“You start dying really when you start breathing, at the same moment. It is not right to say that death comes in the end, it has always been with you from the very beginning. It is part of you, it is your innermost center, it grows with you, and one day it comes to a culmination, one day it comes to flowering. The day of death is not the day of death’s coming, it is the flowering. Death was growing within you all this time, now it has reached a peak; and once death reaches a peak you disappear back into the origin.” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
“Hell is not part of geography, it is part of your psychology, and so is heaven. You create your hell, you create your heaven. And it is not in the future. Herenow somebody is living in heaven and somebody is living in hell – and they may be sitting together, they may be friends. Don’t be worried about hell and heaven; they are just your states. If you live in the mind, you live in hell. If you live in the no-mind, you live in heaven.” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
“What is the secret to the art of life? The secret is this – live in full awareness. Don’t grope in the darkness; don’t walk in sleep; walk in awareness. Whatsoever you do, no matter what it is – even if it is as insignificant as opening and closing your eyes – do it thoughtfully, do it with awareness. Who knows, everything may depend on that tiny action, on opening and closing your eyes. You may be walking along the road and see a woman, and you may spend your whole life with her! Even opening and closing your eyes, stay alert.” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
“If you have not lived rightly, you will not be able to die rightly. Death is the final offering. It is the highest; it is the crowning or the peak. Death is the essence and the flowering of life. How can your death be right if you have spent your life wrongly? How can your death be full of meaning if your life has been a waste? How can a tree whose roots are rotten bear sweet fruit? It is impossible.” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
“The believer is not a seeker. The believer does not want to seek, that’s why he believes. The believer wants to avoid seeking, that’s why he believes. The believer wants to be delivered, saved, he needs a savor. He is always in search of a messiah – somebody who can eat for him, chew for him, digest for him. But if I eat, your hunger is not going to be satisfied. Nobody can save you except yourself.” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
“A man is really a mature man when he has come to this conclusion: ‘If death is happening to everybody else, then I cannot be an exception.’ Once this conclusion sinks deep into your heart, your life can never be the same again. You cannot remain attached to life in the old way. If it is going to be taken away, what is the point of being so possessive? If it is going to disappear one day, why cling and suffer? If life is not going to remain forever, then why be in such misery, anguish, worry?” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
“Life is spread out over a long time – seventy years, one hundred years. Death is intense because it is not spread out – it is in a single moment. Life has to pass one hundred years or seventy years, it cannot be so intense. Death comes in a single moment; it comes whole, not fragmentary. It will be so intense you cannot know anything more intense. But if you are afraid, if before death comes you have escaped, if you have become unconscious because of the fear, you have missed one of the golden opportunities, the golden gate. If your whole life you have been accepting things, when death comes, patiently, passively you will accept and enter into it without any effort to escape. If you can enter death passively, silently, without any effort, death disappears.” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships [Book]
Book Overview: In today’s world, freedom is our basic condition, and until we learn to live with that freedom, and learn to live by ourselves and with ourselves, we are denying ourselves the possibility of finding love and happiness with someone else. Love can only happen through freedom and in conjunction with a deep respect for ourselves and the other. Is it possible to be alone and not lonely? Where are the boundaries that define “lust” versus “love”…and can lust ever grow into love? In Love, Freedom, Aloneness you will find unique, radical, and intelligent perspectives on these and other essential questions. In our post-ideological world, where old moralities are out of date, we have a golden opportunity to redefine and revitalize the very foundations of our lives. We have the chance to start afresh with ourselves, our relationships to others, and to find fulfillment and success for the individual and for society as a whole.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“People should be taught that nobody can love twenty-four hours a day; rest periods are needed. And nobody can love on order. Love is a spontaneous phenomenon. Whenever it happens, it happens, and whenever it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen. Nothing can be done about it. If you do anything, you will create a pseudo phenomenon, an acting. Real lovers, intelligent lovers, will make each other alert to the phenomenon: ‘When I want to be alone that does not mean that I am rejecting you. In fact, it is because of your love that you have made it possible for me to be alone.’ And if your woman wants to be left alone for one night, for a few days, you will not feel hurt. You will not say that you have been rejected, that your love has not been received and welcomed. You will respect her decision to be alone for a few days. In fact, you will be happy! Your love was so much that she is feeling empty; now she needs rest to become full again. This is intelligence.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“In Latin there is a dictum: agere sequitur esse – to do follows to be; action follows being. It is tremendously beautiful. Don’t try to change your action – try to find out your being, and action will follow. The action is secondary; being is primary. Action is something that you do; being is something that you are. Action comes out of you, but action is just a fragment. Even if all of your actions are collected together they will not be equal to your being because all actions collected together will be your past. What about your future? Your being contains your past, your future, your present; your being contains your eternity. Your actions, even if all collected, will just be of the past. Past is limited, future is unlimited. That which has happened is limited; it can be defined, it has already happened. That which has not happened is unlimited, indefinable. Your being contains eternity, your actions contain only your past.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“Unless you know yourself as eternal beings, part of the whole, you will remain afraid of death. The fear of death is simply because you are not aware of your eternal source of life. Once the eternity of your being is realized, death becomes the greatest lie in existence. Death has never happened, never happens, never will happen, because that which is, remains always – in different forms, on different levels, but there is no discontinuity. Eternity in the past and eternity in the future both belong to you. And the present moment becomes a meeting point of two eternities: one going toward the past, one going toward the future.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“The very idea of bringing up children is nonsense. You can help at the most, you cannot ‘bring them up.’ The very idea of building up children is nonsense – not only nonsense, very harmful, immensely harmful. You cannot build… A child is not a thing, not like a building. A child is like a tree. Yes, you can help. You can prepare soil, you can put in fertilizers, you can water, you can watch whether sun reaches the plant or not – that’s all. But it is not that you are building up the plant, it is coming up on its own. You can help, but you cannot bring it up and you cannot build it up.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
If through sex you fall into harmony, if through love you become relaxed – if love is not just throwing energy because you don’t know what to do with it, if it is not just a relief but a relaxation, if you relax into your woman and your woman relaxes into you – if for a few seconds, for a few moments or a few hours you forget who you are, and you are completely lost in oblivion, you will come out of it purer, more innocent, more virgin. And you will have a different type of being – at ease, centered, rooted.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“I say to you, you are absolutely free, unconditionally free. Don’t avoid the responsibility; avoiding is not going to help. The sooner you accept it the better, because immediately you can start creating yourself. And the moment you create yourself great joy arises, and when you have completed yourself, the way you wanted to, there is immense contentment, just as when a painter finishes his painting, the last touch, and a great contentment arises in his heart. A job well done brings great peace. One feels that one has participated with the whole.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“If you love a person and live the whole life with him or with her, a great intimacy will grow and love will have deeper and deeper revelations to make to you. It is not possible if you go on changing partners very often. It is as if you go on changing a tree from one place to another, then another; then it never grows roots anywhere. To grow roots, a tree needs to remain in one place. Then it goes deeper; then it becomes stronger. Intimacy is good, and to remain in one commitment is beautiful, but the basic necessity is love. If a tree is rooted in a place where there are only rocks and they are killing the tree, then it is better to remove it. Then don’t insist that it should remain in the one place. Remain true to life – remove the tree, because now it is going against life.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“When you say to a woman or a man, ‘I love you,’ you are simply saying, ‘I cannot be deceived by your body, I have seen you. Your body may become old but I have seen you, the bodiless you. I have seen your innermost core, the core that is divine.’ Liking is superficial. Love penetrates and goes to the very core of the person, touches the very soul of the person.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“Many times I say learn the art of love, but what I really mean is: Learn the art of removing all that hinders love. It is a negative process. It is like digging a well: You go on removing many layers of earth, stones, rocks, and then suddenly there is water. The water was always there; it was an undercurrent. Now you have removed all the barriers, the water is available. So is love: Love is the undercurrent of your being. It is already flowing, but there are many rocks, many layers of earth to be removed.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“When you don’t need a person at all, when you are totally sufficient unto yourself, when you can be alone and tremendously happy and ecstatic, then love is possible. But then, too, you cannot be certain whether the other’s love is real or not – you can be certain about only one thing: whether your love is real. How can you be certain about the other? But then there is no need. This continuous anxiety about whether the other’s love is real or not simply shows one thing: that your love is not real. Otherwise, who bothers? Why be worried about it? Enjoy it while it lasts, be together while you can be together! It is a fiction, but you need fiction.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships