Osho Quotes on Roots and Wings

Osho Quotes on Roots and Wings

1. Love with freedom  —  if you have it, you are a king or a queen. That is the real kingdom of God; love with freedom. Love gives you the roots into the earth, and freedom gives you the wings.
2. The only help for you and for others too, comes from meditation, because it is meditation that gives you roots in the earth and wings in the sky. It is meditation that creates that space in which your potential can become actual. It is meditation that functions like a soil for the seed to sprout. And you can be a blessing to others only if you have first been a blessing to yourself. You can help others only if you have helped yourself. If you are not rooted, centered, mature enough, even if you want to do good to others you are bound to do harm.
3. Let your life be integrated at the centre of celebration. Only choose that which is celebrating, joyous. If you can go on dropping all that is sad, sombre, serious, all that gives you a long face, you will be moving in the right direction. Cultivate all that brings joy, and I say ‘all’: the bodily, the psychological, the spiritual. The real celebration is when the body, the mind and the soul all dance together. If only the body dances, it is happiness; something is missing in it. It is very gross. If only the soul dances then it is very subtle, abstract, not of the earth. It has wings but no roots; again something is missing. Between the two is the bridge of the mind. The mind can divide the two, it can also unite the two. When the mind divides, it is called the mind. When it unites, it is called meditation. And when all the three dance so together, as if they are one, that is ullas, that is celebration. So let this be your criterion. Whenever the question arises of what has to be done, this has to be the criterion: if it brings joy, do it. And whatsoever brings joy to you will bring joy to others too. Sometimes it may not be very apparent, but this is the fundamental law: that which brings joy to you is bound to bring joy to everybody, and that which brings misery to you is bound to create misery for others, sooner or later. Be utterly self-full, and remember that in being self-full, you are serving humanity.
4. A truly religious person will have wings. And will also have roots. Roots in the earth and wings in the sky. That is the true synthesis. And then religion is complete, total, whole.
5. Look deeply. Find your roots. This silence is the miracle that you are carrying within yourself. Deeper… and deeper… and deeper, without any fear — it is your own sky. Open your wings and fly to any heights you want. There is no obstruction anywhere, just the courage is needed.
6. Meditation is a way of settling in oneself, at the innermost core of your being. Once you have found the center of your existence, you will have found both the roots and the wings. The roots are in existence, making you a more integrated human being, an individual. And the wings are in the fragrance that is released by being in contact with existence. The fragrance consists of freedom, love, compassion, authenticity, sincerity, a sense of humor, and a tremendous feeling of blissfulness. The roots make you an individual, and the wings give you the freedom to love, to be creative, to share unconditionally the joy that you have found. The roots and wings come together. They are two sides of one experience, and that experience is finding the center of your being. We are continuously moving on the circumference, always somewhere else far away from our own being, always directed towards others. When all this is dropped, when all objects are dropped, when you close your eyes to all that is not you — even your mind, your heartbeats are left far behind — only a silence remains. In this silence you will settle slowly into the center of your being, and then the roots will grow on their own accord, and the wings too. You need not worry about them. You cannot do anything about them. They come on their own. You simply fulfill one condition: that is, to be at home — and the whole existence becomes a bliss to you, a benediction.
7. That’s what I’m going to give you: wings into the sky, into the heaven —  weightlessness gives you these wings- and roots into the earth, a groundedness, a centering. This earth and that heaven : they are two parts of the whole. In this life, your so-called ordinary life, you must be rooted; and in your inner space, in the spiritual life, you must be weightless and flying and flowing, floating. Roots and wings I can give to you- if you allow, because I am only a midwife. I cannot force the child out of you. A forced child will be ugly, and a forced child may die. Just allow me. The child is there, you are already pregnant. Everybody is pregnant with God. The child is there and you have already carried too long. Long ago the period of nine months passed. That may be the root cause of your anguish —  that you are carrying something in the womb which needs birth, which needs to come out, which needs to be born.
8. Rooted in meditation you will have wings of compassion. That’s why I say that I would like to give you two things: Roots into this earth and wings into that heaven. Meditation is this earth, it is here and now; the very moment you can spread your roots, do it. And once roots are there your wings will reach to the highest sky possible. Compassion is the sky, meditation is the earth, and when meditation and compassion meet a buddha is born.
9. Go deeper and deeper into meditatio so you can go higher and higher in compassion. The deeper the roots of a tree reach the higher the peak. You can see the tree, you cannot see the roots, but they are always in proportion. If the tree is reaching to the sky the roots must be reaching to the very end of the earth. The proportion is the same. As deep as your meditation is, the same depth will be achieved in compassion. So compassion is the criterion. If you think you are meditative and there is no compassion, then you are deceiving yourself. Compassion must happen, because that is the flowering of the tree. Meditation is just a means towards compassion; compassion is the goal.
10. We live rooted in the earth. We are like trees rooted in the earth. Buddha is a bird on his wings in the sky. Now these trees rooted in the earth are trying to understand the message of the bird who has no roots in the earth any more, who is flying in the sky, who knows the vastness, the infinity of the sky. He has a different understanding, a different vision. And the distance is immense. Only very few can have a few glimpses of what Buddha is trying to do. Something of absolute value is being conveyed to you. If you cannot understand then remember that you cannot understand. Don’t say, like that whisky-drinking, chainsmoking, popcorn-munching priest, that Buddha is mad. Don’t say that, beware of that. It is easier to say that Buddha is mad. Then you are freed of the responsibility of understanding; then you can close.
11. A Buddha alone is one thing. A Buddha with his SANGHA, with his commune, is another thing. Buddha alone is a beautiful flower but almost unrelated to existence, will sooner or later disappear, fade away and will become a myth, and people will wonder whether he ever existed or not. A Buddha with a commune is a very, very concrete reality — not just a flower, more rooted in the earth. The Master finds roots into the earth through the disciples. The Master belongs to the sky — he can fly, he has wings, but he has no more roots. He can get roots only through you. And when a Master has roots in the earth something of immense value happens to the earth. An atmosphere, a soil is created. A new psychology is created. In that psychology many many flowers will bloom. Love is a miracle. It is alchemy.
12. With a master you are caught. It is no longer a question of giving you more information; on the contrary, the master starts cleaning you of all the information that you have collected before. A master really washes your brain; it is a dry cleaning process. It brings you into a state of tabula rasa, nothing is written on you — a pure consciousness which knows nothing. But as knowledge disappears, a strange phenomenon starts happening: you start feeling yourself more. You know less, but you are more. You start growing roots, you start growing wings, your being starts expanding.
13. My emphasis is to live in all the seven centers together. Never lose contact with the lowest, and never avoid flying with the highest. Use all the centers! Then your wings will be in the sky and your roots will be in the earth. And a perfect man is a meeting of heaven and earth — that’s what Taoists say: a meeting of heaven and earth. That’s what a perfect man is: meeting of the physical and the spiritual, meeting of the body and the soul, meeting of the world and renunciation, meeting of prose and poetry.
14. Men love a sane woman — otherwise, they will REALLY go mad — to keep them back on the earth. The woman represents the earth. A man needs a woman because he has no roots in his own being. He needs a woman, the warm earth, the dark soil, where he can have his roots and remain rooted in the earth. He is afraid — he has wings but no roots. And he is afraid that if he is not holding to the earth he may be gone, he may disappear into the infinite sky and there may be no coming back. That fear keeps people running after women. And a woman has no wings. She has roots, great roots; a woman is pure earth. And she is afraid that if she remains alone she will never be able to Fly into the unknown. A woman can’t be a dreamer like a man. It is not just accidental that women have not created great poetry or music. They don’t have wings, they are very earthly, very pragmatic, very real — and sane, of course. They are so sane, that’s why they don’t write poetry. You have to have some insanity to write poetry. You have to have some delusions, megalomania, then only can you write poetry.
15. Prem means love — one who hears love and prayer. And deepest in your being is that centre which hears prayer and love. And it hears only two things. Nothing else ever reaches it; all else remains on the circumference, on the periphery. It cannot go into that deep core of your being; only prayer and love reach there. When you are in deep love you are centred. That’s why you are centred, because love connects you with your own centre. That’s why people are in so much need of love, because without love they feel uncentred, unrooted. A tree without roots in the soil is thirsty for soil, is hungry for the soil. That’s how a man or woman is without love: unconnected with themselves. Love connects…. So is the case with prayer. Prayer is the highest form of love, the purest form of love. In love there is some demand hidden, unhidden, conscious, unconscious, but there is some subtle undercurrent of demand, of desire, of conditions. In prayer love has become free of conditions, free of desires, free of passion. In prayer love is freedom. It has stopped begging. It asks nothing; it has forgotten the language of asking. On the contrary, it has learned how to give. When love starts giving it becomes prayer. So in fact, only love is the bridge. The higher love is, the more rooted you will be…. More grounded. Man also has roots just as do trees, but those roots are not visible roots, that’s the only difference. Otherwise we have roots, but our roots are invisible. They need nourishment, and the nourishment comes through love and finally through prayer. So start by loving and by prayer; that is your whole path. The beginning should be love and the end should be prayer, and somewhere in the middle of the way, love is transformed into prayer. If one can go on loving and loving and loving, one day one suddenly sees that now the love is no more crawling on the earth but has grown wings and is flying into the sky. Then it is prayer.
16. Love without peace is feverish, restless. And a feverish, restless love cannot soar very high, it remains crawling on the earth; it is ill. It is more lust than love. It is more instinct than intuition. It is more body than soul. It is more earth than sky. It continously creates a storm within your being, upheavals upon upheavals. Hence love without peace is not going to fulfill anybody. And peace without love is dead, cold… ice cold. Nothing can grow out of it: it is barren, it is impotent. Peace without love can help you to go upwards but you will not have any roots in the earth. And a man to be fully contented needs both: wings and roots. To be really total one needs to touch both depths and heights. Peace can take you to the heights, love takes you to the roots; and where love and peace meet, that is the point to be attained because that is the meeting of God and world, earth and sky. My whole effort here is to help you to come to that point. I am not in favor of one against the other. I want you to be both together, simultaneously full of love and full of peace. Then love is healthy, whole, and peace is alive and warm — and that is the greatest magic in life. One cannot ask for more.
17. You cannot choose one and avoid the other. Love is a solid phenomenon, it cannot be cut into fragments. Just as your heights need to be showered by love, your roots which are clinging to the earth have to be shaken, because every clinging is an imprisonment. Love would like to give you wings to fly — and with a clinging mind, with attachment, it is impossible to fly in the open sky. Just to cling to the earth, you have grown great roots going deep down so that nobody can shake you. It is out of fear, but fear is just the opposite pole of freedom. Don’t cling to anything — not even to the person you love. Clinging will destroy the very love to which you were clinging. Don’t become a bondage.
18. One has to learn acceptance. If today you feel sad, you feel sad — accept it. Not only accept it, enjoy it. Sadness has its own qualities. It can give you gifts that nothing else can. Happiness never goes as deep as sadness. When you are sad, try to go deep into yourself, because sadness can take you deeper than anything else. Happiness moves towards the heights. Sadness moves towards the depths. When you are happy, soar high, because nothing can take you as high as happiness. Then leave the earth completely, and take a jump towards the height — fly. Use happiness. Use happiness to touch the height of your consciousness. And when sadness comes, dive deep. Use sadness to touch the very depth of your being. Then you will see that both are part of the same ladder. Because the height is yours, the depth is also yours. A man who knows only his height and has not known his depth, will remain shallow. A man who has known only his depth and has not known his height, will remain sombre, sad, burdened. He will not be able to fly. He will have roots, but he will not have wings, and both are needed. A great tree goes high in the sky and its roots penetrate deep into the earth, into the dark earth. Sadness leads you there, and happiness leads you into the sky, into the sunlight. So use everything that becomes available. Then there is no need to be sad when sadness is there. You can use it, and you can be happy because of sadness. And when there is happiness, there is no need to be excited. Use it, and you will not go crazy because of it. Once you know how to use all your moods, you have become a master. And that is what the whole of spiritual growth, of meditation, is all about — to use all methods, all windows of your being.
19. Ideas create stupidity because the more the ideas are there, the more the mind is burdened. And how can a burdened mind know? The more ideas are there, the more it becomes just like dust which has gathered on a mirror. How can the mirror mirror? How can the mirror reflect? Your intelligence is just covered by opinions, the dust, and everyone who is opinionated is bound to be stupid and dull. That’s why professors of philosophy are almost always stupid. They know too much to know at all. They are burdened too much. They cannot fly in the sky, they can’t have wings. And they are so much in the mind, they can’t have roots in the earth. They are not grounded in the earth and they are not free to fly into the sky.
20. The whole is connected. The faraway sun sends its rays to you and those rays are life. If the sun disappears, all life will disappear. Even the sun gets its energy from some source; scientists have not yet been able to find that source, but if that source disappears everything will disappear. Everything is related, joined together. This world does not exist in fragments, it exists as a whole, one whole. To me, “this” plus “that” is God. That’s why I say very contradictory things. I would like to give you two things: roots into this earth, into all that is earthly, and wings into that heaven, into all that is abstract for you now, into all that you cannot even comprehend, that cannot be conceptualized. Roots into the finite, wings into the infinite… And you need not renounce “this.” If you renounce “this,” you are renouncing your roots. That has happened; that is why your monks, your sadhus, look so dead. They have renounced “this;” they are uprooted beings. Uproot a tree and you are exposing the part that was hidden in the earth. Soon the flowers will die, the branches will die, the leaves will start falling.
21. I see wings not against roots but as a flowering of the roots. Trees have wings into the sky — their branches are their wings. They have roots into the earth and branches into the sky. I would like you to be a strong tree — with roots into “this” and wings into “that.”. My God is not against the world. My God is in the world. My God is the world. This earth is not against that heaven; they are two polarities of the same phenomenon.
22. In the future, the East is not going to be East and the West is not going to be West. The earth is going to become a global village — a small place where all distinctions will disappear. And then for the first time the great synthesis will arise, the greatest ever — which will not think in extremes, which will not think that if you go outside, if you are a searcher after knowledge then you lose your roots in being; or if you search in your being you lose your roots in the world, in the scientific realm. Both can be together, and whenever this happens a man has both wings and he can fly to the highest sky possible. Otherwise you have only one wing.
23. A child in the mother’s womb is waiting to come to the earth. First one has to get roots into the earth; only then you can spread your branches into the sky like wings. Unless you have roots, you cannot spread your wings into the sky. The deeper the roots, the higher goes the tree … almost reaching to the stars.
24. The way of all gardeners: first you have to give soil, manure, roots to the plant, and then flowers come of their own accord. Flowers will come, but they cannot come without roots. Roots and flowers are like two wings: if you have both wings then the whole sky is yours. But the most important thing, the first, the basic, the fundamental, is the root.
25. Enlightenment is the ultimate flowering of consciousness. It can happen only when you are rooted in the body, but it cannot happen only with the body. You have to move inwards, you have to transcend the body too. Your roots should be in the body and your wings should be in the soul.
26. If you become aflame, if people see both Zorba and Buddha in you, you will create a great challenge around yourself for everybody. If you can become so rich on the outside and on the inside, so rich that you can have roots deep in the earth and wings flying in the sky, so rich that you can master matter and consciousness both together, then it will be an invitation, a challenge, and an exciting journey for anybody who comes in contact with you. Rebellion is always contagious; it is a wildfire. But you should have the flame. Then wherever you move, you will be setting people on fire — people will become aflame with a new light, with a new vision, with a new idea, a new conception of man and his future.
27. Never belong to any organization, never belong to any holy scriptures, churches, temples. Never belong to any monastery. This whole existence is available for you — rejoice in it, celebrate in it. No religion teaches celebration; they teach celibacy! I am absolutely against celibacy and all for celebration. I am making every effort to bring a new approach towards life which the past humanity has missed — a new freedom, a new sky to open your wings. All religions have been cutting your wings, putting you into cages and making you believe that this is all that life is. There was a reason for them to do this. Unless you take away people’s individuality and destroy their wings and their freedom and cut their roots of nourishment, you cannot enslave them. It is impossible to create armies and wars; it is impossible to make millions of people suffer in poverty — they would have revolted long ago. But religions are keeping them subdued by the fear of God, by the fear of punishment in hell, and by the greed that if you follow their commandments you will be rewarded immensely.
28. The woman has had nothing to laugh about, she has had only things to weep and cry for. She knows perfectly well how to cry; she is expert in tears. Laughter has been a faraway goal. What has the woman to laugh about? Her whole life is so badly damaged: her potential has been so much crushed, her individuality has been kept in such a bondage, her wings have been cut, her roots destroyed. No other class has suffered so much through the hands of man as woman. And she has given birth to man, and she has raised man, and she has loved man, and she has been a companion to him in the darkest nights. She has been a solace in the most depressive moments, she has been an ointment for all his wounds. Still, man has paid her only with slavery and more slavery.
29. Speak from within, use the voice that can take it on it’s wings to the outside. And the same has to be as far as listening is concerned: Don’t just hear, listen — let it reach to the very roots of your being. Then only is there a communion.
30. I am not saying it cannot happen now, remember. If you are ready, if you are ready to wait forever, it can happen now, because this moment is as potential as any other moment. At this time God’s door is as open as ever. But you will need eyes to see, you will need wings to fly, you will need a womb-like receptivity to receive, you will need an innocent mind, thoughtless, aware, loving, compassionate. These things are not seasonal flowers; they take time to grow roots into the earth.
31. Zorba is beautiful, but something is missing. The earth is his, but the heaven is missing. He is earthly, rooted, like a giant cedar, but he has no wings. He cannot fly into the sky. He has roots but no wings. Eat, drink and be merry is perfectly good in itself: nothing is wrong in it. But it is not enough. Soon you will get tired of it. One cannot just go on eating, drinking and marrying. Soon the merry-go-round turns into a sorry-go-round — because it is repetitive. Only a very mediocre mind can go on being happy with it. If you have a little intelligence, sooner or later you will find the utter futility of it all. How long can you go on eating, drinking and marrying? Sooner or later the question is bound to arise — what is the point of it all? Why? It is impossible to avoid the question for long. And if you are very intelligent, it IS ALWAYS there, persistently there, hammering on your heart for the answer: Give me the answer! — why?