“Remember, meditation will bring you more and more intelligence, infinite intelligence, a radial intelligence. Meditation will make you more alive and sensitive; your life will become richer.

“Look at the ascetics: their life has become almost as if it is not life. These people are not meditators. They may be masochists, torturing themselves and enjoying the torture… The mind is very cunning, it goes on doing things and rationalizing them.

“Ordinarily you are violent towards others but the mind is very cunning – it can learn non-violence, it can preach nonviolence, then it becomes violent towards itself. And the violence that you do on your own self is respected by people because they have an idea that to be an ascetic is to be religious. That is sheer nonsense. God is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no flowers, there would be no green trees, only deserts. God is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no song in life, no dance in life – only cemeteries and cemeteries. God is not an ascetic: God enjoys life. God is more Epicurean than you can imagine. If you think about God, think in terms of Epicurus. God is a constant search for more and more happiness, joy, ecstasy. Remember that.

“But mind is very cunning. It can rationalize paralysis as meditation; it can rationalize dullness as transcendence: it can rationalize deadness as renunciation. Watch out. Always remember that if you are moving in the right direction, you will go on flowering.”

Osho, Ancient Music in the Pines, Talk #7