Mysticism is the experience that life is not logic, that life is poetry; that life is not syllogism, that life is a song. Mysticism is the declaration that life can never really be known; it is essentially unknowable.

Science divides existence into two categories: the known and the unknown. The known was unknown one day; it has become known. The unknown is unknown today; tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, it will also become known. Science believes that sooner or later a point of understanding will arrive when there will be only one category: the known, all will have been known. The unknown is slowly being reduced to the known.

Mysticism is the declaration that life consists of three categories: one, the known; another, the unknown; and the third, and the most important, is the unknowable - which has not been known and which will never be known. And that is the essential core of it all.

That unknowable can be experienced but not known. It cannot be reduced to knowledge, although your heart can sing its song. You can dance it, you can live it, you can be full and overflowing with it - you can be possessed by it - but you will not be able to know it.

-Rajneesh

Except man, who is worried about inventing a self? Except man, nobody is neurotic on the earth.

Except man, nobody has gone astray so far away from himself that he needs certificates to prove his validity, that he needs certificates to prove his existence, that he needs certificates to prove his character, intelligence.

Either you have intelligence or you don't have. No certificate is needed; your life will be its own proof.

Your joy will be enough of a certificate, your bliss will show, will prove it. Nothing else is needed.

-Rajneesh

People believe only when something is written. Why do you believe in the Vedas? Why do you believe in the Bible? Why do you believe in the Geeta? It is a written document, ancient, of great prestige. What else is there? Just a great tradition supporting it.

If there had been no written record of Jesus, you would have forgotten all about Jesus. There have been many teachers and Masters of the capacity of Jesus, of the same calibre, but you don't even know their names.

In India, when Buddha existed and Mahavira was alive, there were many more teachers, at least six of the same calibre, of the same status, but you will not even know their names.

One of them was Prakuta Katyiaena, a rare gem. But he insisted that his words should not be written so that no tradition arise after him. Certainly his words were not written; no tradition has arisen, but people have completely forgotten even his name.

There was another great teacher, Buddha's contemporary, Purnakashyapa, but because no scriptures exist - they were written, but destroyed by the organized religion in India - nobody, knows anything about him.

People believe in the written word. People believe too much in their eyes. One should believe only in one's own experience. Nothing else should become a substitute, otherwise you start going false.

-Rajneesh

Every day newspapers carry one criticism about me: that I am a self-appointed God. That means a committee is needed to appoint. Maybe a government has to issue certificates saying who is God and who is not God, or maybe a university has to issue certificates. The people who criticize me as a self-appointed God have taken it for granted that God should be appointed by others. Who are these others, and what right have they, and who has appointed them? Now it will be a regress, ad nauseam.

Buddha declared himself, Krishna declared himself, Jesus declared himself; they were all self- appointed Gods. But there is no other way. When I have come to know, when I have come to see who I am, what can I do? I have simply to state the fact. It is a bare, naked truth - and it is not only my truth.

If I were declaring that I am God and you are not, then it would be just an ego-trip. But my declaration includes you, includes the whole existence. It has nothing to do with me as such; in fact I am no more there, and only God is. I have dropped the self that you are carrying; the self that is created by others, I have dropped. And in dropping that, the real self is discovered.

-Rajneesh

When I am saying I am God, I am saying every human being is God - and not only every human being, every being is God. To be is to be God; there is no other way. God is trees in the trees and birds in the birds and mountains in the mountains, man in man, woman in woman. God has all these manifestations. All these beautiful waves arise in His ocean.

When I declare that I am the ocean, other waves become disturbed. They think that I am claiming some superiority, that I am saying that you are only waves and I am an ocean. I am not saying that.

By declaring that I am the ocean I have declared that you are also the ocean.

-Rajneesh