Author: Osho
«"Respect" is one of the most beautiful words I know. It does not have the sense of "honor, dignity" that it has acquired in the meantime. Respect simply means to respect, that is, to look back, to take into account. It just means looking again.
Before becoming part of a society, a culture, a civilization, he knew his true self." Much of our daily existence is determined by religious and social conditioning, which we are not aware of and which can remain unknown throughout our lives.
Throughout these pages, Osho reveals how these conditionings work, how they distance us from our unique and unrepeatable nature and how they lead us to assume an identity that is not our own. We spend much of our lives not knowing who we really are; so how can we ever have a truly developed self-esteem? True self-esteem, Osho teaches, begins with self-discovery; if we don't discover who we really are, we will never be able to like ourselves and assert ourselves before the world.
For this process of discovery, it is necessary to face and fight the false identities that social, religious and political institutions impose on us. It's a tough challenge - but if we don't take on it, we're never really living our life.
