Rajneesh Quotes (1931-1990)


About Rajneesh

Osho Hindi: ओशो (11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), born Chandra Mohan Jain चन्द्र मोहन जैन, and also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who inspired a controversial spiritual movement in India, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, and many other countries. His syncretic teachings emphasise the importance of meditation, awareness, love, celebration, courage, creativity and humour — qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious tradition and socialisation.

Best Rajneesh Quotes

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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Rajneesh quotes.

“I am the rich man's guru.”
Rajneesh
“Be realistic: Plan for a miracle.”
“‘Only a whole person can be a holy person.’ (p. 19)”
“When you are no more, only then for the first time will you be.”
“Tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to everything.”
Rajneesh
“The tantra masters are simply wild flowers, they have everything in them.”
Rajneesh
“The ordinary society is like a paperweight on you: it won't allow you to fly.”
Rajneesh
“Don't say this is good and that is bad. Drop all discrimination. Accept everything as it is.”
Rajneesh
“Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern.”
Rajneesh
“You say that in heaven there is eternal beauty. The eternal beauty is here and now, not in heaven.”
Rajneesh
“Liberation cannot be desired because desire is the bondage. When you are desireless, you are liberated.”
“I am not a man of etiquette, I don't know manners. I simply call a spade a fucking spade, because that's what it is.”
Rajneesh
“Man has nothing else to do but surrender — in deep trust, in deep love. Don’t be a doer, just surrender. Let there be a let-go.”
“The Christian priest is not interested in God: he is interested in creating a business. He has to claim that Jesus is the only way, that all other ways are wrong. He is in search of customers.”
“Jesus is a rebel, just as Buddha or Lao Tzu is. When the church starts establishing itself it starts destroying the rebelliousness of Jesus, Buddha, because rebellion cannot go with an establishment.”
Rajneesh
“If you believe in any religion you cannot meditate. Religion is an interference in your meditation. Meditation needs no God, no heaven, no hell, no fear of punishment, and no allurement of pleasure.”
Rajneesh
“Democracy basically means government by the people, of the people, for the people; but the people are retarded. So let us say government by the retarded, for the retarded, of the retarded.”
Rajneesh
“Tantra accepts everything, lives everything. That's why tantra never could become a very accepted ideology. It always remained a fringe ideology.”
Rajneesh
“All the Buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact: Be — don't try to become. Within these two words — being and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.”
Rajneesh
“People may understand today or tomorrow or day after tomorrow— that doesn’t matter—but one day they will understand it. One thing I can say that, whatever I am saying is going to be the future philosophy, the future religion, of the whole humanity. (p. 22).”
Rajneesh
“If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.”
“Remain in wonder if you want mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. They end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.”
“I have never been a celibate. If people believe so, that is their foolishness. I have always loved women — and perhaps more women than anybody else. You can see my beard: it has become grey so quickly because I have lived so intensely that I have compressed almost two hundred years into fifty.”
Rajneesh
“

My grandfather ... had raised me with absolute freedom, no inhibitions, no suppressions, and no commandments.

Love with freedom—if you have it, you are a king or a queen. That is the real kingdom of God—love with freedom. Love gives you the roots into the earth, and freedom gives you the wings.

”
Rajneesh
“When I am gone I hope there may still be courageous people in the world to criticize me, so that I don't become a hindrance on anybody's path. And those who will criticize me will not be my enemies; neither am I the enemy of those whom I have criticized. The working of the enlightened masters just has to be understood.”

Rajneesh Quotes by Topic

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Rajneesh on Existence

“Existence is a mystery, and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation.”
Rajneesh

Rajneesh on Transcendental Meditation

“Rajneesh did not mince words. He told them that he considered the so-called Transcendental Meditation (TM) of Maharishi as a sleeping pill. It may be calming and good for people who are nervous or cannot sleep. But it is neither transcendental nor meditation. Meditation does not make you sleepy but wakes you —from sleep and dream into reality. It destroys every kind of illusion and reveals that you are god.”
Rajneesh

Rajneesh on Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava

“So never think that you can become wise by collecting wise sayings. That is not possible. In this age many people have tried that. In India, Mahatma Gandhi was trying it – take a few things from the Koran and a few things from the Bible and a few things from the. Gita and a few things from the Dhammapada, and collect them and make a concoction. That concoction he used to call the synthesis of all religions. This is just meaningless. You cannot create a synthesis of all religions. It will be like you cut off one of my hands and a leg of Krishnamurti and the head of Meher Baba, and put them all together and call it synthesis of all religions. It will not be of any use. It will stink! It will be ugly. That’s what Mahatma Gandhi has done.”

What Rajneesh Said About Others

Discover personal opinions Rajneesh shared regarding contemporaries.

Rajneesh on Moinuddin Chishti

“Chishti was a great mystic, one of the greatest ever born, and he was a musician. To be a musician is to be against Islam because music is prohibited. He played on the sitar and on other instruments. He was a great musician and he enjoyed it. Five times every day, when a Mohammedan is required to pray the five ritual prayers, he wouldn't pray, he would simply play on his instrument. That was his prayer. This was absolutely anti-religious but nobody could say anything to Chishti. ... When Chishti heard that Jilani was coming he felt, "To pay respect to Jilani it will not be good to play my instrument now. Because he is such an orthodox Mohammedan, it will not be a good welcome. He may feel hurt." ... [but] Jilani laughed and said, "Rules are not for you, you need not hide them. Rules are for ordinary people, rules are not for you -- you should not hide them. How can you hide your soul? Your hands may not play, you may not sing from your throat, but your whole being is musical.”
Rajneesh

Quotes About Rajneesh

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Epitaph on Rajneesh

“Never born, Never died: only visited this planet earth between December 11, 1931 and, January 19, 1990.”

Quotes from an Associated Press report on Rajneesh return on Rajneesh

“Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, given a hero's welcome by his Indian disciples after returning from a U.S. jail, denounced the United States Sunday and said the world must "put the monster America in its place." "The real enemy is no more the Soviet Union, it is America," said the 53-year-old guru, who returned to New Delhi after pleading guilty to violating U.S. immigration laws by arranging sham marriages so his followers could stay in the U.S. In his first press conference since he was arrested last month in Charlotte, N.C., Rajneesh declared, "Either America must be hushed up or America will be the end of the world."”

Anthony Storr on Rajneesh

“Reading his discourses made me realize that Rajneesh was a sad loss. He had an extraordinary range of knowledge and a vision of how life should be lived, but he proved incapable of following his own precepts.”
Rajneesh

Source on Rajneesh 9 quotes

“...‘Osho is the greatest incarnation after Buddha in India. He is a living Buddha.’... - Joshi, Vasant. Osho, The Luminous Rebel (p. 8).”
View all 9 quotes on Source →

About Rajneesh

Osho Hindi: ओशो (11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), born Chandra Mohan Jain चन्द्र मोहन जैन, and also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who inspired a controversial spiritual movement in India, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, and many other countries. His syncretic teachings emphasise the importance of meditation, awareness, love, celebration, courage, creativity and humour — qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious tradition and socialisation.