Rajneesh Giving Quotations

Money should not be in the hands of individuals; otherwise it will create this problem of being burdened with guilt. And money can make people's lives very rich. If the commune owns the money, the commune can give you all the facilities that you need, all the education, all creative dimensions of life.

For dignity of character, consciousness is needed, not conscience and that's the function of meditation. Meditation does not give you any character directly. It does not say what to do and what not to do. It never gives you any commandments. It simply gives you a technique for becoming more aware, for being more alert, watchful, witnessing.

There is no greater enjoyment than that of sharing something. Have you given something to somebody? That`s why people enjoy giving gifts so much. It is a sheer delight. When you give something to somebody - maybe valueless, may not be of much value - but just the way, just the gesture that you give, satisfies tremendously. Just think of a person whose whole life is a gift! whose every moment is a sharing - he lives in heaven. There is no other heaven than that.

My meditation techniques ARE dangerous. In fact there cannot be any meditation techniques which are not dangerous. If they are not dangerous, they are not meditation techniques, they are tricks. Just like Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They are mental tricks. Just consolatory. No danger. At the most they can give you good sleep, that's all. If you miss, you don't miss anything, you remain the same. If you attain, you attain to good sleep, that's all. No danger involved.

Don't be bothered by perfection. Replace the word 'Perfection' by 'Totality. Totality will give you a different dimension.

In dreams the mind is constantly giving you substitutes just to protect sleep. And the same is happening while you are awake. The mind is giving you substitutes just to protect your sanity; otherwise you will be scattered in fragments.

Only meditation, only silence, only transcending beyond your mind is going to give you contentment and fulfillment.

The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable.

A person who lives moment to moment, who goes on dying to the past, is never attached to anything. Attachment comes from the accumulated past. If you can be unattached to the past every moment, then you are always fresh, young, just born. You pulsate with life and that pulsation gives you immortality. You are immortal, only unaware of the fact.

A conditional love is nothing but an infatuation, sexuality. Unconditional is the only way love can be. Wherever a condition comes in, love disappears. It cannot live in bondage, and a condition gives it an imprisonment. Love can only live like the vast sky. Love knows no boundaries.

The most fundamental message of Gautama the Buddha is not God, is not soul... it is freedom: freedom absolute, total, unconditional. He does not want to give you an ideology, because every ideology creates its own slavery.

God is the creativity, so if you really want to enter into the world of God you will have to learn the ways of creativity - and that has disappeared. Instead of creativity we value productivity: we talk about how to produce more. Production can give you things but cannot give you values. Production can make you rich outwardly but it will impoverish you inwardly. Production is not creation. Production is very mediocre; any stupid person can do it, one simply needs to learn the knack of it.

Just being alive is such a gift, but nobody ever told you to be thankful to existence. On the contrary, everyone was grumpy, complaining. Naturally, if everything surrounding your life from the very beginning goes on pointing out to you that you are not what you should be, goes on giving you great ideals that you have to follow and you have to become, your isness is never praised. What is praised is your future - if you can become someone respectable, powerful, rich, intellectual, in some way famous, not just a nobody.

Love is authentic only when it gives freedom. Love is true only when it respects the other person's individuality, his privacy.

Blessed are those who have known meditation. Only those few people are the blessed people; others are simply groping in darkness. Meditation gives you an inner light, and then wherever you are there is light and whatsoever you do, you do in full light and clarity. Hence there is never any guilt, no repentance, no looking back. Whatsoever one does, one feels that`s the only thing that can be done. It is always right.

The family gives you ambition, and ambition is one of the hindrances for enlightenment. It gives you desires, it gives you a longing to be successful, and all these things create your tensions, your anxieties: how to be a celebrity?

I would like you to drop the ego, to dissolve, to disappear, because only then is there fulfillment. The ego knows only emptiness; it is always unfulfilled. By the very nature, by its very intrinsic nature, it cannot attain to fulfillment. When you are not, fulfillment is. Call it God, or give it a name Patanjali would like - samadhi - the attainment of the ultimate, but it comes when you disappear.

I am here to destroy your personality, to give birth to your individuality.

Love with eyes knows when to say no, when to say yes. Love neither interferes in anybody`s life nor allows anybody else to interfere into one`s own life. Love gives individuality to others, but does not lose its own individuality.

Forget about getting, simply give; and I guarantee you, you will get much.

Real love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface your individuality, it gives you individuality. Real love is very respectful.

Transcendence of sex is a totally different phenomenon from the suppression of it. But suppression can give you the feeling that you have transcended.

You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sadness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue - blissful, but still sad. The very word sad gives you wrong connotations - that something is wrong. This is your interpretation. To me, life in its totality is good.

Remember one thing: the one who brings unhappiness to others in the end becomes unhappy himself, and the one who brings happiness to others in the end reaches to the heights of happiness. That's why I am saying that someone who tries to give happiness develops the center of happiness inside himself, and someone who tries to bring unhappiness to others develops the center of unhappiness inside himself.

Love respects the other. It is a give-and-take relationship. Love enjoys giving, and love enjoys taking. It is a sharing, it is a communication. Both are equal in love; in a sexual relationship both are not equal. Love has a totally different beauty to it.

But a problem arises because whenever I use words, those words have connotations in your mind. When I say 'Celebrate', you think one has to be happy. How can one celebrate when one is sad? I am not saying that one has to be happy to celebrate. Celebration is gratefulness for whatsoever life gives to you. Whatsoever existence gives to you, celebration is a gratitude; it is a gratefulness.

Creativity is a quality that we give to every activity that we do.

Attachment brings misery, unattachment brings blissfulness. So use things, but don't be used by them. Live life but don't be lived by it. Possess things, but don't be possessed by them. Have things - that's not a problem. I am not for renunciation. Enjoy everything that life gives, but always remain free.

Zen is not morality, it is aesthetics. It does not impose a code of morality. it does not give you any commandments: do this, don't do that.

Compassion goes on giving, but knows no feeling of giving, knows no feeling that "I am the giver." And then existence goes on responding in thousands of ways. You give a little love and from everywhere love starts flowing. The man of compassion is not trying to snatch anything away, he is not greedy. He does not wait for the return, he goes on giving. He goes on getting too, but that is not in his mind.

When sadness comes, accept it. Listen to its song. It has something to give to you. It has a gift which no happiness can give to you, only sadness can give it.

The meditation I am talking about is not a meditation on something. If you light a lamp and remove all the objects surrounding it, the lamp will still go on giving light. In the same way, if you remove all objects from your consciousness, all thoughts, all imagination, what will happen? – only consciousness will remain.

I love to disturb people, because only by disturbing them you can make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them. People have been consoling them. I am not going to console anybody... Because the more you console them, the more retarded they remain. Shog them, hit them hard, give them challenge. That challenge will bring their full capacities to the climax.

A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world - a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better.

God is there only if you surrender. Surrender makes anything God. Surrender give you the eyes, and everything that is brought to these eyes becomes Divine.

Every action is self-perpetuating, every thought is self-perpetuating. Once you cooperate with it, you are giving energy to it. Sooner or later it will become habitual. You will do it and you will not be the doer; you will do it just because of the force of habit.

The sannyasin knows what it means to be an emperor, because he simply gives; he enjoys giving, he loves sharing. And the miracle of life is: the more you give the more you have.

Religion is consciousness-raising. It raises you higher than the problem, it gives you a bird's-eye view.

If you want to learn anything, learn trust - nothing else id needed. If you are miserable, nothing else will help - learn trust. If you don't feel any meaning in life and you feel meaningless, nothing will help - learn trust. Trust gives meaning because trust makes you capable of allowing the whole descend upon you.

An expectation is a shelter - it gives you a security feeling. So when someone breaks your expectations he is breaking your shelter, making you insecure, fearful.

Meditation is the alchemy of transforming. The unconscious into the conscious. It gives you a tremendous power, Far greater than anger, greed and lust.

When you are sharing your joy, you don't create a prison for anybody - you simply give. You don´t even expect gratitude or thankfulness, because you are giving, but not to get anything, not even gratitude. You are giving because you are so full of joy and life, you have to give.

Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth.

Remember, character is not of much value. What is valuable is consciousness - not conscience but consciousness. Conscience is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely that these are not your ideas.

Enlightenment is always through surrender, but surrender is achieved through intelligence. Only idiots cannot surrender. To surrender you need great intelligence. To see the point of surrender is the climax of insight; to see the point that you are not separate from existence is the highest that intelligence can give to you.

Bliss follows witnessing - and that is going to be your meditation. Witness your body as separate, witness your mind as separate. Remain rooted in witnessing: "I am only a watcher." That is going to transform your whole life, it is going to give you the ultimate.

Meditation cannot be purchased and no one can give it to you. You have to achieve it. It is not something outer, it is something inner, a growth, and that growth comes through awareness.

Mind is knowledge, meditation is non-knowledge. Mind knows, meditation experiences. Mind can only give you a certain acquaintance but not the taste. If you want the taste of the Tao you have to move to no-mind, to Meditation.

The man of meditation becomes the man of understanding because his energy accumulates. He is not wasting it. He is not interested in trivia; he does not put any energy at all into petty things. So whenever the time arises to give, he has to give. Energy is understanding. Be conscious of it and use your energy very consciously, and use your energy in such a way that you don't simply go on wasting it.

You cannot possess all and everything. Whatsoever you possess will not give you contentment. The mind, the ego, will always feel unfulfilled.

Love can have the quality of the devil - that`s how it is there in the world, ninety-nine percent. Love can have the quality of God, and unless you make your love divine, it is not going to give you any contentment.

The whole blame goes to the parents. They have lived as ambitious beings; they have destroyed themselves. Now they go on giving their heritage to their children - their unfulfilled desires, their incomplete ambitions. In this way diseases pass on from one generation to another.

Unless a person decides that `Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability - everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else`... This decision and this declaration - this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd - gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don`t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.

Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something.

If you clean the floor with love, you have done an invisible painting. Live each moment in such delight that it gives you something inner.

My whole effort is how to beautify this present moment, how to make people more celebrating, how to make people more joyous, how to give them a little glimpse of blissfulness, how to bring laughter to their life. Then the future takes care of itself. You need not think of the tomorrow, it comes. It comes out of this moment. Let this moment be of great celebration.

If you have a little inteligence, sooner or later the question is bound to arise: What is the point of it all? Why? It is impossible to avoid the question for long. And if you are very intelligent, it is always there, persistently there, hammering on your heart for the answer: Give me the answer! - Why?

There is an intrinsic law: thoughts don't have their own life. They are parasites; they live on your identifying with them. When you say, 'I am angry,' you are pouring life energy into anger, because you are getting identified with anger. But when you say, 'I am watching anger flashing on the screen of the mind within me,' you are not anymore giving any life, any energy to anger.

Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.

Let this be the criterion always: anything that makes you festive, anything that gives you celebration, anything that makes you dance and sing to such an extent that you disappear in your dancing, in your singing, in your celebration... is the only true religion I know of.

Love can never possess. Love is giving freedom to the other. Love is an unconditional gift, it is not a bargain.