Osho’s Liberto: 2000+ Quotes of Shree Rajneesh

By Sreechinth C

The Indian spiritual guru, Osho Rajneesh earned millions of followers worldwide with his spiritual practice of dynamic meditation. This controversial figure was also a gifted speaker, who never shied away from his views though much of them were considered as taboo by the conventional society. Born to an Indian family, he was claimed to have attained spiritual enlightenment when he was 21. Quitting an academic career, Osho spent his later years to spread his thoughts and philosophy on spirituality. Though those were contentious regarding the times, Rajneesh earned millions of young followers. Over a period of time, he established himself as a very popular spiritual guru not just in India but also internationally. However, he also made the headlines when it was revealed that members of his commune had committed a range of serious crimes. Yet he is still regarded as one among the most influential spiritual speakers of the last century. Here in this book, we bring you the biggest collection of his quotes that not only include spirituality but also on life, meditation, self and love. Let’s have a journey through the words of this dynamic Osho...

• Language: English
• Publisher: UB Tech
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463820216

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OSHO’S LIBERTO

OSHO’S LIBERTO

~ 2000+ Quotes of Shree Rajneesh ~

Composer: Sreechinth C

DEDICATION

This book, "Osho’s Liberto: 2000+ Quotes of Shree Rajneesh" is dedicated in the feet of Almighty.

"Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life."

TABLE OF Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A FEW WORDS ABOUT OSHO

WORDS OF OSHO

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sincerely showing thankfulness to all those who participated and supported directly and indirectly in the release of this book.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT OSHO

The Indian mystic, guru and spiritual leader Shree Rajneesh aka Osho or Acharya Rajneesh was a prominent teacher of spirituality who introduced practices of dynamic meditation. Being a controversial figure, he mastered many topics and was an eloquent speaker asserting his own views and neglected the prevailing taboos in the society.

Rajneesh was born with the birth name Chandra Mohan Jain on 11 December 1931 in Madhya Pradesh, India. He spent most of his childhood with his grandparents who gave him almost freedom and played a key role in forming his aggressive character. Though he was very talented and intelligent, Rajneesh rebelled all the preset systems. Completing the school studies, he joined for graduation in 1951, but was forced to transfer the college due to rebellious character. Taking a gap of one year from the studies, he went out in pursuit of soul search and meditation. It was at that time, he claimed to have enlightenment. Returning home, he continued the studies and completed graduation and took master’s in philosophy. After that he joined as assistant professor at University of Jabalpur, but soon quit that job due to the odds with the college’s administration.

By that time, Rajneesh travelled throughout the country rolling out his own style of unconventional and controversial ideas of spirituality. Quitting the professorship, he devoted his life for spreading out his spiritual teachings. In 1970, he started the new practice to attain divinity through ‘dynamic mediation’. This movement soon attracted many young people including westerners. In search of spiritual truth, he had a crowd of followers, dressed in orange and red and there were sessions for his devout disciples in his ashram in Pune, which sometimes involved violence and intercourse. As the six acres ashram got overcrowded, Rajneesh had to search for a larger area, but the local government were displeased with his controversial sessions and put many roadblocks so as to make the things difficult for him.

Due to the bureaucratic and religious pressures, Rajneesh moved to US with his disciples in 1981. In Oregon, he and his followers set up a city called Rajneeshpuram in more than a 100 square meter ranch. There too he had to fight with the local officials but got victorious in court.

As the stress between his disciples in commune and the local government increased, his followers became too arrogant and took drastic violence to achieve their ends that included murders, voter fraud and a mass salmonella poisoning that affected many neighboring citizens. In 1985, Police arrested Rajneesh and many of his followers accusing immigration fraud to escape the trials, he pleaded guilty of immigration charges and could return to India.

Back home, he continued his teachings through the number of his followers were significantly decreased. Over the years, he changed his name to Osho. As his health began to deteriorate, Osho succumbed to death on January 19, 1990 and the medical reports showed the reason for his death as heart failure.

Osho’s philosophy was that God lived in everyone. All human beings were in essence divine; it was just that there were different manifestations of that divinity. Unlike the other Gurus, he advocated the practice of physical exerciser before meditation. He never appointed any successor, yet his teachings and philosophy are still valued by many around the globe…

WORDS OF OSHO

Character

Let me insist and emphasize it because I would like all of my sannyasins to be creative in some way. To me, creativity is of tremendous import. An uncreative person is not a religious person at all.

What is meditation? It is not your character; it is not what you do. It is what you are. It is not the character; it is the consciousness that you bring to whatsoever you do. The doing is irrelevant. Whether you are doing it consciously or not is the question whether moral or immoral. Are you alert? If you are alert, meditation happens. If you are not alert, you live in sleep.

Any action coming out of unconsciousness is sin. The action may look virtuous, but it cannot be. You may create a beautiful facade, a character, a certain virtuousness; you may speak the truth, you may avoid lies; you may try to be moral, and so on and so forth. But if all this is coming from unconsciousness, it is all sin.

Knowledge is not information, its transformation.

But in the West it is very easy to dissolve the ego. So whenever a Western seeker reaches an understanding that ego is the problem he can easily dissolve it, more easily than any Eastern seeker. This is the paradox - in the West ego is taught, in the East egolessness is taught. But in the West it is easy to dissolve the ego; in the East it is very difficult.

Science is concerned about quantity; religion is concerned about quality. Religion is concerned with the art of how to live life and how to die life.

Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears.

When one is total, life flowers - and that flowering is spirituality. Spirituality is not an attitude, it is not a discipline. It is an outcome of a life lived totally, joyfully, delightfully; of a life of no complaint; of a life lived courageously, intensely. Then this flowering happens.

Don`t imitates: imitation creates falsity, pseudo-ness, in authenticity. Just feel your own way and don`t bother about what others say. It is nobody else`s business. Don`t bother about what churches say, organizations say - listen to your own heart.

Remember, character is not of much value. What is valuable is consciousness - not conscience but consciousness. Conscience is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely that these are not your ideas.

To remain absolutely free is what a true and authentic life is. So never gather any character - remain characterless.

The whole Zen attitude is to bring to your notice the fact that there is no effort to be made. The Zen attitude is that of effortlessness.

In the beginning this is bound to happen. You have been sitting on the lid that covers your repressions, and you have been riding on that lid a long time, trying continuously to hold down everything beneath it. To become a witness means that you have finally jumped off the lid; now you will only stand aside and will not do anything. Now you will no longer repress, now you will just witness. So everything suppressed will arise, all the repressions will catch fire; you will find flames leaping where there were only ashes.

I would like to you to become rooted into the earth. I am perfectly in agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche who says: I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe in those who speak of other worldly hopes! Learn your first lesson of trust by trusting the earth. It is your home right now!

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.

Touch your inner space, which is nothingness, as silent and empty as the sky; it is your inner sky. Once you settle down in your inner sky, you have come home, and a great maturity arises in your actions, in your behavior. Then whatever you do has grace in it. Then whatever you do is poetry in itself. You live poetry; your walking becomes dancing, your silence becomes music.

Sacrifice

You exist in time, but you belong to eternity- You are a penetration of eternity into the world of time-You are deathless, living in a body of death- Your consciousness knows no death, no birth- It is only your body that is born and dies-But you are not aware of your consciousness-You are not conscious of your consciousness-And that is the whole art of meditation; Becoming conscious of consciousness itself.

Suffering

When you listen with perfect awareness, then listening becomes possible.

Use all your suffering for meditation, and soon you will come to know that the suffering disappears because the energy starts moving inwards. It is not moving to the periphery, to the suffering, you are not feeding your suffering. It looks illogical, but this is the whole conclusion of all the mystics of the world: that you feed your suffering and you enjoy it in a subtle way, you don't want to be well—there must be some investment in it.

Pleasure is a sort of oblivion, forgetfulness. Pain is remembrance, you cannot forget pain.

I am free. If I want to be sad, it is my freedom. If I want to be happy, it is my freedom. Once you know that you are your world, you have penetrated into a different kind of understanding. Then nothing else matters - all else is games and excuses.

Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don't have, you start pretending things which you can't have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don't have it, and you don't have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.

A man who can do everything fully consciously becomes a luminous phenomenon. He is all light, and his whole life is full of fragrance and flowers. The mechanical man lives in dark holes, dirty holes. He does not know the world of light; he is like a blind man. The man of watchfulness is really the man who has eyes.

Anger will come and go and the watcher abides. Sadness comes and passes by and the witness remains.

Revenge

Mind is a duality; it is always split. There is no single point on which the mind agrees in totality. Half of the mind will agree and half of the mind will disagree, and whatever you choose, you are choosing only the half. The remaining half is going to take revenge. The unchosen part, the left over, will wait for its chance to show you that whatever you have chosen is wrong. But it does not matter which part you choose. Choice itself is wrong.

Hard Work

Children can be taught meditation more easily because they are not yet spoiled. When you have been spoiled the hard work is to help you to unlearn.

All errors are just ordinary, what extraordinary sin can you commit? All the sins have been committed already. You cannot find a new sin - it is very difficult, it is almost impossible to be original about sin. For millions of years people have committed everything that can be committed. To be thrown in hell for your sins. Now this is too much! You can throw a man into hell for five years, ten years, twenty years, and fifty years. If a man has lived for seventy years you can throw him there for seventy years. And that is if you only believe in one life. It is good that they believe in one life.

Music

Love is your song - you can sing it any time. It is like breathing. Nobody is going to take it away from you; nobody can take it away from you.

The more your meditation goes deep, the less and less you will feel the burden of the mind. The more and more meditation goes deep, the less and less you will be a mind. Thoughts will become rare, and ultimately they cease. That doesn't mean you become unthinking; it only means that your consciousness becomes clear, transparent, without thoughts moving continuously as clouds. Whenever you need to think you can think; but now thought becomes an instrument to you, not an obsession as it is presently. Thoughts are an obsession without meditation.

A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world - a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, and meditate better.

When sadness comes, accept it. Listen to its song. It has something to give to you. It has a gift which no happiness can give to you, only sadness can give it.

Everybody is born with the capacity to enjoy, but not with the art. People think just because they are alive and they breathe and they exist, they know how to enjoy. That is sheer stupidity. Enjoyment is a great art, it is a great discipline. It is as subtle a discipline as music or poetry or painting. It is the greatest creativity.

If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, and your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion, life itself will be the religion.

There is no evil and there are no evil forces in the world. There are only people of awareness, and there are people who are fast asleep - and sleep has no force. The whole energy is in the hands of the awakened people. And one awakened person can awaken the whole world. One lighted candle can make millions of candles lighted without losing its light.

I want to be taken playfully, not seriously - not with a long British face, but with beautiful laughter. Your laughter, your playfulness is the recognition that you have understood me. Your seriousness shows that you have misunderstood me; you have missed it - because seriousness is nothing but sickness. It is another name of sadness; it is a shadow of death. And I am all for life. If it is needed for your laughter, your dance, even to reject me, then rejects me - but don't reject the dance and the song and the life, because that is my teaching.

When love moves to the fifth center then whatever talents you have, any creative dimension, is possible for you. This is the center of creativity. It is not only for songs, not only for music; it is for all creativity.

Spiritual

With effort, reach to effortlessness. With seeking, reach to a state of no-seeking. With mind, arrive at no-mind.

Intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence means you will start thinking on your own; you will start looking around on your own. You will not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.

No ideology can help to create a new world or a new mind or a new human being -- because ideological orientation itself is the root cause of all the conflicts and all the miseries. Thought creates boundaries, thought creates divisions and thought creates prejudices; thought itself cannot bridge them. That's why all ideologies fail. Now man must learn to live without ideologies religious, political or otherwise. When the mind is not tethered to any ideology, it is free to move to new understandings. And in that freedom flowers all that is good and all that is beautiful.

Intelligence is the capacity to be in the present. The more you are in the past or are in the future, the less intelligent you are. Intelligence is the capacity to be here-now, to be in this moment and nowhere else. Then you are awake.

Be less of a judge and you will be surprised that when you become a witness and you don't judge yourself, you stop judging others too. And that makes you more human, more compassionate, and more understanding.

The heart is like a flower. Unless it is open, it cannot release its fragrance into the world.

Wherever you feel death, feel it. Don’t escape. Death is beautiful; death is the greatest mystery, more mysterious than life. Through life you can gain the world, the futile world- meaningless, worthless. Through death you can gain the eternal. Death is the door.

People love freedom - but nobody wants responsibility. And they come together, they are inseparable.

Your seed has been covered with so many layers of culture, etiquette, education, religion, country, that you have completely forgotten that you are here to grow, that you have become a lush green bush full of flowers, fragrance, dancing in the wind and in the rain and in the sun.

These are the only two situations possible, and you are in the sad situation. Everybody may know about you - who you are - but you yourself are completely oblivious of your transcendence, of your real nature, of your authentic being. This is the only sadness in life. You can find many excuses, but the real sadness is this: you don't know who you are. How can a person be happy not knowing who he is, not knowing from where he comes, and not knowing where he is going? A thousand and one problems arise because of this basic self-ignorance.

True freedom is always spiritual. It has something to do with your innermost being, which cannot be chained, handcuffed, or put into a jail.

Joy is not dependent on circumstances; it is your own. It is not a titillation produced by things; it is a state of peace, of silence-a meditative state. It is spiritual.

To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity.

The ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation; logic is more important than love; mind is more important than heart; power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.

Poetry has an indirect way of hinting at things. Poetry is feminine. Prose is masculine. Prose, the very structure of it, is logical; poetry is basically illogical. Prose has to be clear-cut; poetry has to be vague - that's its beauty, its quality. Prose simply says what it says; poetry says many things. Prose is needed in the day-to-day world, in the marketplace. But whenever something of the heart has to be said, prose is always found inadequate - one has to fall back to poetry.

You will find meaning in life only if you create it. It is poetry to be composed. It is a song to be sung. It is a dance to be danced.

It is not a question of sitting silently; it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.

No meditation, no life. Know meditation, know life.

Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you. When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

We are not here just to survive and live long. We are here to live and know life in its multi-dimensions, to know life in its richness, in all its variety. And when a man lives multi-dimensionally, explores all possibilities available, never shrinks back from a challenge, goes, rushes to it, welcomes it, rises to the occasion then life becomes a flame, life blooms.

Fighting with anybody is very dangerous because you become like your enemy.

Mind can never be intelligent - only no-mind is intelligent. Only no-mind is original and radical. Only no-mind is revolutionary - revolution in action. The mind gives you a sort of stupor. Burdened by the memories of the past, burdened by the projections of the future, you go on living - at the minimum. You don’t live at the maximum. Your flame remains very dim. Once you start dropping thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is.

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I. I have to contribute my potential to life; you have to contribute your potential to life. I have to discover my own being; you have to discover your own being.

Fame is foolish, it is pointless, meaningless. Even if the whole world knows you, how does it make you richer? How does it make your life more blissful? How does it help you to be more understanding, to be more aware? To be more alert, to be more alive? My whole love and respect is for the person who accepts himself totally, as he is. He has courage. He has courage to face the whole pressure of the society which is bent upon splitting him into divisions — into good and bad, into saint and sinner. He is really a brave, courageous being who stands against the whole history of man, of morality, and declares to the skies his reality, whatever it is.

This is the secret, the secret. De-automatism.

It is a strange thing that every child is born with a closed hand and everybody dies with an open hand!

First prepare the ground, and then prayer happens on its own accord. Prayer is something that you cannot do. Meditation is something that you can do because it has something to do with your mind.

Laughter relaxes. And relaxation is spiritual.

Life is not static. If life were static there would be no need for meditation. The mind would do. Then you could think, and whenever, after many lives, you knocked at the door, the girl would be waiting for you. But life is a flux, a movement. Every moment it is changing and becoming new. If you miss a moment, you have missed.

Real music will help you move towards meditation, beyond the mind needs, towards spiritual needs. Real poetry will give you a glimpse of the minds of the sages - a glimpse of course. It will open a window so you can see the faraway distant Himalayas. And then an urge arises in you, and you start travelling.

To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life.

The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target--you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target--not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things.

Freedom is a ladder: one side of the ladder reaches hell, the other side touches heaven. It is the same ladder; the choice is yours.

Man is born as a seed; he can become a flower, he may not. It all depends on you, what you do with yourself; it all depends on you whether you grow or you don´t. It is your choice- and each moment the choice has to be faced; each moment you are on the crossroads.

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.

You have to be an original individual; you have to find your innermost core on your own, with no guide, no guiding scriptures. It is a dark night, but with the intense fire of inquiry you are bound to come to the sunrise. Everybody who has burned with intense inquiry has found the sunrise. Others only believe. Those who believe are not religious; they are simply avoiding the great adventure of religion by believing.

Now they are a circle, and they vibrate together, they pulsate together. Their hearts are no longer separate, their beats are no longer separate, and they have become a melody, a harmony. It is the greatest music possible, all other music’s are just faint things compared to it, shadow things compared to it.

Find ecstasy within yourself. It is not out there. It is in your innermost flowering. The one you are looking for is you.

Meditation is the breath of your soul. Just as breathing is the life of the body, meditation is the life of the soul.

Whatever you are doing, don't let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet.

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.

"This ego has all the desires, ambitions, wants to be always on the top of everything. You