Does self-acceptance flower out of awareness, or does awareness flower out of self-acceptance?

Osho, does self-acceptance flower out of awareness, or does awareness flower out of self-acceptance?

Here, everything is self-supported, because the truth of the Self is the truth of the Divine. No one is holding anyone else. Otherwise there would be no end to the regress. Turn from chicken to egg and you ask, “Where did the egg come from?”—again the chicken. Ask, “Where did the chicken come from?”—again the egg. There will be no end. But in life we do end it. Who bothers about which came first, chicken or egg? When you are hungry and both are before you, do you philosophize? You eat. I say the same to you. Start with awareness if you like—you will reach the same place, for awareness gives birth to self-acceptance. Or start with self-acceptance—you will reach the same place. Whether you begin with the left foot or the right makes no difference—both feet are yours, and both will carry you. You are supported by both feet,…

Osho, you just said that one has to allow spontaneous acceptance. In that spontaneous state many things were noticed. Once spontaneous acceptance happened, the so‑called process of arriving at witnessing, at the inner awakening, began.

Yes. In fact, whatever words we have are all of a sequential language. The moment you accept, you accept everything—there is no denial left in you. What seems bad to you is accepted, and what seems good is accepted. So, the very moment there is total acceptance of both the bad and the good, integration arises within you, because there is no longer any need for division inside. Otherwise, Bachchu Bhai, there are two persons: one Bachchu Bhai who is religious, good, and another Bachchu Bhai who is condemned, who must be corrected. And you are the one doing both jobs. One part of you is doing the bad, and another part is doing the good. It is as if I make my two hands fight: the left hand is mine, the right hand is mine, the strength is mine—so there will be no victory. There will only be conflict.…

Beloved master, is maturation an ongoing process? How is maturation related to awareness? Please explain.

Yes, maturation is an ongoing process. There is no limit to it -- not even the sky is the limit. Your consciousness is far bigger than the whole universe. It is infinitely infinite. You cannot come to a point where you can say, "Enough." There is always more and more. There is always a possibility to go on growing. And growing, maturing is such a beautiful experience, that who wants to stop it? We are stopped in every way. Even a great scientist like Albert Einstein has used only fifteen percent of his intelligence. What to say about ordinary people? -- they never use more than five percent. Just think, if Einstein was capable of using one hundred percent of his intelligence he would have given the world unimaginable richness. And if everybody is using his consciousness one hundred percent, then who would like to go to heaven and live…

Osho, please understand one thing: in any country, if the society happens to be spiritualist, then those who don’t get a chance in it are pulled toward materialism; and in other countries, those who are materialists—when they don’t get a chance—are pulled the other way. So it is the chance-less who have erected the opposite cult. What do you say about this?

And remember, this small path that takes us from sleep into awakening is religion in the fundamental sense—this small path! Neither temples, nor rituals, nor sacrifices have anything to do with it. All this is meaningless. These are the devices of sleeping people. Temples, prayers, fire rituals, chanting mantras, repeating “Ram, Ram”—these are the creations of the sleeping. A sleeping man also manufactures a kind of religion—and then it becomes the cause of quarrels: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. These are differences of ritual, not of religion. One sleeping man builds one kind of temple—he doesn’t know what a temple is; he is building it himself. Ten other sleeping men build a mosque; ten more build a church. Then the three fight: ours is the true temple; whoever does not come to our temple will go to hell. Sleeping men also coin doctrines, create systems. They try to explain. But the explanations…

Osho, does living moment-to-moment begin the awareness of interdependence?

You have heard of Baital Pachisi (the Vetala tales). You would never suppose it could be a teaching for the wise—yet this land has made unique experiments. It has produced books that can be read on many levels, with layer upon layer of meaning—two, three, four, five meanings running parallel like five roads side by side. Thus whoever you are, there is a way. A small child enjoys it; the supreme knower enjoys it. The seeker finds the path; the arrived recognizes the destination. For one who is neither, it is a diversion—that too is something, a little entertainment. The first story goes like this. Emperor Vikramaditya was in court when a fakir arrived. As custom had it, people came in the morning to offer gifts. The fakir offered a wild-looking fruit. The emperor smiled—why come so far to offer a jungle fruit? But a fakir has nothing else, so…