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Osho Quotes

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Famous Osho Quotes

“I thank you for your courage to expose yourself. This courage is needed by everyone because without this courage, you cannot hope for any possibility of transformation - into a new world, into a new consciousness, into your authentic being, which is the door to ultimate reality and to the ultimate benediction.”

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”

“I don’t divide ordinary life from spiritual life. They are one, they are inseparably one. To separate them is to create a split humanity, a schizophrenic humanity. Life is a unity, an organic unity, indivisible. Nothing is higher and nothing is lower. There is no hierarchy, everything exists simultaneously on the same plane. So nothing has to be renounced, nothing has to be rejected. Of course everything has to be transformed and transformed through love, transformed through bliss, transformed through joy.”

“Don't think that relationship is coming from the past - it is coming from the past, but don't think about it because then you will get more complicated. Make things easier. It is going on - from your past lives things have a continuity, so I don't deny the fact, but don't get burdened by it. It will continue in the future, but don't think about it. The present is more than enough. Munch the cake and say: THIS cake is delicious. Don't think of the past and don't think of the future; they will take care of themselves. Nothing is discontinuous. You have been in relationships in the past. You have loved, you have hated, you have made friends and you have made enemies. That continues, known, unknown to you, it is always there. But if you start brooding about it, you will miss the present moment. So think as if there is no past, and think as if there is no future. THIS moment is all that is given to you. Work it out, as if this moment is all. Behave as if this moment is all and work out how you can transform your energies into a loving phenomenon - this very moment. People come to me and they want to know about their past lives. They HAD past lives, but it is irrelevant. Why this inquiry? What are you going to do about the past? Nothing can be done now. The past is past and it cannot be undone. You cannot change it. You cannot go back. That's why nature, in its wisdom, doesn't allow you to remember past lives. Otherwise you would go mad. You may be in love with a girl. If you suddenly become aware that that girl was your mother in your past life, things will become very complicated. Then what to do? And when that girl has been your mother in a past life, making love to her now will create guilt. Not making love to her will also create guilt, because you love her. That's why I say nature in its wisdom never allows you to remember your past lives - unless you come to a point where it can be allowed, when you become so meditative that nothing disturbs you, then the gates open and all your past lives are before you. It is an automatic mechanism, though sometimes the mechanism doesn't work. Through accidents some children are born who can remember.”

“When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance. Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child. If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don't live in knowledge, live in wonder. Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything. But you have become addicted to misery. You cling to your misery as if it is something very precious. You become cruel because you don't know how to become compassionate. It is a negative state. The same energy that is cruelty will become compassion. With an unalert mind the energy becomes violence; with an alert mind the same energy becomes compassion. In sleep the same energy becomes torture, either of yourself or of somebody else. When you are awake, the same energy becomes love, for yourself and for others also. You are already where you need to be, you are already in that space which you are seeking. Just make a little effort to come out of your clinging to misery. Don't invest in misery; invest in celebration. You take one step towards life and life takes one thousand towards you. Just take one step out of your clinging to misery. The mind will go on pulling you backwards. Just be indifferent to the mind and tell the mind, 'Wait, I have lived enough with you, now let me live without mind.' That's what a child is: living without mind, or, living with no mind.”

“Question : WHAT IS LOVE? Osho : It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes. At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics - the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination. You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously - you are not that conscious yet. You cannot do it deliberately; it is n unconscious mechanism. Hence so much possessiveness and so much jealousy become a part, an intrinsic part, of your love. That's why love creates more misery than joy. Ninety-nine percent of it is bitter; there is only that one percent of sugar that you have coated on top of it. And sooner or later that sugar disappears. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a stepping-stone, if you can use it as a meditation. If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released - but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of partaking, can partake. Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available - you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. 'Medicine' and 'meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic. Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help. When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness - because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life.... And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.”

“Question : OSHO, I AM VERY IMPATIENT, I WANT TO KNOW GOD, BUT I DON'T WANT TO WASTE MY TIME IN SEARCH OF HIM. CAN YOU SHOW ME A SHORT CUT? Osho : Patience is the only way, and if you are absolutely patient you can find right now. This is the ultimate paradox of religious inquiry, of the search for truth, for God, for NIRVANA: if you are impatient you will have to wait for eternity. And patience means love because only love can be patient. Love can wait - love knows how to wait. It can wait forever, and because it can wait forever it becomes capable of receiving the gift right now.”

“Accept whatsoever is there, and once you accept unconditionally, then everything is beautiful. One should simply go on enjoying whatsoever comes on the way. Non-asking will give you a state of non-desire. Not complaining will make you more contented. This moment is all. Never go beyond this moment, but whatsoever happens, be true to it. Be authentic to it.”

“Love is dangerous because it makes you an individual. And the state and the church . . . they don’t want individuals, not at all. They don’t want human beings, they want sheep. They want people who only look like human beings but whose souls have been crushed so utterly, damaged so deeply, that it seems almost irreparable.”

“...you are part of an infinite energy and by doing you are gaining, not losing. By giving you are attaining, not losing. Live as the ocean. Be oceanic! Never think of losing, about anything. Nothing is lost, nothing can be lost. And you are not an individual; you only appear as an individual. The whole is joined to you; you are just a face of the whole, just a way the whole has happened. Enjoy, celebrate, be active, and always be a giver. To be a giver so totally that you never think of retaining or holding anything is the only real prayer. To give is to pray. To give is to love. And those who can give, they are always given more.”

“The decision to be together should be unconditional. It should not be only if you love me, if you are sweet to me, if you are this and that to me – no. It is to be together whatsoever – sometimes sweet and sometimes very salty; sometimes very beautiful and sometimes a monster. Once you understand that, you have come to a mature love, otherwise love is only baby love. Small school children fall in love. They think in poetry and romance, and write poems and beautiful letters, but that’s all childish. They don’t know what life is going to be. It is a hard struggle. Because love is one of the most precious jewels, the struggle is very very hard. Only very few people achieve it.”

“Man cannot be reduced to slavery if he is not distorted first. The politician and the priest have been in a deep conspiracy down the ages. They have been reducing humanity to a crowd of slaves. They are destroying every possibility of rebellion in man—and love is rebellion, because love listens only to the heart and does not care a bit about anything else.”

“...if you have loved a person really, when he is gone he is gone; you will not grieve much. If you have not loved the person deeply, then you will grieve very much. Try to understand this. Your father dies, or your mother dies. If you have loved him totally while he was alive, you will be able to say goodbye to him without any grief -- because you loved him. That experience of love was total and fulfilling; nothing is left undone; nothing is hanging over your head. Whatsoever was possible has happened; now you can accept it. What more was possible? Even if he had been alive, what more would have been possible? The experience is complete. Whenever an experience is complete, you are ready to say goodbye very easily. But if you have not loved your father as you always wanted to, you have not been respectful towards him as you always wanted to, you will feel guilty. Now the father is gone; now there is no way to fulfill your desire -- now there is no way to show your respect, your love. Now there is no way, you will feel yourself hanging in the middle, in mid-air, in a limbo. You will not be at ease; you cannot say goodbye. You will cry and weep and you will be broken, and you will say that you are broken because your father is dead, but the real thing is something else. You are broken because now the possibility to love him, to respect him, is gone. Now there is no possibility -- the doors are closed and you have missed an opportunity. The son will cry more if he has not really loved his father. If he has loved his father he will be able to accept the fact -- love is very accepting and very understanding. Once an experience is complete, you can get out of it very easily -- you can just slip out of it as the snake slips out of his old skin. If you love a woman and you have been constantly quarrelling with her, and it never became a deep satisfaction, and she dies...now she will haunt you, her ghost will haunt you for your whole life. You could not do something that was possible, but now it is no longer possible. Now something incomplete will always be there in the heart, hurting; it will become a wound. This is the understanding of all the sages, that while you are loving a person, if you love him totally there is going to be no misery. If you love him totally, if you enjoy and delight in him totally, and the person is gone -- of course, one feels a little sad but it is not grief; one misses a little but one is capable of remaining centered, one is not distracted. If you are in love, love totally, so nothing remains hanging. Otherwise, that hanging, incomplete experience, that unlived experience, will haunt you. These unlived experiences go on piling up and they become heavy burdens.”

“In fact as I see it, no lover has ever betrayed anybody. It is only ignorance that kills love – nobody betrays it. Both wanted to be together, but somehow both were ignorant. Their ignorance played tricks upon them and became multiplied. By and by they drifted. Then they think that love is dangerous. Love is not dangerous. Only unawareness is dangerous.”