Osho Quotes on Individual

Osho Quotes on Individual

1. Be an individual if you want to be happy. If you want to be happy, then start choosing on your own. There are many times when you will have to be disobedient — be! There are many times when you will have to be rebellious — be! There is no disrespect implied in it. Be respectful to your parents. But remember that your deepest responsibility is towards your own being.
2. Try to find your individuality, your integrity, and make the effort of not compromising. Because the more you compromise, the less you are an individual. You are only a cog in the wheel, just a part in the vast mechanism, just a small part of the mob — not an individual in your own beauty, in your own right. I am absolutely against compromise. Death is far more beautiful than a life of compromise.
3. Be an individual and pay for it. In fact, if you get something without paying for it, don’t accept it — that is insulting to you. DON’T accept it; that is below you. Say: “I will pay for it — only then will I accept it.” In fact, if something is given to you without your being ready for it, without your being capable for it, without your being receptive for it, you will not be able to possess it for long. You will lose it somewhere or other. You will not be able to appreciate its value.
4. An individual is bound to be a rebel. An individual is a non-conformist, he cannot conform. He can say yes only to things which he feels are worth saying yes to, but it depends on his own feeling, his own intuitive understanding, his own intelligence. He cannot be forced to yield. He can surrender out of love, but he cannot be made to surrender; he would rather die than surrender. He cannot be an obedient slave — not that he does not know how to obey. When he feels for something, when he is committed to something, involved with something, he obeys, he obeys totally, but he is really obeying his own inner light; he is not following any commandments from the outside.
5. To be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you. Nobody wants you to be on your own.
6. The soul is always individual; mind is always group. ANY mind, watch carefully, and you will find it belongs to some group. If you believe in God, that means you belong to a certain group which believes in God; they have given the idea, the conditioning, to you. What are your beliefs? From where do they come? They come from the social mind — from the church, from the state; you can find the source from where they come.
7. The individual has totally different interests from the society, because the society has no soul. The society is soulless. And if you become too much a part of the society, it will reduce your soul also to a non-entity. Beware, before you have lost your whole opportunity. Don’t be a slave. Follow society to the point you feel is needed, but always remain master of your own destiny.
8. 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. You come to me seeking knowledge; you want set formulas so that you can cling to them. I don’t give you any. In fact, if you have any I take them away. By and by, I destroy your certainty; by and by, I make you more and more hesitant; by and by, I make you more and more insecure. That is the only thing that has to be done. That’s the only thing a master needs to do! — to leave you in total freedom. In total freedom, with all the possibilities opening, nothing fixed… you will have to be aware. Nothing else is possible.
9. My sannyas is not in any way imposing something on you. It is simply conferring freedom on you. By giving you sannyas I am not giving you an ideology — I am just giving you courage to get free of all ideologies. By giving sannyas to you I am not giving you a certain religion — Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian — I am simply giving you courage to be an individual, to be a unique individual.
10. Remember that individuality is not personality. When you drop personality, you discover your individuality — and only the individual can become enlightened. The false cannot become the ultimate realization of truth. Only the true can meet with the true, only the same can meet the same. Your individuality is existential; hence when your individuality blossoms you become one with the whole.
11. Neither Indians nor anybody else is specially spiritual or holy. Spirituality is something that happens to individuals. It is the individual becoming aflame with God. It has nothing to do with any collectivity — nation, race, church.
12. Be happy when your child disobeys you. Thank God that now he has started moving towards becoming an individual. It is only by disobeying, rebelling, that a child attains authentic individuality. If parents are wise they will be happy.
13. All the societies, all the nations, all the cultures, have taken it for granted that the individuals exist for them, not vice-versa. To me, just the opposite is the case: the society exists for the individual, the culture exists for the individual, the nation exists for the individual. Everything can be sacrificed, but the individual cannot be sacrificed for anything. Individuality is the very flowering of existence — nothing is higher than it.
14. The disappearance of your person is not your disappearance, remember; on the contrary, it is your appearance. As your person disappears, your personality falls away; your individuality, your individual arises. To have a personality is hypocrisy. To be an individual is your birthright. And the function of the master is to take away everything that is not you, and leave only that which is essentially yours, given by existence itself.
15. Each individual is unique in ordinary life. The uniqueness becomes even more sharp and clear, crystal clear, when the person becomes enlightened — because only then his pure genius, his pure individuality, uncontaminated, unpolluted, is revealed.
16. I am basically an individualist, because only the individual has a soul. No group can claim a soul — they are all dead arrangements. Only the individual is a living phenomenon.
17. A Christian is not religious just because he is a Christian. A Hindu is not religious just because he has become part of an organized doctrine. A Jaina is not religious because he has chosen a certain party line. An authentically religious man is individual. He is alone, and in his aloneness there is great beauty, great splendor. I teach you that aloneness. I teach you the beauty, and the grandeur, and the fragrance of aloneness. In your aloneness you will reach to the heights of Everest. In your aloneness you will be able to touch the farthest star. In your aloneness you will blossom to your total potential. Never become a believer, never become a follower, never become a part of any organization. Remain authentically true to yourself. Don’t betray yourself.
18. Humanity will never be religious unless all organized religions disappear and religion becomes an individual commitment towards existence, so no question of compromise arises. Let me say to you: Religion is rebellious, and the man of religion is a rebel. He is rebellious against all orthodoxy, against all traditions, against all organizations, against all ideologies. His only love is for truth, and his whole love is for truth. Only such a man finds it. Others only wander into ignorance, into dreams, into sleep — and they suffer.