Osho – Everybody in the world wants to be true, because just to be true brings so much joy and such an abundance of blissfulness — why should one be false? You have to have the courage for a little deeper insight: Why are you afraid? What can the world do to you? People can laugh at you; it will do them good — laughter is always a medicine, healthful. People can think you are mad… just because they think you are mad, you don’t become mad.
And if you are authentic about your joy, your tears, your dance — sooner or later there will be people who will start understanding you, who may start joining your caravan. I myself had started alone on the path, and then people went on coming and it became a worldwide caravan. And I have not invited anybody; I have simply done whatever I felt was coming from my heart.
My responsibility is towards my heart, not towards anybody else in the world. So is your responsibility only towards your own being. Don’t go against it, because going against it is committing suicide, is destroying yourself. And what is the gain? Even if people give you respect, and people think that you are a very sober, respectable, honorable man, these things
are not going to nourish your being. They are not going to give you any more insight into life and its tremendous beauty.
And moreover, everybody is so concerned with their own problems, who cares whether you are laughing, dancing? Who has time for it? It is only your mind that is thinking that the whole world is thinking about you. My own experience is: everybody is so crowded, worried, with the rush of thoughts about himself, his life, his problems — do you think he has time even to look at you, or to think about you?
One Jewish doctor to another: “All day long, I hear stories of pain and suffering: ‘Doctor, my back… Doctor, my stomach… Doctor, my wife.’ It is awful, I tell you. Tell me, Sam, how come you look so serene after a day listening to the world’s troubles?”
Second doctor: “So, who listens?”
You should not be worried at all. Everybody is so concerned with his own world, they don’t have time, they don’t have energy to bother about you. And even if they have some opinion, it is their problem. You are alone in the world: alone you have come into the world, alone you are here, and alone you will leave this world. All their opinions will be left behind; only your original feelings, your authentic experiences will go with you even beyond death.
Even death cannot take away your dance, your tears of joy, your purity of aloneness, your silence, your serenity, your ecstasy. That which death cannot take away from you is the only real treasure; and that which can be taken away by anybody is not a treasure — it is simply befooling you.
How many millions of people have lived before you on this earth? You don’t even know their names; whether they ever lived or not does not make any difference. There have been saints and there have been sinners, and there have been very respectable people, and there have been all kinds of eccentrics, crazy, but they have all disappeared — not even a trace has remained on the earth.
Your sole concern should be to take care of and protect those qualities which you can take with you when death destroys your body, your mind — because these qualities will be your sole companions. They are the only real values, and the people who attain them — only they live; others only pretend to live.
Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Splendor”