Your soul consists of the essential, and the essential is immortal. The non-essential is momentary, and we cling to the non-essential; hence we suffer, because we cannot keep hold of it. It disappears sooner or later. Whatsoever we do is futile because the momentary cannot be forever. Just as it comes, it goes. It is a wave, a ripple, a bubble; sooner or later it will be gone. For the moment it looks so beautiful - the sun is reflected in it and a small rainbow surrounds it - but it is just a soap bubble. You can play with it but don't become attached to it, otherwise you will suffer. And that's why people are suffering: they become attached to soap bubbles.

They have given different names to the soap bubbles. Somebody calls it love, somebody calls it money, somebody calls it power, somebody calls it life, prestige, and so on, so forth - but they are all soap bubbles. Any moment, they will be gone, and you will be left in despair.

To cling to the personality is to cling to soap bubbles.

-Rajneesh

There are people who are past-oriented, there are people who are future-oriented - both go on missing. The orthodox, the conformist, is past-oriented, and the revolutionary, the rebel, is future- oriented; there is not any difference between them. The orthodox thinks the Golden Age was in the past, "the Garden of Eden". The revolutionary, the so-called communist, the fascist, the socialist - he thinks the Golden Age is to come. It is in the future, the utopia, the classless society where everyone will be equal, the world of freedom where exploitation will have disappeared and paradise will descend on earth. But paradise is right now, here.

Beware of these two traps. You need not go into the past to search for truth. You need not go into the scriptures, because scriptures belong to the past; and you need not go into imagination, logic, because all that logic can do is create utopias in the future. You need not go anywhere, neither in the past nor in the future. You have to be just here.

And the utter beauty of the moment, and the utter blessedness of the moment.. and one is transformed - not by doing anything, but just by being here.

-Rajneesh

Eternity is vertical: it moves into depth and into height. Just think of the cross of Jesus: that is a symbol for time and eternity. The cross is made of two lines, one horizontal on which Jesus' hands were nailed, the other vertical on which his body was nailed. The cross represents the whole phenomenon of time. The horizontal line is history, politics, the mundane life, the world of events, the world of facts. The vertical line is the world of truth, not of facts. The vertical line is the world of absolute reality, of God, of nirvana, of meditation.

Whenever one starts moving into the vertical world, one simply goes beyond time. Then there is nothing new, nothing old. Truth only is.

Time, the horizontal line, consists of two things - past and future. The present is almost absent. You never become aware of the present - or have you ever become aware of the present? - because the moment you become aware, it is already past. You always become aware of the past.

For example, this moment: if you become aware of it, the time that is taken by your becoming aware is enough to make it past. The moment you say, "Yes, this is the present," it is already gone.

You cannot even utter the word "now", because when you have uttered it it is no longer now. The present that you think exists in time is almost nothing. It is sandwiched between the past and the future. The past is big. Look backwards - it stretches and stretches, and on and on. It seems to be beginningless. And so is the future very big - it goes on stretching ahead of you, on and on, endlessly.

Between these two big phenomena, past and future, your present is just a sandwiched atomic moment of which you cannot even become aware. The moment you know it, it is no more there; it is already gone. You only become aware of the past. So time consists of past and future.

Eternity consists of the present. Then what we call "present" is nothing but the spot where eternity crosses time, where eternity penetrates time. There is a way to move into that eternity: that's what meditation is all about.

Meditation is a drop into eternity. That's why all techniques, all methods of meditation, insist: don't be too obsessed with the past, let it go; and don't be too infatuated with the future, let it go too.

Slowly, slowly withdraw yourself from past memories and future projections. The past is no more, the future is not yet; both are non-existential. To remain in the non-existential is to remain in misery, because existence is bliss, satchitananda - it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss. Non-existence is untruth, unconsciousness, misery; just the opposite. And we live in the non-existential.

Just watch what goes on inside you: either you are thinking of the past, the nostalgia of the past - your beautiful childhood, or your youth, your love affairs, and this and that - or you are immersed in the future - what you are going to do tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. Either you are drowned in the past or you are drowned in the future. That's why you are not. That's why you yourself have become a falsehood. You are too concerned with the false, and that concern makes you pseudo.

Withdraw yourself from the past and the future.

-Rajneesh

Truth is. Truth simply is. It is neither old nor new. It is eternal, it has no reference to time at all; it is beyond time. That is the meaning of the eternal. Eternal does not mean forever, because forever has a reference to time; eternal does not mean permanent, because permanency has a reference to time. Eternal simply means timeless. It is.

Truth is never past and never future. It knows only one tense, the present. Truth knows only one time, now - which is not time at all; but it is timelessness. And truth knows only one space, here - which is not space at all; it is transcendence of space. Truth is always now-here. Truth has no history. History belongs to the world of lies. Politics has history, religion has no history.

This is the first thing to be understood: that truth cannot be old and cannot be new either. If truth can be new then one day it will become old. Whatsoever is new today will be old tomorrow. Truth is never old, hence it can never be new.

Truth is equivalent to existence. In a way, it can be said that it is as old as the mountains, and as new as this morning's dewdrops - but that is only a way of saying. What is being said is that truth is eternal.

-Rajneesh

Man in the West has succeeded in attaining to all the affluence that the whole of humanity has been longing for down the ages. The West has succeeded materially in becoming rich, and now it is too weary, too tired. The journey has taken all its soul. The journey has finished the Western man. Outwardly all is available, but the contact with the inner is lost. Now everything that man needs is there, but the man is no more there. Possessions are there, but the master has disappeared. A great imbalance has happened. Richness is there, but man is not feeling rich at all; man is feeling, on the contrary, very impoverished, very poor.

Think of this paradox: when you are outwardly rich only then do you become aware of your inner poverty, in contrast. When you are outwardly poor you never become aware of your inner poverty, because there is no contrast. You write with white chalk on blackboards, not on white boards. Why?

Because only on blackboards will it show. The contrast is needed.

When you are outwardly rich, then suddenly a great awareness happens that "Inwardly I am poor, a beggar." And now a hopelessness also comes as a shadow that "All is attained that we had thought - all imagination and fantasies fulfilled - and nothing has happened out of it, no contentment, no bliss."

The West is bewildered. Out of this bewilderment a great desire is arising: how to have contact with one's self again.

Meditation is nothing but getting your roots again into your inner world, into your interiority. Hence the West is becoming very much interested in meditation, and very much interested in the Eastern treasures.

-Rajneesh