Philosophers From India

"Poets like Jayasi, Rahim, and Raskhan are rare phenomena. So are saints like Kabir, Nanak and Gharib Das. They attempted a synthesis of the two cultural streams in the field of literature in their own way. But their endeavours were severly limited and short-lived. They failed to be popular amongst and influence the Muslims."

"I am looking at you, You at him, Kabir asks, how to solve This puzzle — You, he, and I?"

"A drop Melting into the sea, Everyone can see. But the sea Absorped In a drop — A rare one can follow!"

"I am not a Hindu, Nor a Muslim am I! I am this body, a play Of five elements; a drama Of the spirit dancing With joy and sorrow."

"The whole background of Kabir’s thought is Hindu."

"When the bride is one with her lover, who cares about the wedding party?"

"I do not quote from the scriptures; I simply see what I see."

"He comes to the Path of the Infinite on whom the grace of the Lord descends: he is freed from births and deaths who attains to Him. Kabîr says: "It cannot be told by the words of the mouth, it cannot be written on paper: It is like a dumb person who tastes a sweet thing — how shall it be explained?""

"They call Him Emptiness who is the Truth of truths, in Whom all truths are stored! There within Him creation goes forward, which is beyond all philosophy; for philosophy cannot attain to Him: There is an endless world, O my Brother! and there is the Nameless Being, of whom naught can be said. Only he knows it who has reached that region: it is other than all that is heard and said. No form, no body, no length, no breadth is seen there: how can I tell you that which it is?"

"On the harp of the road what true melodies are being sounded! and its notes pierce the heart: There the Eternal Fountain is playing its endless life-streams of birth and death."

"There the Unstruck Music eddies around the Infinite One; There in the midst the Throne of the Unheld is shining, whereon the great Being sits — Millions of suns are shamed by the radiance of a single hair of His body."

"He is the Ultimate Rest unbounded: He has spread His form of love throughout all the world. From that Ray which is Truth, streams of new forms are perpetually springing: and He pervades those forms."

"When you meet the true Guru, He will awaken your heart; He will tell you the secret of love and detachment, and then you will know indeed that He transcends this universe."

"Open your eyes of love, and see Him who pervades this world! consider it well, and know that this is your own country."

"Do not go to the garden of flowers! O Friend! go not there; In your body is the garden of flowers. Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty."

"O friend! hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live: for in life deliverance abides. If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death? It is but an empty dream, that the soul shall have union with Him because it has passed from the body: If He is found now, He is found then, If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death. If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter."

"Hindus and Moslems alike have achieved that End, where remains no mark of distinction."

"It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs; For the priest, the warrior. the tradesman, and all the thirty-six castes, alike are seeking for God. It is but folly to ask what the caste of a saint may be; The barber has sought God, the washerwoman, and the carpenter — Even Raidas was a seeker after God."

"Kabîr says, "O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath.""

"With regards to Osho, the controversy is more intense because he speaks his truth against governments, religions and old beliefs publicly and without fear. He declares that 'he is a category by himself'. - Joshi, Vasant. Osho, The Luminous Rebel (p. 18)."

"...‘Osho is the greatest incarnation after Buddha in India. He is a living Buddha.’... - Joshi, Vasant. Osho, The Luminous Rebel (p. 8)."

"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."

"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.""

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

"My trust in existence is absolute. If there is any truth in what I am saying, it will survive…The people who remain interested in my work will be simply carrying the torch, but not imposing anything on anyone…I will remain a source of inspiration to my people. And that’s what most sannyasins will feel. I want them to grow on their own qualities like love, around which no church can be created; like awareness, which is nobody’s monopoly; like celebration, rejoicing, and maintaining fresh, childlike eyes…I want my people to know themselves, not to be according to someone else. And the way is in. (p. 22)"

"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)."

"The new man will not be either/or; he will be both/and. The new man will be earthly and divine, worldly and other-worldly. The new man will accept his totality and he will live it without any inner division, he will not be split. His god will not be opposed to the devil, his morality will not be opposed to immorality; he will know no opposition. He will transcend duality, he will not be schizophrenic. With the new man there will come a new world, because the new man will perceive in a qualitatively different way and he will live a totally different life which has not been lived yet. He will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together. (p. 19)"

"‘Only a whole person can be a holy person.’ (p. 19)"

"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."

"The so-called mahatmas and saints are all cowards. I have never come across a single mahatma—Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist—who can be said to be really a rebellious spirit. Unless one is rebellious, one is not religious. Rebellion is the very foundation of religion."

"Nobody should lie — to a child, at least — it is unforgivable. Children have been exploited for centuries just because they are willing to trust. You can lie to them very easily and they will trust you. If you are a father, a mother, they will think you are bound to be true. That’s how the whole of humanity lives in corruption, in a very slippery mud of lies told to children for centuries. If we can do just one thing, a simple thing — not lie to children and to confess to them our ignorance — then we will be religious and we will put them on the path of religion. Children are innocent: leave them not your so-called knowledge. But you yourself must first be innocent, unlying, true."

"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."

"For seven years I remained undisturbed—no one to nag me, to prepare me for the world of business, politics, diplomacy. My grandparents were more interested in leaving me as natural as possible—particularly my grandmother. She is one of the causes—these small things affect all your life patterns—she is one of the causes of my respect for the whole of womanhood. She was a simple woman, uneducated, but immensely sensitive. She made it clear to my grandfather and the servant: "We all have lived a certain kind of life which has not led us anywhere. We are as empty as ever, and now death is coming close." She insisted, "Let this child be uninfluenced by us. What influence can we have? We can only make him like us, and we are nothing. Give him an opportunity to be himself.""

"And my grandparents became very aware of one thing—that I enjoyed my aloneness. They had seen that I had no desire to go to the village to meet anybody, or to talk with anybody. Even if they wanted to talk, my answers were yes or no; I was not interested in talking either. They became aware of one thing—that I enjoyed my aloneness and it was their sacred duty not to disturb me."

"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."

"Only a ripe fruit falls to the ground. Ripeness is all. An unripe ego cannot be thrown, cannot be destroyed. And if you struggle with an unripe ego to destroy and dissolve it, the whole effort is going to be a failure. Rather than destroying it, you will find it more strengthened in new subtle ways. This is something basic to be understood: the ego must come to a peak, it must be strong, it must have attained an integrity — only then can you dissolve it. A weak ego cannot be dissolved."

"Look for the mysterious in life. Wherever you look — in the white clouds, in the stars in the night, in the flowers, in a flowing river — wherever you look, look for the mystery. And whenever you find that a mystery is there, meditate on it. Meditation means: dissolve yourself before that mystery, annihilate yourself before that mystery, disperse yourself before that mystery. Be no more, and let the mystery be so total that you are absorbed in it. And suddenly a new door opens, a new perception is achieved."

"Find moments when you are not, and those will be the moments when you will be for the first time...really. So I am the white cloud, and the whole effort is to make you also white clouds drifting in the sky. Nowhere to go, coming from nowhere, just being there this very moment — perfect. I don't teach you any ideals, I don't teach you any oughts. I don't say to you be this, become that. My whole teaching is simply this: Whatsoever you are, accept it so totally that nothing is left to be achieved, and you will become a white cloud."

"When you are no more, only then for the first time will you be."

"The tantra masters are simply wild flowers, they have everything in them."

"The ordinary society is like a paperweight on you: it won't allow you to fly."

"Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern."

"Tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to everything."

"Tantra accepts everything, lives everything. That's why tantra never could become a very accepted ideology. It always remained a fringe ideology."

"Liberation cannot be desired because desire is the bondage. When you are desireless, you are liberated."

"Don't say this is good and that is bad. Drop all discrimination. Accept everything as it is."

"The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing."

"Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened — I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration — almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality."

"Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose — out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air — it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close."

"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."