Cover of The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to Freedom

The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to Freedom

The path to freedom is filled with questions and uncertainty. Is it possible to truly know who we are? Do our lives have a purpose, or are we just accidental? What are we meant to contribute? What are we meant to become, to create, and to share? In The Book of Understanding, Osho, one of the most provocative thinkers of our time, challenges us to understand our world and ourselves in a new and radical way. The first step toward understanding, he says, is to question and doubt all that we have been taught to believe.

Read more

All our lives we've been handed so-called truths by countless others—beliefs we learned to accept without reason. It is only in questioning our beliefs, assumptions, and prejudices that we can begin to uncover our own unique voice and heal the divisions within us and without.

Once we discover our authentic self, we can embrace all aspects of the human experience—from the earthy, pleasure-loving qualities that characterize Zorba the Greek to the watchful, silent qualities of Gautam the Buddha. We can become whole and live with integrity, able to respond with creativity and compassion to the religious, political, and cultural divides that currently plague our society.

In this groundbreaking work, Osho identifies, loosens, and ultimately helps to untie the knots of fear and misunderstanding that restrict us—leaving us free to discover and create our own individual path to freedom.

Doubt—because doubt is not a sin, it is the sign of your intelligence.

You are not responsible to any nation, to any church, to any God. You are responsible only for one thing, and that is self-knowledge. And the miracle is, if you can fulfill this responsibility, you will be able to fulfill many other responsibilities without any effort. The moment you come to your own being, a revolution happens in your vision. Your whole outlook about life goes through a radical change. You start feeling new responsibilities—not as something to be done, not as duty to be fulfilled, but as a joy to do. —OSHO

From the Hardcover edition.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 288 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to Freedom? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to Freedom. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Infinite Life Shares spirituality, self-help, spiritual
  2. The Path of Love: On the Songs of Kabir Shares osho, spirituality, spiritual
  3. Everyday Enlightenment: The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth Shares self-help, spirituality, philosophy
  4. The Science of Being Great: The Practical Guide to a Life of Power Shares self-help, philosophy, nonfiction

“People who read The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to Freedom tend to reach for these next.”

  1. The Path of Prosperity
  2. Reflections On Life After Life
  3. Confidence: Finding It and Living It
  4. How to Hustle and Win

“If you want more of the same (self-help about spirituality), start with these.”

  1. Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
  2. Handbook to Higher Consciousness
  3. The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life
  4. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“If it was the spirituality that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Art of Dying
  2. The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called the Ark
  3. What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America
  4. A Guide for the Advanced Soul: A Book of Insight Tag - Hold a Problem in Your Mind

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
  2. Intimacy Struggle: Revised and Expanded for All Adults
  3. On Equilibrium
  4. Don't Believe Everything You Think