To avoid fake ‘love’ and God-talk, people leaned so hard into strict meditation that they threw out real love and, stuck in rules, never reached where true love naturally appears.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, the witness, the seer, consciousness is always separate—virginal and unbound. And the whole play of life is nothing but the movement of the gunas within themselves. In such a situation, if a person’s qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas are calmed in a scientific or chemical way, or if a person is made sattvic, will he then attain that ever-free witness? If the witness is forever free and present, then by chemically altering the three gunas will it not be revealed? Would the person not then become religious? What is the fundamental difference between solving the problem arising from the
Sadhana means we are dissolving the current itself, not breaking the bulb. There is no point in breaking the bulb. In fact, the bulb is useful; it tells you whether the current is flowing or not, whether there is current or not. Your anger within tells you you are still sunk in ignorance. Lust tells you your life energies have not yet become aware. If we remove these elements, anger will stop manifesting and you will also stop knowing that you are in deep ignorance. It is as if a man is sick and we snatch away the symptoms of his disease so that he doesn’t even come to know he is ill. And keep in mind, anger is an opportunity. Only the unwise say anger is simply bad; I do not say so. Anger is an opportunity; you can use it badly or well. Anger is a chance. 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…
If you fall into misery, you are responsible—no God. If you attain bliss, you are responsible—no God’s grace. Mahavira bid farewell to prayer; only meditation remained. And meditation meant: keep purifying yourself so completely that one day the supremely pure consciousness remains. That supremely pure consciousness Mahavira called Paramatman—not in the sense of a God, but in the sense of the Supreme Self, the purest Self. Mahavira’s purpose was to shatter the laziness of the person, to break the dullness. The web of self-deception the person has woven around himself out of doctrine, by whose support he lies in stupor and finds convenience for sin—that whole foundation must break. The person should become alert, discerning, awake, and stand on his own feet. He should wait for no God; not for grace, not for blessing, not for God’s support—he should stand on his own feet.
Osho, Mahavira refused to take anyone’s support—that is right. But along with that, a question arises: just as it is important not to take support, it should be equally important not to give support. Yet his way of expressing himself, and then the whole structure of shravaks and shramans and all that—this amounts to giving support to others. So why was this aspect not considered: if I do not take support, who am I to give support to another?
They would say… Sicily is a small island to the south. The Sophists offered an example: a man came from Sicily and, on arriving in Athens, said, “In Sicily, everyone is a liar.” Someone stood up and asked him, “Where are you from?” He said, “I am from Sicily.” The man said, “Now we are in trouble! You say everyone in Sicily is a liar, and you are from Sicily; so you are a liar—what shall we do with your statement? And if we accept that everyone in Sicily is a liar, then at least one person in Sicily must be telling the truth, and your statement becomes false. If we do not accept that everyone in Sicily is a liar—if we take you to be lying—again we land in a difficulty.” Someone stood up and said, “What shall we do?” Perhaps the man himself had no idea what to…
Osho, in Jainism the principles of ahimsa, aparigraha, anekantavada, co-existence, etc., have a special place. But today in a newspaper I read a statement about you by a Jain muni, Shri Bhadragupta Vijayji, and was surprised. This monk is calling people to sacrifice everything and organizing them in protest against your entry into Kutch. For those who profess aparigraha, why this attachment to the Kutch region? And within their anekantavada, why opposition to your vision of life? Does it befit a muni to incite people in this way?
What of a Jain muni’s claim on Kutch! But it makes no difference; if “my India” is possible, why not “my Kutch”? Then “my district, my tehsil, my village.” Then what trouble with “my house”? It’s the same thing. Then why such difficulty with “my wife” and “my children”? If “mine” must remain, what fault is the wife’s and the children’s that you ran away, leaving them? It’s not that the wife wasn’t from Kutch—she must have been a Kutch woman. The children too were Kutchis—they were born of two Kutchis. You left your wife—no shame at leaving a Kutch woman! You left your children—the little Kutchis—no shame! And still: “My Kutch”? But I understand. It is a flock of the blind—led by the blind. The blind lead the blind, and both fall into the well. They keep falling—day after day. But if it is “my own well,” why not…