JESUS
Come Follow Yourself Vol 02 04
Fourth Discourse from the series of 11 discourses - Come Follow Yourself Vol 02 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
I recoil from the whole idea of the crucifixion. The murder of Jesus at thirty-three, even more than the murder of John the Baptist or the murder of Socrates, seems supremely unnecessary. Could not he, the prince of compassion, have managed to sympathize with the high priests, seeing the impossibility of their situation? After all, they were bishops, not the Gestapo – benighted no doubt, but not murderous. Or worse still, did he deliberately push them to the ultimate impossibility where they were bound to kill him, and set them up as the villains?
One very foundational thing will have to be understood, and that is that the people you call bad are never as bad as the people you call good.
The bad people are bad, but they have no excuse for being bad. They know they are bad and they have nowhere to hide themselves. But the people who are thought to be good, respectable, honored, respected, religious, are the really dangerous people because their badness can hide in their goodness. They can murder and will not feel they are murderous. They can kill and can go on feeling they are doing that killing for the good of those who are being killed.
The ordinarily bad person, the criminal, is exposed. He knows he is not good, and that is his possibility of transformation. He can understand it and come out of it. But the so-called good person is hidden under a personality. He may not be able to understand what he is doing and for what reasons he is doing it. He can always manage to rationalize.
That’s how it happened, and not only in the case of Jesus. It has always been happening. The priests who were murderous never thought they were doing anything bad. They thought they were saving their religion, they thought they were saving morality. They thought, “This man is dangerous. He is corrupting the youth.”
The charge against Jesus was that he was corrupting people: “He is destroying the old morality, creating chaos.” That was the charge against Socrates and that is the charge against me. It has always been so.
Whether they are Hindus or Greeks or Jews makes no difference, the priests are the protectors of the old. The temple is of the past: they are the protectors, the guardians of tradition. Of course Jesus looked dangerous to them. He can destroy the whole structure.
Not that they were deceiving themselves. They may have thought themselves perfectly right without a single question that they weren’t: “This man is dangerous and to destroy him is to save the society.” And of course whenever there is such an alternative – that you can save the whole society by killing one man – the murder is worth it. The priests killed him because of their goodness, because of their virtue, because of their morality. They killed him in the name of God. They killed him very innocently.
This situation has arisen again and again in history. There seems to be no possibility of changing it. The only possibility would be for Jesus to be so moderate that he doesn’t hurt anybody – but then he is useless. He could have managed; you ask me rightly. He could have been very moderate and liberal. He could have talked like a politician who talks much but never says anything; who says many things but is always vague; who never clearly asserts anything so you can never pinpoint what he has said.
Jesus’ crime was that he was clear, certain – that whatever he was saying, he was not saying like a politician. He was opening his heart; he was not diplomatic. If he had diluted his teaching, there would have been no trouble – but then there would have been no Christ either, and that would have been a greater murder. Then Christ would have committed suicide.
As I see it, as things are, this is the only way things could have been. Jesus had to be as hard as he was, he had to be as rebellious as he was. He should not have diluted his message and he should not have come down and compromised.
The priests would have been happy if he had become a rabbi, a priest. Then there would have been no trouble. If he had just kept himself within the imprisonment of the tradition, if he had not tried to open new dimensions to humanity, there would have been no trouble. Then they would have worshipped him, loved him, sanctified him as a saint. They would have remembered him.
But he tried to open new dimensions. Then you are moving into danger, but that danger is worth taking. That Jesus was crucified is nothing to be worried about because that is the only way. He pushed humanity to a higher level of being and consciousness.
It is not that he tried to manage in some way to be murdered. There was no need. The priests are enough; you need not provoke them. They will be provoked automatically, they move in a mechanical way. There was no need to provoke them. The very being of Jesus was enough.
You recoil from the whole idea of crucifixion because you cannot understand. It is not an ordinary murder. It is meaningful, it is significant, it has done much. It has created something new that never existed before. Through that crucifixion, Jesus changed almost half of humanity, forced them to move on a different path than they had ever moved on.
When you think about crucifixion, you become afraid – as if you are being crucified. You don’t know that Jesus cannot be crucified. Only his body can, not him. But when you think of crucifixion, you think of yourself being completely crucified and killed. Your understanding about life and death is not there yet.
That is the meaning of the story that after the third day Jesus was alive again, resurrected. It simply says that you can crucify the body of a Jesus, but you can never crucify his spirit. After three days, he will again be moving on the earth, deathless. Crucifixion became a situation in which he could assert his deathlessness.
So it is perfectly okay as it is: there is nothing to be worried about. And this will continue to be so. The only possibility for a Jesus to exist and not be crucified is if people have become so indifferent to religion that they don’t bother. That is not a good possibility. That is very sad. Jesus comes and walks on the earth and nobody is hurt, no priest bothers about him – rather, people enjoy. They gather around and Jesus looks amusing; he looks like a fool or a buffoon who is talking nonsense.
That’s what the modern philosophers say: to talk about God is to talk nonsense. It makes no sense, it is meaningless. You are using words that are only containers, and there is no content in them. God, moksha, nirvana – what do you mean?
If Jesus comes someday and nobody is bothered, that will be the saddest possibility. Jesus hurts because people are concerned. Jesus hurts because religion is meaningful; Jesus provokes antagonism because with religion, life is at stake. That will be the most unfortunate moment in human history – when Jesus comes and nobody bothers to stone him, nobody bothers to crucify him. He will move around the earth and people will laugh, will be amused. And he will look like a buffoon.
No, the crucifixion of Jesus simply says that religion is so meaningful that when a man like Jesus comes, he creates a rift in humanity between those who love him and those who hate him. The whole of humanity is divided. He is significant.
Many times I think about it: this has never happened in India. Buddha was not crucified, Mahavira was not crucified, Krishna was not crucified. Why? This country is too sophisticated about religion, and when you become too sophisticated, you become indifferent.
This country could tolerate Buddha, Mahavira, and Krishna. Ordinarily, people think that it is because this country is so religious. That’s not my opinion. This country is so sophisticated that people have already become indifferent. Nobody bothers about what Buddha is saying. In fact, everybody already knows what he is saying. Everybody knows all that can be known – who bothers?
It is like Jesus walking into Cambridge University or Oxford, where philosophers think that God is meaningless. If Jesus comes to Oxford and stands on the crossroads and cries, “I and my father are one!” then those philosophers will gather together and they will laugh. “About whom are you talking? Which father? Where is he? What do you mean by ‘father’? Then who is your mother?” They will ask irrelevant questions and they will laugh, and Jesus will simply feel embarrassed.
This is my understanding: the Jews of Jesus’ days were very simple people, not sophisticated. Religion was very meaningful, not just a philosophy. Their whole life was at stake, and this man was destroying it. This man was uprooting all they had been protecting for centuries. This man was trying to create a revolution, a chaos. And they had a deep love for the tradition, for the values they had always cherished. They were not indifferent; they could not be indifferent. Either they had to follow Jesus, or they had to kill him. There was no other alternative. India is more philosophical, too much in the head. Jews were not that much in the head.
To me, the crucifixion of Jesus simply shows one thing: they took Jesus seriously. Buddha was never taken that seriously. We could tolerate him: “It’s okay. Let him do his thing. Nothing much is going to happen out of it. Why kill him unnecessarily? By killing him, there may be even more danger because the death will create a stir.”
If he had been in India, Jesus would have become one of the avatars – but nothing much. Nothing much: we would have included him in the tradition. Even Buddha has been included. Buddha denied all that is basic to Hinduism, but Hindus are very sophisticated people. They said, “Yes, this too is a message from God.” He was contradicting all that is meaningful to Hindus, but they were not bothered. They said, “He is also an incarnation of God.”
Hindus have written a story about when Buddha died that shows how sophisticated minds function. Of course, he was a very important man, one of the most important ever born in India, one of the most influential. He had denied Hinduism, so how to cope with him?
Hindus have created a story. They say…
God created the world, heaven and hell. Centuries and centuries passed. People would die and immediately they would go to heaven. Nobody would go to hell because nobody was a sinner.
So the people who were managing hell – the Devil and his disciples – went to God and said, “Why have you created hell? Nobody ever comes. Our whole existence is futile. We go on sitting and sitting and waiting, and nobody knocks at the door. Either cancel it, or send people!”
God said, “Wait! Soon I am going to be born as Gautam Buddha. I will destroy people’s minds, I will poison their minds, and then they will be coming to hell.”
That’s why Buddha was born: an incarnation of God to spoil people’s minds. And since then, hell is overflowing.
This is a sophisticated way to tackle a man like Buddha. Jews were simple. They simply could not tolerate Jesus. They killed him. That means they paid great respect to him. They realized the significance of the man, the dangerousness of the man: either he lives or their tradition lives. Both cannot live together.
Try to meditate on the crucifixion of Jesus and you will not be so puzzled and confused, and you will not recoil so much from it.
The second question:
Osho,
Although you have made me alive toward Christ, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Lao Tzu and all those known as enlightened ones – and although it is really difficult for me to conceive of you as separate –when someone starts talking highly of anyone, it automatically comes out of my mouth that there has never been a greater master than you, and maybe there will never be in the future either. So is this because of my love toward you, or due to my ego, or is it reality, or am I biased? Please enlighten.
The disciples of Jesus thought in the same way. The disciples of Buddha also thought in the same way. It is part of love, not of reality.
It is part of love. You fall in love with a woman and you think, “Never before has there been such a woman; never again shall there be such a woman.” What do you mean? Is this the reality? In a sense it is: it is the reality for you. It is not an objective reality; it is a subjective reality. This is your feeling, and feelings are as real as stones. They exist.
This is not a comparison. You are not saying there really has never been such a beautiful woman before. How can you know? Millions and millions of women have been on the earth: how can you know, how can you compare? You don’t even know all the women that are on the earth right now. Who knows? – there may be somebody who is more beautiful than your beloved.
But that is irrelevant, that is not the point. You are not making a comparative statement. It is not that you have studied all the statistics. You are simply making a statement of love. It has nothing to do with any other woman; it is not comparative. In the moment of love a truth arises, a subjective truth. It is your feeling. For you, this is the woman, and all other women have become irrelevant.
The same happens when you love a master. It happens even more extremely because the love is still deeper. You love a woman physically – at the most, psychologically. You love a master spiritually. You touch the deepest core. He touches the deepest core in you. In that ecstasy, a subjective truth arises.
This is not new. This is nothing new to you. This has always been happening. Ask Jesus’ disciples and they will say, “He is the only begotten son of God.” They cannot conceive that Jesus can be compared in any way with anybody else. He is incomparable, unique –the only begotten son. It is impossible for them to conceive that there is another son of God. Ask the followers of Buddha and they say, “He has attained. And only he has attained the unattainable. It was never attained before.” Ask the followers of Mahavira. They say, “He is the only one, all-knowing, omniscient. There is nobody else.”
What is happening? It is a simple phenomenon of subjective love. It is impossible for the lover to conceive that there can be anybody else. In a moment of love, you are in such deep ecstasy, so intoxicated. Love is an intoxicant. In that intoxication, whatever you say is poetic, it is not scientific. And there is no contradiction in it.
That’s why when I speak on Jesus, I forget all about Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna. They pale down, they disappear, they fade. Then, Jesus arises out of the whole of history, the only one, because that is the only way to understand him. You have to be deeply in love.
When I talk about Buddha, I forget about Jesus because even to remember Jesus will be a disturbance. When I talk about Lao Tzu, I forget about everybody else. He is enough, more than enough. He himself is such a vast sky that you can go on and on and on, and there is no end to it. They are all vast skies.
But the standpoint of the disciple is the standpoint of a lover. He is making a poetic statement. It is not reality, and yet it is reality. It is not reality in the objective sense of the word. It is reality as a subjective feeling. But I would like you to get out of it. I would like you to attain a greater love that is less like an intoxicant and more like awareness.
There are two stages with a master. First is falling in love with him. It is absolutely necessary; without it, you will never be in contact with him. But that is only the beginning. That should not become the end. In that state of ecstasy, you will be poetic. Be poetic! Don’t be worried. There is nothing to worry about. Declare your love! Go on the housetops and declare your love because the more you declare it, the more it grows.
But that is just the beginning. That is necessary to come close to the master. But come still closer and there comes a moment when the two flames of the disciple and the master become one. There is a jump, a leap, and the two flames become one. Then you become aware. Then you will laugh at your own statements.
Now you know that enlightened people are not different at all. Only names differ. Buddha is a name, Jesus is a name, Krishna is a name – but the enlightenment that has happened to them is the same. The closer you come to Buddha, the closer you will come to Christ also.
It is as if you are moving from the periphery of a circle toward the center. On the periphery, one point is Buddha, another point is Jesus, another point is Ramakrishna. The closer you come to the center, those lines are no longer so separate, so different, so distant. Ramakrishna comes toward Christ, Christ comes toward Buddha, Buddha comes toward Krishna. They are coming closer. Move more and more to the center, and they are meeting and merging into each other. When you reach the exact center, suddenly they have all disappeared. Only enlightenment is, only light is. All have disappeared. Those were just the personalities.
Whatever you see in me is a personality. It is not the quality of the light; it is the mode of the lamp. It is the body of the lamp, not the quality of the light.
The quality of the light is the same. Lamps differ. One lamp may be just an earthen lamp, another may be a golden lamp. The difference is vast, but that difference makes no difference in the quality of light. There is the same light in an earthen lamp or in a golden lamp.
It is the same. Buddha is reported to have said, “Go to the sea and taste the seawater. Anywhere you go, the seawater tastes the same.” Such is the quality of buddhas. You can taste from me, you can taste from Ramakrishna, you can taste from Krishnamurti, you can taste from Jesus: the difference is only from where you taste it. The ghat, the banks, may be different, but the ocean is the same. And wherever you taste it, it will taste the same: the same saltiness, the same flame.
So there is nothing wrong in it. Don’t feel guilty in any way. When you are in love, you have to be mad. In love and reasonable? – nobody has ever heard about it. If your love is reasonable, it will not be much of a love. When you are in love, you are mad.
When Majnu says something about Laila, it is not a scientific statement. But still it has a truth: the truth of Majnu’s heart. It does not say anything about Laila, it says something about Majnu’s love. But that love is also true.
So don’t be in any way guilty about it because this is the only way you will proceed. But don’t cling to it: move, go on and on. A greater consciousness is waiting for you – where love becomes aware, where love becomes consciousness, where love flares up and becomes light. There you will understand that all are one and the same. And in enlightenment, the personality disappears – the personality of a Buddha or a Jesus – and only the ocean remains, with the same taste.
It is your love. Good. Be happy about it, but don’t be content with it, don’t think it is enough. Good, but more is possible. Always look ahead and always try to transcend the state you are in. There comes a moment when nothing remains to be transcended. That is realization.
The third question:
Osho,
Do all enlightened masters sound as egoistic as you do?
It is bound to be so. They sound egoistic because they cannot be humble in the sense you understand humility. Try to understand; it is a delicate point. Whatever you call humbleness is a function of the ego. It is a modified ego. The enlightened person has no ego so he cannot have a modified ego, he cannot be humble. He cannot be humble in the sense you can understand.
Otherwise Krishna will not be able to say to Arjuna, “Leave everything and come to my feet. I am the God who created the whole existence – sarva dharman parityajya mamekam sharanam vraj. Come to my feet” What egoism! And Jesus will not be able to say, “I am the door, I am the way, I am the truth, I and my father in heaven are one. Those who follow me will be saved. Only those who follow me will be saved.” And when Buddha attained buddhahood, he declared to the skies, to the heavens, “I have attained the unattainable!”
They sound very egoistical. First, they cannot be humble in the sense you understand humbleness. Your humbleness is a modified, polished, cultured ego. But they sound egoistic because they are not humble. You know only two qualities, two ways, of being: humble or egoistic. They are not humble so they must be egoistic. You have only two categories. And egoism is easy for you to understand. It is your language.
When you say “I,” you mean one thing. When I say “I,” I mean something else. But when I say “I,” you will understand it in your way, not in my way. When Krishna said to Arjuna, “Come to my feet!” what does he mean? Of course you will understand if you said to somebody, “Come to my feet!” – so Krishna’s meaning must be the same. No, that is not his meaning. He has no “I” left, he has no “my” left, but he has to use your language, and you understand it in your own way.
So all enlightened masters sound egoistic because you are egoistic. You can understand their humbleness only when your ego disappears; otherwise it won’t allow you. The only way to understand those who have awakened is to become awake.
I go on observing continuously: I say something, you understand something else. But that’s natural. How can you understand my meaning? When I say something, the word goes to you, but not my meaning. My meaning remains in my heart. And then the word goes within you and you color it, you give it a meaning. That meaning is yours.
The words sound egoistic, but they are not – because if they are, then enlightenment has not happened yet. Enlightenment happens only when the ego has disappeared. The ego is the darkness of the soul, the ego is the imprisonment of the soul. The “I” is the barrier to the ultimate.
A Buddha is an emptiness. And when he says, “I have attained the unattainable,” he is simply saying the emptiness has realized its emptiness, nothing else. But to translate it into your words? He is simply saying the emptiness has realized its emptiness, but he has to say, “I have attained the unattainable.”
When Krishna says, “Come to my feet,” he is saying, “Here, look! The emptiness is standing before you. Dissolve into it!” But that won’t be direct. He has to use Arjuna’s language. He says, “Come to my feet.” If Arjuna is ready and willing to surrender – if he trusts and surrenders – when he touches Krishna’s feet, he will touch emptiness. Only then will there be a realization of what Krishna was saying: “There are no feet, there is no Krishna – just a tremendous quality of emptiness.” The temple of God is emptiness. Touching Krishna’s feet, he will bow down to emptiness, and the emptiness will pour down into him. But that will be possible only when he trusts.
Yes, many times I must sound very egoistic to you, but don’t be deceived. If you cling to the idea that I am egoistic, you will never be able to let go, to surrender, and then your ego will go on. Then there is no need to be here with me because then the whole point is lost. You are wasting your time.
There is only one way to be here with me: if you want to surrender. Otherwise go away. Find somebody somewhere else where you find it easy to surrender because unless you surrender, you will not come to know who you are. And without knowing yourself, you will not be able to know what has happened to a man whom we called enlightened. Only through your own experience will things become clear to you.
Yes, it sounds egoistic. Now there are two ways. If you think it not only sounds egoistic, but it is, then go away from me. The sooner you go the better, because all the time that you are here will be wasted. Or if you think it simply sounds egoistic, but it is not so, then surrender, then don’t wait – because sometimes waiting too long can become habitual. You can get addicted to it, and then you can go on waiting and waiting and waiting.
And I will not be waiting here for long. A little while longer and I will be gone. Then you will repent, then you will suffer, then you will be sad – but then it will be of no use.
It will be easy for you to touch my feet when I am gone because then there is no surrender. You can go and touch the feet of a statue. The statue is dead; there is no surrender. When you touch the feet of an alive man – who is alive just like you, who is in the body just like you – then comes the problem. The ego resists.
So either believe in your ego or believe in me. These are the only two alternatives. Up to now you have believed in your ego. What have you attained? I open another alternative for you. Try it.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Who are you?
Whoever you think, because it depends on you. If you look at me with total emptiness, I will be different. If you look at me with ideas, those ideas will color me. If you come to me with a prejudice, then I will be different.
I am just a mirror. Your own face will be reflected. There is a saying that if a monkey looks into a mirror, he will not find an apostle looking at him through the mirror. Only a monkey will be looking through the mirror.
So it depends on the way you look at me. I have disappeared completely so I have nothing to impose on you. Who am I? Just a nothingness, a mirror. Now you have complete freedom. If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.
The fifth question:
Osho,
During the lectures I find my eyes fixed on your face. Every once in a while, there is a sudden shift and for a few moments your face appears satanic. I know this is a projection. What is inside of me?
Is there any need for me to tell you? You have both sides within you: the divine and the Devil. Sometimes, when you are flowing through your divine side, you will see the divine in me. Then things shift. When you are flowing through the devilish side, then the Devil will be seen in me. But always remember: it is you. I am just a mirror, a situation to reveal yourself to yourself – that’s all. So whatever you see, meditate on it because that must be some quality within you.
It is very easy for the mind to project and forget that it is a projection. There are people who believe I am really a devil, and there are people who believe I am really divine. Both are taking their projections as real. I am just “I am.” I am just a mirror. I show your face to you. That’s the function of a master: to show your face to you.
So whatever you see, meditate upon it. If you see the Devil, then try to find your Devil within yourself and try to drop it. Don’t get the idea the Devil is in me, because then you will never be able to get rid of your Devil. Because if it is in me, then what can you do? Then you are helpless. But if it is in you, something can be done. You can drop it.
The sixth question:
Osho,
Why are the sannyasins who live here not allowed to participate in all the meditations? Why are they told to participate in only one meditation every day?
It is because of you, ladies and gentlemen. It is because of your laziness.
I go on talking about non-doing, and my text becomes your pretext. Non-doing has nothing to do with laziness. In fact, a lazy person can never move into non-doing. A lazy person is almost suicidal, closed. His energy is not flowing. A non-doer is a flowing person, alive.
A non-doer does not mean that he does not do anything. He does many things, many more than ordinary doers, but he is still not a doer. All he does is a happening. He is instrumental – as if the divine possesses him and functions through him. He never thinks, “I am doing it.” At the most he thinks, “I am allowing it.”
A non-doer will do many things and will not be tired because there will be no tension. A non-doer will do many things and will not accumulate any ego because he is not the doer. Things are just happening. A non-doer loves his work, and the work becomes worship.
People are allowed to be here only for certain work. That certain work is that they have to transform their work into worship. But they would like to be lazy. And particularly in India, sannyas is thought to be a type of laziness. People who don’t want to do anything become sannyasins.
I am not a shelter for them; I am not a shelter for escapists. I am here to teach you life and more life and still more life, because only when your energy is flowing will you be able to love; only when your energy is flowing will you be able to know; only when your energy is flowing will you be able to transcend death someday. Otherwise not.
But very few work as worship here. Many go on avoiding. Not that they want to meditate – because if they want to meditate then the whole thing will be totally different: they can meditate with their work. But they would like to do all the meditations just to avoid the work.
A few are absolutely lazy and think they can try and rationalize it. For example, let me tell you about one day in one sannyasin’s life. From six to seven in the morning he meditates, then comes breakfast. Then eight to nine-thirty or ten is the lecture. Then of course by ten o'clock he has already done too much: meditated, listened to such a long lecture – so a little gossiping is obviously needed. Then by eleven, eleven-thirty, he is ready for lunch. By twelve, of course, he has already done too much – meditating, listening, even eating – so at twelve he goes to sleep. Up till three, rest is needed. Three to three-thirty: tea or coffee time. Three-thirty to four-thirty: Nadabrahma – individual meditation. Four-thirty to five-thirty he goes for a walk. Of course, one needs a little physical exercise. Five-thirty to six-thirty: Kundalini Meditation. Then dinner time. And, of course, then the girlfriend comes, so the day is complete. Do you need still more meditations?
I talk every day for ninety minutes. That means, at the most, thirty pages. Here we have twenty people who are editing. Every day they have to edit, transcribe, proofread, thirty pages. Twenty people: that means one and a half pages per person. Still the work goes on piling up. And they are always carrying long faces – they are doing great work! It looks ridiculous: one person speaks, twenty people edit. It simply looks ridiculous. Then, too, the work is never done. It goes on piling up.
They are told not to meditate too much because listening to me is meditation. Can you do a better meditation than listening to me? If you love the work, if you love me, that is meditation. Your whole life should be meditation. People who come for a few days from the outside have to learn meditation, but those who are living here – their whole life should be meditation. Their walking, their sitting, even their sleep – everything should become meditative. Meditation should be a climate here, not something you do, but something you are.
Don’t put on faces that you are doing very great work. Love it! Nobody is helped by carrying a long face and a burden, and nobody is deceived by you because the whole thing seems to be ridiculous. You just have the idea of feeling burdened. That burden kills you. And if you go on thinking about it, it will become a burden. It will create ulcers, it will make your body feel ill, and you will become tense and nervous. Then you will try even more to show that you are very burdened – and now you are moving in a vicious circle.
You are here to enjoy, be, delight. And the work is so little that, in fact, it can be done within minutes. Just one and a half pages of editing, transcribing, and proofreading – how long will it take? This is just an example. It is the same with other work.
But there are people who take it as worship. They are flowing and growing and flowering. There are people who work, and work lovingly. That’s why some work is done; otherwise it would be impossible.
These questions come from the people who are lazy. I will not use the name of the person who has asked this question again because it is the same sannyasin who wants her name to be told.
The seventh question:
Osho,
Are fear and guilt the same thing? And surely as light shows up darkness, so Jesus must have made people aware of their guilt?
Fear and guilt are not the same thing. Fear accepted becomes freedom; fear denied, rejected, condemned, becomes guilt.
If you accept fear as part of the situation… It is part of the situation. Man is a part, a very small tiny part, and the whole is vast. Man is a drop, a very small drop, and the whole is the whole ocean. A trembling arises: “I may be lost in the whole. My identity may be lost.” That is the fear of death. All fear is the fear of death. And the fear of death is the fear of annihilation.
It is natural that man is afraid, trembling. If you accept it, if you say, “This is how life is,” if you accept it totally, trembling stops immediately and fear – the same energy that was becoming fear – uncoils and becomes freedom. Then, you know that even if the drop disappears in the ocean, it will be there: in fact, it will become the whole ocean. Then, death becomes nirvana. Then, you are not afraid to lose yourself. Then, you understand the saying of Jesus: “If you save your life you will lose it, and if you lose it you will save it.”
The only way to go beyond death is to accept death. Then it disappears. The only way to be fearless is to accept fear. Then the energy is released and becomes freedom. But if you condemn it, if you suppress it, if you hide the fact that you are afraid, if you armor yourself and protect yourself and are defensive, then guilt arises.
Anything repressed creates guilt, anything not allowed creates guilt, anything against nature creates guilt. Then you feel guilty that you have been lying to others and lying to yourself. That inauthenticity is guilt.
You ask, “Are fear and guilt the same thing?” No. Fear can be guilt, but it may not be. It depends what you do with fear. If you do something wrong with it, it becomes guilt. If you simply accept it and don’t do anything about it – there is nothing to do – then it becomes freedom, it becomes fearlessness.
“And surely as light shows up darkness, Jesus must have made people aware of their guilt.” No, not at all. Jesus tried to help people not to feel guilty. That is his whole effort. His whole effort is to tell people to accept themselves and not feel guilty, not feel condemned: “Don’t say to yourself that you are ugly, wrong, a sinner. Don’t condemn. Whatever you are, you are. Accept the fact and the very acceptance becomes a transformation.”
Jesus never created guilt in people. That was one of his crimes. He tried to cheer up guilty people – that was his crime. He tried to tell them, “Don’t be guilty, don’t feel guilty. Even if there is something wrong, you are not wrong. Maybe you have acted wrongly, but your being is not wrong because of that.” Some action may be wrong, but the being is always right.
He accepted people. Sinners were at ease with him, at home with him. That became the trouble. The rabbis, the bishops, the priests, started saying, “Why? Why do you allow sinners to be with you? Why do you eat with them, why do you sleep with them? Why are so many outcasts following you?”
Jesus said, “It is bound to be so. I come for those who are sick. The sick seek the physician. Those who are already healthy need not. Go and think about it.” Jesus says, “I have come for the sick, for the ill. I have to support them and I have to make them strong. I have to bring light to them and I have to bring life to them again so that energy, their energy, becomes dynamic and flowing.”
No. Jesus as a light does not show darkness. In fact, when the light is there, darkness disappears. Darkness is not shown by light; it disappears with light.
This is the difference. If a priest is there he will show darkness. He is not a light; he cannot destroy darkness. He will make you feel guilty, he will create sinners. He will condemn, and he will make you afraid of hell, and he will create a greed and a desire for heaven and rewards. At the most he can create more fear and more greed in you. That’s what heaven and hell are: projections of fear and greed.
When a Jesus, a sage, appears, darkness is simply destroyed. When the light is there, darkness is not shown. Darkness simply is not – because darkness is nothing but the absence of light.
There is darkness in the room. If I give you a lamp and tell you, “Go, and take the lamp with you because with the lamp it will be easy to see the darkness. If you go in darkness, how will you be able to see the darkness?” – it looks logical, but it is absurd. Darkness can be seen only when there is no light? If you take the light with you, you will never be able to see darkness because once the light is there, darkness is no longer there.
Jesus simply destroys darkness, he destroys guilt. He creates hope, he creates confidence and trust. People who have been condemned for long have lost all hope. They have settled with their sin, they have settled with their ugly lives, and they know that nothing can be done now; they can only wait for hell. They have accepted that they are going to be thrown in hell and they have to suffer.
Jesus comes and helps people to come out of their closed darkness. He says, “There is no hell.” He says, “Come out! Except for your ignorance, there is no hell. Except for your own closedness, there is no hell. Come out of it! Flow again. Unfreeze and melt, and live life again. Come into the sunlight and God is available.”
That’s why he says, “Return! The Kingdom of God is at hand.” He does not say that if you are a sinner then returning will take a long time, and if you are a respectable religious man then returning will take less time. No.
Just think of the whole thing as if you are dreaming a long dream that you are a sinner, and somebody else in the same room is dreaming he is a saint. Will it take a longer time for you to get out of your sleep than it will take for the one who is dreaming he is a saint? Both the saint and the sinner have been dreaming. They will take the same time to get out of their sleep.
Sometimes, paradoxically, it may take a little longer time for the saint because he is having such a beautiful dream. He would not like to come out of it. The sinner is already in a nightmare: he would like to come out of it. He is crying, shrieking, that he should somehow come out of it. He is making every effort to come out. The dream is not beautiful. The dream is ugly: he is in hell. The saint may like not to be disturbed. He would like to turn over onto the other side and go still a little more into his sleep.
Remember, when you feel happy, returning is difficult; when you feel unhappy, returning is easy. That’s the meaning of the saying: “There are blessings hidden in misfortunes, hidden in curses” – because when one is going along happily and everything is running smoothly, who bothers to transform oneself? When one is sad, in deep sorrow, in misery, in tears, then one would like to come out of it.
Suffering is also good because it gives you an opportunity to awaken, to come out of your sleep. Nothing is wrong if you can use it rightly. Even poisons can be used as medicines and they can become life-enhancing.
If you feel guilty, try to see why you are feeling guilty. Yes, man is helpless – right. And man is ignorant – that is right, too. In his ignorance he has done many things that were not as they should be – that too is right. Accept this helplessness, this ignorance, and pray and let your tears come down. Confess, repent, say to God, “I was helpless and I was ignorant, and I could not do better – and I still cannot do better, unless you help. As I am, I will again go wrong. As I am, I will again betray you. I cannot rely on myself. Help me. Only your grace can save me.”
That’s what Jesus’ whole teaching is: ask for God’s grace, don’t believe in yourself – because that very belief has been your whole undoing.
No, he never created guilt in anybody. He tried to free people from guilt.
The last question but one:
Osho,
How?
Now. And there is no “how” to it.
And the last question:
Osho,
Osho! Osho! Osho!!!
That is the way! If you can cry, if you can pray, if you can call from your very innermost core, the divine is always available. The divine is always close. It is just that you have not called, just that you have not knocked at his door. Jesus says, “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask, and it shall be given…”
Enough for today.
Osho,
I recoil from the whole idea of the crucifixion. The murder of Jesus at thirty-three, even more than the murder of John the Baptist or the murder of Socrates, seems supremely unnecessary. Could not he, the prince of compassion, have managed to sympathize with the high priests, seeing the impossibility of their situation? After all, they were bishops, not the Gestapo – benighted no doubt, but not murderous. Or worse still, did he deliberately push them to the ultimate impossibility where they were bound to kill him, and set them up as the villains?
One very foundational thing will have to be understood, and that is that the people you call bad are never as bad as the people you call good.
The bad people are bad, but they have no excuse for being bad. They know they are bad and they have nowhere to hide themselves. But the people who are thought to be good, respectable, honored, respected, religious, are the really dangerous people because their badness can hide in their goodness. They can murder and will not feel they are murderous. They can kill and can go on feeling they are doing that killing for the good of those who are being killed.
The ordinarily bad person, the criminal, is exposed. He knows he is not good, and that is his possibility of transformation. He can understand it and come out of it. But the so-called good person is hidden under a personality. He may not be able to understand what he is doing and for what reasons he is doing it. He can always manage to rationalize.
That’s how it happened, and not only in the case of Jesus. It has always been happening. The priests who were murderous never thought they were doing anything bad. They thought they were saving their religion, they thought they were saving morality. They thought, “This man is dangerous. He is corrupting the youth.”
The charge against Jesus was that he was corrupting people: “He is destroying the old morality, creating chaos.” That was the charge against Socrates and that is the charge against me. It has always been so.
Whether they are Hindus or Greeks or Jews makes no difference, the priests are the protectors of the old. The temple is of the past: they are the protectors, the guardians of tradition. Of course Jesus looked dangerous to them. He can destroy the whole structure.
Not that they were deceiving themselves. They may have thought themselves perfectly right without a single question that they weren’t: “This man is dangerous and to destroy him is to save the society.” And of course whenever there is such an alternative – that you can save the whole society by killing one man – the murder is worth it. The priests killed him because of their goodness, because of their virtue, because of their morality. They killed him in the name of God. They killed him very innocently.
This situation has arisen again and again in history. There seems to be no possibility of changing it. The only possibility would be for Jesus to be so moderate that he doesn’t hurt anybody – but then he is useless. He could have managed; you ask me rightly. He could have been very moderate and liberal. He could have talked like a politician who talks much but never says anything; who says many things but is always vague; who never clearly asserts anything so you can never pinpoint what he has said.
Jesus’ crime was that he was clear, certain – that whatever he was saying, he was not saying like a politician. He was opening his heart; he was not diplomatic. If he had diluted his teaching, there would have been no trouble – but then there would have been no Christ either, and that would have been a greater murder. Then Christ would have committed suicide.
As I see it, as things are, this is the only way things could have been. Jesus had to be as hard as he was, he had to be as rebellious as he was. He should not have diluted his message and he should not have come down and compromised.
The priests would have been happy if he had become a rabbi, a priest. Then there would have been no trouble. If he had just kept himself within the imprisonment of the tradition, if he had not tried to open new dimensions to humanity, there would have been no trouble. Then they would have worshipped him, loved him, sanctified him as a saint. They would have remembered him.
But he tried to open new dimensions. Then you are moving into danger, but that danger is worth taking. That Jesus was crucified is nothing to be worried about because that is the only way. He pushed humanity to a higher level of being and consciousness.
It is not that he tried to manage in some way to be murdered. There was no need. The priests are enough; you need not provoke them. They will be provoked automatically, they move in a mechanical way. There was no need to provoke them. The very being of Jesus was enough.
You recoil from the whole idea of crucifixion because you cannot understand. It is not an ordinary murder. It is meaningful, it is significant, it has done much. It has created something new that never existed before. Through that crucifixion, Jesus changed almost half of humanity, forced them to move on a different path than they had ever moved on.
When you think about crucifixion, you become afraid – as if you are being crucified. You don’t know that Jesus cannot be crucified. Only his body can, not him. But when you think of crucifixion, you think of yourself being completely crucified and killed. Your understanding about life and death is not there yet.
That is the meaning of the story that after the third day Jesus was alive again, resurrected. It simply says that you can crucify the body of a Jesus, but you can never crucify his spirit. After three days, he will again be moving on the earth, deathless. Crucifixion became a situation in which he could assert his deathlessness.
So it is perfectly okay as it is: there is nothing to be worried about. And this will continue to be so. The only possibility for a Jesus to exist and not be crucified is if people have become so indifferent to religion that they don’t bother. That is not a good possibility. That is very sad. Jesus comes and walks on the earth and nobody is hurt, no priest bothers about him – rather, people enjoy. They gather around and Jesus looks amusing; he looks like a fool or a buffoon who is talking nonsense.
That’s what the modern philosophers say: to talk about God is to talk nonsense. It makes no sense, it is meaningless. You are using words that are only containers, and there is no content in them. God, moksha, nirvana – what do you mean?
If Jesus comes someday and nobody is bothered, that will be the saddest possibility. Jesus hurts because people are concerned. Jesus hurts because religion is meaningful; Jesus provokes antagonism because with religion, life is at stake. That will be the most unfortunate moment in human history – when Jesus comes and nobody bothers to stone him, nobody bothers to crucify him. He will move around the earth and people will laugh, will be amused. And he will look like a buffoon.
No, the crucifixion of Jesus simply says that religion is so meaningful that when a man like Jesus comes, he creates a rift in humanity between those who love him and those who hate him. The whole of humanity is divided. He is significant.
Many times I think about it: this has never happened in India. Buddha was not crucified, Mahavira was not crucified, Krishna was not crucified. Why? This country is too sophisticated about religion, and when you become too sophisticated, you become indifferent.
This country could tolerate Buddha, Mahavira, and Krishna. Ordinarily, people think that it is because this country is so religious. That’s not my opinion. This country is so sophisticated that people have already become indifferent. Nobody bothers about what Buddha is saying. In fact, everybody already knows what he is saying. Everybody knows all that can be known – who bothers?
It is like Jesus walking into Cambridge University or Oxford, where philosophers think that God is meaningless. If Jesus comes to Oxford and stands on the crossroads and cries, “I and my father are one!” then those philosophers will gather together and they will laugh. “About whom are you talking? Which father? Where is he? What do you mean by ‘father’? Then who is your mother?” They will ask irrelevant questions and they will laugh, and Jesus will simply feel embarrassed.
This is my understanding: the Jews of Jesus’ days were very simple people, not sophisticated. Religion was very meaningful, not just a philosophy. Their whole life was at stake, and this man was destroying it. This man was uprooting all they had been protecting for centuries. This man was trying to create a revolution, a chaos. And they had a deep love for the tradition, for the values they had always cherished. They were not indifferent; they could not be indifferent. Either they had to follow Jesus, or they had to kill him. There was no other alternative. India is more philosophical, too much in the head. Jews were not that much in the head.
To me, the crucifixion of Jesus simply shows one thing: they took Jesus seriously. Buddha was never taken that seriously. We could tolerate him: “It’s okay. Let him do his thing. Nothing much is going to happen out of it. Why kill him unnecessarily? By killing him, there may be even more danger because the death will create a stir.”
If he had been in India, Jesus would have become one of the avatars – but nothing much. Nothing much: we would have included him in the tradition. Even Buddha has been included. Buddha denied all that is basic to Hinduism, but Hindus are very sophisticated people. They said, “Yes, this too is a message from God.” He was contradicting all that is meaningful to Hindus, but they were not bothered. They said, “He is also an incarnation of God.”
Hindus have written a story about when Buddha died that shows how sophisticated minds function. Of course, he was a very important man, one of the most important ever born in India, one of the most influential. He had denied Hinduism, so how to cope with him?
Hindus have created a story. They say…
God created the world, heaven and hell. Centuries and centuries passed. People would die and immediately they would go to heaven. Nobody would go to hell because nobody was a sinner.
So the people who were managing hell – the Devil and his disciples – went to God and said, “Why have you created hell? Nobody ever comes. Our whole existence is futile. We go on sitting and sitting and waiting, and nobody knocks at the door. Either cancel it, or send people!”
God said, “Wait! Soon I am going to be born as Gautam Buddha. I will destroy people’s minds, I will poison their minds, and then they will be coming to hell.”
That’s why Buddha was born: an incarnation of God to spoil people’s minds. And since then, hell is overflowing.
This is a sophisticated way to tackle a man like Buddha. Jews were simple. They simply could not tolerate Jesus. They killed him. That means they paid great respect to him. They realized the significance of the man, the dangerousness of the man: either he lives or their tradition lives. Both cannot live together.
Try to meditate on the crucifixion of Jesus and you will not be so puzzled and confused, and you will not recoil so much from it.
The second question:
Osho,
Although you have made me alive toward Christ, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Lao Tzu and all those known as enlightened ones – and although it is really difficult for me to conceive of you as separate –when someone starts talking highly of anyone, it automatically comes out of my mouth that there has never been a greater master than you, and maybe there will never be in the future either. So is this because of my love toward you, or due to my ego, or is it reality, or am I biased? Please enlighten.
The disciples of Jesus thought in the same way. The disciples of Buddha also thought in the same way. It is part of love, not of reality.
It is part of love. You fall in love with a woman and you think, “Never before has there been such a woman; never again shall there be such a woman.” What do you mean? Is this the reality? In a sense it is: it is the reality for you. It is not an objective reality; it is a subjective reality. This is your feeling, and feelings are as real as stones. They exist.
This is not a comparison. You are not saying there really has never been such a beautiful woman before. How can you know? Millions and millions of women have been on the earth: how can you know, how can you compare? You don’t even know all the women that are on the earth right now. Who knows? – there may be somebody who is more beautiful than your beloved.
But that is irrelevant, that is not the point. You are not making a comparative statement. It is not that you have studied all the statistics. You are simply making a statement of love. It has nothing to do with any other woman; it is not comparative. In the moment of love a truth arises, a subjective truth. It is your feeling. For you, this is the woman, and all other women have become irrelevant.
The same happens when you love a master. It happens even more extremely because the love is still deeper. You love a woman physically – at the most, psychologically. You love a master spiritually. You touch the deepest core. He touches the deepest core in you. In that ecstasy, a subjective truth arises.
This is not new. This is nothing new to you. This has always been happening. Ask Jesus’ disciples and they will say, “He is the only begotten son of God.” They cannot conceive that Jesus can be compared in any way with anybody else. He is incomparable, unique –the only begotten son. It is impossible for them to conceive that there is another son of God. Ask the followers of Buddha and they say, “He has attained. And only he has attained the unattainable. It was never attained before.” Ask the followers of Mahavira. They say, “He is the only one, all-knowing, omniscient. There is nobody else.”
What is happening? It is a simple phenomenon of subjective love. It is impossible for the lover to conceive that there can be anybody else. In a moment of love, you are in such deep ecstasy, so intoxicated. Love is an intoxicant. In that intoxication, whatever you say is poetic, it is not scientific. And there is no contradiction in it.
That’s why when I speak on Jesus, I forget all about Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna. They pale down, they disappear, they fade. Then, Jesus arises out of the whole of history, the only one, because that is the only way to understand him. You have to be deeply in love.
When I talk about Buddha, I forget about Jesus because even to remember Jesus will be a disturbance. When I talk about Lao Tzu, I forget about everybody else. He is enough, more than enough. He himself is such a vast sky that you can go on and on and on, and there is no end to it. They are all vast skies.
But the standpoint of the disciple is the standpoint of a lover. He is making a poetic statement. It is not reality, and yet it is reality. It is not reality in the objective sense of the word. It is reality as a subjective feeling. But I would like you to get out of it. I would like you to attain a greater love that is less like an intoxicant and more like awareness.
There are two stages with a master. First is falling in love with him. It is absolutely necessary; without it, you will never be in contact with him. But that is only the beginning. That should not become the end. In that state of ecstasy, you will be poetic. Be poetic! Don’t be worried. There is nothing to worry about. Declare your love! Go on the housetops and declare your love because the more you declare it, the more it grows.
But that is just the beginning. That is necessary to come close to the master. But come still closer and there comes a moment when the two flames of the disciple and the master become one. There is a jump, a leap, and the two flames become one. Then you become aware. Then you will laugh at your own statements.
Now you know that enlightened people are not different at all. Only names differ. Buddha is a name, Jesus is a name, Krishna is a name – but the enlightenment that has happened to them is the same. The closer you come to Buddha, the closer you will come to Christ also.
It is as if you are moving from the periphery of a circle toward the center. On the periphery, one point is Buddha, another point is Jesus, another point is Ramakrishna. The closer you come to the center, those lines are no longer so separate, so different, so distant. Ramakrishna comes toward Christ, Christ comes toward Buddha, Buddha comes toward Krishna. They are coming closer. Move more and more to the center, and they are meeting and merging into each other. When you reach the exact center, suddenly they have all disappeared. Only enlightenment is, only light is. All have disappeared. Those were just the personalities.
Whatever you see in me is a personality. It is not the quality of the light; it is the mode of the lamp. It is the body of the lamp, not the quality of the light.
The quality of the light is the same. Lamps differ. One lamp may be just an earthen lamp, another may be a golden lamp. The difference is vast, but that difference makes no difference in the quality of light. There is the same light in an earthen lamp or in a golden lamp.
It is the same. Buddha is reported to have said, “Go to the sea and taste the seawater. Anywhere you go, the seawater tastes the same.” Such is the quality of buddhas. You can taste from me, you can taste from Ramakrishna, you can taste from Krishnamurti, you can taste from Jesus: the difference is only from where you taste it. The ghat, the banks, may be different, but the ocean is the same. And wherever you taste it, it will taste the same: the same saltiness, the same flame.
So there is nothing wrong in it. Don’t feel guilty in any way. When you are in love, you have to be mad. In love and reasonable? – nobody has ever heard about it. If your love is reasonable, it will not be much of a love. When you are in love, you are mad.
When Majnu says something about Laila, it is not a scientific statement. But still it has a truth: the truth of Majnu’s heart. It does not say anything about Laila, it says something about Majnu’s love. But that love is also true.
So don’t be in any way guilty about it because this is the only way you will proceed. But don’t cling to it: move, go on and on. A greater consciousness is waiting for you – where love becomes aware, where love becomes consciousness, where love flares up and becomes light. There you will understand that all are one and the same. And in enlightenment, the personality disappears – the personality of a Buddha or a Jesus – and only the ocean remains, with the same taste.
It is your love. Good. Be happy about it, but don’t be content with it, don’t think it is enough. Good, but more is possible. Always look ahead and always try to transcend the state you are in. There comes a moment when nothing remains to be transcended. That is realization.
The third question:
Osho,
Do all enlightened masters sound as egoistic as you do?
It is bound to be so. They sound egoistic because they cannot be humble in the sense you understand humility. Try to understand; it is a delicate point. Whatever you call humbleness is a function of the ego. It is a modified ego. The enlightened person has no ego so he cannot have a modified ego, he cannot be humble. He cannot be humble in the sense you can understand.
Otherwise Krishna will not be able to say to Arjuna, “Leave everything and come to my feet. I am the God who created the whole existence – sarva dharman parityajya mamekam sharanam vraj. Come to my feet” What egoism! And Jesus will not be able to say, “I am the door, I am the way, I am the truth, I and my father in heaven are one. Those who follow me will be saved. Only those who follow me will be saved.” And when Buddha attained buddhahood, he declared to the skies, to the heavens, “I have attained the unattainable!”
They sound very egoistical. First, they cannot be humble in the sense you understand humbleness. Your humbleness is a modified, polished, cultured ego. But they sound egoistic because they are not humble. You know only two qualities, two ways, of being: humble or egoistic. They are not humble so they must be egoistic. You have only two categories. And egoism is easy for you to understand. It is your language.
When you say “I,” you mean one thing. When I say “I,” I mean something else. But when I say “I,” you will understand it in your way, not in my way. When Krishna said to Arjuna, “Come to my feet!” what does he mean? Of course you will understand if you said to somebody, “Come to my feet!” – so Krishna’s meaning must be the same. No, that is not his meaning. He has no “I” left, he has no “my” left, but he has to use your language, and you understand it in your own way.
So all enlightened masters sound egoistic because you are egoistic. You can understand their humbleness only when your ego disappears; otherwise it won’t allow you. The only way to understand those who have awakened is to become awake.
I go on observing continuously: I say something, you understand something else. But that’s natural. How can you understand my meaning? When I say something, the word goes to you, but not my meaning. My meaning remains in my heart. And then the word goes within you and you color it, you give it a meaning. That meaning is yours.
The words sound egoistic, but they are not – because if they are, then enlightenment has not happened yet. Enlightenment happens only when the ego has disappeared. The ego is the darkness of the soul, the ego is the imprisonment of the soul. The “I” is the barrier to the ultimate.
A Buddha is an emptiness. And when he says, “I have attained the unattainable,” he is simply saying the emptiness has realized its emptiness, nothing else. But to translate it into your words? He is simply saying the emptiness has realized its emptiness, but he has to say, “I have attained the unattainable.”
When Krishna says, “Come to my feet,” he is saying, “Here, look! The emptiness is standing before you. Dissolve into it!” But that won’t be direct. He has to use Arjuna’s language. He says, “Come to my feet.” If Arjuna is ready and willing to surrender – if he trusts and surrenders – when he touches Krishna’s feet, he will touch emptiness. Only then will there be a realization of what Krishna was saying: “There are no feet, there is no Krishna – just a tremendous quality of emptiness.” The temple of God is emptiness. Touching Krishna’s feet, he will bow down to emptiness, and the emptiness will pour down into him. But that will be possible only when he trusts.
Yes, many times I must sound very egoistic to you, but don’t be deceived. If you cling to the idea that I am egoistic, you will never be able to let go, to surrender, and then your ego will go on. Then there is no need to be here with me because then the whole point is lost. You are wasting your time.
There is only one way to be here with me: if you want to surrender. Otherwise go away. Find somebody somewhere else where you find it easy to surrender because unless you surrender, you will not come to know who you are. And without knowing yourself, you will not be able to know what has happened to a man whom we called enlightened. Only through your own experience will things become clear to you.
Yes, it sounds egoistic. Now there are two ways. If you think it not only sounds egoistic, but it is, then go away from me. The sooner you go the better, because all the time that you are here will be wasted. Or if you think it simply sounds egoistic, but it is not so, then surrender, then don’t wait – because sometimes waiting too long can become habitual. You can get addicted to it, and then you can go on waiting and waiting and waiting.
And I will not be waiting here for long. A little while longer and I will be gone. Then you will repent, then you will suffer, then you will be sad – but then it will be of no use.
It will be easy for you to touch my feet when I am gone because then there is no surrender. You can go and touch the feet of a statue. The statue is dead; there is no surrender. When you touch the feet of an alive man – who is alive just like you, who is in the body just like you – then comes the problem. The ego resists.
So either believe in your ego or believe in me. These are the only two alternatives. Up to now you have believed in your ego. What have you attained? I open another alternative for you. Try it.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Who are you?
Whoever you think, because it depends on you. If you look at me with total emptiness, I will be different. If you look at me with ideas, those ideas will color me. If you come to me with a prejudice, then I will be different.
I am just a mirror. Your own face will be reflected. There is a saying that if a monkey looks into a mirror, he will not find an apostle looking at him through the mirror. Only a monkey will be looking through the mirror.
So it depends on the way you look at me. I have disappeared completely so I have nothing to impose on you. Who am I? Just a nothingness, a mirror. Now you have complete freedom. If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.
The fifth question:
Osho,
During the lectures I find my eyes fixed on your face. Every once in a while, there is a sudden shift and for a few moments your face appears satanic. I know this is a projection. What is inside of me?
Is there any need for me to tell you? You have both sides within you: the divine and the Devil. Sometimes, when you are flowing through your divine side, you will see the divine in me. Then things shift. When you are flowing through the devilish side, then the Devil will be seen in me. But always remember: it is you. I am just a mirror, a situation to reveal yourself to yourself – that’s all. So whatever you see, meditate on it because that must be some quality within you.
It is very easy for the mind to project and forget that it is a projection. There are people who believe I am really a devil, and there are people who believe I am really divine. Both are taking their projections as real. I am just “I am.” I am just a mirror. I show your face to you. That’s the function of a master: to show your face to you.
So whatever you see, meditate upon it. If you see the Devil, then try to find your Devil within yourself and try to drop it. Don’t get the idea the Devil is in me, because then you will never be able to get rid of your Devil. Because if it is in me, then what can you do? Then you are helpless. But if it is in you, something can be done. You can drop it.
The sixth question:
Osho,
Why are the sannyasins who live here not allowed to participate in all the meditations? Why are they told to participate in only one meditation every day?
It is because of you, ladies and gentlemen. It is because of your laziness.
I go on talking about non-doing, and my text becomes your pretext. Non-doing has nothing to do with laziness. In fact, a lazy person can never move into non-doing. A lazy person is almost suicidal, closed. His energy is not flowing. A non-doer is a flowing person, alive.
A non-doer does not mean that he does not do anything. He does many things, many more than ordinary doers, but he is still not a doer. All he does is a happening. He is instrumental – as if the divine possesses him and functions through him. He never thinks, “I am doing it.” At the most he thinks, “I am allowing it.”
A non-doer will do many things and will not be tired because there will be no tension. A non-doer will do many things and will not accumulate any ego because he is not the doer. Things are just happening. A non-doer loves his work, and the work becomes worship.
People are allowed to be here only for certain work. That certain work is that they have to transform their work into worship. But they would like to be lazy. And particularly in India, sannyas is thought to be a type of laziness. People who don’t want to do anything become sannyasins.
I am not a shelter for them; I am not a shelter for escapists. I am here to teach you life and more life and still more life, because only when your energy is flowing will you be able to love; only when your energy is flowing will you be able to know; only when your energy is flowing will you be able to transcend death someday. Otherwise not.
But very few work as worship here. Many go on avoiding. Not that they want to meditate – because if they want to meditate then the whole thing will be totally different: they can meditate with their work. But they would like to do all the meditations just to avoid the work.
A few are absolutely lazy and think they can try and rationalize it. For example, let me tell you about one day in one sannyasin’s life. From six to seven in the morning he meditates, then comes breakfast. Then eight to nine-thirty or ten is the lecture. Then of course by ten o'clock he has already done too much: meditated, listened to such a long lecture – so a little gossiping is obviously needed. Then by eleven, eleven-thirty, he is ready for lunch. By twelve, of course, he has already done too much – meditating, listening, even eating – so at twelve he goes to sleep. Up till three, rest is needed. Three to three-thirty: tea or coffee time. Three-thirty to four-thirty: Nadabrahma – individual meditation. Four-thirty to five-thirty he goes for a walk. Of course, one needs a little physical exercise. Five-thirty to six-thirty: Kundalini Meditation. Then dinner time. And, of course, then the girlfriend comes, so the day is complete. Do you need still more meditations?
I talk every day for ninety minutes. That means, at the most, thirty pages. Here we have twenty people who are editing. Every day they have to edit, transcribe, proofread, thirty pages. Twenty people: that means one and a half pages per person. Still the work goes on piling up. And they are always carrying long faces – they are doing great work! It looks ridiculous: one person speaks, twenty people edit. It simply looks ridiculous. Then, too, the work is never done. It goes on piling up.
They are told not to meditate too much because listening to me is meditation. Can you do a better meditation than listening to me? If you love the work, if you love me, that is meditation. Your whole life should be meditation. People who come for a few days from the outside have to learn meditation, but those who are living here – their whole life should be meditation. Their walking, their sitting, even their sleep – everything should become meditative. Meditation should be a climate here, not something you do, but something you are.
Don’t put on faces that you are doing very great work. Love it! Nobody is helped by carrying a long face and a burden, and nobody is deceived by you because the whole thing seems to be ridiculous. You just have the idea of feeling burdened. That burden kills you. And if you go on thinking about it, it will become a burden. It will create ulcers, it will make your body feel ill, and you will become tense and nervous. Then you will try even more to show that you are very burdened – and now you are moving in a vicious circle.
You are here to enjoy, be, delight. And the work is so little that, in fact, it can be done within minutes. Just one and a half pages of editing, transcribing, and proofreading – how long will it take? This is just an example. It is the same with other work.
But there are people who take it as worship. They are flowing and growing and flowering. There are people who work, and work lovingly. That’s why some work is done; otherwise it would be impossible.
These questions come from the people who are lazy. I will not use the name of the person who has asked this question again because it is the same sannyasin who wants her name to be told.
The seventh question:
Osho,
Are fear and guilt the same thing? And surely as light shows up darkness, so Jesus must have made people aware of their guilt?
Fear and guilt are not the same thing. Fear accepted becomes freedom; fear denied, rejected, condemned, becomes guilt.
If you accept fear as part of the situation… It is part of the situation. Man is a part, a very small tiny part, and the whole is vast. Man is a drop, a very small drop, and the whole is the whole ocean. A trembling arises: “I may be lost in the whole. My identity may be lost.” That is the fear of death. All fear is the fear of death. And the fear of death is the fear of annihilation.
It is natural that man is afraid, trembling. If you accept it, if you say, “This is how life is,” if you accept it totally, trembling stops immediately and fear – the same energy that was becoming fear – uncoils and becomes freedom. Then, you know that even if the drop disappears in the ocean, it will be there: in fact, it will become the whole ocean. Then, death becomes nirvana. Then, you are not afraid to lose yourself. Then, you understand the saying of Jesus: “If you save your life you will lose it, and if you lose it you will save it.”
The only way to go beyond death is to accept death. Then it disappears. The only way to be fearless is to accept fear. Then the energy is released and becomes freedom. But if you condemn it, if you suppress it, if you hide the fact that you are afraid, if you armor yourself and protect yourself and are defensive, then guilt arises.
Anything repressed creates guilt, anything not allowed creates guilt, anything against nature creates guilt. Then you feel guilty that you have been lying to others and lying to yourself. That inauthenticity is guilt.
You ask, “Are fear and guilt the same thing?” No. Fear can be guilt, but it may not be. It depends what you do with fear. If you do something wrong with it, it becomes guilt. If you simply accept it and don’t do anything about it – there is nothing to do – then it becomes freedom, it becomes fearlessness.
“And surely as light shows up darkness, Jesus must have made people aware of their guilt.” No, not at all. Jesus tried to help people not to feel guilty. That is his whole effort. His whole effort is to tell people to accept themselves and not feel guilty, not feel condemned: “Don’t say to yourself that you are ugly, wrong, a sinner. Don’t condemn. Whatever you are, you are. Accept the fact and the very acceptance becomes a transformation.”
Jesus never created guilt in people. That was one of his crimes. He tried to cheer up guilty people – that was his crime. He tried to tell them, “Don’t be guilty, don’t feel guilty. Even if there is something wrong, you are not wrong. Maybe you have acted wrongly, but your being is not wrong because of that.” Some action may be wrong, but the being is always right.
He accepted people. Sinners were at ease with him, at home with him. That became the trouble. The rabbis, the bishops, the priests, started saying, “Why? Why do you allow sinners to be with you? Why do you eat with them, why do you sleep with them? Why are so many outcasts following you?”
Jesus said, “It is bound to be so. I come for those who are sick. The sick seek the physician. Those who are already healthy need not. Go and think about it.” Jesus says, “I have come for the sick, for the ill. I have to support them and I have to make them strong. I have to bring light to them and I have to bring life to them again so that energy, their energy, becomes dynamic and flowing.”
No. Jesus as a light does not show darkness. In fact, when the light is there, darkness disappears. Darkness is not shown by light; it disappears with light.
This is the difference. If a priest is there he will show darkness. He is not a light; he cannot destroy darkness. He will make you feel guilty, he will create sinners. He will condemn, and he will make you afraid of hell, and he will create a greed and a desire for heaven and rewards. At the most he can create more fear and more greed in you. That’s what heaven and hell are: projections of fear and greed.
When a Jesus, a sage, appears, darkness is simply destroyed. When the light is there, darkness is not shown. Darkness simply is not – because darkness is nothing but the absence of light.
There is darkness in the room. If I give you a lamp and tell you, “Go, and take the lamp with you because with the lamp it will be easy to see the darkness. If you go in darkness, how will you be able to see the darkness?” – it looks logical, but it is absurd. Darkness can be seen only when there is no light? If you take the light with you, you will never be able to see darkness because once the light is there, darkness is no longer there.
Jesus simply destroys darkness, he destroys guilt. He creates hope, he creates confidence and trust. People who have been condemned for long have lost all hope. They have settled with their sin, they have settled with their ugly lives, and they know that nothing can be done now; they can only wait for hell. They have accepted that they are going to be thrown in hell and they have to suffer.
Jesus comes and helps people to come out of their closed darkness. He says, “There is no hell.” He says, “Come out! Except for your ignorance, there is no hell. Except for your own closedness, there is no hell. Come out of it! Flow again. Unfreeze and melt, and live life again. Come into the sunlight and God is available.”
That’s why he says, “Return! The Kingdom of God is at hand.” He does not say that if you are a sinner then returning will take a long time, and if you are a respectable religious man then returning will take less time. No.
Just think of the whole thing as if you are dreaming a long dream that you are a sinner, and somebody else in the same room is dreaming he is a saint. Will it take a longer time for you to get out of your sleep than it will take for the one who is dreaming he is a saint? Both the saint and the sinner have been dreaming. They will take the same time to get out of their sleep.
Sometimes, paradoxically, it may take a little longer time for the saint because he is having such a beautiful dream. He would not like to come out of it. The sinner is already in a nightmare: he would like to come out of it. He is crying, shrieking, that he should somehow come out of it. He is making every effort to come out. The dream is not beautiful. The dream is ugly: he is in hell. The saint may like not to be disturbed. He would like to turn over onto the other side and go still a little more into his sleep.
Remember, when you feel happy, returning is difficult; when you feel unhappy, returning is easy. That’s the meaning of the saying: “There are blessings hidden in misfortunes, hidden in curses” – because when one is going along happily and everything is running smoothly, who bothers to transform oneself? When one is sad, in deep sorrow, in misery, in tears, then one would like to come out of it.
Suffering is also good because it gives you an opportunity to awaken, to come out of your sleep. Nothing is wrong if you can use it rightly. Even poisons can be used as medicines and they can become life-enhancing.
If you feel guilty, try to see why you are feeling guilty. Yes, man is helpless – right. And man is ignorant – that is right, too. In his ignorance he has done many things that were not as they should be – that too is right. Accept this helplessness, this ignorance, and pray and let your tears come down. Confess, repent, say to God, “I was helpless and I was ignorant, and I could not do better – and I still cannot do better, unless you help. As I am, I will again go wrong. As I am, I will again betray you. I cannot rely on myself. Help me. Only your grace can save me.”
That’s what Jesus’ whole teaching is: ask for God’s grace, don’t believe in yourself – because that very belief has been your whole undoing.
No, he never created guilt in anybody. He tried to free people from guilt.
The last question but one:
Osho,
How?
Now. And there is no “how” to it.
And the last question:
Osho,
Osho! Osho! Osho!!!
That is the way! If you can cry, if you can pray, if you can call from your very innermost core, the divine is always available. The divine is always close. It is just that you have not called, just that you have not knocked at his door. Jesus says, “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask, and it shall be given…”
Enough for today.