In what way do you experience your own beauty?

Beloved Osho, each time I see you, I am shocked by your beauty. You've got to be the most gorgeous being that has ever happened! Osho, in what way do you experience your own beauty?

So he made the portrait. It took many sittings and the woman became more and more puzzled as she saw the portrait coming up. When the portrait was complete she said, "Only one question, I want to know where my nose is. Everything is okay, but at least I should know where my nose is. From there I can figure out the eyes, the mouth, my ears -- that can be the center for finding myself." Picasso said, "I told you in the very beginning...! Now it is a trouble to find the nose -- who knows where your nose is! I have painted it, that is true, but in so many sittings I can't remember exactly where I have put it. You take it home and contemplate; perhaps you may find it. It is there, that much is certain. It is there, this much I can guarantee because I…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, AND A POET SAID, SPEAK TO US OF BEAUTY. AND HE ANSWERED: WHERE SHALL YOU SEEK BEAUTY, AND HOW SHALL YOU FIND HER UNLESS SHE HERSELF BE YOUR WAY AND YOUR GUIDE? AND HOW SHALL YOU SPEAK OF HER EXCEPT SHE BE THE WEAVER OF YOUR SPEECH? THE AGGRIEVED AND THE INJURED SAY, "BEAUTY IS KIND AND GENTLE. "LIKE A YOUNG MOTHER HALF-SHY OF HER OWN GLORY SHE WALKS AMONG US." AND THE PASSIONATE SAY, "NAY, BEAUTY IS A THING OF MIGHT AND DREAD. "LIKE THE TEMPEST SHE SHAKES THE EARTH BENEATH US AND THE SKY ABOVE US." THE TIRED AND THE WEARY SAY, "BEAUTY IS OF SOFT WHISPERINGS. SHE SPEAKS IN OUR SPIRIT. "HER VOICE YIELDS TO OUR SILENCES LIKE A FAINT LIGHT THAT QUIVERS IN FEAR OF THE SHADOW.

Beloved Osho, your inner beauty I can only feel as far as I have discovered myself. But for ten years, whenever I see you entering the auditorium, there is this surprise about your unbelievable outer beauty too. Osho, is the outer appearance always just a reflection of the inner?

Janak asked him, "I can understand why they are laughing -- because of your body; but I cannot understand why you are laughing. And you stopped all their laughing with your laughter." A single man stopped one thousand people's laughter. Ashtavakra said to Janak, "I thought this conference was for scholars and philosophers, but these are all shoemakers. They can understand only the skin. They cannot see the inner, they can only see the outer." There was a great silence. What he was saying had a great truth in it. Janak dissolved the conference and said, "Now I would like to inquire of Ashtavakra only. He has defeated you all just by his laughter and his statement that, `You can't see the inner, you can only see the outer; you are all shoemakers.' Shoemakers work with the skin of different animals. I dissolve the conference and, Yagnavalka, return those one…

(Then Osho wound up the evening by talking about the beauty meditation creates in and around the meditator.) Meditation does two things to you: one: it makes you aware of the beauty that exists all around, it makes you sensitive to it; and the second thing: it makes you beautiful, it gives you a certain grace. Your eyes become full of beauty because the whole existence is beautiful. We just have to drink out of it, we just have to allow the beauty to enter us. Through our eyes, through our ears, through all our senses; the beauty has to be allowed to enter us. It gives tremendous nourishment to the soul. Ordinarily a person is not aware of the beauty that surrounds existence. He is more aware of all that is ugly because the mind always goes on finding the negative. It counts the thorns, it misses the roses.

The more I look into myself, the more I find that I'm such a narcissist -- and my only and real concern is not enlightenment, liberation... And all that, but beauty. I want to make myself and the world as beautiful as possible. And the beauty of beauties seems not to be. Am I an okay student of your aesthetics?

Religions of the past have either been of the first or of the second. The third, the highest, stage is evolving: the religion of beauty. That's why I say the first is logical, the second is ethical, and the third is aesthetical. The third is nothing but aesthetics. The man who is trying to be good has to impose goodness on himself; he has to practise and cultivate it. Deep down there is a split, and that split will remain. You think celibacy is good; logically you have arrived at the conclusion that celibacy is good, that sexuality is just a waste of life energy, and that it is stupid also, and that it is animal-like also, and that unless you transcend sexuality, you will not be able to transcend your body, because body is the body of sex. It consists of sex, it is made of sex cells; it…