Osho

And all are asleep,so all are foolish. Don't feel offended. Thefacts have to be stated as they are.You function in sleep; that's why you go on stumbling,you go on doing things you don't want to do, you go on doing things you have decided not to do. You go on doing things you know are not right to do, and you don't do things that you know are right. How is this possible? Why can't you walk straight? Why do you go on getting trapped into bypaths? Why do you go on going astray? This is what is happening. Watch your life--everything that you go on demanding is so confused and so confusiing. You are not alert. You can't see, you can't heart-- certainly you have ears so you can hear, but there is nobody inside to understand it. Certainly you have eyes so you can see,but there is nobody present inside. So your eyes go on seeing and your ears go on listening, but nothing is understood. And on each step you stumble, on each step you commit something wrong. And still you go on believing that you are aware.

The first step in awareness is to be watchful of your body. Slowly,slowly one becomes alert about each gesture,each movement. And as you become aware, a miracle starts happening: many things that you used to do before simply disappear. Your body becomes more relaxed,your body becomes more attuned, a deep peace starts prevailing even in your body, a subtle music pulsates in your body.

Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love - now you are love.

The attitude of Tao is of cooperation, not conflict. The attitude of Tao is not to be against nature but to be with it, to allow nature, to let it have its way, to cooperate with it, to go with it. The attitude of Tao is of great relaxation.

The whole of history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister, you can become a president__ut these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind.

If you live consciously, if you try to bring consciousness to every act that you go through, you will be living in a silent, blissful state, in serenity, in joy, in love. Your life will have the flavour of a festival. That is the meaning of heaven: your life will have many flowers in it, much fragrance will be released through you. You will have an aura of delight. Your life will be a song of life-affirmation, it will be a sacred yes to all that existence is. You will be in communion with existence _ in communion with stars, with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with people, with animals. This whole life and this whole existence will have a totally different meaning for you. From every nook and corner, rivers of bliss will be flowing towards you. Heaven is just a name for that state of mind. Hell means you are living so unconsciously, so absurdly, in such contradiction, that you go on creating more and more misery for yourself.

Love sharpens intelligence, fear dulls it. Who wants you to be intelligent? Not those who are in power. How can they want you to be intelligent?__ecause if you are intelligent you will start seeing the whole strategy, their games. They want you to be stupid and mediocre. They certainly want you to be efficient as far as work is concerned, but not intelligent; hence humanity lives at the lowest, at the minimum of its potential.

Just as trees need roots in the earth, man is also a tree and needs roots in existence or else he will live a very unintelligent life.

If you are intelligent, if you are alert, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary.

To be "great" is an ego goal; to be real is existential.

No ideology can help to create a new worldor a new mind or a new human being --because ideological orientation itselfis the root cause of all the conflicts and all the miseries.Thought creates boundaries, thought creates divisions and thought creates prejudices; thought itself cannot bridge them. That's why all ideologies fail.Now man must learn to live without ideologiesreligious, political or otherwise. When the mind is not tethered to any ideology, it is free to move to new understandings. And in that freedom flowers all that is good and all that is beautiful.

Love is dangerous because it makes you an individual. And the state and the church . . . they don__ want individuals, not at all. They don__ want human beings, they want sheep. They want people who only look like human beings but whose souls have been crushed so utterly, damaged so deeply, that it seems almost irreparable.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ATMAN, THE SOUL.The first meaning is: in this world, only consciousness is yours. The word atman means: that which is your own. Regardless of how much the rest may appear to you as your own, it is alien. All of that which you otherwise claim as yours _ friends, loved ones, family, wealth, fame, high position, a great empire _ it is all a deception. Because one day death will snatch it all away from you. So death is the criterion for determining who is your own and who is the stranger. That which death can separate you from, know that it didn__ belong to you, and that which it can__, was indeed your own.

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.

Millions of beauties and splendors are waiting for you. You go on moving around and around, never entering into the temple of life. The door is the heart.

The day you leave, this will be your only contentment: if you have made the existence a little more beautiful.

Man is a question mark . . . and it is a blessing__elebrate it. It is a blessing because only man is a question mark; no dog is, no tree is. The rose bush is beautiful but not as beautiful as man, and the moon is beautiful but not as beautiful as man__ecause they are unconscious. Only man is consciously on a quest. And how can you be on a quest if you don__ have a question mark in your being?

Untalented people, unintelligent people go into politics. Those who are talented become artists, painters, poets, philosophers, mystics, dancers. They have a thousand and one other beautiful things to do, not politics. Only the third rate, the most unintelligent part of a country, moves into politics.