What is the difference between healthy self-love and egoistical pride?

Will you please speak about the difference between a healthy love of oneself and egoistical pride?

Aikagro, there is a great difference between the two, although they both look very alike. The healthy love of oneself is a great religious value. The person who does not love himself will not be able to love anybody else, ever. The first ripple of love has to rise in your heart. If it has not risen for yourself it cannot rise for anybody else, because everybody else is farther away from you. It is like throwing a stone in the silent lake -- the first ripples will arise around the stone and then they will go on spreading to the further shores. The first ripple of love has to be around yourself. One has to love one's body, one has to love one's soul, one has to love one's totality. And this is natural; otherwise you would not be able to survive at all. And it is beautiful because…

How can I distinguish between enlightened self-love and egomania?

The distinction is subtle but very clear, not difficult; subtle, but not difficult. If you have egomania, it will create more and more misery for you. Misery will indicate that you are ill. Egomania is a disease, a cancer of the soul. Egomania will make you more and more tense, will make you more and more up-tight, will not allow you to relax at all. It will drive you towards insanity. Self-love is just the opposite of egomania. In self-love there is no self, only love. In egomania there is no love, only self. In self-love you will start becoming more and more relaxed. A person who loves himself is totally relaxed. To love somebody else may create a little tension, because the other need not be always in tune with you. The other may have his or her own ideas. The other is a different world; there is every…

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, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?

Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…

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.