Osho Quotes on Individuality

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  The greatest adventure that can happen to a human being is the movement from mind to no-mind, the movement from personality to individuality. The no-mind has an individuality: the mind is social.
   
• All your personalities are absolute cover-ups, hiding your individuality.
   
• I am here to destroy your personality, to give birth to your individuality.
   
• Coming to the master is coming in search of your innocence, in search of your lost childhood, in search of your originality... in search of your individuality, in search of freedom.
  
   
• Remember: no attachment should grow, no clinging should grow. They are all against your independence, your freedom, your individuality.
   
• Respect man, love man. Respect his individuality, respect his differences. And that is possible only if you respect your individuality. That is possible only if you are grounded in your own being and you are unafraid.
   
• Love with eyes knows when to say no, when to say yes. Love neither interferes in anybody's life nor allows anybody else to interfere into one's own life. Love gives individuality to others, but does not lose its own individuality.
   
• Try to find your individuality, your integrity, and make the effort of not compromising. Because the more you compromise, the less you are an individual. You are only a cog in the wheel, just a part in the vast mechanism, just a small part of the mob -- not an individual in your own beauty, in your own right. I am absolutely against compromise. Death is far more beautiful than a life of compromise.
   
• One thing is certain: you can never become anything other than yourself, and unless you become yourself you cannot be happy. Happiness happens only when a rosebush grows roseflowers; when it flowers, when it has its own individuality. You may be a rosebush and trying to flower as lotus flower -- that is creating insanity. Erase the mind. And the way to erase it is not by fight: the way to erase it is just to become aware.
   
• The disappearance of your person is not your disappearance, remember; on the contrary, it is your appearance. As your person disappears, your personality falls away; your individuality, your individual arises. To have a personality is hypocrisy. To be an individual is your birthright.
   
• Each man is born with a unique individuality, and each man has a destiny of his own. Imitation is crime, it is criminal. If you try to become a Buddha, you may become an imitation Buddha. You may look like Buddha, you may walk like Buddha, you may talk like Buddha, but you will miss. You will miss all that life was ready to deliver to you. Because Buddha happens only once. It is not in the nature of things to repeat. God is so creative that He never repeats anything. You cannot find another human being in the present, in the past, or in the future, who is going to resemble you exactly. It has never happened. Man is not a mechanism. He is not like Ford cars on an assembly line; you can produce millions alike, exactly alike. Man is a soul, is individual. Imitation is poisonous. Never imitate anybody
   
• To be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you. Nobody wants you to be on your own.
   
• Each individual is unique in ordinary life. The uniqueness becomes even more sharp and clear, crystal clear, when the person becomes enlightened -- because only then his pure genius, his pure individuality, uncontaminated, unpolluted, is revealed.
   
• The first step is: accept yourself as you are; drop all shoulds. Don't carry any ought on your heart! You are not to be somebody else; you are not expected to do something which doesn't belong to you -- you are just to be yourself. Relax! and just be yourself. Be respectful to your individuality. and have the courage to sign your own signature. Don't go on copying others signatures.
   
• Don't bother whether you become a world-famous artist or not; that is not the significant thing. But create something -- a beautiful song, a little music, a dance, a painting, a garden. And when the roses blossom... you cannot say that life is a drag with so many roses blossoming. A beautiful painting... you cannot say life is a drag, because this painting has been created for the first time in the world and for the last time. Nobody has done it before, and nobody will do it again; only you were capable of doing it. Express your uniqueness in whatsoever you do. Express your individuality.
  Let existence be proud of you. Life will not be felt like a drag; it will become a fragrance.
   
• Unless a person decides that "Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability -- everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else"... This decision and this declaration -- this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd -- gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don't need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.
   
• The ordinary, unconscious human being has no individuality; he has only a personality. Personality is that which is given by others to you -- by the parents, by the teachers, by the priest, by the society -- whatever they have said about you. And you have been desiring to be respectable, to be respected, so you have been doing things which are appreciated, and the society goes on rewarding you, respecting you more and more. This is their method of creating a personality. But personality is very thin, skin-deep. It is not your nature. The child is born without a personality, but he is born with a potential individuality. The potential individuality simply means his uniqueness from anybody else -- he is different.
   
• People are very much confused about personality and individuality. They think personality is individuality. It is not -- in fact it is the barrier. You will never attain to individuality if you are not ready to drop your personality. Here the group therapies, meditations, work, this communion...all is devised in such a way that it destroys your personality, the plastic self, and throws you back to your real individuality. Individuality is born with you, it is your being. Personality is a social phenomenon, it is given to you. When you are sitting in a cave in the Himalayas you don't have any personality, but you have individuality. Personality can exist only in reference to others. The more people know you, the more personality you have -- hence the desire to have name and fame. The more people respect you, the more you enjoy the personality; it becomes strengthened.