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nedjelja, 29. prosinca 2013.


Love is the most healing force in the world; nothing goes deeper than love. It heals not only the body, not only the mind, but also the soul. If one can love then all one´s wounds disappear. Then one becomes whole - and to be whole is to be holy.

Unless one is whole one is not holy. The physical health is a superficial phenomenon. It can happen through medicine, it can happen through science. But the innermost core of one´s being can be healed only through love. Those who know the secret of love know the greatest secret of life. Then there is no misery for them, no old age, no death. Of course the body will become old and the body will die, but love reveals to you the truth that you are not the body. You are pure consciousness, you have no birth, no death. And to live in that pure consciousness is to live in tune with life. Bliss is a by-product of living in tune with life.

Osho


Relationship is a structure, and love is unstructured. So love relates, certainly, but never becomes a relationship. Love is a moment-to-moment process. Remember it. Love is a state of your being, not a relationship. There are loving people and there are unloving people. Unloving people pretend to be loving through the relationship. Loving people need not have any relationship – love is enough.

Be a loving person rather than in a love relationship – because relationships happen one day and disappear another day. They are flowers; in the morning they bloom, by the evening they are gone.

You be a loving person, Mantra.

But people find it very difficult to be a loving person, so they create a relationship – and befool that way that “Now I am a loving person because I am in a relationship.” And the relationship may be just one of monopoly, possessiveness, exclusiveness.

Relationship may be just out of fear, may not have anything to do with love. Relationship may be just a kind of security – financial or something else. The relationship is needed only because love is not there. Relationship is a substitute.

Become alert! Relationship destroys love, destroys the very possibility of its birth. 

Osho, Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind



Relationship is beautiful because it is a mirror. But there are stupid people – they see their face in the mirror and they see it is ugly so they destroy the mirror. The logic is apparent: this mirror is making them ugly, so destroy the mirror and then they are beautiful.

Relationship is a mirror. Wherever you are related with a person – a wife, a husband, a friend, a lover, an enemy – a mirror is there. The wife mirrors the husband. You can see yourself there. And if you see an ugly husband, don’t try to leave your wife – the ugliness is in you. Drop that ugliness. The mirror is beautiful; be thankful to this mirror.

But stupid and cowardly people always escape and renounce; brave and wise people always live in relationship and use it as a mirror. Living with someone is a constant mirroring around you. Every moment the other reveals you, exposes you. The closer the relationship, the clearer is the mirror; the more distant the relationship, the less clear is the mirror. 

Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds




Just look at people. And each person is a fiction, and each person carries so many stories in his heart. Love people, search in their souls, and you will not need to go to the movies and you will not need to read novels. Each person contains many novels and many movies, but we don’t listen to people. We don’t see people face to face, we don’t hold their hands, we don’t allow them to open their hearts.

For the first time humanity has become very closed. Each person is living a windowless life, completely encapsulated. Open up, throw your doors and windows open. Let wind and rain and sun come in. Let people enter into you and you enter into people’s lives. That is the only way to become aware of the tremendous mystery of life. And to be aware of the mystery of life is to be aware of godliness. 

Osho



nedjelja, 15. prosinca 2013.


You see the people ― they are miserable because they have compromised on every point, and they cannot forgive themselves because they have compromised. They know that they could have dared, but they proved cowards. In their own eyes they have fallen, they have lost self-respect. That´s what compromise does.

Osho




subota, 14. prosinca 2013.


Millions of people are suffering: they want to be loved but they don´t know how to love. And love cannot exist as a monologue; it is a dialogue, a very harmonious dialogue.

Osho





petak, 13. prosinca 2013.


You can make a big list and you will be surprised how many fears are there, and still you are alive! There are infections all around,diseases, dangers, kidnapping, terrorists...and such a small life. And finally there is death, which you cannot avoid — your whole life will become dark. Drop the fear. Fear was taken up by you in your childhood, unconsciously. Now consciously drop it and be mature. Then the life can be a light which goes on deepening as you go on growing.

Osho


četvrtak, 12. prosinca 2013.


Drop the idea that attachment and love are one thing. They are enemies. It is attachment that destroys all love. If you feed, if you nourish attachment, love will be destroyed; if you feed and nourish love, attachment will fall away by itself. They are not one; they are two separate entities, and antagonistic to each other.

Osho



srijeda, 11. prosinca 2013.


Meditation is non-doing

When people come to me and they ask, "How to meditate?" I tell them, "There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. 

Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation - how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.

When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the centre, it settles down towards the centre. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Non-doing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read the Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.

Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed - courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards.

I have not come across a greater courage than that - the courage to be meditative.

But people who are engaged outside - with worldly things or nonworldly things, but occupied all the same, they think ....and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers. 

They say that if you are introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about you: "What are you doing? - Gazing at your navel? What are you doing? - Opening the third eye? Where are you going? Are you morbid? Because what is there to do inside? There is nothing inside."

Inside doesn't exist for the majority of people, only the outside exists. And just the opposite is the case - only inside is real; outside is nothing but a dream. But they call introverts morbid, they call meditators morbid. In the West they think that the East is little morbid. What is the point of sitting alone and looking inwards? What are you going to get there? There is nothing

David Hume, one of the great British philosophers, tried once... because he was studying the Upanishads and they go on saying: Go in, go in, go in - that is their only message. So he tried it. He closed his eyes one day - a to.tally secular man, very logical, empirical, but not meditative at all - he closed his eyes and he said, "It is so boring! It is a boredom to look in. Thoughts move, sometimes a few emotions, and they go on racing in the mind, and you go on looking at them - what is the point of it? It is useless. It has no utility."

And this is the understanding of many people. Hume's standpoint is that of the majority: What are going to get inside? There is darkness, thoughts floating here and there. What will you do? What will come out of it? If Hume had waited a little longer - and that is difficult for such people - if he had been a little more patient, by and by thought disappear, emotions subside. But if it had happened to him he would have said, "That is even worse, because emptiness comes. At least first there were thoughts, something to be occupied with, to look at, to think about. Now even thoughts have disappeared; only emptiness....What to do with emptiness? It is absolutely useless."

But if he had waited a little more, then darkness also disappears. It is just like when you come from the hot sun and you enter your house: everything looks dark because your eyes need a little attunement. They are fixed on the hot sun outside; comparatively, your house looks dark. You cannot see, you feel as if it is night. 

But you wait, you sit, you rest in a chair, and after few seconds the eyes get attuned. Now it is not dark, a little more light........

You rest for an hour, and everything is light, there is no darkness at all.

If Hume had waited a little longer, then darkness also disappears. Because you have lived in the hot sun outside for many lives your eyes have become fixed, they have lost flexibility. They need tuning. When one comes inside the house it takes a little while, a little time, a patience. Don't be in a hurry.

In haste nobody can come to know himself. It is a very very deep awaiting. Infinite patience is needed. By and by darkness disappears. There comes a light with no source there is no flame in it, no lamp is burning, no sun is there. A light, just like it is morning: the night has disappeared, and the sun has not risen.... Or in the evening - the twilight, when the sun has set and night has not yet descended. That's why Hindus call their prayer time sandhya. Sandhya means twilight, light without any source.

When you move inwards you will come to the light without any source. In that light, for the first time you start understanding yourself, who you are, because you are that light. You are that twilight, that sandhya, that pure clarity, that perception, where the observer and the observed disappear, and only the light remains.

Osho - from the book What is Meditation?


Be more and more at ease.
Be more and more here and now.
Be more and more in action, and less and less in activity.
Be more and more hollow, empty, passive.
Be more and more a watcher — indifferent, not expecting anything, not desiring anything.
Be happy with yourself as you are.

Osho



utorak, 10. prosinca 2013.


Many of our problems — perhaps most of our problems — are because we have never looked face to face, encountered them; and not looking at them is giving them energy. Being afraid of them is giving them energy, always trying to avoid them is giving them energy — because you are accepting them. Your very acceptance is their existence. Other than your acceptance, they don´t exist.

Osho


nedjelja, 8. prosinca 2013.


You already are born with an urge to grow, with an urge to be somewhere else. A seed has to travel long to become flowers. It is a pilgrimage. The urge is beautiful. It is given by nature itself. But the society, up to now, has been very cunning; it turns, deviates, diverts your natural instincts into some social utility.

Osho



The whole idea that children are your possession is wrong. They are born through you, but they do not belong to you. You have a past, they have only a future. They are not going to live according to you. To live according to you will be almost equivalent to not living at all. They have to live according to themselves — in freedom, in responsibility, in danger, in challenge.

Osho


art credit: Colleen Milburn 

nedjelja, 1. prosinca 2013.


Mind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again. No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.

Osho



We are trying to become something which is not in the nature of things. We are not allowing nature to take its course; that is our agony.

Osho


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.

Osho


srijeda, 27. studenoga 2013.


The majority consists of fools, utter fools. Beware of the majority. If so many people are following, that is enough a proof that something is wrong. Truth happens to individuals, not to crowds.

Osho



nedjelja, 24. studenoga 2013.


When you have emptied all the content — thoughts, desires, memories, projections, hopes — when all is gone, for the first time you find yourself, because you are nothing but that pure space, that virgin space within you. Unburdened by anything, that contentless consciousness, that´s what you are! Seeing it, realizing it, one is free. One is freedom, one is joy, one is bliss.

Osho



If the child sees that the parents are very happy because he has become knowledgeable, he starts gathering more and more knowledge. He starts forgetting the knack that he had brought with his life, that was inborn. By the time he comes out of the university he has completely forgotten one of the most beautiful things that was given by God to him: the capacity to wonder, the capacity to see without thinking, the capacity to contact reality without the mind continuously interfering, distorting.

Osho


petak, 22. studenoga 2013.

"The lover who wholly loves, can reach reality, comprehending the unattainable man...." Love is the path of the Baul; love, and nothing else -- wholly in love, totally in love, total trust.

To find nectar,
stir the cauldron on the fire,
and unite the act of loving
with the feeling for love.

ORDINARILY people love, but they don't have a FEELING for love. They exploit love. They even act like lovers, but their love is in the service of gratification. They don't have a feeling for love. They don't love love. They don't have respect, reverence for love. Love
remains a lust; it never becomes worship, prayer.

TO FIND NECTAR,
STIR THE CAULDRON ON THE FIRE,
AND UNITE THE ACT OF LOVING
WITH THE FEELING FOR LOVE.
DISTILL THE SWEETNESS
OF THE HEART
AND REACH THE TREASURES,
DEVOTING YOURSELF
TO THOSE WHOLLY DEVOTED.

If you can find a person who is wholly devoted to God, then devote yourself to that person -- because love cannot be taught, it can only be caught. Nobody can teach you the ways of love; you will have to live in close vicinity of a lover. Nobody can teach you how to pray: you will have to live in close vicinity of one who is in prayer. Watching him, feeling him, moving around him, tasting the flavor of his being, will teach you what prayer is. Then prayer will not become a ritual. Then prayer will be a flowering within you, a spontaneous arising of a new vision.

Distill the sweetness
of the heart and reach the treasures,
devoting yourself
to those wholly devoted.

Osho: The Beloved_Volume 2




You may be the last generation who has the possibility to rebel. 
And if you don´t rebel, there may be no more chances: humanity can be reduced to a robot-like existence. So rebel while the time is still there!

Osho


 Love Unites 



četvrtak, 21. studenoga 2013.


A LOVER is capable of creating life out of death; he can do the miracle. He can make the moon rise in the darkest night. That's why there is a fear about love. I have observed thousands of people trembling whenever they are on the threshold of love, afraid. Why does so much fear come out of love. 
Erich Fromm has written a beautiful book in which he says that love seems to be one of the most risky things, one of the most dangerous. And there is tremendous fear in humanity about love. People talk about love; they may be talking just to deceive
themselves. Their talk may be just a substitute to give them a feeling that they are lovers. But people are afraid of love. It gives fear, because love is death. Your ego has to be dropped completely, utterly effaced. It is suicide. Fear is natural, but if you are courageous enough and you can pass through it, if you can carry the cross of love on your shoulders, resurrection is certain. The moment ego is dropped, you are born. 

He who knows
the essence of love,
fears none.
Devoted only
to love's own form,
alive before his eyes,
his home is in
happiness itself.
Lulling lust
by lust alone
he raids the heart of the God
that churns all hearts,
finding himself
in perennial love.
Let your heart be a caring home
for the man of your heart.
Focus your vision
through the eye-black of loving.
He will be floating
on the mercurial mirror.
Hours wither like broken games
on the playground of the earth.
Abandon search
and join the carnival of love.
Abandon search
and join the carnival of love....

The Bauls say just intellectual search, seeking, is not going to help. "Join the carnival of love": that is what prayer is, that-is what worship is. Be ecstatic, joyful, celebrating, singing, dancing. Let God be allowed to be playful through you. Let playfulness be your only prayer. Let joy be your only worship.

Osho: The Beloved_Volume 2



utorak, 19. studenoga 2013.


Reality Check

I feel I don’t allow my heart to open. When I was very young I rejected my parents. I felt good about being a bad little boy. Now I feel that everything that I thought was love was nothing.

This is a good insight. To understand that whatsoever you have called love up to now was not love, is one of the most meaningful insights. When it happens much becomes possible.

People go on thinking that they love, and that becomes their greatest illusion — and the sooner they are disillusioned the better. Love is such a rare thing that it cannot be so easily available to all. It is not; it is as rare as buddhahood, not less than that.

This insight is good but it will make you sad, very morose, and give you a certain gloom. But don’t be worried, because out of a dark night the morning is born. When the night is darkest the morning is closest. You will be very very morose and sad because whatsoever you were thinking was love was not, and you have lived in dreams and have been missing reality. When this insight dawns on you, you become very sad, almost dead.

Don’t try to escape from this state. Relax into it, let yourself be drowned in this sadness, and soon you will come out of it completely new. I can see even in your voice, in your eyes, in your very body, that a tremendous sadness is settling, allow it. The human tendency is not to allow it, to escape from it — to go to a hotel, to a cinema, to friends to talk nonsense, to do something to be occupied so that you can escape from this state. But if you escape you again miss something that was going to happen. Relax into it.

Osho, Above All, Don’t Wobble





It is the stretched soul that makes music. And souls are stretched by the pull of opposites — opposite points, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity, where energies flow smoothly in one direction, there will be much doing but no music, much noise but no music. The music is created by the meeting of silence and sound, the music is created by the polar opposites.

Osho


ponedjeljak, 18. studenoga 2013.

Life as Dance
 
Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you — silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast. And when you have reached the point of death, you will know there is no death. You can say goodbye, there is no need for any tears of sadness — maybe tears of joy, but not of sadness. But you have to begin from being innocent.

So first, throw out all crap that you are carrying. Everybody is carrying so much crap, and one wonders, for what? Just because people have been telling you that these are great ideas, principles.... You have not been intelligent with yourself. Be intelligent with yourself.

Life is very simple; it is a joyful dance. The whole earth can be full of joy and dance, but there are people who are seriously vested in their interest that nobody should enjoy life, that nobody should smile, that nobody should laugh, that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy when the climate is such that you have been told continuously that it is a punishment? — that you are suffering because you have done wrong things and it is a kind of jail where you have been thrown to suffer?

I say to you life is not a jail, it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it. Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you don’t enjoy.

It will be against existence if you don’t beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant.

Osho, Beyond Enlightenment


subota, 16. studenoga 2013.

Unconditional love or sick relationships

Osho,
You have talked about the superiority/inferiority dialectic as the basis of authoritarian and fascist relationships. It is one of the miracles of being with you that in spite of having been constantly persuaded of our unworthiness by our parents, teachers and priests, you are able to shed light on all our unconscious habits without ever making us feel bad about it. You allow us to be aware of our potential for enlightenment in a way that does not make us feel superior, and yet simultaneously you never make us feel inferior because we are not enlightened. In groups, too, while you are present, we can reveal our notions of inferiority but because you are there and simply not part of the egotistic inferiority/superiority game, dependency and spiritual slavery cannot happen. But what happens in groups where you are absent? Surely, if the therapist has a trace of ego, then doesn't this kind of psychological fascism inevitably emerge? 

You have seen something so significant that everybody must be made aware of it.

There is only one possibility for sanity to exist in relationships so they don't turn into inferiority and superiority games, so they don't become sado-masochistic tortures. And that only possibility is in the presence of an unconditional love. Love is the greatest alchemy.

It transforms base metals into gold. Your ingredients are the same – the murderer and the Gautam Buddha are not different as far as their ingredients, their intrinsic potentialities are concerned. It is just that man is not a one dimensional machine.

Man is not one-dimensional; otherwise, his whole world would be sheer boredom.

And man's search is basically to be one with existence – separation hurts.

In our other loving relationships, in small measures we are searching for the same unity. In love with a woman, in love with a man, in love with a friend, in love with some creative activity – dance, music, poetry – we are trying to have a certain synchronicity with existence.

Our situation is that of a small child in the forest who has lost his mother and is searching in the forest, not knowing where to go. This situation allows many exploiters... this helplessness is used by those who are in power, by those who have money. The helplessness is used to convert you into a slave, into dependence.

Hence, all the religions have developed particular programs. They begin with God – and with God, your relationship cannot be anything else but that which exists between a puppet and a puppeteer, between the slave and the owner. With God, you cannot expect more than that, because he is the creator; he has made you – he can at any moment destroy you too. Neither did he ask you whether you wanted to enter into life, nor will he ask you whether you are in favor of destroying the world.

All the gods of all the religions are dictatorial. They are fascist.

I don't have any God; hence I don't have any program for you in which you will be transformed slowly into a slave. 

I am fulfilled – nothing more can be added to my experience. That's why the people who are with me will not feel in any way inferior.

Nobody is inferior. People may be in different spaces, but nobody is inferior and nobody is superior. They are all made of the same stuff you call God. How can somebody be superior and somebody be inferior? We belong to the same existence, our roots are nourished by the same existence.

Existence makes no distinctions, no discriminations between the sinners and the saints. My approach is existential. 

Hence, nobody is superior and nobody is inferior here. Naturally, by destroying this complex of inferiority and superiority, we are removing the very possibility of any kind of fascist mentality, fascist personality – because to me, it is inconceivable that a fascist can ever be religious.

And your so-called religious people are more or less all fascist fanatics. They are not in search of truth; they think they have found it already – in their scriptures which are dead, in the old superstitions which even they know have no basis in reality.

Just a clarity of vision dispels all darkness out of which all the monsters are born.

Here with me, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are white or black, it does not matter; nobody even takes note of it. It is enough that you are a human being. And it is your freedom to choose your own lifestyle; it is your basic right how you want to blossom. Those who love you can help in taking care of the garden in which you are growing – watering your roots, showering their warmth.

It has now been scientifically proved that even the plants know who are their friends and who are their enemies. They have developed something like a cardiogram which is attached to the tree, and if a man comes with the idea to cut a branch of the tree or to uproot the tree – he just has the idea – suddenly the graph that is being made by the cardiogram on the tree starts trembling. It loses the rhythm it had... now you can see how fear is felt by the tree.

And remember that the tree has telepathic sensitivity; otherwise she could not know the thought in the man's mind. He has not done anything – visibly, nothing has happened. And when the gardener comes – with his warmth, with his love – suddenly the graph becomes the most harmonious. Now the tree is no longer afraid, the tree is immensely blissful.

Loving warmth is not only a poetic phenomenon. It is a reality of great importance.

Now the flowers will be bigger, the fruits will be juicier; the tree will respond. Except for man, perhaps there is no ingratitude in this whole existence. The tree cannot give anything more – she cannot give money, she cannot give gold – but she can give beautiful flowers, as big as possible, to a loving heart. She can give juicier fruits.

Love has never been thought of as food, but it is a very subtle kind of food. And now psychologists have concluded that if a child gets everything necessary – all chemicals, all hormones, food, exercise, fresh air, rest, everything that is necessary for life – still he will die in three to six months unless there is someone to pour love. He will not feel that life is worth living without love; he will simply shrink and die. And in thousands of labs around the world, many animals have died in these experiments.

Ordinarily, it is understood that these experiments are being done on animals first and that unless we have found safe principles we do not apply them to human beings – this has been the idea prevalent in the masses. Even the medical professionals – doctors, physicians – also believe in it. But the truth is something very different.

Just a few days ago.... For almost two years, a group of senators in America were investigating about a certain amount of money... not a small amount of money; two hundred million dollars is there in the books, but where has it been spent, where has it gone? The cabinet went on denying any knowledge of it, the president went on denying. The suspicion was that the government of America today is the greatest terrorist. And the money is going to the terrorists in a small country in the middle portion of the Americas, between South America and North America.

Just like Cuba, another small country has become communist. It is their right, whether they are right or wrong. Nobody else has to decide it. If they want to live a wrong kind of life, then too, they have the absolute freedom to live it; only they should not harm anybody else. They should not interfere in the lives of others.

Two hundred million dollars had been given to guerrillas, terrorists, to destroy that small Central American country because it had gone into the hands of the communists. And after two years of continuous struggle, only now has the president accepted that, "Yes, that money has gone to the terrorists."

And the whole world is silent, nobody has criticized it!

Governments are to save people from terrorism, and here governments are supplying money and arms and food to terrorists. And then they go on lying....

I have looked into the scriptures of all the religions, I have looked into the ideological literature of all the political parties and I am amazed: they go on piling up lies upon lies. And the whole of humanity is asleep – not only does nobody object, but nobody even suspects.

Here with me, you are gathered for a special purpose: the search for the truth, the search for the purest kind of love, the search for a life which is a dance of sheer joy.

Nowhere else in the world are people gathering for the same reasons. They are gathering for the purpose of creating more hatred; they are gathering to create more wars; they are gathering to create more destructive activities in human life. Naturally, we have a sick world, an insane world.

Here, it is impossible to feel any superiority or inferiority.

I have tried my best to convince you of only one thing: that enlightenment is your nature; that it is not something achieved, you bring it with your birth. All that you have to do is not to create it but just to open the hidden secret of your life.

The moment you start feeling your inner light, your whole perspective starts changing. You will feel compassionate towards human beings even if they are doing stupid things. And you will feel immensely joyous, celebrating, even though you don't have anything to celebrate. Nothing is needed to celebrate – only excuses... my birthday is just an excuse! But if you want to celebrate, you will find a thousand and one excuses.

It is your life, and whatever becomes of it is your creation.

Remember, there are hidden signatures on it. You cannot disassociate yourself from what you create, from the way you live, the way you respond.

Once you are overflowing with love and blissfulness, you cannot, even in your dreams, act in a way which is humiliating to another. Because the other is not really the other, it is just part of us.

We are one consciousness filling the whole universe.

But a little experience will help... and you will start seeing the same light in others. And to see light within yourself and light within others is to live the whole year round surrounded with a festival of lights.

In the outside world, there are people who want to dominate and there are people who want to be dominated. The responsibility is not one-sided. There are people who want to be enslaved, because slavery has one thing about it: it takes all responsibility away from you. Then the responsibility is of your owner. You are just instrumental – whatever he says, you do, but you don't feel any burden. So most human beings deep down want to remain slaves.

Slavery in religion means you remain a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. And you are afraid also, because your slavery is based only on beliefs. So everybody is trying to protect his flock from coming in contact with others.

Just the other day I received a message from friends in Germany. The German parliament has passed a resolution that I cannot enter Germany. Sannyasins are protesting it because it is absolutely against the German constitution, against German law. There is not a single precedent! Not only in Germany but all over the world, there is not a single incident prohibiting a man who has never before entered your country. How can you judge that he is going to be dangerous?

So they asked five hundred world-famous, prominent intelligentsia from different fields – professors, scientists, poets, painters, dancers, actors. Up to now they have received one hundred and fifty letters of strong support, an absolute protest against the government.

They have also received a few letters which are in support of the government. A few points in those letters were so hilarious that they have sent me those few points. One point was: One Protestant high priest has supported the government because he thinks I am a Catholic, and Germany has to be saved from the Catholic religion.

Such fear shows deep doubts. You are not certain about your Protestant theology; you are afraid somebody may make punctures in the balloon of your faith.

Here with me, there is a religious fragrance but no religion as such. That gives you total freedom. That makes you proud of yourself and grateful for all that existence has done for you. Remember, pride is not ego.

Ego is something without content. For example, a man who cannot even draw a straight line thinks himself a great painter – that is ego, there is no content. But if Picasso thinks he is a great painter, that is simply a fact, and if he is proud of his genius there is nothing wrong in it. In fact, people should be helped to find some pride in their individuality because that pride will make their eyes shine, their faces luminous; that pride will make them unique individuals, with no more question of inferiority and superiority.

And secondly, anybody who is proud is always grateful. Because the genius of Picasso or Yehudi Menuhin is not their own; they are only vehicles. It is the beyond that comes through them – in music, in dance, in painting, in scientific research, in poetry, in thousands of ways, but the real genius will know it for sure, that it is coming from the beyond.

He is proud that he has been chosen, he is not proud in comparison to you. Ego is a comparison: you are higher, you are superior, but there is comparison. You cannot be superior living alone in a forest – superior to whom? You cannot even be inferior – inferior to whom?

The man of pride has a deep feeling of gratitude that existence has chosen him, although he is not worthy. It is a strange phenomenon. The more worthy you are, the more you feel you are not worthy enough. You have been given so much and you cannot do anything in return.

Here, there will be people with pride. I would like my sannyasins to be proud, even of the fact that they are sannyasins, that they have been courageous enough to move against all orthodoxies, traditions, conventions, all that is rotten, and come out into the fresh, into the young, into the new. You are blessed. But your blessedness will be full of gratitude.

That is the distinction to be remembered between ego and pride.

I destroy the ego and I create the pride. Ego is something like a cancer that simply eats you and eats others. Pride, self-respect is a creative phenomenon. It fulfills your own potential and it also shares with the world all the treasures that you have brought into the world. So here the situation is totally different.

I would like it to be so in the whole world, but they are so afraid. Their fear that I can destroy their morality, their religion, their past, is a clear-cut indication that they are already uprooted from the past. They are just hoping against hope that somehow all this old garbage can be carried. Because we have respected it as golden for centuries. Now, to suddenly drop it as garbage by the side of the road hurts the ego, because it means the ego has been wrong for centuries.

A sannyasin needs the courage to drop the fear – because unless he drops the fear, the ego cannot be dropped. And without dropping the ego, the whole load, the whole luggage, all rotten, has to be carried. Your whole energy is wasted in carrying the dead.

Just think of yourself carrying your father, your grandfather, your forefathers, all on your back and going towards Marine Drive. Do you think you will ever reach Marine Drive? Because the people lined up on your back is going to be endless; all your skyscrapers will look like pygmies. The load is going to be so tremendous that you will not be able to carry it without the help of Suraj Prakash – you will need trucks, transport vehicles. And your whole life will be simply wasted carrying these dead people.

And we are all carrying them. That's why life becomes serious, burdensome, heavy, juiceless, dry. Otherwise, there is no reason. You can be lush green with red flowers.

And there is no need for any comparison. Why not have all the people of the planet be emperors? What is the problem? It is a question of understanding the world – and if you understand yourself, to understand the world is not difficult, it is the simplest thing.

And once you have understood that to be an emperor or to be a slave is your decision, who is going to choose to be a slave? When you can put your whole energy into creating something that will give you satisfaction, that will give you a deep sense of fulfillment, a sense that you have not been here unnecessarily, you have contributed something; you have made the world a little more beautiful – a few more flowers you have added to it.

If everybody is adding a few more flowers, this whole world can again become a garden.

There is no need to fight. There is no need for you to be superior to anybody, because I am giving you something which is far higher than superiority. I am making you unique individuals.

Osho, Sermons in Stones