Move backwards. Every night for one hour before you go to sleep, move into the past, relive. Many memories by and by will be unearthed. With many you will be surprised that you were not aware that these things are there — and with such vitality and freshness, as if they had just happened! You will be again a child, again a young man, a lover, many things will come. Move slowly, so everything is completed. Your mountain will become smaller and smaller — the LOAD is the mountain. And the smaller it becomes, the freer you will feel. A certain quality of freedom will come to you, and a freshness, and inside you will feel you have touched a source of life.
Osho
One birth has been given to you by your parents,
the other birth is waiting.
It has to be given to you by yourself.
You have to father and mother yourself.
Then your whole energy is turning in–
it becomes an inner circle.
(Osho, The Beloved, Vol. 1)
The child never dies…nothing ever dies. The child is there, always is there, wrapped by other experiences…Wrapped by adolescence, then by youth, then by middle age, then by old age…but the child is always there.
You are just like an onion, layers upon layers, but if you peel the onion, soon you will find fresher layers inside. Go on deeper and you find more and more, fresher layers. The same is true about man: if you go deep into him you will always find the innocent child…And to contact that innocent child is therapeutic.
(Osho, The Wild Geese and the Water)
…You will see yourself reborn again, being born again, arising out of the past, out of the clouds and confusion—thoughts, prejudices, egos, minds, conditionings—arising out of them, virgin, pure.
Then you will again see the power that you are, the being that you are.
(Osho, The Alpha and the Omega, Vol. 10)
Just think of a child: a child is born, for the first time a child opens his eyes — he will see the trees, but he will not be able to say to himself, “These are trees.” He will see light, but he will not be able to say within himself, “This is electric light.” He will see the redness of the rose, but he will not be able to say, “This is a roseflower and the color is red.” He will see everything, but he will not say anything inside. That is mirroring: he will simply mirror. The trees will still be green, in fact far greener than they will ever be again, because the mirror is completely pure, crystalline. The mirror has no dust…thoughts gather dust.
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Have you observed that if you look inside, time exists not? If you look outside there is time, but if you look inside there is no time. Have you not felt it sometimes, sitting silently with closed eyes — that inside you have not aged at all? Inside you remain the same as when you were a child, or as when you were young. Inside nothing has changed: the face is wrinkled by age, the hairs have gone gray, death is approaching — this is all from the outside. If you look in the mirror then of course there are signs that much time has passed, that very little is left, that sooner or later you will be gone. But look within: there has never been any time there. You are exactly the same as you ever were when you were running in a garden or on the sea-beach and collecting colored stones and seashells. Just remember..
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The first step is to accept yourself in your totality, in spite of all your traditions, which have driven the whole of humanity insane. Once you have accepted yourself as you are, the fear of intimacy will disappear. You cannot lose respect, you cannot lose your greatness, you cannot lose your ego. You cannot lose your piousness, you cannot lose your saintliness — you have dropped all that yourself. You are just like a small child, utterly innocent. You can open yourself because inside, you are not filled with ugly repressions which have become perversions.
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You have to listen to others up to an extent, and then you have to start listening to yourself. You must come back to the original state in the end. Before you die you must become an innocent child again — loose, natural; because in death again you are entering the dimension of being alone. Just as you were in the womb, in death again you will enter in the realm of being alone. No society exists there. And the whole of your life you have to find a few spaces in your life, a few moments like oases in deserts, where you simply close your eyes and go beyond society, move into yourself, in your own womb — this is what meditation is.
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Childishness is not a value, it is a disvalue. Child-likeness is a great value. To be child-like means that the circle is complete: the man has lived life, lived and loved, experienced all that was available and has come to conclude that there is nothing more valuable than innocence. He has known — known that knowledge is futile, so he has dropped knowledge. He has known all the cunning ways of the world — he has been cunning, he has been deceptive, he has been deceived, others have been cunning towards him — he has known all that, but he has grown-up and he has come to conclude that that is just useless, meaningless. Deceiving, deceived — all is a game; it does not lead you anywhere, it is a dream. He has dropped all those games.
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When you were born you did not know anything, you carried no information with you, no knowledge, but you carried consciousness, awareness, alertness; being you carried, not knowledge. A sage tries to become again a child. He tries to know that which cannot be learnt, which is already within you: there is no need to go to any school to learn about it. In fact, you can learn other things only because that unlearned being is there already inside you. That’s why you can learn other things.
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You are just like an onion, layers upon layers, but if you peel the onion soon you will find fresher layers inside. Go on deeper and you find more and more, fresher layers. The same is true about man: if you go deep into him you will always find the innocent child — and to contact that innocent child is therapeutic
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Remember, no stage of life is ever lost. Your child is still within you. It is not that the child becomes the young man, no. The child remains inside, the young man is imposed over it, then the old man is superimposed over the young man, layer by layer. The child never becomes the young man. The child remains there, a layer of young man comes over it. The young man never becomes the old; another layer, of old age, comes over it. You become like an onion — many layers — and if you penetrate, all the layers are Still there, intact.
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Becoming knowledgeable is not becoming a buddha, but becoming an innocent child, reaching to the sources playfully without any seriousness, joyously and cheerfully, dancing… Take your energy to the very source and remain there just for a few moments, and you will be filled with a new experience which goes on growing every day.
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Innocence is the base of all spirituality. The moment you think you know, you are no more a child. You are closed. Knowledge kills and poisons. Innocence opens you and makes you alive. That’s why Jesus goes on saying ‘If you are like children, only then — and only then — will you be able to enter into the kingdom of God’.
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A child has nothing to do with age. Childhood is a state. You can be old and yet a child. You can be a child and yet old. Childhood is a certain attitude deep inside you, of your being ready to learn; that from wherever and whatsoever source life comes, you will be ready to receive; that in your heart there is a deep welcome; that you are not afraid; that you are not yet crippled by knowledge, information; that you are still in a flow and not frozen.
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The art of remaining a child forever is to never collect. When the moment is gone, leave it. Don’t collect the past and then you are never old. You are born every second again and again and again. It is a constant rebirth… a riverlike flow of rebirth. You are renewed, resurrected. Die to the past every moment so it is no more a hangup and is not a burden on your head and on your heart, so that it does not hang like a rock around your neck. Go on dying to the past so you become more and more available to the present. Childhood is a state of consciousness, of purity, of uncorruption, of uncontamination.
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The authentic childhood is available inside you; you have just to put aside your cultivated ways of being adult. It is just like nudity: you take off your dress and you are nude. There is no need to ask how to be nude, how to plan to be nude: ‘Teach me to be nude’; that is not needed at all! Children have to be taught how to dress, not how to be nude; they have always been nude.
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At least for a few moments every day, at least once in a while, one should simply drop out of the world into one’s own being. It is rejuvenating: one comes back alive, again young, again fresh. One comes back again with gusto and zest. There is again enthusiasm and significance and love. Again one can see with the eyes of wonder, like a child. Each time you go inside yourself you attain to a new childhood, because there inside nothing ever grows old; it is pure childhood. That’s why Jesus says, ‘Unless you are like a child you will not enter my kingdom of God’. The child lives there… but we forget. Sooner or later the world becomes heavy and it is constantly dragging you out of your being.
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When you can laugh, when you can be a child again… when life is not taken seriously, when life is only a drama and the earth is a vast stage and whatsoever you are doing is nothing but playing a game… when life is acting, when life is an art — nothing serious about it, not a business — in those moments of cheerfulness, playfulness, something inside you starts growing. It is like a seed: we come with it, but it remains a seed.
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Playfulness, cheerfulness, blissfulness, give us the right climate in which the seed can grow and become a sprout. Then much foliage comes to it and flowers and fruits. A man of wisdom is utterly fulfilled
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One has to become a child again. The mind is impurity. If you can attain to no-mind you will be pure again. Purity is inside, the mind is blocking it; it does not allow it to be expressed. It distorts is, corrupts it, poisons it. Hence the emphasis of all the mystics on meditation: meditation simply means a way of putting the mind aside, nothing less, nothing more simply that. Once the mind is put aside your innocence starts blossoming.
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And there are such flowers and such fragrance … which are not of this world, which belong to the beyond.
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When there is nothing clinging to you and you are not clinging to anything, in that state of non-clinging, it happens: truth happens, god happens.
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It can happen only when you have the innocence of a child — fresh like a dew-drop, clean like a sky without clouds, empty, with no content. When there is no content inside, the mind cannot project anything. When there is emptiness inside, the mind goes into non-functioning, and the non-functioning of the mind is the beginning of god.
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The same can happen again, should happen again. That’s what all religion is about — to give you a second childhood. In India we call that man who attains to the second childhood, dwij, twice-born. He is born again — not physically, psychologically. The first birth is out of your parents, the second birth is out of your master. The first birth is only of the body, the second birth is of the soul.
The Discipline of Transcendence, vol 2
If you can become a child again, you have achieved all. If you cannot become a child again, you have missed all. A sage is a twiceborn child. And firstborn children are not real children because they will have to grow up. The second birth is the real birth, because when somebody is twiceborn he has given birth to himself. It is a transformation, he has again become a child.
The Hidden Harmony, chapter 6
One birth is given by your parents, another birth you have to manage by yourself. The second birth is the birth which matters. The first birth is going to end up in death. The second birth is the beginning of eternity: no death, no end, no beginning.
I celebrate myself, chapter 2
So we have to be aware that many good things will have to be thrown out. But it is not going to be a loss, because once man is deprogrammed, he is now free to grow according to his nature. Now he will not be American, he will not be Christian, he will not be Catholic, but just a human being, as he was born. Deprogramming brings him back his second birth.
The last testament, vol 2
Then there is again a childhood; that is called the second childhood. Hindus have called that stage ‘the twice-born’, dwij. Again you are born, but this is a different birth, not out of a father and a mother. This is out of your own self, not out of two bodies meeting, not out of duality. It is through your self that you are born.
The Mustard seed, chapter 8
One birth is from the mother and the father; another birth is that which happens between the disciple and the master. And the second birth opens all the doors and all the secrets to explore. Life becomes a continuous adventure, a moment to moment excitement, a day and night ecstasy.
Om Mani Padme Hum, chapter 3
You are born, but not yet really born. A rebirth is needed; you have to be twice-born. The first birth is only the physical birth, the second birth is the real birth: the spiritual birth. You have to come to know yourself, who you are. You have to ask this question: Who am I? And while life is there, why not enquire into life itself? Why bother about death? When it comes, you can face it and you can know it. Don’t miss this opportunity of knowing life while life surrounds you.
The Path of Love, chapter 8
And as you come closer to yourself, you are coming closer to the universe. And the greatest moment in your life is when you accept the mystery of existence as it is without asking any question. You have understood one thing, that existence is mysterious and is going to remain mysterious. There is no need of any knowledge. That means you have settled with the universe as mysterious and you have settled with yourself as innocent.
This is the second birth. In India we have called this state dwij, the second birth. And this is our search here.
Sat Chid Anand , chapter 22
Rebirth is a totally different phenomenon: you again become innocent like a child, but this time you are not dependent, this time you are not helpless. This time nobody can enforce anything on you: you have enough intelligence, enough logic, enough argumentative power — it is not easy to force stupid beliefs on you. That’s your safeguard. The second birth is the beginning of a new life.
Socrates poisoned again, chapter 1
In the East, we have a name for a man who has become alert and total, we call him DWIJA — twice-born. He has attained to a second birth. The first birth is BOUND to be unconscious. And if you live only with the first birth, you will remain a perfectionist.Once you are twice-born, consciously born, and have erased all the pain-memory of the first birth, you will live the life of totality.
Take it easy, chapter 2
Just being born is not enough; necessary, but not enough. You have to be born twice. Hindus have a word for it: they call it dwij, the twice-born. One birth, the first birth from your parents is just a possibility, a potential phenomenon, not actual yet. A second birth is needed. It is what Jesus calls resurrection: a second birth in which you break all the shells, all the eggs, all the egos, all the past, the familiar, the known, and you move into the unknown, the strange, the existence full of dangers. Every moment there is the possibility of death. And with the possibility of death, every moment you become more and more alive.
Yoga, the Alpha and the Omega, vol 4
The work of a Master consists in undoing what society has done to you. He has to make a clean sheet out of you again, he has to give you a new birth, a new childhood. That’s what sannyas is all about: initiation into a second childhood. And remember these two things, which are not really two but two aspects of one phenomenon: be blissful and you will be wise. Whatsoever is done out of bliss is always wise; whatsoever is done out of misery, anger, sadness, jealousy, hatred, is bound to be wrong.
Don’t let yourself be upset by the Sutra, chapter 5
The first birth is only physical; it happens through the parents. The second birth happens through the Master; it is spiritual. Get ready for the second birth, get ready to be reborn. And life can become paradise. It is paradise: all that is needed are eyes, free eyes, to see it, and a free heart to feel it.
Don’t let yourself be upset by the Sutre, chapter 5