You are unique.. Just be yourself!

Today I have added a new category to this blog – “Irrepressible Osho”. I want to share snippets from Osho’s books, which are largely a collection of his discourses. When I started to think of a name for the category the word “irrepressible” came to my mind and here’s the google search that brings up the synonyms.

Hahahahaha, I couldn’t stop laughing because even Osho couldn’t have described himself better. He is indeed inextinguishable, unquenchable, uncontainable for sure, undying, eternal and well, irrepressible.

The only regret of my life is that I didn’t meet or see Osho, inspite of living a few kilometres away from the Pune ashram for the first 11 years of my life. We have crossed the ashram many times on dad’s scooter, but never went in. Krishnan and I discovered Osho when we were given a book of his called “The beginning of the beginning” by Srihari and the rest is “ourstory”  not “history” :):). I do believe that Osho is the most intelligent being to have ever walked the Earth, and he has prepared the world for what is to come. And his irrepressible spirit !!

I have started to read this book called “The wild geese and the water” and here’s are some excerpts that caught my attention about how unique each of us is –

“… Each individual is unique; uniqueness is a gift from existence. But why have these religions been teaching: Live in the spirit of Jesus Christ, or in the spirit of Gautam Buddha – why? Don’t you have your own spirit? Then drink alcohol-get some spirit! Make some spirit of your own!”

“……. The whole idea is of imitation. Imitate! You have no right to be yourself, you have to imitate. You can be accepted only if you are somebody else-Buddha,Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, Kabir, Nanak, but not yourself. Can’t you see a simple fact?-that Jesus was not Moses. He should have repeated, then he would have saved his own life. He would not have been crucified by the Jews if he had lived the spirit of Moses. But he tried to create his own spirit, he tried to be an individual, and that was his crime. If he had simply repeated he would have respected, glorified as a great rabbi. But he became a rebel.

Everybody has to become a rebel, not an imitator.”

“..Thats why you see people living their lives deadly serious, they don’t love their work, they don’t enjoy their work. How can they enjoy? They are not doing their work. You can never enjoy somebody else’s life, howsoever beautiful it is-it is not your life. You can only enjoy being yourself.”

“…Nobody needs to be anybody else. Just be yourself. Show some respect to your life. Respect yourself, love yourself, because unless you respect yourself you will not respect anybody else in the world.”

Phew! I was laughing through the entire first chapter. Osho is so liberating and that’s the biggest favour he has done to humanity. All his teachings help you to be just you, without accepting any dogma, social norm or religious injunction. None of the other so called “saints” and “Godmen/women” are liberating and that is my simple test before following any of the mystics. If there is even the smallest affiliation to any religion, concept, belief system etc and I am compared against that – I just back out. I don’t want to spend even one minute of my life “not measuring up” to someone’s idea of what is right.

Thank you Osho… for being around and saying all that you did.

Message for me today – “You are unique. Just be yourself”.