Who is Osho?

Osho has had a huge influence on the world of meditation, therapy and personal growth. Born in 1931 in central India, he became enlightened at the age of 21 while at university. He remained in the academic world for several more years, becoming professor of philosophy at the University of Jabalpur, before leaving to become a spiritual teacher.

In the 1970s, at his ashram in India, Osho became the first spiritual teacher to combine Western therapy with Eastern meditation, creating new methods to assist seekers in their quest for self-knowledge. His active meditation techniques, designed especially to help contemporary men and women, have helped thousands of people to unburden feelings of mental stress and physical tension, in order to experience a relaxed state of meditation and inner harmony.

In his discourses, Osho has spoken about psychology, philosophy and shed new light on many religious paths, including Yoga, Sufism, Tao, Zen, Tantra and Hasidism. He has also commented on the sayings of great masters like Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma, Jesus and Krishna. The essential core of Osho’s teaching is awareness or consciousness. This foundation can be applied to any form of self-help method or therapy, which is why so many therapists – offering a wide range of skills and insights – have embraced Osho’s vision of how personal transformation works.

Osho died in 1990, but his teachings continue to be a living force for self-inquiry and individual transformation. Many ashrams, institutes and meditation centers offer the opportunity for people to explore Osho’s meditation methods and other growth techniques. This includes the Osho Risk Institute, which was founded in 1986.

“I am an invitation for all those who are seeking, searching, and have a deep longing in their hearts to find their home.

I am an answer to the question that everybody is, but cannot formulate — a question that is more a quest than a question, more a thirst than a verbal, mental inquiry; a thirst that one feels in every cell and fiber of his being, but has no way to bring to words and ask.

I am an answer for that question which you cannot ask and you cannot expect that it could be answered.

When I say I am the answer, I don’t mean that I can give you the answer… yes, if you are ready, you can take it. I am just like a well, ready for you to throw your bucket and draw the water for yourself. I have it but I cannot reach to you without your efforts.

Only you can reach to me.

It is a strange invitation.

It will take you on a long pilgrimage and it will end only where you already are. You will have to move many steps and on many paths just to come to yourself, because you have gone far away from yourself. You have completely forgotten the way back.

I am a reminder, a remembrance, of the lost home.

As a person I do not exist.

As a person I only appear.

I exist as a presence.

I am an effort to provoke the dormant in you, to wake up the asleep. The fire is there, but is burning very low because you have never taken any care of it.

My invitation is to make you aflame, and unless you know a life which is luminous and aflame all your knowledge is just a deception. You are gathering it to help you forget that the real knowledge is missing. But however great is your accumulation of the other, the objective, the world, it is not going to become a substitute for your self-knowing. With self-knowing suddenly all darkness disappears, and all separation from existence.

I am an invitation to take a courageous jump into the ocean of life. Lose yourself, because that is the only way to find yourself.” – Osho

“My therapists are in a totally different trip. They have to clean your mind from all unnecessary ideas that have been imposed by the society, its psychoanalysts, its doctors, its so-called wise men. They want you to become again a simple, innocent child as you were born — a rebirth.

That is the work of my therapy.

Once I have got the innocent child, then the work of therapy is finished. Then starts the work of meditation.

Then you are healthy, whole and ready to take any quantum leap. You are ready to go into the unknown.

In the East, meditation has existed but without any therapy. It was half.

You don’t clean the ground and you start sowing the seeds. Your roses will be lost in the grass that will be growing there. First you have to remove all grass and all possibilities for grass to grow.
Therapy is missing in the Eastern approach. That’s why enlightenment has happened only rarely, very rarely. Millions of people — perhaps one becomes enlightened.

Just the opposite should be the case. In millions of people, perhaps one should miss, because enlightenment is just a natural phenomenon.

Without therapy, the East has missed much. Without meditation, the West has missed much.

I am bringing East and West together, because both separate are not going to create the whole man. Both together in an organic unity — therapy plus meditation — is equal to relation. That is my formula.” – Osho

“To me, if therapy prepares the ground for meditation, therapy is going right… ground for the patients and ground for the therapist, both. Therapy should turn at a certain point into meditation.” – Osho

“Even if you have to give up a meal, do it… but do not give up meditation. The more regular you are, the greater depth you will attain. Meditation is such a delicate thing that it takes months to grow but just a day or two to wither away. A delicate thing needs much regularity, continuity. Meditation is the highest; everything else is secondary.

You will not miss much by missing a day’s sleep. One can do without sleeping for five to seven days. It is okay if you miss a meal; man can survive without food for three months. You can go without drinking water for a day; you will not die.

But usually, people give much more importance to such petty things and think that for a day or two they can do without the things that are really significant. But let it be remembered that nothing will go wrong if you do not fulfil the petty things of your routine. You will not gain anything by doing them; nor will you be a loser by not doing them.

But meditation is of the highest, and through it the divine is attained. If you do not meditate, you will not know what you were to gain and what you have missed; you will really not know what you have lost.

The greatest misfortune that can befall people is that they never come to know what they have missed. Apart from missing, people never come to know what they were to gain, they never become aware of it.

So always devote energy to meditation.” – Osho

“In the first place, I am not a guru. That is a dirty word. Because all gurus have been just exploiting people in the name of spirituality. I don’t belong to that gang.

And I am not an Indian in the sense that I don’t believe in nationalities. I simply believe that the whole earth is one.” – Osho

“Jogging, dancing, swimming – anything can be a meditation. My definition of meditation is: whenever your body, mind and soul are functioning together in rhythm it is meditation, because it will bring the fourth in. If you are alert to the fact that you are doing it as a meditation – not to take part in the Olympics, but doing it as a meditation – then it is tremendously beautiful.” – Osho

“The definition which calls me a sex guru is not only false, it is absurd. To put it right: I am the only person in the whole world who is antisex. But that needs tremendous understanding. You cannot hope for that understanding from journalists.

I have been talking about sex so that it can be transformed. All the religious teachers can be called sex gurus except me, because they are teaching repression of sex, which keeps a man continuously sexual; he will never be transformed. He will never go beyond sex. Repression is the way to keep you attached to whatever you have repressed.

I am the most antisex person in the world, but it is such an insane world that nobody wants to understand the whole thing of why I am supporting sex, why I am saying, “Be expressive, live it, and be finished with it. The sooner you do it the better, so you can have a transcendental life at least for a few years, years which can be devoted totally to meditation.

The description, calling me a sex guru, is absolutely absurd. But the journalists go on supplying to people what people want — sensationalism. They make up things, invent things.

There are at least four hundred books in my name, and there is only one book about sex. Only that book is talked about; the three hundred ninety-nine other books nobody cares about. And those three hundred and ninety-nine are the best. The book on sex is just preparing the ground so that you can understand the other books and go higher, dropping small problems, reaching to the heights of human consciousness — but nobody talks about them.” – Osho

“There is nothing higher and nothing lower. In fact, there are not two values at all. These are the two paths from the valley leading to the peak. One path is of awareness, meditation: the path of Zen we have been talking about these days. And the other is the path of love, the path of the devotees, the BHAKTAS, the Sufis. These two paths are separate when you start the journey; you have to choose. Whichever you choose is going to lead to the same peak. And as you come closer to the peak you will be surprised: the travelers on the other path are coming closer to you. Slowly slowly, the paths start merging into each other. By the time you have reached the ultimate, they are one.

The person who follows the path of awareness finds love as a consequence of his awareness, as a by-product, as a shadow. And the person who follows the path of love finds awareness as a consequence, as a by-product, as a shadow of love. They are two sides of the same coin.

And remember: if your awareness lacks love then it is still impure; it has not yet known one hundred percent purity. It is not yet REALLY awareness; it must be mixed with unawareness. It is not pure light; there must be pockets of darkness inside you still working, functioning, influencing you, dominating you. If your love is without awareness, then it is not love yet. It must be something lower, something closer to lust than to prayer.

So let it be a criterion if you follow the path of awareness, let love be the criterion. When your awareness suddenly blooms into love, know perfectly well that awareness has happened, SAMADHI has been achieved. If you follow the path of love, then let awareness function as a criterion, as a touchstone. When suddenly, from nowhere, at the very center of your love. a flame of awareness starts arising, know perfectly well…rejoice! You have come home.” – Osho