Reflection On Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

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Written in 1923 by the Lebanese-American writer Kahlil Girvan, The Prophet is one of the world’s most beloved classics. Through the voice of the prophet Almustafa, Kahilil gibran explores many of the themes closest to our lives: love and hate, work and creativity joy and sorrow, friendship and enmity, reason and passion, earring and drinking.

Osho loves Gibran, but, unlike the millions before him who have just extolled the beauty and spender of his words, he sees not only where gibran soars and takes flight, nut also the time where his words fall again to the earth-still beautiful, but ultimately missing an existential depth.

In reflections, Osho examines Gibran’s poetic exploration of life-and goes further. He looks at whether Gibran is “a mystic of the highest order,” simply a poet “who speaks in words of gold”- or perhaps an extraordinary mixture of the two.

Throughout this book, Osho comprehensively trounces the so-called religious and philosophical approaches to life. All that is of worth is to be found not in the extraordinary but in the ordinary; not in fantastical ideas of the other world but in this very would that we find ourselves in. In short, this book shows that making a simple yet utterly basic shift in our lives will awaken the silence in our beings and bring joy into our every moment.

Osho is in a category all of his own, and as he states: “I am nobody, I don’t belong to any nation, I don’t belong to any religion, I don’t belong to any political party. I am simply an individual, what existence cleared me.

I have kept myself absolutely uninfluenced by any idiotic ideology-religious, political, social, financial, and the miracle is that because I am not burdened with all these glasses on my eyes, and curtains before me. I can see clearly.”

“Most people never ask existence. “What is my destiny? Why am I here? What is the life all about? They are not seekers, they simply accept what able to them, and think this is all life has to offer.

“A man becomes a seeker the moment he becomes aware that this mundane existence cannot be all there is. Life must contain more,”

Osho defies categorization, reflecting everything from the individual quest for meaning to the most urgent social and political issues facing society today. He books are not written but transcribed from recordings of extemporaneous talks given over a period of thirty-five years. Osho has been described by The Sunday Times in London as one of the “1000 Makers of the 20th Century” and by Sunday Mid-Day in India as one of the ten people- along with Gandhi, Nehru and Buddha- who have changed the destiny of India.

Osho has a stated aim of helping to create the conditions for the birth of a new of human being, characterized as “Zorba the Buddha”- one whose feet are firmly on the ground, yet whose hands can touch the stars. Running like a thread though all aspects of Osho is a vision that encompasses both the timeless wisdom of the East and highest potential of western science and technology.

He is synonymous with a revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation and an approach to meditation which specifically addresses the accelerated pace of contemporary life. The unique Osho Active Meditations” are designed to allow the release of accumulated stress in the body and mind so that it is easier it is easier to be still and experience the thought-free state of meditation.

Whenever I think about the paradise that all the religions have created I simply freak out. I don’t want to go paradise. Absolutely no! It is only for idiots. I would rather go to hell, because the best and the most colorful people, the most creative people, all the great poets, all the great painters, all the great dancers, all the great sculptors, you will find there. In heaven you will find only dried up saints with no juice. It will be utter boredom; you cannot even have a good conversation.

You cannot find Byron in heaven, you cannot find Jawaharlal, you cannot find Rabinfdranath Tagore, and you cannot find Maupassant, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Leonardo da Vinci, Dannte, and Socrates. You cannot find the cream of humanity there. You will find only dull, unintelligent, retarded people. Their qualities are that they can fast for twenty-one days that does not give intelligence. Somebody can stand for twelve years and will not sit down, but that is not a quality. Somebody lives naked, but that is nothing creative every child is born naked, every animal lives naked. If nakedness is spiritual, then all animals will be ahead of you.

I have also renounced, and my renunciation is far greater. I have renounced the would of cereal pleasures pleasures for this beautiful would of momentary pleasures. I have renounced for the moment; to me it is enough. And I call this contentment.

All your saints are full of desire, whatever they say. They go on saying to you, “Be desire less.” But why?-so that in paradise all your desires can be fulfilled. But this is desirelessness. I say to you, there is no need to be desireless. Live each desire with as much awareness as possible, and you will feel a tremendous contentment arresting in you. Each moment it goes on growing-you fulfilled, here and now. I do not promise you anything after death, because that is a very cunning device of your priests, your prophets, your messiahs. I am not a dreamer. And my experience is that if you can live each moment with contentment, awareness, silence, joyfulness, this very earth because paradise, there is no other paradise anywhere.