Rajneesh Quotes

When somebody on the outside fits with your inner image, you fall in love — that is the meaning of love.

But basically courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable, arduous pilgrimage to some unknown destination. One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is. THE

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.

Why should one be a Christian? It is ugly. Be a christ if you can be, but don’t be a Christian. Be a buddha if you have any respect for yourself, but don’t be a Buddhist. The Buddhist believes. Buddha knows.

A respectable person is invariably unrespectable within.

Intelligence comes from meditation, intelligence comes from rebellion, intelligence does not come from memory

There are always problems in the world, and the world has always been there, and the world will remain there. If you start trying to work it out — changing circumstances, changing people, thinking of a utopian world, changing the government, the structure, the economy, the politics, the education — you will be lost. That is the trap known as politics. That’s how many people waste their own lives. Be very clear about it: The only person you can help right now is you yourself. Right now you cannot help anybody. This may be just a distraction, just a trick of the mind. See your own problems, see your own anxieties, see your own mind, and first try to change that. It happens to many people: The moment they become interested in some sort of religion, meditation, prayer, immediately the mind tells them, “What are you doing sitting here silently? The world needs you; there are so many poor people. There is much conflict, violence, aggression. What are you doing praying in the temple? Go and help people.” How can you help those people? You are just like them. You may create even more problems for them, but you cannot help. That’s how all the revolutions have always failed. No revolution has yet succeeded because the revolutionaries are in the same boat. The religious person is one who understands that “I am very tiny, I am very limited. If with this limited energy, even if I can change myself, that will be a miracle.” And if you can change yourself, if you are a totally different being with new life shining in your eyes and a new song in your heart, then maybe you can be helpful to others also, because then you will have something to share.

My grandfather ... had raised me with absolute freedom, no inhibitions, no suppressions, and no commandments. Love with freedom—if you have it, you are a king or a queen. That is the real kingdom of God—love with freedom. Love gives you the roots into the earth, and freedom gives you the wings.

Don’t allow your life to become just a dead ritual. Let there be moments, unexplainable.

It is your life – you have to be respectful towards it. It is your life – you have to trust it and you have to go with it, wherever it leads. Even if you have to go astray, go. There is nothing wrong in going astray, because only those who go astray come back. Even if you have to commit an error, do it – because only by mistakes do we learn, and there is no other way to learn.
Those people who never commit mistakes never learn anything, they never grow. All growth needs the courage to commit mistakes.
From this moment only do that which you like to do, whatsoever the cost.

Never make the negative the object of your study, because the negative is not there. You can go on and you will never arrive anywhere. Try to understand what light is, not darkness. Try to understand what life is, not death. Try to understand what love is, not hate.
If you go into hate you will never understand it, because hate is only the absence of love. So is darkness the absence of light.

<…> God is a person; godliness is a quality. You cannot become God, but you can be godly. <...>

Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern.

The natural desire of the human mind is to become special - to become special in the ways of the world, to have many degrees, to have much political power, to have money, wealth - to be special.

The mind is always ready to go on some ego trip. And if you are fed up with the world, then again the ego starts finding new ways and new means to enhance itself - it becomes spiritual. You become a great mahatma, a great sage, a great scholar, a man of knowledge, a man of renunciation; again you are special.

Unless the desire to be special disappears, you will never be special. Unless you relax into your ordinariness, you will never relax.

All the Buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact: Be — don't try to become. Within these two words — being and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.