The enlightened person is always joyous, but the tradition, the convention cannot be joyous. The whole structure of a tradition is basically political; it is there to dominate, it is there to oppress, it is there to exploit. And you cannot exploit people playfully, you have to be very serious. You have to make them so sad, so afraid of life itself, you have to create so much trembling in their being, that out of that fear they fall into your hands; they become objects of your manipulation.

A man like me cannot exploit you, because this whole place is more like a tavern than a temple. It is more playful than serious. We are engaged in a beautiful game! The moment you think of it as a game, all seriousness disappears, things become lighter. You can walk in a dancing way; there is no weight on you.

-Rajneesh

When Bodhidharma became enlightened, for seven days he could not stop laughing. Asked again and again, he only said this much: "I am laughing because the whole thing was ridiculous. The goose has always been out, and I was trying to bring it out of the bottle, and the bottle never existed. The whole effort was sheer absurdity, ridiculous! I am laughing at myself and I am laughing at the whole world, because people are trying to do something which need not be done at all. People are trying hard, and the harder they try the more difficult it becomes. Their very effort is the barrier!"

-Rajneesh

To me religion consists of three layers; the first layer is of science. Just as your body consists of material, atomic constituents, so religion consists first, the most peripheral part, of science. I am not against science -- science is an absolute need -- but it is only a peripheral phenomenon, the most superficial, the first concentric circle around your center.

Then comes the second concentric circle, which is deeper than science; that is of art, aesthetics. And then the third; that is meditation. And if you have entered these three concentric circles, slowly slowly you will attain to the fourth.

The fourth in the East is called TURIYA; we have not given it any name, we have simply given it a number, "the fourth." Nothing can be said about it, that's why no name has been given to it. It is even beyond mystery. Meditation will take you into the mysterious, but there is still something more than that; that is inexpressible. Nothing can be said about it, nothing has ever been said about it, nothing will ever be said about it, but it has been experienced.

Only at that ultimate peak of experience, in that ultimate ecstasy, will you know what it is to be.

-Rajneesh

If you can be a participant for a moment, you have known the key, the secret. Then become a participant in everything that you are doing. Walking, don't just do it mechanically, don't just go on watching it -- be it. Dancing, don't do it technically; technique is irrelevant You may be technically correct and yet you will miss the whole joy of it. Dissolve yourself in the dance, become the dance, forget about the dancer.

When such deep unity starts happening in many many phases of your life; when all around you start having such tremendous experiences of disappearance, egolessness, nothingness; when the flower is there and you are not, the rainbow is there and you are not; when the clouds are roaming in the sky both within and without and you are not; when there is utter silence as far as you are concerned; when there is nobody in you, just a pure silence, a virgin silence, undistracted, undisturbed by logic, thought, emotion, feeling, that is the moment of meditation. Mind is gone, and when mind is gone mystery enters.

-Rajneesh

The moment you dissect the rose, the beauty disappears. The rose was only an opportunity for the beauty to descend, a receptivity of the earth to the sky, a receptivity of the gross to the subtle.

-Rajneesh