Listen to your own heart and follow it wherever it takes you.

Buddha is Buddha, Krishna is Krishna, and you are you. They didn’t copy anyone else. They didn’t follow anyone else. Who are you imitating? Who are you trying to be?

“Do what your nature wants to do, do what your intrinsic qualities hanker to do. Don’t listen to the scriptures, listen to your own heart; that is the only scripture I prescribe. And listen very attentively, very consciously and you will never be wrong.

Listening to your own heart you will never be divided. Listening to your own heart you will start moving in the right direction, without ever thinking of what is right and what is wrong.

“So the whole art for the new humanity will consist in the secret of listening to the heart consciously, alertly, attentively. And by all means follow it, and go wherever it takes you. Yes, sometimes it will take you into dangers – but then remember, those dangers are needed to make you ripe. And sometimes it will take you astray – but remember again, those goings astray are part of growth.

Many times you will fall. Rise up again, because this is how one gathers strength, by falling and rising again. This is how one becomes integrated.

“But don’t follow rules imposed from the outside. No imposed rule can ever be right, because rules are invented by people who want to rule you. Yes, sometimes there have been great enlightened people in the world too – a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, a Mohammed. They have not given rules to the world, they have given their love. But sooner or later the disciples gather together and start making codes of conduct. Once the master is gone, once the light is gone and they are in deep darkness, they start groping for certain rules to follow, because now the light in which they could have seen is no longer there. Now they will have to depend on rules.

“What Jesus did was his own heart’s whisperings, and what Christians go on doing is not their own hearts’ whisperings. They are imitators – and the moment you imitate, you insult your humanity, you insult existence.

Never be an imitator, be always original. Don’t become a carbon copy. And that’s what is happening all over the world: carbon copies and carbon copies.

“Life is really a dance if you are an original – and you are meant to be an original. And no two men are alike, so my way of life can never become your way of life.”

This article has been published in the HuffPost, India

To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, The Book of Wisdom, Talk #11 – Expelled from the World
Osho, The Golden Future, Talk #1 – The Language Of The Golden Future