Marketing

Beloved Osho, you are the greatest marketing person of a product that gratifies the soul. We are in the business of selling a product that gratifies the mind; there are others who sell products that gratify the body. What lessons can we learn from you to effectively market mind and body products?

A man who rejoices in his body and the wisdom of the body, a man who uses his mind as a tremendously significant mechanism that evolution has brought, and a man who does not stop at mind but goes on searching beyond, into the realms of divineness, into the realms of godliness -- to produce this man should be the effort of all those who are in some way concerned with educating the new generation. The educationists, the journalists, the spiritual teachers -- all people who are involved in some way in creating a better human being than has been possible in the past -- have to accept the totality of man without rejecting anything. Journalists can do a tremendous service to humanity if their minds are clear, if they are not themselves prejudiced, either in favor of spiritualism or in favor of materialism. A journalist has to be of…

Osho, with reference to the East—and especially India—a question has been pursuing me for a long time: those who once scaled the Gaurishankar of philosophy and reflection, of religion and meditation, how did they, in the course of time, become so broken, degenerate, and impoverished? Osho, please be gracious and shed some light on this question.

The question is meaningful. The East reached great heights—but crippled heights, like a bird that has flown very high with only one wing. How high can it truly go, and how far? Maybe it flutters a bit, rides the winds a little, drags itself some distance—but not for long. Seeing just one wing, you can already say: this bird will fall; its fall is inevitable. Flight happens with two wings. A lame man can walk, but how different that walk is from walking on two sound legs. The lame walk is painful, compelled. One with two healthy legs sometimes runs for no reason, even dances, strolls with nowhere to go. The joy in the meeting of those two legs is complete in itself. Therefore I do not tell my sannyasin to renounce the world. The world has been renounced and the result is clear—those who left it fell badly, flat…

Osho, you say, “As He wills, let us become mere instruments; whatever role in life we have been given, let us fulfill it.” But letting what happens happen—i.e., flowing along with the body, mind, and ego—gives rise to suffering. So should we keep applying the principle of instrumentality even in relation to the body, mind, and ego, and go on suffering? How do we solve the riddle between the principle of instrumentality and the continuous reality of suffering?

That supreme bliss is beyond both pleasure and pain. It is neither like night nor like day. It is twilight. The sun has set, night has not yet come; the light remains—very gentle, sweet, non-aggressive—that is twilight. Morning has come, the sun is not yet risen, the night has gone—such is the twilight. One who abides in that twilight—that is what we call prayer. That is why Hindus call their prayer sandhya. Sandhya means one who has stopped in between the dualities, who has found the truce between the two. Between pleasure and pain, love and hate, victory and defeat, night and day, life and death—one who has found the pact and stands in that concord. Seek that interval of conjunction. Krishna says, it is simple to find. If you cease to be the doer, you will find it instantly. It is only through your doer-ship that you keep missing.…

Many see the work that goes on around you as a model for the holistic approach to life. Please talk about this.

Krishna Prem, the old man is dying. And it is good news that the old man is on his deathbed, because the new can be born only when the old is gone, utterly gone. The old has to cease. The old has existed long, and the old man has been a curse, because he was rooted in very stupid conceptions of life. The old man was based on superstitions. The most basic flaw in the concept of the old man was perfectionism: he wanted to be perfect, and the very idea of perfectionism drives people crazy. The perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life till he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things. Totality is possible, perfection is not possible. That is the fundamental of the holistic approach. And there is a tremendous difference between perfection and…