Imagination is just through words, verbal structures. You create a thing – it is not there, it is not a reality. But you create it through your mental images. And you can create it to such an extent that you yourself become deceived by it and you think it is real. This happens in hypnosis. Hypnotize a person and say anything; he conjures up the image, and that image becomes real. You can do it. You are doing it in many ways.
Imagination is a force, but it is a conjured-up force, imagined force. You can use it and you can be used by it. If you can use it, it will be helpful, but if you are used by it, it is fatal, it is dangerous.
Imagination can become madness any moment; imagination can be helpful if through it, you create a situation for your inner growth and crystallization.
[Osho]
The moment you become alert thinking ceases. With alertness you cannot think.
The whole energy becomes alert, there is no energy left to move into thinking. When you are alert even for a single moment, you simply listen. There is no barrier. Your words are not there which can get mixed. You need not interpret. The impact is direct.
If you can listen with alertness, then what I am saying may be meaningful or may not be meaningful, but your listening with alertness will always be significant in meaning That very alertness will make a peak of your consciousness. The past will dissolve; the future will disappear. You will be nowhere else, you will just be here and now. And in that moment of silence when thinking is not, you will be deep in contact with your own source. And that source is bliss, and that source is divine. So the only thing to be done is to do everything with alertness.
[Osho]
Whatsoever you do, you are sowing some seeds. Then trees will follow, and whatsoever you have sown you will crop it. And whenever you crop anything, there is suffering, but you never look that these seeds were sown by you. Whenever suffering happens to you, you think it is coming from somewhere else, you think it is some accident or some evil forces are working against you.
So you have invented the devil. The devil is just a scapegoat – you are the devil. You create your suffering. But whenever you suffer, you simply throw it on the devil, the devil is doing something. Then you are at ease. Then you never become aware of your own foolish pattern of life.
Or you call it a fate, or you say ”God is testing me." But you go on avoiding the basic fact that you are the sole cause of whatsoever happens to you. And nothing is accidental. Everything has a causal link, and you are the cause.
[Osho]
Somewhere
you have lost the fundamental sincerity to simply accept,
what you do not know as you do not know. If you see "I do not
know," you cannot fight with anybody. You believe "This is it,"
that is when you fight with somebody. Belief gives you
a certain sense of confidence and stability, but it is a dangerous
confidence. Confidence without clarity is a deadly mix.
You manufacture these presidents of powerful countries, when you have too
much confidence and no clarity. We have again and
again produced these people on the planet because they have
enormous confidence and no clarity, isn’t it? And this comes
from belief. When you believe something that you do not know,
it gives you enormous confidence. It looks like power, it looks
like strength, but it is always a destructive strength - confidence
without clarity. You do not need any confidence in your life.
What you need is clarity. How much clarity you have with life,
only to that extent you can handle it.
[Jaggi]
A hundred years ago, whatever
people thought as destiny, today you have taken many of those
things into your hands. Whatever your grandmother
thought was destiny, you have taken it into your hands and are
making it happen the way you want it.
So all the things that we do not understand, all the things
that we are not able to logically compute, we are always calling
it destiny. It is convenient. All the things which are unpleasant
in us, we are blaming it on destiny. We do not want to admit
that we are like this because we are like this. “We are like this because our destiny is like this.” Your destiny is written by you
unconsciously.
If you have mastery over your physical body, 15–20% of
your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery
over your mind, 50–60% of your life and destiny will be in your
hands. If you have mastery over your life energies, 100% of your
life and destiny will be in your hands. How much out of control
you are, that is how much destiny you talk about.
[Jaggi]
What you call as your body, when you were born it was so small, now it has become so big. That means you accumulated it slowly, isn’t it? What you call as your physical body is an accumulation. It is a piece of planet that you picked up, and you made it into this, yes? Similarly, what you call as my mind is a huge accumulation of impressions of life around you. Depending upon what kind of social, educational, religious and family situations, accordingly, you have taken in those kinds of impressions, and you formed a certain kind of mind.
So both your physical body and your mind are accumulations. What you accumulate is definitely not you, isn’t it so? It is yours, but it is not you.
[Jaggi]
What it means is that money comes from our minds, our thoughts. If a person says, 'Money is hard to get," it will probably be hard to get. If a person says, "Oh I’ll never be rich," or "It’s really hard to get rich," it will probably be true for that person. If a person says, "The only way to get rich is to work hard," then that person will probably work hard. If the person says, "If I had a lot of money, I would put it in the bank because I wouldn’t know what to do with it," then it will probably happen just that way. You’d be surprised how many people think and do just that. And if a person says, "Investing is risky," then it is. As it is said, "Money will be anything you want it to be."
The mental preparation needed to become a sophisticated investor is probably similar to the mental preparation it would take to climb Mt. Everest, or to prepare for the priesthood. Such an undertaking was not to be taken lightly.
[Robert T.K]
First, absolute contentment. Nothing else is needed; not even God is needed. Second, no future. This very moment of love is eternity. No next moment, no future, no tomorrow. Love is a happening in the present. And third, you cease to be, you are no more. If you still are, then you have still not entered the temple of love. Its just like any meditation.
What is meditation going
to do? These three things: It will create contentment; it will allow you to remain in the present, help
you to remain in the present; and it will destroy your ego.
Why you cannot feel deep love is because you cannot be in it totally, this unfulfilled being
craves for fulfillment in many dimensions.
[Osho]
Philosophers have created many stories, and it is a game. If you like the game of atheism, be an
atheist. If you like the game of theism, be a theist. But these are games, not the reality. Reality is
something else. Reality Is concerned with you, not what you believe. The reality is you, not what you believe. The reality is behind the mind, not in the contents of the mind, because theism is a content of the mind, atheism is a content of the mind – something in the mind.
[Osho]
Your mind is just a vagabond, a wandering. It is never at
one point. It is always going, moving, reaching, but never at any point. It goes from one thought to
another, from A to B. But it is never at the A; it is never at the B. It is always on the move. Remember
this: mind is always on the move, hoping to reach somewhere but never reaching. It cannot reach.
The very structure of the mind is movement. It can only move; that is the inherent nature of the
mind.
If you stop at A or B or any point, the mind will fight with you. The mind will say, "Move on," because if you stop, the mind dies immediately. It can be alive only in movement. The mind means a process.
If you stop and do not move, mind suddenly becomes dead, it is no more there; only consciousness
remains.
Consciousness is your nature; mind is your activity – just like walking. It is difficult because we think
mind is something substantial. We think mind is a substance – it is not, mind is just an activity. So it
is really better to call it ”minding” than mind. It is a process just like walking. Walking is a process,
if you stop, there is no walking. You have legs, but no walking. Legs can walk, but if you stop then
legs will be there but there will be no walking.
Consciousness is like legs – your nature. Mind is like walking – just a process. When consciousness
moves from one place to another, this process is mind. When consciousness moves from A to B,
from B to C, this movement is mind. If you stop the movement, there is no mind. You are conscious,
but there is no mind. You have legs, but no walking. Walking is a function, an activity; mind is also a
function, an activity.
If you stop at any point, the mind will struggle. The mind will say, ”Go on!” The mind will try in every
way to push you forward or backward or anywhere – but, ”Go on!” Anywhere will do, but do not stay
at one point.
You have never disidentified yourself from the mind. You think you are the mind. This fallacy that you
are the mind gives the mind total freedom, because then there is no one to master it, to control it.
There is no one! Mind itself becomes the master. It may become the master, but that mastery is just
seemingly so. Try once and you can break that mastery.
Mind is just a slave pretending to be the master, but it has pretended so long, for lives and lives, that
even the master believes that the slave is the master. That is just a belief. Try the contrary and you
will know that that belief was totally unfounded.
[Osho]
Man is born with a center, but he remains completely oblivious of it. Man can live without knowing
his center, but man cannot be without a center. The center is the link between man and existence;
it is the root. You may not know it, knowledge is not essential for the center to be, but if you do not
know it you will lead a life that is rootless – as if rootless. You will not feel any ground, you will not feel yourself based; you will not feel at home in the universe. You will be homeless.
Of course, the center is there, but by not knowing it your life will be just a drifting – meaningless,
empty, reaching nowhere. You will feel as if you are living without life, drifting, just waiting for death. You can go on postponing from one moment to another, but you know very well that that postponing will lead you nowhere. You are just passing time, and that feeling of deep frustration will follow you like a shadow. Man is born with a center, but not with the knowledge of the center. The knowledge has to be gained.
Every moment you live through those roots, but those roots are underground. Just as with any tree, the roots are underground; the tree is unaware of its own roots. You also have roots. That rootedness is your
center. When I say man is born with it, I mean it is a possibility that you can become aware of your
rootedness. If you become aware, your life becomes actual; otherwise your life will be just like a
deep sleep, a dream.
What Abraham Maslow has called "self-actualization" is really nothing but becoming aware of your
inner center from where you are linked with the total universe, becoming aware of your roots: you
are not alone, you are not atomic, you are part of this cosmic whole. This universe is not an alien
world. You are not a stranger, this universe is your home. But unless you find your roots, your center,
this universe remains something alien, something foreign.
Sartre says that man lives as if he has been thrown into the world. Of course, if you do not know your
center you will feel a thrownness, as if you have been thrown into the world. You are an outsider;
you do not belong to this world and this world doesn’t belong to you. Then fear, then anxiety, then
anguish are bound to result. A man as an outsider in the universe is bound to feel deep anxiety,
dread, fear, anguish. His whole life will be just a fight, a struggle, and a struggle which is destined
to be a failure. Man cannot succeed because a part can never succeed against the whole.
It would be better to say that you are the universe grown into a particular dimension which we call "human." The universe grows in multi-dimensions – in trees, in hills, in stars,
in planets... in multi-dimensions. Man is also a dimension of growth. The universe is realizing itself
through many, many dimensions. Man is also a dimension along with the height and the peak. No
tree can become aware of its roots; no animal can become aware of its roots. That is why there is
no anxiety for them.
Bliss is the result of an organic unity with the universe, and anguish the result of an enmity.
When man is born he is rooted in a particular spot, in a particular CHAKRA – center – and
that is the navel. Look at a child breathing – his navel goes up and down. He breathes with the belly, he lives with the belly – not with the head, not with the heart. But by and by he will have to drift away.
[Osho]
The first is what we call ’pleasure’; pleasure is of the body.
The second is happiness; happiness is of the mind.
The third is bliss; bliss is of the spirit, spiritual.
But they all share one reality, and that reality is joy. Joy, converted into the language of the body, becomes pleasure. Joy, received through the body, become pleasure. Joy, received through mind, becomes happiness. Joy, received neither through mind nor through body, received without body, without mind, becomes bliss. These are the three layers of joy.
Joy is the only reality. Joy is God! Joy is the stuff which the existence is made of.
Joy takes away your ego, and misery gives you your ego in a very strong way. Misery creates ego, and joy takes it away. When you are miserable, you ARE; when you are joyful, you are NOT. We convert all opportunities of joy into sadness, because that is the only way for the ego to exist.The ego can exist only in hell. In heaven, the ego cannot exist.
You have been told, down the centuries, that if you become egoless you will enter into heaven. I say to you: If you become egoless heaven enters in you. Heaven is not a geographical thing somewhere, it is not that you go there. When you are egoless, you are heaven. When you are egoful, you are hell. It is not that hell is there somewhere at the bottom of existence and heaven is somewhere at the peak of existence – these are just metaphors. Heaven and hell are states of being.
Now, the paradox: the ego creates misery, and the ego wants to be joyful. The ego seeks, is very greedy about joy; it wants to have all the joys possible – and the ego creates misery. Now you are trapped. The more misery the ego creates, the more interested the ego becomes in joy. But it cannot create joy: joy is not its function.
[Osho]
Intelligence is not greedy. You will be surprised to know that an intelligent man is never greedy. Greed is part of unintelligence. You hoard for tomorrow because you are not confident that tomorrow you will be able to tackle your life, otherwise why hoard? You become misers, you become greedy, because you don’t know whether tomorrow your intelligence will be capable of coping with life or not. Who knows? You are not confident about your intelligence so you hoard, you become greedy.
An intelligent person is not afraid, is not greedy. Greed and fear go together – that’s why heaven and hell go together: hell is fear, heaven is greed.
Create fear in people and create greed in people – make them as greedy as possible. Make them so greedy that life cannot satisfy them, then they will go to the priest and to the leader. Then they will start fantasizing about some future life where their foolish desires and stupid fantasies will be fulfilled. Watch it. To demand the impossible is to be unintelligent.
An intelligent person is perfectly satisfied with the possible. He works for the probable, he never works for the impossible and the improbable, no. He looks at life and its limitations. He is not a perfectionist. A perfectionist is neurotic. If you are a perfectionist you will go neurotic
[Osho]
The scholar believes in knowledge, not in knowing. Knowledge is from the outside; knowing is from the inside. The scholar trusts information. The information goes on collecting; it becomes a heavy load, but nothing grows inside. The inner reality remains the same – as ignorant as before.
The politician seeks power – it is an ego-trip. And those who arrive are humble people, not egoists. Egoists never arrive; by their very egoism they cannot arrive. Ego is the greatest barrier between you and God – the only barrier. So the politician cannot come.
And the priest... the priest is very cunning. He is trying to become a mediator between you and God, and he has not known God at all. He is the MOST deceptive, the most fraudulent. He is committing the greatest crime a man can commit: he is pretending that he knows God. Not only that: that he will make God available to you, that you come and follow him and he will take you to the ultimate. And he does not know anything of the ultimate! He may know the ritual, how to do the prayer, but he does not know the ultimate. How can he lead you? He is a blind man, and when a blind man leads the blind, they both fall into the ditch.
[Osho]
In fact, there are two kinds of religions in the world. The moment you utter the word ‘God,’ a whole lot of people look up – he is Uparwala, ‘the One Above.’ But in a few indigenous religions, God means they look down because they believe God is in the core of the Earth. Those who believe God is up in heaven are responsible for all the disastrous ways in which we are treating this planet, because they want to burn it and go to heaven. Those who believe God is hidden in this planet walk a little more gently. Because this planet is the abode of their gods, they don’t want to damage it, so they walk causing the least possible disturbance. But those who think God is above walk blatantly; every step that they take scorches the planet. We call this ‘carbon footprint.’ What they are leaving is ashes, burnt-out, carbon – wherever they step.
Looking up and looking down is not a way of knowing. It cannot be a way of knowing because a human being is not capable of knowing anything other than what reflects within his own consciousness. You cannot see anything outside; you can only see that which happens in your mindscape. You cannot hear anything that is happening outside; you can only hear that which happens in your mind. So there is only one place. That makes it easy, isn’t it? If there were a million places in front of you and you were asked to choose, just the decision making could become too difficult. If you look at your life closely enough, with enough penetration, you will see there is only one place – the only place. [Osho]
There were two notorious brothers in our local town in Tennessee, some time ago. Both of them were bootleggers. They made a lot of money but carried themselves off in the society by dispensing money. One of the brothers died. There was a new pastor. The old one had been completely under their grip; they had been supplying spirits to him and kept him happy. Now this new one was young and a little straight. You know, when they are young, a lot of people have values and principles; they believe they can clean up the world. This pastor wanted to build a new place of worship and clean up the mess that his predecessor had left. So this other brother went to the pastor and told him, "See, all the money that you need to build this new place of worship, I will give it to you. The only thing is, when you conduct my brother’s service, you must declare that he is a saint." The pastor readily agreed. When the moment came he said, "This man was a bootlegger, he corrupted the society, he corrupted all the local officials, he cheated on his wife, he treated his family badly, he abused God, but compared to his brother, he’s a saint."
Your goodness is always in comparison to somebody else’s. That is of no value. When the only place is within you, comparing to this one or that one is a horrible way to live. When ‘The Only Place’ is right here, there is nowhere to go. There is no comparison because it is the only place. There is only one place of experience for you. Even if you go to heaven, you can only experience within yourself. If you go to hell, you can only experience within yourself. So when there is only one place, how to compare it with something else? The moment you compare, you are gone into a hallucinatory state because reality happens only in one place, nowhere else.
[Jaggi]
Imagination is just through words, verbal structures. You create a thing – it is not there, it is not a reality. But you create it through your mental images. And you can create it to such an extent that you yourself become deceived by it and you think it is real. This happens in hypnosis. Hypnotize a person and say anything; he conjures up the image, and that image becomes real. You can do it. You are doing it in many ways.
Imagination is a force, but it is a conjured-up force, imagined force. You can use it and you can be used by it. If you can use it, it will be helpful, but if you are used by it, it is fatal, it is dangerous.
Imagination can become madness any moment; imagination can be helpful if through it, you create a situation for your inner growth and crystallization.[Osho]
^ Top
The moment you become alert thinking ceases. With alertness you cannot think. The whole energy becomes alert, there is no energy left to move into thinking. When you are alert even for a single moment, you simply listen. There is no barrier. Your words are not there which can get mixed. You need not interpret. The impact is direct.
If you can listen with alertness, then what I am saying may be meaningful or may not be meaningful, but your listening with alertness will always be significant in meaning That very alertness will make a peak of your consciousness. The past will dissolve; the future will disappear. You will be nowhere else, you will just be here and now. And in that moment of silence when thinking is not, you will be deep in contact with your own source. And that source is bliss, and that source is divine. So the only thing to be done is to do everything with alertness.
[Osho]
^ Top
Whatsoever you do, you are sowing some seeds. Then trees will follow, and whatsoever you have sown you will crop it. And whenever you crop anything, there is suffering, but you never look that these seeds were sown by you. Whenever suffering happens to you, you think it is coming from somewhere else, you think it is some accident or some evil forces are working against you.
So you have invented the devil. The devil is just a scapegoat – you are the devil. You create your suffering. But whenever you suffer, you simply throw it on the devil, the devil is doing something. Then you are at ease. Then you never become aware of your own foolish pattern of life.
Or you call it a fate, or you say ”God is testing me." But you go on avoiding the basic fact that you are the sole cause of whatsoever happens to you. And nothing is accidental. Everything has a causal link, and you are the cause.
[Osho]
^ Top
Somewhere you have lost the fundamental sincerity to simply accept, what you do not know as you do not know. If you see "I do not know," you cannot fight with anybody. You believe "This is it," that is when you fight with somebody. Belief gives you a certain sense of confidence and stability, but it is a dangerous confidence. Confidence without clarity is a deadly mix.
You manufacture these presidents of powerful countries, when you have too much confidence and no clarity. We have again and again produced these people on the planet because they have enormous confidence and no clarity, isn’t it? And this comes from belief. When you believe something that you do not know, it gives you enormous confidence. It looks like power, it looks like strength, but it is always a destructive strength - confidence without clarity. You do not need any confidence in your life. What you need is clarity. How much clarity you have with life, only to that extent you can handle it.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
A hundred years ago, whatever people thought as destiny, today you have taken many of those things into your hands. Whatever your grandmother thought was destiny, you have taken it into your hands and are making it happen the way you want it.
So all the things that we do not understand, all the things that we are not able to logically compute, we are always calling it destiny. It is convenient. All the things which are unpleasant in us, we are blaming it on destiny. We do not want to admit that we are like this because we are like this. “We are like this because our destiny is like this.” Your destiny is written by you unconsciously.
If you have mastery over your physical body, 15–20% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your mind, 50–60% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your life energies, 100% of your life and destiny will be in your hands. How much out of control you are, that is how much destiny you talk about.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
What you call as your body, when you were born it was so small, now it has become so big. That means you accumulated it slowly, isn’t it? What you call as your physical body is an accumulation. It is a piece of planet that you picked up, and you made it into this, yes? Similarly, what you call as my mind is a huge accumulation of impressions of life around you. Depending upon what kind of social, educational, religious and family situations, accordingly, you have taken in those kinds of impressions, and you formed a certain kind of mind.
So both your physical body and your mind are accumulations. What you accumulate is definitely not you, isn’t it so? It is yours, but it is not you.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
What it means is that money comes from our minds, our thoughts. If a person says, 'Money is hard to get," it will probably be hard to get. If a person says, "Oh I’ll never be rich," or "It’s really hard to get rich," it will probably be true for that person. If a person says, "The only way to get rich is to work hard," then that person will probably work hard. If the person says, "If I had a lot of money, I would put it in the bank because I wouldn’t know what to do with it," then it will probably happen just that way. You’d be surprised how many people think and do just that. And if a person says, "Investing is risky," then it is. As it is said, "Money will be anything you want it to be."
The mental preparation needed to become a sophisticated investor is probably similar to the mental preparation it would take to climb Mt. Everest, or to prepare for the priesthood. Such an undertaking was not to be taken lightly.
[Robert T.K]
^ Top
First, absolute contentment. Nothing else is needed; not even God is needed. Second, no future. This very moment of love is eternity. No next moment, no future, no tomorrow. Love is a happening in the present. And third, you cease to be, you are no more. If you still are, then you have still not entered the temple of love. Its just like any meditation.
What is meditation going to do? These three things: It will create contentment; it will allow you to remain in the present, help you to remain in the present; and it will destroy your ego.
Why you cannot feel deep love is because you cannot be in it totally, this unfulfilled being craves for fulfillment in many dimensions.
[Osho]
^ Top
Philosophers have created many stories, and it is a game. If you like the game of atheism, be an atheist. If you like the game of theism, be a theist. But these are games, not the reality. Reality is something else. Reality Is concerned with you, not what you believe. The reality is you, not what you believe. The reality is behind the mind, not in the contents of the mind, because theism is a content of the mind, atheism is a content of the mind – something in the mind.
[Osho]
^ Top
Your mind is just a vagabond, a wandering. It is never at one point. It is always going, moving, reaching, but never at any point. It goes from one thought to another, from A to B. But it is never at the A; it is never at the B. It is always on the move. Remember this: mind is always on the move, hoping to reach somewhere but never reaching. It cannot reach.
The very structure of the mind is movement. It can only move; that is the inherent nature of the mind.
If you stop at A or B or any point, the mind will fight with you. The mind will say, "Move on," because if you stop, the mind dies immediately. It can be alive only in movement. The mind means a process. If you stop and do not move, mind suddenly becomes dead, it is no more there; only consciousness remains.
Consciousness is your nature; mind is your activity – just like walking. It is difficult because we think mind is something substantial. We think mind is a substance – it is not, mind is just an activity. So it is really better to call it ”minding” than mind. It is a process just like walking. Walking is a process, if you stop, there is no walking. You have legs, but no walking. Legs can walk, but if you stop then legs will be there but there will be no walking.
Consciousness is like legs – your nature. Mind is like walking – just a process. When consciousness moves from one place to another, this process is mind. When consciousness moves from A to B, from B to C, this movement is mind. If you stop the movement, there is no mind. You are conscious, but there is no mind. You have legs, but no walking. Walking is a function, an activity; mind is also a function, an activity.
If you stop at any point, the mind will struggle. The mind will say, ”Go on!” The mind will try in every way to push you forward or backward or anywhere – but, ”Go on!” Anywhere will do, but do not stay at one point.
You have never disidentified yourself from the mind. You think you are the mind. This fallacy that you are the mind gives the mind total freedom, because then there is no one to master it, to control it. There is no one! Mind itself becomes the master. It may become the master, but that mastery is just seemingly so. Try once and you can break that mastery.
Mind is just a slave pretending to be the master, but it has pretended so long, for lives and lives, that even the master believes that the slave is the master. That is just a belief. Try the contrary and you will know that that belief was totally unfounded.
[Osho]
^ Top
Man is born with a center, but he remains completely oblivious of it. Man can live without knowing his center, but man cannot be without a center. The center is the link between man and existence; it is the root. You may not know it, knowledge is not essential for the center to be, but if you do not know it you will lead a life that is rootless – as if rootless. You will not feel any ground, you will not feel yourself based; you will not feel at home in the universe. You will be homeless.
Of course, the center is there, but by not knowing it your life will be just a drifting – meaningless, empty, reaching nowhere. You will feel as if you are living without life, drifting, just waiting for death. You can go on postponing from one moment to another, but you know very well that that postponing will lead you nowhere. You are just passing time, and that feeling of deep frustration will follow you like a shadow. Man is born with a center, but not with the knowledge of the center. The knowledge has to be gained.
Every moment you live through those roots, but those roots are underground. Just as with any tree, the roots are underground; the tree is unaware of its own roots. You also have roots. That rootedness is your center. When I say man is born with it, I mean it is a possibility that you can become aware of your rootedness. If you become aware, your life becomes actual; otherwise your life will be just like a deep sleep, a dream.
What Abraham Maslow has called "self-actualization" is really nothing but becoming aware of your inner center from where you are linked with the total universe, becoming aware of your roots: you are not alone, you are not atomic, you are part of this cosmic whole. This universe is not an alien world. You are not a stranger, this universe is your home. But unless you find your roots, your center, this universe remains something alien, something foreign.
Sartre says that man lives as if he has been thrown into the world. Of course, if you do not know your center you will feel a thrownness, as if you have been thrown into the world. You are an outsider; you do not belong to this world and this world doesn’t belong to you. Then fear, then anxiety, then anguish are bound to result. A man as an outsider in the universe is bound to feel deep anxiety, dread, fear, anguish. His whole life will be just a fight, a struggle, and a struggle which is destined to be a failure. Man cannot succeed because a part can never succeed against the whole.
It would be better to say that you are the universe grown into a particular dimension which we call "human." The universe grows in multi-dimensions – in trees, in hills, in stars, in planets... in multi-dimensions. Man is also a dimension of growth. The universe is realizing itself through many, many dimensions. Man is also a dimension along with the height and the peak. No tree can become aware of its roots; no animal can become aware of its roots. That is why there is no anxiety for them.
Bliss is the result of an organic unity with the universe, and anguish the result of an enmity.
When man is born he is rooted in a particular spot, in a particular CHAKRA – center – and that is the navel. Look at a child breathing – his navel goes up and down. He breathes with the belly, he lives with the belly – not with the head, not with the heart. But by and by he will have to drift away.
[Osho]
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Joy has three planes:
The first is what we call ’pleasure’; pleasure is of the body.
The second is happiness; happiness is of the mind.
The third is bliss; bliss is of the spirit, spiritual.
But they all share one reality, and that reality is joy. Joy, converted into the language of the body, becomes pleasure. Joy, received through the body, become pleasure. Joy, received through mind, becomes happiness. Joy, received neither through mind nor through body, received without body, without mind, becomes bliss. These are the three layers of joy.
Joy is the only reality. Joy is God! Joy is the stuff which the existence is made of.
Joy takes away your ego, and misery gives you your ego in a very strong way. Misery creates ego, and joy takes it away. When you are miserable, you ARE; when you are joyful, you are NOT. We convert all opportunities of joy into sadness, because that is the only way for the ego to exist.The ego can exist only in hell. In heaven, the ego cannot exist.
You have been told, down the centuries, that if you become egoless you will enter into heaven. I say to you: If you become egoless heaven enters in you. Heaven is not a geographical thing somewhere, it is not that you go there. When you are egoless, you are heaven. When you are egoful, you are hell. It is not that hell is there somewhere at the bottom of existence and heaven is somewhere at the peak of existence – these are just metaphors. Heaven and hell are states of being.
Now, the paradox: the ego creates misery, and the ego wants to be joyful. The ego seeks, is very greedy about joy; it wants to have all the joys possible – and the ego creates misery. Now you are trapped. The more misery the ego creates, the more interested the ego becomes in joy. But it cannot create joy: joy is not its function.
[Osho]
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Intelligence is not greedy. You will be surprised to know that an intelligent man is never greedy. Greed is part of unintelligence. You hoard for tomorrow because you are not confident that tomorrow you will be able to tackle your life, otherwise why hoard? You become misers, you become greedy, because you don’t know whether tomorrow your intelligence will be capable of coping with life or not. Who knows? You are not confident about your intelligence so you hoard, you become greedy.
An intelligent person is not afraid, is not greedy. Greed and fear go together – that’s why heaven and hell go together: hell is fear, heaven is greed.
Create fear in people and create greed in people – make them as greedy as possible. Make them so greedy that life cannot satisfy them, then they will go to the priest and to the leader. Then they will start fantasizing about some future life where their foolish desires and stupid fantasies will be fulfilled. Watch it. To demand the impossible is to be unintelligent.
An intelligent person is perfectly satisfied with the possible. He works for the probable, he never works for the impossible and the improbable, no. He looks at life and its limitations. He is not a perfectionist. A perfectionist is neurotic. If you are a perfectionist you will go neurotic
[Osho]
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The scholar believes in knowledge, not in knowing. Knowledge is from the outside; knowing is from the inside. The scholar trusts information. The information goes on collecting; it becomes a heavy load, but nothing grows inside. The inner reality remains the same – as ignorant as before.
The politician seeks power – it is an ego-trip. And those who arrive are humble people, not egoists. Egoists never arrive; by their very egoism they cannot arrive. Ego is the greatest barrier between you and God – the only barrier. So the politician cannot come.
And the priest... the priest is very cunning. He is trying to become a mediator between you and God, and he has not known God at all. He is the MOST deceptive, the most fraudulent. He is committing the greatest crime a man can commit: he is pretending that he knows God. Not only that: that he will make God available to you, that you come and follow him and he will take you to the ultimate. And he does not know anything of the ultimate! He may know the ritual, how to do the prayer, but he does not know the ultimate. How can he lead you? He is a blind man, and when a blind man leads the blind, they both fall into the ditch.
[Osho]
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In fact, there are two kinds of religions in the world. The moment you utter the word ‘God,’ a whole lot of people look up – he is Uparwala, ‘the One Above.’ But in a few indigenous religions, God means they look down because they believe God is in the core of the Earth. Those who believe God is up in heaven are responsible for all the disastrous ways in which we are treating this planet, because they want to burn it and go to heaven. Those who believe God is hidden in this planet walk a little more gently. Because this planet is the abode of their gods, they don’t want to damage it, so they walk causing the least possible disturbance. But those who think God is above walk blatantly; every step that they take scorches the planet. We call this ‘carbon footprint.’ What they are leaving is ashes, burnt-out, carbon – wherever they step.
Looking up and looking down is not a way of knowing. It cannot be a way of knowing because a human being is not capable of knowing anything other than what reflects within his own consciousness. You cannot see anything outside; you can only see that which happens in your mindscape. You cannot hear anything that is happening outside; you can only hear that which happens in your mind. So there is only one place. That makes it easy, isn’t it? If there were a million places in front of you and you were asked to choose, just the decision making could become too difficult. If you look at your life closely enough, with enough penetration, you will see there is only one place – the only place.
[Osho]
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There is only one place of experience for you...
There were two notorious brothers in our local town in Tennessee, some time ago. Both of them were bootleggers. They made a lot of money but carried themselves off in the society by dispensing money. One of the brothers died. There was a new pastor. The old one had been completely under their grip; they had been supplying spirits to him and kept him happy. Now this new one was young and a little straight. You know, when they are young, a lot of people have values and principles; they believe they can clean up the world. This pastor wanted to build a new place of worship and clean up the mess that his predecessor had left. So this other brother went to the pastor and told him, "See, all the money that you need to build this new place of worship, I will give it to you. The only thing is, when you conduct my brother’s service, you must declare that he is a saint." The pastor readily agreed. When the moment came he said, "This man was a bootlegger, he corrupted the society, he corrupted all the local officials, he cheated on his wife, he treated his family badly, he abused God, but compared to his brother, he’s a saint."
Your goodness is always in comparison to somebody else’s. That is of no value. When the only place is within you, comparing to this one or that one is a horrible way to live. When ‘The Only Place’ is right here, there is nowhere to go. There is no comparison because it is the only place. There is only one place of experience for you. Even if you go to heaven, you can only experience within yourself. If you go to hell, you can only experience within yourself. So when there is only one place, how to compare it with something else? The moment you compare, you are gone into a hallucinatory state because reality happens only in one place, nowhere else.
[Jaggi]
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