How you look comes from your parents, but your real glow comes from growing inside; looks can’t make you kind, yet a kind, aware heart can make any face shine.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
A friend has asked: Osho, yesterday you said that to know anger completely, one must experience it in its totality. Then how is one to know lust completely? Because the experienced say that lust is never satisfied; the more you indulge it, the more it grows. So how can one go beyond lust?
Surely there is an inherent purpose. And it is this: even these saints could not have been born without lust. They too went beyond only by passing through the experience. They too entered it and found it to be futile. That realization of futility is precious—and it comes only when it happens in your own experience. So do not be in a hurry. Do not rely on borrowed experience. That does not mean you tell the experienced, “You are wrong.” You should simply say, “We do not yet know. We wish to enter and know for ourselves what this lust is. We will know it fully. If it turns out to be wrong, that very knowing will bring liberation. And if it turns out to be right, then there is no need for liberation.” One thing is certain: whoever has known rightly has become free. And another thing is also…
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…
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…
Whether you have meditated or not—no one can see. Whether you have bathed or not—everybody can see. Whether you have refined the inner beauty or not—where will you find eyes to see this! But that you have bathed, you step out fragrant, you wear fresh clothes—even the blind can understand. Slowly you forget that there is also a form of yours that you alone will know. And there is a form of yours that appears from the outside. If you remain occupied only in adorning the outer form—then even if you gratify the eyes of others, you will be deprived of the search for your own life. You will go on persuading others that you are beautiful—and you will not become beautiful. For this is not a matter of persuading anyone. If you are beautiful, you are beautiful—there is nothing to convince anyone about.