Osho,
Your inner beauty I can only feel as far as I have discovered myself. But for ten years, whenever I see you entering the auditorium, there is this surprise about your unbelievable outer beauty too.
Osho, is the outer appearance always just a reflection of the inner?
The outer beauty comes from a different source than the inner. The outer beauty comes from your father and mother: their bodies create your body. But the inner beauty comes from your own growth of consciousness that you are carrying from many lives. In your individuality both are joined: the physical heritage from your father and mother and the spiritual heritage of your own past lives, its consciousness, its bliss, its joy. So it is not absolutely necessary that the outer will be a reflection of the inner, nor will vice versa be true, that the inner will correspond with the outer.
But sometimes it happens that you have so much inner beauty, so much inner light that they start radiating from your outer body. Your outer body may not be beautiful, but the light that comes from your sources, your innermost sources of eternal life, will make even a body which is not beautiful in the ordinary sense appear beautiful, radiant. But vice versa it is never true.
Your outer beauty is only skin-deep. It cannot affect your inner beauty. On the contrary, the outer beauty becomes a hindrance in search of the inner: you become too identified with the outer. Who is going to look for the inner sources? Most often it happens that the people who are outwardly very beautiful, are inwardly very ugly. Their outer beauty becomes a cover-up to hide themselves behind, and it is experienced by millions of people every day. You fall in love with a woman or a man because you can see only the outer. Just within a few days you start discovering his inner state; it doesn’t correspond to his outer beauty. On the contrary, it is very ugly.
For example, Alexander the Great had a very beautiful body but he killed millions of people, just to fulfill his ego that he was the world conqueror. He met one man, Diogenes, when he was on his way to India, who lived naked, the only man in Greece who did, unique in a way. His beauty was tremendous, not just the outer, but he had so much inner radiance, so dazzling, that even Alexander had to stop his armies when he was close by in a forest near a river. He stopped the armies and went to see Diogenes alone; alone, because he did not want anybody to know that there exists a man who is far more beautiful than Alexander himself.
It was early morning and Diogenes was taking a sunbath, naked on the riverbank. Alexander could not believe that a beggar… He had nothing, no possessions – even Buddha used to have a begging bowl, but that too Diogenes had thrown away. He was absolutely without any possessions, exactly as he was born, naked.
Alexander could not believe his eyes. He had never seen such a beautiful personality and he could see that this beauty was not just on the outer. Something infiltrated from the inner; a subtle radiation, a subtle aura surrounded him. All around him there was a fragrance, a silence.
If the inner becomes beautiful – which is in your hands – the outer will have to mold itself according to the inner. The outer is not essential, it will have to reflect the inner in some way. But the converse is not true at all. You can have plastic surgery, you can have a beautiful face, beautiful eyes, a beautiful nose; you can change your skin; you can change your shape. That is not going to change your being. Inside you will still remain greedy, full of lust, violence, anger, rage, jealousy, with a tremendous will to power. The plastic surgeon can do nothing about all these things. For that you will need a different kind of surgery.
It is happening here: you are on the table. As you become more and more meditative, peaceful, a deep at-onement with existence happens. You fall into the rhythm of the universe. The universe also has its own heartbeat. Your heartbeat, once it starts in rhythm with the universal heartbeat, will have transformed your being from that ugly stage of animality, into authentic humanity. And even the human is not the end. You can go on searching deeper and there is a place where you transcend humanity and something of the divine enters in you. Once the divine is there, it is almost like a light in a dark house. The windows will start showing the light; even the cracks in the wall or the roof or the doors will start showing the inner light.
The inner is tremendously powerful, the outer is very weak. The inner is eternal, the outer is very temporary. How many years do you remain young? And as youth fades away you start feeling that you are becoming ugly, unless your inner being is also growing with your age. Then even in your old age you will have a beauty that the youth may feel jealous of. Remember: from the inner the change to the outer happens, but I am not making it inevitable. Most often it happens, but sometimes the outer is in such a rotten state that even the inner radiation cannot change it.
There have been cases on record: one very great mystic of India whose name was Ashtavakra – I have spoken on him for almost half a year continuously. What he has written is tremendously important. Each sentence has so many dimensions to be explored, but the man himself was in a very difficult situation.
Ashtavakra – the name was given to him because he was almost like a camel. In eight places he was distorted in the body – one leg was longer, one arm was shorter, his back was bent… In eight places he was distorted. That’s how he was born, with a crippled, distorted body. But even in a crippled and distorted body the soul is as beautiful as in the most beautiful body. He became enlightened, but his body was too rigid to change with his inner change. His eyes started showing something of the beauty, but the whole body was in such a mess.
The story is…

The emperor of India in those days was Janak and he was very much interested in philosophical discussions. Each year he used to call a big conference of all the scholars, philosophers, theologians or whoever wanted to participate. It was a championship competition.
One very famous philosopher, Yagnavalkya, came a little late. The conference had started and he saw one thousand beautiful cows standing outside. Their horns were covered with gold and diamonds. This was going to be the prize for the champion. It was a hot day and the cows were perspiring.
He told his disciples, “Take these cows. As far as winning the competition is concerned, I am certain. Why should the cows suffer here? Take them to our place.” They had their own place in the forest.
Even Janak could not prevent him, because he knew that Yagnavalkya had been the champion continuously for five years, and he would be the champion this time because there was nobody else who could defeat him. It is not right to take the reward before you have won, but his victory was so certain to everybody that nobody objected. So his disciples took away all the cows.
While Yagnavalkya was discussing, a very unknown scholar was also present at the conference. Ashtavakra was this unknown philosopher’s son. His mother was waiting for her husband to come home. It was getting late and the meal was getting cold. So she sent Ashtavakra to bring his father home, knowing he could not win the competition. Why should he unnecessarily waste his time? He was a poor scholar and there were great scholars there. Ashtavakra went. There were at least one thousand people at the conference, the highly cultured and sophisticated scholars of the country.
As Ashtavakra entered, looking at his distorted body they all started laughing. But Ashtavakra was a man of tremendous integrity. As they started laughing, he laughed even louder. Because of his loud laugh they stopped. They could not believe that he was laughing.
Janak asked him, “I can understand why they are laughing; it’s because of your body, but I cannot understand why you are laughing. And you stopped all their laughing with your laughter.” A single man stopped one thousand people’s laughter.
Ashtavakra said to Janak, “I thought this conference was for scholars and philosophers, but these are all shoemakers. They can understand only the skin. They cannot see the inner, they can only see the outer.”
There was a great silence. What he was saying had a great truth in it. Janak dissolved the conference and said, “Now I would like to inquire of Ashtavakra only. He has defeated you all just by his laughter and his statement ‘You can’t see the inner, you can only see the outer; you are all shoemakers.’ Shoemakers work with the skin of different animals. I dissolve the conference and, Yagnavalkya, return those one thousand cows because you also laughed. And when Ashtavakra laughed, you also stopped.”
It was a very strange situation; it had never happened before. And then began the long inquiry of Janak, the emperor. He asked questions and Ashtavakra answered them. Each answer in itself carried so much meaning and significance. Because his body was in such a bad shape he could not get identified with it. Sometimes blessings come in such disguise. He could not go out, because wherever he went people would laugh, “Look at that man! Have you seen anything uglier than this?”
So most of the time he was in the house, meditating, figuring out, “Who am I? Certainly I am not this body, because I can be aware of this body, I can observe this body from within. Certainly that awareness has to be different from the body.”
Because of his crippled body he experienced enlightenment. The only barrier is identification with the body. But he could not identify, the body was so ugly. He never looked in a mirror; it would have been such a shock.
Yagnavalkya had to return those one thousand cows to Ashtavakra’s house. He was young and he defeated one thousand old philosophers, well-versed in the ancient scriptures.

It is one of the strangest things in this country that on every book written by any prominent mystic there have been hundreds of commentaries, but nobody before me has commented on Ashtavakra. And he must be at least five thousand years old. For five thousand years nobody has bothered to look into his statements, which are so significant. But his inner enlightenment, his inner understanding, could not change his outer appearance. And yet for those who are going deeper into themselves, the outer does not matter. Even in Ashtavakra they would have seen tremendous beauty; it would not have been of the outer circumference, but of the center.
Most often the inner change changes the outer, if the outer is not too rigid. But the outer never changes the inner. You need to have eyes going deep into people’s beings, which is possible only if you are going inward yourself. The deeper you go into yourself the deeper you can look into other people’s beings. And then a totally new world opens its doors.

Flanagan is on his deathbed and Father Murphy has come to give him the last rites. “Open your eyes,” says the priest. “We have got to save your immortal soul.” Flanagan opens one eye, closes it and tries to doze off. He is having such a nice snooze.
“Come on now,” says Father Murphy. “If you don’t want to confess, at least answer me this: Do you renounce the Devil and all his works?”
“Well, I don’t know,” says Flanagan, opening one eye again. “At a time like this, it doesn’t seem very smart to upset anyone.”

The inner comes out, you cannot hide it much. Now he is being very calculating. At the time of death, unnecessarily annoying anybody… And who knows where you are going? It is better to keep silent.

A wealthy widower and his beautiful daughter are on a sea cruise. By chance the girl falls overboard, and Rubin Fingelbaum, aged seventy, splashes in afterward and rescues her. After the two are brought on board the ship, the widower throws his arms around Rubin.
“You saved my daughter’s life,” he cries. “I’m a rich man. I will give you anything! Ask for whatever you want.”
“Just answer me one question,” replies Rubin. “Who pushed me?”

What is inside is bound to come outside. How can you hide it?

An old black preacher had used the letters BS, MS and PhD after his name for many years without ever having had anyone from his congregation ask what they meant. Finally, a nosy old woman questions him about it.
“Well, sister,” he answers. “You know what BS stands for, don’t you?”
“I sure do,” says the lady indignantly. “Bull shit!”
“Right,” says the preacher. “And MS just means more of the same, and PhD means piled high and deep.”

That’s the inner side of most people: bull shit, BS; MS, more of the same; PhD, piled high and deep. No plastic surgeon can change it. But you are capable of changing it yourself. It is within your hands. Nobody can do anything about your inner being except you. You are the master of your inner world. As the inner world becomes silent, naturally your eyes become deeper, with an oceanic depth. As your inner being becomes cloudless, your face also becomes cloudless, just an open sky. As your inner being comes to discover the source of your life, the flame of your life, something of that flame starts radiating from every pore of your body.
This is the rule. Ashtavakra is an exception. Exceptions don’t make the rule, they only prove the rule. But it has never happened vice versa before, and I don’t think it can ever happen.
We are all trying to be beautiful on the outside: all kinds of make-up, all kinds of things are going on to make your outer beautiful.
I have heard…

A man was catching flies. Finally after two or three hours’ effort he caught four flies. He told his wife, “I have caught four flies: two are male, two are female.”
The wife said, “My God, how did you figure out who is male and who is female?”
He said, “Easy! Two were sitting for almost two hours on the mirror and two were reading the newspaper for two hours!”

We are so identified with the periphery of our being that we have forgotten that the periphery does not exist in itself. There must be a center inside. And the search for the center is the only religious search – not for God, not for heaven, not for any rewards for your virtues, not to avoid hell and punishment.
There is only one authentic religious search and that is to know your innermost being. It is the being of the whole universe. By entering your innermost temple you have entered the real temple. All other temples are false, man-manufactured; all other gods in those temples are false, they are man-manufactured.
Only one thing is not man-manufactured and that is your innermost dignity, your innermost grace. That grace starts flooding your outer being too. And that grace transforms not only the inner, but gives a new look to your outer being: an innocence, a serenity, a depth, a peace, a love, and these are all flowers blossoming around you. Then even your periphery becomes so beautiful, so musical, such a dance of rejoicing.
But you should start from the inner.

Osho,
What is civilization?
Civilization has not happened yet. It is a false idea that we are civilized people – civilized people and continuously preparing for war?
Even the animals don’t eat, don’t kill, their own species. It is only man who kills his own species – no lion will kill another lion, no dog will kill another dog. No lion will eat another lion. Man is the only one who can be a cannibal. There are still small groups around the world in isolated places who are cannibals. They are remnants of the past, but they are still there.
In Africa there is a small cannibal colony in the thick forest. There used to be three thousand at the beginning of this century, now there are only three hundred because when they cannot find anybody else, they have to eat somebody from their own group. They are getting reduced in numbers – they eat their own children, they eat their own parents. Once in a while they get a Christian missionary, but that is very rare.

Once they caught a very fat Christian missionary and they were immensely happy. There was dancing and celebration, a big pot on the fire was boiling and the Christian missionary asked, “What is this celebration for? I have come here to give you a taste of Christianity.”
They said, “You wait, soon we will have the first taste of Christianity.”
He asked, “How are you going to have the first taste of Christianity if I don’t give it to you?”
They said, “Don’t be worried, you will have to give it.”
The missionary said, “I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
They said, “Look at that fire and the big pot. We will put you in the pot. When the water is hot enough, we will make a soup of you and that will be our first taste of Christianity!”

Once perhaps the whole of humanity was cannibal. In emergency situations one falls back. For example, when there was a famine in Bengal, people were found eating their own children. You cannot conceive it, but rather than die it seems to be logical and rational to eat your own children. Those who were not able to do such a thing sold their children, knowing perfectly well that the people who were purchasing their children would eat them. And with the money they purchased other people’s children. This way they protected their conscience a little bit, but not much, because it was absolutely clear what was going to happen. In emergency situations man shows his real face; otherwise our civilization is only a mask.
In a civilized humanity a few things are absolutely necessary. One: there should be no possibility of war because it is life-destructive. And a civilized humanity will have the sensitivity not to destroy life in any form.

George Bernard Shaw had around his house a beautiful garden where he had collected exotic roses from different countries, different colors, different fragrances. A friend had come to see him and he saw the roses. He could not believe that there were so many colors and so many different fragrances. When he went inside he said to Bernard Shaw, “You have such beautiful flowers, but you don’t put them in a pot inside your sitting room.”
Bernard Shaw said, “I am a civilized man. I love children, but that does not mean I should cut off their heads and decorate my sitting room with them. I love roses, but that does not mean that I have to cut the living flower from its life source and put it here in my sitting room. That would be uncivilized behavior.”

Even to cut a flower is uncivilized behavior, what to say about people like Genghis Khan, who killed forty million people; Tamerlane, who killed thirty million people; Nadir Shah, he again killed forty million people, and statistics are not available about many others. There is no data available about Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte or Ivan the Terrible, but they must have killed more people than Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah. Data is available on Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and they were not very far away from our present time, just forty years ago. They killed millions of people for no reason at all. This destructiveness is a death-oriented ideology and it is so deeply rooted in our minds that it keeps us below the animals.
Man is not yet civilized. His civilization will begin by dropping war, by dropping nations. What is the need of nations if you are not going to fight? Nations are needed for wars. Why create these stupid lines on the map of the world? The world is one. There are no natural lines dividing nations. Then why do you go on with this? There is a deep desire to dominate and there are so many people in the world to dominate: they need many nations. Otherwise just a single government, a functional government for the whole world will be enough.
What is the need of so many laws if man is civilized? What is the need of so many courts, jails, so many legal advisers, if man is civilized? A civilized man will not commit murders, a civilized man will not rape women, but we keep this whole paraphernalia of courts, laws, constitutions, legal experts. For whom?
Man is still a criminal. These jails, these judges and these laws prevent nothing. Jails go on growing, judges go on increasing – more and more of them; more courts, more legal experts, thousands of colleges around the world producing legal experts every year. But even they cannot manage, for the criminals increase at a faster rate, and they don’t have a college, they are not educated. Something is basically wrong, something is missing. What is missing?
I call it meditation. Only meditation can make humanity civilized, because meditation will release your creativity and take away your destructiveness. Meditation will bring your compassion and will take away your cruelty. Meditation will make you responsible to your own being and then you cannot be a criminal. To be a criminal needs great unconsciousness. Meditation destroys your unconsciousness, opens the doors of light and suddenly what you were doing in the darkness starts disappearing.
A civilization can be based only on meditation. The only people who have been civilized were people who were in touch with their own being: a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Lao Tzu; these people are civilized. Only individuals once in a while have been found civilized, but the collective mass is still far below the standard of civilization.
It has to happen! Those who are with me, they have to create the foundation for a civilization, for a civilized humanity, by themselves becoming civilized.

It was the night before the wedding, and young Herschel Goldberg is having a drink with Moishe Finkelstein, his future father-in-law.
Soon the conversation turns to Ruthie, the bride-to-be.
“Well,” says Moishe, a little the worse for drink, “are you going to be a man and do it tonight, or are you going to be a mouse and wait until tomorrow night?”
Before he can stop himself, Herschel blurts out, “I guess I am a rat, sir – I did it last week.”

These are your civilized people.

On honeymoon, the young French bride is becoming exhausted by her ardent eighty-year-old husband. During a short lull, while he is shaving, she sneaks out and staggers into the hotel coffee shop downstairs.
“I don’t get it,” says her friend, the waitress. “Here you are, a teenage bride with an ancient husband, and you look a wreck. What happened?”
“The old goat double-crossed me,” sobs the bride. “He told me he had been saving up for sixty years, and I thought he was talking about money!”

Just look around, look at people’s behavior and you will be surprised. This idea that we have become civilized is very dangerous. It is preventing us from being civilized, because once you accept that you are civilized there is no need to work for civilization. Once you accept you are healthy, there is no need to remove any sickness that you may be suffering from. The first thing to be recognized is that you are sick. Then only can something be done for your health. But if you deny sickness, which has been done for centuries by your so-called politicians…
They deny that we are uncivilized people, they say we are civilized people. And this camouflage prevents us from being civilized. We have completely accepted the idea and forgotten that we have to see whether it is true or not. It is certainly not true. Unless each man comes to the consciousness of a Gautam Buddha, there is no question of civilization.
After I left America, the US Attorney for Oregon gave a press conference in which he was asked, “Why have you let Osho go and not jailed him?” And the US Attorney said, “There are three reasons: one, our priority was to destroy his commune and we could not destroy it if we had not deported him.”
But why should they be interested in destroying the commune? The commune was not hurting anybody. It was the most civilized group of people in the whole world. Five thousand people living for five years together in a desert, with no rape, no madness, no stealing, no murder, no suicide. People were so happy and so joyous. Why was the US Attorney interested in destroying the commune? The fact is: the commune became a pain in their neck. They could see what is possible. No court, no laws, no army, no police and yet five thousand people are living peacefully, lovingly, understandingly. This was hurting the politicians of America, because soon people would start comparing: “Why is it not happening all over America?” That was their number one priority – to destroy the commune.
“Second,” he said, “we did not want Osho to become a martyr.” It implies that they had the intention to murder me, but they were afraid that murdering me would mean creating a new Christianity.
If the Jews had not crucified Jesus there would not have been any Christianity at all. That’s why I never like to call it Christianity. I call it Crossianity. It has nothing to do with Jesus, it has everything to do with the cross. And you can see that cross hanging around the necks of all the missionaries and the bishops and the cardinals and the priests and the pope. The cross is the center. Anyway Christ was a Jew! And he always remained a Jew. He never even heard the word Christian. He died a Jew. But the cross created a great sympathy toward him. That was the fear: if they assassinate me, the danger is that sannyas will become a far more solid movement around the world.
But the desire was there, otherwise he would not have mentioned it. Whatever you say shows not what you are saying but what is hidden behind it. Mentioning “We did not want Osho to become a martyr,” shows the desire that if it had been possible without making me a martyr, they would certainly have preferred to assassinate me. But he said, “We will do everything to silence him.” And they did everything to silence me.
They influenced twenty-four countries not to allow me into their territories. The Indian government is under their pressure, making every effort… They cannot do anything to me, but they can do one thing: they can ensure that no news media reaches me, that no seekers from outside India reach me. They are making all kinds of efforts to prevent people coming to me. Naturally I will be silenced. It will be equivalent to killing me without a cross.
The third thing is the most interesting thing he said. He said, “Moreover, Osho has not committed any crime; we don’t have any proof, we don’t have any evidence.” This recognition by the US Attorney for Oregon – but still I was fined four hundred thousand dollars! They don’t have any proof and they don’t have any evidence, they don’t think I have committed any crime. For what have I been fined? And they know perfectly well, I don’t have a single dollar. I have not touched money for almost thirty-five years! Perhaps, because I don’t have any possessions, they were hoping that I wasn’t going to be able to pay almost half a million dollars. So naturally, if I could not pay them, they would have an excuse to put me in jail for at least twenty years, thirty years.
And you call this world a civilized world? For what reason did they deport me? They did not allow me even to stay a single night! I was ordered from the court directly to the airport; my jet was ready, its engine was kept running. “Move out of America immediately.”
What was the problem? Why could I not stay at least for the night? The reason was they were afraid I might appeal to the higher court, I might go up to the Supreme Court. It was better to throw me out of America so I could not do that.
And this is a civilized world! America is very proud of its civilization. Absolutely innocent people are being tortured. Thirty million people in America are beggars. They are just on the street, with no food, no shelter, no clothes; they don’t know from where they are going to get their food tomorrow. And exactly the same number – a strange coincidence – thirty million Americans are suffering from too much weight. They are looked after in the hospitals because they cannot be left alone in their houses. Devageet was right: in the middle of the night they empty the fridge.
Thirty million people are dying of overfeeding and thirty million people are dying without food. Is this civilization? Can’t a simple understanding be there: “Don’t eat too much and what remains can save thirty million people?” Not eating too much is going to save the other thirty million who are dying of starvation. If they go on eating, sixty million people are dying unnecessarily.
You call this an intelligent world, a civilized world, a cultured world? No, I refuse to! A hundred times No! This world is not yet civilized. It needs civilization, certainly. But up to now no effort has been made to civilize it.
And strange things go on happening. I have been continuously receiving letters from sannyasins from all over the world that they want to come, but the moment they mention meditation – that they are going to India for meditation – the Indian embassies refuse them. They say “India is not for meditation.” And for almost ten thousand years India has been the center of meditation, and pilgrims from all over the world have always moved toward India in search of meditation.
Now who are these idiots who are preventing people from coming to India because they want to learn meditation? They are allowing people who want to see the ruins of old forts, castles, caves. That’s perfectly okay, you are a tourist. But if you are going to learn meditation, you are not to be allowed.
The fear is: if you are going to learn meditation, you will end up in Pune. Around the world this is the only effort being made on a large scale to make people civilized. But no politician wants people to be civilized. No country wants people to be civilized. They want a pretense, a hypocrisy, but not a deeper transformation.
We have to create that revolt around the world. It is not against anybody, it is against your false ideas, your false personality, your masks. You have to discover your original face, you have to discover your authenticity and you will create a small energy field. Whoever comes close to you will feel the flavor of civilization, of culture, of humanness. And if you go really deep into your being, you can radiate something which is the only argument and the only proof that the world is not dead, that it is alive, it is intelligent, it is divine.
All religions should disappear from the world. Religiousness alone is enough, and religiousness need not be organized. It is each individual’s communion with the universe. There is no need for Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans. There is only need for religious people, seekers, lovers of meditation dropping all their masks, courageous enough to expose their original face to the world.
When the world has its original face, it will be a civilized world – not before that.

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