Osho Great Quotes & Sayings

The great appeal of drugs in the West is only because the West has succeeded in destroying the right hemisphere completely because of compulsory education. — Osho

This is the first truth to be learned in life: that you are always responsible, nobody else. With that comes great freedom, because with that all alternatives are open. If you think that somebody else is responsible then you are a slave; then nothing is open. Then you have to be what you are. If your life is a tragedy then it has to be a tragedy, because others are responsible; unless they change, nothing can be done about it. You don't have any freedom. And that is the reason why millions of people live in misery: they think others are creating their misery. Nobody is creating your misery, nobody can create it; and nobody can create your bliss either. It is a totally individual phenomenon. It is just your work upon yourself. And the most strange thing is: to create misery is difficult and to create bliss is easy, but people always choose the difficult thing, because the difficult thing always gives them an ego-trip. — Osho

The attitude of Tao is of cooperation, not conflict. The attitude of Tao is not to be against nature but to be with it, to allow nature, to let it have its way, to cooperate with it, to go with it. The attitude of Tao is of great relaxation. — Osho

To be "great" is an ego goal; to be real is existential. — Osho

Love is wild; its whole beauty is in its wildness. It comes like a breeze with great fragrance, fills your heart, and suddenly where there was a desert there is a garden full of flowers. — Osho

Just the other day I came across a statement: A perfectionist is a person who takes great pains, and gives even greater pains to others. And the outcome is just a miserable world! — Osho

Love creates a great need to be alone, and aloneness creates a great need to be together. — Osho

The natural desire of the human mind is to become special - to become special in the ways of the world, to have many degrees, to have much political power, to have money, wealth - to be special.
The mind is always ready to go on some ego trip. And if you are fed up with the world, then again the ego starts finding new ways and new means to enhance itself - it becomes spiritual. You become a great mahatma, a great sage, a great scholar, a man of knowledge, a man of renunciation; again you are special.
Unless the desire to be special disappears, you will never be special. Unless you relax into your ordinariness, you will never relax. — Osho

If the left hemisphere of the brain goes on dominating you, you will live a successful life - so successful that by the time you are forty you will have ulcers; by the time you are forty-five, you will have had at least one or two heart attacks. By the time you are fifty you will be almost dead - but successfully dead! You may become a great scientist, but you will never become a great being. You may accumulate enough wealth, but you will lose all that is of worth. You may conquer the whole world like an Alexander, but your own inner territory will remain unconquered. — Osho

Watch the thoughts, because in your watching them, they disappear. Then watch your emotions, sentimentalities; by your watching, they also disappear. Then your heart is as innocent as that of a child, and your head is as great a genius as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Aristotle. But — Osho

I don't see the point in being afraid of death, because in the first place I don't know what is going to be. And secondly, there are only two possibilities: Either I will survive - then there is no question of fear. Or I will not survive - then too there is no problem of fear. If I don't survive there is no problem - when I am not, there cannot be any problem, and if I survive as I am here, if my consciousness survives, there is no problem because I am still there. "Problems were there in life also - I solved them, so if I am there and there are problems I will solve them - and it is always a joy to solve a problem, it gives a challenge. You take the challenge and you move into it, and when you solve it a great release of happiness happens." The fear of — Osho

Compare, go on comparing yourself with everybody else you pass by, and a great jealousy will be the outcome. It is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison. Otherwise, if you drop comparing, jealousy disappears. Then you simply know you are you, and you are nobody else, and there is no need. — Osho

You are the way and you are the goal, and there is no distance between you and the goal. You are the seeker and you are the sought; there is no distance between the seeker and the sought. You are the worshipper and you are the worshipped. You are the disciple and you are the master. You are the means and you are the end: this is the great way. — Osho

To be a parent is a great art. To give birth to children is nothing - any animal can do it; it is a natural, biological, instinctive process. To give birth to a child is nothing great, it is nothing special; it is very ordinary. But to be a parent is something extraordinary; very few people are really capable of being parents. — Osho

If you know your being, there is no question of becoming. All that you could have ever imagined to become you already are. You are gods who have forgotten who they are. You are emperors who have fallen asleep and are dreaming that they have become beggars. Now beggars are trying to become emperors, in dreams they are making great efforts to become emperors, and all that is needed is to wake up! Osho — Osho

Every time anything arises in you, is a great chance to experience pure energy. Just watch and the donkey will go. It may raise a little dust, but that dust also settles on its own; you don't have to settle it. You simply wait. Don't move from waiting and watching, and soon you will find yourself surrounded by a pure energy, which has not been used in fighting, in repressing, or in being angry. And energy is certainly delight. Once you know the secret of delight, you will enjoy every emotion. And — Osho

He says, Love yourself ... This can become the foundation of a radical transformation. Don't be afraid of loving yourself. Love totally, and you will be surprised: The day you can get rid of all self-condemnation, self-disrespect - the day you can get rid of the idea of original sin, the day you can think of yourself as worthy and loved by existence - will be a day of great blessing. From that day onward you will start seeing people in their true light, and you will have compassion. And it will not be a cultivated compassion; it will be a natural, spontaneous flow. — Osho

There is a deep urge in man to know things which are worthless, to know things which make you feel special - because only you know those things and nobody else does. Man wants to be special, and nothing makes you more special than so-called esoteric knowledge. That is why esoteric knowledge remains important. All kinds of rubbish go on in the name of esoteric knowledge - that the earth is hollow, that inside the earth there are great civilizations. And there are people who still believe in it, and in many more such stories. — Osho

The greatest fear in the world is the opinion 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. — Osho

All that is great cannot be possessed - and that is one of the most foolish things man goes on doing. We want to possess. — Osho

Just being alive is such a gift, but nobody ever told you to be thankful to existence. On the contrary, everyone was grumpy, complaining. Naturally, if everything surrounding your life from the very beginning goes on pointing out to you that you are not what you should be, goes on giving you great ideals that you have to follow and you have to become, your isness is never praised. What is praised is your future - if you can become someone respectable, powerful, rich, intellectual, in some way famous, not just a nobody. — Osho

All that is painful has to be accepted; a dialogue has to be created with it. It is you. There is no other way to go beyond it. The only way is to absorb it. And it has tremendous potential. Anger is energy, fear is energy, so is cowardice. All that happens to you has great momentum, a great quantity of energy hidden in it. Once you accept it, that energy becomes yours. — Osho

Imagination is a great force. On the path of meditation, imagination is a barrier; on the path of love, imagination is a help. On the path of love, imagination is used as a device: You are told to imagine as intensely and passionately as possible. But on the path of meditation the same thing becomes a barrier.

Imagination simply means that you visualize a certain thing but you put so much energy into it that it almost becomes real. — Osho

Be a man: accept the challenge of the unknown, of the beyond. Let it become a great dream in your being. — Osho

Life is also a great instrument. You have to learn how to play upon it. Nothing has to be cut, destroyed, repressed, rejected. All that existence has given to you is beautiful. If you have not been able to use it beautifully, it simply shows that you are not yet artful enough. We have all taken our lives for granted, and that is wrong. We are given only a raw possibility. We have been given only a potential for life; we have to learn how to actualize it. All — Osho

We will be entering the beautiful world of a Zen master's no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him- this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence- it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no more a part of our madness. So it is as it should be.
Ch. 1: The Great Way Is Not Difficult — Osho

People think that those who commit suicide are against life - they are not. They are too lusty for life, they have great lust for life; and because life is not fulfilling their lust, in anger, in despair, they destroy themselves. — Osho

When anger comes to you, it is not going to kill you. It has been with you many times before, and you have survived perfectly well. It is the same anger that you have been through before. Just do one thing new, which you have never done. Instead, every time you get involved with it, fight with it. This time just watch as if it does not belong to you, as if it is somebody else's anger. And you are in for a great surprise: it will disappear within seconds. — Osho

Each moment, die to the past and remain fresh, and your life will be a great adventure. And it is only for the adventurous people to know what truth is. The non-adventurous live in comfortable lies. — Osho

Osho is one of India's greatest mystics ... I see him as one of the world's great teachers, thinkers, philosophers and guides of our times. I have enormous respect for his world vision and the kind of International Communities he is building. I have always felt his influence in my life. — Kabir Bedi

The greatest miracle in the world is that you are, that I am. To be is the greatest miracle - and meditation opens the doors of this great miracle. But only a man who loves himself can meditate; otherwise you are always escaping from yourself, avoiding yourself. Who wants to look at an ugly face, and who wants to penetrate into an ugly being? Who wants to go deep into one's own mud, into one's own darkness? Who wants to enter into the hell that you think you are? You want to keep this whole thing covered up with beautiful flowers and you want always to escape from yourself. — Osho

Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved. — Osho

Gibran says: Once I asked such a scarecrow, "I can understand the farmer who made you - he needs you. I can understand the poor animals - they don't have great intelligence to see that you are bogus. But in the rain, in the sun, in the hot summer, in the cold winter, you remain standing here: for what?" And the scarecrow said, "You don't know my joy. Just to make those animals afraid is such a joy that it is worth suffering rain, suffering sun, suffering heat, winter, everything. I am making thousands of animals afraid! I know I am bogus, there is nothing inside me, but I don't care about that. My joy is in making others afraid." I want to ask you: Would you like to be just like this bogus man - nothing inside, making somebody afraid, making somebody happy, making somebody humiliated, making somebody respectful? Is your life only for others? Will you ever look inside? — Osho

And there is no harm in loving a stranger. In fact, it is more exciting to love a stranger. When you were not together, there was great attraction. The more you have been together, the more the attraction has become dull. The more you have become known to each other, superficially, the less is the excitement. Life becomes very soon a routine. People go on repeating the same thing, again and again. If you look at the faces of people in the world, you will be surprised: Why do all these people look so sad? Why do their eyes look as if they have lost all hope? The reason is simple; the reason is repetition. Man is intelligent; repetition creates boredom. Boredom brings a sadness because one knows what is going to happen tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow ... until one goes into the grave, it will be the same, the same story. Finkelstein — Osho

And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder. They are dangerous because they give you the feeling that you know, although you know not. They give you this misconception about yourself that now questions have been solved. "I know what The Bible says, I know what the Koran says, I know what the Gita says. I have arrived." You will become a parrot; you will repeat things but you will not know anything. This is not the way to know - knowledge is not the way to know. Then what is the way to know? Wonder. Let your heart dance with wonder. Be full of wonder: throb with it, breathe it in, breathe it out. Why be in such a hurry for the answer? Can't you allow a mystery to remain a mystery? I know there is a great temptation not to allow it to remain a mystery, to reduce it to knowledge. — Osho

Don't be like the crowd that exists on Earth. They all have beautiful theories, beautiful dogmas, great philosophies, magnificent theologies, but all in their heads. They have not tasted anything, and they will die without actually knowing anything. Their whole lives will be simply a long desert where nothing grows, where nothing happens, where nothing is realized. — Osho

One just needs a little alertness to see and find out: Life is really a great cosmic laughter. — Osho

If you feel pain, be attentive to it; don't do anything. Attention is the great sword; it cuts everything. You simply pay attention to the pain. — Osho

It is not that good people go to paradise - wherever good people are, it becomes paradise. And wherever stupid people and idiots are - they may be great believers in God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible, it does not matter - even paradise becomes a ruin. It becomes a hell." - Edmund Burke — Osho

Seventy is the natural life span for human beings. And if things move in this natural course then one dies with tremendous joy, with great ecstasy, feeling immensely blessed that life has not been meaningless, that at least one has found his home. And because of this richness, this fulfillment, one is capable of blessing the whole of existence. Just to be near such a person at the time of death is a great opportunity. You will feel, as the person leaves the body, as if some invisible flowers are falling upon you. Although you cannot see them, you can feel them. It is sheer joy, so pure that even to have a little taste of it is enough to transform your whole life. — Osho

Difficulty in communicating because the feminine mind functions differently, and the masculine mind functions differently. And man has been conditioned by society in a different way to how the woman is conditioned. And both have to live together, twenty-four hours. It becomes heavy. It becomes heavy because whatever the man says, the woman hears something else. The woman is not much in the head, she is much more in the heart: the man is much more in the head. That creates a great disparity. — Osho

A real intelligence is free from any preoccupation with thoughts. That's why all the great scientists say that whenever they have discovered something, they have discovered it not while they were thinking but when the thinking stopped and there was an interval, a gap. In that gap was the insight: the intuitive flash, like lightning. When thought stops, your thinking is pure. It will look paradoxical. When thought stops - let me repeat it - your thinking is pure, your capacity to reflect reality is pure. — Osho

You go on falling in the same ditch every day, deciding every day never to fall again in the same ditch. But when you come near the ditch, the attraction, the fascination with falling in the ditch is so great that you forget all your decisions. You console yourself "Just once more. From tomorrow, I'm going to keep the promise I've given to myself." But this has happened so many times. And you will do it your whole life, unless you allow the watcher to see the ridiculous acts that you are doing. And — Osho

The people of the heart - the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the actors - are all irrational. They create great beauty, they are great lovers, but they are absolutely unfit in a society that is arranged by the head. Your artists are thought by your society to be almost outcast, a little bit crazy, an insane type of people. Nobody wants his or her children to become musicians or painters or dancers. Everybody wants them to be doctors, engineers, scientists, because those professions pay. Painting, poetry, dance, are dangerous, risky - you may end up just a beggar on the street, playing on your flute. — Osho

When I say be creative I don't mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. — Osho

A totally new kind of education is needed in the world. The person who is born to be a poet is proving himself stupid in mathematics and the person who could have been a great mathematician is just cramming history and feeling lost. Everything is topsy-turvy because education is not according to your nature: it does not pay any respect to the individual. It forces everybody into a certain pattern. — Osho

There is great difference between trust and belief.
Trust is personal,
Belief is social. — Osho

I have heard Shree Rajneesh and have been inspired by his talks. His works are sublimne and seek to liberate the soul of humans. Indeed his presentation is unique, his goal is great and his success in liberating each person from the mafia surrounding the soul is rewarding reading. The message that he had to deliver must reach everywhere. Ultimately salvation comes when one attains freedom from oneself. That, I believe, is the consummation which exposure to Osho may help. — V. R. Krishna Iyer