Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody. Because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.
There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk -- it means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.
- And the Flowers Showered, Chapter#3

Somebody insults you, anger arises; you remain a witness. The insult comes from outside, the anger arises on the periphery, and you remain at the center, watching. Yes, somebody has done something, provoked your periphery, and there is anger on the periphery, and the anger is surrounding you like a smoke cloud, but you are at the hub, watching. You are not identified with the periphery. Then the insult is outside, and the anger is also outside of you. Both are separate and far away. Both are different from you
- The Beloved, Vol 1, Chapter #3

I don't believe in astrology; ninety-nine point nine percent of it is nonsense, but point one percent is pure truth. A man of insight, intuition and purity can certainly look into the future, because the future is not non-existential, it is just hidden from our eyes. Maybe just a thin curtain of thoughts is all that divides the present and the future.
- Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Chapter #3

Awareness has no past, awareness has no future; awareness has only this here-now.
And a man of awareness never thinks about the past again, it is finished. He did whatsoever could have been done. He never regrets, he has no grudge. He never thinks in terms of what should have been.
- Returning To The Source, Chapter #4

The magic of awareness is that the more you become alert, naturally, the more a calm surrounds you. You need not cultivate it, it follows you like a shadow, it is simply your vibe. You are surrounded by a subtle aura of peace, serenity. When you are aware inside, there is a grace radiating from your being. That grace is spontaneous, not cultivated. And when something is spontaneous it has tremendous beauty. It is not an artificial flower, it is not a plastic flower; it is something that has grown in you, that has bloomed in you. It is your own flowering. It has fragrance because it has roots in your being.
- The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 12, Chapter #7

The authentic awareness is not created by you, it is discovered by you. And the discovery needs no effort on your part because you are the problem, your efforts are the hindrances.
You have to be absent -- with all your will power, with all your efforts. You simply have to give way, and then there will be a totally different quality of awareness -- spontaneous, joyous, relaxing, rejuvenating, and you can never be tired of it. It is simply your nature.
- The Hidden Splendor, Chapter 24

“The sound of Om is heard only when your mind is completely silent, when you have gone beyond all language, all thinking, when there is pure silence, not even a ripple. Suddenly you hear a music. There is no instrument playing it. It seems it is simply the very heartbeat of existence. That's why it doesn't matter whether someone is a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Jaina. It does not depend on your philosophy, on your religion. It depends on the depth of your reach towards your very inner center. There, suddenly, you are overwhelmed.
It is not exactly Om, but Om comes the closest to expressing the sound. And the sound has been called the divine sound because it is not man-made. It is eternally herenow. Whoever wants to enter into the stream of eternal existence is bound to hear it. It says nothing, but it vibrates your being to such joy, to such celebration, to such dance that you have never dreamt of before.”
- Hari Om Tat Sat, Chapter #1

“In Sanskrit, aum is the symbol for the whole universe. It carries three basic sounds: a-u-m. Through these three basic sounds all the sounds have evolved. So aum is the basic sound, the synthesis of all the basic roots. That's why Hindus have been saying that aum is the secret mantra, the greatest mantra, because it implies the whole existence.
The three English words, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, are derived from aum. They mean one who has become as powerful as aum, one who has become as knowing as aum, one who has become as present as aum -- one who has become universal, one who has become the all.”
- The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus, Chapter #21

“Now scientists, physicists particularly, have discovered that existence consists only of vibrations. They call it ‘vibrations of electricity'. It does not matter what name you give, what jargon you use, but vibration means sound. That is the meaning of AUM.

AUM is the primordial sound of which the whole universe consists; we are made of music. Hence if we move into anything totally, only the music is left and everything else disappears because music is the stuff we are made of; all else is arbitrary, artificial, invented. Only the music hidden in our souls is not invented; it is part of God. God is the musician and we are his music. He is the dancer and we are his dance. He is the poet and we are his poetry. He is the singer and we are his song. This is the meaning of AUM.”

“It is called ANAHAT NAD; ANAHAT NAD means unstruck sound. There are two kinds of sounds. When you play on a sitar it is a struck sound; duality is involved, your hands and the strings, and you have to strike, then the sound is created. It is a little bit violent -- you are being violent with the strings. You are not allowing them to rest, you are disturbing their sleep. And there is a conflict involved with your hands; there is a fight going on between the musician and his instrument.
AUM is the unstruck sound; there is no instrument. When you become absolutely silent, suddenly it is there.

Zen people have the right expression for it; they call it ‘the sound of one hand clapping'. If two hands are there, of course, the clapping is easy, but one hand clapping and the sound of one hand clapping seems to be absurd -- but they are truly expressing the reality. When you go inside and you are absolutely silent you hear for the first time the inner music.”
- Philosophia Ultima, Chapter #1

“AUM consists of three sounds and one anuswar. Anuswar is a very subtle sound; it represents a kind of humming. When you say, "AU", that M prolonged, that humming sound that goes on reverberating, is the anuswar. Anuswar means just a dot; that too represents something. So AUM consists of four things: three visible, A,U,M, and the fourth invisible the rhythmic, humming shadow.

These four represent the whole of Indian metaphysics. "A" represents one state of the mind, when you are awake, the waking consciousness. "U" represents when you are dreaming, the dreaming consciousness. "M" represents when you are fast asleep, dreamlessly asleep -- sushupti -- deep, profound dreamless sleep. These are the three states of the human mind, human consciousness.

And the anuswar, the dot -- that humming sound that goes on reverberating -- that represents the fourth, turiya, the transcendental state when you are neither asleep nor awake nor dreaming, when you are just a witness to all that is happening: the state of a Buddha or a Christ, the state where I am, where one can declare oneself Bhagwan.”

“And, symbolically, AUM represents your waking consciousness, your dreaming consciousness, your sleeping consciousness, and the beyond -- the turiya -- the fourth state, where one becomes Bhagwan, where one becomes Christ, Buddha, where one is one with totality. It is a tremendously important formula; it contains the whole metaphysics of the East. But it is not a mantra. Please never repeat it. Repeating won't help; it will deceive you.”
- The Secret, Chapter #4

The first birth is only a physical birth; don't be satisfied with it. It is necessary but not enough. A second birth is needed. The first birth was through your mother and father; the second birth is going to be out of the mind. You have to slip out of the mind and that will be your rebirth -- you will be reborn.
- A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Chapter #1

Ecstasy is our very nature; not to be ecstatic is simply unnecessary. To be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic, it needs great effort to be miserable. That's why you look so tired, because misery is really hard work; to maintain it is really difficult, because you are doing something against nature. You are going upstream -- that's what misery is.

And what is bliss? Going with the river -- so much so that the distinction between you and the river is simply lost. You are the river. How can it be difficult? To go with the river no swimming is needed; you simply float with the river and the river takes you to the ocean. The river is already going to the ocean.
Life is a river. Don't push it and you will not be miserable. The art of not pushing the river of life is sannyas.
- The Book of Wisdom, Chapter #4

Bliss is true happiness. What you call happiness is just misery in disguise. What you call happiness is nothing but entertainment, pleasure. It is momentary -- it cannot be true. Truth has to have one quality, and the quality is of eternity. If something is true it is eternal; if it is untrue it is momentary.
True happiness is found only when the mind completely ceases functioning. It does not come from the outside. It wells up within your own being, it starts overflowing you. You become luminous. You become a fountain of bliss.
- The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1, Chapter #7

Whenever some bliss happens, trust it, and go in that direction...and you will be moving towards God. Bliss is his fragrance. If you can follow bliss, you will never go astray. If you follow bliss, you will be following nature. And if you are natural, blissful, relaxed, wisdom arises.
- The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2, Chapter #7

The five aggregates are the five elements the body is made of: earth, air, fire, water, and the sky. These five are the aggregates -- SKANDHAS -- elements of which your body is made. Just behind these five elements is hidden your treasure, THE HALL OF ZEN. Just inside the temple made by these five elements, is the fire of your awareness.
This body is a temple, and your consciousness is the god of the temple.
- Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master, Chapter #9

Your body is your temple, it is sacred. Your body is not your enemy. It is not irreligious to love your body, to take care of your body -- it is religious. It is irreligious to torture your body and to destroy it. The religious person will love his body because it is the temple where God lives.
You and your body are not really two, but the manifestation of one. Your soul is your invisible body, and your body is your visible soul. I teach this unity, and with this unity, man becomes whole. I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness.
- The Book of Wisdom, Chapter #26

Enjoy this celebration as much as possible, because whatever remaining falsities, personalities, parts here and there may have remained, they will be thrown away by your dance. Enjoy... this existence is for your enjoyment. It is our existence, it is our home.
Nobody is a sinner except those who don't celebrate.
To me, celebration is the only virtue.
- The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, Chapter #12

I want to remind you that whether I am here or not the celebration has to continue. If I am not here, then it has to be more intense and it has to spread around the world.
Celebration is my religion.
Love is my message.
Silence is my truth.
- Nansen: The Point of Departure, Chapter #10

Your celebration will bring you closer to existence, because existence is in constant celebration. Your joy, your blissfulness, your silence, will bring the silences of the stars and the sky; your peace with existence will open the doors of all the mysteries it contains. There is no other way to become enlightened.
- The Rebel, Chapter #5

Celebration is without any cause. Celebration is simply because we are. We are made out of the stuff called celebration. That's our natural state: to celebrate -- as natural as it is for the trees to bloom, for birds to sing, for rivers to flow to the ocean. Celebration is a natural state.
- The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, Chapter #8

“Celibacy has nothing to do with holiness.
And celibacy gives no power; on the contrary, it creates a conflict within you because you are trying to fight with your own energy. It weakens you. Your own power becomes divided; and a house divided against itself cannot be powerful. And it was because of celibacy that tantra was born in India -- which is just a revolution, a rebellion against Hinduism.”
- From Bondage to Freedom, Chapter #8

“Celibacy is one of the most unnatural things. It has destroyed so many human beings -- millions -- Catholic monks, Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, Jaina monks, nuns. For centuries they have been teaching celibacy; and the most amazing thing is, even in the twentieth century, not a single medical expert, physiologist, has stood up and said that celibacy is impossible, that in the very nature of things, it cannot happen.

To impose celibacy means to pervert the sexual energy of man. It is celibacy that has created homosexuality. It is celibacy that has created sodomy. Perhaps you don't understand the word "sodomy"; it is making love to animals. And, finally, it is celibacy which has brought humanity to experience the great joy of AIDS. I call AIDS a religious disease. It has been created by all the religions.

Nobody ever has been celibate, whatever the pretensions; you can only be a hypocrite. But your sexual energy will find ways to move -- it is natural.

Celibacy is as natural as somebody taking a vow that he will not allow his hair to grow. What are you going to do? Is it within your hands?”
- From Bondage to Freedom, Chapter #31

“Celibacy is not something to be practiced, it is not something to be rehearsed, it is not something to be imposed on you by any method, any effort, any doing. Celibacy comes when sex disappears on its own accord. Certainly the word `celibacy' has tremendous meaning in my sense.

But the misunderstanding was that seeing the mystical people rejoicing and dancing and singing and their eyes and their faces and their charismatic pull, people started repressing sex, thinking it is sex that is preventing them from knowing higher realms of being. There lies the great misunderstanding.”
- Satyam Shivam Sundram, Chapter #19

“When there is no fight with nature, just an acceptance, you have moved beyond nature. But this 'beyond nature' is not against nature. It is really a growth THROUGH it. You will come to brahmacharya -- to a beautiful celibacy -- but not through fighting sex. No one has come that way ever, no one can ever come that way.

When you are growing through sex, becoming more and more alert through sex, sex will be transformed. This is the way: if you suppress sex it becomes sexuality; if you express sex it becomes love. And through sexuality you cannot reach the divine. It is a perversion. But through love you can reach -- it is a natural growth.

The more you accept natural instincts totally, without any condemnation at all, by and by they subside and the fever is lost. And when they subside you have tremendous energy left with you. That energy can become the arrow toward the divine. It becomes! There is a celibacy which comes through growth and there is a celibacy which comes simply through negation, denial. The celibacy that comes through denial is perverted: your mind will be filled with sexuality. The celibacy that happens gracefully, through alertness, through acceptance, becomes a grace. It has a beauty of its own, and by and by it goes beyond itself.

Then it is love. Then it is prayer. And the love that was flowing toward the opposite sex starts flowing toward the divine -- the same love, the same energy.”
- The Supreme Doctrine, Chapter #3

Children are careful watchers, observers of what is happening all around. Of course, their senses are very clear, unclouded. They see the truth immediately. You cannot cheat a child; he knows it immediately, intuitively. And he is so innocent that it is impossible for him to be formal. But he has to be formal to survive. And man's child is very helpless. It is because of man's child's helplessness that our whole civilization exists. We can manage, mold the child in every possible way, whatsoever way we want.

Children are not supposed to say things that they know. They know much more than they ever tell you. They pretend to be innocent because you don't want them to know more than is taught in the school, than is taught by the preacher, than is taught by you; and they certainly know more. They move in society, in life, with keen, alert senses. They are watching everything, whatsoever is happening all around. But they learn one thing sooner or later: that they have to be diplomatic -- with the grown-ups you can't be true, honest, sincere.
- Ah, This! Chapter #4

If you watch small children, their inventiveness, their intelligence, their constant exploration into the unknown, their curiosity, their inquiry, you need not teach them any beliefs.

In fact, children should be allowed to choose their own Masters. Parents should not enforce their own ideology on their children. If you really love your children, don't teach them any religion. Yes, give them the feel of being religious, give them the feel of prayerfulness. And that you can give not by telling them how to pray but by just being in prayer yourself. If they see you in prayer they will catch. Prayer is contagious. They will start asking you, "How we can also participate in the prayer?" If you sit in meditation and they see the silence and the serenity and the stillness surrounding you and a certain aura that arises out of meditation, a certain radiation, they are bound to be interested in it. They are always interested in everything new.
- Zen: The Special Transmission, Chapter #6

And my own experience is that the well-behaved children, the obedient children, are not really alive people.

The alive children are bound to be rebellious, they will be disobedient. Out of disobedience, intelligence becomes sharper. Out of disobedience one starts being an individual. One has to learn to say no, only then does saying yes have any meaning.
- Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, Chapter #2

If you want your children to be wise, never give them wisdom. If you want your children to have a clarity about life and a spontaneous responsibility towards situations and people, don't load them with ideas of good and evil, because they will not be living in your time -- and you cannot conceive in what time they will be living, what will be their situations.

All that you can do is make them more intelligent, make them more alert, make them more conscious, make them more loving, make them more silent. So wherever they are their response will come out of their silence and out of their love and out of their alertness; it is going to be good. Don't tell them what is good, but give them the right means to discover what is good in a different situation.
- Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet, Chapter #17

I have lived in comfort -- I have never done anything in my life -- but that has not disturbed my meditation. So when I say it, I say it with authority: you can live in comfort and in meditation. Meditation is inner comfort, and comfort is outer meditation. Let them become one. A man perfectly fulfilled outside and perfectly fulfilled inside will be the total man, and less than the total man is not going to be of much help for more evolution of humanity.
- The Path of the Mystic, Chapter #32

I live naturally -- and it is very natural to live in comfort and convenience. It is simply stupid, if comfort is available, not to live in it. If it is not available, that is another thing. Then whatsoever is available, live in it comfortably, manage to live in it comfortably.
- Unio Mystica, Vol 1, Chapter #8

“My commune was a totally new experiment. It has never happened before. There is no comparison in the past because my people were not dependent on anybody, and they were against the society, the culture, the civilization, the religion, the politics, the education -- everything that constitutes the world.
We were fighting an impossible fight -- a small group trying to live in a totally different way from the whole of humanity.”

“This small commune of five thousand people had everything that man needs, and all the freedom, all the love. And everybody was working seven days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day, and still were not tired -- because it was not something forced, it was something they wanted to do, they wanted to create. It was such a creative act that after working fourteen hours they were still dancing in the streets; late in the night they were playing on their guitars, singing, dancing.”
- Beyond Enlightenment, Chapter #29

“The commune is the lifestyle of the future.
The family is gone and the commune is going to take its place. Much depends on the success of commune life, and we have to make the commune life such a celebration that it starts spreading like wildfire, that others start communes of their own.

Each village can become a commune, there is no need to establish different villages. We just have to prove that life in a commune is much richer, much more lovely, much more meditative, that there is a possibility of living in a different way, different from the way humanity has lived up to now.
We have proved it in Rajneeshpuram.”
- Beyond Enlightenment, Chapter #30

“Each buddha creates a commune, because without a commune a buddha cannot function. A commune means his energy field, a commune means the people who have become joined with him, a commune means an alternate society to the ordinary mundane society which goes after spurious comforts -- it is there available to everybody.

A small oasis in the desert of the world is what is meant by a commune created by a buddha -- a small oasis in which life is lived with a totally different gestalt, with a totally different vision, with a totally different goal; where life is lived with purpose, meaning, where life is lived with method -- even though to the outsiders it may look like madness, but that madness has a method in it -- where life is lived prayerfully, alert, aware, awake; where life is not just accidental, where life starts becoming more and more a growth in a certain direction, towards a certain destination; where life is no more like driftwood.”
- The Book of Wisdom, Chapter #17

“I would love a world where the family is replaced by the commune. Psychologically it is more healthy to have a commune, where children are not possessed by the parents, they belong to the commune; where children are not given the im