Respect is a taught, polite bow; reverence is your heart bowing by itself when it really feels love or wonder.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the relationship between meditation and patience?
If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin. The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost. Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core. In…
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…
Beloved Osho, you are the eternal, awesome silence and grandeur of the himalayas. And yet you live in a fragile, human body, which is such a joy for us to be together with. In connection with you, and even more in relation to close friends, the question arises: can the playfulness of human love be bridged with reverence for the divine?
So let me make it clear to you: don't call it "respect for the divine." It will be better to call it "reverence for life." And then there is no problem. Then playfulness is part of being alive; it is the overflowing energy of life. It can become a dance, it can become a song, it can become any kind of creativity. I wrote to both the ambassador of Ceylon to America and the atheist association of America, saying that it looks contradictory because of their conditionings -- and that I want to destroy those conditionings; hence specifically I have chosen Zorba and Buddha, two polarities, and have put them together. And I want the New Man to live both together, without any contradiction. Once we stop thinking of respect for the divine and start thinking of respect for life, reverence for life, then the bridge becomes immediately possible. Then…
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?…
Osho, I have worn the mala for less than a month, but I understand how feeling you is important. But these feelings are mixed up. I respect and love you, but I don't look at you as his holiness. Strange, but I look at you as a buddha. Only that, without anything added or taken away from your being. And what a buddha is I don't know. How come I love you, respect you because you are my master. But...love? Also I see that I can play with you with joy and you are so far away. Or so close? Respect, love, joy -- are they the same?
IT IS GOOD THAT YOU CANNOT THINK OF ME AS HIS Holiness, because I am neither His Holiness nor His Unholiness. It is good and beautiful that you think of me as a Buddha, because that's exactly what I am -- simply a Buddha. A Buddha means one who is awake. It has nothing to do with holiness, nothing to do with unholiness. Holiness, unholiness, both are dreams; for dreams you have to be asleep. A Buddha is awake; all dreams have disappeared. A Buddha is not a saint, is not a sinner either. A Buddha is not God and is not a devil either. All dualities are irrelevant as far as Buddha is concerned. Buddha is simply a witness of all the mystery that surrounds you within and without. Mario, it is absolutely right, you are moving in the right direction. If you start looking at me as a…