Osho – The word ’nija’ has many meanings: one is self, another is individual.When a person is just his own self, when a person has an individuality – when a person lives his way, in his own way, lives his life in his own way, when a person doesn’t try to fit with any mould, with any pattern provided by others, when a person has freedom – then he has individuality. And God loves individuals. God does not love the mass-product at all; he has no joy from people who are carbon copies of others. He wants the original and he has given everybody an original face. He never repeats, he never creates two individuals alike… not even two pebbles alike, not even two leaves alike.
Unique is his love, so those who want to be loved by god should become unique. There is no other prayer: just be unique and your prayer is heard. Just be unique and you need not go to god, god comes to you. By being unique, one earns, one becomes worthy; that too is the meaning of ’nija’.
Sanskrit words are very liquid words: they have many meanings, meaning within meaning. It is a very poetic language, very fluid, flowing. Only when you are an individual are you blissful. The misery is always because we have not been able to assert our being.We have sold it for small things: respectability, ego, prestige, power, money, or security, comfort, convenience. For small things, for trivia, we have sold our individuality – and once individuality is gone, the soul is gone; then man is a mechanism.
My whole approach is individualistic. And my message to my sannyasins is: be unique, be individuals. Live your life the way you feel to live it… be rebels! There is no need to be too ready to fit into any mould. If you choose and if it is your joy it is perfectly good, otherwise there is no need… For no other reason, for no other motive should one fit into anything. If one feels this is the thing that one would like to be, then it’s okay. Then it is no more a slavery; it is freedom.
If you choose even hell out of freedom, you will be happy there, and if you are forced into heaven without your choice, without your will, then you will be unhappy there. So hell and heaven are not places; they are certain spaces within. When one accepts something, welcomes something of one’s own accord, heaven arises. One may remain a beggar, but if one has chosen that, then there is joy. One may become a millionaire and if one has not chosen it of one’s own accord, has been pulled, forced, manipulated, pushed… the parents, the wife, the children; the society, the priests, the politicians – a thousand and one manipulators are there… if one has been pulled like a puppet, one can have all the riches the world can give and one will be unhappy, one will be in hell. So from this moment assert your uniqueness, your individuality, your bliss. Nothing is lacking, all is already there. Good!
Source – Osho Book “The No Book (No Buddha, No Teaching, No Discipline)”