&nbsp;Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) was born into Russian nobility, a distant relative of the Czar with vast estates and thousands of serfs, yet he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, novels many still consider unmatched. Despite his wealth, he lived austerely, choosing to stay in the servants' quarters rather than the family palace, walking his thoughts of simplicity and poverty.Tolstoy was denied the Nobel Prize on the grounds that his Christianity was too mystical and unorthodox, a decision Osho later called one of the clearest signs of institutional insanity, insisting no committee member was "worth the dust under his feet." Just a few days ago the records of the Nobel Prize committee were made available ... the public is being allowed to see them every fifty years. Fifty years of records: how many people were considered for the Nobel Prize, why certain people were rejected for the Nobel Prize; why it was given to certain people ... All those records were opened just a few days ago. And I came across the strangest thing -- I could not believe that they could have done such an ugly and nasty thing: Leo Tolstoy was denied the Nobel Prize on the grounds that he was a kind of mystic.I have never thought that it can be a crime, that one of the greatest creative artists ... Incomparable are his novels -- perhaps no one will ever be able to write such a great novel as WAR AND PEACE. And the man was not only a novelist, but a man who lived whatever he was preaching. His preaching may be under dispute, you may not agree with him -- that's another thing.I myself don't agree with him because he was preaching poverty. He was a very rich man, he was a faraway cousin of the Czar. He belonged to the royal family of Russia and he had immense land, thousands of slaves. Everything that was possible in those days was available to him, but he did not use anything, he lived like a poor man. His whole family lived like a royal family, but he used to live in the servants' quarters, not in the palace. At least he was a sincere man: whatever he thought was right, he did it.And the Nobel Prize committee mentions it, that he was a Christian and he has written the most beautiful books on Christianity. I don't think there has ever been another theologian who has written so beautifully about Christianity. But the Nobel Prize committee declared that the Nobel Prize will not be given to him because his ideas about Christianity are not orthodox, they are very much his own.Tolstoy believed in a mystical Christianity. He did not believe in the orthodox, traditional Christianity. He had his own ideas about Christianity, as if to have one's own ideas about religion is a crime. And he was not accepted because his Christianity was a kind of mystic Christianity. This mysticism became the barrier. His name was proposed and rejected.There have been many other names which have been rejected on strange grounds -- and even politicians have been given the Nobel Prize.It is very strange. Leo Tolstoy is as important a person as Jesus Christ himself, but I think Jesus Christ would also have been denied the Nobel Prize because he was not an orthodox Jew. He was proposing his own ideas about religion -- mystical Judaism.Naturally, you cannot give a Nobel Prize to a man who finally was crucified. He cannot be accepted as a respectable, prestigious person. He was hanged on the cross just like any other criminal. On each side of him there was a criminal. He was treated exactly like any other criminal, or even worse. No other criminal was forced to carry his own cross.And it was certainly difficult. I know it by my own experience. Against all their own constitution and all their own laws, they handcuffed me, they chained my legs ... Not only that -- they were not satisfied -- they put another chain on my waist. Even that was not enough: they put both my hands in handcuffs and chained them to the chain on my waist, so I could not even move my hands. To the crowds who were greeting me, I could not even wave my hands. That was the strategy -- that I could not even wave my hands to the crowds who had come to greet me. And they chained my feet so close together that walking was impossible.So I know how difficult it must have been for Jesus to carry a cross in such a situation, a heavy cross. Perhaps because he was only thirty-three, young, healthy, and a son of a carpenter, accustomed to carrying big logs from the forest to his father's workshop, continuously working with wood, that he was able to somehow carry the cross. But three times, on the way, he fell. And whenever he fell with the cross, they hit him hard with their sticks, lashed him and forced him to get up and take the cross on his back. Certainly a Nobel Prize cannot be given to such a man. It will be very insulting to the Nobel Prize committee.We are living in an insane asylum. Mysticism is the highest flowering of human consciousness. And to deny Leo Tolstoy the Nobel Prize on the grounds that he is a mystical person is so absurd, but so indicative of the insanity of humanity and of the people who are powerful, because they are the members of the Nobel Prize committee. The King of Sweden is the chairman. And all the others are highly respectable, prestigious people.I don't think any one of them is even worth the dust under the feet of Leo Tolstoy. But they are denying that man who has created novels which are sheer poetry. And the beauty of his novels is so alive that if you want to choose just ten great novels of all the languages of the world, you will have to include at least two novels of Leo Tolstoy in those ten. &nbsp;&nbsp;