Fear

If you have fear, you have fear- why make a problem out of it? You know that you have fear, just as you have two hands. Fear is there: accept it, note it. What will happen? Suddenly you will feel it has disappeared. And this is the inner alchemy — a problem disappears if you accept it, and a problem grows more and more complex if you create any conflict with it. It is there and nothing can be done about it. And when I say nothing can be done about it, don’t think that I am talking about pessimism to you, in fact I am giving you the key to solve it.

Fear is nothing but absence of love. Do something with love, forget about fear. If you love well, fear disappears. If you love deeply, fear is not found. Whenever you have been in love with someone, ever for a single moment, was there any fear? It has never been found in any relationship – if even for a single moment two persons are in deep love and a meeting happens, they are tuned to each other, in that moment fear has never been found. Just as if the light is on and darkness has not been found There is the secret key: Love more. If you feel there is fear in your being – love more. Be courageous in love, take courage. Be adventurous in love, love more, and love unconditionally, because the more you love the less will be the fear. And when I say love I mean all the four layers of love: from sex to samadhi. Love deeply.

Knack

A knack comes when you do many many things on the path -- trial and error, falling and rising, going astray and coming back -- thousands of experiments in living, and then suddenly one day you have the knack of it. A knack is the essence of many errors, mistakes, of trial and error. Something grows in you, and once you know it you can forget about it, you have it always. You need not remember it. If you need to remember it, it is still not a knack; it is something in the mind. If it is a knack it goes into the blood, into the bones, into the very marrow, into the very being. Then you can forget about it.

The Poetry of the Heart by Osho

The intelligence of the head is not intelligence at all; it is knowledgeability. The intelligence of the heart is the intelligence, the only intelligence there is. The head is simply an accumulator. It is always old, it is never new, it is never original. It is good for certain purposes: For filing it is perfectly good! And in life one needs this– many things have to be remembered. The mind, the head, is a bio computer. You can go on accumulating knowledge in it and whenever you need it you can take it out. It is good for mathematics, good for calculation, good for the day-to-day life, the marketplace. But if you think this is your whole life then you will remain stupid. You will never know the beauty of feeling and you will never know the blessings of the heart. You will never know the grace that descends only through the heart, the godliness that enters only through the heart. You will never know prayer, you will never know poetry, you will never know love.

The intelligence of the heart creates poetry in your life, gives a dance to your step, makes your life a joy, a celebration, a festivity, a laughter. It gives you a sense of humor. It makes you capable of love, of sharing. That is true life. The life that is lived from the head is a mechanical life. You become a robot– maybe very efficient. Robots are very efficient, machines are more efficient than man. You can earn much through the head, but you will not live much. You may have a better standard of living but you won’t have any life.

Life is of the heart. Life can only grow through the heart. It is the soil of the heart where love grows, life grows, spirit grows. All that is beautiful, all that is really valuable, all that is meaningful, significant, comes through the heart. The heart is your very center, the head is just your periphery. To live in the head is to live on the circumference without ever becoming aware of the beauties and the treasures of the center. To live on the periphery is stupidity.

To live in the head is stupidity. To live in the heart and use the head whenever it is needed is intelligence. But the center, the master, is at the very core of your being.

The master is the heart, and the head is just a servant– this is intelligence. When the head becomes the master and forgets all about the heart, that is stupidity.

It is up to you to choose. Remember, the head as a slave is a beautiful slave, of much utility. But as a master it is a dangerous master and will destroy your whole life, will poison your whole life. Look around! People’s lives are absolutely poisoned, poisoned by the head. They cannot feel, they are no longer sensitive, nothing thrills them. The sun rises but nothing rises in them; they look at the sun empty-eyed. The sky becomes full of the stars– the marvel, the mystery!– but nothing stirs in their hearts, no song arises. Birds sing– man has forgotten to sing. Clouds come in the sky and the peacocks dance, and man does not know how to dance. He has become a cripple. Trees bloom– and man thinks, never feels, and without feeling there is no flowering possible.

Watch, scrutinize, observe, have another look at your life. Nobody else is going to help you. You have depended on others so long; that’s why you have become stupid. Now, take care; it is your own responsibility. You owe it to yourself to have a deep, penetrating look at what you are doing with your life. Is there any poetry in your heart? If it is not there, then don’t waste time. Help your heart to weave and spin poetry. Is there any romance in your life? If there is not, then you are already in your grave.

Come out of it! Let life have something of the romantic in it, something like adventure. Explore! Millions of beauties and splendors are waiting for you. You go on moving around and around, never entering into the temple of life. The door is the heart.

The real intelligence is of the heart. It is not intellectual, it is emotional. It is not like thinking, it is like feeling. It is not logic, it is love.

Love is available only to those who go on sharpening their intelligence. Love is not for the mediocre…love is not for the unintelligent. The unintelligent person may become a great intellectual. In fact unintelligent people try to become intellectuals; that is their way of hiding their unintelligence. Love is not for the intellectual. Love needs a totally different kind of talent– a talented heart, not a talented head.

Love has its own intelligence, its own way of seeing, perceiving, its own way of understanding life, its own way of comprehending the mystery of existence. The poet is far closer to it than the philosopher. And the mystic is exactly inside the temple. The poet is on the steps and the philosopher is just outside. At the most he can approach the driveway, but never the steps. He goes on round and round. He goes on moving around the temple, studying the outer walls of the temple, and becomes so enchanted that he forgets completely that the outer walls are not the real temple and that the deity is inside.

The poet reaches the door, but the door is so beautiful that he becomes hypnotized. He thinks he has arrived– what more can there be? The philosopher is lost in guessing what is inside. He never goes there, he simply thinks, philosophizes. The poet tries to penetrate into the mystery but gets hooked near the door. The mystic enters into the very innermost sanctum of the temple.

The way is love, and the way is a loving intelligence. When love and intelligence meet together you create the space in which all that is possible to a human being can become actual. A loving intelligence is what is needed. Intelligence alone becomes intellectual, love alone becomes sentimentality, but a loving intelligence never becomes intellectuality or sentimentality. It gives you a new kind of integrity, a new crystallization.

What is the meaning of life?

Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered: it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.

Meaning is a dance, not a rock. Meaning is music. You will find it only if you create it. Remember it. Meaning comes out of creativity.

Meaning comes through participation. Participate in life! Participate as deeply, as totally, as possible. Risk all for participation. If you want to know what dance is, don’t go and see a dancer -- learn dancing, be a dancer. If you want to know anything, participate! That is the true and the right way, the authentic way, to know a thing. And there will be great meaning in your life. And not only one-dimensional -- multi-dimensional meanings. You will be showered by meanings.

Don’t allow your life to become just a dead ritual. Let there be moments, unexplainable. Let there be a few things which are mysterious, for which you cannot supply any reason. Let there be a few doings for which people will think you are a little crazy. A man who is a hundred percent sane is dead. A little bit of craziness by the side is always a great joy. Go on doing a few crazy things too. And then meaning will be possible.

One World

The collective is a very dangerous word. In the name of collective, the individual, the real has always been sacrificed. Nations have been sacrificing individuals in the name of nation – and “nation” is just a word. The lines that you have drawn on the map are not any where on the earth. They are just your game! But on those lines that you have drawn on the map, millions of people have died – real people, dying for unreal lines. And you make them heroes, national heroes! If we want really a world of freedom, then we have to understand that in the name of collectivity so much massacre has happened that now it is time to stop it.

Wisdom and Philosophy

Philosophy, the very word, means love for wisdom, and they have nothing to do with wisdom at all. Wisdom happens only through meditation; it never happens by collecting information. It happens by going through a transformation. Wisdom is the flowering of your consciousness, the opening of the one-thousand-petaled lotus of your being. It is the release of your fragrance, the release of the imprisoned splendor. Real philosophy has nothing to do with thinking; on the contrary it has everything to do with transcending thinking, going beyond and beyond thinking, going beyond mind, reaching to the pure space of no-mind. Out of that space something flowers in you. You can call it Christ-consciousness, Buddhahood, or whatsoever you like. That is true philosophy.

Accept Yourself

Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training, education, your culture. From the very beginning you have been told how you should be. Nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are.

Don't be obsessed with yourself -- but a natural self-love is a must, a basic phenomenon. Only then out of it, you can love somebody else. Accept yourself, love yourself.

Nobody else has ever been like you and nobody else will ever be like you; you are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this -- and in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others. Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the soil in which love blooms.