I'm My Own Prophet

Osho Quotes on Awareness This self-remembering   Buddha calls sammasati — right mindfulness.   Krishnamurti calls it ‘choiceless  awareness’, the Upanishads call it ‘witnessing’,  Gurdjieff calls it ‘self-remembering’, but they all mean the same. But it does not mean that you have to become indifferent; if you become indifferent you lose the opportunity to self-remember. Watch anything in the   mind, and you are cut off. Watching is a sword. If a thought is moving in your mind, just watch it — and suddenly you will see the thought is there, you are here, and there is no bridge left. Don’t watch, and you become identified with the thought, you become it; watch, and you are not it. Mind possesses you because you have forgotten how to watch. Learn it. Witnessing is a happening, a by-product — a by-product of being total in any moment, in any situation, in any experience. Totality is the key: out of totality arises the benediction of Witnessing. The more you think, the more you fall awa

If you ask Zen people they will say; tea is not something that you pour with unawareness and drink like any other drink. It is not a drink, it is meditation; it is prayer. So they listen to the kettle creating a melody, and in that listening they become more silent, more alert. Remember, meditation is not something that is done by the mind, it is the absence of the mind. When the mind stops meditation happens. It is not something out of the mind, it is something beyond the mind. And whenever you are alert, the mind is not. Meditation is not contemplation, it is action — action of the whole, of the total being. In the West particularly. Christianity has created a false impression, and meditation looks like contemplation. It is not. Because of Christianity the West has missed many things, and one of them is meditation, the rarest flowering of a human being, because they have made it equivalent to contemplation. Contemplation is thinking. Meditation is no-thinking. A religious mind is

Osho Meditation Quotes Looking inside is meditation — just pure looking inwards, a turning of the eyes inwards one hundred and eighty degrees, and you have arrived home. Not a single step has to be taken, because you are not going anywhere; you are simply coming from here to here. You are already there where you need to be, just you are not aware. Hence, meditation can be called awareness, watchfulness, alertness, witnessing — but it is not thinking. Contemplation is thinking; it will not lead you anywhere. Meditation means you don’t have anything, any object to think about. You are just in a state of absolute aloneness. You don’t have anything on which you can focus yourself — not a sutra, not a mantra, not any great value of life, just pure space all around you. Then you are in meditation. Meditation is never about something. Meditation is a state. Meditation is simply going beyond mind, beyond the functioning of the mind, beyond all the fetters of the mind, and just entering into

Osho Quotes on Meditation All these meditations that you are doing here are only to help you to relax, to forget the future, to be here-now. Singing, dancing, chanting, humming… it is a present-moment activity: you get absorbed into it. Listening to me is a meditation: you get absorbed into it. You are not worrying about going anywhere, you are simply here with me. Meditation should not be a thing apart from life; it should be amidst life, it should be a part of life an organic part, nothing ‘put separate’. The temple should exist exactly in the middle of the market, and all distinctions between the sacred and the secular should be dissolved. You become really human only when you start moving in the inner direction of possessing yourself. It can happen only through meditation. Money and meditation are the two directions. If you want to possess things money; if you want to possess yourself — meditation. And if you possess yourself, money loses all meaning. This richness you are carry

Osho Meditation Quotes Only meditation can make humanity civilized, because meditation will release your creativity and take away your destructiveness. Meditation will bring your compassion and will take away your cruelty. Meditation will make you responsible to your own being and then you cannot be a criminal. Except witnessing, I don’t teach anything else. So just witness your mind and the meditation will be happening. And once you have got in tune with your being, you know the way, you know the how. Then it does not matter where you are. Alone or in the crowd, in the silences of the forest or in the noises of a marketplace, it is all the same. You can simply close your eyes and disappear inwards. Music is the easiest method of meditation. Whoever can let himself dissolve into music has no need to seek anything else to dissolve into.  Music is wonderfully intoxicating. Music is the ultimate wine. Dissolving deeper and deeper into it, your thoughts will go, your ego will go. Underst

Osho Meditation Quotes The meditation that I teach is so simple, so scientific, that if a hundred people take to it, seventy of them are going to make it. There is no condition that you are qualified to do it; that you do it is all that is needed. Besides, you are not required to owe allegiance to any religion, any scripture, or to have faith and belief as a pre-condition to meditation. Thoughtlessness removes the covering. Thoughtlessness is meditation. When there is no thinking, it is then we come to know the one hidden by our thoughts. When there are no clouds the blue sky comes into view. My friends, there is a sky within you as well. Remove the cloud of thoughts so it can be seen, so it can be known. This is possible. When the mind is at rest and there are no thoughts in it, then in the silence, in that deep thoughtlessness, in the total absence of thought, truth is seen. Right-awareness is the method of meditation. The process of meditation does not take you to some new world

Osho Quotes on Meditation If tea-drinking can become a meditation, then anything can become a meditation — cooking or washing your clothes, any activity can be transformed into meditation. And the real sannyasin, the real seeker, will transform all his acts into meditation. Only then, when meditation spreads over all your life, not only when you are awake in the day — slowly slowly it starts penetrating and permeating your being in sleep too — when it becomes just part of you, like breathing, like your heartbeat, then, only, have you attained to the discipline, to the essential discipline of Zen. Meditation means: drop all thoughts, drop all ideologies, drop all knowledge. Drop the mind itself. The mind is constantly talking. If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That’s what meditation is all about. The state of no-mind is the right state. It is your state. Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on

  Osho Meditation Quotations Concentration is mind and meditation is no-mind. Meditation is possible only when you are unmotivated: you don’t have any desire. When there is no desire, there is meditation. Meditation is a state of desirelessness. Concentration has nothing to do with meditation. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you — no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness. This watchfulness, I call meditation. If the mind stops chattering, don’t start patting your back. Just remain calm and quiet, alert and watchful. Meditation simply means the process of unconditioning the mind. Whatsoever the society has done has to be undone. When you are unconditioned you will be able to see the beauty of love and freedom together; they are two aspects of the same coin. If you really love the person you will give him or her absolute freedom — that’s a gift of love. And when there is freedom, love responds tremendously. Me

Osho Quotes on Consciousness Unconsciousness is a wandering outside; consciousness is a deepening of the inside. My work consists of transformation. This is an alchemical school: I want to transform you from unconsciousness into consciousness, from darkness into light. I cannot give you a character; I can only give you insight, awareness. I would like you to live moment-to-moment, not according to a set pattern given by me or given by the society, the church, the state. I would like you to live according to your own small light of awareness, according to your own consciousness. Be responsive to each moment. A man of consciousness responds, and his responses are spontaneous. He is mirrorlike: he reflects whatsoever confronts him. And out of this spontaneity, out of this consciousness, a new kind of action is born. That action never creates any bondage, any karma. That action frees you. You remain a freedom if you listen to your nature. Responsibility is awareness, alertness, consci

Osho Quotes on Meditativeness It does not matter that you have become a sannyasin; it won’t change anything unless your sannyas triggers a meditativeness in you. Religion has to become something like your heartbeat. Meditation has to become something like your breathing. Whatever you are doing, you are breathing; it is not a separate action. And only then are you saturated, in every fiber of your being, with meditativeness. If you understand meditation then that’s enough: sitting silently anywhere you can fall into meditativeness. Meditativeness is not action but a state of silence, a state of inaction when everything stops: time stops, all movement disappears, you are in total rest. And those are the moments when you know that you are immortal, that only the body will die; you are not going to die. Then all fear disappears because all fear is rooted in death. And to be fearless is the most fundamental thing for living life joyously. Learn to be more meditative, and let your creat

Osho – Society gives the feeling to every person that he is worthless in OSHO INSIGHTS ON SOCIETY Osho – Society gives the feeling to every person that he is worthless. It is a political strategy. Once a person gets the idea that he is worthless, he cannot be rebellious, he cannot be independent, he cannot go outside the fold. He cannot choose a path of his own, he will follow the crowd. Once the idea sinks deep into your unconscious that you are worthless you cannot trust yourself; you will have to trust the priest, the politician, the teacher, the parents — all kinds of authorities. And you will seek them, you will cling to them because the ground underneath your feet has been taken away. You are afraid to be left alone on your own because then you know you cannot decide, all that you decide is wrong; you cannot act, whatsoever you do is wrong. Then it is better to follow the mob; let them decide, you just be an imitator. To create imitators and slaves each child’s trust in hi

Osho – My sannyasins have to accept all the challenges of life in OSHO INSIGHTS ON LIFE, OSHO INSIGHTS ON SANNYAS Osho – The path of action is very paradoxical. The paradox is that you have to act and yet deep down you have to remain absolutely inactive; at the centre absolute stillness, no action, not even a wave, not even a ripple, and on the circumference much action. The path of action is being in the world and yet not being of it, remaining in the world and yet surpassing it, transcending it. Krishna has called it action without action. Zen people in Japan call it effortless effort, actionless action. Doing is there but the doer is not there. One simply becomes the centre of the cyclone but the cyclone remains only one’s circumference. One becomes more like an actor; action becomes more like acting. It is as if you are just playing a role: you are doing it as perfectly as possible but it is still a role, a game; you are not really involved in it. You are doing it perfectly

Osho – the sannyasin has to learn not to defend stupidities in OSHO INSIGHTS ON SANNYAS Osho – A psychoanalyst was going into an elevator with a young woman, his patient, and he farted so loudly and the smell was so foul that the woman said ‘Was it you?’ And the man said ‘What do you think? Do I smell like that the whole time? It is only once in a while.’ People defend everything! And the sannyasin has to learn not to defend stupidities. He has to drop them, he has to go beyond them. He has to become aware that ‘Nothing belongs to me,’ that ‘Nothing is mine,’ that ‘In fact I don’t exist. There is no such entity as I. There is a consciousness inside but it has no idea of I at all.’ When you become silent and meditative you simply know you are but there is no notion of I, not at all. You have an existential feeling, but there is no ego at all. That is the moment when one transcends all kinds of stupidities and then great fragrance is released. And that fragrance is not only a bles

Osho on Suicide – Ordinary suicide will-not help much, you will be born immediately in OSHO INSIGHTS ON SANNYAS Question – I want to commit Suicide. Osho – Then first take sannyas. And you may not need to commit suicide, because sannyas is the greatest suicide possible. And why should one want to commit suicide? Death is coming on its own – why are you in such a hurry? Death will come, it always comes. Even if you don’t want it to come, it comes. You need not go to meet it, it comes uninvited. But you must be missing your life badly. It is out of anger, out of desperation, that you want to commit suicide. I will teach you the real suicide: Become a sannyasin. And the ordinary suicide will-not help much, you will be born immediately into some other womb somewhere. Some foolish couple will be making love somewhere, remember…and you will be trapped again. You cannot escape so easily – there are fools and fools. Before you will be escaping from this body you will be caught in anothe

Osho on Sannyas – Sannyas is the ultimate game — the last, the final in OSHO INSIGHTS ON SANNYAS Question – I wonder about colors. No beginning, No end, But emptiness. What about orange, The color of the sun, and the sannyasins? Osho – Sannyas is the ultimate game — the last, the final. Beyond it there is no game. It had to be very colorful. The householder, the grihasth, plays a game but it is in black and white. Poor. A sannyasin is playing a game but not in black and white. It is colorful. A sannyasin has to become a rainbow because the moment you know that everything is empty everything becomes possible; because that emptiness has in it all. To me, sannyas is not renunciation against indulgence. No. It is renunciation in indulgence. sannyas is not leaving the world; it is living in the world as if you are out of it — it is an ‘as if’ phenomenon. You live in the world but you are not in it; you move in the world, but never, never, do you take a single step in it; you remain i

Osho – If you go beyond the mind you are really born in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MIND Osho – Adventurousness is one of the most essential qualities for those who want to live life in its totality. And to live one’s life in totality is to be religious, to live it whole is to be holy. Life is a great adventure, but people are so afraid that they cling to the familiar, to the known, to the well-defined, to the logical. They never go beyond the boundary of the mind. If you live in the mind you are living in a grave. If you go beyond the mind you are really born, you have come out of the grave. One can live each moment with such intensity, with such adventure, that each moment becomes a great gift of god because it brings so much joy, so much ecstasy. But one has to be ready to go on dropping the past. One should not allow the past to be accumulated. That becomes a prison wall around you. Each moment die to the past and remain fresh, and your life will be a great adventure. And it is only

 Osho – The mind has to cease, completely cease for the truth to be in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MIND Osho – Knowledge that is borrowed from others is untrue, knowledge that is gathered from scriptures is untrue. It may have come from a very original source, from a Jesus, from a A Lao Tzu, from a Zarathustra — it does not matter, because truth is untransferable. There is no way to express it. So whatsoever information you gather from scriptures, and from others is all rubbish. One has to unlearn it. Slowly slowly one has to unburden oneself. When your being is totally unburdened, when your slate is completely clean, when there is no writing on you, then suddenly an invisible writing starts appearing. Your own being becomes your scripture. Then for the first time you come across the Bible, the book of the books, then for the first time you read the Vedas, never before that. This can happen only through meditation; not by studies, not by logical, intellectual understanding, but by becoming m

Osho Insight on Mind – Mind lives in discontentment in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MIND Osho – Mind lives in discontentment. That is its food. To be discontented is its nourishment. If you become contented mind dies out of starvation… and the mind has to die, only then you can know who you are. So learn the ways of being contented. Whatsoever is, feel grateful for it. Don’t ask for more and you will be cutting the very roots of the mind. Mind lives in the more. If you have money it says, “Have more.” If you have knowledge it says, “Have more.” Whatsoever you have — it doesn’t matter what it is — mind says “More”, and it goes on saying “More, more…” When you have attained that, again it is there asking for more. That more is unquenchable. Seeing the absurdity of it, one drops it. One no more runs after the horizon because one knows there is no horizon. It only appears. It looks so close by, just ten, fifteen miles away. If you run you can reach within two hours, but by the time you reach th

Osho – Mind is always mediocre. Mind is never bright, never brilliant in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MIND Osho – Mind is always mediocre. Mind is never bright, never brilliant. By its very nature it cannot be so. Mind is a dust-collector. Mind means the past. It is always dead; it is nothing but an accumulation of memories. And how can dust be brilliant? How can the past be intelligent? It is dead. Only the living can have the quality of intelligence, brilliance. Meditation is bright, brilliant, original. Mind is always repetitive, old; it is a junkyard. Through mind nothing has been achieved. All that has been achieved has been achieved through meditation — not only in religion but even in science. Of course in science meditation is unconscious; meditative moments are just accidental in science, but all the breakthroughs have happened through intuitive gaps. They have not come through the mind but beyond the mind. This is a confession by all of the great scientists; they are puzzled by it

Osho on Unending Chattering of Mind in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MIND [Osho gives a sannyasin an ’energy darshan’, after which the sannyasin said he had been feeling increasingly frustrated by the unending chatter of his mind.] Osho – No, it is going well. It just takes time. We have cultivated the habit of continuously chattering for so long that it has become autonomous. Even when you are asleep, it goes on. You go on doing other things, it goes on. It has taken on its own autonomous status. So it takes a little time, but it goes. And there is no hurry and no need to be impatient about it. Impatience destroys many things and makes things difficult. Go slowly, hurry slowly. There is eternity available. In the west, time consciousness has become too much of a heaviness. So people are in a hurry because time is short and there are so many things to do. Time is running out and nothing is happening. That creates a tremor, a fever, a delirium. The eastern attitude is far more beautiful and t