Goals are in future; life is here, close by

Make your life an aesthetic experience. And not much is needed to make it that; just an aesthetic consciousness is needed, a sensitive soul. Become more sensitive, more sensuous, and you will become more spiritual.

Priests have almost poisoned your body into a state of death. You are carrying paralyzed bodies and paralyzed minds and paralyzed souls – you are moving on crutches. Throw away all those crutches! Even if you have to fall and crawl on the ground, that is better than clinging to crutches.

And experience life in all possible ways – good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don’t be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become. Search for all possible alternatives, move in all directions, be a wanderer, a vagabond of the world of life and existence. And don’t miss any opportunity to live.

No past, no future
Don’t look back. Only fools think of the past-fools who do not have the intelligence to live in the present. And only fools imagine about the future, because they don’t have the courage to live in the present. Forget the past; forget the future, this moment is all. This moment has to become your prayer, your love, your life, your death, your everything. This is it.

And live courageously, don’t be cowards. Don’t think of consequences; only cowards think of consequences. Don’t be too result-oriented; people who are result-oriented miss life. Don’t think of goals, because goals are always in the future and far away, and life is here, now, close by.

Purposeless beauty
Don’t be too purposive. Let me repeat it: don’t be too purposive. Don’t always bring in the idea, “What is the purpose of it?” because that is a strategy created by your enemies, by the enemies of humanity, to poison your very source of life. Ask the question, “What is the purpose of it?” and everything becomes meaningless.

It is early morning, the sun is rising and the East is red with the sun, and the birds are singing and the trees are waking up, and it is all joy. It is a rejoicing, a new day has happened again. And you are standing there asking the question, “What is the purpose of it?” You miss it totally. You are simply disconnected.

A rose flower is dancing in the wind, so delicate and yet so strong, so soft yet fighting with the strong wind, so momentary yet so confident. Look at the rose flower. Have you ever seen any rose flower nervous? So confident, so utterly confident, as if it is going to be there forever. Just a moment’s existence, and such trust in eternity.

Dancing in the wind, whispering with the wind, sending out its fragrance-and you are standing there asking the question, “What is the purpose of it?” Life is its own purpose
Raise the question, “What is the purpose?” and everything is destroyed. Let me tell you, there is no purpose in life. Life is its own purpose; it is not a means to some end, it is an end unto itself.

Excerpted from The Book of Wisdom. The 82nd birth anniversary of Osho Rajneesh will be observed on December 11

Osho