Osho Quotes on Freedom

Osho Quotes on Freedom

1. When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are responsible. You cannot throw responsibility on anybody else, you are alone. And whatsoever you do, it is your doing. You cannot say that somebody else forced you to do it — because you are free; nobody can force you! Because you are free, it is your decision to do something or not to do something. With freedom comes responsibility. Freedom IS responsibility. But the mind is very cunning, the mind interprets in its own way: it always goes on listening to that which it wants to listen to. It goes on interpreting things in its own way. The mind never tries to understand what really is the truth. It has taken that decision already.
2. It is your freedom to be a Buddha or not to be a Buddha — and if you like sleep and the dreams it’s perfectly okay with me. I respect your freedom.
3. The moment you give your whole responsibility to somebody, unknowingly you are also giving your whole freedom.
4. When I say ‘freedom’, I mean be responsible. The more responsible you become, the more free you become; or, the more free you become, the more responsibility comes on you. Then you have to be very alert to what you are doing, what you are saying. Even about your small unconscious gestures you have to be very alert — because there is nobody else to control you, it is only you. When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are a God. It is not licence, it is tremendous discipline.
5. The whole effort of meditation is to give you a taste of ultimate freedom. So don’t be afraid of anything — there is nothing to be afraid of. It is your own sky, it is your own truth, it is your own originality.
6. Many people become too much afraid of the responsibility because they don’t see the other side of the coin. On one side is written ‘responsibility’; on another side is written ‘freedom’. Responsibility means freedom. If somebody else is forcing you to be in misery, then you cannot get out of it — how can you get out of it if somebody else is forcing you into misery? Unless the other decides not to make you miserable you can never get out of it. If it is you who are responsible for your misery, then it is for you to decide. If you are enjoying being miserable, be miserable thousandfold — there is no problem. Enjoy! If you are not enjoying it, then drop it. Be clear-cut.
7. Man lives in freedom. Freedom needs insecurity and uncertainty. A real man of intelligence is always hesitant because he has no dogma to rely upon, to lean upon. He has to look and respond.
8. The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears — there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it. It is your responsibility.
9. I am not here to discipline you, I am not here to give you principles — my whole effort is to give you an unprincipled Life, a spontaneous, undisciplined life. The only gift that I can present to you is freedom. And freedom has no walls to it, it is as infinite as the sky. Claim the whole sky — it is yours.
10. I don’t teach tolerance. I teach freedom from all the nonsense of being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. Be free from all prejudices. Be just a human being! And in that freedom you will find great joy, and in that freedom. for the first time you will feel love for other human beings, compassion, brotherhood. You will start feeling the whole universe as your family, your commune. And not only with human beings — when the fascist in you has disappeared and the fanatic is gone, even with the trees and the birds and the animals you will have a communion. You will be constantly in a beautiful dialogue with existence.
11. Meditation is the balance. Meditation is the bird with two wings: freedom and love.
12. At this moment, your sole concern is meditation. Go deeper into meditation and you will find compassion, and you will find understanding of compassion. You will find freedom, and you will find that freedom does not mean ungratefulness, unthankfulness.
13. Be on your own. Only that way one grows. There is no other way to grow. The mind always wants to throw responsibility onto somebody else; the mind always wants to become a slave. The mind is a slave. It is afraid of freedom, it is afraid of responsibility — hence so many churches and so many organisations exist in the world, because so many people are ready to fall in their traps. In fact churches are not responsible, it is the people’s need. Because they need certain types of imprisonments somebody is going to provide them.
14. Go in insecurity, go in freedom; go independent — there is no need to lean on anything or anybody. Don’t use me as a crutch. Allow me to help you to become independent, to be free of me and to be free of everything.
15. Any habit that becomes a force, a dominating force over you, is a sin. One should live more in freedom. One should be able to do things not according to habits but according to the situations.
16. God is available only when you are unburdened. But they will never know. They will knock at the doors of temples but they will never know where the real temple exists. The real temple is freedom: dying moment to moment to the past and living the present. And freedom to move, to move into the dark, into the unknown — that is the door to the divine!
17. Don’t throw the responsibility on anybody else. Nobody else is a deciding factor, neither your mother nor your father. Whatsoever the psychoanalysts say is really irrelevant to your being. It is for you to decide. Even the people who are mad are mad because of their own decision. Somehow they found it to be convenient. Somehow they decided; they voted for it. Nobody has forced them. Nobody can force anybody because the innermost quality of being is freedom. It is not something accidental; it is your very nature.
18. Each individual is a freedom, an unknown freedom. It is impossible to predict, impossible to expect. One has to live in awareness and in understanding.
19. You cannot possess your beloved like a thing; you cannot become a possessor — yet in a certain sense you possess your beloved, and in a certain sense you don’t possess. In fact, the more you love, the more you make your beloved free. In fact, the more freedom you give to your beloved, the more you possess. The more you possess, the less you possess. This is the paradox of love.
20. Buddha says: You can be victorious, but take the responsibility upon your own shoulders. It is your own desiring mind that has been creating your lives. This wheel of life and death is your own creation. When for the first time you realize this, you are shocked, shaken — shaken to the very roots. But slowly slowly, you start seeing a great freedom in it. You start rejoicing that, “If I am responsible, then there is a possibility for me to change the whole pattern.”
21. Guilt is bad, guilt is very dangerous — it destroys you. It is like a wound. But to feel responsible is very, very essential — it gives you soul, it gives you an integration. And unless you feel responsibles you are not a healthy person. A healthy person is always aware that whatsoever he is doing, he is responsible. The very idea of responsibility will give you a freedom, a dignity. An authentic being will come out of it. You will become more present, you will be more here and now.
22. I am not confusing you, I am simply giving you total freedom — and of course, freedom is confusing. Confusing, because you have to decide every moment. I am not going to decide for you. Who am I to decide for you? Anybody who decides for you is a murderer. And you are in search of your murderers. You want somebody to take the whole responsibility.