We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love. Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.
Society is just a structure with no soul. The soul is of the individual. One individual outweighs all societies. And, one individual's revolution outweighs all revolutions in the whole of history, because one man can become the womb for God to be reborn.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of the individual over societal norms, suggesting that personal transformation holds greater significance than collective movements.
Rajneesh's quote reflects the belief that society itself lacks inherent worth without the individuals that comprise it. He argues that true change and meaning arise from the individual, whose capacity for personal evolution or 'revolution' is more vital and impactful than any societal change. The notion of an individual being a 'womb for God to be reborn' suggests that personal realization can lead to profound spiritual transformations that surpass the collective efforts of society.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about personal growth and empowerment.
More from Rajneesh
All quotes →The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms you. It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality. It is a method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against awareness. Awareness is always choiceless.
Only those persons who have lived, really lived, are ready, welcoming, receptive, thankful to death. Then death is not the enemy. Then death becomes the fulfillment.
Creativity has two possibilities. One is that it arises out of your silence, love, understanding, your clarity of vision, your intimate friendliness with existence - then creativity is healthy. But if it does not arise out of meditation, out of silence and peace and understanding and love, then there is a danger. It may be arising out of your confused mind. It may be arising out of your insanity.
There is no separate art of life. If you know how to allow poetry, if you know how to allow dance, if you know how to allow love - if you know how to ALLOW, then you know the art of life. In the allowing, in the let-go, in the surrender, is the art of life. How not to be and to let God be - that is the only art of life.
Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not "in love", one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
Similar quotes
L.A. runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy. I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad. It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weather-wise, socially and professionally.
For life is but a dream whose shapes return, some frequently, some seldom, some by night and some by day.
Civil government cannot let any group ride roughshod over others simply because their consciences tell them to do so.
Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.
Those who praise victory relish manslaughter. Those who relish manslaughter cannot reach their goals in the world.
Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.