Osho,
The other day in discourse, your being, your beauty, struck me like a huge wave. I was again a child, looking with big eyes. It was like a window opening to something unknown, yet known.
Osho, would you like to speak on this experience? What is this amazement?
This amazement is pure love, a love unfettered by biological conditions. It is trust: a trust that has not been asked for, a trust that does not make you a slave, but gives you absolute freedom. This amazement is the whole secret that happens between the master and the disciple. Perhaps there is no other miracle in the world that can be compared to this. It is invisible, particularly to those who are unacquainted with anything like a master-disciple communion. It is something from being to being.
It will be good to have this comparison. Sex is from body to body; ordinary so-called love is from heart to heart; trust is the highest form of love from being to being. As you go deeper, things go on becoming more and more amazing, more and more unbelievable, but more and more an experience so definitive that you cannot doubt it. It is a transfer, a transmission between the being of the master and the disciple.
Your description about it is very accurate: as if a window has opened. Suddenly where there was just darkness, a cool breeze comes and a window opens and the whole sky with all its stars becomes available to you. Certainly one is stunned. The mind stops, and because the mind stops, one feels as if one has become a child again.
You are also right in saying that it is something unknown, yet seems to be very much known. It is both. You have known it; it was your first experience when you were born and opened your eyes – your senses were immensely sensitive. Each day that has passed has been making them more and more insensitive. What people think of as the growth of a child is simply the death of the child.
The child knew something which even the old people don’t know. But his knowing was so simple that he could not formulate it into words. He could not say anything about it. He saw the roseflower in the garden and he saw the lush green trees, but he had no idea what green was and what a tree was and what a rose was, what a flower. He was seeing everything with better eyes than you have because your eyes are too much covered with dust.
Life is a continuous traveling in which your senses become tired, dust-covered, your mirror no longer reflects but distorts. And sometimes it stops even distorting, it is no longer a mirror. A thick layer of experiences covers it so totally that it becomes impossible for it to reflect anything.
The child’s eyes are pure, clean; so are his ears and other senses. The first moment he opens to the world, he is filled with amazement and wonder. But there is no way for him to convey it. He has lived for nine months in a dark tunnel. No light penetrated there, no roses bloomed there. He was almost a part of his mother’s body. He was not an individual. He was not even breathing by himself. It was the mother’s breath that he was getting his oxygen from. He was being nourished by the mother. He had not even dreamed. He was not yet a separate entity. He was just like the hand of the mother or the leg of the mother, just part and parcel. His life was dependent on the mother’s life, he was sharing it.
The moment of birth is a great trauma because the child naturally feels afraid, worried. He cannot think that it is going to be a birth into a bigger world, into a vast universe, that miracles are waiting for him. He can only conceive birth as a death. Just think about the child coming out of the mother’s womb. He cannot conceive that he is going into authentic, individual existence, that he is moving into a vaster universe. For nine months he has known a certain life and he is being taken away from it. He cannot conceive life as something that is going to happen. He can conceive it only as a death compared to what has been happening for nine months. He is freaking completely. He does not want to come out.
That’s why there is such a struggle and it takes the mother so much time. The child does not want to come out of the womb. He clings with absolute force. His life is being destroyed. He does not know what is happening, who is throwing him out of his home. It is the child who is creating all the pain for the mother because he is resisting coming out. But he has to come out. He cannot live forever in his mother’s womb.
Except for one exceptional story, in the whole of history there is no incidence where somebody has lived longer than ten months, at the most, in the mother’s womb. Just one man lived there for eighty-four years. His name was Lao Tzu. He is a strange man. You cannot predict what a man like Lao Tzu will do. For eighty-four years he lived in his mother’s womb. When he was born he was already so old, his hair white, a long beard… And the strangest thing was: he came out laughing. From the very start he behaved in a way that nobody has ever done, nobody has even tried. This story about Lao Tzu cannot be historical. You have to think about the mother carrying a child for eighty-four years. She would have been dead long before the child was born.
The scientific fact is that every human child is born incomplete. Many other animals are born complete. That’s why they become immediately independent from the mother, from the father, and soon they have moved on their own way. They don’t create a family. A family is the need of the helpless child. A family is not created by man and woman, the family is created by the helplessness of the child. The child is not complete.
In fact a child needs at least four years in the mother’s womb. But the mother cannot manage that long, a four-year-old child in the womb when even nine months is too much. It is just the infinite compassion and love of a woman that there are children in the world. If it were the other way round, that the man was going to become pregnant, you can take it for granted that no child would be born in the world. The man is so impatient. Nine months! Carrying such a load which goes on growing inside you. You cannot eat, you cannot drink, you are throwing up because there is no space inside you: the child is growing and taking all the space. It is only because of the patience of a woman that humanity exists.
But even the woman is not capable of more than nine months. Scientific understanding is that the child, every child, is a kind of abortion, even the natural birth. The child is born incomplete. That’s why for four years at least he will need absolute support – and that is the minimum I am talking about. The actual fact is that a child often needs the support of the family for up to twenty-five years. Until he comes down from the university with a PhD he is dependent. He is still somehow part of the womb.
But the first moment of every child’s birth is a tremendous experience for him. He is expecting to die. He is almost certain that it is going to happen. His life is being destroyed by unknown forces. Why is he being thrown out of his house? He has not known any other kind of life. The only life he knows is in the womb. He thinks he is going to die, but suddenly finds that instead of death, birth has happened. Instead of dying, for the first time he has become alive. The womb was only a preparation. It was not his life. It was just preparing him so that he could move into life.
The womb is just like a nursery where plants are prepared and then they move into gardens the moment they are strong enough to face the sun, the wind, the rain, and all kinds of problems and responsibilities of existence. The moment the experience of death turns into its opposite, the experience of life, the child feels his first amazement, which is never transcended unless he is born again in a spiritual sense.
The mother’s womb was one preparation. The master’s womb is another preparation. The energy field of the master is the womb. And you are being prepared to die to the past, to die to your personality that you have known as yourself and to enter into a new quality of life which you have not even dreamed of. So when you enter this new life, it brings great amazement. You cannot believe it. But you are right: in a way you know it, in a way you don’t know it. You know it because your first birth had something similar in it. This is the same phenomenon on a higher level.
The master is your death and he is also your resurrection. Passing through the master you are going to enter a life which is eternal. No mother can give you an eternal life. She can give you only a mortal life, the life of the body which is going to die sooner or later. In fact it starts dying from the very first moment. It takes the body seventy, eighty or a hundred years to reach the grave, but it goes on moving toward the grave. Do you think that each birthday you are celebrating life? You are wrong. Each birthday you are celebrating death. Each birthday means one year has slipped by. You are more dead than you have been, and you are coming closer to the grave. The queue is becoming shorter and shorter.
The day my father died, I counted how many people are still in the queue in which I am standing. Two of my father’s sisters had died, two of his brothers were alive, so they were the only two persons between me and the window. Just a few days ago one uncle died. Now there is only one uncle between me and the window. So I know how one gets closer and closer to the grave. Each moment you are moving without your knowing toward death.
The mother cannot give you a birth which is eternal. The mother herself knows nothing about the eternal. The master is another womb, another energy field, another preparation for a new life. The old is going to be ending any moment and if you don’t get acquainted with the new, you have wasted your whole life in utter futility.
Once in a while you will be very close to the master but this is going to be a zigzag way. Sometimes you will be very close and then you will have that amazement of a new life dancing very close by. You can hear the music. You go on coming closer but then you go farther away. Your coming to the master is not a straight line without looking back.
There are a few people who have the guts not to look back, who never waver for a single moment, who don’t go astray here and there, who go on coming closer and closer. Every step is toward the master’s being. But not all are so fortunate, not all are so courageous. They come close and they see that it is going to be death – like the child who, in a certain unconscious way, would like to be free of this small space he has been imprisoned in for nine months, but is not conscious of it. He is coming closer to getting out of the womb, but then he steps back. Who knows? To go into the unknown may be worse than the known. It may be the very end of your existence.
But what happens to the child is very unconscious, dark. What happens to the disciple is not that unconscious because by becoming a disciple he is making every effort to become more and more alert. Once in a while he comes very close – when suddenly he sees through the master a glimpse of the new life. That is the amazement. That is the wonder. And that is going to be your guarantee that passing through the master is not going to be just a death. It is going to be the beginning of a new eternal life. Hence the joy. Hence the ecstasy.
It has been a beautiful experience. Now, don’t move even a single inch backward. Much more is ahead. Just go on coming closer, be ready for a merger, for a melting, for disappearing as you are. Only then can you appear as you should be. That life knows no end. You have transcended death, you have reached the eternal source of life. This is the search.
And the master is certainly a window. You have to pass through him. Any master who tries to stop you somewhere, who wants you to cling to him, not to pass through him and go ahead is not authentic, is pseudo. Take a jump from the window into the infinite, the eternal, the ultimate. If he is not a window to jump into sat-chit-anand – into truth, into consciousness, into bliss – then he is not an authentic master. If he wants you to remain loyal to him, if he wants you only to believe in him, if he insists that you remain always a shadow of him, then he is your enemy, he is not your friend.
Most of the so-called masters in the past have been your enemies. That’s why you are still shadows, you are still not authentic beings. They did not allow you to be. They enjoyed the game “I have so many disciples,” which is a very pious game of ego. The ego is so subtle, it can catch hold of you in any place. It does not matter that you are trying to be spiritual, the ego can still manage to live within you.

I have heard about a master who used to live alone deep in the forest. One day a seeker came who was searching for a master. He had been to many masters, but had found nothing but ego trips in the name of spirituality. He had just left another master who was continuously bragging about how many disciples he had. He never forgot to tell any stranger who came to him how many disciples he had. The seeker, watching the whole scene that seemed to be a circus, felt it was not a place for spiritual growth because the man in the center was himself still not out of the games of children, the ego games.
So he went into the forest in search. Perhaps somewhere in the deeper forest he might find a master. And he found an old master, very silent, very serene and he felt that perhaps this was the right man. He told him, “I have been searching. I have been to many masters, but I was not satisfied.”
The old man asked, “What was the trouble? Why were you not satisfied?”
He said, “They were all playing a political game, the politics of numbers. They were all comparing with each other who had more disciples, who had the king as a disciple, who had the prime minister as a disciple, who had the richest man as a disciple. It seemed they were more influenced by the king, by the prime minister, by the richest man than they were influencing those people.”
The old man said, “Then you have found the right man. I don’t have a single disciple. Now you need not go anywhere. I am the only one who has no disciples.”
Such are the ways, so subtle and so cunning… Now he is enjoying the idea that he has no disciples, he is the only one.
But that young seeker said, “Once you accept me as a disciple, you will not be able to claim what you are claiming now. I will not disturb your ego, I am going in search of an authentic master.”
The man said, “But what more do you want? I am the only one who doesn’t have any disciples!”
He said, “That is the problem, they are all trying to prove this: that they are the only one – the only one who has ten thousand disciples, the only one who has twenty thousand disciples. You are the only one who has no disciples. But the idea that ‘I am the only one, unique,’ continues to haunt you. And that is preventing your own spiritual explosion.”

Such masters are bound to have a mutual conspiracy. They will pretend that they are the saviors, and they will enjoy the idea that they are not only saviors but the only savior. And the disciples who follow them will enjoy the ego that they are the disciples of the only real savior. All others are following fools, idiots, all kinds of stupid people. “We are following the right person.” This is a mutual conspiracy. They are both fulfilling each other’s egos.
I don’t want you to be a shadow, I don’t want you to believe in me; I don’t want you in any way to be in a certain bondage or commitment. I want you simply to use me as a window so that you can go beyond. Beyond the window is the real, is the true, is the beautiful. You have used a very beautiful word, window. I am certainly nothing but a window. And if you can pass through me I will be, more than you can conceive, grateful to you because my only concern is that I should not become a bondage to you, I should not become an imprisonment, a slavery to anyone.
My love cannot allow any kind of bondage forced upon you, any belief, any discipline. I want you to be individuals in your own right, unique, growing to your own potential. At the most I can only be a window to the beyond, to the starry night. And it is something that you have known before on a small scale when you were born. Now you have to know it on a bigger scale, on a higher scale, so that you can be reborn.
These were exactly the words Jesus used to the professor who had come to see him in the middle of the night.

When everybody was asleep he came, very silently, and woke up Jesus. In the dark Jesus said, “What do you want?”
He said, “I have heard so much about you and once in a while in the crowd, standing behind the crowd, I have listened to you. I am a professor and I have been afraid to come to you because people think I know already. What is the need for me to go to a carpenter’s son who is uneducated, who knows nothing? So I could not come in the daytime. But your words have such authority. They haunt me day and night. I have come in the night so nobody knows. I have a few questions to ask.”
Jesus said, “Such a coward who doesn’t even have the courage to meet me in front of others will not be able to understand what my answers are going to be. So first be reborn, and then come to me.”

What does he mean by “be reborn”? He is saying, “Drop all this rubbish knowledge, this personality, this respectability, this prestige of being a professor. Be reborn. Be a child again and then come to me, because only innocence can understand another innocence. Only a heart can understand another heart. Only a silent being can understand another silent being.”
Remember this experience, and much more is going to happen. But don’t expect it, just let it happen on its own. Even your expectation can become a block. This happened spontaneously. Remember it: everything that is going to happen is only going to happen spontaneously and not according to your expectations. So just be here, enjoy this relaxed communion of seekers, this silence that is resounding in so many hearts, this music that joins everybody who is here with invisible threads.
Out of this rejoicing and singing and dancing, you will become more and more spontaneous and more and more available to me. You will be coming closer and closer to the window; the unknown will start becoming more and more familiar and cozy. The coldness of the unknown will disappear. And remember that the unknown is not enough. You have to move still further, you have to reach to the unknowable. Only then will you have entered into the mystery of existence. But it is going to happen. Just get ready.
I am not asking much for you to be ready. Every religion has been asking too much. In India there have been three religions who have asked so much from the disciples that one life was not enough. Many, many lives were needed for preparation. After many, many lives you may become enlightened. But I say unto you, you can become enlightened this very moment because my preparation is a totally new dimension. It is about being spontaneous, having a rejoicing heart, being in tune with love. It is more musical, harmonious; it is more relaxed.
My whole approach can be condensed into two words – let go.

Osho,
When Jesus ascended to heaven he went alone. When Mohammed ascended, he rode his horse. Will you drive?
The question you have asked is very complicated. It is not an easy question. First, I am not going the way Jesus and Mohammed went. My way is just the opposite. They have all been going to heaven. To be frank with you I am not interested in heaven! My whole interest is in hell because all the beautiful people are there: musicians, dancers, poets, painters, great creators in all dimensions. All the people who had some color to their being, people who had some juice are in hell, not in heaven.
In heaven you will find only dry bones. I cannot tolerate their company for a single moment. Just think of yourself surrounded by saints. It will be so suffocating. Heaven is no longer the place to go. If you want to meet Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, if you want to meet Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, if you want to meet Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Turgenev, if you want to meet Van Gogh and Picasso, then hell is the place.
So the first thing, I am not going where Jesus went or where Mohammed ascended with his horse. I am not going that way. Whatever I have heard about that place does not appeal to me at all. For example, water is not available because the rivers are of milk and honey. I cannot take a bath in honey or milk. And it is such ancient milk that by this time it must have turned into curd, turned into butter, butter into ghee! It will be stinking. You cannot even get a coca-cola there. No cold drink, just that rotten honey and milk.
Just think! So ancient… And all kinds of dirty saints are swimming in those rivers and doing all kinds of nasty things. India has produced more saints than any other country and you know what Indian saints will be doing, defecating around those rivers. An Indian is an Indian, he cannot change his habits, his civilization, his culture. Indians think that people who go to a toilet are dirty people. Why not go under the open sky, in the open air? Why go into small cabins? In my childhood I used to hear this. Most of the houses – almost ninety percent of the houses – in India don’t have any attached bathroom or toilet. It is thought to be something against Indian culture.
Saints in particular: even if there is an attached bathroom and a modern toilet where they are staying, they cannot go in it because their religious scriptures don’t allow them to defecate in water. The modern toilet has water in it, so they cannot use it. They have to find very dry land, only then can they defecate. With millions of saints in heaven for centuries, it must have become the dirtiest place possible. I am not interested at all.
You will be surprised that it is not only true about India. Just a hundred years ago there was a case in the Supreme Court of America. The Christian church brought a case against a man because he had brought all that was needed to make an attached bathroom with toilet from Europe. The Christians who brought the case to the Supreme Court said that God never created any house with an attached bathroom. That’s true. God himself goes in the open! No scripture of any religion mentions that he has an attached bathroom. It was so obvious so the Christian church said: “This man is going to spoil the whole morality of the country, the whole culture of the country. He should be prevented. You can have outhouses far away from your house but you cannot be allowed to have a toilet, a bathroom, inside the house. Are you mad or something?” And it is not a very old story, just a hundred years ago.
It was because of the intelligence of the Supreme Court of America that they gave the man permission. They said: “There is nothing wrong in it. There is nothing against religion in it. God may not have created it, but we can see that this is perfectly clean.” But I don’t think any modern technology has reached heaven.
All saints are against anything new, but everything that you are enjoying on the earth is new. It was not created in those six days when God created the world. I don’t see any mention of shampoo or hair conditioner or soap. No mention of anything. It is all man-made. Whatever comforts you have, whatever luxuries you have, all are man-made. God left this world almost in chaos. In six days you cannot hope for much more.
My own tailor…

I was going on a journey for two to three months. I was not coming back, and I told him, “I need my clothes ready by Saturday evening.”
He said, “But that’s only six days.”
He was a Christian, so I said, “In six days God created the whole world and you cannot create two or three robes for me?”
But he was a very beautiful old man. That’s how we had become friends and he had become my tailor. He said, “Okay, I will, but have another look at the world! That will be the situation of your clothes too.”
I said, “Then you take your time, because I don’t want my clothes to be in the same situation as the world is, even today.”
He said, “You are a sane man. I will try my best. But I am a poor tailor; even God could not manage.”

In the heaven of all religions there are beautiful women available for the saints as a reward. Strange reward! Their whole life they were told not to look at women: don’t touch them, don’t think of them. All the religions say woman is the cause of all your misery, all your sins. And then in the end, you end up with them as a reward! But those call girls in heaven have remained stuck at the age of sixteen. They have always been sixteen.
Here also women get stuck in many places. Sixteen, then for two, three years they are sixteen, but not more than that. Then at about twenty-six they will again get stuck. They hop. The age of thirty-five is the longest gap, because now it is more dangerous to go ahead. It has been calculated that at the age of thirty-five all intelligent women stop growing, at least for six years. In six years’ time they will be thirty-six. This way it is very difficult to find out the actual age of a woman. But in heaven they are stuck at sixteen for millennia.
Now what kind of girls are these saints being given? They are not only secondhand or thirdhand… How many saints have used the same girls? Most probably they are made of plastic, so that once in a while after dry cleaning the girl is again ready. Pump in the air and the girl is ready. I suspect it’s plastic not without any reason – I never suspect anything without a reason – but because the scriptures say they don’t perspire. Skin is bound to perspire. It is impossible for skin not to perspire, because it is the perspiration that keeps your temperature constant.
If you don’t perspire when it is hot, your temperature will rise too high – and the span as far as temperature is concerned is not much. In years, your life span may be seventy or eighty, but as far as temperature is concerned, from ninety-eight to one hundred and ten – that is only twelve degrees – is the span. If on a hot summer day you don’t perspire, the heat will push your temperature up to one hundred and five, and at one hundred and five you start becoming delirious. At one hundred and six or seven you start hallucinating. By a hundred and ten you are finished.
Perspiration keeps you constantly at ninety-eight degrees because the body goes on releasing water and the heat goes on evaporating the water. It is deceiving the heat. The heat gets involved in evaporating the perspiration and forgets to heat you up. The perspiration does not allow the heat to enter the body, it keeps it out.
You don’t perspire when it is cold. Even if you try you cannot. When you are cold, you shiver. That is another way to keep the inner temperature again at ninety-eight degrees. By shivering you keep yourself hot, otherwise the cold will bring you down. On both ends there is a limit. Above, there is a possible range of at least twelve degrees. Below ninety-eight there is not even that much possibility – just two or three degrees and you shiver. You think that because you are shivering it is not good; you don’t know it is saving your life. Your teeth will start chattering. That is keeping you warm.
But those girls in heaven… If they are dead, either the saints just don’t know exactly what they are doing, or perhaps after lifelong repression even corpses are enough.

I have heard about one drunkard. He was caught by the police in France because he was making love to a dead woman who had drowned and been brought by the waves to the shore. In the night the drunkard had staggered there and found a beautiful woman, so he made love to her.
He was caught, and in the morning was asked in the court, “Why were you making love to that dead woman?”
He replied “I had no idea that she was dead. I thought she was English! You cannot punish me because of a misunderstanding.”

What are those saints doing there? I have never heard of any intelligent man going to heaven. Now, Mohammed going on his horse… You think this looks intelligent? The poor horse will unnecessarily suffer with the saints. What does he know about saintliness? He will miss his girlfriend, and Mohammed will have no idea that the poor horse… In heaven there is no provision for horses.
I am not going that way, that much is certain – and neither are you. From my window you will jump directly to hell! I have already fixed my window in the right direction. I want you to be in the best company. Every genius is there. As far as saints are concerned, most of them are retarded. At least in thirty-five years continuously roaming around this country, which produces nothing but poverty and saints, I have not come across a single saint who can be called intelligent.
I met one saint who even Mahatma Gandhi declared a great saint of modern India. Once he was a professor. His name was Professor Bhansali. Then he became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and entered his ashram. It was not much of an ashram, just a miniature heaven. You could get some idea from Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram of what is going to happen in heaven. Bhansali became a great saint because for six months continuously he was eating only cow dung and drinking only cow urine. And he became a great saint! Even Gandhi declared: “I have seen saints, but Bhansali is superb.”
Now do you call this intelligence? When I saw Bhansali I told him, “You are an absolute idiot!” He was very angry.
He said, “Mahatma Gandhi used to call me a saint!”
I said, “He was in the same category as you, but you surpassed him.”
If you want beautiful company, people of intelligence, genius, creativity, you will find them all in hell – all great scientists, all great technologists and they have already transformed hell completely. No new scripture is written, so nobody knows how things have changed. Hell is no longer the same. It has become the most beautiful place in existence because all the great people are there.
You are asking me if I am going to drive. From earth to hell the road is exactly as it was from Antelope to Rajneeshpuram. It is an American county road. I don’t want to drive on it. Avesh and Anandadas are going to take my limousine and I am going to rest on the way. Avesh is needed because that road is long and no car has ever traveled on that road, so it’s good to have a mechanic. And a perfect driver, Anandadas, is needed. Nobody knows how long the road is because there are neither milestones nor traffic. So they can take turns driving. And I always travel asleep. In trains and airplanes and cars, I always travel sleeping, because why bother unnecessarily? This is the right time to have a good sleep.
So I will be sleeping and it will be the first time anybody has gone to hell sleeping beautifully, restfully. People go toward hell in such fear, tension, paranoia. I am going there; many of my sannyasins are already there. Many I will send even before I go, just to prepare everybody that I am coming. We are going to create a real commune there. I think with God it will be very difficult. With the Devil I can manage. I can initiate him very easily into sannyas!
Nivedana, if you are thinking of going to heaven, drop that idea. You are coming with me. I never go alone: one car ahead, one car behind. In one of the cars, Nivedana will have a seat. He asked the question because, listening to me talking about Jesus and Mohammed and others, he must have thought that I am going to take the same route. No, Jesus and Mohammed are both repenting, but there is no exit from heaven. Once you enter, you enter for eternity. You cannot get out. That is one more difficulty. You cannot go as a tourist, just a three-week tour to see whether this is the place where you would like to stay for eternity.
I think he got into a misunderstanding because I have been using these names with deep love and respect, and with deep compassion because these poor fellows did not realize that where they were going was the wrong place. But once we are all in hell, we will try to create some back door in heaven from where we can pick up the right people who are in the wrong place. There are not many. Only very few people who are worth taking out have got into the wrong place.

Nancy and Ronald Reagan go out to a restaurant for dinner. The waiter approaches them and asks Nancy what she would like to eat.
“I would like to have a steak,” says Nancy.
“And would you like to have some wine with your meal?” asks the waiter.
“Yes,” she replies. “A bottle of your finest.”
The waiter then asks, “How about the vegetable?”
“Ah,” says Nancy, “he will have the same as me.”

Identical twin brothers Hamish and Gordon lived in the same town. Hamish was married but Gordon was single and used to have an old rowboat. It happens that Hamish’s wife dies on the same day as Gordon’s boat sinks.
The minister’s wife meets Gordon in the street and, mistaking him for Hamish, says, “I am very sorry to hear about your great loss.”
“Ah,” says Gordon, “I’m not sorry a bit. She was a rotten old thing from the start. Her bottom was all chewed up. The first time I got into her she made water faster than anything I have ever seen. She had a big crack and a big hole at the front which just got bigger every time I used her. Then the other day, four guys came around looking for a good time and they asked if they could rent her. Well, the crazy fools all tried to get into her at the same time, and she cracked right up the middle.”
The minister’s wife collapsed.

Just misunderstanding, Nivedana. A few people have entered heaven without understanding the whole situation, and now they are repenting, but nobody has ever done anything to save them from heaven. These people used to think that they were going to save you. Now they are caught themselves in this situation, and nobody comes to their help.
I have plans. First let us settle down in hell, then we will try to take out a few really juicy people who are suffering, surrounded by saints. Saints are absolutely dead people who learned in their whole life only one thing: how not to live, how to be almost dead in this so alive existence. Their whole life’s training will follow them in heaven too. They will continue with their long, sad faces, they will go on torturing themselves.
I can see Jesus feeling more pain and agony than he would ever have felt on the cross. Heaven is not the right place. Only wrong people, people who deny life, people who are against love, people who are against every celebration end up there.
People who love life, rejoice in life, love to dance and sing, for them hell is the right place. And you will find there all kinds of giants, all kinds of revolutionaries, all kinds of rebellious people. All those who did not agree with the world the way God has made it, who wanted to improve it, they all have gathered there in hell; these are not the people to sit silently. They have improved hell. They have changed the whole face. Beautiful restaurants, discotheques, and no discrimination between nations or religions or races or colors – sheer joy! And all those stories about hell fire are no longer true. They have used that fire for running railway trains, factories. Whatever you have heard about hell is no longer true at all. Everything has changed.
So you keep your suitcases ready. Only in hell are suitcases allowed, not in heaven. In heaven any kind of stupidity is allowed: Mohammed’s going, sitting on his horse is allowed. But if you take a suitcase with you and toothpaste, you won’t be allowed in.
In India, Jaina saints never use any mouthwash; they never clean their teeth; they never take a shower. That is part of their discipline. They stink so badly that when they used to come to see me, I had to tell them, although it looked very unmannerly, to sit as far away as possible. I am allergic to smells and this saintly smell was so bad, so foul, because they had not taken a bath for twenty or thirty years, they had never washed their mouths, they had never cleaned their teeth. You will have to meet some Jaina saint: it is an experience. Then you will never think of heaven because you will meet these people there.
These are smaller saints, but centuries ago even greater ones arrived. They ate standing on their heads and because they were allowed to eat only once a day, they would eat too much, so their bodies were thin. Only their bellies were big. They looked so ugly that I have thought many times that there should be an international competition for ugliness, just as there is a beauty competition. Then Jaina saints would come first, without any doubt.
They live naked. So there is no need for them to remove clothes, et cetera. They have removed them already. And just seeing them, one feels such pity that this calamity has happened to these people. Their faces show no life. All that is alive is their belly. Just looking at their belly rising up and down, you can see that they are still here. Otherwise nothing shows any sign of life. Everything is dead.
Nobody has given you the right description of heaven and hell. I am giving it to you. From now onward never think of heaven, always think of hell. And when we reach there we can change the signboard. It is so easy for us. We will have the craftsmen to do all kinds of things. Change the board to: “The Real Heaven.” If the word hell hurts you, it is only a question of changing the board. And once the Devil becomes Swami Anand Devil… I will tell Dhyan Yogi to keep his name and his mala ready.
The poor Devil has suffered badly at the hands of God. He has never done anything wrong. There is no description anywhere that he has done anything wrong. And still he has been appointed to take care of hell. But once we are there we will relieve him of his duty. We will take care. He has done enough; he needs retirement.
Nivedana, your question is really significant because it completes my theology.

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