What does it mean to love myself?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE MYSELF? Prem Kabir, one has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don't know who you are. Who are you going to love? If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. Even the ugliest woman, if you say to her, "How beautiful you are," will not refuse to accept it. I have heard... Two old men meet on a street corner. "Where have you been for the past eight weeks?" "In jail," says the second man. "In jail? How come?" says the first man.

Question: LOVE YOURSELF AND WATCH -- TODAY, TOMORROW, ALWAYS. FIRST ESTABLISH YOURSELF IN THE WAY, THEN TEACH, AND SO DEFEAT SORROW. TO STRAIGHTEN THE CROOKED YOU MUST FIRST DO A HARDER THING -- STRAIGHTEN YOURSELF. YOU ARE YOUR ONLY MASTER. WHO ELSE? SUBDUE YOURSELF, AND DISCOVER YOUR MASTER. WILLFULLY YOU HAVE FED YOUR OWN MISCHIEF. SOON IT WILL CRUSH YOU AS THE DIAMOND CRUSHES STONE. BY YOUR OWN FOLLY YOU WILL BE BROUGHT AS LOW AS YOUR WORST ENEMY WISHES. SO THE CREEPER CHOKES THE TREE. HOW HARD IT IS TO SERVE YOURSELF, HOW EASY TO LOSE YOURSELF IN MISCHIEF AND FOLLY. THE KATTHAKA REED DIES WHEN IT BEARS FRUIT. SO THE FOOL, SCORNING THE TEACHINGS OF THE AWAKENED, SPURNING THOSE WHO FOLLOW THE LAW, PERISHES WHEN HIS FOLLY FLOWERS. These are poisonous ideas, but you have been poisoned.

And only when one is full of light.... The first child of light is love. And love contains all that is beautiful, all that is divine: compassion, prayer, creativity, grace. They all follow love, you need not think about them, they are by-products, consequences of love. But love itself happens only through light. All meditation techniques are devices to bring you out of your sleep, to help you wake up. OSHO (to Aige) : Your heart starts pulsating in a different rhythm. The whole world remains the same but your eyes are no more the same; hence you start seeing things which you have never seen before and you stop seeing things which you have always been seeing. So in a sense the world remains the same and in another sense it is no more the same, because when the seer changes, the seen changes.

Osho, what is the difference between surrender and blind imitation?

So be careful: the freedom you allow yourself, allow the other too. You have no right to judge another as blindly credulous or as a surrendered being. Drop that concern. You cannot judge anyway—how will you enter another’s heart? How will you know? Think only about yourself. See within whether, up to now, you have lived by blind belief or by surrender. Decide only there; leave worrying about others. Otherwise, all your judgments will be wrong. Jesus said: Judge not; do not set yourself up as a judge in relation to another. To the friend who has asked: if you are asking for yourself, good. Drop worrying about others. Look within and see: whatever I have been clinging to till now—have I ever staked my life to hold it? Have I meditated for it? Have I loved for it? Or am I just clutching what culture, society, civilization handed me?…

Beloved Osho, is it possible to be responsible for oneself without first learning to love oneself?

Half of India is going to face the same fate as Ethiopia soon -- and India's government is selling wheat, exporting wheat to the outside world. Their own people are going to die -- not in small numbers: fifty percent of India is just on the borderline. Any moment it can become a bigger Ethiopia. But the political leaders are selling the wheat to other countries because they want nuclear plants, atomic energy, so they can also compete in the foolish race that is going on. Anybody can see that it will take at least three hundred years for India to be a nuclear power equal to America or the Soviet Union. And do you think for these three hundred years America and the Soviet Union will simply wait? They will be growing in the same direction of destruction and death. All this has happened in the name of altruism.…