Books by Osho

Selected from Osho's hundreds of public talks and intimate conversations --from How to use this book.

For five thousand years the politician and the priest have been in the same business. In this provocative volume, Osho invites us to look through his microscope and examine not only the profound influence of religion and politics in society, but also its influence in our inner wo...rld. To the extent we have internalized and adopted as our own the values and belief systems of the powers that be, he says, we have boxed ourselves in, imprisoned ourselves, and tragically crippled our vision of what is possible. From Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring, from the election of the first Black president in the United States to the appointment of a new pope who promises to use St. Francis of Assisi as a role model (following endless scandals involving child abuse)the roles of priests and politicians in our public life have recently captured the attention of our times, often just initiating another round of hope and subsequent disillusionment. In other words, wittingly or unwittingly, we keep digging ourselves deeper into the mess we are in. A new kind of world is possible but only if we understand clearly how the old has functioned up to now. And, based on that understanding, take the responsibility and the courage to become a new kind of human being. You have to be aware who the real criminals are. The problem is that those criminals are thought to be great leaders, sages, saints, mahatmas. So I have to expose all these people because they are the causes. For example, it is easier to understand that perhaps politicians are the causes of many problems: wars, murders, massacres, burning people. It is more difficult when it comes to religious leaders, because nobody has raised his hand against them. They have remained respectable for centuries, and as time goes on their respectability goes on growing. The most difficult job for me is to make you aware that these people knowingly or unknowingly, that does not matter have created this world.
Read more

Zen masters are dangerous people! While many of their stories have an entertaining aspect, the real meaning behind them is the total and radical transformation of human beings. Osho is a contemporary Zen Master and according to his own statements even more dangerous than the anci...ent masters. Like the masters of old, Osho tries to create situations for modern seekers that allow instant awakening, or enlightenment - to bring us out of the old habits and patterns of the mind and its illusions, out of the fog of conditioned beliefs and assumptions, and into the reality of the atomic, clear moment - the here and now. The stories Osho uses as points of departure in this series are carefully chosen for their emphasis on healing the conflicts created in the human psyche by Judeo-Christian traditions - ideas that divide and separate this world from the other world, the natural from the supernatural, the heart from the mind, the material from the spiritual. As he unwraps these simple and profound Zen tales, ordinary and yet utterly mysterious, Osho offers key insights into each individual's journey toward a wholeness that embraces both the particular and the universal. Be rooted in the body so you can have wings in the soul, he says. Be rooted in the earth so you can spread into the sky; be rooted in the visible so you can reach into the invisible. Don't create duality and don't create any antagonism. If I am against anything, I am against antagonism. I am against being against anything; I am for the whole, for the complete circle. A Bird on the Wing is an invitation to enter the world of Zen: to move from words to silence and from theory to experience. This book will take you as far as words can go; the rest is up to you. This is the very essence of Zen.
Read more

We are here, we have life -- but we don't know what life really is. We can feel our energy, but don't know where this energy comes from and to what goal this energy is going. We are that energy, we have glimpses of its true source and our connection to it, and those glimpses keep... us going even when it seems we will never find what we are seeking. An ancient Zen story symbolizes the search for the source of this life. Zen master Kakuan's story of The Ten Bulls of Zen is a teaching that uses ten images, each representing a particular step on the journey of experiencing and understanding it means to be a conscious and aware human being. Osho takes us through this story and its lessons for the traveler on a journey into the inner world -- that's what meditation is all about according to him. But reaching the pure, uncluttered freedom of meditation is not the end. The circle is only complete when the seeker comes back into the marketplace of the world, but as a transformed person. The book is illustrated with ten original images of Gomizen's Ten Bulls of Zen.
Read more

Although the word 'psychology' does not come up in this book, this early work by Osho shows his deep understanding of the subject and his attempt to make the connection between meditation and a modern understanding of psychology that includes the importance that our minds play in... determining and giving direction, on many levels, to our lives. Osho has taught for many years that meditation is not a religious exercise but a scientific method to understand what the mind is, and how it works, and to learn how to create a healthy distance from what is, in many ways, a programmed and robot-like mechanism that seems to be dominating our lives and decisions and activities more and more and not always in a positive way. As Osho has said so often, beginning many decades ago - that humanity is afflicted by a deep and fundamental insanity, and that we initiate each new generation of children into that madness - is now becoming more and more obvious. The children who refuse to be initiated into that madness will appear rebellious or mad to their elders, who persist with the best intentions to force them onto the same path, to participate in the same madness. It is utterly dangerous to be sane in this world, Osho says. A sane person has to pay a heavy price for his sanity. Osho pleads in this book for what he calls an independent mind, independent thinking and challenges us to question our belief that we are already great independent minds, a belief based on the lack of understanding that our thoughts mostly come from others, like a computer program full of malware downloaded into our brains. What I mean by the thinking state is that you should have eyes, what I mean is the ability to think on your own. But I don't mean a crowd of thoughts. We all have a crowd of thoughts within us, but we don't have thinking within us. So many thoughts go on moving within us, but the power of thinking has not been awakened. In his early days of teaching Osho ran meditation camps in which he intr
Read more