Instead of shrinking yourself, grow so wide that everyone and everything is included—then there’s no separate “me” left.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, all through the Gita Krishna appears supremely egotistical. Yet in your morning discourse you said that it is precisely because of egolessness that Krishna could say, “Abandon everything and come into my refuge; I alone am all,” and so on. But Buddha and Mahavira don’t speak like this. Are their egolessnesses different? What is the fundamental difference?
The final remembrance that dawns for Buddha and Mahavira is remembrance—not the fruit of practice. But we observe: “He circled the village twenty times; then he remembered.” Another went one time; he remembered. Another went not at all; he remembered. From outside we conclude: “He remembered after twenty rounds—let us also do twenty.” There is no causal link between Mahavira’s doing and his awakening. If there were, then Jesus could not awaken—he did none of what Mahavira did. Nor the Buddha—he didn’t do what Mahavira did. If water boils at one hundred degrees, then in Tibet, India, China, America—wherever—you will get steam at one hundred. That is causal law. Spiritual life is not causal. Therefore it can be free. Causality is bondage—each thing bound to what precedes and to what follows. If water becomes steam, it was bound by the laws of water; now by the laws of steam; if…Read the full discourse →
Questioner: throughout the geeta krishna appears to be utterly egoistic, but this morning you said it was because of his egolessness that krishna asked arjuna to surrender to him, giving up everything else. But buddha and mahavira don't say this to their disciples. So is there a difference between their kinds of egolessness? If so, what is the basic difference between them?
If water is heated to the boiling point it turns into vapor, so there is a causal connection between vapor and heating. But the spiritual life is not subject to the law of cause and effect. And that is why spiritual life can be absolutely free. Freedom is not possible within the chain of cause and effect. The law of cause and effect is a kind of bondage: every effect is tied in with its cause. Cause and effect are dependent on each other one cannot be without the other. And as a cause turns into an effect, so an effect turns into a cause for some other effect. So everything is bound up with everything else, and-there is no end to it. It is a kind of cause-and-effect continuum. When water turns into vapor it becomes subject to the law of vapor as it was subject to the law…Read the full discourse →
Osho, attachment arises from the illusion called ego; please clarify more clearly the origin of ego.
The weak pray; they look religious. The truly religious has such trust—but for that trust, great strength is needed. “Fine, it is in His hand; He knows. If the sword is His, and if He must cut my neck, let Him—it must be for some good.” Only the strong surrender; the egoist is always weak. You will say, “Wrong—egoists look strong.” A psychological truth: Adler found that the more inferior a man feels, the more egoistic he becomes. One who has real power has no need of ego; his power shows—no announcement required. The sun does not announce its coming; it comes and all know—flowers open, birds sing, people wake, trees stir, winds blow, waves rise. A fake sun would bring a band to announce itself because its mere presence would announce nothing. Our ego hides inner weakness; it arranges externals. It knows it is weak; in itself, nothing will…Read the full discourse →
Questioner: you once said that buddha and mahavira were masochistic sannyasins. But in fact they came to sannyas from very affluent families; their sannyas was a follow up to their affluence. So how can you associate them with the sannyas of sorrow?
Gandhi found himself in such a dilemma when he wanted to discuss Krishna. In fact, he was more in agreement with Arjuna than with Krishna, How can Gandhi accept it when Krishna goads Arjuna into war? He could be rid of Krishna if he were clearly bad, but his badness is not that clear, because Krishna accepts both good and bad. He is good, utterly good, and he is also utterly bad -- and paradoxically, he is both together, and simultaneously. His goodness is crystal-clear, but his badness is also there. And it is difficult for Gandhi to accept him as bad. Under the circumstances there was no other course for Gandhi but to say that the war of Mahabharat was a parable, a myth, that it did not happen in reality. He cannot acknowledge the reality of the Mahabharat, because war is violence, war is evil to him. So…Read the full discourse →
Osho, you just said that sannyasins like Buddha and Mahavira are sorrow-centered. But their sannyas arose out of a life of great splendor; renunciation was the next phase of their opulence. So you can’t put sorrow at the base of it.
But Gandhi was far removed in time; there are five thousand years between Krishna and Gandhi. So calling a five-thousand-year-old story “myth” is not hard. The Jains did not have such distance, so they could not call the story a tale—the event happened. Jain thought is as ancient as the Vedas; the first Jain Tirthankara is mentioned in the Vedas. The antiquity of Hindus and Jains is equal. The Jains could not deny the war, nor that Krishna had it fought. So what could they do? Had they had Gandhi’s convenience, they would have done what Gandhi did—who, in the body a Hindu but in mind deeply Jain—dismissed it as myth. The Jains could not; it was contemporaneous. They had to consign Krishna to hell. Their scriptures had to say that Krishna went to hell. If someone causes so great a violence and does not go to hell, then what…Read the full discourse →