Rajneesh
My house was a guest house of many Jaina saints, Hindu monks, Sufi mystics, because my grandfather was interested in all of these people.
There is no god, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man.
Don't avoid extremes, and don't choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities - that is the art, the secret of balancing.
Rajneeshism is creating a Noah's Ark of consciousness, remaining centered exactly in the middle of the cyclone. You can only escape within, and that's what I teach. I do not teach worship of God or any other ritual but only a scientific way of coming to your innermost core.
What I am teaching is religiousness, a quality. Religion is a dead dogma, fixed principles, frozen fossils. What I am teaching to you is a living, flowing religiousness - an experience like love.
If you have difficulties making a decision, choose the lesser of the two evils.
Because of the womb being a central phenomenon in the feminine body, the whole psychology of woman differs: she is non-aggressive, non-inquiring, non-questioning, non-doubting, because all of those things are part of aggression. She will not take the initiative; she simply waits - and she can wait infinitely.
I am going to be contradictory to myself many times for the simple reason that I am trying to bring all the religions to a higher synthesis. Different approaches have to be joined together. I am creating an orchestra.
All of the religions are looking after the poor. At least leave me alone to look after the rich. I am the rich man's guru.
When you become a sannyasin, I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else... I am destroying your ideologies, creeds, cults, dogmas, and I am not replacing them with anything else.
My people. I have given them a sense of individuality, integrity. I have not made them slaves of any god or any religion. Nor of any holy book or any priest. I have certainly not replaced their god. They are all a part of what I call my traveling circus.
A man has a birthright to be tired and retired. I am retired completely.
Discover yourself, otherwise you have to depend on other people's opinions who don't know themselves.Collection: Love
Because of watching your breath and thoughts you have come to know now that you are neither thoughts nor your breath, you are the watcher, the witness. This is awareness. This is what I call meditation. Once you have known this awareness you are unidentified with your body, with your mind. Now you experience a vastness inside you, in one sense utterly empty and in another sense overflowingly full. Because of its emptiness you will remain calm and quiet. And because of its overflowing fullness you will be creative.Collection: Creative
You can become happy just by deciding to be happy.Collection: Life
Fearlessness is not the absence of fear, fearlessness is the total presence of fear with the courage to face it.Collection: Faces
Mind is memory, not intelligence.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Heart
NOW is the only reality. All else is either memory or imagination.Collection: Life
Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I.Collection: Unique
Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.Collection: Inspirational
It does not matter if you are a rose or a lotus or a marigold. What matters is that you are flowering.Collection: Love
CREATIVITY is when you are not, because creativity is the fragrance of the creator. It is the presence of God in you. Creativity belongs to the creator, not to you. No man can ever be creative. Yes, man can compose, construct, but can never be a creator. When man disappears, when man becomes utterly absent, a new kind of presence enters his being - the presence of God. Then there is creativity. When God is inside you His light that starts falling around you is creativity. The climate that arises around you because of the presence of God within you is creativity.Collection: Fall
A certain darkness is needed to see the stars.Collection: Life
You are not accidental. The world needs you. Without you, something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it.Collection: Life
The only thing that matters in life, is your own opinion about yourself.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Moving
The moment you accept yourself, you become beautiful.Collection: Beauty
Never ask, "Who is my real friend?" Ask, "Am I a real friend to somebody?" That is the right question. Always be concerned with yourself.Collection: Love
The world is not a problem; the problem is your unawareness.Collection: World
If you are courageous, listen to the heart. If you are a coward, listen to the head.Collection: Heart
The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable.Collection: Hurt
First become alone. First start enjoying yourself. First love yourself. First become so authentically happy that if nobody comes it doesn't matter; you are full, overflowing. If nobody knocks at your door it is perfectly okay; you are not missing. You are not waiting for someone to come and knock at the door. You are at home. If somebody comes: good-beautiful. If nobody comes that too is beautiful and good.Collection: Beautiful
In love the other is important; in lust you are importantCollection: Spiritual
Attachment is the root cause of all misery. Possessiveness is nourishment for the ego.Collection: Attachment
Never sacrifice your life for anything! Sacrifice everything for life! Life is the ultimate goal.Collection: Life
Love means the art of being with others. Meditation means the art of being with yourself. Both are two aspects of the same coin.Collection: Art
Only an acceptance of both the flowers and the thorns can bring you peace. Peace, after all, is the fruit of total acceptance.Collection: Attitude
Love dispels fear just as light dispels darkness. If even for a moment you have been in love with someone, fear disappears and thinking stops. With fear thinking continues. The more you are afraid, the more you have to think.Collection: Fear
Your whole past hangs around you with nothing completed - because nothing has been lived really, everything somehow bypassed, partially lived, only so-so, in a lukewarm way. There has been no intensity, no passion. You have been moving like a somnambulist, a sleepwalker. So that past hangs, and the future creates fear. And between the past and the future is crushed your present, the only reality.Collection: Moving
Your so-called religions have made you very tense. Because they have created guilt in you. My effort here is to help you get rid of all guilt and all fear. I would like to tell you: there is no hell and no heaven. So don't be afraid of hell and don't be greedy for heaven. All that exists is this moment. You can make this moment a hell or a heaven - that certainly is possible - but there is no heaven or hell somewhere else. Hell is when you are all tense, and heaven is when you are all relaxed. Total relaxation is paradise.Collection: Somewhere Else
As your silence grows; your friendliness, your love grows; your life becomes a moment-to-moment dance, a joy, a celebration.Collection: Silence
If you take the responsibility for your life, you can start changing it.Collection: Change
Love yourself...accept yourself...be yourself-these qualities will create for the first time an individual whose inner flame is undividable a great pool of energy will gather and surround you with this an inner trust will arise from within you.Collection: Love
True celebration should come from your life, in your life. And true celebration cannot be according to the calendar, that on the first of November you will celebrate. Strange, the whole year you are miserable and on the first of November suddenly you come out of misery, dancing. Either, the misery is false, or the first of November is false; both cannot be true. And once the first of November has gone, you are back in your dark hole, everybody in his misery, everybody in his anxiety.Collection: Dark
Life should be a continual celebration, a festival of lights the whole year round. Only then can you grow up, can you blossom.Collection: Growing Up
Whatsoever you can be you are. There is no goal. And we are not going anywhere. We are simply celebrating here. Existence is not a journey, it is a celebration. Think of it as a celebration, as a delight, as a joy! Don't turn it into a suffering, don't turn it into a duty, a work. Let it be play.Collection: Journey
Future arises out of your misery, not out of your celebration. A really celebrating person has no future; he lives this moment, he lives it totally. Out of that total living arises the next moment, but it is not out of any lust. Of course, when out of celebration the next moment arises, it has more capacity to bless you. When out of celebration the future arises, it goes on becoming more and more rich. And a moment comes when the moment is so total, so whole, that time completely disappears.Collection: Lust
And whatsoever is repressed has to be repressed again because victory is never complete. There is no way to destroy sex by force, by violence. There is no way to control and discipline it. The people who have tried to control and discipline it have made the world very pornographic. Your so-called saints have a very pornographic mind. If a window can be created and a hole can be made in their heads, you will be able to see just sex, pornography. it is bound to be so. It is natural.Collection: Sex
The real thing is not the goal, the real thing is the beauty of the movement. The real thing is not reaching, the real thing is the journey. Remember, the real thing is the journey, the very traveling. It is so beautiful, why bother about the goal? And if you are too bothered about the goal, you will miss the journey, and the journey is life - the goal can only be death.Collection: Beautiful