Rajneesh Relaxation Quotations

Life as such has to be taken as a cosmic joke - and then suddenly you relax because there is nothing to be tense about. And in that very relaxation something starts changing in you - a radical change, a transformation - and the small things of life starts having new meaning, new significance. One learns only one thing, how to rejoice in life.

Nobody asked you about being born, nobody is going to ask you when the time comes for you to be taken away. Then why be worried? Birth happened to you; death will happen to you; who are you to come in between?

Religion is not a result of something that you practice. Religion enters in you any moment you relax. Religion is a flowering of relaxation, not a result of practicing. Remember the difference because when you practice you become more tense.

Relaxation is the point. And if you can relax with an enlightened person his enlightenment will start penetrating you, because when you are relaxed you become porous. When you are tense you are closed; when you relax he will enter

Just a little relaxation, just a little looking inwards, and the doors of immense potentialities open up. You are no more a beggar. Without conquering the world you have conquered the whole universe. Just conquer yourself.

God is a synergetic experience. Science can never reveal it, philosophy can never come to it - only a poetic approach, a very passive, very loving approach, can.

Don't seek, don't search, don't ask, don't knock, don't demand - relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.

This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural.

You ask me, "Will you say something more about relaxation? I am aware of a tension deep in the core of me and suspect that I have probably never been totally relaxed."

First the body has to become utterly relaxed, like a small child, then only start with the mind. Move scientifically: first the simplest, then the complex, then the more complex. And then only can you relax at the ultimate core.

Just try walking very slowly, and you will be surprised - a new quality of awareness starts happening in the body. Eat slowly, and you will be surprised - there is great relaxation. Do everything slowly... just to change the old pattern, just to come out of old habits.

Start from the body, and then go, slowly slowly, deeper. And don't start with anything else unless you have first solved the primary. If your body is tense, don't start with the mind. Wait. Work on the body. And just small things are of immense help.

If you become capable of relaxing the body voluntarily, then you will be able to help your mind relax voluntarily. Mind is a more complex phenomenon. Once you have become confident that the body listens to you, you will have a new trust in yourself. Now even the mind can listen to you. It will take a little longer with the mind, but it happens.

You will have to relax from the circumference. The first step in relaxing is the body. Remember as many times as possible to look in the body, whether you are carrying some tension in the body somewhere - at the neck, in the head, in the legs. Relax it consciously. Just go to that part of the body, and persuade that part, say to it lovingly "Relax!"

Remember one very fundamental thing about life: Any experience that has not been lived will hang around you, will persist: "Finish me! Live me! Complete me!" There is an intrinsic quality in every experience that it tends and wants to be finished, completed. Once completed, it evaporates; incomplete, it persists, it tortures you, it haunts you, it attracts your attention. It says, "What are you going to do about me? I am still incomplete - fulfill me!"

Total relaxation is the ultimate. That's the moment when one becomes a buddha. That is the moment of realization, enlightenment, christ-consciousness. You cannot be totally relaxed right now. At the innermost core a tension will persist.

Just by being aware, thoughts start disappearing. There is no need to fight. Your awareness is enough to destroy them. And when the mind is empty, the temple is ready. And inside the temple the only god worth placing is silence. So those three words you have to remember: relaxation, thoughtlessness, silence. And if these three words are no more words to you but become experiences, your life will be transformed.

The only way to achieve something in the interior world is let-go - a kind of effortlessness, a relaxation. It is not a doing; it is nondoing. It is not action; it is inaction. And it seems difficult because everybody from the very beginning is told, `Do something; don`t just go on sitting there! Something is always better than nothing.` In the inner world these are not the laws. Nothing is better than everything.

Laughter relaxes. And relaxation is spiritual.

Zen is not a philosophy, it is poetry. It does not propose, it simply persuades. It does not argue, it simply sings its own song.

Relaxation is one of the most complex phenomena - very rich, multidimensional. All these things are part of it: let-go, trust, surrender, love, acceptance, going with the flow, union with existence, egolessness, ecstasy. All these are part of it, and all these start happening if you learn the ways of relaxation.

Meditation or religion is a totally different world: it is relaxation, it is let-go - it is not concentration at all. It is not one-pointedness, it is no-pointedness.