If you don't have any ego, it doesn't matter whether somebody says you are an idiot or somebody says you are a genius. It does not matter... they are their opinions. You know who you are -- you don't depend on other people's opinions. Your ego depends. Your ego keeps you a slave of the society in which you live. Ordinarily people think that their ego is something very precious. It is nothing but their slavery.

A man becomes independent and free and individual only when he has dropped his ego, when he is just a silent being, without any idea of "I" -- just a pure silence... THIS silence. And if in this silence you look inward, you will not find any "I," any ego, any self, but just a pure space.

This pure space is your spirituality.

This pure space is your enlightenment.

This pure space is your ultimate ecstasy.

-Rajneesh

Ego is the only trouble in the world.

If everybody in the world just for one hour decides to put the ego aside -- just for one hour -- there will be no trouble, no problem; there will be such great peace and silence and love that we have not known before. This whole planet has not known that.

But the ego is nourished on troubles. If it cannot create trouble, it will starve to death. It needs continuous nourishment, and that nourishment comes from trouble. So if you understand that the trouble is a pain in the neck, and you are tired of it... If you are not tired of it, then I am not saying you have to drop it; first get really tired, then there is no need for me to tell you to drop it. You will just drop it.

-Rajneesh

You are all a joke unto yourself.

Gautam Buddha said as his last statement: "Be a light unto yourself." The day I leave the body please remind me, so that I can make my last statement: "Be a joke unto yourself."

That is far more joyful than being a light unto yourself. What are you going to do with a light? Light your cigars, or burn people's houses? But being a joke unto yourself, you will be a bliss for everyone.

-Rajneesh

Mistakes happen because our clarity about existence is not meditative. Our mind is continuously creating unnecessary problems, unnecessary dilemmas.

-Rajneesh

If people like Gautam Buddha or Mahavira became celibate... it was not that through being celibate they became Gautam Buddha and Mahavira. The situation is just the reverse: they became Gautam Buddha and Mahavira by meditation and they found a far bigger freedom and orgasmic joy. Sex disappeared from their life.

But people have looked at it wrongly. From the outside you cannot see their orgasmic joy; you can only see that this man has become celibate. Perhaps by becoming celibate you will also attain the orgasmic joy. It does not work that way.

-Rajneesh