You have been taught values which are not really values; you have been taught things which are basically poisonous. For example, you have been told not to love yourself, and you have been told so many times that it looks like a simple fact, truth. But a man who is incapable of loving himself will be incapable of loving anybody else. The man who cannot love himself cannot love at all.

-Rajneesh

Once a jaina monk came to see me. He asked, "Is hell real? Is there really a hell?" Instead of answering him, I asked him, "And where do you think you are living?" Man lives in hell, because man is upside down. You need not go to some stupid yoga teacher to learn the headstand posture, because you are already doing it. Everything is in the wrong order.

For centuries you have been messed up; a chaos has been created in you instead of a cosmos. You are just a kind of madness. Whatever you think is normal is not normal at all. It appears normal, because you have lived with these people from your very childhood and you have started thinking that these are the only people, so they must be normal.

It is as if one was born in a madhouse and from the very beginning was acquainted only with mad people; he will think them normal. In fact, if he ever comes across somebody who is sane, he will be very puzzled, he will not be able to believe his own eyes. He will think this man has gone crazy.

-Rajneesh

Lazy people are good people, they have never been mischievous -- they cannot be, because mischief needs activity. You have to be very active, only then you can be mischievous. Just think, if Alexander the Great had been a little lazy, Adolf Hitler a little lazy, Morarji Desai a little lazy, the world would have been so beautiful. All the mischief comes from the active people. Lazy people have never done any harm, that much can be absolutely said.

-Rajneesh

Sex is life, and wherever you see life you will find sex somewhere, in some way. The day sex disappears you will start dying, because it is sex energy that keeps you alive. Drop the foolish ideas that you have been taught. This has been done to many people in different ways. A thousand and one inhibitions and taboos have been created, and the best way to make you afraid of sex is to associate it with death. This is the simple, simple logic priests have discovered. And priests have been the most cunning people in the world. They must have discovered in the very beginning that if you join sex with death, then you can make people afraid of sex. Once they are afraid of sex, they are afraid of intelligence, creativity, they are afraid of being, they are afraid of freedom, they are ready to become slaves.

Death has nothing to do with sex. Sex or no sex, death is going to happen. In fact, if you can move deep into sex and transform its energy into love, and can move deep into love and transform its energy into prayer, you will come to know that there is no death. That is the only way to know something of immortality.

-Rajneesh

There was an ancient mysterious wall which stood at the edge of a village and whenever anyone climbed the wall to look onto the other side, instead of coming back he smiled and jumped to the other side, never to return. The inhabitants of the village became curious as to what could draw these beings to the other side of the wall. After all, their village had all the necessities of living a comfortable life.

They made an arrangement where they tied a person's feet, so when he looked over and wished to jump, they could pull him back.

The next time someone tried to climb the wall to see what was on the other side, they chained his feet so he could not go over. He looked on the other side and was delighted at what he saw, and smiled. Those standing below grew curious to question him and pulled him back. To their great disappointment he had lost the power of speech.

Those who have seen cannot say. That which has been seen cannot be painted, cannot be reduced to words. But still each one has to give a try. The world goes on becoming more and more beautiful because of these efforts.

-Rajneesh