The Masters do not tell the truth. Even if they want to they cannot; it is impossible. Then what is their function? What do they go on doing? They cannot tell the truth, but they can call forth the truth which is fast asleep in you. They can provoke it, they can challenge it. They can shake you up, they can wake you up. They cannot give you God, truth, NIRVANA, because in the first place you already have it all with you.

You are born with it. It is innate, it is intrinsic. It is your very nature. So anybody who pretends to give you the truth is simply exploiting your stupidity, your gullibility. He is cunning -- cunning and utterly ignorant too. He knows nothing; not even a glimpse of truth has happened to him. He is a pseudo Master.

Truth cannot be given; it is already in you. It can be called forth, it can be provoked. A context can be created, a certain space can be created in which it rises in you and is no more asleep, becomes awakened.

The function of the Master is far more complex than you think. It would have been far easier, simpler, if truth could be conveyed. It cannot be conveyed, hence indirect ways and means have to be devised.

-Rajneesh

The great miracle of Zen is in the transformation of the mundane into the sacred. And it is tremendously extraordinary because THIS way life has never been approached before, THIS way life has never been respected before.

Zen goes beyond Buddha and beyond Lao Tzu. It is a culmination, a transcendence, both of the Indian genius and of the Chinese genius. The Indian genius reached its highest peak in Gautam the Buddha and the Chinese genius reached its highest peak in Lao Tzu.

And the meeting...the essence of Buddha's teaching and the essence of Lao Tzu's teaching merged into one stream so deeply that no separation is possible now. Even to make a distinction between what belongs to Buddha and what to Lao Tzu is impossible, the merger has been so total. It is not only a synthesis, it is an integration. Out of this meeting Zen was born. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist and yet both.

-Rajneesh

La illaha ill Allah - there is no God but God. There is no goal but the goal. And the paradox is that the goal is in the source. You have it already within you. It is there, vibrating, pulsating in your being.

-Rajneesh

Whenever you make a condition you destroy love. Remember it: never make conditions on love.

Let your love be unconditional, and never force the other to fulfill your expectations. Let your love be a sharing of freedom, in freedom.

Real lovers, real friends, make each other free. The more they love, the more freedom arises. Unreal lovers, pretenders, have a thousand and one ifs and buts surrounding their love. Their conditions have to be fulfilled; only then can they be loving. But this is not love at all. Love knows no conditions.

-Rajneesh

Remember, when you say something about somebody else, the first thing to be thought and pondered over is that it may be a truth about yourself and not about the other. The person who is really interested in self-knowledge will always ponder over the fact: "What I am saying about the other, is it truly about the other, or is it just a projection of me and shows something about me and not about the other?" And you will be surprised: out of a hundred cases, ninety-nine percent you will find to be your own mind.

But the mind is very cunning - it projects. It always uses a kind of transference.

For example, if you are sexually repressed and you see a couple hugging, caressing each other, you immediately jump at them and you start talking of morality, culture, society, and all that, and you start saying, "This is not right." But watch. Have a little insight in your own being as to what really is happening. You have a repressed sexuality. Seeing them in a deep, loving embrace, your sexuality that is repressed starts surfacing. It becomes stirred, and you become afraid of it.

Rather than accepting the fear of it, rather than looking into and watching it, rather than doing something about it, you become angry. Fear becomes anger when transferred; fear takes the form of anger. You become angry at the couple, and they are not doing anything to you!

-Rajneesh