What happens when a record is broken?

Both are the possibilities. One can just go on seeking challenges because it enhances the ego. Then the motive is wrong. What you are doing is right, but the reason you are doing it is wrong. If you simply love challenges and it is not in any way an effort to enhance the ego, then it is tremendously beautiful. Then whatsoever you are doing is right, and the motive is also right. Then you are one thousand percent right. So just watch that -- that's what I am saying. Don't gather the ego. Go on finding new challenges, enjoy, but there is no need to collect the ego, to feed an ego, because if you are feeding an ego, then in fact you will not be able to enjoy the challenges; they become secondary. The purity is lost then; you are always hankering for the ego.

When you help somebody to grow, to pass through a fixation, an obsession, to attain to a breakthrough.... And when he blooms -- that is exactly the right word -- when he blooms, suddenly, a flare of energy. And the person who is helping is tremendously benefited. And always remember that the more peaks that you attain, the more you become capable of further and higher peaks. And there is no end to peaks. There is no ultimate peak. . . it goes on and on. Life is an endless process. So never think that now, this is the last. It is never the last. When people start thinking that this is the last and they start settling, they miss much. Because this is my observation -- that if you settle on a peak, sooner or later that peak will disappear, because peaks exist only when you are growing.

Osho, the fall of ordinary people seems understandable. But how is it that even someone who walks the path of renunciation, dispassion, austerity, and sadhana—who has come close to the destination—can still fall into the abyss?

The ordinary person cannot really fall. Where would he fall? One who walks on level ground—even if he stumbles, where is there to fall? Only the one who tries to climb the mountain peaks can fall. To fall you need a summit. And near the summits lie hidden ravines and chasms. On level ground, on the royal road, even if someone falls, what kind of fall is it? He is already fallen. The ordinary person never becomes “fallen,” because there is nowhere left to fall. So when you say the fall of the ordinary is understandable—you have not understood. How is the ordinary to fall? He lives at the point below which no further decline is possible. He lives at zero degrees, at the very bottom. He has made the ravine itself his home. Only the extraordinary fall—those who undertake the ascent to the peaks; who strive for heights; who…

Beloved master, when I first sat in front of you at woodlands, fourteen years ago, there was an explosion inside. I don't know what it means, but I've often had the feeling that all I've been trying to do ever since is catch up to something that has already happened.

Don't behave like an old Indian who had gone for the first time in his life to see a movie. A beautiful girl is undressing by the side of a lake, and just when she is going to drop the last part of her clothes a railway train passes by, and that blocks the view. The old fellow tries in every way -- this way and that way, between the compartments, but the train is going so fast and when the last compartment of the train has gone, the girl has already entered the lake; she is swimming. The old man is very much frustrated. The first show is over, everybody has left, and the old man is still sitting in his seat. The manager comes and asks him, "Is there something that I can do to help? Everybody is gone, the show is over. Now the cleaners will come…

Osho, at times I feel I am on the very peak of life. It seems that everything—the whole mystery of life—has been found. But then, in certain moments, I also experience a very dense sadness and helplessness. I cannot grasp what my real problem is.

As long as there are peaks, there will be valleys. As long as there is the longing for the peak, you will have to endure the melancholy of the valleys as well. One who has asked for pleasure has, along with it, asked for pain. And when pleasure comes, pain enters with it like a shadow. We change the names of our pleasures, but we do not become free of pleasure; and the one who is not free of pleasure will not be free of pain. Ashtavakra’s entire teaching is just this: be free of duality. Only the one who is free of duality arrives. The peak you think you have reached is the illusion of arrival—because there is no peak to arrive at. Arrival is a vast plain—neither height nor depth. Arrival is like a scale that has balanced: both pans exactly equal and the needle at rest. Or…