Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Quotes

98 Sourced Quotes

I have withdrawn the red dress, the mala, because thousands of people wanted to be sannyasins but just because of the clothes and the mala they felt difficulties in the world — their job, their family, their wife, their parents, their friends — and it was too much of a trouble. I have withdrawn everything. Now whatsoever remains is something inner which neither the wife can detect nor the father nor the job nor the friends.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
It is not decided by votes what is true; otherwise we could never come to any truth, ever. People will vote for what is comfortable — and lies are very comfortable because you don't have to do anything about them, you just have to believe. Truth needs great effort, discovery, risk, and it needs you to walk alone on a path that nobody has traveled before.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
It is my observation that all human hearts are the same and that their ultimate desire is also the same. This soul wants happiness, perfect and pure happiness, because only then will all desires end. As long as desire exists misery exists, because with desire there can be no peace.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Find moments when you are not, and those will be the moments when you will be for the first time... really. So I am the white cloud, and the whole effort is to make you also white clouds drifting in the sky. Nowhere to go, coming from nowhere, just being there this very moment — perfect. I don't teach you any ideals, I don't teach you any oughts. I don't say to you be this, become that. My whole teaching is simply this: Whatsoever you are, accept it so totally that nothing is left to be achieved, and you will become a white cloud.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden — you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of a buddha. There is no contradiction … I say unto you, your every act should be a ceremony. If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion: life itself will be the religion.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
If you take the responsibility for your life, you can start changing it.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
I would like the whole world to be full of feminine qualities. Then only can wars disappear.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
There are only two states of consciousness that exist - the state of the ego and the state of love. The ego is the narrow state, the seed-form, the atomic stage; love is all encompassing, love is God. The center of the ego is I; the ego exists for itself. The nectar of love is the universe. Love exists for all.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Liberation cannot be desired because desire is the bondage. When you are desireless, you are liberated.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Freedom is a ladder: one side of the ladder reaches hell, the other side touches heaven. It is the same ladder; the choice is yours.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Spirituality is rebellion; religiousness is orthodoxy. Spirituality is individuality; religiousness is just remaining part of the crowd psychology. Religiousness keeps you a sheep, and spirituality is a lion's roar.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Now they are a circle, and they vibrate together, they pulsate together. Their hearts are no longer separate, their beats are no longer separate, they have become a melody, a harmony. It is the greatest music possible, all other musics are just faint things compared to it, shadow things compared to it.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
The longer a person has been dead the greater is the tradition … If Buddha is alive you can barely tolerate him. … You cannot believe this man has known the ultimate because he looks just like you … Hungry he needs food, sleepy he wants a bed, ill, he has to rest — just like you … That is why Jesus is worshipped now and yet he was crucified when he was alive. Alive, you crucify him; dead, you worship him.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
I would like marriage to disappear completely from the world, and with marriage, divorce will disappear.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
It needs great art, learning to play with one's own life, to play on one's own life. Meditation is the art to create music from your heart. Meditation is simply the method to transform noise into harmony, the method to shift your consciousness from the head to the heart. The head is noisy, it is all noise - a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes. It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to everything.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Without love a man is just a body, an empty temple without the deity. With love the deity arrives, the temple is no more empty. That's why love gives such fullness, such deep contentment, such tremendously overflowing joy. Remain in love and let love be the door to the divine.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love. Meditate so that you can feel immense silence, and love so that your life can become a song, a dance, a celebration. You will have to move between the two, and if you can move easily, if you can move without any effort, you have learned the greatest thing in life.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
You say that in heaven there is eternal beauty. The eternal beauty is here and now, not in heaven.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
When I am gone I hope there may still be courageous people in the world to criticize me, so that I don't become a hindrance on anybody's path. And those who will criticize me will not be my enemies; neither am I the enemy of those whom I have criticized. The working of the enlightened masters just has to be understood.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
To accept yourself wherever. you are.... And don't think in terms of competition! You need not be anywhere else. Wherever you are, if you can be happy there, you have become religious, you have become spiritual. Spirituality knows no competition, spirituality knows no greed, spirituality knows no ambition - because spirituality means desirelessness.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
There is a tremendous desire and longing for love, but love needs great awareness. Only then can it reach its highest climax — and that highest climax IS marriage. It has nothing to do with law. It is a merging of two hearts into totality. It is the functioning of two persons in synchronicity — that is marriage.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
No, I don't want to give my people sticks. I want to give them eyes.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not "in love", one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
The ego is exploitation; love is service. And the service that flows from love, freely and spontaneously, is non-violence.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Whenever I meet prostitutes, they never speak of sex. They inquire about the soul, and about God. I also meet many ascetics and monks, and whenever we are alone they ask about nothing but sex. I was surprised to learn that ascetics, who are always preaching against sex, seem to be captivated by it. They are curious about it and disturbed by it; they have this mental complex about it, yet they sermonize about religion and about the animal instincts in man. And sex is so natural.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
One of the greatest problems that money creates is that you never know whether you are loved or your money is loved, whether you are desirable or your money is desirable. And it is so difficult to figure out, that one would have preferred not to have had money; at least life would have been simple.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
I am not a man of etiquette, I don't know manners. I simply call a spade a fucking spade, because that's what it is.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
What kind of living can be out of fear? Once the armor is dropped you can live out of love, you can live in a mature way. The fully matured man has no fear, no defense; he is psychologically completely open and vulnerable.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh