Osho on worldly richness and inner poverty

Osho – Whatsoever the world can give to us keeps us poor. It can’t make us rich; it can at the most give us a pretension of being rich. Even Alexander the Great is a beggar. Even the richest person on earth remains empty, futile, deep down, because the riches that he has accumulated are outside and the poverty is within. Your money cannot go inside you, cannot fulfill you there.You can go on piling up money outside; it will remain outside you. You will remain poor. In fact you will start feeling more poor as the money starts piling up. In comparison a poor man never feels so poor as a rich man, because of the contrast.

The really rich is one who knows God, because that is an inner experience. Only when God fills you within are you rich. Then you may have money, may not have money, it doesn’t matter, it is not relevant. Initiation into sannyas is an inquiry, an exploration, into this inner richness.

Jesus says again and again: The kingdom of God is within you. He is indicating this richness. When he says man cannot live by bread alone; he is saying that if a man lives by bread alone he does not live at all. He only exists, he only survives — maybe comfortably but his life has no significance, no song arises out of him. He has not been able to know anything which is really valuable.

And what is really valuable? There is only one definition: that which you can take beyond death, only that is really valuable. All else is worthless. It may have a price to it but it has no value. Things have prices but no values. Only inner experiences have values, but they don’t have any price. You cannot purchase them, you cannot sell them, but you can have them. In fact you already have them, it is just that you are not aware of the fact. One has to turn in and look, and immediately one becomes rich, immediately one is an emperor.

Source – Osho Book “The Rainbow Bridge”

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