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...if you have loved a person really, when he is gone he is gone; you will not grieve much. If you have not loved the person deeply, then you will grieve very much.

Try to understand this.

Your father dies, or your mother dies. If you have loved him totally while he was alive, you will be able to say goodbye to him without any grief -- because you loved him. That experience of love was total and fulfilling; nothing is left undone; nothing is hanging over your head. Whatsoever was possible has happened; now you can accept it. What more was possible? Even if he had been alive, what more would have been possible? The experience is complete.

Whenever an experience is complete, you are ready to say goodbye very easily. But if you have not loved your father as you always wanted to, you have not been respectful towards him as you always wanted to, you will feel guilty. Now the father is gone; now there is no way to fulfill your desire -- now there is no way to show your respect, your love. Now there is no way, you will feel yourself hanging in the middle, in mid-air, in a limbo. You will not be at ease; you cannot say goodbye. You will cry and weep and you will be broken, and you will say that you are broken because your father is dead, but the real thing is something else.

You are broken because now the possibility to love him, to respect him, is gone. Now there is no possibility -- the doors are closed and you have missed an opportunity. The son will cry more if he has not really loved his father. If he has loved his father he will be able to accept the fact -- love is very accepting and very understanding.

Once an experience is complete, you can get out of it very easily -- you can just slip out of it as the snake slips out of his old skin. If you love a woman and you have been constantly quarrelling with her, and it never became a deep satisfaction, and she dies...now she will haunt you, her ghost will haunt you for your whole life. You could not do something that was possible, but now it is no longer possible. Now something incomplete will always be there in the heart, hurting; it will become a wound.

This is the understanding of all the sages, that while you are loving a person, if you love him totally there is going to be no misery. If you love him totally, if you enjoy and delight in him totally, and the person is gone -- of course, one feels a little sad but it is not grief; one misses a little but one is capable of remaining centered, one is not distracted.

If you are in love, love totally, so nothing remains hanging. Otherwise, that hanging, incomplete experience, that unlived experience, will haunt you. These unlived experiences go on piling up and they become heavy burdens.

Osho, A Sudden Clash of Thunder chapter 3 : Why Should I Grieve Over Him?

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Question : WHAT IS LOVE?

Osho : It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love.

It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung.

Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.

At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political.

And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics - the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political:

you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination.

And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated. You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously - you are not that conscious yet. You cannot do it deliberately; it is n unconscious mechanism.

Hence so much possessiveness and so much jealousy become a part, an intrinsic part, of your love.

That's why love creates more misery than joy. Ninety-nine percent of it is bitter; there is only that one percent of sugar that you have coated on top of it. And sooner or later that sugar disappears.

When you are in the beginning of a love affair, those honeymoon days, you taste something sweet.

Soon that sugar wears off, and the realities start appearing in stark nakedness and the whole thing becomes ugly.

Millions of people have decided not to love human beings any more. It is better to love a dog, a cat, a parrot; it is better to love a car - because you can dominate them well, and the other never tires to dominate you. It is simple; it is not as complex as it is going to be with human beings.

At a cocktail party the hostess couldn't help overhearing the conversation of a suave gentleman.

"Oh, I adore her. I worship her," declared the gentleman.

"I would too if she were mine," agreed his friend.

"The way she walks and swishes. Her beautiful big brown eyes, her head so proud and erect..."

"You're very fortunate," commented his friend.

"I would too if she were mine," agreed his friend.

"The way she walks and swishes. Her beautiful big brown eyes, her head so proud and erect..."

"You're very fortunate," commented his friend.

"And do you know what really thrills me? The way she nibbles my ear."

"Sir," the hostess interjected. "I couldn't help listening to those affectionate words. In this day of numerous divorces I admire a man who so passionately loves his wife."

"My wife?" said the gentleman, surprised. "No - my champion race horse!"

People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict - nagging, always at each other's throats.

This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a stepping-stone, if you can use it as a meditation. If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards.

Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released - but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness.

When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of partaking, can partake. Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available - you are available unconditionally.

That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative.

'Medicine' and 'meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease:

it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.

Nancy was having coffee with Helen.

Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?"

"He takes out the garbage every morning."

"That's not love. That's good housekeeping."

"My husband gives me all the spending money I need."

"That's not love. That's generosity."

"My husband never looks at other women."

"That's not love. That's poor vision."

"John always opens the door for me."

"That's not love. That's good manners."

"John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair."

"Now, that's love."

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth.

Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help. When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness - because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears.

Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear. It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight:

they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die.

And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love - because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

Osho, Unio Mystica Volume 2 Chapter 4 : A Buddhafield in Spring

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Sannyas is rejoicing. Rejoice in life, in love, in meditation, in the beauties of the world, in the ecstasy of existence - rejoice in everything! Transform the mundane into the sacred.

Transform this shore into the other shore. Transform the earth into paradise.

And then indirectly a certain renunciation starts happening. But that happens, you don't 'do' it. It is not a 'doing', it is a happening.

You start renouncing your foolishnesses; you start renouncing rubbish. You start renouncing meaningless relationships. You start renouncing places where growth was not possible.

But I don't call it renunciation, I call it understanding, awareness.

Heaven is not somewhere else: it is a way of living. So is hell - a style of life. Hell is living unconsciously; heaven is living consciously. Hell is your own creation, so is heaven. If you go on living unconsciously, through your unconscious desires, instincts, motives - of which you are not the master but only the victim - then you create hell around yourself. But if you start living a conscious life, a life of bringing more and more light to the deep, dark corners of your being, if you start living full of light, your life is moment-to-moment ecstasy.

But my emphasis is never on renouncing anything; my emphasis is on rejoicing more and more. And your rejoicing is bound to change your life patterns.

The moment you change from mind to meditation your whole life is going to be affected. It is natural. If it is not affected, that will be something unnatural. Your relationships are bound to change.

For example, a man may believe that he loves his wife. The moment he starts meditating it will become clear and transparent whether he loves her or not. He may never have loved her. He may simply be using her as a sex object, or he may be using her as a mother substitute. He may be using her because he is unable to be alone, but he may never have loved her. He may be dependent on her; she may have great utility.

But to use another human being is ugly - and to pretend that you love.... And I am not saying that you are consciously doing it; it may be just an unconscious thing.

You may not even be aware that you don't love her; you may also think that you love her. You may not be deceiving her deliberately; you may be deceiving her and you may be deceived yourself too.

But if you start meditating, things will become clear. You will have more light in your life; just as when you bring a candle into a dark room you start seeing clearly. In the darkness the window looked like a door; now it is no longer a door. Or the painting, the frame of the painting, in the darkness and dimness looked like a window; it is no longer a window. Now that you see things clearly you cannot behave in the old way. You will have to change; you will have to rearrange your whole life.

That's what happens to every sannyasin. If your love was true, it will be deepened; if it was false, it will disappear. If your respect for your parents was just a formality, it will disappear; if your respect for your parents was a reality, it will become more and more profound. The work that you were doing - if it was your heart's fulfillment, you will go deeper into it.

A painter will become a greater painter, a musician will have new visions, a poet will have new insights - if the poet was really a poet, only then. If the poet was just playing with arranging words and was writing poetry just to become famous and the poetry was not his love affair, he was not ready to sacrifice his life for it, then poetry will disappear.

But it is not renouncing anything. You are not renouncing anything! A few things are disappearing; a few other things will appear.

One thing is certain: after meditation, after my sannyas, whatsoever happens is going to give you more fulfillment, more maturity, more rootedness, more centering. It will become a life which does not only grow old but also grows towards heights and depths.

You will start living not only a horizontal life but a vertical life too. You will live on the horizontal as far as it is needed; otherwise ninety percent of your energies will start moving in the vertical dimension, towards heights and depths.

Then this earth, this world, becomes only an opportunity to grow. And the man who is using the world, the earth, this life, as an opportunity to grow is on the right track. If you not only grow in age but you also become grown-ups, then you have lived rightly.

And it is not renunciation: it is rejoicing, it is being grateful to God.

Here I only make things clear to you. I don't impose any discipline. I don't give you any character. I simply give you more consciousness, more light. Then you have to find your character. Then you have to find your life-style, your life pattern.

I give you just a small candle; then you can find your path into the darkness of life. And even a small candle is enough. If a little space around you becomes lighted and you can take three, four steps in the light, that's enough; because by the time you have taken four steps, the light goes four steps ahead of you. With a small candle one can pass through ten thousand miles of darkness.

And I am not against life at all, as the old sannyas was. The old sannyas had a very strange idea: that if you want to attain to God, you have to be anti-life - as if God were against life. If God was against life, life would not exist even for a single moment. Who goes on nourishing life? Who goes on pouring energy into life?

The great Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, has said, "Whenever a child is born, I dance, I rejoice. Why? Because a new child gives me an absolute certainty that God has not yet become hopeless, that he still hopes. Each new child brings this certainty to the world, that God is still interested in humanity, that he has not abandoned the project, that he still hopes that buddhas will be born, that he still goes on creating new children, that he is not tired, that his hope is infinite and his patience is infinite."

God loves the world. It is his creation. To deny it is to deny him. If you deny the painting, you have denied the painter. If you condemn the poetry, you have condemned the poet. If you reject the dance, you have rejected the dancer.

And this stupid logic has been going on for centuries: accept God, praise God, and deny life! And these same people went on saying again and again that God created the world. Then why did he create the world? So that you can renounce it? So that you can reject it?

God created the world as an opportunity to grow. Growth needs many many opportunities, challenges.

I am all for life. If you ask me, God and his creation are not two separate things.

The creation and the creator are one. I am in immense love with life.

And this is my message to you: Love life totally! Get involved with life! Don't hold back, because whatsoever you hold back will remain empty.

Become committed to life: a multidimensional commitment is needed.

I want to bring a totally new concept of sannyas to the world: a sannyas that loves, a sannyas that knows how to become committed, a sannyas that goes to the deepest core of life.

Osho, Dhammapada Volume 6 Chapter 2 : Many are called; few are chosen

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Question : YOU HAVE DEFINED YOURSELF AS THE RICH MAN'S GURU. DON'T THE OTHER PEOPLE INTEREST YOU? ARE THE RICH PARTICULARLY IN NEED OF A GURU? OR ARE YOU THEIR GURU BECAUSE THEY HAVE MONEY?

Osho : The first thing to be understood: I have not defined myself as the rich man's guru. It is the yellow journalism, which dominates the mind of the masses around the world, which came up with the definition. I simply accepted it with my own meanings. They were saying it to be derogatory, but my meaning is totally different.

A Vincent van Gogh is far more rich than Henry Ford. Richness does not mean only wealth or money; richness is a multidimensional phenomenon. A poet may be poor, but he has a sensitivity that no money can purchase. He is richer than any rich man. A musician may not be rich, but as far as his music is concerned, no wealth is richer than his music.

To me the rich man is one who has sensitivity, creativity, receptivity. The man of wealth is only one of the dimensions. According to me the man of wealth is also a creative artist: he creates wealth.

Not everybody can be a Henry Ford. His talents should be respected, although what he creates is mundane. It cannot be compared to Mozart's music or Nijinsky's dance, or Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy. But still, he creates something which is valuable, utilitarian, and the world would be better if there were many more Henry Fords.

So when I accepted the definition, my meaning was richness in any dimension. Only a rich being can have some connection with me. A certain sensitivity is absolutely needed, a certain vision is needed.

A poor man is one whose mind is retarded - he may have immense wealth; that does not matter - who cannot understand classical music, who cannot understand poetry, who cannot understand philosophy, who cannot understand the high flights of human spirit. Yes, one of the dimensions of poverty is a man who cannot even produce money. He is the poorest of the poor, because money is such a mundane thing. If you cannot create it, you simply show that you don't have intelligence enough.

There are certain basic necessities which should be fulfilled; there is a hierarchy. First your bodily needs should be fulfilled; then your psychological needs should be fulfilled. Only then for the first time you become hungry for spiritual experiences. Now what can I do about it? - that is the nature of things. If water evaporates at one hundred degrees heat, what can I do? I cannot persuade it to evaporate at ninety-nine degrees. It is the nature of things.

And this is the hierarchy: bodily needs first, then psychological needs second, and only then spiritual needs. What I can give to you concerns your hunger for spiritual growth. If it is not there, I cannot create it. If it is there, I can show you the path.

You can see it. I have not been seeking out and going to the rich people. Those who have come to me have come on their own. Their thirst has brought them to me.

I have not been giving any promises to anybody. I have not been going after anybody. Millions of people - those who have come to me - have come on their own.

And now you can see for yourself. Those who have come have a certain richness of some kind or other; it is not only the money. I have around me people of all talents, people of different kinds of genius. Somehow my very approach prevents those people who will not be benefited from coming close to me. Even if they come accidentally, they disappear; they don't stay. They don't become part of my world. They don't share the vision with me.

Nobody is sorting out who are the rich and who are the poor, and that the poor should be sent back and the rich should be retained. No scrutiny is going on. But by some existential arrangement I can attract only those people who are very talented, immensely intelligent, very rich in some quality of life. Only from that angle of richness will they have a connection with me.

And the yellow journalists go on saying sensational things to people, meaningless, false, ugly - because I am not a guru. If I have to define it I will say, "I am only a friend, a friend of all those who have talents, intelligence and some urge for spiritual growth." To me they are the rich people.

Osho, Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries (Talks in Greece) Chapter 3 : The well is going to the thirsty

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My effort in the new commune is to create a man who is not partial...who is total, whole, holy. A man should be all three together. He should be as accurate and objective as a scientist; and he should be as sensitive, as full of the heart, as the poet; and he should be as rooted deep down in his being as the mystic. He should not choose. He should allow all these three dimensions to exist together.

I believe in richness.

I would like humanity to be rich in all possible ways: rich in science, rich in technology, rich in poetry, rich in music, rich in meditation, rich in mysticism. Life should be lived in its multidimensionality. God should be approached through all possible ways. Why impoverish your soul?

The world breathes, is alive, and life is God. The tree is divine because it is alive, and the rock is divine because the rock is also alive in its own way, the rock also grows. The whole existence is full of life, overflowing with life. God is not against the world - how can the painter be against his painting? and how can the poet be against his poetry? and how can the musician be against his music? The world is his poetry, his painting, his music - it is his dance.

My new man is going to be deep in love with life. And my religion is not of renunciation but of rejoicing. The new commune will create every possible opportunity to rejoice, sing, dance.

The new commune is not going to be of any religion. It will be religious. But the religion will not be unearthly, it will be very down to earth; hence it will be creative, it will explore all possibilities of being creative. All kinds of creativity will be supported, nourished.

The real religious man has to contribute to the world. He has to make it a little more beautiful than he found it when he came into the world. He has to make it a little more joyous. He has to make it a little more perfumed. He has to make it a little more harmonious. That is going to be his contribution.

Osho, Dhammapada Volume 2 Chapter 8 : God loves laughter

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Question : BELOVED MASTER, SHOULD ONE TRY TO BE RICH OR NOT?

Osho : Asango, meditate on Murphy's maxim: Don't care if you are rich or not as long as you can live comfortably and have everything you want.

That's exactly what I have been doing and that's exactly what I would like you to do.

Why bother whether you are rich or not? In fact, people go into unnecessary worries.

Whatsoever you have, enjoy it - it is already too much. You cannot look at it because your mind is constantly occupied with doing this, becoming that. And all that existence goes on giving you, you go on neglecting. You never even thank existence for it; you don't have any gratitude. Otherwise, even if you don't possess anything, you can live a very rich life.

A rich life is something inner. And I am not against outer things, remember, but basically a rich life is something inner. If you are inwardly rich you can make even outer things richer by your inner light. For example, if the buddha lives in a hut, he lives in the hut as if the hut is a palace. If the buddha lives in the palace, of course he will be able to enjoy the palace more than anybody else in the world. If he can enjoy the hut as a palace, what to say about the palace itself? Wherever he is he finds ways to enjoy life.

The whole art of sannyas is to live a rich life - but the richness comes through your inner awareness. You can live a very poor life and you can be very rich outwardly; you can have a big bank balance, but you can live a dog's life.

I know very many rich people. I feel sorry for them. They have all, but they are living in such a poor way that I cannot conceive what blindness has befallen them. Can't they see their beautiful houses, their beautiful gardens? But they don't have any sensitivity. So the flowers come and go and they pass those flowers every day, but they don't see.

Otherwise a single flower is enough. And whether the flower has grown in your garden or in your neighbor's garden, who cares?

You don't possess the stars, still you can enjoy them. Or do you first have to possess them, and only then you will be able to enjoy them? You don't possess the birds in the sky, but you can enjoy them.

What you need is not more possessions. What you need is more sensitiveness, more aesthetic sensibility, more musical ears, more artistic eyes. What you need is a vision which transforms everything into something significant and meaningful.

You ask me, Asango, "Should one try to be rich or not?"

You ARE rich! You have been given already that which you need. Let it grow, and then whatsoever you have on the outside will be enough.

You can see my sannyasins living here. They have not anything really that you can call possessions, but you cannot find more happy people anywhere in the world. For no reason they are happy, there is nothing to be happy about! But something inner has started growing, something like a subtle fragrance which only people who have sensibility, sensitiveness, can feel; others can't see it.

Many people have asked me, "Why do your sannyasins look so happy?" The why cannot be answered easily, because they want to know something on the outside which is causing the happiness.

There is nothing on the outside. But still, my people are immensely happy. And they are not just sitting idly, they are working hard, and working hard for no rewards, no pay; they don't get anything. But something inner is happening; that is real richness.

Osho, Dhammapada Volume 8 Chapter 10 : Towards a new humanity

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Money is needed, but don't make money your God. Use it when you have it. When you don't have it, then use that non-having also, because that has its own beauties. When you have money, you can have a place. Have it. When you don't have the money, become a vagabond and live under the sky. That has its own beauty. When you have money, use it. Don't be used by the money. When you don't have it, enjoy poverty. Richness has its own richness, poverty has its own richness also.

There are many things which only a poor man can enjoy - never a rich man. There are many things only rich people can enjoy - never a poor man. So, whatsoever opportunity.... When you are rich, enjoy that which a rich man can enjoy. Whenever you are poor, enjoy that which poor men enjoy.

But what do you do? - you do just the reverse. When you are rich, you suffer for those things which only poor men can enjoy. And when you are poor, you suffer for those things which only a rich man can enjoy.

When you have money, enjoy it. Live like a king when you have it. But I see people - they have money and they live like beggars. They are saving it for the future, and when it is lost, then they start thinking about it: 'Why did we waste time? We should have enjoyed.'

Poor persons, poor people, always thinking about living in palaces, while they can enjoy the tree where they are. The singing birds, and the sun, and the air - the world is more open to a poor man.

A poor man can enjoy a beautiful sleep, because for a rich man, sleep has become difficult. He may have better sleeping-rooms, he may have more comfortable mattresses, but he will not be able to sleep. Then he will think about beggars and will feel envious and jealous that these poor people are sleeping so well, snoring, and, 'I cannot sleep.'

When you can sleep well, sleep well. When you have beautiful mattresses, enjoy them - and suffer insomnia. But be intelligent!

Osho, The True Sage Chapter 4 : The watchman - Questions and Answers

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Question : BELOVED MASTER, IS THERE ANY POSSIBILITY FOR ENLIGHTENMENT FOR A NONSERIOUS MEDITATOR?

Osho : There is only possibility of enlightenment if you are a nonserious meditator because seriousness is sickness, seriousness is not health. Seriousness is a tense state of mind, it is sadness; it is not overflowing joy.

Yes, the old traditions will tell you, "Be serious." I cannot say that to you. Why be serious? The birds singing in the morning are not serious. The stars in the night are not serious.

The flowers in their different colors and fragrances are not serious. Except man, have you anything else in existence which is serious? The oceans, the rivers, the mountains... nothing is serious, except man.

Who has made man serious? It is your old traditions which have created the idea that life is not a rejoicing, that life is not playfulness; that life has to be serious, only then can you enter into paradise, only then can you meet God. But I want to tell you, even God will not give you an audience if you reach there with a serious, long face. You have to go there like an innocent child, playful, joyous. You have to learn something of the sense of humor.

My approach is to create a world where laughter is good, is healthy, is supported not condemned.

I would like all our religious places to be playful.

"Leela" means playfulness.

If the whole of existence is divine play, then our lives should also be a part of it, a divine play.

So don't be worried about meditating nonseriously; in fact, that is the right way to meditate. Meditate playfully, nonseriously, because whenever you meditate seriously you become tense. Meditation needs relaxation. Meditation needs a joyful heart. It is not work, it is play.

So you can meditate anywhere - taking a shower you can meditate, sleeping in your bed you can meditate, making love to your wife or your husband you can meditate - because meditation has no barriers, no conditions.

Meditation simply means a silent state of mind. You can do anything with the silent state of mind.

And whatever you do will become more graceful, will become more creative, will bring better flowers, better fruits. Your life will become in every dimension richer. I am all for richness, in all the dimensions of life. Money alone is not richness.

There are so many greater things than money. If you can meditate in the different areas of your activities you will be making different dimensions richer, deeper. But don't be serious.

I remember, my grandfather was a very serious meditator....

I was always watching. Whenever he meditated I would disturb him. Anything was enough. Just pulling the lobe of his ear - and he is meditating - or closing his nose... And he would be furious.

I would say, "A meditator is not supposed to be so angry and so furious. And I know perfectly that when there is a customer in the shop, even meditating, you tell him to wait. This is strange. You don't get angry about that. Then you forget all your seriousness. A dog enters in the house, and you are meditating and you start pointing to the dog saying, 'Throw him out.' What kind of meditation is this?

"The best will be: don't pretend to be serious, be human, and there is no problem. You can continue to be silent and take care of the customer. You can remain silent and take care of the dog. You can remain silent and take care of me."

But all the so-called religious people are very angry people. They think they have earned so much virtue that they can afford to be angry. On small matters they are ready to burst and freak out. This is because of their seriousness.

"Otherwise," I told my grandfather, "if you are really in meditation, and I come to you, you can hold my hand, you can dance with me. You can play with me and still your inner world remains silent, watchful."

Meditation is totally an undercurrent activity, so nothing touches it. There is no need to be serious.

Please don't think of meditation as seriousness. It is a very playful activity. Make it as light as possible. It should not be a burden on your heart.

It should give you wings to fly in the sky.

Osho, The Sword and the Lotus Chapter 4 : The only secret there is

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I celebrate myself, and I hope soon the day will come you will be celebrating yourself.

And when thousands and thousands of people around the earth are celebrating, singing, dancing, ecstatic, drunk with the divine, there is no possibility of any global suicide. With such festivity and with such laughter, with such sanity and health, with such naturalness and spontaneity, how can there be a war?

Life is not given to you to murder, to destroy. Life has been given to you to create, and to rejoice, and to celebrate.

When you cry and weep, when you are miserable, you are alone. When you celebrate, the whole existence participates with you. Only in celebration do we meet the ultimate, the eternal. Only in celebration do we go beyond the circle of birth and death.

Osho, I Celebrate Myself Chapter 4 : Showering invisible flowers

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I teach you to dance, to sing, to play.

Life should be, each moment, a precious creativity. What you create does not matter but whatever you do should come out of your playfulness and joy.

Life is such a valuable opportunity, it should not be lost in seriousness. Keep seriousness for the grave.

Here, start living moment to moment totally and intensely, joyfully and playfully - and you will see that nothing goes out of control; that your intelligence becomes sharper; that you become younger; that your love becomes deeper. And when you go out into the world, wherever you go, spread life, playfulness, joy, as far away as possible - to every nook and corner of the earth.

War is created by serious people; murder is committed by serious people; suicide is committed by serious people - madhouses are full of serious people. Just watch what harm seriousness has been doing to human beings and you will jump out of your seriousness, and you will allow your child, which is waiting within you, to play and to sing and to dance.

Osho, The Rebellious Spirit Chapter 17 : The child is still within you

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Anand Gerard. Anand means bliss; gerard mean brave, courageous, and it also means a loyal heart - a blissful, courageous, loyal heart. And these are the basic qualities of a religious consciousness.

Religion has nothing to do with seriousness; seriousness is pathology. Religion is playful, sportlike, it is fun. Prayer is playing with God, and it is possible only if one remembers that one has to continuously choose to be cheerful. Mind tends to be serious and sad. Mind exists and lives in misery; misery is food for it. The moment you are blissful, mind disappears - hence the beauty of laughter. Laughter has something intrinsically spiritual in it: when you really laugh, mind disappears, and time also disappears. In total laughter you are herenow. There is no ego, nobody is laughing in you - it is pure laughter.

The actor disappears, the doer disappears, only the happening remains. That is the beauty of blissfulness, and its benediction. It is possible only for a courageous person because it needs guts to lose the mind. It needs guts to get out of the calculative mechanism of the mind, and unless you get out of the mind you can't enter into the heart.

Mind is doubt; the heart is trust, and trust is the door to the divine.

Hate is part of our unconsciousness: the more unconscious we are, the more hateful. The moment one starts waking up, becomes more alert, more aware, more conscious, one starts changing from darkness to light. That is real transformation - not the change in your character but the change in your very consciousness. And the moment you are full of light, your life is full of love. That love is real character - not the so-called cultivated virtue.

This inner light is possible only through being more alert. That's what meditation is all about: the art of alertness. Ordinarily we live like robots: mechanically, repetitively. We have to de-automatize

ourselves, we have to make each act conscious. Small, ordinary acts, walking, sitting, standing, they all have to be changed into awareness.

Walk, but remain a witness to it. Eat, and remain a witness to it. Think, and remain a witness to it. Slowly slowly you start accumulating great reservoirs of awareness in you. At a certain point awareness changes into light. Just as at one hundred degrees' heat water evaporates, when your being is full of light your actions are full of love. Then love is spontaneous. You are not even thinking of it, you are not doing it: it is happening. You become just a medium to God.

Osho, Dont Let Yourself Be Upset by the Sutra rather Upset the Sutra Yourself, Darshan 19 September 1979

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To be sincere is one thing, to be serious is another. A man who loves life is sincere, authentic, but never serious.

Remember, an authentic religious person is not fear-oriented, he is love-oriented. A really authentic religious person becomes religious to enjoy life more, to enjoy it deeply and totally.

A real religious man looks at life as a game: it is not business, it is a game. Hindus call it LEELA, a play; not even a game but a play.

There is a difference between a game and play. Children play, but you even make a game out of play. Then it becomes business-like, then even in playing you are seeking victory, success, gain, profit.

Life is a play. There is nothing to be achieved out of it, it itself is the goal; there is nowhere to reach, it itself is the Ultimate.

It is just like children playing, you cannot ask them: For what are you playing? What is the purpose? They will say: We are simply playing. It is so beautiful! Profit is not their concern, and profit should also not be your concern, but play.

Life is a moment to celebrate, to enjoy. Make it fun, a celebration, and then you will enter the temple.

...if you have lived, lived a life of celebrations, then you can die celebrating - it is fun. When you know that you are not going to die, that something in you is eternal, then the whole of life becomes fun. It is a great cosmic joke and you can play with it.

Osho, Returning to the Source Chapter 10 : So Teng Died Standing On His Head

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BUKKO SAID: TAKING THINGS EASILY AND WITHOUT FORCING, AFTER SOME TIME THE RUSH OF THOUGHT, OUTWARD AND INWARD, SUBSIDES NATURALLY, AND THE TRUE FACE SHOWS ITSELF.

That's what I have been telling you. To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize. It is the easiest thing in the world, because it has already happened without your knowing.

The buddha is already breathing in you. Just a little recognition, just a little turning inwards... and that has not to be done forcibly. If you do it forcibly you will miss the point. It is very delicate. You have to look inward playfully, not seriously. That's what he means by "taking things easily." Don't take anything seriously.

Existence is very easy. You have got your life without any effort, you are living your life without any effort. You are breathing perfectly well without being reminded; your heartbeat continues even in your sleep -- so easy is existence with you! But you are not so easy with existence. You are very close-fisted. You want everything to be turned into an "achievement."

Enlightenment cannot be an achievement. That which you have already -- how can it be an achievement?

The authentic master simply takes away things which you don't have and you believe you have, and he gives you that which you already have. You are having many things which you don't have at all, you just believe that you have them. The master's function is that of a surgeon, to cut all that is not you and leave behind just the essential core -- the eternal being.

It is a very easy phenomenon; you can do it on your own. There are no problems and no risk in taking things easily, but people take things very tensely. They take things very seriously, and that spoils the whole game.

And remember, life is a game. Once you understand it as a game, a deep playfulness arises on its own accord. The victory is not the point; the point is to play totally, joyously, dancingly.

What is called playfulness is very essential in the inquiry of your own being.

Osho, The Buddha The Emptiness of the Heart Chapter 1 : The emptiness of the heart

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This whole world is just like a drama, so don't be too serious about it. Seriousness will force you into trouble, you will get into trouble. Don't be serious about it. Nothing is serious; this whole world is just a drama.

If you can look to the whole world as a drama you will regain your original consciousness. The dust gathers because you are so serious. That seriousness creates problems, and we are so serious that even while seeing a drama we gather dust. Go to a picture house and look at the spectators.

In India, we have called this world not a creation of God, but a play, a game, a LEELA.

God is just a player; he is not serious. This is just a game. Rules are there, but rules of a game. You need not be serious about them. Nothing is sin - only error, and you suffer because of error, not because God punishes you.

Just change your attitude. You cannot be happy with a serious mind. With a festive mind, you can be happy. Take this whole life as a myth, as a story. It is one, but once you take it this way you will not be unhappy. Unhappiness comes out of too much seriousness.

Osho, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Volume 1 chapter 37 : Techniques to witness the flux-like film of life

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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. Then you become a Baul, then you become a lover -- because love can exist only with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight.

Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic is in tune. Be non-serious.

I'm not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic LEELA, this cosmic play.

Osho, The Beloved Volume 1 Chapter 9 : It is always god who loves

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We are so end-oriented that we turn everything into a means.

This must be remembered: meditation is the ultimate play, it is not a means to something, it is not a means to enlightenment.

Enlightenment happens in it, but it is not a means to it. It is not a means to ultimate freedom. Ultimate freedom happens in it, but it is not a means to it.

You cannot use it as a cause to effect something.

This has been one of the most puzzling things - all through the centuries, those who have known go on insisting on meditation for meditation's sake. Don't desire anything out of it, enjoy it in itself, don't move out of it - and the consequence will be enlightenment. Remember, consequence - not effect.

Meditation is not a cause, but if you are deep in meditation, enlightenment happens. Really, being deep in the play is enlightenment.

But the mind always turns everything into work. It says, "Do something because this will be the profit from it." Imaginary or real, the mind needs something to hang onto, to project onto. Only then can it devote itself. That is how mind functions - it functions in the present for the future. The future may be illusory, it may not ever happen, but if the mind can hope for the future then it can work. This is what is called desire: working in the present for the future. The end is always somewhere else; the means are here but the end is somewhere else. This division of end and means, this gap, is desire.

If you are playing, there is no desire because the end is here and the means are also here. While playing there is no future; you are simply merged so much in it that the future disappears.

Look at children playing. Look at their faces, at their eyes. Now they are in eternity. They are happy because they are playing. Happiness will not result in an end, it is here right now. Moment to moment they are happy - not that something great is going to happen later on - it is happening already. They are in eternity. But their minds are still not developed. We will force them to develop because this play will not be of much help in the world. They will have to learn work. They will have to divide means and end. They will have to create a gap between this moment and the future, and we will teach them to sacrifice the present for the future. This is the way of the world, the way of the market, the way of desire. Desire makes everything utilitarian.

In meditation you will become a child again, playing, with no idea of the future, enjoying this very moment, enjoying the very act in itself, intrinsically. Then imagination is not desire. Then you can play with it, and it is one of the most beautiful things possible. And this playing, this being in the moment, totally absorbed, is enlightenment. The moment it happens you are transformed.

So enlightenment is never in the future, it is always in the present; and it is not a work to be done, it is a game to be played.

That is the meaning of the Indian concept of LEELA. God is playing; he is not engaged in work. This world is not utilitarian, it is just a play of energy. Energy enjoys itself playing; it divides itself and then plays the game of hide and seek.

God is just playing and you cannot ask "Why?" because a play has no "Why?" to answer.

When you also become a player, you become Divine. If you are a worker you are human; if you are a player you have become Divine. Then you share in the game.

If you follow the rules, and if you follow them knowing that this is a game and that the rules have to be followed, it is good. If you don't follow, nothing is wrong; really, you are playing the reverse game of not following. If you obey, you follow the game of obedience; if you don't obey, you follow the game of disobedience, the game of rebelliousness. But nothing is wrong. What you want to play is your choice. And if you are not serious and are happy whatsoever you do, you are enlightened.

There are rules because a game has to be played with others. If you are playing alone there is no question of rules; then you can change your rules any moment you like. But because you are playing with others, rules have to be followed so that you can play with them. There isn't any other reason behind it. Morality is a rule, love is a rule, society is just a rule - agreed-upon rules that we are going to play a game so we will agree. If you don't want to play the game then you can be rebellious, but don't be serious about it. Then play the game of being rebellious. And if someone kills you, murders you, or crucifies you, you know that you were playing the game of a rebellious leader, so you have been killed. There is no condemnation. You were not with the established rules, so the established rules were against you - it is okay. Then nothing is wrong, and you don't have to complain.

Once you become aware that the concept of work, utility, reaching somewhere, the goal, is the bondage, it doesn't mean that you stop playing the dame in the market - you go on playing. But you know that this is a game. It doesn't mean that you divorce your wife - you go on playing the game of marriage. But know well that this is a game. Don't get serious about it. And if you want to play the game of divorce, you can play it, but remember, don't get serious about it. Divorce or marriage - these are alternative games; being a worldly man or becoming a sannyasin - these are alternative games. But don't be serious about it. Be light-hearted, festive. And whatsoever you choose, you can play; and whatsoever consequences follow, you will welcome them because there is nothing serious about them.

Once this deepens in your consciousness - and it will deepen if you start playing with meditation - it will be a good beginning. Because in meditation you alone are the player. That's why it can be a good beginning, the right beginning. You are alone playing the game so you can forget society and society will not come to interfere. This is a solo game, meditation, a solo game. You play alone.

So whatsoever you want to play you can play, but forget the ends. If there are ends you have also turned meditation into a work. Just play it, enjoy it, love it. It is beautiful in itself. There is no need for any other end to beautify it.

People come to me and they say, "We are enjoying meditation, but tell us what is going to happen. What will be the end result?" I tell them, "This IS the end result - that you are enjoying. Enjoy it more!"

But they go on insisting, "Tell us something about it. What will be the end result? Where will we reach to?" They are not concerned at all where they are: they are always concerned with where they will reach to. The mind cannot exist in the present so it goes on giving you excuses to move into the future. These excuses are the desires. So if you desire to be a god, to be a buddha, your meditation will be a sort of desire, and then it is not meditation. If you don't desire anything, you just enjoy being here, you just celebrate being alive, you enjoy the inner energy playing in imagination, in visions, in emptiness, whatsoever you choose, and you are totally one with this moment of enjoyment, then it is meditation. Then there is no desire, and, with no desire, the world drops. With a non-desiring, playful mind you have entered. You are already in it.

But this has to be hammered into your mind again and again because your mind is a transformer. It transforms anything into a desire - anything - it can transform even non-desire into a desire. People come to me and they say, "How does one achieve the state of non-desire?" How to achieve the state of non-desire? Now this has become the desire. Your mind has a transforming mechanism: whatsoever you put in will come out as a desire.

Be alert of this and enjoy moments so much that no energy is left to move into the future. Then, any day, any moment, it will happen to you that suddenly all the darkness falls; suddenly all that is a burden disappears; suddenly you are freed.

But the emphasis should be more and more on play, the present, here and now - and less and less on the future.

Osho, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Volume 2 Chapter 28 : If you get serious you lose the point

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People come to me and they say, "I have been meditating for three months and nothing has happened yet."

A desire... and that desire is the barrier. It can happen in a single moment if desire is not there.

Really, don't desire anything.

Just be at ease, at home with reality as it is.

Be ordinary - to be ordinary is wonderful. Because then there is no tension, no anguish.

To be ordinary is very mysterious because it is so simple.

..meditation is a play, a game; it is not a work. But to you it goes on being work; you think in terms of work.

It will be good to understand the distinction between work and play. Work is end-oriented, not enough in itself. It must lead somewhere, to some happiness, to some goal, to some end. It is a bridge, a means. In itself it is meaningless. The meaning is hidden in the goal.

Play is totally different. There is no goal to it, or, it itself is the goal. Happiness is not beyond it, outside it; to be in it is to be happy. It will not give you any happiness outside of it, there is no meaning beyond it - all that is there is intrinsic, internal. You play, not because of any reason, but because you enjoy it right now. It is purposeless.

That's why only children can play really; the more you grow, the less capable you become of playing.

Because of more and more purpose, more and more you ask why, why should I play? More and more you become end-oriented: something must be achieved through it, in itself it has no meaning.

Intrinsic value loses meaning for you. Only children can play because they don't think of the future.

They can be here timelessly.

Work is time; play is timeless. Meditation must be like play, not end-oriented. You must not meditate to achieve something because then the whole point is lost.

You cannot meditate at all if you are meditating for something.

You can meditate only if you are playing with it, enjoying it, if nothing is to be achieved out of it, if it is beautiful in itself.

Meditation for meditation's sake... then it becomes timeless. And then the ego cannot arise.

Without desire, you cannot project yourself into the future, without desire you cannot start expectations, and without desire you will never be disappointed. Without desire, time really disappears: you move from one moment of eternity to another moment of eternity. There is no sequence... and then you will never ask why nothing special is happening.

The very play is the mystery; being timeless, desireless, is the mystery. And to be ordinary is the 'goal', if you allow me to use the word. To be ordinary is the goal. If you can be ordinary you are liberated, then there is no SANSAR for you...

This whole world is a struggle to be extraordinary. Some try it in politics, some try it in economics, some try it in religion. But the lust remains the same.

Osho, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Volume 2 Chapter 26 : Enlightenment - the most ordinary