Rajneesh Quotes

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, effort is to achieve something. Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself.

Whatever be the means adopted, you must at last return to the Self, so why not abide as the Self here and now?

The word 'ecstasy' is beautiful; it simply means 'standing out.' Out of what? Standing out of your ego, your personality, your mind; getting out of the whole structure in which you have lived - not only lived but with which you have become identified. Standing out of all this, just a pure witness, a watcher on the hills - and everything is left deep down in the valley.

But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.

Your soul is Me, and it knows it. What it is doing, is trying to experience that. And what it is remembering is that the best way to have this experience is by not doing anything. There is nothing to do but to be.

When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.

When you are in the present without thinking, you are for the first time spiritual.

He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation.

Step into this moment, because it is the only one you have right now. It is not wasted or thrown away. The divine opportunity could be stolen unless you tell yourself it is here right now; available to you this moment, to make of it anything you choose. Why not choose this moment, right now, to be available to yourself by declaring, I AM GOOD! . . . . The richness of the present is here. The fullness of now is present. If you are not here now, it means you could be missing the love, joy, peace and brand-new ideas that are here right now.

Those who think to reach God by running away from the world, when and where do they expect to meet him? We are reaching him here in this very spot, now at this very moment.

Enlightenment means choosing to dwell in a state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is.

Even great travelers of the inner world have got stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences, thinking, "I have found myself." They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear. Enlightenment is not an experience.

Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.

The science of meditation: it brings you to the present, it brings you to this moment. The past is a thought; it disappears when thoughts disappear. The future is also a thought; it disappears when you drop thinking. When you are in a state of no-thought - there is no past, no future, there is only the present - in that state of no-thought you are ONE, in tune with God. And suddenly the flood is there: you are flooded with light, with love, with grace. You are no more a man, you are divine. You have surpassed humanity. Humanity is in a state of deep sleep.

Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.

You cannot fight against the ego and win, just as you cannot fight against darkness. The light of consciousness is all that is necessary. You are that light.

I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.

If you have your attention on what is see its fullness in every moment you will discover the dance of the divine in every leaf in every petal in every blade of grass in every rainbow in every rushing stream in every breath of every living being. ...beyond memory and judgement lies the ocean of universal consciousness.

Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, transformed consciousness.

We live in this thought web; we identify things and put them away and distance ourselves from them. But to be completely present? That is source, that is art, that is spirituality. And meditation is a way to defy fear and experience that source.

Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.

Meditation means keeping one mind. You must understand - what is life? What is death? If you keep one mind, there is no life, no death. Then if you die tomorrow, no problem; if you die in five minutes, no problem.

One has to go beyond the mind to experience the spiritual bliss of desirelessness.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.