Amano Wilfred,
Author of Das Rote Tuch, Germany
Osho,
Looking back on the development of the neo-sannyas movement, it appears to me very well planned, just like a seed which has the whole plan of the tree inside itself. In which state of growth is the tree of your religion now?
It is true, but nobody has planned it. Looking back, you can see all the stages from the seed to the flower, but if you look at the seed you will not be able to predict what is going to happen.
The seed is completely closed. It has potential, but we don’t know whether the seed will fall into the right soil, or will fall on a stone and will never grow, or may be eaten by animals, destroyed by children. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future. The future remains open; unknown, unknowable.
And that’s how sannyas has grown. I have never planned it – not the way an architect plans how a building is going to be. A building is a construction, it is not a growth. A construction can be planned, but growth is life. It is an opening into many dimensions; what root, what dimension it will take, nobody knows.
I have functioned continuously from this innocence. I am not a man who plans; I trust existence so much, and planning means distrust. I know that existence has helped me up to this moment, and I have never done anything. The next moment also will be taken care of. To me, this trust is real religion, not believing in Jesus Christ or God, or believing in the Bible or the Koran.
No, living a life of spontaneity without any plan, trusting whatsoever happens, is the right thing. And when I say “whatsoever,” I mean whatsoever – because we don’t have any plan, so we cannot have any judgment of what happens. If we have a plan, then there is every possibility of disappointment.
Existence has no obligation to follow my plan. That’s why religious people have been saying through the centuries, “Man proposes and God disposes.” There is no God to dispose; we have disposed of God himself. But if man proposes, he is bound to come to a point where there will be disappointment.
Our vision is small, existence is infinite; so whatsoever we can decide will be of no significance. In fact, it will create all kinds of hindrances. If existence is going to the south and we plan to go to the north, then there will be a tension between you and existence. This is the cause of so many people around the world living in anxiety, anguish, tension, disappointment, frustration. The reason is, that in the first place they started expecting, planning, hoping, desiring. Existence is not at fault. Existence is not “disposing their proposals,” existence is simply going on its own way. And my experience is just to go with existence. I call it the “let-go way.”
So, wherever the river takes. Yes, retrospectively you may be able to figure that there seems to be planning, but there has never been planning. But things have happened that should give every sannyasin courage to live without bothering about the future. My whole experience proves this. Things just go on happening – allow them to happen. That’s all. Don’t hinder, don’t try to change the direction. Relax, trusting like a small child holding his father’s hand, unworried that the night is descending, that the way is long, that there is every danger on the way. Wild animals, thieves, robbers – he has no worry. He knows his father is holding his hand.
While the father is tense, in great anxiety, the child just by his side is enjoying every moment, not affected by his anxiety at all.
Are you the father who is holding the hand of the sannyasins?
Existence itself – a father is not of much help. That’s what the old religions have provided man, they have provided God the father. That is a small projection. The child had trusted the father, and now he is grown up; now he knows perfectly well that his father is fallible. When he was a child he knew his father was infallible. But now he is in a great dilemma; the father is fallible and he has become dependent on an infallible God.
This is the simple reason why every religion projected an infallible God, far above. Omnipresent – everywhere present – so you need not worry that he may not be seeing you. Omniscient – knowing everything, past, present, future – so you need not worry that he may bypass or may ignore something. Omnipotent – all powerful – he can do everything, there is nothing which is impossible for him.
The religions used the child’s psychology to create God the father. But it is a dangerous game. It means you are depending on a fiction. It means you are living in a dream world. It means your prayers are addressed to nobody; no answer is going to come.
Existence is there, surrounding you everywhere. There is no need for any theologian to prove that existence is. There is a great need to prove that God exists. Still nobody has been able to prove it. For five thousand years, philosophers, theologians, logicians have all been trying hard to prove the existence of God, but nothing is proved.
So I am not projecting anything, I am simply saying you exist. It does not need any proof. The trees exist, the sun exists, the moon exists, the stars exist, so many animals, men, women. No theologian has ever tried to prove that existence exists. Existence simply means “that which exists.” It needs no proof; it is solidly here, now.
So I am not in favor of projecting any imaginary thing, because if you live with an imagination you will never grow. You will remain a child. With God the father, you will remain a child, retarded. It is your retarded child’s need that a fiction of God is required. Without God the retarded child feels nervous, afraid; he does not know where to go, what to do. Nobody is there to take care of him, nobody is there to guide him, nobody is – all is darkness, and there seems to be no possibility of light.
But with God in heaven, the retarded child is perfectly happy.
Isn't there a danger that sannyasins project all these things onto the master?
I am continuously destroying their projections. As far as I am concerned, I am not allowing any projections. And this is being done for the first time. In the past, the so-called masters all allowed people to have all kinds of projections about them. It was a simple, logical thing: they were projecting God. The fiction of God was being projected by those so-called masters. The people had no acquaintance with God, but they knew the master, so they believed in the master.
To create such a belief, faith, masters have been doing things which are really ugly, things which may be right for a street magician, but are not right for a master. For example, all the miracles of Jesus either never happened and were created by his disciples after he was dead – because in no Jewish literature contemporary to Jesus… It is impossible to ignore such a man, he must have been big news. A man who walks on water – do you think contemporary literature can ignore him? Will a man who makes a dead follower come back to life again be ignored?
If these things are ignored, then what is news? Not a single mention of Jesus Christ, not even his name. So, most probably all those miracles were created by the followers, to make that man into a reliable representative of God. No ordinary man can walk on water – and he walks. Naturally, he has some direct relationship with the original source of life.
So, firstly they were most probably invented around all the masters of the world. And a few cunning people even managed to arrange them.

I know a man, a friend of mine, who was worshipped like a god. He did a small thing – he was traveling from Howrah station, and he entered the first class. He was a Mohammedan fakir. The ticket collector came, and asked for the ticket.
The fakir said, “I never travel with a ticket. I am a godman; everything belongs to me. Don’t waste my time – move on!”
This was simply insulting: a government servant doing his duty and you are without a ticket, and behaving in such an arrogant manner! The ticket collector also became adamant.
He said, “Get down from the train otherwise I will call the police. The train will not move until you get down. And don’t force me, because I don’t want a religious man to be arrested. Simply get out. I have nothing to do with you, but I am not going to allow anybody to travel in this train without a ticket – God’s man or not.”
The fakir said, “If you want me to get out, you will have to push me out. I am not going by myself.”
One thing led to another, and finally the conductor became angry and pushed the man out of the door, threw out his box, his bags. The fakir laughed and he said, “Now, you were saying that if I am inside the train the train will not move. Now listen to me. If I am outside the train, the train cannot move!”
A crowd gathered. And the driver was trying his hardest; the engineer was trying his hardest. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but the train was not moving. The guard was showing his flag, but the train was just standing there. By and by, all the passengers got out. There was a huge crowd, and the fakir was standing there with closed eyes.
The station master came running and he asked, “What is the matter?”
The conductor said, “Now, it is my duty…”
But the people in the crowd were so angry at the conductor that they were ready to kill him: “You insulted a man of God, and we are being unnecessarily delayed! Somebody has to attend court, somebody has to do some business, somebody has some appointment – who will be responsible for this?”
The crowd forced the conductor to give an apology. The fakir said, “Touch my feet, and remember, never misbehave with any man who seems to be religious and is traveling without a ticket.”
He had to touch the fakir’s feet. The fakir entered the train, and the passengers had to rush into their compartments because the train started moving. That made him famous to thousands of people: “This is divine power.” And it was nothing – he had bribed the conductor and the driver. Just two persons and a miracle is done, and he becomes a godman.

Now, it is possible that Lazarus was Jesus Christ’s friend. It could be very easily managed that his death was bogus, and Jesus brought him back to life. Lazarus was not the only person who had died in Jesus’ life. He was here for thirty-three years: in thirty-three years, thousands of people in Judea must have died. And if the man knew how to bring them back to life, then he was really cruel – knowing the secret and not bringing the people back to life. Why only Lazarus? – a friend who can conspire.
In that way, I am the first man not allowing my people to make me an object of any kind of projection. Many of them will feel hurt because of their expectations. It is a very complicated phenomenon; if I am a miracle man, then they are disciples of a miracle man. If I walk on water, then I am fulfilling their egos, too. And I am a totally different man – I would start drowning in the water! That would destroy their egos. And they would most probably run away from me, would never mention my name: that they were my followers, a man who drowned in the river.
Only people who are really ready to grow can remain with me. Thousands have come to me, but they all wanted some fulfillment of their egos from me. And that I cannot do. I cannot be a source of their retardedness, stupidity, superstition – no. Because I would not support them, they had to find some other master somewhere, who was ready to support them.
In fact, there have been moments when, without my knowing, they managed to project something. I came to know about it only later on. But the moment I knew it, I destroyed it completely.

A young man came one night. I had never seen him before; he was well educated. He told me, “My doctor has suggested coming to you and asking for a glass of water.”
I said, “But who is this doctor and why should he suggest me? Because I am not a doctor and I don’t treat patients.”
He said, “He told me that you would refuse, ‘But remain there, don’t leave.’”
It must have been nine o’clock at night. Until twelve he was sitting there in front of me. I said, “Okay, you can sit.” I continued my work, whatsoever I was reading.
I went on reading, and once in a while he would ask, “Why? I have to go four or five miles; my house is far away and my mother will be waiting.”
Because I was sick, my mother had come to visit me. She had gone to sleep, but seeing the light was on in my room and I was talking to somebody at twelve o’clock, she came out and asked what the matter was.
That young man just fell at my mother’s feet and he said, “Help me! I don’t want anything, just a glass of water.”
So my mother said, “Why don’t you give him a glass of water? And there is no problem in it, I will bring it.”
I said to her, “You don’t know. That glass of water can be very dangerous.”
She went in and brought a glass of water just to satisfy herself, otherwise she would get very upset: “What kind of compassion have you? He is simply asking for a glass of water. If it can help him, why should you hinder me?”
I gave it to the man, and as he drank the water, I could see his whole face changing. He touched his stomach and said, “My God, the pain has gone.”
He had been suffering from stomach pain for six months, and the doctor finally got fed up with him – because there was no pain, there was just something psychological. And the doctor knew me.
I had to tell that man, “It is good that your pain has disappeared. But be kind to me; don’t start talking about it to other people. Otherwise, there are so many sick people all around, and I don’t want to be surrounded by that kind of crowd.”
He said, “No, I will not say anything. Just do one thing: once in a while I will come with a bottle of water – just touch it, and I will do it.”
He cured many people!
And I told him, “I myself fall sick, and I have to call the same doctor who has sent you to me. I myself am drinking the same water. Can’t you see a simple thing?”
He was not willing to listen. He said, “I have experienced a miracle and not only in myself, I have seen the miracle happening in others. And you have just touched the water!”
It took me months to convince that man that it was just his mind: that there was no pain, that’s why the doctor had failed. Finally, I had to call the doctor and tell him, “Explain to him that the medicines were creating more trouble.” Because there was no pain, and he was continuously asking for medicines.
The doctor told him, “I sent you there because your thing was completely mental. You may have helped a few people, because almost ninety percent of people are suffering from diseases which don’t exist, which are in the mind.”

That’s why there are so many “pathies” in the world: allopathy, naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture, ayurveda. In every country there are many pathies. And the miracle is that they all work, and their working is totally different. Except allopathy, no pathy is scientific. But even allopathy cannot defeat those other pathies – they also cure people. Just ten percent of the people they will not be able to cure. But ninety percent of the people can be cured by any pathy, and these ninety percent are the people that allopathy will not be able to cure.
So, if you look at the figures, those bogus pathies are doing greater work than allopathy. Allopathy is certainly going to cure the ten percent; about the ninety it cannot be certain. But those other pathies certainly will not cure the ten percent, but they can manage the ninety percent.

I had a friend who was a doctor. Without any degrees, without any education in medicine, but if you count the people that he cured, he was a great physician. In his house – he was a bachelor and he lived alone – his lab was worth seeing. His lab was all bogus, there was nothing in it: test tubes, bottles, all kinds of colored water moving from one bottle into another bottle, and many kinds of beds and chairs, electrical chairs.
Seeing his lab, any sick person would be immensely impressed. He never took a stethoscope in his hand: he had invented a certain bed, you had to lie down on it. The stethoscope would be put on your chest, and above you there were two bottles of colored water. They would start jumping up and down because of the stethoscope. You would see them – and this man seemed to be a great scientist! And he would watch those colors, and that’s how he decided what kind of medicine was going to help you. And it was all water.
He was caught, because the medical profession would not allow him to do it.
I stood up for him in the court. I said, “It is not a question of whether he has a certificate or not. The man managed to save thousands of people from suffering. And you bother too much about a piece of paper: that he is not an MBBS. And all these MBBS’s who have filed the case against him, the reason is not that they are against him. The reason is that he is attracting patients, and they are all losing their business. They cannot compete with him; he is really such a genius.”
The magistrate laughed. He said, “What you are saying is right. I know this man, he has even cured me! But as far as the law is concerned, I have to prevent him from practicing medicine. And because I understand your argument – and my own experience is in his favor – I will not give him any punishment. Just he should not be a physician anymore.”
I told the man, “Don’t be worried. Move to another town, in a faraway place where people don’t know you. Take all your instruments and start again.” And he is still doing it!
And I told him, “Remember, as the medical profession becomes alert about you, change your place. You cannot remain in one place. They won’t let you. This time this magistrate has helped you. We don’t know if any other court will help you or not.”

I have been trying in every possible way, to destroy the projections. I don’t want my people to have faith in me. I want them to experience me; I want them to experience what I have experienced. I can show the way. I cannot walk for them; they will have to walk alone. I can give them encouragement, but I cannot give them the truth.
And the real function of the master is to give you encouragement. Just by his presence, his blissful life, peaceful life, he creates a certain milieu in which you can easily move toward dropping your plans, projects – and allow existence to happen.
So, what is happening in sannyas is not a doing on my part or on anybody’s part. It is a happening. And it has gone so beautifully. And it is going so beautifully. I don’t see that I can ever be disappointed, because in the first place I don’t bother whether the river is going to the north, or to the south. Wherever it goes, wherever it lands, that’s my home. That’s where I always wanted to go, but I was not aware of it.
Osho,
The modern age, the so-called “age of enlightenment,” is an age of liberalization from old belief systems and religions. You claim your religion to be a modern religion. Isn't this a contradiction in itself?
It is; it is a contradiction to call it a modern religion. Or better, a religionless religion, which will make the contradiction more clear. But to me, existence allows contradictions. It is not logical, it is very illogical. In fact, existence depends on contradictions. What are life and death? Are they not contradictory? But both are going to happen to one person, to the same person. In fact, a dead person cannot die. That would be consistent. If some dead person dies, it would be absolutely logical. But what happens is contradictory: a living person – life suddenly becomes death.
If you look into existence – and I am not a philosopher, I am simply existential; not even an existentialist, just existential. I see contradiction everywhere. Light cannot exist without darkness; darkness cannot exist without light. For example, ordinarily people think that a blind man must be living in darkness. They are wrong. A blind man knows nothing of darkness, because to see darkness you need eyes. If a blind man cannot see light, he cannot see darkness. They are two poles of one phenomenon; for both, eyes are needed.
Now, what the blind man experiences is something almost impossible to conceive. No light, no darkness. Then what? Is there something else that he feels? No. You must be thinking that a deaf person is enjoying continuous silence. You are wrong. A deaf person knows nothing of silence, because he knows nothing of sound. Sound and silence go together. Light and darkness go together. Everything – find anything and you can predict that there must be something polar opposite to it. Without the polar opposite, it cannot exist.
For example, men cannot exist without women. They are polar opposites, and that’s why they are so much attracted to each other. They are like positive and negative polarities of electricity. They are polar opposites. You have to understand the whole thing. First, they will be attracted to each other and they will be opposed to each other. This is the whole problem of all the couples in the world, of all the lovers in the world. They are attracted to each other, and the same is the cause of their continuous fight. They are the opposite of each other. That’s why homosexuals became known as gay people – they have no polarity. There is nothing to fight about. They are always smiling, they look really gay. But their gayness, their delight, is very superficial. It has not the tension of the opposites. The force is not there.
Have you ever heard any story about gay people which can be compared to the stories of Romeo and Juliet, Majnu and Laila, Siri and Farhad? Not a single love story exists about the millions of gay people who have lived on the earth. There was not the attraction to create a story; there was no conflict. In fact, a man loving another man simply loves his own mirror image. So, you can go on loving your mirror image. There is no trouble.
Lesbians have no trouble with each other. But these are mirror images. If you want excitement, you have to pay for it. If you want a tremendous experience of ecstasy and love, then you have to fight for it. It all comes in a single package. That’s why I am continuously contradicting myself. It is absolutely in tune with existence.
I call my religion, religionless religion. I call it religionless because it has nothing to do with all the religions which have existed up to now. To deny any connection with all those religions, I call it religion-less. But still I call it religion, because I also want to deny the atheists, the anti-religious. They were both part of the old game. The theist and the atheist were the polarity in the past. If I simply call this a religionless phenomenon, it becomes atheism. And it is not atheism. I want to insist that I am not a theist or an atheist. In fact, both are idiots. They are discussing something which does not exist. One is saying, “God is,” the other is saying, “God is not,” but both are concerned about God, and they are wasting their whole life arguing about God.
So, I am giving a new term: religiousness. It is no longer concerned with God, no longer concerned with heaven and hell, no longer concerned with all kinds of theologies or anti-theologies. It is a scientific search into your consciousness. But because it is a search into consciousness, I call it religion. I cannot call it simply science, because science is arrowed toward the objective reality. Religion is arrowed toward the subjective reality.
A scientist goes on working with all kinds of things, except for himself. In his lab he has done all kinds of experiments, but he has completely forgotten himself. He is the only one in his lab who has not even been touched by any experiment. Religion is experimenting on your own consciousness. So I use a slightly different word, just to make the distinction. Science experiments; religion experiences.
Science is objective, religion is subjective. Science is concerned with all that you can see, and religion is concerned with the one who sees. To make this distinction clear, I have to use a contradiction. There is no other way. Otherwise, I will be falling into something wrong, something which is not my approach.
Osho,
In Germany there are more sannyasins and more communes than in any other country. The critics say the reason is that the German soul is drawn toward the irrational, and longs for a leader. According to you, why is your religion, and why are you, so attractive to Germans?
The reason is simple. What the critics say is absolutely wrong. The reason is that Adolf Hitler has cheated Germany; deceived its youth, as nobody else has ever done to any country. They are so frustrated with political leadership, messiahs. Adolf Hitler was pretending to be a messiah. He thought that he was a reincarnation of the Old Testament prophet, Elijah. And in the Second World War, Germany saw something which no other country knows. Millions of people were killed, and the people of Germany were not aware what was happening. They were not aware that six million Jews were being gassed, and what they saw – the smoke from the chimneys of the concentration camps – was thousands of peoples’ lives becoming smoke.
Adolf Hitler cheated them by saying, “You are the people who are meant to rule over the world.” Of course, the people could not say that they were not responsible for supporting Adolf Hitler. They were as responsible as Adolf Hitler; it was a mutual thing. Adolf Hitler was giving them a great ego project – to conquer the whole world – and they were overjoyed that they had got a prophetic leader, a charismatic leader. For five years continuously he was winning, which made Germany feel, “Now there is no doubt at all.” The man went on being victorious, so more and more support came to Adolf Hitler.
But, finally, all such ambitious projects fail – sooner or later. Existence cannot support any such idiotic thing. Five years does not mean anything in existence, not even five seconds. So, Germany saw just a little dream, and the glory, and then the tremendous fall. It was almost as if Hitler had taken Germany to the top of Everest, and from there, the fall.
It has created two things in Germany – that’s why it now becomes my country. One, now no Adolf Hitler can deceive them. Enough is enough. No prophet, no messiah can deceive them, they have suffered too much. They know perfectly well that nobody is special – neither the Germans, nor the Italians, nor the English – nobody is special. The suffering that they have gone through, and the suffering they created for the whole world, at least proves one thing: that nobody is meant to rule over the world. And purity of blood is simply nonsense. You cannot tell whether a certain blood is German, English, Chinese, Hindu, Mohammedan – impossible. There are blood types, but they are not German, Italian, English. Blood is simply blood; there is no pure blood or impure blood.
So on the one hand, there is a tremendous frustration with Adolf Hitler and what he did to the country, and on the other hand, the guilt that they were also part of this stupid game. Now they want to get rid of all messiahs, and they also want to get rid of the guilt that they are carrying within themselves.
They have no alternative other than me, because every religion will create guilt. They cannot be freed from guilt; all religions are based on guilt. I am the only person who frees you from all guilt. There is no such thing as sin. There are mistakes, and to err is human. In fact, that is the only way to learn; there is no other way to learn.
So, I say to my people, commit as many mistakes as possible, just don’t commit the same mistake again – that is stupid, not sin. Committing the same mistake again simply means you are not watching what you are doing, you are not being intelligent. And you are not going to suffer in hell because of your mistakes; you will suffer in the mistakes themselves.
If you don’t commit a mistake, the reward is there. There is no need for a God, and a paradise, where all those people who did not commit mistakes will be rewarded. There is no need; each act brings its punishment, or its reward. And there is no need to feel guilt, because there is no idea of sin in my approach to life. Sin is the opposite polarity of guilt. If you have any idea of sin, then the idea of guilt is bound to be there.
No religion in the world can free the German youth from a tremendous burden of guilt. In fact, they will exploit it. And no religion in the world can make the German youth independent, free from all those saviors, prophets, messiahs – because they themselves are dependent on these people. It is a strange thing that I am the only person who can free you from messiahs, and who can free you from guilt.
Naturally Germany needs me, and I need Germany. Soon you will see that the whole of Germany will be my commune. Adolf Hitler has made the ground for me; that’s why I have a certain love for that man. Without him, my work in Germany would have been impossible. It is difficult in America because there has been no Adolf Hitler – just a poor Nixon!
Osho,
A few weeks ago a young woman who was very much interested in sannyas and very much afraid that she might became a sannyasin, said to me, “But I hate the personal cult around Osho.” I tried to explain to her that there was no personal cult, but I wasn't very successful. Can you help?
Just tell her that if she hates enough, she is already in love with me. She cannot escape. She can delay, but hate is already a relationship, and who wants to remain in a relationship of hate? It is not bothering me, it is bothering her. I don’t know about her, but her hatred will torture her. She will have to change it into love, only then will she be free of that torture. This is one thing.
The second thing: Bhagwan does not mean “God” or “personal God.” In fact, the problem has arisen because in India there are three religions, and these three religions have three different languages. Hinduism has Sanskrit as its language, Buddhism has Pali as its language, Jainism has Prakrit as its language.
Hinduism believes in a personal God. So when in Hindu scriptures the word bhagwan is used, it means a personal God. Buddhism and Jainism don’t believe in any God; they are God-less religions. So, when in Buddhist and Jaina scriptures bhagwan is used, it simply means “the blessed one.” That is actually the meaning of the word: the blessed one. It has nothing to do with God.
I am reminded of H. G. Wells, and his famous statement about Gautam Buddha. Buddha did not believe in God, but he was known to his disciples as “Bhagwan Gautam Buddha.” H. G. Wells was very puzzled when he was writing his world history, so he inquired, “What is this? – Gautam Buddha denies God, and his followers are calling him God. And he never denied it to his followers, that he should not be called God.” Then he came to know that in Pali, bhagwan means the blessed one, it has nothing to do with God.
In English there is only one word for God, in India there are many. The Buddhists don’t believe in God, they deny God – but to deny you have to use a word. The word that is used is ishwara. The Jainas also deny God. Naturally you have to use a word, so they use the word paramatma. Bhagwan is not used by either of those religions for God; it is used for the enlightened person. And it simply means, “One who has come to a fulfillment so deep, that there is nothing missing anymore.”
So, tell that woman that I myself don’t believe in any God, personal or impersonal. I am not a God, and she need not be worried about that. But I insist that I am certainly the blessed one. That I cannot deny, because that would be a lie. And my whole function is to make you also the blessed one. If I myself am not in that space, how I can lead you into that space?
Ask that woman, “Do you want to be ‘the blessed one’? Then there is no way other than falling in love with someone who is already the blessed one. Or, if you want to be ‘a miserable one’ you can go to the Vatican – the Polack pope is there – and be as miserable as you want.” So make it clear that it has something to do with self-realization; it has nothing to do with God at all.
Osho,
Many aspects of your commune and your vision are very similar, in my view, to Karl Marx's vision of the classless society, as there is no personal property, no money. Everybody gets what he needs; everybody works out of joy and creativity, and feels responsible for the whole; no politicians, no nations, et cetera, et cetera. Nevertheless, your commune feels totally different from any Marxist vision. The Marxists of today seem to be more afraid of you than any other people. Can you say a few words about that?
It is true. The Marxists have to be more afraid than anybody else, because the others are really fading out on their own accord. The real conflict – and the decisive conflict – is going to be between my red colors and the communist red flag. There is nobody else in the field. And their fear is natural, because they cannot condemn me on all these points.
So, everything that Karl Marx wanted – a classless society, a nationless world, and everybody according to his need – I am in perfect agreement with. What I am not in agreement with is that Karl Marx thought that consciousness is only a by-product of material things – chemistry, physics.
About that he is absolutely wrong. He had no right even to say that, because he had never meditated. He had never sat in silence even for one hour in his whole life, to look into what he is talking about. On what grounds does he say that? He pretends to be a scientific thinker; he calls his philosophy “scientific communism.” Now, that pretension won’t stand: if he is scientific, on what grounds does he say that consciousness is a by-product? He has to prove it in a scientific lab, mixing all the chemicals and things that a man is made of. And if consciousness arises, he has proved his point.
But he never entered any scientific lab in his whole life. He was sitting in the British Museum reading books on economics, politics, but he never knew anything about the Eastern ways of finding oneself. All he knew about religion was the Christian religion and the Jewish religion. He was a Jew.
Jews have contributed such great people to the world: Jesus, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and they have all given as much insanity to the world as possible. These three people, this is the real trinity of the whole insanity of humanity. And the whole credit goes to the Jews – all three were Jews.
Karl Marx knew only about Judaism and Christianity, and both are third-rate religions. There is nothing, they don’t have any philosophic ground, their arguments are childish. Compared to the Eastern religions – Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism – they are simply in kindergarten. To condemn them is very easy; it does not need a great mind to condemn Judaism or Christianity, it is such a simple job. But to condemn Gautam Buddha is not a simple job. You will have to face the basic thing, meditation, because his whole structure is based on meditation. And meditation is not a belief; you have to experience it. So that is the trouble for the Marxist.
In India, Marxists were constantly coming in contact with me. They have written books against me. I seem to be more dangerous to them than anybody else, because nobody in the whole world – no religion – is capable of giving a counter-argument. They cannot prove the existence of God. They cannot prove that Jesus was born of a virgin girl. They cannot prove that Moses really saw God, or simply went mad roaming in the hot desert for forty years. Anybody can go mad; it is nothing special to Moses.
Forty years of wandering: hungry, thirsty, people dying, and he was responsible for all this, because he had promised the people to take them to the holy land. And there was no sign of it. People were dying – forty years is a long time, the original people who had started the pilgrimage had all gone by the time that he declared, “We have arrived at the holy land.” I can say with certainty that it was not the holy land he had arrived at, it was simply despair. “Now people cannot be deceived anymore, so this is ‘the holy land.’”
Israel is not worth anything. If Moses had stopped a little earlier, the Jews would have had all the oil in the world. Every Jew knows that he cannot forgive this fellow Moses! They passed all the oil fields and reached a place where there was nothing – and that was the holy land. Moses was God’s representative, and what kind of God would not say, “Moses, stop! This is the place.”
I don’t think he saw God. In the desert heat, forty years can drive anybody with so much responsibility, mad. And everybody was torturing him: “Where is the holy land?” People were dying; he was not able to arrange for their food and water. This man is part of the foundation of Judaism. He had no time to meditate; he had no time to create a scientific methodology about meditation. He had never heard the word meditation. All that he knew was prayer. Prayer presupposes God.
Communists are not concerned with Jews. All their religious doctrines can be very easily finished, there is nothing to it. And Jesus is just an offshoot of Judaism; he does not bring anything new to the world. He is simply repeating Jewish ideology. Even the Jews got fed up with this man: “He has nothing to offer, all that he says is to repeat the scriptures, which any rabbi can do in a better way.” He was uneducated, illiterate; any rabbi would have been far more philosophical, intellectual. And this carpenter’s son was declaring himself the only begotten son of the Jewish God.
Remember, it is the Jewish God. He has nothing to do with the Hindu gods; he had never heard of Hindu gods. He has nothing to do with any other God; his God is the Jewish God. Now, the Jews are angry, naturally: God giving birth to his only begotten son in a poor carpenter’s house? He was born in a stable – God could not manage a better place for the fellow? For his whole life he was riding on a donkey; God could not even manage a Rolls Royce for him. And the things that he was saying were nothing but old scriptures. He had to repeat those scriptures because he wanted to prove that he was the promised messiah of the Jews, that he had come to save the Jews.
The Jews could not accept it, it was simply insulting. This man is their messiah? And his whole following consisted of twelve fools! Those fools are called apostles.

When Jesus was crucified, they had all escaped. Only one remained there, and that one also denied that he knew Jesus – because people were looking at him and found that he seemed to be a stranger there, he did not belong to Jerusalem. They insistently asked, “Who are you?”
He said, “I have come to Jerusalem for a pilgrimage, and I have nothing to do with this man. I don’t even know anything about this man you are crucifying.” Eleven escaped, one denied – these were the followers.

So, it was very easy for Karl Marx to criticize Christianity and Judaism. But facing me, Karl Marx would be in difficulty – because I have the whole heritage of thousands of years of inner experimentation in the East. He would not be able to argue that consciousness is a by-product. He would have to prove it, because he says he is a scientific thinker. “Then why, on what grounds, are you accepting this as a belief – calling consciousness a by-product of matter?” In fact, modern physicists proved just the opposite: matter does not exist anymore.
Karl Marx is simply out of date. Absolutely out of date, because he was thinking that only matter exists and consciousness is a by-product. Now physics has come to the conclusion that matter does not exist. Then what does exist? Except consciousness, there is no other alternative left. Something certainly exists.
I was arguing with communists, and they were in difficulty. I proved that Marx is unscientific; he is simply an atheist believer. And a man who is not even scientific about the most important thing – consciousness – how can you rely on this man about other matters? In fact, on all other matters he was proved wrong. He had never thought that the revolution would happen in Russia. If somebody had suggested that revolution would happen in Russia, he would simply have laughed. He would not have conceived that revolution would happen in China. He thought that revolution was going to happen in a capitalist country like America – where it has not happened, and there are no signs at all that it is going to happen.
The Communist Party in America is the weakest party in the whole world. In all other countries the Communist Party is far stronger. In America – what Communist Party, what revolution? Here it should happen, because here the rich are super-rich, and the poor are super-poor. The distinction is vaster than anywhere else. Marx’s predictions have not proved right. Revolutions happened in poor countries like Russia and China.
And whatever Marx was thinking about the revolution and its after effects, nothing has proved right. He thought that once the revolution had happened, the country would not have any classes. It would take maybe five years, ten years. But seventy years have passed, and in Russia the classes still exist. Only their names have changed. The poor are still poor; in fact, more poor than in America. And the communists who are in power are more powerful than any rich man who has ever been in power. So there is a new class division, the powerful and the powerless.
In America there is a possibility – I say only a possibility – because at least one is free to express. In Russia there is no possibility for revolution. Marx could not be born in Russia; there was no way for anybody to say anything different from the government policy. The classes are there, and there is no sign of their disappearing; they are becoming more consolidated. Marx thought that those who were in power would soon decentralize power, but they go on centralizing power.
When Stalin died – and perhaps no man had that much power for that long a time, for almost forty years he was omnipotent. In Russia, at least, he was God, had all the qualities. His detectives made him omniscient; he was looking at everyone, watching everyone. People could not even talk to their spouses, because one never knew – the woman may be a detective or the husband may be a detective. People could not talk to their kids, because those kids belonged to the children’s Communist Party, and to prove themselves loyal to the country and to communism, they were telling their leaders everything that was happening in the family: what the father said, what the mother said. Wives had their own Communist Party; husbands had their own Communist Party. For the first time in history, everybody was completely surrounded. For the first time, walls were hearing you.
Such slavery. And Marx wanted that great freedom would happen. Marx was thinking that once rich people were no longer there, immense riches would suddenly fall from the sky. That has not happened; the Russian people are very poor people. So, communists are worried by me because I say they have only distributed poverty. And that is not my way.
I also want a classless society, but not enforced by a dictatorship – a classless society because people have so much money that nobody wants to hoard it. For example in a desert, if you have an oasis you hoard it. You have people on guard so that nobody takes the water; the water is scarce. But when enough water is available, there is no question of hoarding it. You don’t hoard water for tomorrow, because tomorrow the tap will be available. Money can be created, and to me, just as there are people who are born poets, born painters, born scientists, there are people who are born wealth creators. Not everybody is Henry Ford, and cannot be; not everybody can be a Rockefeller. And if you destroy Henry Ford, Rockefeller, Morgan and other people who continuously create wealth, the poor people will not become rich. They will be poorer than before, because the creators of wealth are gone.
I would like money to be respected in the same way that any other art is respected. Wealth should not be condemned; in fact, we should encourage people to become wealthier. I would like a classless society which is totally rich. Marx’s classless society is totally poor. I want it to be equal on the highest peak, and he wants people to be equal crawling on the earth.
My commune is working in that way.
Secondly, I respect the individual; Marx has no respect for the individual. Marx is utterly a socialist – society is important; all individuals can be sacrificed for the society. To me, that is not the case. On the contrary, every individual is so unique and valuable that he cannot be sacrificed for the nation, for the society, for ideology – no.
So my commune will be rich; it will have all affluence, abundance, but still individuals will be free. They will not be forced to be of equal size. Somebody prefers a Ferrari and somebody prefers a Mercedes – I don’t think that everybody should have a Ferrari whether he likes it or not! Individuals should be free. Not only about expressing their words, because all these things make your individuality. Your car is also part of you, your expression. Your dress is also part of you, your expression. Everything should be allowed to individuals, but things should be in such abundance.
For example in this small commune, where only fifteen hundred people are permanent residents, we have hundreds of cars, hundreds of buses, five airplanes; the whole commune is centrally air-conditioned. The commune tries to provide everybody’s need, whatsoever it is. Still, they are not cut equally – that your size should be equal, that everybody has to be six feet. Then those who are six feet five inches have to be cut, and those who are five inches less have to be given traction and lengthened! This is stupid.
To me, a classless society simply means that we give everybody an opportunity – an equal opportunity – to be himself. If somebody wants to live naked, in my society he will be allowed. In Russia, no. In China, no – in China he has to use a certain dress determined by the government. Nobody can even have the freedom to be naked. This kind of inhuman society is not my vision.
My vision is, people having so much that they can have anything they want. There is no need to hoard, because everything is always available. You can get it any moment you want. And still there will be differences. Somebody does not want to use a car at all, likes walking? Now, you cannot force a car on him, “You have to go in a car because it is an equal society and everybody has to be in a car.” People should be allowed their differences. All should be equally allowed to be themselves – and at the highest peak. That is why communists are very much against me.
In fact, all religions are against me, the communists are against me, the fascists are against me, the capitalists are against me. It seems only I am for myself, nobody else in the whole world!
Osho,
Can I add one last question?
Recently you have said all your sannyasins should join the commune. For me, that creates a problem. I have two very small children and a beautiful wife – she is not a sannyasin. We would like to live together with other sannyasins, but as the communes are now, we can't live together in a commune. So what to do?
Take the challenge and accept the trouble of it. Don’t choose the easier way. The easier way will be to live outside with your wife, with your children, because that is where you are. Nothing has to be changed. Moving into a commune will bring many problems, many of which you are not yet aware of. Your wife may fall in love with another sannyasin – most probably, she will do. You may fall in love with some sannyasin; in fact, you have already been thinking of it! So there are going to be troubles.
But my suggestion is, choose the way where there are troubles, because one grows through them, facing them, encountering them. In the outside world you will remain safer, more secure – a salary, a job, a position, a house. In the commune you have nothing. All that you have you pour into the commune’s pool. It is risky, but to take risks is one of the basic devices for growth.
Many kinds of new dimensions will open to you. For example, you think you have a very loving wife. Give it a chance – whether it is just an idea or a reality. If she is a very loving wife she will soon fall in love with somebody!
What about the children? They are really very small.
They will be part of the commune. That’s my approach toward children, that children should not be possessed by the parents. It is creating one thousand and one psychological difficulties for the children.
Humanity has not yet become aware that the family is one of the most criminal institutions in history, because it gives the child a very limited area of growth. The husband, the wife, the child: a very small area. And the child learns to depend on the father, on the mother. He learns their habits, learns their religion, learns everything from them. His learning is very linear; he is not rich in his learning. If the child is a boy he loves his mother, and hates his father. If the child is a girl she loves the father, and hates the mother. The mother is almost a competitor. You can see small girls flirting with their fathers, not knowing it is simply the way of nature, that he is the only man available.
If the family moves into a commune, and dissolves itself into a commune, the children have a tremendously vast scope; hundreds of uncles, hundreds of aunts. Every woman is different, every man is different. And the child will have the opportunity to learn from everybody.
You can give your love, but you should not possess the child. You should give him freedom to move, relate with as many people as possible. It is one of the greatest problems for psychologists, that no man ever finds a woman who is totally satisfying. Neither does a woman ever find a man who is tailored just for herself. The coat is always either loose or it is too tight, because it is not tailored for you. The boy raised in a family unconsciously gets continuously conditioned by the mother. In his unconscious, an image of the mother becomes so deeply impressed that his whole life he will try to find a woman who is exactly his mother. But that is impossible. Existence never repeats. So, whenever he falls in love, it is only a part of the woman that resembles his mother, but it is always only a part.
So, when you are just having a love affair everything goes good, because something in you resembles the father of the girl, something in the girl resembles your mother. On the beach, in the garden, it is good – you are both at your best. But when you get married and you have to live together twenty-four hours a day, then it becomes troublesome, because you cannot pretend that the whole is only that part with which you were in love.
The whole is far bigger, and when the whole starts showing it – and it happens from both sides – the woman wonders that she never knew this man, she could not have conceived that this man will be like this. The man could not have conceived that this woman would throw tantrums and pillows and scream every night, and the neighbors would come. And even if you are right you have to apologize, otherwise she goes on screaming and crying. You had never thought about this. On the beach she had never behaved like this!
No couple in the whole world fits absolutely, and the reason is the family. If a child is raised by the commune, then he will not have a fixed image, he has known so many women. One day he sleeps with one aunt, another day with another aunt, once in a while he sees his mother, too. Once in a while, his father. Otherwise, there are so many uncles and everybody is loving to him. He never gets impregnated with one idea. He has a very vague sense of womanhood, not of a particular woman. The same is true about the girl: she has a certain idea of what it means to be a man, but she has no fixed picture.
There will be no disappointment in their lives because they will be more flexible, they will be more adjusting. And they will be able to cope with new realities that may be coming, because they have seen so many people that they know that people are different. And they don’t have some picture to compare with. They can love more. They can accept even difficult parts of the other person, and they will never be angry with their parents.
Otherwise, every boy remains angry with his father because the father was the person who was making love to his mother. He was the hindrance; otherwise he would have been the lover. That’s what he wanted. But the father was always there and was stronger and bigger and more powerful, so he had to repress himself.
No girl ever forgives the mother because she was always there. And as the girl grows, comes of age, the mother is continuously watching whether the father is taking too much interest in the girl, or the girl is taking too much interest in the father. And she is continuously cutting in, and creating barriers between them. The girl cannot understand. She cannot be forgiving, she will always be angry.
In a commune, the child will not have any anger against the father or the mother. In fact, his experience of richness will be vast, because a commune is already a world. For a child, five thousand people are enough of an experience. With this experience, he will enter into the world. He will not need God the father; he will not need the priest – the father. He will be independent enough, because he was never dependent on the father or the mother. He was not dependent on anyone. To belong to a commune means he was independent, he was not dependent on anybody. So he has been nourished and nurtured into freedom. And that should be the new man.
So my suggestion is, take the risk. And help other sannyasins who are outside the commune, to also move to the commune – because only in a commune will you have a real experience of sannyas. Outside, you cannot have. The world is rotten, simply a graveyard. Drop all the security of the world, the safety of the world, and take the risk.
And don’t be afraid. Just look at me – not a single cent.

When I resigned from the university, my father started crying. He asked, “What are you doing?”
I said, “From this moment, I want to live totally with existence. If existence wants me to be hungry, I will be hungry and thankful.”
He said, “You have always been difficult. Now you have taken the most dangerous step.”
I gave all my property to the other children, because I told him, “I don’t want any inheritance – because when I refused your religion, which was my inheritance; when I refused your party politics, which was my inheritance; how can I accept your money, your house, your lands, your garden? That will be very insincere of me. So I cannot accept, because I have rejected everything else. And if I accept only the money, I don’t receive anything from you. Your love, your blessing is enough.”
So he had distributed all the money and he said, “You should have told me a few days before. I would have kept a part reserved for you, for any time you are in difficulty.”
I said, “I will never be in difficulty. Nowhere will I be in difficulty, for the simple reason that I know how to love, and that’s enough. I can take any risk, I can jump into any challenge, because I know how to love. I know how to trust.”

And it is such a tremendous joy to discover every day that you are still here, with not a single cent. I must be the poorest man in the whole world.
You don't look like!
I live like an emperor, because what can a poor man lose? I live like an emperor. Even an emperor is worried about losing land, money, this and that. I don’t have anything, so I can live as no emperor has ever lived, without any anxiety. But the fact is that I am the poorest man in the world. Even beggars have their accounts.
So don’t be worried, just take a jump. And next time you come here, bring your loving wife.

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