The whole of life has become an institution, a madhouse in which duties are to be fulfilled not love; in which you have to behave, not be spontaneous; in which a pattern has to be followed, not the overflow of life and energy. That's why the mind thinks and decides everything, because there is danger.

I call a man a sannyasin who breaks out of these institutions and lives spontaneously. To be a sannyasin is the most courageous act possible. To be a sannyasin means to live without the mind, and the moment you live without mind you live without society. The mind has created society, and society has created the mind; they are interdependent. To be a sannyasin means to renounce all that is false but not to renounce the world, to renounce all that is unauthentic, to renounce all the answers, to be responsive, spontaneously responsive, and not to think about the reasons, but to be real.

This is difficult: there is much investment in falsity, in the masks, in the faces, in the games you go on playing. To be initiated as a sannyasin means now you will try to be authentic; whatsoever the consequences, you will accept them and live in the present.

You will sacrifice the future for the present; you will never sacrifice the present for the future. This moment will be the totality of your being, you will never move beforehand. This is what sannyas is - to kick the pot and walk out, and not to wait for the results.

Results will take care of themselves, they will follow you. 

-Rajneesh

Morality is a pretender, morality is a pseudo-religion. It gives you respectability but it does not give you understanding. It gives you a great ego trip but it cannot give you humility. It makes you feel superior but it doesn't help inner growth. And the man who feels superior cannot grow. He is stuck with the ego.

Morality is a sort of decoration of the ego. Yes, through morality you can cultivate great virtues, but you will never be virtuous. Through morality you can become very talented in certain directions but those talents will remain unconscious. Morality cannot bring awareness because morality is not based on enlightenment.

The essential has to come from the inner, the essential has to grow like a tree, the essential is alive.

The non-essential is imposed from the outside.

-Rajneesh

Start acting spontaneously. It will be difficult in the beginning, you will feel much discomfort. With a premeditated answer there is less discomfort, you are more certain. Why are we not spontaneous? It is because of fear, the fear that the answer may be wrong. It's better to decide beforehand then you can be certain; but certainty always belongs to death.

Remember, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is certain, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is solid, fixed - its nature cannot be changed; everything alive is moving, changing - a flow, a liquid thing, flexible, able to move in any direction. The more you become certain, the more you will miss life. And those who know, know life is God. If you miss life, you miss God.

Act spontaneously. If there is discomfort in the beginning allow it to be there; don't hide it and don't suppress it - and don't imitate. Be childlike but don't be childish. If you are childlike, you will become a great saint; if you are childish, you will become a great, knowledgeable person.

-Rajneesh

People come to me and ask, "If we meditate, what will happen? What will be the result?" Remember, meditation can never be result-oriented; you simply meditate, that's all.

Everything happens but it will not be a result. If you are seeking the result nothing will happen; meditation will be useless.

When you seek a result, it is the mind; when you don't seek a result, it is meditation. Kick the pot and walk out, meditate and walk out; don't ask for the result. Don't say, "What will happen?" If you think about what will happen you cannot meditate. The mind goes on thinking about the result; it cannot be here and now, it is always in the future. You are meditating and thinking, "When will the happiness come? It has not come yet."

If you forget the result completely, if there is not even a flicker in the mind for the result, not a single vibration moving into the future - when you have become a silent pool, here and now everything happens. In meditation cause and effect are not two - cause is the effect; the act and the result are not two - the act is the result - they are not divided. In meditation the seed and the tree are not two -, the seed is the tree.

-Rajneesh

There is a Zen story: Two monasteries existed side by side and both the masters had small boys to run errands. Both the boys used to go to the market to fetch things for the masters -- sometimes vegetables, sometimes other things.

These monasteries were antagonistic towards each other, but boys will be boys. They would forget the doctrines and meet on the way and talk, enjoy. It was really prohibited to talk -- the other monastery was the enemy.

One day, the boy from the first monastery came and said, "I am puzzled. As I was going to the market, I saw the boy from the other monastery and asked him, `Where are you going?' He replied, `Wherever the wind blows.' I was at a loss as to what to say; he puzzled me.

The master said, "This is not good. Nobody from our monastery has ever been defeated by the other monastery, not even a servant, so you must fix that boy. Tomorrow, ask again where he is going. He will say, `Wherever the wind blows,' so you say, `If there is no wind, then?' "

The boy couldn't sleep the whole night. He tried and tried to conceive of what would happen the next day; he rehearsed many times. He would ask and the other boy would respond and then he would give his answer.

The next day he waited on the road. The other boy came and he asked, "Where are you going?" The boy said, "Wherever my feet lead me."

He was at a loss as to what to do. His answer was fixed; reality is unpredictable. He came back very sad and said to the master, "That boy is not trustworthy. He changed and I was at a loss as to what to do."

So the master said, "Next day when he answers, `Wherever my feet lead,' you tell him, `If you are crippled and your legs are cut off, then?' "

Again he couldn't sleep. He went early to wait on the road. When the boy came he asked, "Where are you going?" And the boy said "To fetch vegetables from the market." He became very disturbed and said to the master, "This boy is impossible: he goes on changing."

Life is that boy. Reality is not a fixed phenomenon. You have to be present, spontaneously in it -- only then will the response be real. If your answer is fixed beforehand you are already dead, you have already missed. Then tomorrow will come but you will not be there; you will be fixed in the yesterday, that which has passed. All the minds which are too verbal are fixed like this. Go to a pundit, a scholar, and ask, "What is God?" Before you have asked he will start answering. Your question is not answered because even before you had the question this man had the answer. The answer is dead; it is there already, it has just to be brought from the memory.

This is the difference between a man of wisdom and a man of knowledge. A man of knowledge has ready-made answers: you ask and the answer is already there. You are irrelevant, your question is irrelevant. Before the question, the answer exists; your question simply triggers the memory.

If you go to a man of wisdom he has no answers for you; he has nothing ready-made. He is open, he is silent. He'll respond but first your question will resound in his being, not in his memory. Through his being the response comes; nobody can predict that response. If you go the next day and ask the same question, the response will not be the same.

-Rajneesh