The first question:
Osho,
Are there different levels of hedonism? I suspect: “Eat, drink and be merry” means different things to different people.
Yes, there are two levels of hedonism and they are almost polar opposites of each other. Because of it, much misunderstanding has prevailed down the ages. The lower hedonism is of the body and the higher hedonism is of the soul. They both speak the same language: eat, drink and be merry. They both propound the same philosophy of life: live in the moment, don’t think of the morrow. They both want that one should not be worried about the past and should not be concerned about the future. This moment is enough unto itself.
Their language is the same, their proposal is the same, yet they are diametrically opposite. To the first level of hedonism – the material, the physical, the outer hedonism – belong the philosophies of Charvaka in India and Epicurus in Greece. To the second philosophy, the spiritual hedonism, belong all the great masters: Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra.
Where do they differ? Where do they become diametrically opposite? If you live only as a physical being, you will remain unaware of the non-physical dimension that is continuously penetrating you. You will only know the visible and the invisible will remain unknown to you. The invisible is far bigger, far more essential. The visible is just a covering, it is just a shell around the invisible. It is there to protect the invisible. The body is the shrine of the soul.
If you live only in the body and you only take care of the body and let the physical sensations dominate you, you will never become aware of the non-physical dimension, the divine dimension. If you are utterly lost in the body – as you would be if you think “Eat, drink and be merry” is the goal – you would be living at a very superficial level. It is as if you have been given the Bible and you go on looking at the cover. You start worshipping the cover and you never open the book and go inside, so you never see what is there. The cover could be beautiful; it could be leather bound, printed in gold, maybe the top is diamond studded. It could be beautiful and it could be very precious, but still it is nothing compared to that which is inside the book.
Your body is only a cover. It is beautiful, it is precious, but it is carrying something far more precious inside it. The man who thinks of “Eat, drink and be merry” in the physical sense, is a man who receives a letter and worships the envelope and forgets the message. The message is important. What a message you are carrying inside you! What a destiny you are carrying inside you!
The second level of hedonism is not against the body, it is for the soul. It also lives in the moment, but when the first hedonist is eating, he is only concerned with the food. When the second hedonist is eating, he is more concerned with the awareness of the taste of the food. That is where they differ. When the first hedonist goes for a walk, he looks around – the trees, the birds, the people, the dewdrops, the morning sun – but he does not look at who is looking at all these things. When the second hedonist goes for a morning walk, he enjoys the birds, the trees, the people, the sun, the sky, but he also goes on enjoying the one who is enjoying it all. He remains aware.
The first hedonist lives an unconscious life, the second hedonist lives a very conscious life. The second hedonist gets all that the first is getting, plus… The first hedonist gets only the bodily sensations and he goes on missing the real life because he lives in the body. There are people who are against the first hedonist and who think they are spiritual. They are not. That’s a logical fallacy.
Because the first goes on living in the body, there are people who logically think, “We have to be against the body, only then can we enter into the second realm of our being. Only then can we attain to happiness, to heaven, to bliss.” Because the first is missing – and the first is missing because he is overly obsessed with the body – the second, this so-called spiritualist, becomes obsessed at being against the body. This is not a real spiritualist. The real spiritualist is a hedonist. Let me repeat it: “He is not against the body, he is for the soul.”
So now there are three kinds of people: the ordinary hedonist who lives in the body, the real hedonist who lives in the soul and naturally lives in the body too. Between these two is the spiritualist, the so-called spiritualist – the ascetic who fights with the body, who destroys the body, who is against the body and who tortures it. He thinks that in torturing his body he will attain to the soul; he cannot. The first goes on missing, but the second – the false spiritualist – misses even more. So if you have a choice, I would say it is better to be a physical hedonist than to be an anti-physical spiritualist because at least you will be enjoying the body and the physical part of God will remain available to you.
To the spiritualist, even that is not available. He is completely blind. But if you really want to enjoy life, you have to choose the second kind of hedonism, the spiritual hedonism, the divine hedonism. The second is already available to the first if he starts becoming a little alert. It is not available to the false spiritualist. He is closed to both kinds of hedonism. The physical hedonist can rise to the higher hedonism because he has to grow in the same way but deeper. He has to dig a little deeper into his being. So if you have to choose between Epicurus and Mahatma Gandhi, choose Epicurus. But if you have to choose between Epicurus, Buddha or Jesus, choose Jesus or Buddha.
Never become a so-called saint. He will fall from grace. He misses the body, how can he attain to the soul? The body has to be used as a stepping-stone. The body has to become a staircase. It has to become a boat to the other shore. Use the body.
I am a hedonist. My whole teaching is to love the body, use the body, go into the body as deeply as you can. Be sensitive to its feelings, be available to its wisdom, its joys, but don’t be confined there. There is much more in your life. That is just a beginning. Use the body as a springboard. The secret is the same. So the secret can be used on the second, higher, level too. Be in the present. Live moment to moment. Don’t allow the past to interfere and don’t allow the future to cloud your vision. Let the present moment be crystal clear. Enter into it with the body, with the soul. Enter into it as a unity of the body and the soul. Enter into it not as body or as soul, but as a unity. There are these two kinds of hedonism. The higher contains the lower. The lower cannot contain the higher. I teach you the higher hedonism.

The second question:
Osho,
What does one do about unrequited love? What does one do about unrequited love that seems to live on and on like a wound that never heals? How is it that a man can go on loving one woman year after year believing, in spite of the pain, that one day she will find a place for him in her heart? Am I a fool to believe? I think that I am a fool and yet I continue to believe. Am I creating this situation? Or is this situation creating me?
First, you are not really in love with love. That’s why you have become stuck on a particular woman. A real lover never gets stuck anywhere. His offering is to love, not to persons. He loves beauty, not the roseflower, not the lotus flower. He loves beauty wherever it is. He does not get confused, he does not think that the container is the content. You have got confused. You are not a real lover. You have not really loved. In fact, you are avoiding love in the name of that woman. This is a beautiful trick to escape from love.
What can you do? You loved a woman and she never responded to you, so what can you do? Now you can only go on playing with your wound. You are a masochist. I will not say that you are a fool, you are not. You are a masochist, a clever masochist, an intelligent masochist. You are arranging your torture through the name of love, in the name of love. You are playing the game of being a martyr. You are enjoying this crucifixion.
You loved a woman; there is no necessity for the woman to love you. Your love is not enough to make it a surety. Love is a two-way street, it is not one-way. But down the ages, poets, novelists, people who go on playing with imagination, have been talking about love as if when you love a person, that person has to love you. The only condition that you have to fulfill is that you should really love. Even then, there is no need for the other to love you. The other has freedom, the other is a living soul. If the other has to love you just because you love, where is his freedom? Where is his soul or her soul? You are not leaving the other any freedom. If the other does not want you, does not like you, if the other is not turned on by you, you can go on loving and nothing is going to happen.
Your love is not enough. In fact, the more you try, the more the other will back away from you because the other will become more and more afraid of you. You are dangerous. Even before love has happened between you, you are not allowing any freedom. What will you do when love starts happening? – you will suffocate the woman or the man. You will surround her in such a way that it will become a prison. Even right now she has not responded, but you are waiting. You are thinking and hoping that because you love her, she will love you. Why? There is no must in it, there is no inevitability in it. Just the reverse will be the case.
The more you chase her, the more you will make her afraid of you and the more she will escape from you. You are dangerous. The paradox is that the more she distances herself from you, the more you will fantasize about her.
A real woman very soon loses all her charm. So is the case with a real man because with reality the fiction cannot be continued for long. All relationships settle down by and by – the honeymoon is only short. If you really get the woman, within seven days, fifteen days, three weeks, things will start settling. The fiction, the poetry and the fantasy will start disappearing. The real woman and the real man will come back to earth.
You cannot go on moving in the clouds for long. With gravitation, the other’s reality will pull you back. So when you respond to love, it is soon finished. When love remains unrequited, it can continue for your whole life because there is no way for it to be finished. You can go on playing in your imagination – games, fantasies, dreams…
The person who has asked the question is an author, Musin. He must be imaginative, poetic. He must be able to create fictions. He cannot lose this woman because she is giving him great fictions. And she will go on giving them to him. The only condition is that she should not respond to your love, then the love can continue forever. In that way Majnu was fortunate because he could never get Laila. The really unfortunate people are those who can get their Lailas. Once you get your Laila or your Majnu, things are finished.

A man went to visit a madhouse. In one room a man was beating his head, crying. Large tears were flowing down his cheeks and he was holding a small picture very lovingly to his chest.
The visitor asked the superintendent, “What has happened to this man?”
The superintendent said: “You see the picture that he is holding? He holds it day and night. That is the woman he wanted, he had loved, but could not get. Hence, he went mad. He cries and sings songs to her and goes on thinking of her. It’s his whole life. The whole world has disappeared, only the woman… He talks – he talks from his side and the woman’s side and the dialogue continues.”
They went to another room and another man was beating his head and throwing himself against the wall.
The visitor asked, “What has happened to this man?”
The superintendent said, “This is the man who got that woman. Since he got her, he has gone mad.”

You can go on living in your dreams and you will think that you are a great lover, think about how much you are sacrificing. But you are simply a masochist. This can be done only by a masochist who wants to torture himself. Now you have found a good excuse to torture yourself. I cannot appreciate this. I have no appreciation for any pathology, whatsoever the excuse. This is pathological. You offered yourself, the woman rejected you – it is finished. There are millions of women in the world. Why are you wasting your life? If you want to waste it that’s another thing, but then don’t befool yourself that it is because of love. Love is just an excuse, you really want to waste your life. You are afraid of love. You are depending on that woman. You don’t want to approach another. One woman or one man does not mean anything.
If you are hungry, you will eat anything even if the food that you want is not available – won’t you? If you are thirsty, you will drink even if Coca-Cola is not available – plain Pune water will do! If you are thirsty, you will drink, you will not say, “I will die because I only drink Coca-Cola. I love Coca-Cola!” No, you will drink because you are thirsty. You are hungry so you will eat. If you are really hungry for love, what does it matter if one woman has rejected you? There is no need to feel lost because there are millions of women. But one woman has rejected you.
There are a few things involved in this. First, your ego is hurt – as if you have some power over people. Just because you love, it doesn’t mean that somebody else has to love you. You can offer yourself, but the other has to decide. You can take the initiative, but if the woman does not like you, it does not mean that you are a nobody. It simply means something didn’t fit between the two of you. It is good that the woman rejected you.
If she had agreed to be with you out of politeness, or respect, or out of compassion, you would have been in far more trouble. Because compassion can never become love and politeness is hypocrisy. If she had not liked you and decided to be with you for some other motive, you would have been in far more trouble and anguish. There would never have been that harmony that happens between two people who are in love with each other. She would always have been the compassionate one, the sympathizer; she would have felt for your misery.
That’s what you are doing; that’s what people go on doing. They go on crying when a woman or a man refuses them. They go on making themselves miserable in the hope that their misery will create compassion in the other. Misery can create compassion and that is dangerous because compassion is never love. You cannot be fulfilled by compassion because the one who is showing compassion remains the higher one. You remain a beggar. The woman gives to you, but there will be no passion in it. When compassion comes, passion disappears. There will be no thrill in the woman’s heart, she will never feel ecstatic. She will always feel obliged and she will remain insensitive because her heart will not open to you. She will pretend, she will do whatsoever is needed. She will fulfill the duty, but duty is not love.
Love is ecstasy, duty is dull.
She will not dance – because of you. She may become a good housekeeper, she may take care of your children. She may look after you and she may be a good caretaker, but these things won’t fulfill her. It is good that the woman wasn’t compassionate toward you. You are asking for compassion, that’s why you won’t allow the wound to heal. Once the wound is healed, nobody will be compassionate toward you. You won’t get down from your cross. You hang there and you go on shouting, “Look how much I am suffering! Come!” You are trying to create a situation so that in her heart she starts feeling guilty, feeling that it is she who is responsible for all your suffering. That’s why you cannot allow the wound to heal. This is not love.
First – this is the ego. Second – this is the fear of love. You are afraid to knock at another door because you have been rejected once and you are afraid that you may be rejected again. You are hesitant, so you knock on the same door and your knocking will only create the feeling of nausea in the woman. You will be a nuisance. She doesn’t love you, so you will become more and more of a nuisance.
Forget about her and forgive her. This is your life – don’t waste it. This life is precious – don’t let it go down the drain. Love can still flower. If it has not happened with A, it can happen with B, it can happen with C. The real thing is the flowering of love. With whom it happens is irrelevant. But people become too obsessed with small things. “It should happen only with this woman who has black hair.” What is wrong with blonde or brunette? “It should happen only with this woman who has such a long nose.” These are obsessions. Foolish! You get too involved with the details and you go on missing the real point.
The real point is that love should happen. Once it starts happening and your heart starts flowing, it is even possible that the woman may become interested in you. Because people only become interested in other people who are happy, who are flowing, who are blossoming. If you start blossoming, there is a possibility… I only say a possibility, I am not saying with certainty, otherwise you can even try to make that happen. If you start blossoming, the woman may start thinking about you again. She may start feeling that she missed an opportunity, she may start feeling that there is still time. She may start thinking, “How to make it possible again?” She may start knocking on your door.
It is possible only when you are happy. Now you are a wound. Nobody loves a wound. Remember, if somebody loves a wound, beware of them – they are neurotic. Escape, because if the person loves the wound, he will never allow the wound to heal. He will create bigger wounds in you because he loves wounds. There are people who love wounds because when somebody is wounded, they are always above, higher, greater, better.

A man – he was one of my students at University – told me that he would like to marry a widow. In India that is a problem. Nobody wants to marry a widow. So there are people who think that to marry a widow is a great sacrifice.
I said, “You can marry her, but once you have married her, she will not be a widow. Then what will you do? The whole charm will disappear because the charm is in her being a widow.”
He laughed – he thought I was joking. He got married. After six months he said: “You were right. I’m no longer interested in her. My interest was basically in her widowhood. I wanted to show to the public that I am a great servant of the people and that I am serving people even through my love. I am sacrificing my love for a widow. I am going against society, I am going against the tradition. I am doing something great. But now the marriage has happened and the widow has come here; now there is no point.”
I said, “Do one thing. Commit suicide. She will be a widow again and somebody else will have a chance to serve her again. If you are really a public servant, do this.” Since then I have not seen him.

Don’t go on playing with your wound. This continuous fingering of a wound will not allow it to heal. I think the woman you were in love with has some sense. She will not look at you. Who wants to look at a wound? Be happy, become a flower – blossom. Let her feel jealous. Let her feel that she missed an opportunity of finding such a beautiful man. Let your song burst forth, then there is a possibility she may come to you. Whether she comes or not is not the point. You are not here only to love that woman. This is a vast world, with millions of beautiful people all around. Why get so obsessed with one person?
A real lover is never obsessed with individuals, his devotion is toward love itself. He worships the god of love. People come and go, people change; the god of love remains the same.
You have asked: “What does one do about unrequited love?” One forgets about it and forgives the person. One does not make much fuss about it. “What does one do about unrequited love that seems to live on and on like a wound that never heals?” You are not allowing it to heal. The only way for it to heal is for you to fall in love with somebody else. Only love heals because only love is a healing energy. Love is therapy.
Fall in love and it will be healed. But you have a lot of investment in the wound. You don’t want it to heal, that’s why you won’t fall in love with somebody else. This wound has become your prestige. This is your ego trip. You think it is love; it is nothing, it is an ego trip. You are feeling offended. You have to show this woman, even if you have to die, but you will show this woman. You will die crying for her and then she will be miserable for you and she will feel guilty about you. These are your hopes.
You don’t love this woman at all, otherwise you wouldn’t think of making her guilty. If you really love her, you would like her to be happy. You would simply disappear from her world and you would help her to forget you. You would become non-existent – at least for her – so that she can live her life without any interference from you. But that would heal your wound and you would no longer be a martyr, you would not be such a “great lover.”
You are not interested in love, you are interested in being a “great lover” – that is the ego trip. “What does one do about unrequited love that seems to live on and on like a wound that never heals?” It is simple. You like a certain food and you haven’t had that food today, but if you haven’t eaten anything else, naturally you would become ill. Hunger would grow. Tomorrow you would be hungrier, the day after tomorrow you would be starving. You go on asking, “What is one to do? When one cannot get the food of one’s own choice, what is one to do?” The second choice, the third choice – whatsoever is available.
One never knows because each person is carrying such divinity in him or in her, that one never knows. If you fall in love with another woman, you may start thanking God. “It was good that the first woman had rejected me. If she had not rejected me then I would not have been able to find this woman.”
This is my observation of thousands of people. Once you look backward you will be surprised, everything fits perfectly. The first woman denied you and the second woman accepted you and you can feel happy. If the first had accepted, the second would not have been possible. The second deserted you and the third became possible and you are happier. Otherwise the third would not have been possible.
Just a few days ago, a sannyasin said to me, “I have lived with this woman for three months and they were so beautiful. I have never known such moments. Now she is deserting me. What should I do?” I said to him, “Help her to desert you because three months ago you were clinging to another woman. I remember it perfectly well. At that time you were saying, ‘If this woman leaves me I will commit suicide. I cannot live without her.’ After just three months you had forgotten about that woman. You have not committed suicide. On the contrary, you are saying that this woman has been your greatest experience in life! Now she is deserting you, help her.” Why get so obsessed with personalities? Remain in love. Let your love be fluid. Don’t let your love become stale and solid and dead. Millions of flowers will blossom in your being. Don’t go on weeping for just one flower that didn’t bloom.
“How is it that a man can go on loving one woman year after year…?” Yes, if you don’t get the woman, you can go on year after year, life after life. You are living in fiction, you are living in fantasy, you are living in your dreams. You go on creating the woman – who is not the real woman. The beauty that you give to the woman is given by you. That woman is just a fiction. You can go on living with your fiction. Real women are difficult, as real men are. You are alone and it is your fiction; you can paint it any way you want. Your woman will never become old, the real woman becomes old.
Now, Musin’s woman will never become old. He will become old, but his woman will always remain young. She will never become ugly, he will become ugly. He will become old, ill, death will come and she will always remain fresh, like dewdrops in the morning, always fresh, always young, always beautiful.
Your woman will never stink, she will not perspire either. She will not throw her panties around the bathroom. It is your woman, a fiction. She will not nag you, she will not fight with you, she will not be jealous. You can do whatsoever you want, she will not hinder you. She will never get in your way and she will always allow you total freedom. Now, no real woman can do that, so one gets fed up with a real woman, one gets fed up with a real man. With the unreal, there is no problem. So you are in a non-problematic relationship. You can enjoy it forever.
But this is not a relationship, this is neurosis. It is like a madman who is talking with somebody who is not there. You will go on talking to your woman and you will go on doing things for her and you will go on hoping. Your life will be slipping through your hands. Be a little more alert. It is your life. You owe yourself some joy, some celebration. The real celebration is always in reality. It cannot be only in dreams.
“How is it that a man can go on loving one woman year after year believing, in spite of the pain, that one day she will find a place for him in her heart?” You can believe it. If you remain hungry and don’t eat anything, you will have to believe that the food that you demand will descend from heaven. “One day it is going to happen, I am sacrificing so much. A little more, a little more – I will sacrifice myself completely and then it will happen. How can my sacrifice be in vain?” This is your logic. But you can go on starving – the food is not going to come from heaven. If you want to seek food, you will have to accept the food that is available. Nourish yourself. Start moving and maybe the food that you want may become available to you. But starving, dying in a coma, no energy to move and just hoping that something will happen is a deception. You are deceiving yourself.
Deceptions can be very beautiful, artistic, aesthetic, but still they are deceptions. Love the real. It is through reality that one grows. Beware of dreams and their power over you. They can take away the whole opportunity, they can destroy the whole opportunity.
“Am I a fool to believe? I think that I am a fool and yet I continue to believe. Am I creating this situation?” Certainly, you are creating this situation. The woman may have forgotten about you. The woman may not be a part in it at all. She may not remember you at all. It is you who is creating the whole situation for yourself. And naturally… “Or is this situation creating me?” It works both ways. First you create the situation and then the situation creates you. You create the situation and the situation creates you. It is a vicious circle. You get more and more into the mire of it, entrapped, entangled and it becomes very difficult to get out of. You will need great courage to get out of it. You will need to jump out of it. It will not be gradual, you will just have to escape out of it. Fall into anybody’s arms just to get out of it.
Every person is beautiful, you just have to love the person and the beauty starts flowing. Ordinarily, people think that they have fallen in love because the person is beautiful. Just the contrary is the case: you see the person as beautiful because you have fallen in love. If somebody asks, “Why have you fallen in love with this man, or this woman?” You say, “She is beautiful, that’s why.” That is not true. The truth is just the opposite. You have fallen in love; hence, she looks beautiful. Love creates beauty.
Start falling in love again. I don’t think that you are a fool. You are too clever, too wise. If you are a fool, you will fall in love easily because only fools fall in love. Wise people never do such things. You are wise – you tried once and now you are finished for your whole life. Be a little more foolish. Try it once again. I don’t see that one has to go on being a failure forever. Remember, if you succeed in love, only then will you be able to go beyond love.
One has to go beyond love. But one can only go beyond when one has gone through it. You are struggling below love. It is far better to move into love and struggle there. One grows out of authentic, real experiences of love. One goes beyond and a totally different kind of awareness arises. It is not that it is unloving, but it is no longer a longing for love. It is a state of love; one shares one’s being. It is no longer relationship, it is your state. You are love, not loving.
So these are the three things. Firstly, you are in the dark night of the soul, you are in a very unloving space. The second thing is – be in a loving space. A loving space creates anxiety; it is conflict, it is struggle because a real person enters your life. There is a clash and an overlapping of the boundaries. All kinds of diplomacies and politics enter and strategies to dominate, to possess. There is a great war.
Lovers are intimate enemies. Only out of that experience does one grow to the third state: one becomes absolutely independent. Now there is no need for love. One can live alone and one can live alone as happily as one can live in relationship. Now there is no difference. There is no hankering. A different quality of love arises in your being. You start sharing it.
Musin, you are struggling at the lowest point. Try to get out of it. Don’t wait for a miracle. Miracles don’t happen.

The third question:
Osho,
Why are you so against logic?
Because it is logical to be against logic. Logic proves nothing, that’s why I am against it. It only pretends to prove; it proves nothing. It is an empty game, verbal. But the pretension is such that millions of people are befooled by it and down the ages we have been trained for logic, so it has an appeal. But logic has never proved anything. Proof comes only through experience, never through logic. Logic can help to explain your experience. No experience is ever derived out of logic. Yes, logic can be a servant. When you have attained to a certain experience, logic can help to explain it, logic can help to make it clear. Logic is secondary. So, the first thing – logic proves nothing.

Reporter: “They say the moon is made of green cheese. Is this correct?”
Spaceman: “We didn’t find any cheese on the moon.”
Reporter – laughing: “Perhaps all the moon mice have eaten it.”
Spaceman: “We didn’t find any mice on the moon either.”
Reporter: “What do you expect with all the cheese gone?”

Now this is how logic goes on moving; it is circular.
A famous Sufi story:

Mulla Nasruddin was seen by some people in the marketplace throwing seeds around. From his bag he would take a fistful of seeds and throw them. So a crowd gathered, and they asked, “What are you doing, Mulla?”
He replied, “These seeds are miraculous. If you throw them, no lion, no tiger, no elephant, no snakes or no wild animals will ever come around.”
They laughed and they said, “Mulla, there are no wild animals, no elephants, no tigers, no lions, no snakes here!”
Mulla said, “See! They work! They are a miracle, they have miraculous powers. They are not here because of the seeds.”

Logic is only a good game for small children to play. But a few people remain childish even when they have become old. They may be university professors, but they go on playing the game. It is a good game, an intelligent game like chess, but a game all the same.
Firstly, logic never proves anything. Secondly, logic can prove anything – this way or that way, for or against. Logic is a whore! It has no grounds of its own. You can bribe logic and it will be with you. Your enemy can bribe logic and it will be with the enemy.

A certain French general named Guillard, who lived in the time of King Louis XV and was renowned for his gallantry toward women, said on one occasion that there was no such thing as an ugly woman. His remark was overheard by a lady whose face was disfigured by a squashed nose and who thereupon accosted him with the words, “Confess, General, you are now face-to-face with a really ugly woman.”
“Not at all, madame,” replied the general. “You are like all women, an angel fallen from heaven. You merely had the misfortune to fall on your nose.”

Logic cannot prove anything, that’s why it can prove anything. Logic has no truth in it. Logic is empty of truth. Truth is attained only by existential experience. I am against logic because logic is impotent. I would like you to go beyond logic. That is the whole meaning of the word that Jesus uses: faith. It does not mean belief. It means trust in existence not belief in dogmas. Faith simply means that you are finished with logic. The day you are finished with logic, you are finished with doubt too because logic is a support to doubt. Doubt and logic are in a mutual conspiracy: a doubter becomes a logician, a logician remains a doubter. They go together. Once logic is dropped, all the props for the doubt disappear and doubt falls to the ground. When you are free of doubt, you are in faith. Faith transforms. Trust transfigures. The sooner you can get out of logic and doubt, the better. A man is religious only when he has known the game of logic and is finished with it.

The fourth question:
Osho,
How many religions are there in India?
It is difficult to say. There are as many religions in India as there are Indians. Everybody has his own religion here. Religion is basically individual, it is not organizational. So when you talk about Christianity, it is one thing. When you talk about Hinduism, it is quite another. Christianity is a church, an organized religion. Hinduism is a chaos. It has nothing like the Vatican’s Pope, it has nothing like an authority. It is very chaotic, it has freedom. People are allowed to live their own way, people are allowed to worship in their own way. There is nobody to dominate, it is a democracy.
Christianity is dictatorial, so is Islam. Hinduism is basically democratic. You can go and worship in the temple of Shiva, it is there for you. You can go and worship in the temple of Rama, it is there for you. You can go and worship in the temple of Krishna, it is there for you. The man who worships in the temple of Krishna is a Hindu and the man who worships in the temple of Rama is also a Hindu. Both are as opposed to each other as Christians are opposed to Muslims – or even more. But that does not make any difference, they are both Hindus.
Hinduism has a kind of freedom. It does not decide what your prayer should be. It has no official prayer like Christianity. It has no hierarchy – the bishop and the archbishop, etcetera; it knows nothing of that. It is an individual phenomenon. So it is very difficult to say how many religions there are in India. Each one is free to worship in its own way. In that way, it is difficult because it is almost chaotic. If you want to find a system it will be difficult. Thousands of philosophies are available for people to choose from, millions of alternatives. All kinds of ideas are in the market. You can choose any or you can make your own. Choosing something from here, something from there, you can make your own mixture. Hinduism is not one-dimensional, it is multi-dimensional. In one way it gives freedom, in another way it creates indiscipline. In one way it is democratic and beautiful, in another way it has no order, no system. Everything seems to be confused and unclear and vague.
I have heard…

When Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, she went to Israel. She was talking with Golda Meir – Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel in those days. The women were talking and chit-chatting about their countries.
Indira Gandhi said, “You don’t know my troubles. Six hundred million people! You don’t know Indians. It is a chaos!”
Golda Meir laughed and said, “That’s nothing! You don’t know my people. Although the number is very small – only three million people – it is far more difficult to rule three million Jews.”
Indira looked surprised. She said, “What are you saying? Six hundred million people… You have only three million people and you say it is difficult to rule over three million people?”
Golda Meir said, “Yes, because they are no ordinary people. They are three million prime ministers!”

It may be so in politics, but in religion, in India, you have six hundred million masters – enlightened masters – six hundred million! Everybody knows! Everybody has his own creed, everybody has his own ideas and philosophy. For ten thousand years India has done nothing but philosophize. It has gone into the blood and the bones. It is not so easy, as it is about other countries, to say how many religions there are in India.
I have heard…

A Pakistani went home to visit his family and his old father said to him, “Are they good people in Britain, my son? Do they have religion in Britain?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, father mine,” said the Pakistani. “They have three religions: the Church of England, the Church of Rome, and Bingo.”
“What is this Bingo?” asked the old man.
“Well, father mine, the people go to the Bingo church every evening. The high priest stands before them calling out the holy numbers which the congregation mark off their prayer-cards. Then one of the faithful rushes to his feet and calls out ‘Bingo!’ and all the people say, ‘Jesus Christ!’”

Now it is simple if you are talking about Britain – they have three religions!

The fifth question:
Osho,
Of what value are the cathartic therapies – the reliving of one's traumatic moments or acting out of fears etc.? Isn't insight enough? Or bliss methods, such as Sufi Dance?
Insight is enough, but how to get the insight? It is hidden in a lot of rubbish. The diamond is there, but it is hidden under a lot of debris, dirt. The dirt has to be removed, only then will the diamond be available and the insight become available. The therapies do the spade work. If insight were available directly, it would be very easy. You could become blissful at any moment. But you are layers upon layers of repression.
You have repressed your fear and you have repressed your anger. You have repressed your love and you have repressed your sex. You have repressed so many things. The insight is there, but the layers of repression have to be thrown out. The cathartic therapies help, but they will not produce your insight, they will only clear the way. They will only make the insight available to you. The insight is there. Everybody has brought it with them, that’s why we call it insight.
Have you observed these words: insight, intuition, instinct, intelligence? They all carry the word in. It is there, built-in, but so much has gathered around it. The rosebush is there, but hidden behind the weeds. The weeds have to be uprooted. They have to be uprooted very skillfully because there is every danger that you may uproot the rosebush. There are many weeds and the rosebush is just one. You need to be helped.
The therapy group is a situation in which you can be helped to sort out what is a weed and what is a rosebush. Slowly, slowly, the rosebushes have to be protected and the weeds have to be uprooted. It has to be done very skillfully because the roots of the weeds are entangled with the roots of the rose. If you are not careful you may destroy the rose itself. The insight is there; it has to be uncovered.
You ask: “Of what value are the cathartic therapies…?” Catharsis simply means throwing out that which should be thrown out, throwing out that which should not be kept in. Now, in ordinary life it is difficult. You cannot throw your anger anywhere and everywhere. You will get into so many difficulties. It will be very costly and dangerous too. You need a special situation where you can throw your anger out, where anger is accepted. A group is an artificial situation where everything is accepted.
If you become angry, the group will not be repressive. On the contrary, the group will help you, will provoke you to be angry. It will bring out all your violence and aggression. It will accept it – welcomes it even. That gives you an opportunity and confidence that here you are not rejected, that here there are no expectations. Nobody expects that you should not be angry or this and that. Whatsoever you are, you are given total freedom to be that. A group is an artificial situation. Society cannot allow that.
Once your anger has started bubbling up, you will be surprised how much you have been carrying. How much poison has been in your system. Only when this poison has gone and the smoke has disappeared, will you be able to find methods of insight and bliss like Sufi Dancing. If a man who is angry participates in Sufi Dancing, his dance will have anger in it. You can watch – you can watch people and you can see their dances have different qualities.
Somebody’s dance is a kind of rage: anger is filtering through his dance, through his gestures. Somebody’s dance has grace to it, love is flowing, a kind of elegance. Somebody else’s dance has compassion in it. Somebody else’s dance has ecstasy in it. Somebody else’s dance is just stale and dull. He is just making empty gestures, there is nobody behind them – it is mechanical. Watch. Why these differences? – because they are carrying different layers of repression. When you dance, your anger will dance if it is there. Where can it go? The more you dance, the more it will dance. If you are full of love, when you start dancing your love will start overflowing – it will dance all around you, all over the space. Your dance is going to be your dance, it will contain all that you contain. If you are sexually repressed, your dance will contain that.
Many Indians have written to me because it has become a problem for them to participate in Sufi Dancing. One Indian sannyasin, a very honest man, has written a letter. He was participating in the dance. Three days later, he wrote, “I am feeling very guilty because I became sexually aroused. Whenever I have gone to Sufi Dancing, I have become sexually aroused. I feel very guilty.” He was asking for forgiveness. “Osho, forgive me.” He became so afraid that he stopped dancing.
Now a whole life of repression… He may never have been able to hold the hands of any woman except his wife, and that too only in the night when everybody is fast asleep. He may not have been able to move with such a dancing energy of women or men. It is very natural; there is no need to feel any guilt. It is just a whole life of repression. This man who became sexually aroused in Sufi Dancing – is he going to feel any insight in it? He will feel great guilt and he will not feel spiritual at all. He will feel sexual and he will be in a turmoil. He will be very confused. His whole being will be like a volcano. He may start trembling and he may become afraid that he may do something. That’s what he has written to me: “I cannot participate in Sufi Dancing any more because I may do something. I may not be able to control myself. I become so aroused.”
This is bound to happen. If you are sexually repressed, then sex will bubble up when you dance. So you cannot go directly, you have to go through catharsis. Only then can blissful methods be of help.
Cathartic methods are modern inventions. In Buddha’s time they were not as necessary as they are now because people were not so repressed. People were natural, people lived primitive lives – uncivilized, spontaneous lives. So vipassana – vipassana means insight – was given by Buddha directly to the people. But now you cannot go to vipassana directly. The teachers who go on teaching vipassana directly don’t belong to this century; they are two thousand years behind. Yes, sometimes they may help one or two people out of one hundred, but that can’t do very much. I am introducing cathartic methods so that first, what civilization has done to you can be undone, so you can become primitive again. From that primitiveness, from that primal innocence, insight can become easily available. Then bliss methods work – never before that.

The sixth question:
Osho,
Why are the Jews hated everywhere in the world?
The Jews are hated everywhere because they are clever, intelligent. Nobody likes clever, intelligent people. One feels inferior, hence, the hatred.
Adolf Hitler must have felt very inferior to the Jews. He was. He was almost idiotic, imbecilic. But he must have felt this inferiority tremendously. Jews have a certain intelligence and because of that intelligence they have become rich fast. Put them in any situation and sooner or later they will be on top. How can you avoid hating them? They simply go directly to the top; they don’t wait. Particularly about money, they are the cleverest people in the world. For a certain reason… After Jesus’ crucifixion, they lost all power, all political power. Christianity became politically powerful. There was no way for the Jews to be politically powerful, so their whole mind turned to the second power – money. They became focused on money.
These are the only two worldly powers: politics or money. Because they were not in the majority, they could not be politically powerful, so naturally their whole intelligence was channeled toward money. It was the only way for them to become powerful. With money, many things follow. With money comes more education, with money comes more literature, more music, more drama, more art. With money comes more intelligence. So down the ages they have been hoarding money and money on its own creates more possibilities to be intelligent, to be clever.
When you are more intelligent, you earn more money and it goes so on and so forth. People who have money are hated because ninety-nine percent of people don’t have any money; they are very jealous. Poor people hate the rich and if they could get an opportunity they would kill them. Whenever they would have the opportunity, they would kill – they would find any excuse.
Jews are hated because they have immense power over money and money gives them power over other things – even power over politicians. Money is such a strange power… It goes on creating more power, so they are hated. They have turned the whole world into a market. They reduce everything to a commodity, they reduce everything to a certain market value. That too creates a little hatred because if everything is reduced to money, if everything is reduced to the market and everything becomes a commodity, it creates an ugly world. Then there is no higher value. Then there is nothing more important than money. Everything is reduced to money. That, too, creates hatred.
So poor people hate them and rich people also hate them. Money has a very low value – powerful, immensely powerful – but a lower value and Jews think that nothing more valuable exists. They have learned through experience that if they have money, only then can they survive. So wherever they are they are hated. They are hated because they are clever. Of course, their cleverness turned in a wrong direction, it became money-oriented. The whole Judaic tradition fell slowly, slowly and became very worldly. It lost the spiritual dimension. So the very word Jew has a wrong association. Jews can only be free from this hatred of the world if they start looking for higher values than money.
I have heard…

The local synagogue was holding a raffle. The winner of the third prize stood delightedly as the curtain was raised to show a gleaming Cadillac. The winner of the second prize held his breath as the curtain was raised – to reveal a sponge cake.
“A sponge cake?” he said angrily. “The third prize was a Cadillac. How can the second prize be a stupid sponge cake?”
“But this sponge cake is special,” said the master of ceremonies. “You see, it was baked by the rabbi’s wife with her own lily-white hands.”
“Fuck the rabbi’s wife!” yelled the man.
“Shut up!” said the M.C. “That’s the first prize.”

Now the mind, which reduces everything to a commodity, is bound to be hated. But Jews are intelligent people. There is no doubt about it – one of the most intelligent races on the earth, otherwise they would not have survived. They have survived with no political power and with enemies all around and everywhere. They have been on the cross for two thousand years since Jesus’ death. They have suffered too much. For one man’s crucifixion it is enough punishment – more than enough. They have lived in a Christian world, hated from every side. But because they were hated and they were always in danger and they were always helpless, that too has helped them to have a higher intelligence.
Always remember – if your life is in danger, you have to be intelligent. You cannot afford non-intelligence, otherwise you will be gone. So in a way, the very challenge, the very danger, has helped them and they have been continuously polishing their intelligence. It is not just an accident that more Nobel Prizes go to the Jews than to anyone else. And their number is small; it is out of all proportion. This century’s greatest thinkers are three: Marx, Freud and Einstein – they all belong to the Jews. The greatest revolutionaries have come from them. They are small in number, but the situation has helped them. They had to fight, struggle, survive and they could not fall asleep, they could not rust away. Their intelligence has been going higher and if it released toward God it will bring a great revolution in the world.
I am very happy that fifty percent – more than fifty percent – of my sannyasins are Jews. What I am saying appeals only to very intelligent people. Stupid people won’t be attracted to me – only very intelligent people can understand what I am saying. But they have been hated, that is true. That hatred can be dropped only when the Jews start changing. There are a few things that they can do. One is that they accept Jesus back home. If they can welcome Jesus back home, almost ninety percent of the hatred will disappear. Jesus is theirs – more theirs than the Christians. Jesus was born a Jew, died a Jew. He was the greatest Jew ever born. He was not a Christian.
If the Jews can accept Jesus back home, that will change the whole climate in the world. If the Jews can put their energies – as they have put them into money – if they can put their energies into meditation, they will become the greatest meditators on the earth. They can herald a new era.

The seventh question:
Osho,
I met a man ten years ago on a train in Japan. Then I met the same man in Afghanistan on a bus. And two days ago I met the same man again on a plane coming to Pune. Is it just coincidence, or is there some hidden significance in it?
It is because our lives are so meaningless, that we go on finding any excuse for any kind of significance. Our lives have no significance, so we go on hoping that there must be some significance in anything. Man cannot live without significance. Significance is inner nourishment. Because we don’t create any significance in our lives – because we are not creative – we don’t create God in our being, we remain empty. To be empty hurts, hurts like hell. One goes to an astrologer or a palmist and one shows the hand, maybe there is some significance in the stars, or in the lines of the hand or in the birth chart. And one starts desperately seeking and searching everywhere. Anything that can give you a feeling that yes, you are significant, that something special is happening to you, you pounce upon. That’s why astrology lives, palmistry lives, the I Ching lives. People go on looking into these things. That’s why psychoanalysis has become so significant.
Your life has no meaning, maybe your dreams have meaning? Go to the psychoanalyst, he will show you great meanings in your stupid dreams. You cannot find them, but he will find them. He will manage it; he will show you what your dreams mean. You will feel very, very grateful and you will feel very happy that your dreams have significance. People go on hankering for significance.
One thing to be remembered: this hankering is not bad, but let it become creative. Don’t search for any meaning in accidental things. There is none. It is just accidental that you met somebody on the train and again on the plane, and again on the bus – it is just accidental. This world is a small world and becoming smaller and smaller every day. It is nothing to brag about or to brood about, but it shows something: life is empty, utterly empty. You would like to find some indication from somewhere – anything.
Just the other day a sannyasin has written that she saw Teertha in her dream. “Now what is the significance? There must be some significance,” she thinks. Ninety-nine percent of dreams are just rubbish, just fragments of thoughts that you go on gathering during the whole day. In the dream those fragments go on moving in your mind. In the morning when you remember those fragments, you start looking for significance. You have to find some significance. Now the woman thinks it is a message that she should do the Encounter group because she has seen Teertha. Or is there some other meaning hidden in it? Life has no hidden meaning, life has obvious meaning, unhidden. From the very beginning there is nothing hidden. Just that you are not aware, so you cannot see it. When you are not aware, you still hanker for it, so you go on imagining.
Each and every thing can become precious because you want something to be precious in your life. There is nothing much in it. This world is becoming a small village. Now here you can find people from all over the world. It is no longer the old world; the distances have gone. You can go around the world within twenty-four hours. You can reach any place within a day, within hours. But what I see in it is a great desire for significance. That is good, but you are looking in the wrong direction.
Create some meaning. Dance the dance that you were born to dance. Sing the song that you are carrying in your heart. Be yourself and there will be significance. You will not need to go to any astrologer or palmist or tarot reader, or things like that. There will be no need – you will have significance. But significance never comes passively. It comes only when you are creative. Do something.
I am not saying that significance is only there when you are very famous – when you become a Picasso then there is significance, no. You can paint a small picture for your child and if your child is happy there is significance. You can paint a picture for your husband. If he likes it, that’s enough. Or you can even paint a picture just for your own joy, and if you like it, or you like it while you are painting it – you have become absorbed in it – there is significance. Significance comes when you create beauty, whenever you create truth, whenever you create good: satyam, shivam, sunderam. These three things create significance: beauty, good, truth. Be true and there will be significance.
But you remain untrue and you go to the astrologer to find significance. Become beautiful. Beautify your being, let grace surround you and there will be no need to go to any tarot reader. You will know that you are significant. You will find a blissfulness continuously surrounding you and you will not feel that you are here unnecessarily. You will not think for a single moment that you are accidental. You will know that God’s hand is behind you because he is breathing life in you.
The English words is and am come from a Sanskrit root asmi. Asmi means: breath-life. Your isness, your amness, your being is nothing but God’s breath in you. But we have not recognized it, so we search desperately in every nook and corner for meaning. Stop this search. This happened only as a coincidence. Don’t be worried about it. Meditate over this story. This will show you that the world is really very small.

A flea phoned up a rental agency asking for accommodation and the agent said, “Oh, yes, we have a very nice vacancy available, just come in.” But it turned out to be a Pole’s armpit and after a few days the flea phoned the agency again and said, “I really can’t stand it – the noise, the smell, the crowded conditions – could you give me something nicer? Something really posh?”
So the agent said, “Well, yes, we do have something – just come in – it’s Omar Sharif’s mustache.”
“Lovely,” said the flea. “I’ll take it.” But after a week he phoned the agency again and said, “Sorry, but I really must find some other place. All the oysters and champagne are really getting to be too much, not to mention the incessant pulling, stroking and scratching. It’s really not livable.”
“Very well,” said the agent. “I do have one vacancy now – very exclusive, very cozy and very expensive – it’s Raquel Welch’s pubes.”
“I’ll take it,” said the flea. The agent heard no more until a month later when the phone rang and it was the flea.
“What’s the matter?” asked the agent. “Don’t tell me you don’t like Raquel Welch’s pubes either?”
“Oh, yes, I liked it fine,” said the flea. “But I’m back in Omar Sharif’s mustache!”

Enough for today.

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