Osho Quotes - Glimpses of the Highest Truth

Osho quotes are words of one of the most radical spiritual guides of the last century, who was also known as Bhagwan Rajneesh or Acharya Rajneesh.

For him, no religion, no dogma, no philosophy and no ritual of the world was sacrosanct.

Every single, mindlessly held belief was decimated when put in front of his razor sharp intellect.

He urged his followers to consciously examine their every thought, belief and value and only accept those that were validated by their own inner intelligence and reject the rest.

I hope you find great appeal and inspiration in at least some, if not all, of the Osho's quotes below.

"The man of perfection is one who can move through all the seven chakras easily"

"Start meditating on death. And whenever you feel death close by, go into it through the door of love, through the door of meditation, through the door of a man dying. And if you can receive death in joy and benediction, you will attain to the greatest peak, because death is the crescendo of life"

"Just as nature abhors vacuum, god abhors vacuum too. When the disciple has come to the point of being empty, utterly empty, grace descends; one is fulfilled. That is god-realisation or enlightenment or nirvana; that’s what Jesus calls ‘the kingdom of god’. And the kingdom of god is within you, but you are the barrier to it"

"Enlightenment means to live life without any hankering for meaning. Then whatsoever is, is good, and whatsoever is not, that too is good. Then each moment becomes so radiant, so luminous, so full of fragrance, but still there is no meaning"

"One of the greatest steps towards inner enlightenment is to drop the idea of being known to others. That is an ego-trip, and a sheer wastage of time, energy, opportunity — and an opportunity that is tremendously meaningful.

If you can use it, if you can turn in, you can be utterly contented. Life has so much to give, but it gives only to those who turn inwards.

And the person who is after fame never turns in, because his whole point is to catch the attention of others. He is really childish, still saying ‘Daddy, Mummy, look at me, pay attention to me.’ He is still searching for somebody to pat him, appreciate him. Deep down he feels he is nothing; he wants to be patted, appreciated, so that he can feel some worth. But even if the whole world pats you and the whole world appreciates you, you will remain the same. This is not the way to attain to worth"

"How to decide whether it is true enlightenment or untrue? The only decisive factor is: the absence of I. In true enlightenment, the idea of I simply disappears, it is not found. There is nobody to claim ‘I am enlightened’, there is simply nobody to claim anything"

"If one can know what god is, one need not know anything else, and if one knows everything else and has not come across god, all that is just absurd, meaningless; it is not going to take you anywhere"

"Only silence communicates the truth as it is"

"It is only out of totality that suddenly you feel the presence of God all around you. But the irony is that the split has been created by your so-called saints, priests and churches. In fact the priest has been the greatest enemy of God on the earth"

"Do what your nature wants to do, do what your intrinsic qualities hanker to do. Don’t listen to the scriptures, listen to your own heart; that is the only scripture I prescribe. Yes, listen very attentively, very consciously, and you will never be wrong. And listening to your own heart you will never be divided. Listening to your own heart you will start moving in the right direction, without ever thinking of what is right and what is wrong"

"Whoever may have died right now… each death is your death, because each death is a reminder that you are not going to be here forever. Each death is an opportunity to be awake. Before death comes use the opportunity of life to attain something which is beyond death"

"The secret is, start living more fully, more totally. Be more alert so that you can find within yourself something that is unreachable by death. That is the only shelter, the only security, the only safety. And if you want to help your friends and family, let them become aware of this secret"

"You were a child, you have become a grown-up, you will become old. This is phenomenal, this is unreal. But there is something within you which never becomes anything other than itself. In your childhood it is the same, in your youth it is the same, in your old age it is the same, in your death it is the same. A man of meditation knows his eternal being, his immortal being. There is no deathbed for him"

"The whole function of the master is to create such energy, such a magnetic force that you are pulled in and slowly, slowly start disappearing. And a point comes when you have become one with existence. This I call real death"

"If you say you will not move into sadness, that you want only happiness, then you cannot flow. Flow is only possible if you accept everything as it is, unconditionally"

"My work is to undo what the priests have done, to destroy all guilt and instead to create self-love. And whenever one loves oneself, one becomes capable of loving the whole existence"

"I am not interested in the after-life, I am not interested in heaven and hell, I am not interested in virtue and vice — I am interested only in how to impart to you an understanding of living intensely, delightfully, because God is delight"

"Don’t look for any salvation in the afterlife. Salvation is HERE, because salvation is through experience. Salvation is not through renunciation, salvation is not through virtue, salvation is not through doing good to people. Salvation is through experiencing life as deeply, as intensely, as passionately as possible. Virtue arises out of that passionate living. Good happens to people — it happens naturally without any effort on your part"

"The real man knows no other goal than life itself. Living totally is his goal; living moment to moment, intensely, passionately, hot, that is his goal. Then each moment becomes so precious, such a gift. And only when you know those gifts can you be thankful to god, can you feel grateful, can prayer arise in you"

"You will find meaning in life only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes,so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced"

"Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it"

"All you need is just to be watchful, and nothing will affect you. This unaffectedness will keep your purity, and this purity has certainly the freshness of life, the joy of existence - all the treasures you have been endowed with.

But you become attached to the small things surrounding you and forget the one that you are. It is the greatest discovery in life and the most ecstatic pilgrimage to truth. And you need not be an ascetic, you need not be anti-life; you need not renounce the world and go to the mountains. You can be where you are, you can continue to do what you are doing.

Just a new thing has to be evolved: Whatever you do, you do with awareness, even the smallest act of the body or the mind - and with each act of awareness you will become aware of the beauty and the treasure and the glory and the eternity of your being"

"Everybody is after being extraordinary. That is the search of the ego: to be someone who is special, to be someone who is unique, incomparable.

And this is the paradox: the more you try to be exceptional, the more ordinary you look, because everybody is after extraordinariness. It is such an ordinary desire.

If you become ordinary, the very search to be ordinary is extraordinary, because rarely does somebody want to be just nobody, rarely does somebody want to be just a hollow, empty space. This is really extraordinary in a way, because nobody wants it. And when you become ordinary you become extraordinary, and, of course, suddenly you discover that without searching you have become unique"

"Whenever you are surrendered to existence, whenever you live in trust, love, prayer, joy, celebration, you are in heaven"

"Compassion is a shadow of meditation; a meditative mind is a compassionate mind"

"The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude"

"In a better world no parent will give you any belief. Certainly he will give you courage to inquire, courage to adventure. He will sharpen your intelligence so that when you come across a lie you can see it and when you come across a truth you can immediately recognize it, but he will not give you any belief. No parent, if he loves the child, can give beliefs because beliefs are poisonous. They destroy your intelligence,  they destroy your courage, and they create prejudices in you"

"Every parent distracts the child from his essential being, leads him astray. Every teacher, every priest goes on doing the same. Nobody respects the individual. They have already decided what is right and what is wrong, and for all!"

"Move in freedom, move in total freedom, and each moment remember to drop the past. It accumulates like dust. Each moment you have experienced something, and then it goes on accumulating. Don't accumulate it. Just go on ceasing as far as the past is concerned, dying as far as the past is concerned, so you are totally alive, throbbing, pulsating, streaming, and, whatsoever comes, you face it with awareness"

"Neither age matters nor birth matters, nor country nor race. What matters is your awareness, and awareness is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. It is just a fire, an eternal fire, invisible to the outside eye but visible when you close your eyes and go inward"

"One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind"

As these Osho quotes make abundantly clear, Osho was not interested in creating beliefs in anyone or in imparting any kind of ideology. His whole effort was - as it has been with all the enlightened ones since the beginning of time - to provoke truth in us.

To quote Osho - "I know it is already there; it just needs a synchronicity. It just needs something to trigger the process of recognition in you."

To that end, I sincerely hope that at least one amongst these many Osho quotes acts as a trigger to your own self-realization.

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