Rajneesh Quotes

To realize that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually.

Become alert about desire and non-attachment begins to appear. This is not to be made to happen, it follows naturally from awareness of attachment. Each one of us has to become aware of his attachments, and keep being so! Nothing should be done unconsciously.

This is what meditation is all about, just becoming a watcher. Failure comes, success comes, you are praised, you are condemned, you are respected, you are insulted - all kinds of things come, they are all dualities. And you go on watching. Watching the duality, a third force arises in you; a third dimension arises in you. The duality means two dimensions: one dimension is happiness; another is unhappiness. Watching both, a depth arises in you: the third dimension, witnessing, sakshin.

Don't cling to anything. Clinging is the cause of our being unconscious.

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

You cannot turn your brain off or stop your thoughts, but you can try while meditating not to become too invested in them. This is called transcendental meditation, which is the kind I practice.

I'm big into Eastern concepts. The horror of life, the love of children, the whole phantasmagoria - it's all meaningless. Be still, and see what happens. All of life unfolds perfectly. You have to get beyond consciousness.

We must be able to appreciate and enjoy the places where we tarry and yet pass on without anguish when we are called elsewhere. In our spiritual development we are often required to pull up roots many times and to close many chapters in our lives until we are no longer attached to any material thing and can love all people without any attachment to them.

Happiness requires that we give up a worldly orientation-not worldly things, but a worldly attachment to things. We have to surrender all outcomes. We have to live here but appreciate the joke.

Only by practice and non-attachment can we conquer mind.

No matter how many times I tell you this, you're still thinking, thinking, judging, judging, coming to conclusions, trying to work out your life. You have to let go. Totally, absolutely, completely. You have to let go so completely that you will feel no body, no mind, no pain, nothing.

Don't be attached to the things of the world, and don't be attached to the things of the other world, because things are things. It makes no difference whether they are of this world or the other world - attachment is the problem.

Holding on to anything blocks wisdom.

The awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.

Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path.

Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises.

Witness your thoughts. Your thoughts are attachments.

When we start out on a spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck.

How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

To be unattached is not to renounce the world. If you renounce the world you are attached to the world; otherwise why should you renounce it? What is the point in renouncing it if you are not attached to it? Only attachment renounces. If you are really non-attached there is no question of any renunciation.

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.

It's only when you become love - in other words, when you have dropped your illusions and attachments - that you will "know." As you identify less and less with the "me," you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything.

Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation.