Richness
Richness can be defined as the state of existing in or containing plentiful quantities of something desirable.
Many still equate richness with being rich, being wealthy, having a lot of money, and, often, with showing that money off. They identify with outer richness and think they are rich. But increasing numbers are starting to realize that without an inner richness, without the kind of resources money cannot buy, outer richness means little.
Osho’s understanding is of a richness far greater than that which the money-identified mind could comprehend, and his proposal is that both outer and inner richness are valuable.
“To me the rich man is one who has sensitivity, creativity, receptivity. The man of wealth is only one of the dimensions. According to me the man of wealth is also a creative artist: he creates wealth. Not everybody can be a Henry Ford. His talents should be respected, although what he creates is mundane. It cannot be compared to Mozart’s music or Nijinsky’s dance, or Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. But still, he creates something which is valuable, utilitarian, and the world would be better if there were many more Henry Fords.”
Osho, Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, Talk #3
Are you saying that richness is a quality?
“I teach you richness: richness of the body, richness of the soul, richness of this world and that world. Both are possible, there is no problem at all. What I am saying I am living, and I don't see there is any conflict. I can be as meditative in my Rolls Royce – in fact, more meditative – than in a bullock cart! I have been in a bullock cart, I have been on a camel. I have used all kinds of vehicles – and to be meditative on a camel is really difficult. Camels don't like meditation at all, they are very non-meditative animals – and in a bullock cart on an Indian road…
“I don't see any point in dividing the outer and the inner. I have been poor, I have lived in utter poverty, I have lived in richness. And believe me, richness is far better than poverty. I am a man of very simple interests – I am utterly satisfied with the best of anything, I don't ask for more!”
Osho, The Wild Geese and the Water, Talk #9
So richness has little to do with possessions?
“Richness has nothing to do with possessions, it has something to do with how you live, the quality of your life, the music of your life, the poetry of your life. And all these things happen only through meditation. There has never been any other way, there is none and there will never be.”
Osho, The Miracle, Talk #12
Then is it only the outwardly rich can become aware of their inner poverty?
“The West has succeeded materially in becoming rich, and now it is too weary, too tired. The journey has taken all its soul. The journey has finished the Western man. Outwardly all is available, but the contact with the inner is lost. Now everything that man needs is there, but the man is no more there. Possessions are there, but the master has disappeared. A great imbalance has happened. Richness is there, but man is not feeling rich at all; man is feeling, on the contrary, very impoverished, very poor.
“Think of this paradox: when you are outwardly rich only then do you become aware of your inner poverty, in contrast. When you are outwardly poor you never become aware of your inner poverty, because there is no contrast. You write with white chalk on blackboards, not on white boards. Why? Because only on blackboards will it show. The contrast is needed.
“When you are outwardly rich, then suddenly a great awareness happens that ‘Inwardly I am poor, a beggar.’ And now a hopelessness also comes as a shadow that ‘All is attained that we had thought – all imagination and fantasies fulfilled – and nothing has happened out of it, no contentment, no bliss.’
“The West is bewildered. Out of this bewilderment a great desire is arising: how to have contact with one's self again.
“Meditation is nothing but getting your roots again into your inner world, into your interiority. Hence the West is becoming very much interested in meditation, and very much interested in the Eastern treasures.”
But why have religions been so against wealth?
“All the religions have been against wealth because wealth can give you all that can be purchased in life. And almost everything can be purchased except those spiritual values – love, compassion, enlightenment, freedom. But these few things are exceptions, and exceptions always prove the rule. Everything else you can purchase with money. Because all the religions have been against life, they were bound to be against money. That is a natural corollary. Life needs money because life needs comforts, life needs good food, life needs good clothes, good houses. Life needs beautiful literature, music, art, poetry. Life is vast!”
Osho, From Death to Deathlessness, Talk #22
“Perhaps I am the first person who is respectful of money, of wealth, because it can make you multidimensionally rich.
“A poor man cannot understand Mozart. A hungry man cannot understand Michelangelo. A beggar will not even look at the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. And these people who are suffering from hunger don't have enough energy to make them intelligent. Intelligence comes only when you have superfluous energy in you. They are exhausted just in earning bread and butter. They don't have intelligence. They cannot understand The Brothers Karamazov, they can only listen to some stupid priest in a church.
“Neither the priest understands what he is talking about, nor the audience. Most of them are fast asleep, tired after six days of work. And the priest finds it more comfortable that everybody is asleep, so he need not prepare a new sermon. He can go on using the old sermon. Everybody is asleep, nobody will figure out that he is just cheating them.
“Wealth is as significant as beautiful music, as great literature, as masterpieces of art.”
Osho, From Death to Deathlessness, Talk #22
“Inner richness means having a great heart. Not only a big house, but a great heart. Inner richness implies having an expanded vision. Inner richness means having not only outer wealth, but inner wealth too. Until someone attains inner wealth and the inner kingdom, his outer affluence, outer wealth, and outer kingdom have no value.”
Osho, Falling in Love with Darkness, Talk #10
Is meditation a key to richness?
“There are many kinds of richness, and the man who is rich because of money is the lowest as far as the categories of richness are concerned. Let me say it in this way: the man of wealth is the poorest rich man. Looked at from the side of the poor, he is the richest poor man. Looked at from the side of a creative artist, of a dancer, of a musician, of a scientist, he is the poorest rich man. And as far as the world of ultimate awakening is concerned he cannot even be called rich.
“Meditation will make you ultimately rich by giving you the world of your innermost being and also relatively rich, because it will release your powers of mind into certain talents that you have. My own experience is that everybody is born with a certain talent, and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be.
“Give the mind a rest – it needs it! It is so simple: just become a witness to it and it will give you both things.”