RAJNEESH

My house was a guest house of many Jaina saints, Hindu monks, Sufi mystics, because my grandfather was interested in all of these people.

There is no god, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man.

A man has a birthright to be tired and retired. I am retired completely.

My people. I have given them a sense of individuality, integrity. I have not made them slaves of any god or any religion. Nor of any holy book or any priest. I have certainly not replaced their god. They are all a part of what I call my traveling circus.

If you have difficulties making a decision, choose the lesser of the two evils.

When you become a sannyasin, I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else... I am destroying your ideologies, creeds, cults, dogmas, and I am not replacing them with anything else.

Because of the womb being a central phenomenon in the feminine body, the whole psychology of woman differs: she is non-aggressive, non-inquiring, non-questioning, non-doubting, because all of those things are part of aggression. She will not take the initiative; she simply waits - and she can wait infinitely.

I am going to be contradictory to myself many times for the simple reason that I am trying to bring all the religions to a higher synthesis. Different approaches have to be joined together. I am creating an orchestra.

Don't avoid extremes, and don't choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities - that is the art, the secret of balancing.

All of the religions are looking after the poor. At least leave me alone to look after the rich. I am the rich man's guru.

What I am teaching is religiousness, a quality. Religion is a dead dogma, fixed principles, frozen fossils. What I am teaching to you is a living, flowing religiousness - an experience like love.

Rajneeshism is creating a Noah's Ark of consciousness, remaining centered exactly in the middle of the cyclone. You can only escape within, and that's what I teach. I do not teach worship of God or any other ritual but only a scientific way of coming to your innermost core.

You can change your attachment from this to that, but you will be in misery. Attachment creates misery.

Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it - that is the only way to know it.

As you walk, you simply walk. Don't go ahead, don't jump here and there. Mind always go ahead or lag behind. Remain with the moment.

That's why children look so beautiful because they are yet full of hope, full of dreams, and they have not yet known frustration.

Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that this is it. Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go.

Only Zorbas become Buddhas - and Buddha was never a monk, A monk is one who has never been a Zorba and has become enchanted by the words of Buddhas. A monk is an imitator, he is false, pseudo. He imitates Buddhas. He may be Christian, he may be Buddhist, he may be a Hindu - that doesn't make much difference - but he imitates Buddhas.

Wisdom happens through meditation, and bliss also happens through meditation. Both the flowers bloom on the same branch.

Celibacy is one of the most unnatural things. It has destroyed so many human beings - millions - Catholic monks, Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, Jaina monks, nuns. For centuries they have been teaching celibacy; and the most amazing thing is, even in the twentieth century, not a single medical expert, physiologist, has stood up and said that celibacy is impossible, that in the very nature of things, it cannot happen.

Anywhere everywhere! Anything anyhow! just dance!

Awareness means to listen to me unfocused - alert of course, not fallen asleep, but alert to these birds, their chirping, alert to the wind that passes through the trees, alert to everything that is happening. Concentration excludes much, includes little. Awareness excludes nothing, includes all. Awareness is a state of no-mind. You are, yet you are not focused. You are just a mirror reflecting all, echoing all; see the beauty of it and the silence and the stillness.

With effort, reach to effortlessness. With seeking, reach to a state of no-seeking. With mind, arrive at no-mind.

If you are aware, you speak with awareness. But the awareness comes from the inward being. It flows from the inner being towards others.

Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are.