Osho was a voracious reader. It is said that he read more than 100,000 books. Here’s a list of books that Osho himself dictated as his ‘favorites’. Osho’s disciple Devageet took notes while Osho was describing the list of books he loved and why he loved them. A book of these sessions was published with the title Books I Have Loved. Following is a list of the books mentioned in each chapter.
From the first chapter:
Even if Nietzsche had not written anything else but Thus Spake Zarathustra he would have served humanity immensely, profoundly – more cannot be expected from any man – because Zarathustra had been almost forgotten. It was Nietzsche who brought him back, who again gave him birth, a resurrection. Thus Spake Zarathustra is going to be the bible of the future.
It is said that Zarathustra laughed when he was born. It is very difficult to imagine a new-born baby laughing. Okay, smiling – but laughing? One wonders at what, because laughter needs a context. At what joke was the baby Zarathustra laughing? The cosmic joke, at the joke this whole existence is.
Yes, write in your notes the cosmic joke and underline it. That’s good. I can even hear you underline it. That’s beautiful. Do you see how good my hearing is? When I want to, I can hear even the sound of drawing a sketch, a leaf. When I want to see I can see in darkness, utter darkness. But when I don’t want to hear, I pretend not to hear, just to give you the good feeling that everything is going good.
Zarathustra at his birth, laughing! And that was only a beginning. He laughed throughout his whole life. His whole life was a laughter. Even so people have forgotten him. The English have even changed his name, they called him “Zoroaster”. What a monstrosity! “Zarathustra” has the softness of a rose petal, and “Zoroaster” sounds like a huge mechanical disaster. Zarathustra must be laughing at his name being changed to Zoroaster. But before Friedrich Nietzsche, he was forgotten. He was bound to be.
The Mohammedans had forced all the followers of Zarathustra to become Mohammedans. Only a few, very few, escaped – to India, where else. India was the place where everybody could enter without a passport or visa, without any trouble. Only very few followers of Zarathustra escaped the Mohammedan murderers. There are not many in India, only one hundred thousand. Now, who bothers about a religion of only one hundred thousand – who not only almost all live just in India, but in and around only one city, Bombay. Even they themselves have forgotten Zarathustra. They have compromised with the Hindus with whom they have to live. They escaped the well and fell into the ditch – a deeper ditch! On one side the well, the other side the ditch. And through the middle goes The Way – Buddha calls it the middle way – exactly in the middle, just like a tightrope walker.
Nietzsche’s great service was in bringing Zarathustra back to the modern world. His great disservice was Adolf Hitler. He did both. Of course, he was not responsible for Adolf Hitler. It was Hitler’s own misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s idea of ’superman’. What could Nietzsche do about it? If you misunderstand me, what can I do about it? Misunderstanding is always your freedom. Adolf Hitler was a juvenile mediocrity, a retarded child, really ugly. Just remember his face – that small mustache, those fearful eyes staring as though trying to make you fearful, and the tense forehead. He was so tense that he could not even be friendly to anybody throughout his whole life. To be a friend one needs to be a little relaxed.
Hitler could not love, although he tried in his dictatorial way. He tried, as many husbands do unfortunately, to dictate, to order, to maneuver and manipulate women – but he was unable to love. Love needs intelligence. He would not even allow his own girlfriend to be alone with him in his room at night. Such fear! He was afraid that while he was asleep… one never knows, the girlfriend may be a girl-foe; she may be an agent working for the enemy. He slept alone all his life.
How could a man like Adolf Hitler love? He had no sympathy, no feeling, he had no heart, no feminine side to him. He had killed the woman within himself so how could he love the woman outside? To love the outer woman you have to nourish the woman within, because only that which is within is expressed in your actions.
I have heard that Hitler shot one of his girlfriends for just a small reason; he killed her because he had said she should not go to visit her mother, but when he was out, she went, although she was back before Hitler returned. He came to know through the guards that she had gone out. That was enough to finish the love – not only the love, but the woman too! He shot her saying, “If you disobey me, then you are my enemy.”
That was his logic: who obeys you is your friend; who disobeys you is your enemy. Who is for you is for you, and who is not for you is against you. It is not necessarily so – somebody may be just neutral, neither being for you nor against you. He may not be your friend, but that does not necessarily mean that he is an enemy.
I love the book Thus Spake Zarathustra. I love very few books; I can count them on my fingers . . .
Thus Spake Zarathustra will be the first on my list.
Here is a list of the books Osho speaks of from each chapter:
Chapter One:
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Book of Mirdad by Mikhail Naimy
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
The Parables of Chuang Tzu
The Sermon on the Mount
Bhagavad-Gita by Krishna
Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
Chapter Two:
The Book of the Sufis
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
The Book of Lieh Tzu
Dialogue on Socrates by Plato
The Notes of the Disciples of Bodhidharma
The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam
Masnavi by Jalaluddin Rumi
The Isa Upanishad
All and Everything by George Gurdjieff
In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Chapter Three:
Hsin Hsin Ming by Sosan
Tertium Organum by P. D. Ouspensky
Geet Govinda by Jayadev
Samayasar by Kundkunda
The First and the Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti
The Book/Teachings of Huang Po
The Book of Hui Hi
The Song of Solomon
Chapter Four:
The Fragments by Heraclitus
The Golden Verses by Pythagoras
The Royal Song by Saraha
Tilopa’s Song of Mahamudra
Zen and Japanese Culture by D. T. Suzuki
Let Go by Hubert Benoit
Ramakrishna’s Parables
The Fables of Aesop
Mula Madhyamika Karika by Nagarjuna
The Book of Marpa
Chapter Five:
Brahma Sutras by Badrayana
Bhakti Sutras by Narada
Yoga Sutras by Patanjali
The Songs of Kabir
The Secret Doctrine by Madame Blavatsky
The Songs of Meera
The Songs of Sahajo
The Book of Rabiya-al-Adabiya
The Songs of Nanak
Vivek Chudamani by Shankaracharya
The Koran – Hazrat Mohammed
Chapter Six:
The Dhammapada – Buddha
Jaina Sutras – Mahavira
Zorba the Greek by Nikos KazantzakisT
The Declarations of Al-Hillaj Mansoor
The Fragments of Mahakashyapa
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Stories of Baal Shem Tov
The Songs of Farid
Vigyana Bhairava Tantra – Shiva
Tatva Sutra by Uma Swati
The Songs of Naropa
Chapter Seven:
The Poetry of Malukdas
Guru Grantha Sahib (The Book of the Sikhs)
The Light on the Path by Mabel Collins
The Songs of Lalla
Words of Gorakh-Nath
The Supreme Doctrine by Hubert Benoit
Shiva Sutra
Message of Gaurang
The Songs of Dadu
The Statements of Sarmad
Chapter Eight:
The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietzsche
A New Model of the Universe by P. D. Ouspensky
The Statements of Sanai
The Fragments of Dionysius
At the Feet of the Master by Jiddhu Krishnamurti
The Fragments of Junnaid
God Speaks by Meher Baba
Maxims for a Revolutionary by George Bernard Shaw
The Teachings of Hui Neng
The Jokes of Mulla Nasruddin
Chapter Nine:
The Destiny of the Mind by Haas
The Sayings of Eckhart
The Sayings of Boehme
The Sufis by Idries Shah
The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
The Sayings of Rinzai by Lin Chi
The Lectures of Hazrat Inayat Khan
All of the books by Hazrat Ali Khan
Jesus, the Son of Man by Kahlil Gibran
The Madman by Kahlil Gibran
Chapter Ten:
Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Sartre
Time and Being by Martin Heidegger
Tractatus Logico Philisophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nirdesh Sutra by Vimalkirti
Commentaries on Living by J. Krishnamurti
Commentaries by Maurice Nicoll
Our Life with Gurdjieff by Hartmann
Shree Pasha by Ramanuja
The Future Psychology of Man by P.D. Ouspensky
The Book of Bahauddin
Chapter Eleven:
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
The Analects by Confusius
The Garden of the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
The Voice of the Master by Kahlil Gibran
Who am I by Maharshi Ramana
The Mind of India by Moorehead and Radhakrishnan
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Wanderer by Kahlil Gibran
The Spiritual Sayings by Kahlil Gibran
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Chapter Twelve:
Tales of Hassidism by Martin Buber
I and Thou by Martin Buber
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
Meetings with Remarkable Men by Gurdjieff
The Grantha by a disciple of Kabir
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The Myth of Sisyphus by Marcel
The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
The Songs of Daya bai
Chapter Thirteen:
Lust for Life by Irving Stone
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
Notes on Jesus by Thomas
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Mother by Maxim Gorky
Fathers and Sons by Turgenev
The Phoenix by D.H. Lawrence
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious by D.H. Lawrence
Light of Asia by Arnold
Bijak by Kabir
One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse
The I Ching
Nadi Ke Dvip (Islands of a River) by Sacchidanand Vatsayana
Chapter Fourteen:
The Art of Living by Lin Yutang
The Wisdom of China by Lin Yutang
The Talmud
Shunya Svabhava by Taran Taran
Siddhi Svabhava by Taran Taran
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Prose Poems by Kahlil Gibran
Thoughts and Meditations by Kahlil Gibran
Chapter Fifteen:
My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi
Confessions by Saint Augustine
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Art of Tantra by Ajit Mukherjee
The Tantra Paintings by Ajit Mukherjee
Bhaj Govindam Moodh Mate by Adi Shankaracharya
Philosophical Papers by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Zen Flesh Zen Bones – Paul Reps
Zen Buddhism by Christmas Humphries
The Songs of Chandidas
Chapter Sixteen:
Shiva Puri Baba by Bennett
Listen Little Man by Wilhelm Reich
Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Whitehead
Poetics by Aristotle
Three Pillars of Zen by Ross
The Gospel of Ramakrishna by Mahendranath
The Collected Works of Ramatirtha
Principa Ethica by G.E. Moore
The Songs of Rahim by Rahim Khan Khana)
Divan by Mirza Ghalib
The Book by Alan Watts
Copyright © OSHO International Foundation
You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.
Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.
Sat Sangha Salon 