Live and love, and love totally and intensely — but never against freedom. Freedom should remain the ultimate value.

Osho

If there is passion in love, then love will become hell.

If there is attachment in love, then love will be a prison.

If love is passionless it will become heaven.

If love is without attachment then love itself is the divine.

Osho

A person who lives moment to moment, who goes on dying to the past, is never attached to anything. Attachment comes from the accumulated past. If you can be unattached to the past every moment, then you are always fresh, young, just born. You pulsate with life and that pulsation gives you immortality. You are immortal, only unaware of the fact.

Osho

I have heard... 

When Pompei was burning, and the whole town was rushing out, and people were carrying whatsoever they could carry  – jewels, gold, silver, valuable things.... And they were all crying and weeping because they had much that they could not carry  –somebody has missed his child, somebody has missed his wife. It was a mad crowd  – the whole town on fire-and they were all rushing out of the town just to save their lives. It was a chaos.

Only one man, it is said  – it was three o'clock in the morning  – only one man was coming out of the town very quietly, silently, as if nothing had happened. He was a mystic. He had only a walking-stick. And many people looked at him and said, 'You look undisturbed.' He said, 'For what to get disturbed? I have nothing else  – just this walking-stick; and this is my time to go for a morning walk. So, for what?... I have nothing to lose!'

Live here in such a way that the 'here' does not become too important for you  – don't become obsessed. It is good to live in a house, but when the time comes to leave the house one should be able to go without looking back. Be with people  – but if your wife dies, one should be able to say goodbye silently, lovingly, with no complaint, with no grudge. Live in such a way that you don't become entangled too much.

So live here, my brother, 

That you may cross with ease to that other shore.

And that other shore is not very far away, the other shore surrounds you everywhere. If you start living rightly... and what do I mean by 'rightly'? Those four steps: be herenow, learn to transform your poisons into honey, share your positivity, and be nothing. That's what I mean by 'living rightly.'

If you live rightly, in twenty  – four hours' time you will cross many times to this shore from that, from that to this, from this to that  – many times God will penetrate you, radiate within you. Many times you will be suddenly on the other shore. Walking on the street... and suddenly he is there. The sun is falling on you, the sunrays falling behind the trees... and suddenly the other shore is there. It is not somewhere far away near other galaxies; it is always here. It is a quality of your awareness, it is a quality of your understanding, it is a quality of your meditation. If you are unburdened here, unobsessed with the worldly things....

Live in the world but don't allow the world to live in you. And then you will be alone even in the crowd... and even in the crowd you will see the other shore. The other shore becomes so close that you can cross the barrier any moment you want. It is so easy, like breathing  – but the art has to be learned. It is a question of art, skill. Be skillful. Love, but don't allow your love to become lust. Love, but don't allow your love to become attachment. Love, but don't allow your love to become a dependence, a slavery. And then... then love tremendously. Then there is no fear. And loving, you will be able to cross to the other shore without any difficulty.

Use money, but don't become money-minded. I'm not saying escape from money, and I'm not saying escape from your wife and children and desert them and go to the Himalayan caves  – I am not teaching any sort of foolishness to you. And neither is Kabir in favor of that. Kabir is tremendously life-affirmative, he's absolutely for life. In fact, anybody who knows God will be for life, because this life is of God. If you escape from life you are escaping from God himself-from the very opportunity where he was available. Don't escape anywhere. Rather than putting effort into escaping, put more effort into becoming aware. That will be the real escape: without escaping anywhere, you will create a cave in your heart... and you will start living there.

And the other shore is always by the corner. Any moment you want, you can move... and you can have as many drinks out of God in the day as you like. Looking at a flower, you can drink him... and the other shore opens. It is a vision  – it is not a material thing. Looking at a rose flower silently, lovingly, without any verbalization inside  – total silence... and the silence becomes luminous, and the silence becomes a song, and a vision arises. The flower disappears, you disappear... and God is there. In the disappearance of the subject and the object, the gap arises. Between the two notes, the pause... and suddenly you are on the other shore.

Osho, The Divine Melody, Talk #9

PROTECTION OF JOY

Step 1: Preparation
“For the first seven days, the first step: Lying down on the bed, or sitting, put the light off, be in darkness.

Step 2: Remember a Beautiful Moment
“Just remember any beautiful moment that you have experienced in the past. Any beautiful moment — just choose the best. It may be very ordinary…because sometimes extraordinary things happen in very ordinary grounds.

“You are just sitting still, doing nothing, and the rain is falling on the roof…the smell, the sound...you are surrounded, and something clicks. You are in a sacred moment. Or one day walking along the road, suddenly the sunlight falls on you from behind the trees...and click! something opens. For a moment you are transported into another world.

“Once you have chosen it, continue it for seven days. Just close your eyes and relive it. Go into the details. The rain is falling on the roof...the drip drip — the sound...the smell...the very texture of the moment...a bird is singing, a dog is barking...a plate has fallen, and the sound….

“Go into all the details, from all sides; multi-dimensionally, from all the senses. Every night you will find that you are moving into deeper details — things that you may even have missed in the real moment, but that your mind has recorded. Whether you miss the moment or not, the mind goes on recording.

“You will come to feel subtle nuances which you were not aware that you had experienced. When your consciousness is focused on that moment, the moment will be there again. You will start feeling new things. You will suddenly come to recognize that they were there but you had missed them at that moment. But the mind records it all. It is a very very reliable servant, tremendously capable.

“By the seventh day you will be able to see it so clearly that you will feel that you have never seen any real moment as clearly as this one.

Step 3: Week 2: The Climate of Joy
“After seven days do the same thing but add one more thing. On the eighth day, feel the space around you; feel the climate is surrounding you from all sides…up to three feet. Just feel an aura surrounding you of that moment. By the fourteenth day you will almost be able to be in a totally different world, although conscious that beyond that three feet a totally different time and a totally different dimension is present.

Step 4: Week 3: Live the Moment
“Then the third week, something more has to be added. Live the moment, be surrounded by it, and now, create imaginary anti-space. For example you are feeling very good; for three feet you are surrounded by that goodness, that divinity. Now think of a situation — somebody insults you but the insult comes only up to the limit. There is a fence, and the insult cannot enter you. It comes like an arrow...and falls there. Or remember some sad moment: you are hurt but that hurt comes to the glass wall that is surrounding you, and falls there. It never reaches you. You will be able to see — if the first two weeks have gone right — by the third week, that everything comes up to that three-foot limit, and nothing penetrates you.

Step 5: Week 4: Carry the Aura Everywhere
“Then from the fourth week continue to keep that aura with you; going to the market, talking to people, continuously have it in the mind.

“You will be tremendously thrilled. You will move in the world having your own world, a private world, continuously with you.

“That will make you capable of living in the present, because, in fact, you are continuously bombarded by thousands and thousands of things, and they catch your attention. If you don’t have a protective aura around you, you are vulnerable. A dog barks: suddenly the mind has been pulled in that direction. The dog comes into the memory. Now you have many dogs in the memory from the past. Your friend has a dog: now from the dog you go to your friend. Then to the friend’s sister with whom you had fallen in love. Now the whole nonsense starts. The barking of this dog was in the present, but it led you somewhere else into the past. It may lead you into the future — there is no way of saying. Anything can lead to anything; it is very complicated.

“So one needs a surrounding, a protective aura. The dog goes on barking, but you remain in yourself — settled, calm, quiet and centered.

Step 6: Dropping the Aura
“Carry that aura for a few days or a few months. When you see that now it is not needed, you can drop it. Once you know how to be herenow, once you have enjoyed the beauty of it, the tremendous bliss of it, you can drop the aura of it.”

Osho, Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. 

The mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. 

The questioners sooner or later end up in a library.

 The questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures,

 because scriptures are full of answers.

 And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

Osho