take yourself and everything seriously. Nothing kills the ego like playfulness, like laughter. When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die, it cannot exist anymore. Ego is illness; it needs an atmosphere of sadness to exist. Seriousness creates the sadness in you. Sadness is a necessary soil for the ego. Hence your saints are so serious, for the simple reason that they are the most egoistic people on the earth. They may be trying to be humble, but they are very proud of their humbleness. They take their humbleness very seriously.

Our whole energy remains blocked either in the past or in the future. When you withdraw all your energy from past and future a tremendous explosion happens.

Ecstasy is our very nature, not to be ecstatic is simply unnecessary. To be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic, it needs great effort to be miserable. That's why you look so tired, because misery is real hard work; to maintain it is really difficult, because you are doing something against the nature.

If love exists between two persons, it is blessed. If love does not exist between two persons, then all your laws put together cannot bridge them. Then they exist separate, then they exist apart, then they exist in conflict, then they exist always in war. And they create all kinds of trouble for each other. They are nasty to each other, nagging to each other, possessive of each other, violent, oppressive, dominating, dictatorial.

Being in deep devotion comes as a surprise the first time, because it is so difficult for people to feel even love, and devotion is the highest form of love... just the essential fragrance of love. If love is the flower, then devotion is just the fragrance. You cannot catch hold of it. You can feel it, you can smell it, you can be surrounded by it, you can be drowned in it, but you cannot catch hold of it. It is not that material.

Sadness is silent, it is yours. It is coming because you are alone. It is giving you a chance to go deeper into your aloneness. Rather than jumping from one shallow happiness to another shallow happiness and wasting your life, it is better to use sadness as a means for meditation. Witness it. It is a friend! It opens the door of your eternal aloneness.

Marriage is an institution that teaches a man regularity, frugality, temperance, forbearance and many other splendid virtues he would not need had he stayed single.

An expectation is a shelter - it gives you a security feeling. So when someone breaks your expectations he is breaking your shelter, making you insecure, fearful.

Belief is a deception you play upon yourself.

When desiring ceases, the other world opens. The other world is hidden in this world. But because your eyes are full of desire, full of the ego, you cannot see it.

The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.

Crowds create illusions.

Surrender is the quantum leap from mind to no-mind, from ego to egolessness. And in a single step the whole journey is contained. It is not a long journey from you to God, it is a single-step journey. It is not a gradual phenomenon; it is not that slowly slowly, gradually you come to the divine. It is a quantum leap! One moment you were in darkness and the next moment all is light. All that is needed is to put the ego aside.

Awareness means you come with an inner light, you move fully alert. Each step is taken in awareness - the walking, the coming, the sitting - everything is done in full awareness.

The man who is egoless is the man who has no ideals. Let this be the criterion, and you have stumbled upon a fundamental. The man of no ego is the man of no ideals. Then how can the ego be created? - the very energy is missing. The energy comes out of friction, conflict, struggle, will.

Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training, education, your culture.

Any expectation, even the expectation of peace, brings restlessness. The tension has to go. As soon as this happens a divine peace sets in.

When sadness comes, just sit by the side and look at it and say, "I am the watcher, I am not sadness," and see the difference. Immediately you have cut the very root of sadness. It is no more nourished. It will die of starvation. We feed these emotions by being identified with them.

Our whole attitude about life is money-oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power-oriented and power is destructive, not creative. A man who is after money will become destructive, because money has to be robbed, exploited; it has to be taken away from many people, only then can you have it. Power simply means you have to make many people impotent, you have to destroy them - only then will you be powerful, can you be powerful.

Knowledge is also borrowed. It is not a flower that grows in your soul, it is something plastic that has been imposed upon you.

All the great masters in the world have been saying only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it.

Philosophers are never happy here. Now is not their time, and here is not their space. They live there, they live somewhere else.

If you are courageous, listen to the heart. If you are a coward, listen to the head.

If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against.

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

Love deeply, love without jealousy, love blissfully and help each other to be more meditative.

If you are not capable of being alone, your relationship is false. It is just a trick to avoid your loneliness, nothing else.

Love is life, love is god, love is sannyas!