Osho [Hindi: ओशो] (11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), born Chandra Mohan Jain [चन्द्र मोहन जैन], and also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who inspired a controversial spiritual movement in India, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, and many other countries. His syncretic teachings emphasise the importance of meditation, awareness, love, celebration, courage, creativity and humour — qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious tradition and socialisation.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Sjakkelien Vollebregt (Public domain / CC0)
I also teach you to love yourself first. It has nothing to do with ego. In fact, love is such a light that the darkness of the ego cannot exist in it at all. If you love others, if your love is focused on others, you will live in darkness. Turn your light toward yourself first, become a light unto yourself first. Let the light dispel your inner darkness, your inner weakness. Let love make you a tremendous power, a spiritual force.
Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.
If you go to a tree and start talking, or to a flower, a rose, people will think you are mad. If you go to the church and talk to the cross or to an image, nobody will think you are mad, they will think you are religious.