Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not a humble man. By the very nature of things, I cannot be a humble man; only an egoist can be a humble man. When there is no ego, there is no humbleness either – one simply is.

But our mind is such that it moves like a pendulum of a clock, from one extreme to another extreme: either ego or humbleness, either love or hate, either friendship or enmity. And the reality is somewhere exactly in between, where you are neither an egoist nor a humble man – you are simply without any attributes of ego or non-ego.

When I greet you with folded hands it is not my humbleness.

Secondly, I don’t greet you. I greet something which is within you and beyond you. My greeting is nothing but an effort to remind you that you are not what you think you are, you are not where you think you are. I am greeting you deep inside – not on the circumference where you exist, but at the center where you never go. I am greeting you just as a reminder that you are carrying within you something divine, something that is waiting to be fulfilled. It is a seed, but it is ready to become a sprout at any moment; new green leaves, ready to become a flower. I am greeting you as you should be – I am greeting your future.

Right now you are only your past. You are not even your present; you are just all that has passed by, a collection of memories. I am not greeting that. I am utterly against it.

I want you to look into the new, into the coming, into the future – the moment that has not come but is going to come any moment.

Don’t just thank me, because the danger is that by thanking me for my greeting you may feel that the chapter is closed, the work is done: I have greeted you, you have thanked me.

No, you can thank me for my greeting only in one way, and that is by realizing the godliness to which the greeting is addressed. There is no other way to show your gratefulness, your thankfulness to the master.

Osho,
Although you have been teaching us to enjoy all pleasures of life, and not to be led by some kind of morality or disciplines, my life with you starts to look more like that of a monk – a life of detachment from the usual kicks of life, and more of simplicity and silence. Is this a natural happening? Or am I creating a new discipline for my life?

It is a natural happening. Not only that – it is my whole intention. I want you not to repress, because the person who represses anything remains stuck with the repressed thing for his whole life. Repression is the way to drive people insane.