The first question:
Osho,
Is there quality in nothingness?
Nothingness can either be just emptiness or it can be a tremendous fullness. It can be negative, it can be positive. If it is negative it is like death, darkness. Religions have called it hell. It is hell because there is no joy in it; no song in it, there is no heartbeat, no dance. Nothing flowers, nothing opens. One is simply empty.
This empty nothingness has created great fear in people. That is why in the West particularly, God has never been called nothingness except by a few mystics like Dionysius, Eckhart, Böhme; but they are not the main current of Western thinking. The West has always conceived nothingness in negative terms; hence it has created a tremendous fear about it. And they go on saying to people that the empty mind is the Devil’s workshop.
The East has known its positive aspect too; it is one of the greatest contributions to human consciousness. Buddha will laugh at this statement that emptiness is the Devil’s workshop. He will say: “Only in emptiness, only in nothingness does godliness happen.” But he is talking about the positive phenomenon.
For Gautam Buddha, for Mahavira, for the long tradition of Zen masters and the Taoists, nothingness simply means no-thingness. All things have disappeared, and because things have disappeared there is pure consciousness left behind. The mirror is empty of any reflection, but the mirror is there. Consciousness is empty of content, but consciousness is there. When it was full of content, so many things were inside; you could not have known what it is. When the consciousness is full of contents, that’s what we call mind. When consciousness is empty of all contents, that’s what we call no-mind or meditation.
To create nothingness in you is the goal of meditation, but this nothingness has nothing to do with the negative idea. It is full, abundantly full. It is so full that it starts overflowing. Buddha has defined this nothingness as overflowing compassion.
The word compassion is beautiful. It is made out of the same word as passion. When passion is transformed – when the desire to seek and search for the other is no longer there, when you are enough unto yourself, when you don’t need anybody, when the very desire for the other has evaporated, when you are utterly happy, blissful, just being alone – then passion becomes compassion. Now you don’t seek the other because you are feeling empty and lonely; now you seek the other because you are too full and you would like to share.
The enlightened person also seeks the other just as the unenlightened person seeks, but there is a qualitative difference. The unenlightened person seeks the other because he feels a negative nothingness in him. Left alone he does not feel aloneness, he feels loneliness.
Remember, loneliness and aloneness are not synonymous, notwithstanding what the dictionaries go on saying. It is not a question of language; it is something existential. Loneliness is negative – you are missing something. Aloneness is positive – you have found something.
The unenlightened seeks the other because it is his need; he is needy and greedy. He grabs the other, he clings to the other. He is always afraid the other may leave. Husbands are afraid, wives are afraid, parents are afraid, children are afraid, everybody is afraid. Even your so-called religious teachers are afraid their disciples may leave them, so they have to concede and compromise with the disciples. Can you see the irony of it?
Jaina monks send messages to me saying, “We want to see you, but we cannot because our followers don’t allow it. They become angry, they become antagonistic.” Now the teachers are afraid of the followers! What kind of teachers are these? They need the follower because without the follower they are nobody – and that is power in the hands of the follower. The follower really dictates the rules. He says, “Do this, say this, behave like this – only then am I going to respect you. Of course I will respect you if you follow all the rules prescribed by me.” It is a contract.
The so-called religious leaders go on following their own followers and the followers, of course, in return pay great homage, respect. Both are satisfied. The follower needs somebody whom he can follow and the leader needs somebody to follow him. Both are fulfilling each other’s needs, but both are dependent; both are clinging, possessive.
Just the other day I was reading a statement: a Christian organization in England has asked Sheldon Press – because Sheldon Press belongs to that Christian association, it is one of the branches of the association – why they have published my books. Sheldon Press has published seven of my books; the director seems to have fallen in love with me. The director has replied, “We have published the books because they are beautiful, and we have published the books because they come closest to the teachings of Jesus.” But the head of the association and the members who possess the association are very angry; they may even throw this Sheldon Press director out of his job.
They have asked one of my sannyasins who is a chaplain at Cambridge University, “Why do you, being a priest, a Christian priest, go on wearing orange?” And Dynamic Meditation is being done in the church. They have asked for an explanation; naturally they are afraid.
But the sannyasin is not afraid. He has written a beautiful letter to them saying, “I am doing the work of Christ and I am doing the work of a living christ, and I don’t see any difference.” But ordinarily… Now he can be thrown out, is bound to be thrown out. No organized religion can tolerate such individuals, such rebels.
The followers want you to behave the way they decide, the way the tradition decides, and if you need their respect you are bound to follow them. They will follow you, you follow them. Hence I say, religious or political, it does not matter: leaders are the followers of their own followers.
And that is the criterion whether a man is really a master or not. The master is one who does not follow the followers, who does not compromise in any way because he has no need. Whether there are people or not, there is no question of greed.
The unenlightened seeks the other because he feels lonely. It may be the teacher-disciple thing, it may be the husband-wife trip, it may be friendship; it may be any kind of relationship. You seek the other out of your loneliness, and the other is also seeking you out of her or his loneliness. And two lonelinesses are bound to create hell, great hell, because both are negative. When two negatives meet it is not a simple addition, it is a multiplication. The same is true about two positives: when they meet it is not simple addition, it is multiplication.
The enlightened also seeks the other. Jesus moved from one village to another – for what? Mahavira traveled thousands of miles on foot – for what? For forty-two years Buddha was going, he was always on the go. Even when he was very old, eighty-two, he was still moving from village to village, for the simple reason that somebody has to be found with whom he can share. But now it is not a need, hence he will not compromise. It is not a need, hence he will not possess. It is not a need, in fact, it is just the opposite of it: it is abundance.
He is like a rain cloud full of rainwater: it wants to shower somewhere. If it can find a garden, good; if it cannot find a garden, then too it has to shower. It may shower even on the rocks; it does not matter, but it has to shower. When the flower opens up, the fragrance has to be released. Whether anybody comes to know of it or not is immaterial. It is not a need, it is overflowing joy. When there is overflowing love it is compassion.
Passion arises out of negative nothingness and compassion arises out of positive nothingness.
Buddha says, defines, “The real man of wisdom can be judged only by one thing: his compassion, his love.” He will be radiating compassion. He will be always ready to help people on the path. People will be insulting him, people will be in every possible way against him, people will be angry at him, because people are fast asleep and to put them on the path he has to wake them up. And nobody likes to be awakened – because people are dreaming beautiful dreams and you shake them and you wake them and you destroy their dreams, and that’s all that they have got. Otherwise they are lonely, otherwise they are empty. So they are somehow filling their inner spaces with dreams, projections, imaginations.
The function of the master is to destroy all your dreams, to make you empty of all content. But when you drop all content consciously, deliberately, you are not lonely: you become alone. And aloneness is beautiful, loneliness is ugly. Loneliness is like a wound, aloneness is like a flower. Loneliness is sick – Søren Kierkegaard has called it “sickness unto death” – and aloneness is life, abundant life. It is health.
The Sanskrit word for health is very beautiful; the English word also has its own beauty. Health means the wound is healed; it comes from healing. The person is no longer sick; the wound of negative nothingness is no longer there. It has healed. It is beautiful, but nothing compared to the Sanskrit word for health. The Sanskrit word for health is swasthia; it means becoming centered. It means coming to one’s own self, realizing one’s own self. Swa means self; swasthia means getting rooted in the self.
People are not rooted in their own selves, hence they are clinging to others. All clinging is an indication that you are afraid that if you are left alone you will not be alone, you will be simply lonely, miserable.
The West has yet to recognize this tremendously significant fact. The Western religions have remained confined to prayer. They have not touched even the periphery of meditation, for the simple reason that meditation means nothingness, and to them nothingness has only one connotation: that of loneliness, emptiness. And they start feeling that if you are nothing then you will start falling into an abyss, you will be lost.
But we have tasted a totally different quality of nothingness. We have tasted the hidden godliness in it, we have known the uttermost of bliss in it, we have known its benediction.
It is my own experience that there is no greater joy than to be alone; the joy of love is secondary. And the joy of love is possible only if you have known the joy of being alone, because only then do you have something to share. Otherwise, two beggars meeting each other, clinging to each other, cannot be blissful. They will create misery for each other because each will be hoping, and hoping in vain, “The other is going to fulfill me.” The other is hoping the same. They cannot fulfill each other. They are both blind; they cannot help each other.

I have heard about a hunter who got lost in the jungle. For three days he could not find anybody to ask for the way out, and he was becoming more and more panicky – three days of no food and three days of constant fear of wild animals. For three days he was not able to sleep; he was sitting awake on some tree, afraid he might be attacked. There were snakes, there were lions, there were wild animals.
After the third day, the fourth day early in the morning, he saw a man sitting under a tree. You can imagine his joy. He rushed, he hugged the man, and he said, “What joy!”
And the other man hugged him, and both were immensely happy and they asked each other, “Why are you so ecstatic?”
One said, “I was lost and I was waiting to meet somebody,” and the other said, “I am also lost and I am waiting to meet somebody. But if we are both lost then the ecstasy is just foolish. So now we will be lost together!”

That is what happens: you are lonely, the other is lonely – now you meet. First the honeymoon: that ecstasy that you have met the other, now you will not be lonely any more. But within three days, or if you are intelligent enough, then within three hours, it depends how intelligent you are… If you are stupid, then it will take longer because one does not learn; otherwise the intelligent person can immediately see after three minutes, “What are we trying to do? It is not going to happen. The other is as lonely as I am. Now we will be living together – two lonelinesses together.” Two wounds together cannot help each other to be healed. Two blind people leading each other Kabir says, “Both are bound to fall in a well sooner or later – and more possibly sooner than later.”
Nothingness, meditativeness, no-mindness is a totally different phenomenon. Loneliness is natural. You are born lonely, and immediately the child starts searching and seeking for the other; he starts searching for the mother, he starts groping. He clings to the mother; he does not want to be left alone even for a few moments. He starts crying, he starts screaming; he makes much fuss so that the mother comes back. He learns the language – how the mother can be manipulated. It is a very strange world. Even small babies become politicians. They know how to manipulate. They will start crying, they will start weeping.
Once it happened…

I went to see a friend with one of my friends driving me. His small son had come with him – not more than three years old. The friend went into some other person’s house to inquire whether he was there or not. I was sitting in the back of the car and the child was sitting in front. The child somehow fell over and hit his head against the wheel. I closed my eyes, as if I had not seen it. He looked at me; remained silent. After ten minutes when his father came back he started crying.
I said, “This is not right! This is not fair. Why are you crying now?”
He said, “What to do then? What was the point of crying? You were not even looking at me!”
I said, “Now it cannot be hurting. At that time it must have hurt, I know.”
But he knows politics because he understood immediately: “This man will not take any note of it. Even if I cry or weep it is useless. When my father is back, then…”

The child behaves differently when his mother is there. When the mother is not there he is far more grown-up, far more mature, because he has to be alert and cautious – he is alone, the mother is not there. When the mother is there he can do anything, he can take risks.
From the very childhood we know the negative aspect, but the positive aspect has to be discovered. It is a lifelong discovery; one has to go on discovering it.
Meditation is nothing but the method of discovering the positive aspect of nothingness, the positive quality of it. Meditation means dropping the content of the mind very consciously, knowing that you are dropping it. And when you have dropped everything, suddenly you realize that everything has disappeared but you are. And you are fuller than ever because all those things, all that junk that you have been carrying all along was simply taking your space. Now the whole space, the whole sky is available, and your heart can open its petals. In the East we call it “the one-thousand-petaled lotus.” Now there is space. With all the junk that you carry in your mind, where is the space for the one-thousand-petaled lotus to open? You are not spacious enough. You are so full of junk, rubbish, that only weeds can grow in you, not roses. It is impossible for the roses to grow; they need a little spaciousness.
Nothingness is spaciousness, and to be spacious means to be vast. The moment you feel nothingness in its positive quality you feel vastness, you feel infinity. You don’t see any limit anywhere; you are unlimited. Even the sky is not the limit. That experience makes you enlightened. That experience makes you full of light, life, love; so full that you start overflowing, that sharing is now possible.
Only a meditator can be a lover. In the past, people have tried to be lovers or to be meditators; both have failed. The whole history of humanity is a history of failures, and the greatest failure has been this: lovers have failed because they were not meditators, and without meditation you don’t have anything to share. Before you can share something you have to have it. And the meditators have failed because instead of being nothing, instead of being nobodies, instead of being the experience of utter emptiness, shunyata, they were full of mantras, chanting, praying, repeating any word constantly. But they were not nothing, they were not in a state of nothingness. Maybe they were not thinking of the market, not thinking of money, not thinking of politics – but they were thinking of God.
It does not matter what you are thinking: thinking as such keeps you away, far away from experiencing the beauty of nothingness. Whether mantras fill you or film songs fill you, it is all the same – you are too full of rubbish. Whether that rubbish has been collected through scriptures or through magazines like Playboy does not matter; it is the same rubbish.
One has to be utterly empty of all Playboys, all Bibles, all Gitas. One has to be completely empty of all Korans, all Vedas. When you are in that beautiful space you will know what godliness is, what truth is, what freedom is. In fact, knowing this, love is bound to happen as a shadow of it, as a consequence of it.
Meditators have failed because they were not real meditators; they were doing something else in the name of meditation. Concentration, they were doing; contemplation, they were doing; prayer, they were doing; chanting, they were doing; and they were doing a thousand other things, but not meditation. In fact, they were avoiding meditation – in a religious way. Ordinarily people avoid meditation in worldly ways, and your so-called saints avoid meditation through other-worldly ways, but it is the same: avoiding.
One has to discover the positive quality of nothingness. One has to be courageous enough to go into it. Once you have known it you have known everything that is worth knowing. Then you can share. Not only can you then share: only then will you be able to understand the Koran, the Bible, the Gita, because those are expressions of people who had known the same positive emptiness, the same beautiful nothingness. You cannot understand Christ unless you are a christ, you cannot understand Buddha unless you are a buddha. Before being a Buddha you will be simply a parrot repeating the Dhammapada. Before being a mohammed you cannot understand a single word of the Koran. That is impossible because unless you have the same consciousness and the same connection with the ultimate source of things, how can you understand Mohammed? No Mohammedan understands Mohammed, no Christian understands Christ, no Buddhist understands Buddha, no Jaina understands Mahavira. They are simply imitators, repeaters, just going on parrotlike, mechanically. And their whole effort is how to fill the negative nothingness. The negative nothingness has not to be filled; you have to be consciously aware of it: “Yes, it exists there.”
The moment negative emptiness is joined with awareness it becomes positive – the miracle happens. That very moment the alchemy transforms you. Let me repeat: negative nothingness plus awareness is equal to positive nothingness.

The second question:
Osho,
Why are the so-called religious people against you?
They are not religious they are only so-called religious, hence they are bound to be against me. The so-called religious people have always been against the religious people; it is nothing new, it is the most ancient thing in the world. They worship a religious person only when he is dead because then there is no problem.
Jesus alive is a problem. He disturbs you in many ways, in thousands of ways. In his presence you start feeling that all that you are is just holy cow dung, nothing else. It hurts, it hurts the ego. The so-called religious person starts looking so stupid. He is stupid, but when he is living with other so-called religious people he looks like a saint. He is a rabbi, he is a pundit, he is a priest; he is respected by people. The moment he comes close to a really religious person, immediately he is nothing. That negative nothingness is felt. Now he can see that he is like darkness.
Encountering a buddha you are encountering a mirror, a perfect mirror.

I have heard about a woman who was very ugly. She was very much against mirrors, obviously, so much so that whenever she came across a mirror she would immediately destroy it – even other people’s mirrors! People were afraid to let her come close to their mirrors. She would immediately hit the mirror with anything available. And her logic was the same, her argument was the same.
She used to say, “These mirrors make me look ugly. I am not ugly – these mirrors are wrong!”

The so-called religious people are bound to be against me. The argument is the same: I am functioning like a mirror. The moment your mind disappears and you become a no-mind, you are a mirror. Whosoever comes to you is bound to see his reality. And people live such unreal lives, such unauthentic lives, that how can they forgive me? Impossible. They have to be angry.
They would like to destroy me the way they destroyed Jesus, the way they destroyed Socrates, the way they destroyed Mansoor. They would like to destroy me too, because once they have crucified me they will be at ease again. Again they are beautiful because there is nobody to reflect them. The mirror is no longer there, so they can believe in whatsoever they want to believe.
They are against me because I am trying to expose them. I am trying to bring to their notice their real, original faces. They are hiding behind masks and I am pulling their masks away. And they are hiding because they feel their ugliness. They have found a cheap way to feel beautiful: to wear a mask. That is the meaning of the word personality: it comes from persona. Persona means a mask. You can wear a beautiful mask and you can deceive others. And slowly, slowly, when many people are deceived by you and they start thinking this is your real face, you become auto-hypnotized; by your own deception you create a self-deception. First you deceive others, then their eyes reflect your face – the mask – then you think, “This is my real face.”
When you come to a master his work is to pull the mask away, to loosen the hold of the mask on you. And you have believed in it for so long, and you have rationalized in every possible way: “This is my real face,” that you will be angry with whosoever is going to show you your real face. It is not accidental that always it has been the same; it seems to be the very law of existence that people like me are bound to be crucified in some way or other.
I have to destroy much in you. In fact, that is not your reality, but unless your unreal is taken away you will not be able to make any distinction between what is real and what is unreal. You will not be able to know what is essential and what is nonessential.
Desiderata is right: one should know exactly what is essential. But to know the essential as essential, first you have to become aware of the nonessential because that is where you are living: a nonessential life, a superficial life. You are acting, you are not really living. You are playing games, you are acting certain roles, you are not living a true life. Of course you have many ways to rationalize whatsoever you do; you have to rationalize, otherwise you will become aware of its falseness. You have to give it all your support, all kinds of arguments.
The Christian will give a thousand and one arguments why to be Christian is right. Why is he so self-defensive? Why is the Hindu so self-defensive? – “I am right! I am the only spiritual person in the world. My tradition is the greatest spiritual tradition. My country is the most holy country – even gods desire to be born here.” And every country thinks in the same way and every religion in the same way. These are rationalizations, supports, props for something false. The real needs no support, no crutches. And my work is to take away your crutches.

It was somewhat disconcerting to the minister’s wife to hear him exclaim, “Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus!” every time he reached orgasm, and she finally asked him about it.
“It is perfectly proper, my dear, and in accordance with the Bible,” he assured her. “Don’t you remember where it says, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’?”

People are ready to bring all kinds of rationalizations for whatsoever they are doing. You can always find something in the scriptures to support you.
The so-called religious are to be pitied. I feel sorry for them because they are thinking they are religious. They are only pretending – going to the church, going to the temple has nothing to do with being religious.
Religiousness is sensitivity, it is awareness. How can you become more sensitive by going to a church and listening to some stupid priest or minister who knows nothing; who lives almost as double a life as you live, in fact more so, who wears thicker masks than you are wearing? Your masks are thin; sometimes even your real faces show. Your masks are very thin. But the priest, the saint, the rabbi, the pope, has to wear a very thick mask. He has to believe in himself and he has to live a double kind of life – one at the front door, one at the back door. And the front-door life is just hypocrisy – he knows it.
That is why every so-called religious person feels guilty – guilty because he knows that he is doing something wrong, but he cannot stop doing it because that “something wrong” is wrong only because others say it is wrong. He has not experienced its wrongness. He does not know on his own what is right and what is wrong. He has no light of his own. He has believed others that this is wrong, but his own biology says that it is right. Now he is in a jam, a real jam. If he follows his natural instinct, guilt arises: “I am doing something wrong.”
Even a man like St. Augustine says, “My Lord, help me because I go on doing that which should not be done and I never do that which should be done.” Now, this simple statement is of tremendous significance. At least Augustine is sincere and honest; in many ways he was an honest man. If he had not been trying so hard to be a Christian, he would have become enlightened. He missed enlightenment for the simple reason that he was trying too hard to be a Christian. Rather than being himself he was trying too hard to follow the Ten Commandments, to follow in the footprints of Jesus. And, of course, when you follow somebody else this is going to happen. Again and again you will do something which should not be done, and again and again you will not be doing the thing that should be done and that creates a division, a split.
If you do what should be done, what is told by the others, then your nature suffers. Then you have to repress, and nothing that is repressed is going to remain repressed forever. It will assert itself again and again, it will start surfacing because it is accumulating momentum, energy.

Ruth was too shy to confess, so the priest offered his help.
“Did he do this?” asked the padre, kissing her.
“Yes, Father, and worse.”
“You mean he did this?” he said, touching her breasts.
“Yes, Father, and worse.”
Finally he had intercourse with her. “You mean that is what he did?”
“Yes, Father, and worse, too!”
“What worse could he do?”
“He gave me the clap, Father!”

The so-called religious person is bound to be repressive, and those repressions will create perversions. All sexual perversions are created by the so-called religious people. And the amazing thing is that they are the people who are against all perversions – and they are the creators! They are the culprits, the criminals. For example, they condemn homosexuality, and the source of homosexuality is religious because religions always separated men and women. For monks there were monasteries, for nuns there were different monasteries called nunneries, and they were not allowed to meet, mingle, merge with each other. Now if you put many people of the same sex enclosed behind walls for long periods… And there are monasteries in which you enter once and then you cannot leave; you enter for your whole life. Now, thousands of men living together and thousands of women living together without any way to transform their sexual energies, without knowing anything of Tantra because they are afraid of knowing anything of Tantra…
Tantra is the only science which can transform your energy; there is no other science which can transform your sexuality. Just as when you want to know something about atoms you have to know physics, and if you want to know something about chemicals you have to know chemistry, the same way, if you want to understand sex, without Tantra there is no other way, no possibility that there will ever be another way. Tantra has to be understood, but these people are afraid.
Because I have been talking about Tantra, the religious people are against me. They never told their people how to transform their sexual energy, so the nuns were bound to become lesbians and the monks to become homosexuals. Homosexuality has its roots in religion – it is a religious phenomenon.

Father Sanchez, a priest in Venezuela, went to the Caracas hospital with a stomach tumor. As a gag they told him he was pregnant and that his child had to be delivered by Caesarean section. He was given the baby of an unmarried girl who had died in childbirth.
The priest brought up the baby as his son. Years later, on his deathbed, Father Sanchez called the boy to him.
“There is something I must tell you,” said the priest. “You have always called me father, but now that I am about to die I have to tell you the truth. I am not really your father, I am your mother.”
“Then who is my father?” asked the boy.
“The Archbishop of Caracas!”

Because I call a spade a spade, the so-called religious people are against me. I can understand their anger and I have no reaction to it. I have only compassion. I can understand why Jesus prayed to God at the last moment on the cross, “Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” The same is my feeling: they know not what they are doing. And they are so unconscious that they are bound to behave in this way.
And you all have to understand it, and you all have to be very compassionate, because what can they do? For centuries they have been told lies, for centuries they have been brought up on lies and they have accepted them as truths. And I say it is not truth; what you are believing is a lie.
Every belief is a lie. Truth has to be experienced, not believed. Truth liberates, but it has to be your own experienced truth; anybody else’s truth is bound to create bondage for you.
To help a prisoner who has always lived in a prison to be free is a difficult task, but it is a beautiful challenge too. I have accepted the challenge and I am trying whatsoever I can. And of course, the more I succeed in doing, the more the crowd, the mob will be against me. But I have to do my work and I enjoy doing it. Even if I am crucified for it, that will be perfectly okay as far as I am concerned. That will be a perfect reward for my work.

The third question:
Osho,
Do you have any wish?
I wish I were Adam. If I pulled a joke, no one could say, “I heard that one before!”

The fourth question:
Osho,
Why are you being compared with Rasputin rather than with Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira or Buddha? And especially when you are continuously and bitterly criticizing present politics and politicians and giving the world a dynamic view of religiousness?
Do you know what they did with Jesus? Do you know what they did with Mahavira? Do you know what they did with Buddha? You are not aware. Of course, they could not have compared Jesus with Rasputin because Rasputin had not yet come into existence. But isn’t it enough proof that they crucified him; that they were not thinking that he is a good man, that they were perfectly certain that he is evil, that he is doing the work of the Devil, not of God; that he is not the Messiah, that he is a pretender? If they were not convinced “He is a pretender and destroying our spirituality, our culture, our religion,” why should they have crucified Jesus?
They tortured Mahavira in every possible way. They wounded Buddha; they did everything to kill him. Of course, they could not succeed. That’s the difference between Indians and Jews: when Jews do something they succeed! Indians are Indians: they do, but they can’t succeed.
Just a few days ago they threw a knife at me to kill me. Now in a twentieth-century world, trying to kill somebody with an old-fashioned knife – it was something very ancient, totally rusted. When it fell I thought it was a stone.
They could not kill Buddha or Mahavira; that simply shows Indian efficiency, nothing else. And do you think they were very happy with Krishna?
Jainas have thrown Krishna into the seventh hell. Jainas believe there are seven hells: the seventh is the last hell where the greatest criminals are thrown. Now Jainas have thrown Krishna into the seventh hell. Even Adolf Hitler will be somewhere near the third! Genghis Kahn, Tamurlaine, Nadir Shah cannot go beyond the third. The seventh is reserved only for people like Krishna.
Jainas have thrown Krishna into the seventh hell. Why? I don’t think they can throw Rasputin into the seventh hell. Rasputin may go at the most to the second, not to the seventh. Krishna seems to be a far more dangerous man. It was he who persuaded Arjuna to go to war; in that war millions of people died. Now the whole violence, that great massacre of people, was caused by Krishna. Arjuna wanted to renounce the world. The story is beautiful…

The war was about to start. The enemies were facing each other, just waiting for the signal to be given so they could start killing each other. Arjuna, seeing the millions of people, became a little shaken. He thought, “This is stupid. Just for the kingdom’s sake, just to be a king, it is not worth killing millions of people.” The insight was so penetrating that he dropped his famous bow and he told Krishna – Krishna was his driver, his charioteer – he told Krishna, “Turn the chariot away. Take me to the jungle, leave me there. I want to renounce the world. I don’t want this kingdom any more and I don’t want to fight.”
Krishna persuaded him, argued with him, convinced him that this was his duty, that he was being a coward, that this was escapism. And finally he made him fight. Now according to Jaina philosophy Arjuna was right. He was really becoming a Jaina monk, dropping all violence. Krishna is the dangerous person who gave great logical rationalizations for him to go into war.
He says to Arjuna, “It is decided by God – the war is going to happen, it is inevitable. Even if you escape, somebody else will have to take your place, but the war is going to happen. So don’t be worried, you are just an excuse. You are not killing these people; God has already decided that these people have to be killed, and these people have to be killed to save religion. These people have to be killed for the sake of peace. You have to do it – it is your duty!”
And he gives great arguments. He says, “And remember, when you kill a person…” and that is the most dangerous argument. He says, “…when you kill a person you only kill his body. The soul is not killed, the soul is eternal. So why be worried? He will be born again. He will have another body, in fact a new body. You take away an old model and he will get a new model because the soul is eternal.”
This is a very dangerous argument according to Jaina ideology. This means you can kill, it is not a crime. This man is dangerous. They have thrown him into the seventh hell.

You ask, “Why are you being compared with Rasputin rather than with Jesus…?” Jesus was not thought to be a very nice fellow – you don’t crucify nice fellows! Neither was Krishna thought to be a very religious person. You don’t throw religious people into the seventh hell. And Mahavira was thought to be utterly mad by the Hindus, by the Buddhists, because he was roaming naked. He was destroying the Hindu culture. He was not even behaving like a gentleman, what to say about an enlightened man? They chased him out from one village to another village. Finally he was poisoned in his old age – he suffered for six months.
Hindus have so much anger against Mahavira that they have not even mentioned his name in their scriptures – they have completely ignored him. Even to take note of him would have been giving some importance to him. His name is not mentioned in a single Hindu scripture. A man of such tremendous truth and even his name is ignored, deliberately, so that he can be effaced from history. And they knew that it can be done because there were very few followers and those followers can be destroyed or converted; the whole thing can be effaced as if it had never happened.
They had to mention Buddha in their scriptures because Buddha had millions of followers; it was almost impossible to destroy his name. So just out of sheer necessity they have mentioned Buddha, but in a very condemnatory way. They say Buddha came into the world to destroy religion, to destroy people’s virtue, because hell was empty and the Devil was continuously nagging God: “You have made hell, and hell is empty. For centuries we have been sitting there doing nothing. Send us people! We have perfected every means of torture, but there is nobody to torture and we are hankering. And people are so virtuous; the Hindus are so virtuous, so religious, so spiritual, all the Hindus go to heaven.”
So God took compassion on the poor Devil and he said, “Okay. Now I will come to the world as Gautama the Buddha and I will destroy people’s faith in the true religion and I will distract them from their path. I will make them go astray; then they will start falling into hell and you will have enough people to torture.”
Hence Buddha is accepted by the Hindus as an incarnation of God, but for what? To fill hell! Hindus are cunning people, far more cunning than anybody else.
Crucifying Jesus did not succeed in a way because by crucifying him, Christianity was born. But accepting Buddha as an incarnation of God and yet giving him such a twist, giving such a condemnatory turn to the whole thing, India became completely non-Buddhist. Who wants to go to hell? Buddhism completely disappeared from India, totally disappeared. Even in the temple in Bodh Gaya where Buddha became enlightened – the temple is made in his memory – for centuries they could not find a Buddhist monk to be the priest. There is a Hindu priest in the temple. The temple stands as Buddha’s memorial, but Buddhists disappeared so completely that even for a single temple there was not a single Buddhist to be the priest. The priest is still a Hindu because now it has become a traditional thing. Now the temple is owned by Hindu priests, by brahmins. Strange, because Buddha is against the brahmins, against the Vedas. And the most sacred place for the Buddhists is possessed by the Hindus – a brahmin priest!
The Jews killed Jesus, but they forgot that crucifixion will attract many people – it will prove that he was a messiah, it will become a proof, it will become historical, it will go deep into people’s hearts. In fact, the Jews themselves started feeling guilty afterward. Judas immediately committed suicide after twenty-four hours. Just twenty-four hours afterward he committed suicide – he felt so guilty. In the Jews who had crucified this simple man, this poor man, of course a feeling of guilt was bound to arise and when guilt arises, the only way is to cover it up by worshipping, by giving respect. The same Jews turned Christians – they were the first Christians.
Hindus succeeded far more cleverly. They did not crucify Buddha, although they tried many times to kill him but could not succeed. But philosophically, metaphysically they succeeded.
Do you think that when Buddha was alive people were thinking that he is a god? Then you are wrong. Do you think Mahavira was worshipped by the people as a god? Then you are wrong. Of course, he was accepted by a few disciples as divine, but the major part of the society condemned him. They condemned Buddha, they condemned Krishna, they condemned Jesus in the same way they are condemning me. In fact, in a roundabout way, by calling me Rasputin, they are putting me in the same category as Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha – because Rasputin is nothing but an evil spirit in their minds, a very powerful evil spirit. And of course, they are accepting one thing: that there is some power which is working here.
Just the other day I received a letter from a sannyasin: a few months ago a television company had made a film of the ashram, and now a Christian priest is doing the commentary on it. And the sannyasin has seen the commentary and the film, and the priest is just stating lies, absolute lies. He has never been here. The film was made by the television company; the priest has never been here and he is commenting on the film, he is giving a running commentary on the film. So when in darshan people are moved, and they are dancing and they are singing and they go ecstatic, his commentary is: “Look! This is black magic! This man is an incarnation of the Devil. What he is doing is hypnotism, mesmerism.”
They are bound to compare me with Rasputin just to condemn me. Once they have crucified me, the same people will worship me, but first they have to crucify me. And I am not in any way in a hurry – that’s why there are so many guards and security arrangements. Naturally, twenty centuries after Jesus I am a little more alert about what they can do. Jesus was not alert about it, that they would go to such lengths. I know they can go – I know they will go – but I would like to linger on a little more so I can infect as many people as possible.
So they will make every effort to destroy me – but because they cannot destroy they become enraged. Then at least they can write in newspapers and spread rumors – and I love it. I love all those rumors. Even respected newspapers, news agencies go on doing stupid things, but it creates sensation and they live on sensationalism. This is absolutely natural; it has to happen in this way. It can only happen in this way – this is inevitable.
Only my people will understand what I am, and I don’t care what others say – not a bit. In fact, I would like them to create as many rumors as possible because their rumors bring people to the ashram – and once they are here I can always hypnotize them! Those rumors are bringing many people here. Once they are here their vision changes, their perspective changes. They start seeing that it is a totally different phenomenon: what is happening here is something totally different from what they have heard. What they have heard helps me because that becomes a contrast.
If you come to me thinking “Here is a Rasputin,” and then you see and you listen and you sit in silence with me, suddenly the contrast is clear: where is Rasputin? Here is a simple man, talking in simple language, pouring his heart and his love, sharing his joy; neither interested in any politics nor interested in any organized religion, only interested in one thing – how people can become more aware, more alert, more meditative.
The priests are afraid – their business can be destroyed by me. The politicians are afraid because I can create, through creating consciousness, rebellious people. Hence they are going to conspire against me, but all their conspiracy is ultimately a help.
It is my observation that truth cannot be killed. You can kill me, but truth cannot be killed. You can crucify Jesus, but how can you crucify truth? In fact, crucifixion becomes a background in which the truth shines forth more clearly, more definitively than ever. So I enjoy their rumors. I never say anything against their rumors.
Just a few days ago there was a picture in a German magazine – that I have got two wives, one Indian, one English. And they have even taken the picture as I was getting out of the car. The picture is taken from behind Shiva, and Shiva sometimes does his hair in such a way that his head looks like an Indian woman – so Shiva is my Indian wife! Now I don’t criticize and I don’t say a single word. I loved the idea. Shiva is so beautiful, what is wrong in it? Good! In fact, I should have at least thirty wives, each wife representing one country. Why just Indian and English? Go on spreading the news: “He has thirty wives, one representing each country.” That will be far more right. I have got thirty mediums, you can use them as my thirty wives.
But these fools are bound to do such things – this is expected. And I am not worried, because I have nothing to worry about. I have found that which is the fulfillment of my life. Now whether I am famous or notorious does not matter. Whether I am Rasputin or Buddha does not matter. A few people will think about me as Buddha, a few people, and the majority, will think about me as Rasputin. That’s beautiful.
One thing I am certainly interested in is that everybody should think something about me!

The last question:
Osho,
I am very angry that you are telling so many jokes about the Polacks.
I am very sorry but really the fault is not mine; I am not the culprit. I have got three librarians: Lalita, Gayan and Nandan. It seems one of them has fallen in love with some Polack this month, so they go on sending me beautiful jokes about the Polacks. And the jokes are so juicy that whether you are angry or not I am going to tell them!
And this is also a beautiful way to find out how many Polacks are here, because they go on hiding. Nobody says, “I am a Polack,” but this is how I find out who is a Polack.
Now even by asking this question you have proved all those jokes are true.

Did you hear about the tiger who cornered Mr. Aesop and then proceeded to eat him for his Sunday dinner?
“Go ahead, Aesop,” said the tiger, “try and make up a fable about this!”

Naturally, tigers and wild animals must be angry about Aesop – he goes on making up stories about them. But I am not making up these stories, I am simply stating facts. You cannot improve upon the jokes – the jokes are perfect.

Have you heard about the Polack who started saying intelligent things? He was born perfectly stupid and then had a relapse!

What would you suspect if a Polack started behaving in an intelligent way? Rather than suspecting, you could be sure that his mother had not been faithful to his father!

Two Polacks go to see a Western movie. In the middle of the film a cowboy, mounted on a white horse, and an Indian, mounted on a black horse, begin to race each other across the plain.
The first Polack turns to his friend and says, “I’ll bet you fifty dollars that the black horse gets to the river before the white horse.”
“Okay, you’re on!” exclaims the second Polack.
A few seconds later, the white horse and his rider splash into the river ten lengths ahead of the black horse.
“Listen,” said the second Polack after a pause, “I can’t take your money. I have seen this movie before and I knew that the white horse would win.”
“Ah!” said the first Polack. “I have seen it twice before, but that black horse got off to such a good start this time!“

The sawmill foreman hired Sofronski, led him to a buzz saw and explained how it worked. He warned Sofronski that it was extremely dangerous, and left him alone.
Sofronski, fascinated by the saw, reached out a probing finger toward it. One second later the finger was gone. Sofronski screamed in pain, bringing the foreman on the run.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Your saw cut my finger off.”
“Well,” asked the foreman, “what did you do wrong?”
“I don’t know!” said the Polack. “I just touched it like this… Ow, damn! There goes another one!”

A gorilla in the zoo died. His female companion, after a few months, began getting violent as her need for sex increased. The zookeepers decided to get a man to make love to her. They picked up a Polack down on skid row and offered him twenty dollars for the job.
They muzzled the she-ape, tied her arms to the bars, and let the Polack gingerly into her cage. When the gorilla saw the guy had an erection, she suddenly ripped her arms loose from the bars and began crushing him in her embrace. “Help!” he shouted. “For God’s sake, help!”
“Don’t worry,” the keeper shouted back, “we’ll get an elephant gun and shoot her.”
“No! No! Don’t shoot her. Just get her muzzle off – I wanna kiss her!”

Enough for today.

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