Osho – Essentially love is humbleness — there is no other kind of humbleness. If humbleness is cultivated without love, it is just a face for the ego, just another trick of the ego. When humbleness comes naturally out of love, then it is tremendously beautiful. So fall in love with existence — and the beginning is to fall in love with yourself.
Once you are in love with yourself you start feeling in love with many many people, and by and by that space becomes bigger and bigger. One day you suddenly find that the whole existence is included in it, that love is now no more addressed to anybody in particular, that it is simply there for anybody to take — it is simply flowing. Even if nobody is there to take it, it is flowing….
Then love is not a relationship, it is a state of being. And in that state of being is humbleness, true humbleness. Jesus is humble in that way; the pope is not humble.
Once each year the pope washes the feet of a poor man — but that is just show, that is not humbleness. Once a year he touches one poor man’s feet: that is just a gesture, a meaningless gesture. The so-called religious people are almost always egoistic people. Even if they pretend to be humble, you can see through their humbleness.
There is a very beautiful anecdote about a mystic who came to see Socrates…. The mystic used to say that he was the most humble man in the world. He used to wear a gown full of holes — dirty, rotten, very ancient. When he came to see Socrates, Socrates looked at him and said ‘But through the holes of your robe, only ego is looking at me, nothing else.’ And he was right!
So somebody can cultivate poverty and become very egoistic about it, somebody can cultivate humbleness and become egoistic about it. To me, real humbleness arises as a fragrance of love. It cannot be cultivated, you cannot practise it, there is no way to learn it. You have to go into love and one day suddenly you find that love has flowered — spring has come and love has bloomed and there is a certain fragrance which was never there before: you are humble!
It is not that you practise it — one day you are suddenly surprised that it is there. And the taste of that humbleness is that we are all one, so how can we be superior or inferior? Remember, a humble person does not think that he is inferior. A humble person knows no superiority, knows no inferiority; both have become irrelevant.
A humble person knows only this much, that this whole existence interpenetrates, is interdependent, we are all together. He is not separate, the other is not separate, so how can he be superior and the other inferior? How can he be inferior or the other superior? There is nobody superior and there is nobody inferior. You participate in the greatest saint and you participate in the greatest sinner. In that light of understanding, ego is not found.
So humbleness does not mean that one is egoless, humbleness means that one searched and could not find the ego. So the humble person is neither ego-full nor egoless. A humble person simply says that he looked deep into himself and could not find any ego — so he cannot be either ego-full or egoless; he is simply he. This is what he is, this is how he is, and there is no claim. But this happens only out of love — so grow into love!
Source – Osho Book “For Madmen Only (Price of Admission: Your Mind)”