Falling Back Into the Source – Osho

You say, “Accept yourself as you are,” and “Unless you are reborn you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Please comment on this apparent contradiction.

Divakar, all contradictions are apparent. If you meditate a little bit, you will see that there is no contradiction. I say, “Accept yourself as you are.” And I also say, “Unless you are reborn you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Now, you are creating the contradiction by not meditating on it.

The way to be reborn is to accept yourself as you are: this is how one is reborn. You live in a kind of rejection; you don’t accept yourself as you are. It is very rare to find a person who accepts himself – because the moment he accepts himself, he is reborn, he is enlightened.

You don’t accept yourself, you go on rejecting yourself. You are constantly in search of ways of improving your image. You want to become more beautiful, healthier, stronger, famous, creative, this and that. You are not contented the way you are.

It seems so impossible to be contented the way we are, because the mind can always imagine better things. You can have a little longer nose, or a little shorter. You can have a little more intelligence, a little more physical beauty, a little more charisma, a little more psychological integrity, a little more powerful personality. You can always imagine, and your imagination makes you discontented with yourself as you are.

If roses were to think, they would be discontented too, because they would see: “Look in the pond, the lotus flower is so big, and we are so small.” They would feel very, very inferior, they would star suffering from an inferiority complex, and they would start searching for some psychoanalyst. Then small bushes would feel very much depressed, because big trees, cedars of Lebanon, are reaching to the stars, and we are so small. Why has God been so unjust to us?” Then the whole existence would be in a tremendous discontent.

But only man is in discontent. Bushes are happy being bushes, and roses are happy being roses, and grass flowers are happy being grass flowers. Birds are happy being birds – nobody wants to be anybody else.

This contentment is all around if you just look. If you open your eyes you will see contentment showering from every tree, from every star, from every rock. Just remove man from the world, and discontentment is removed.

Why is man discontented? Because he compares. And all comparisons are false, because you are absolutely alone. Like you there is nobody else, so all comparison is false. You can compare one Fiat car with another Fiat car, but you cannot compare a Fiat car with a dog – or can you? Each human being is so unique, it is impossible to compare him. But you go on comparing.

You have been taught to compare. Your whole education depends on comparison, and it depends on comparison because it wants to create a competitive fever in you. The society has not yet known any other way to make you do something, the only way it knows is to create a competitive fever: create a neurosis, create a longing, an ill longing, to be the first. The society has not yet discovered any better way to make you creative. “Compete, compare, defeat – reach first place.” It teaches you conflict, violence.

And to be in that conflict, naturally it teaches you discontentment with yourself – otherwise how will you improve? It gives you great ideals: “You have to be like this.” And then suddenly you look so short, so small, so tiny, so trivial. The ideal is so big, so great, and you are so small. You shrink: a great rejection arises in you, you start hating yourself. This is the whole misery that people are passing through.

I teach you acceptance. There is no need to compete, there is no need to compare, there is no need to be ambitious. Then you become afraid: “if there is no ambition and no competition and no comparison, then how am I going to grow?”

Growth has nothing to do with these things. Growth has something to do with energy; growth is an energy phenomenon. When you don’t compare, when you don’t compete, when you are not ambitious, when you don’t want to be anybody other than who you are, you accumulate much energy – because all that energy that was being wasted in competition and conflict, is no longer wasted. You become a reservoir.

Out of that energy comes creativity. Creativity has nothing to do with competition; it has something to do with overflowing energy. William Blake is right, he says, “Energy is delight.”

When you are overflowing with energy, aglow with energy, aflame with energy, it itself becomes creativity. You start growing, but now the growth has a totally different connotation. It has no goal – it has a source but no goal. Now you are not thinking what to be; you are not following a particular goal, a particular plan. You are such a big river that through your rushing energy you will reach the ocean.

No river is searching for the ocean, but rivers reach the ocean; and no river is competing with any other river, but all rivers reach the ocean. The river reaches the ocean through overflowing water. That very energy is enough to take it to the ocean.

You can become an ocean of creativity if you are contented. Then creativity arises in you, grows in you – not for any ideal, but just because you have too much: you have to share it. You have to sing a song, because the heart is so full and overflowing. You have to pour it into songs. You cannot contain the energy, hence the overflow happens. And that overflow is creativity.

When a tree is overflowing with energy it blossoms in thousands of flowers. Those flowers are just a simple statement from the tree: “Now I cannot contain any more. The colors are too many in me, and the fragrances are so much that I have to burst forth.” The tree is not fulfilling any ideal; it has no goal.

To have a goal is to be miserable, not to have a goal is to be blissful. The person who accepts himself in totality – with not even a slight grudge against himself, not even a slight rejection, not even a shadow of rejection – that man becomes enlightened immediately. Enlightenment has not to be achieved somewhere in the future. If you accept yourself, if you relax into your being, it can happen just this very moment, now, here.

So I say: Accept yourself as you are, because this is the way to be reborn. And I also say: Unless you are reborn, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Please remember, the second statement is not for you to create a goal: “I have to be reborn, I have to enter into the kingdom of God.” If it becomes a goal, you have misunderstood me. It is not a goal, it is a consequence. A consequence of what? A consequence of total acceptance: tathata, suchness. “I am this, and I am utterly happy with this.” In that utter happiness and contentment is the miracle, the transformation. You are reborn.

And remember again, I am not saying to use “accept yourself” as a method so that you can be reborn; I am not saying that either, otherwise you have created a goal again. You say, “Okay, if this is the way to become enlightened, if this is the way to enter into the kingdom of God, then I am ready to accept myself.” this is not acceptance. You are still thinking of the kingdom of God, you are still thinking of becoming enlightened. You are still competing with the Buddhas. You are still thinking, “How did this man Gautam Buddha become enlightened, and I have not yet? How dare this man Jesus become Christ, and I am here and I have not yet become Christ?”

Friedrich Nietzsche has said exactly that. He has said, “I cannot accept God, because if there is a God then what am I doing here? And how can anybody else become a God before me? Hence I reject the idea: there is no God.” Because if there has to be a God, then Friedrich Nietzsche has to be first. It is better to reject the whole idea: “There is no kingdom of God, there is no enlightenment.” Otherwise it creates a feeling of great inferiority: “Others have reached, and I have not reached yet. Am I lagging so far behind?”

So please don’t make it a goal. My statement about being reborn is just a consequence. The source is acceptance, and the consequence is entry into the kingdom of God.

But the mind is very cunning – beware of it. The mind can say deep down in you, “So okay, if this is the key then I will use it, but I have to enter into the kingdom of God.” And you have missed in that very cunningness.

Things are very simple. What I am saying is so simple; it has no complexity in it. But you can create complexity. Your mind can create such confusion, such a chaos! And the basic trick, the basic strategy of the mind is to make consequences goals.

Never make any goal, there is none. We are already at the source; we need not be anywhere else.

In deep acceptance you fall back into the source. That very falling back into the source is a rebirth, a resurrection. You disappear as a separate entity and you appear as the mystic union: unio mystica.


From Unio Mystica, V.2, Chapter Ten

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation


Many of Osho’s books are available online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from Viha Osho Book Distributors.