OSHO’s famous first letter in 1963

I am for those who need me – nothing in my life is for myself.

Weep so much that only the tears remain, not you.
If the tears alone remain and he who weeps vanishes
then God comes by himself.

Emptiness

That alone is the path and that alone is the destination. The courage to be empty is all that is needed to become one with the all.

Love

This is why I say that love itself is knowing God. God can only be known in love because in love the “I” disappears. You will never find love where “I” exists. Love is only there when “I” is not. oshoLet me tell you a secret: only the pleasure you give to others becomes bliss. And there is no end to bliss. Bliss is the nectar of life. It is eternal, endless.
Is there a greater satisfaction to be found than undertaking a task with love? Is anything more gratifying than serving others? No, nothing at all.

The love that rolls on like the waves in the ocean is no less than a fervent prayer, no less than God himself, no less than the benediction of ultimate and absolute salvation. If your love does not halt on its way, but marches on, it sets you free. Let there be no end to its onward march until the last man in the world has been brought into its fold, into that communion with the universal soul.

The Ego

The ego is the core of one’s ignorance of the Self. All violence is born there; it is born within the ego. A man feels that he is everything and that the rest of the world exists for him alone. He sees himself as the center, as the focal point for all existence. The exploitation that is born of this egoism is what violence is.

Being “loose and natural”

Don’t fight with yourself, be loose. Don’t try to make a structure around yourself of character, of morality. Don’t discipline yourself too much; otherwise your very discipline will become your bondage. Don’t create an imprisonment around you. Remain loose, floating. Move with the situation, don’t move with a character jacket around you. Don’t move with a fixed attitude. Remain loose like water, not fixed like ice. Remain moving and flowing; wherever the nature leads you, go. Don’t resist. Don’t try to impose anything on you, your being.

Whatsoever I do flows out of my state of rest.
I do not swim. I just float.
No one can ever do anything for another but if something happens to others out of what I am, that is something else – and there to – I am not the doer.

I am one with all things
in beauty, in ugliness,
for whatsoever is – there I am,
not only in virue
but in sin too I am a partner
and not only heaven, but hell too is mine
Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu – it is easy to be their heir
but Genghis, Taimur and Hitler?
They are also within me!
no, not half – I am the whole of mankind
whatsoever is man’s is mine –
flowers and thorns, darkness as well as light,
and if nectar is mine, whose is the poison?
whoever experiences this, I call religious.
for only the anguish of such experience can revolutionize life on earth.

Once something is perfect, it is dead. The painting that I have started will remain imperfect – although I will go on trying to make it perfect, but it is the very nature of existence that it cannot be perfect.
And it is not my painting.
Those who are with me, it is as much their painting too. When I am gone, you have to continue to paint it. The painting has to go on growing new flowers, new foliage. Don’t let it be dead at any point.
In other words, don’t let it become perfect.
Make every effort to make it perfect, but don’t let it become perfect.
Then there is tremendous beauty … and always flowing and growing, and there comes no full stop.
In life we are always in the middle.
You don’t know the beginning of life, you don’t know the end of life. We are always in the middle and everybody has always been in the middle. It is a proc-ess, an ongoing process, a river that goes on flowing. That’s the beauty of it, that’s the glory of it.

Now I have only one wish; that what has happened to me, should happen to all.