What is the basic message of self-love?

Beloved Osho, for years I have contemplated what seems to me to be the basic message for well-being: love yourself. When I was a therapist, all day hearing, "I hate myself; I feel sorry for myself; I am proud of myself; I want to destroy myself," I started wondering -- who is this self? I love when you say there is no self. That seems so freeing. Could you please say more?

The whole therapeutic movement has gone wrong on that point: Love thyself. Socrates used to say, "Know thyself." And there have been masters, particularly Sufis, who say, "Be thyself." But there is only one person in the whole history of man, Gautam Buddha, who said, "There is no self. You are an emptiness, utter silence, a non-being." His message was much opposed by all the traditions, because they all depended in some way or other on the idea of the self. There may have been differences on other points, but on one point they were all totally in agreement -- and that was the existence of the self. Even people like George Gurdjieff, who used to talk about a very novel idea -- that you are not born with a self, you have to earn it: "Deserve thyself" -- finally, he also ends up with the self. Gautam Buddha does…

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.

For example, people are made egoistic. The moment a person becomes egoistic, he will be unloving. To love, one has to dissolve the ego. Now he will protect his ego, so even if he falls in love that is going to be only a partial affair -- it will never be total, and unless it is total it is not fulfilling. Hence the conflict between lovers, the continuous fight, because each is trying to dominate the other. Two egos trying to be in love, but the whole effort proves to be futile and ridiculous. Egos cannot be in love; egos can only be in conflict. Love happens when there is no ego left. Only in those rare moments when two persons are egoless, empty of the egos, does love bloom. The society gives you ambition, ego, and great ideas of possessing things, and great fear about persons.

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.