INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS
The Last Testament Vol 2 11
Eleventh Discourse from the series of 30 discourses - The Last Testament Vol 2 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
Christian Sidel,
Sonntagsblick, Zurich, Switzerland
Glad to meet you.
You can start asking your questions.
Osho,
I want to ask some questions about Switzerland. You love the Swiss people?
I hate all divisions in humanity – Swiss, Italian, German, Indian. Mankind is one; the whole earth is one. People everywhere are all lovable, there is no need to discriminate. Of course I love the people who live in Switzerland, but I will not call them Swiss people.
The Swiss people are famous because of their clean country, and they call themselves a commune too. Do you think there is a similarity between your commune and Switzerland, because you are keeping your commune very clean and so…
I know Swiss people are clean, but there is nothing in it to brag about. One should be clean; it is not something special, it should be natural. When somebody is unclean, then he is a special case.
Switzerland is clean, a beautiful country…
Is it possible that you will go to Switzerland at any time?
There is every possibility, I keep everything open.
What would you do if you were in Switzerland?
That would depend what people there do with me. They will be as hostile to me as any other people, because the mind of man is just the same all over the world: conditioned by the past. Anything new creates fear, paranoia. And I am totally new, discontinuous with the past.
I want humanity to burn the whole history of man and just to start from scratch, because what we have done in the past is not worth remembering. The sooner we forget it the better.
So it is not a question of Switzerland or Germany or England or India. The mind is conditioned by the past. There may be differences in detail, but one thing is basic: they are all living with ideas which are out of date, and they are all living with fictions as if they are realities. So when I say the truth it hurts, it shocks.
What would you deprogram in Switzerland?
I would do exactly the same as I am doing here: shocking people, creating as many enemies as possible – because that is my way of working. Once you are my enemy, then friendship is not far away. Rather than starting with friendship and ending up with enmity – which is what happens – I have reversed the process. I start with enmity and end up with friendship. Then there is no possibility of enmity again; it is already finished, it is already over.
Gautam Buddha used to say that anything that is sweet in the beginning turns out to be bitter in the end, and anything that is bitter in the beginning turns out to be sweet in the end – and I feel he is right as far as human relationships are concerned.
Osho,
I never saw such a peaceful place as Rajneeshpuram, and I can't explain to myself why it is that most of the journalists who come here write very hatefully and negatively about this place and you, especially the German-speaking journalists.
There are reasons. The people who come here, come with closed minds, already full of prejudice; they have already arrived at their conclusion before arriving here. And with those glasses on their eyes they look – naturally, whatever color glasses they are wearing, they see it here. It is their reflection. Because you have come open, unprejudiced, with no idea for or against, you will see the reality.
There is certainly no other place more peaceful, more loving, more rejoicing. In fact, that is also one of the causes of people becoming hostile. Basically their hostility is based on jealousy. They are miserable; they have forgotten how to smile, they have forgotten how to laugh. They are living in utter anguish, and suddenly they come across these tremendously ecstatic people. Jealousy arises, and hostility is a way to hide that jealousy. They don’t want to believe that they have missed something in their lives which others are already enjoying. They don’t want to believe that it is a reality. So they spread all kinds of rumors which have no base in fact. But they are bound to do that.
It is difficult to find open people to come here, because open people don’t exist. Somebody is Christian, somebody is Hindu, somebody is Mohammedan, somebody is a communist – everybody is part of a crowd, everybody is part of a mob psychology. And whatever is happening here goes absolutely against his background, his mind, his tradition, his religion. Naturally, he feels offended.
I have no complaint about these people, just sadness, because if they were open they themselves could have found a way to rejoice in life. But rather than finding a way, they create more and more barriers to understanding.
We don’t hate anybody; everybody is welcome. But it is one of the basic things to be understood: you can be compassionate to somebody who is suffering, because that gives you the idea that you are not suffering. You can be compassionate to a poor man who is dying, starving, because deep inside there is a consolation that you are not in his place. But you cannot be loving towards someone who is living better than you. He creates inferiority in you. It is your doing, he is not doing anything – he is just living his life – but you start feeling inferior. And how to get rid of the inferiority complex? Either you learn to live the way the other man is living – that needs tremendous courage and guts because you will have to drop so many things you have become attached to.
People become attached even to their fetters, as if the fetters are made of gold; people become attached to their cages as if they are masterpieces. They don’t want anybody else – just think of a bird in a cage looking at the sky, at other birds on the wing, how does he feel? He has to find some way to condemn those birds, otherwise he is condemned. He cannot leave the cage, he is not brave enough to destroy it and get rid of it. And, in fact, he is infatuated with its beauty – the beautiful cathedrals, the churches, the beautiful Vatican, all that keeps you encaged. The bird on the wing has nothing, but he has the whole sky.
The only way to console yourself is to find some fault with the bird on the wing: that he is disobedient, that he is rebellious, that he is a criminal, that he is doing something wrong which is not supposed to be done. He should be peacefully in a cage. And the cage is nothing but the living acceptance of a grave. You have already died – a bird without wings is dead. A bird whose sky has been taken away from him is dead.
So when those dead birds come here and they see my people with their wings open in the sky – loving, dancing, singing, enjoying, relishing every moment – suddenly a great inferiority complex arises in them. They have to do something about it. And there are only two ways: either become red or become hostile.
Becoming hostile is easier, because it keeps your vested interests, your jobs, your crowd, your respectability intact. Becoming a sannyasin…yes, you will have the whole sky but you will lose the safety, the security, the bank balance, the job – perhaps the wife, the parents, the children. The risk is too much; they decide it is better to hate these people. Their hate is a protection.
But as far as I am concerned, I know that the moment they start hating, they have already fallen in love. Their hate is superficial; it will not last long. That’s why I say I influence people and create enemies. Once they are my enemies they are my people. Sooner or later their hate is going to be dropped because it cannot stand against the truth. Their hate is going to become a nightmare for them because deep down they know what they are doing. It is not that they don’t know – they would like not to know, but there is no way. They know perfectly well what they are doing. They are rejecting a reality just because they are cowards, because accepting the reality of this place means a tremendous revolution in your life – in all the values of your life.
Perhaps you are living with your wife and there is no love anymore, but you are simply living with her because it is respectable. You are part of a society which respects monogamy, which respects that marriage should last for the whole life. And you have also promised this woman many times, “We are made for each other,” and now you find that, “We are not made for each other.” Nobody is.
So all husbands and wives are simply coexisting. It is not relationship but tolerating, avoiding conflict. They don’t open their mouths because the moment they open their mouths, soon there will be argument. It is better to keep silent. The husband goes on reading the same newspaper again and again just to avoid the wife, because if he stops reading it the wife is there. And it is not rare that wives throw away the newspapers, magazines, books, because they know they are just barriers. They want to talk. The whole day they have been burning hot, and in the evening you come and you start reading your newspaper!
Why are they in such anger? – because you have both given each other great promises, great hopes, and neither you have been able to fulfill them nor she has been able to fulfill them. You had promised paradise and you have given hell to each other.
If you come here with an open mind, and you see that to live with a woman you no longer love is a crime – it is sin, it is ugly, inhuman. It is better to depart with friendship, with gratitude for all those beautiful moments that you lived together. The breeze that had come into the room has now gone out by the other door; there is no point in pretending. But everybody is pretending.
I am simply taking one example. I know doctors who don’t want to be doctors – but what else to do? They have a wife, they have children, they have parents…
Why not?
They are afraid to just play guitar on the street and become a hippy! They have been raised with all these responsibilities. Their conditioning is that you have duty towards your parents, duty towards your children, duty to your wife. Even if they dare to go, they will feel guilty, they will feel they have betrayed the culture, the civilization, the religion; they have betrayed their parents, their children, their wives. They will not feel at ease at all.
In my commune, nobody has any responsibility towards anybody else. He is responsible only for himself. Hence there is no question of any guilt and there is no question of any repentance.
Jesus continuously says to his people: “Repent! Repent!” What kind of religion is this that teaches people to repent? They can repent only if you have first created guilt. Repentance is secondary; it cannot exist on its own. First create guilt in them. First tell them that even to look with loving and desiring eyes at someone’s wife is sin. Strange. If the woman is beautiful, why not look with loving eyes? That should be simply the way, the right way. Why not go and tell the husband of the woman, “You are fortunate. You have a beautiful wife. I am already thinking of swapping!”
But we are living in a very idiotic society. You can appreciate a painting, you can appreciate music, you can appreciate a flower, but you cannot appreciate a beautiful woman, a beautiful man? If your wife tells you, “Look at that beautiful man,” you will feel hurt.
How would you react in this kind of situation?
I would enjoy; my wife has some ascetic sensibility. And I would tell her, “If that man is willing, you are free to go with him. It is your life, and you are not responsible towards me. I love you, hence I cannot prevent you. I love you so much that if you are happy with that man, I will be immensely happy.” That would be my response. I cannot call it a reaction; it is not reaction. Reaction is an ugly word.
What would you say?
It is my response – and this is my response-ability. I love the woman, but she suddenly feels a great love arising in her towards somebody else. What she can do? Love is not something within her hands. It happens. And if it is happening and she has to repress it, she will take revenge on me. That’s why every wife is taking revenge, every husband is taking revenge. Instead of love flowing between them, only revenge, because everybody sees the prison in the other, “Because of her…”
I don’t think you can find a single husband who has not thought of killing his wife at least once. The exact number is at least four times. And it is natural, because she is the barrier and a beautiful woman is standing just within your reach.
These are all problems. When people come here they are burdened with thousands of things. If they appreciate this place, these people, then what they are going to think about themselves? They are impotent, they are cowardly; they don’t know how to live, they don’t know how to love, they don’t know how to enjoy freedom and they don’t know how to allow others to enjoy freedom. They know nothing. And it is difficult to accept; it is against the ego to accept, “I don’t know anything of the art of living.” And that is my whole religion: the art of living.
There is no God in my religion, there is no heaven and hell in my religion; there is just simply an art.
Osho,
You say that you are against all isms, but you call your religion Rajneeshism – how do you explain this?
I don’t call it – this is one of the problems; it is others who started calling it that. And I can understand their difficulty, they have to label it something. And it is not only in this case. For example, Germans don’t call their country Germany; it is others who call it that. Germans have their own name for their country, but nobody bothers about their name.
India has its own name, but nobody knows about it outside India. They have never called it India; it was others who started calling it India – for a very strange reason. When Alexander the Great – who was the first invader – reached the boundaries of India, on the boundary there was an immensely beautiful big river which is called Sindh. The Greeks could not call it Sindh; they called it Indh. And from their “Indh” the country became India. No Indian has ever called it India, no scripture of India ever mentions it as India. It was Alexander and his armies who coined the name Indh, India, Indian – and that became the name to the whole world.
That’s what is happening to us. We don’t have any ism, but people had to label it something. But it is just like a name: you are born without a name, people give you a name because without a name it is really going to be difficult for them – how to address you? It is others who started calling it an ism.
I am against all isms, including Rajneeshism. The very idea of ism is ugly. It means you have come to a conclusion, to the full point – now there is going to be no growth. Every ism is a dead thing – and I am still alive. Please at least wait for me to die, then you can call it an ism. But while I am alive… And every day I am contradicting myself knowingly, for the simple reason that with so many contradictions, nobody will be able to create an ism even when I am gone.
Is there a difference between a Rajneeshee and a sannyasin?
There is. Rajneeshee is the name given by others to my people. Sannyas is my peoples’ decision to be with me, to allow me to reach their hearts, to be open to me, to remain available to me.
Sannyas simply means your decision that you would like to be in as intimate contact with me as possible. It is a totally individual decision. And all my sannyasins are related to me directly, individually. They are together because they all love me; otherwise there is no ism that is binding them together. Their love is the only thing that is binding them together. Because they love me, naturally they have started loving each other.
Sannyas is a totally different thing. It is not an ism, it is a love affair. Yes, exactly a love affair.
There are some people who don't get sannyas. How do you explain the phenomenon that some people don't get sannyas?
It is up to them. There can be a thousand and one reasons, and for every individual it will be different. There are people who would like to become sannyasins – for example, you! I can see that you would like to become a sannyasin, but there may be a thousand and one things hindering. To be or not to be – but trust me, I am going to get you. You cannot escape.
I know my people. I recognize them immediately. There are many people who would like to become sannyasins but they have problems, and I can understand. For example, many Mohammedans from the Middle East have come to me. They want to become sannyasins but they would be killed.
So, people from the Middle East want to become sannyasins; they have come with tears in their eyes, but they say, “Then we cannot go back to our country, to our family. We will immediately be killed.”
There are Russians who want to become sannyasins. There are other communist countries where people want to become sannyasins, but there are problems. Now in Russia they have found that I have a few groups, and they are persecuting them, for no reason at all. They are not creating any problems, any harm, anything, but the KGB is calling them, interrogating them, harassing them, threatening them.
And now, just a few days ago, they have published an article against me which is absolute fiction. It has nothing to do with me; not a single thing is right in it. And in it they have declared the names of twenty people who are suspected of being my people. Now, those twenty people will be in difficulty everywhere – in the restaurant, in the village, in the job; with their wives, with their parents, with the communist party. Now, those twenty people will be in difficulty everywhere.
But for the sixty years after the revolution in Russia, the young man has lost something tremendously valuable which is an intrinsic part of being young. That is the dream of a revolution, the dream of a change, the dream of a utopia. They are not allowed to have any dreams of this kind: the revolution has happened and now there is going to be no revolution.
But young people will always need something – that is part of their romantic youth. So they have found me. They are smuggling in literature, they are typing my books, spreading those books. Cyclostyled books, handwritten books, typed books, are moving from hand to hand, underground. They meet in basements – and they are more excited than anybody else. They had been asking me, “Can we wear red clothes? Can we wear a mala?” I tell them not to do such things, “because you will be in trouble and I don’t want anybody to be in trouble. You are my sannyasins without the mala, without red clothes.”
Strangely enough, red had been the monopoly of the communists, it is now my monopoly. They have already lost a great monopoly. Now they have only a flag. I have all my people in red – everybody is a flag.
There are problems with people. One old man comes here, for the whole year he has been coming. He is a billionaire. Now, that is his problem because his family – he’s old, almost seventy, but he is the head of the family, the head of all the corporations, the head who controls all the money. Now the family is worried that he is coming here too much. Every month he is here for one week.
He wanted to become a sannyasin, but the family went to a deprogrammer, and the deprogrammer said, “He is not a young kid that you can deprogram – he is seventy years old. If you try to force him to come here you will be really forcing him into sannyas. He has not taken sannyas yet – just keep quiet. Be more loving to him, be more respectful to him, and don’t disturb him.”
Is he an American?
He is an American. And he is still coming and he will become a sannyasin. He has asked me twice and I said wait, because I don’t want to disturb that old man with his family and everything. I have been preventing him by telling him, “You will be unnecessarily troubled. Right now, go on coming, meditate, but remain underground.”
I have many underground sannyasins around the world, because there are countries where they have thrown my sannyasins out of their jobs; universities have thrown professors out of their jobs because they became sannyasins. Strange. They are fighting cases in the courts, because you can be a Christian and nobody throws you out. Christianity has power, the majority, and the politicians are in the hands of the majority. They cannot do anything against Christianity – and they themselves are Christians. And now suddenly a person appears who is intelligent, well-educated, a professor, and he has never been found doing anything wrong, but just becoming a sannyasin… He will still be teaching the same things, he will still be doing the same work – what has gone wrong?
Now, I don’t want anybody to unnecessarily be a martyr. I don’t want anybody to be unnecessarily tortured. I will suggest to drop the red clothes, keep the mala at home, and take the job. Tell them you are no longer a sannyasin. It does not matter; what matters is your love towards me – nobody can take that. What matters is your meditation – nobody can take that, nobody can even know about it.
The essential is such that it is invisible. These are non-essential things which I have created just to shock the crowd, just to make my sannyasins have a certain identity, so they can create more enemies, more hostility. That is my way of working – that’s how I have got one million sannyasins around the world, without going anywhere. I simply sit in my room.
Buddha traveled continuously for forty-two years, and still he did not have as many people as I have without moving out of my room. I will not move out of my room, and I am going to have many more millions of sannyasins. And now I have opened a new area – underground sannyasins. Those who want to be sannyasins are willing to sacrifice, but I am against sacrifice. Why should you sacrifice? You can have it without any sacrifice. It is something inner. You can go on pretending to be a Christian, and even if you have to go to church every Sunday, go and have a good morning nap – there is no problem in it. I am not a fanatic about anything.
So people come…if they stay here a little, then they are bound to fall in love with my people. If they just come and have a look and run away, then they will carry hostility, all kinds of jealousies – and they will feel inferior and they will take revenge.
You ask me why particularly the Germans are so hostile. Because the Germans have suffered two world wars – and particularly the Second World War, in the hands of a very charismatic but crackpot Adolf Hitler. The Germans are worried because the German youth is getting too attracted to me, the same way the German youth was attracted to Adolf Hitler. They don’t know that I am just the opposite kind of person.
For example, the Swiss haven't had any war since one hundred years.
I know, that’s why there are not many Swiss sannyasins. They are living comfortably, well.
They don't need it.
They need it…
Why?
…but they don’t know it. They are comfortable and it is difficult to drop comforts.
Why should they?
They will have to drop comforts if they want to have luxuries. I am against poverty, but I am against just mere comforts. I am for luxury I am always for the best.
You have said that you are the guru of the rich people. Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world – are you the guru of the Swiss people?
Soon I will be – just start it! It is not going to be long. Only the rich can understand me, because only the rich need me. They have seen everything in life and it is not fulfilling them; it is not what they were looking for. They have everything and yet there is tremendous discontent inside.
The poor man is hungry. He needs bread, he needs clothes, he needs shelter. To talk about meditation to a poor man is simply inhuman. I will not do that – it is not his need. It is as if he is hungry and you tell him, “Listen to Mozart, look at the paintings of van Gogh.” It would be very inhuman. And meditation is far higher than any Mozart or any van Gogh. It is the ultimate in luxury, because only in meditation will you find what you have been looking for, for many lives.
The rich man is capable of understanding me and is in need of me. He just has to come to know about me. So make an effort that the rich people in Switzerland become aware of me, that I can give them what they cannot purchase. I can give them that which no money can ever purchase.
Do you have any special projects for Switzerland already?
No, but I have my commune there. They are working well, perfectly well, and soon they will be spreading. It takes a little time and it is very delicate. But I am the talk of the whole world, nobody can escape me. He will have to decide either for me or against me, he cannot ignore me. And either way I am happy. Decide for or against – I have taken possession of you.
So, my people are there and they have a beautiful commune in Zurich. I can come there any day.
Osho,
Today in the discourse you talked about women's menstruation. Some weeks ago you said that you are for nature and for natural things. I was surprised that you were saying that the menstruation should be prevented by medicine.
I understand. I have always spoken for nature; it does not mean that we cannot go beyond nature. We should not go against nature, but we can go beyond nature – otherwise what is your intelligence for? Nature has given you intelligence, and the simple reason is to make you capable of going beyond. Up to now you have used your intelligence for going against.
I would like man to improve upon nature. There are many things which can be improved. And nature has given you intelligence, so it is nature itself improving. You are part of nature. For example, this monthly blues of women is simply something very crude and primitive. Nature can be improved upon and we will not be going against nature.
If we can make all the women of the world free from this torture that they have to go through for six days, seven days, some for ten days, I don’t think we are doing anything against nature. We are helping the woman to become more healthy, more loving, less nagging. We are not only helping the woman, we are also helping the man, because for those ten days of the woman she is continuously a nuisance! She is suffering, she is in pain, she is almost in a kind of temporary insanity. Everything she does she will regret after the period is over. She will say, “It is because of the period that I was throwing plates and breaking things unnecessarily.”
So the distinction has to be remembered: I am against anybody going against nature but if you are going beyond, I am all for you. And intelligence is really part of nature. Nature itself wants to transcend all mistakes, all errors through intelligence. Intelligence is part of nature, otherwise nature is blind. Intelligence is nature’s eyes.
So everything… For example, if a plastic heart gives you better health, a longer life with no possibility of a heart attack, I will support the plastic heart. And I would not say that this is going against nature, because whatever nature could do, you are doing in a better way. And you are part of nature, so it is nature itself improving on itself.
So I am for everything. I am not a fanatical person who believes in “back to nature.” Then you will be in the trees!
Osho,
What do you think about homeopathy?
Nonsense, German nonsense.
Why?
Because it was born in Germany.
Why a nonsense?
Because it is just sugar pills and nothing else. But it can help idiots who are suffering from diseases which do not exist, which are just their creations. It can help, so I am not saying to stop it. But a better way would be that people should be made more intelligent, so that they don’t suffer from hallucinatory sicknesses. There are many “pathies,” not only homeopathy. There is naturopathy, there is ayurveda in India, there is acupuncture in China, and there are many others in every country. And only allopathy is scientific; all others are just belief systems.
If you believe in naturopathy, it can be of great help in at least eighty percent of diseases, because those diseases don’t exist. They are just in your mind. So anything – in India people will go to the so-called saints and just wash their feet, drink the water and they are healed. No homeopathy, no naturopathy, no allopathy, nothing is needed – just washing the feet of the saint and drinking that water and they are healed! They were never sick in the first place; that’s why allopathy could not help them.
Allopathy can only help if the sickness is real. If the sickness is unreal, then allopathy is dangerous, because you are giving medicines for a sickness which does not exist. Your medicines will have their own after-effects, because medicines have of all kinds of poisons. They are meant to kill a certain virus, certain causes of sickness, but if the sickness is only in the mind, just an idea, then allopathy is dangerous. The person should go to homeopathy, to other pathies, naturopathy…
But if we can raise human consciousness just a little bit, eighty percent of diseases will simply disappear. And with eighty percent of diseases disappearing, homeopathy, naturopathy, ayurveda, acupuncture, all nonsense will disappear. There is going to be only one science of medicine, and for the twenty percent of diseases which are actual, it is enough.
The difference is exactly like other religions and my religion: all those religions are homeopathy; my religion is allopathy. All those religions are superstition; my religion is science. Those superstitions have exploited man for thousands of years: they create the disease, then they give the medicine to you. Naturally it is cured. They create guilt, then they give you prayer; they create guilt, then they say, “Confess to the priest.” They give you guilt, then they say, “Trust in God. He is compassionate, forgiving” – a very cunning game.
My people are guilt-free, hence nobody needs any prayer, nobody needs any Holy Bible, nobody needs any God. Even if God comes to Rajneeshpuram, the people who are dancing in the disco will not come out to see him. Who cares about God?
If you are guilty, if you feel you are a sinner, if you feel that on the judgment day God will be the person to decide where to send you – to hell or to heaven – then naturally if somebody appears on the streets and declares, “I am God,” a few people are going to believe in him. They will be the people who are suffering from fictitious ideas. God will be a tremendous consolation to them. That’s what your messiahs, your saviors, your prophets have been doing. The whole business of religion is dependent on lies, absolute lies.
The search for truth is a totally different thing. It is not out of guilt, it is not out of the sense that you are born in sin; it is born out of your intelligence. Naturally an intelligent person wants to know, “Why am I here? Why is this existence here? What is the meaning of it? What is the source of it and where are we going?” Any intelligent person is bound to be curious, with so many significant questions. Then there is a totally different religion.
When I hear you speaking I feel that humanity developed in the wrong direction for thousands of years.
That’s true.
Why?
It developed in the wrong direction because the cunning people could exploit it only if it developed in the wrong direction. And there are cunning people around – politicians, priests. These are the real criminals, not the people who are in prisons. They are poor people; they have done some small, trivial thing. The real criminals are your politicians and your priests, because their whole existence depends on man not knowing the truth: man should be diverted into directions where he finds nothing. That’s why humanity has gone in wrong directions – and is still going.
Is it natural that it's going in the wrong direction?
No, it is not natural. It is because of the criminal minds of a few people who have dominated. And the criminal mind always wants to dominate. If it fails then it has to suffer the indignity of imprisonment; if it succeeds it becomes a president of a country or a prime minister or a pope. But all those people are criminals.
Simple humanity, innocent humanity, is available to those criminals, and nobody is standing against them. That’s why they are all against me. They may be against each other – it is a very strange situation: they are all against each other, but as far as I am concerned they are all together against me, because I am trying for the first time to cut their business from the very roots.
My effort is that man should be freed from guilt and sin, and immediately you would see such a flare-up of intelligence around the world, which has been repressed for thousands of years. Suddenly you would see new faces, fresh, without any mask, young. Once they dropped out of the direction that has been forced on them and started living simply, naturally, silently, through their own intrinsic insight – not depending on Jesus Christ or Moses or Buddha or Mohammed, just taking the whole responsibility on themselves – you would see a beautiful world arising. And it is not far away; it is going to happen, because people are really fed up, tired. They have been exploited too much. They just need the alternative, which we are trying to create.
All these communes around the world are to finally become the alternative. This is our answer to the society which is suffering unnecessarily, is miserable unnecessarily, is poor unnecessarily. And I don’t want just to talk about it, because that will not help. I want existential proof of what I am saying, and my people are going to become the existential proof. They don’t have any God, they don’t fear any hell, they are not greedy for any paradise. They are creating paradise here, now. And anybody can come and see and experience.
We are going to take over the world. It is a wildfire that I am creating which no fire brigade can stop. It just takes time, it is a big world.
So maybe sometime there ninety percent of the population of the world will be sannyasins, and the other ten percent non-sannyasins – what would you do then?
No problem; let those ten percent suffer. They are already punishing themselves, no further punishment is needed for them. If ninety percent of people are rejoicing and ten percent are mourning in the church because Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, because they will be comforted,” so let them mourn. We don’t want anybody to comfort us, we are already immensely fulfilled. We don’t need anybody to comfort us.
So those ten percent, or any percentage of people – those who do not want to change, who cling to their misery, suffering, anxiety, anguish, and who do not want to live, and their hopes are directed beyond death – it is up to them. They are free to suffer, they are free to torture themselves – and that’s what they have been doing for centuries. What have your saints been doing? – torturing themselves. And the more they torture themselves, the more they are respected. The more they are respected, the more they torture themselves, because then their ego is fulfilled. Just a vicious circle. They fast and people respect them. They start fasting more and people respect them more, they become great saints.
There have been strange kinds of religious sects. One Christian sect believed in flogging themselves every morning. The more you flog yourself, lash yourself, and blood flows from your body, the greater a Christian you are. And the saints, of course, were torturing themselves more than their followers.
In Russia there was a Christian sect which used to cut off their genitals, and they were tremendously respected. Women were in a difficulty, because the men were becoming saints – they were cutting off their genitals – but the women…? Finally they found a way, they started cutting off their breasts. Every year there was a day in that sect when people would get into a frenzy and would start cutting off their genitals, their breasts. And those who did it became saints – nothing else to do.
In India all kinds of masochists have been respected as great saints. And of course, those who follow them have to do something on the same lines.
I teach my people to rejoice, not to live in any torture. Suffering is not a quality, a value. Creativity is a value. Create something that will make you a great musician, a great dancer, a great poet. These will be my saints because they have contributed to the happiness of man, to his pleasure, to his comfort. They have made the world better, they have improved upon nature. They should be called saints and they should have all the respect, honor – not these idiots who are cutting off their genitals or hitting themselves with…
A strange kind of instrument was developed in the Middle Ages by Christianity. A certain kind of shoes in which there were nails – you put your feet in and those nails go into your feet, and you have to walk on those shoes, blood oozing – and those nails make permanent wounds, because the saint has to use them every day. They made belts with nails going into your skin, and you are not supposed even to take those belts off when you go to sleep.
In India there are still people – if you go to Varanasi you will find people lying down on a bed of nails, specially made. Their whole body is in immense torture, but thousands of people are worshipping them. You will find people who are not sitting, not sleeping, but just standing for years – that is their great achievement. They have to stand with support, so ropes hang from the ceiling, a rod is fixed in the ropes and they put their hands on the rod. Slowly, slowly the blood goes on and on filling their legs; their head and their upper body shrinks and their legs become elephant legs. They are really creating elephantitis – a certain kind of disease – but they are known as saints. And you will not see any intelligence in their eyes. From where will intelligence come? Their blood does not reach their head anymore. You need to sleep sometimes so that blood can reach your head, clean it, take away the old cells, bring new cells.
But those people have been standing for twelve years or twenty years, and the dead cells have not been removed by the blood. In fact, all the blood has moved into their legs because of gravitation,. Now, even if they want to sit they cannot; their body has lost the elasticity. They cannot bend their legs, their knees have disappeared long ago. But they have the respect of thousands of people.
And I have been asking people, “If somebody suffers from elephantitis, do you think of him as a saint?” These people are creating the disease themselves; they are idiots! What is their contribution to humanity, to the world? They have not given a single poem, a single painting, a single song. All that they have done is this stupid thing, and now they have followers who are practicing standing just the way the great master is doing. They have lost all intelligence; they cannot even speak. But this is what has been done in the past.
I am not against it unnecessarily. Every intelligent person in the world should be against it, and we should create an atmosphere in which man is freed from all these mad ideas. And that’s what my work is: a sannyasin is one who is freed from all insane ideas, who has dropped the cage and opened his wings into the sky. Now he knows the beauty of being free, he knows the tremendous joy of moving towards the faraway stars – the immensity of the universe is all his.
And every sannyasin has to contribute; nobody should leave this world the same as he has found it. He should contribute something – that is my religion. He should improve something. He should make more songs, more music, more dances. He should make more beautiful flowers. Nature has to be improved.
You can crossbreed plants; you can create new flowers which have never existed. It is not against nature – it is simply that you were intelligent enough to use the potential of nature, when nature was always ready to crossbreed. You can crossbreed fruits and you can have new fruits, with new taste, which no human being has ever tasted before. You will be the first to taste it. And you can arrange the taste the way you want – an apple having also a little taste of lemon in it will be more juicy. Or you can make it more sweet…
The same has to be done with animals, and the same has to be done with man. I am all for human engineering. Up to now, man has been just an accident. We have to improve upon it. Because of this accidental thing there are so many idiots in the world who could have been prevented, and there could have been in their place so many geniuses. It is not against nature; it is simply using your intelligence and the potential of nature.
In a single intercourse a man releases millions of living cells. In those million people there may be an Albert Einstein, there may be a Shakespeare, there may be a Milton, there may be a Dante – and there are going to be thousands of idiots, mediocre people. And it is just left to accident who reaches to the female egg first. And as far as I know, geniuses are always lazy. I myself always wonder how I managed to reach the egg first, with so many idiots in the race. Just by accident.
Up to now we have lived with accidental humanity; now we can live with a planned humanity. So, if we need one thousand Albert Einsteins we can produce one thousand Albert Einsteins. If we need more doctors, then there is no need to force people to be doctors, because a forced man – for example, I myself.
My parents wanted me either to become a doctor or an engineer or a scientist, and I simply refused. I said, “I am going to study philosophy.” They said, “You are mad! Philosophy pays nothing. You will not even get a job.”
I said, “I am not bothered about a job. I can beg, but I am going to study philosophy.”
My whole family was against it, and they all said, “Then you can go, but we will not be giving you any financial support.”
I said, “That is decided. There is no problem in it. I am going against you, it is expected that you should not give me any economic support. But remember, even if someday you want to give me support, I will not take it.”
For two years I had to work in the night as an editor on a newspaper and in the day to attend the university. Slowly, slowly, my family started feeling guilty that they were destroying my health. I was working the whole night, then in the day I was going to the university, and here and there I found time to sleep.
My father came to me with tears in his eyes. He said, “Forgive us, but please accept – stop what you are doing and drop this job. We will be sending you enough money.”
I said, “But it was decided. I will not take it, because I have not followed your idea. Why should you be unnecessarily burdened financially, to help somebody who has disobeyed you, always disobeyed you? No, it is perfectly good. I have no grudge, no complaint against you. I have done it knowingly. Even before you said it, I knew that that would be the last pressure. But I don’t want to see you crying.”
But he would not leave. He said, “I will not go from the hostel till you accept the money.”
Finally I had to accept but I told him, “I am taking this money only because of your tears. I don’t want anybody to be miserable. Otherwise, I don’t deserve it. I am accepting it only because you will never be able to forgive yourself, and I don’t want anybody to feel guilty on my account.”
There is no need to force anybody to become a doctor or an engineer or a scientist. We can produce exactly what we want. This whole life is a mess: the person who needed to become a plumber has become a professor; the person who needed to be a professor is just a plumber. A strange world. Both are unhappy, both are inadequate in their work, neither can ever be total in their work. Neither of them is going to reach to the height of his creativity and potentiality. They are in the wrong places.
We can improve upon nature, we should improve upon nature. And it is not against nature. Nature is already giving one million living beings to you; now it is up to you who wins the race. Help the right person, because the right person may be lazy. The right person may not run so fast. The right person may not care at all. Poets, painters, dancers, scientists, philosophers, mystics, may perhaps stand by the side and let the crowd go by. This type of people don’t like crowds! We have to remove the crowd from the traffic jam and bring those people who are standing by the side of the road.
And we know now that the cell has everything. What it is going to be, what its potentialities are, how long its life will be, what kind of diseases the person will suffer, what color the person will have, can be read, because the living cell has everything built in. And we can change it. That too is possible now. Why should this man unnecessarily suffer diseases when we can remove them from the plan from the very beginning? We can reprogram the person. We can take out all the possibilities of sicknesses; we can take out old age. We can let the person live a long, healthy and young life. Old age can simply disappear from the world. Sicknesses can be prevented from the very beginning, rather than fighting with your sicknesses your whole life – and thousands of hospitals and millions of doctors and nurses. A sheer waste. All this could have been prevented.
Even whether the person is going to be a criminal or not can be read. The whole map of his life is available. We can take out his criminal element, his political element, his effort to become a priest or a pope – we can take out all these stupid things. And we can give him a new program: how you can live more joyously, how to relish the small things of life. A cup of tea – you can enjoy it as if it is the ultimate bliss.
I call it going beyond nature and I say it is nature’s own project, it is not against nature. Intelligence is the proof. Nature has given you intelligence, now use it.
Okay?
Get ready for sannyas!
Sonntagsblick, Zurich, Switzerland
Glad to meet you.
You can start asking your questions.
Osho,
I want to ask some questions about Switzerland. You love the Swiss people?
I hate all divisions in humanity – Swiss, Italian, German, Indian. Mankind is one; the whole earth is one. People everywhere are all lovable, there is no need to discriminate. Of course I love the people who live in Switzerland, but I will not call them Swiss people.
The Swiss people are famous because of their clean country, and they call themselves a commune too. Do you think there is a similarity between your commune and Switzerland, because you are keeping your commune very clean and so…
I know Swiss people are clean, but there is nothing in it to brag about. One should be clean; it is not something special, it should be natural. When somebody is unclean, then he is a special case.
Switzerland is clean, a beautiful country…
Is it possible that you will go to Switzerland at any time?
There is every possibility, I keep everything open.
What would you do if you were in Switzerland?
That would depend what people there do with me. They will be as hostile to me as any other people, because the mind of man is just the same all over the world: conditioned by the past. Anything new creates fear, paranoia. And I am totally new, discontinuous with the past.
I want humanity to burn the whole history of man and just to start from scratch, because what we have done in the past is not worth remembering. The sooner we forget it the better.
So it is not a question of Switzerland or Germany or England or India. The mind is conditioned by the past. There may be differences in detail, but one thing is basic: they are all living with ideas which are out of date, and they are all living with fictions as if they are realities. So when I say the truth it hurts, it shocks.
What would you deprogram in Switzerland?
I would do exactly the same as I am doing here: shocking people, creating as many enemies as possible – because that is my way of working. Once you are my enemy, then friendship is not far away. Rather than starting with friendship and ending up with enmity – which is what happens – I have reversed the process. I start with enmity and end up with friendship. Then there is no possibility of enmity again; it is already finished, it is already over.
Gautam Buddha used to say that anything that is sweet in the beginning turns out to be bitter in the end, and anything that is bitter in the beginning turns out to be sweet in the end – and I feel he is right as far as human relationships are concerned.
Osho,
I never saw such a peaceful place as Rajneeshpuram, and I can't explain to myself why it is that most of the journalists who come here write very hatefully and negatively about this place and you, especially the German-speaking journalists.
There are reasons. The people who come here, come with closed minds, already full of prejudice; they have already arrived at their conclusion before arriving here. And with those glasses on their eyes they look – naturally, whatever color glasses they are wearing, they see it here. It is their reflection. Because you have come open, unprejudiced, with no idea for or against, you will see the reality.
There is certainly no other place more peaceful, more loving, more rejoicing. In fact, that is also one of the causes of people becoming hostile. Basically their hostility is based on jealousy. They are miserable; they have forgotten how to smile, they have forgotten how to laugh. They are living in utter anguish, and suddenly they come across these tremendously ecstatic people. Jealousy arises, and hostility is a way to hide that jealousy. They don’t want to believe that they have missed something in their lives which others are already enjoying. They don’t want to believe that it is a reality. So they spread all kinds of rumors which have no base in fact. But they are bound to do that.
It is difficult to find open people to come here, because open people don’t exist. Somebody is Christian, somebody is Hindu, somebody is Mohammedan, somebody is a communist – everybody is part of a crowd, everybody is part of a mob psychology. And whatever is happening here goes absolutely against his background, his mind, his tradition, his religion. Naturally, he feels offended.
I have no complaint about these people, just sadness, because if they were open they themselves could have found a way to rejoice in life. But rather than finding a way, they create more and more barriers to understanding.
We don’t hate anybody; everybody is welcome. But it is one of the basic things to be understood: you can be compassionate to somebody who is suffering, because that gives you the idea that you are not suffering. You can be compassionate to a poor man who is dying, starving, because deep inside there is a consolation that you are not in his place. But you cannot be loving towards someone who is living better than you. He creates inferiority in you. It is your doing, he is not doing anything – he is just living his life – but you start feeling inferior. And how to get rid of the inferiority complex? Either you learn to live the way the other man is living – that needs tremendous courage and guts because you will have to drop so many things you have become attached to.
People become attached even to their fetters, as if the fetters are made of gold; people become attached to their cages as if they are masterpieces. They don’t want anybody else – just think of a bird in a cage looking at the sky, at other birds on the wing, how does he feel? He has to find some way to condemn those birds, otherwise he is condemned. He cannot leave the cage, he is not brave enough to destroy it and get rid of it. And, in fact, he is infatuated with its beauty – the beautiful cathedrals, the churches, the beautiful Vatican, all that keeps you encaged. The bird on the wing has nothing, but he has the whole sky.
The only way to console yourself is to find some fault with the bird on the wing: that he is disobedient, that he is rebellious, that he is a criminal, that he is doing something wrong which is not supposed to be done. He should be peacefully in a cage. And the cage is nothing but the living acceptance of a grave. You have already died – a bird without wings is dead. A bird whose sky has been taken away from him is dead.
So when those dead birds come here and they see my people with their wings open in the sky – loving, dancing, singing, enjoying, relishing every moment – suddenly a great inferiority complex arises in them. They have to do something about it. And there are only two ways: either become red or become hostile.
Becoming hostile is easier, because it keeps your vested interests, your jobs, your crowd, your respectability intact. Becoming a sannyasin…yes, you will have the whole sky but you will lose the safety, the security, the bank balance, the job – perhaps the wife, the parents, the children. The risk is too much; they decide it is better to hate these people. Their hate is a protection.
But as far as I am concerned, I know that the moment they start hating, they have already fallen in love. Their hate is superficial; it will not last long. That’s why I say I influence people and create enemies. Once they are my enemies they are my people. Sooner or later their hate is going to be dropped because it cannot stand against the truth. Their hate is going to become a nightmare for them because deep down they know what they are doing. It is not that they don’t know – they would like not to know, but there is no way. They know perfectly well what they are doing. They are rejecting a reality just because they are cowards, because accepting the reality of this place means a tremendous revolution in your life – in all the values of your life.
Perhaps you are living with your wife and there is no love anymore, but you are simply living with her because it is respectable. You are part of a society which respects monogamy, which respects that marriage should last for the whole life. And you have also promised this woman many times, “We are made for each other,” and now you find that, “We are not made for each other.” Nobody is.
So all husbands and wives are simply coexisting. It is not relationship but tolerating, avoiding conflict. They don’t open their mouths because the moment they open their mouths, soon there will be argument. It is better to keep silent. The husband goes on reading the same newspaper again and again just to avoid the wife, because if he stops reading it the wife is there. And it is not rare that wives throw away the newspapers, magazines, books, because they know they are just barriers. They want to talk. The whole day they have been burning hot, and in the evening you come and you start reading your newspaper!
Why are they in such anger? – because you have both given each other great promises, great hopes, and neither you have been able to fulfill them nor she has been able to fulfill them. You had promised paradise and you have given hell to each other.
If you come here with an open mind, and you see that to live with a woman you no longer love is a crime – it is sin, it is ugly, inhuman. It is better to depart with friendship, with gratitude for all those beautiful moments that you lived together. The breeze that had come into the room has now gone out by the other door; there is no point in pretending. But everybody is pretending.
I am simply taking one example. I know doctors who don’t want to be doctors – but what else to do? They have a wife, they have children, they have parents…
Why not?
They are afraid to just play guitar on the street and become a hippy! They have been raised with all these responsibilities. Their conditioning is that you have duty towards your parents, duty towards your children, duty to your wife. Even if they dare to go, they will feel guilty, they will feel they have betrayed the culture, the civilization, the religion; they have betrayed their parents, their children, their wives. They will not feel at ease at all.
In my commune, nobody has any responsibility towards anybody else. He is responsible only for himself. Hence there is no question of any guilt and there is no question of any repentance.
Jesus continuously says to his people: “Repent! Repent!” What kind of religion is this that teaches people to repent? They can repent only if you have first created guilt. Repentance is secondary; it cannot exist on its own. First create guilt in them. First tell them that even to look with loving and desiring eyes at someone’s wife is sin. Strange. If the woman is beautiful, why not look with loving eyes? That should be simply the way, the right way. Why not go and tell the husband of the woman, “You are fortunate. You have a beautiful wife. I am already thinking of swapping!”
But we are living in a very idiotic society. You can appreciate a painting, you can appreciate music, you can appreciate a flower, but you cannot appreciate a beautiful woman, a beautiful man? If your wife tells you, “Look at that beautiful man,” you will feel hurt.
How would you react in this kind of situation?
I would enjoy; my wife has some ascetic sensibility. And I would tell her, “If that man is willing, you are free to go with him. It is your life, and you are not responsible towards me. I love you, hence I cannot prevent you. I love you so much that if you are happy with that man, I will be immensely happy.” That would be my response. I cannot call it a reaction; it is not reaction. Reaction is an ugly word.
What would you say?
It is my response – and this is my response-ability. I love the woman, but she suddenly feels a great love arising in her towards somebody else. What she can do? Love is not something within her hands. It happens. And if it is happening and she has to repress it, she will take revenge on me. That’s why every wife is taking revenge, every husband is taking revenge. Instead of love flowing between them, only revenge, because everybody sees the prison in the other, “Because of her…”
I don’t think you can find a single husband who has not thought of killing his wife at least once. The exact number is at least four times. And it is natural, because she is the barrier and a beautiful woman is standing just within your reach.
These are all problems. When people come here they are burdened with thousands of things. If they appreciate this place, these people, then what they are going to think about themselves? They are impotent, they are cowardly; they don’t know how to live, they don’t know how to love, they don’t know how to enjoy freedom and they don’t know how to allow others to enjoy freedom. They know nothing. And it is difficult to accept; it is against the ego to accept, “I don’t know anything of the art of living.” And that is my whole religion: the art of living.
There is no God in my religion, there is no heaven and hell in my religion; there is just simply an art.
Osho,
You say that you are against all isms, but you call your religion Rajneeshism – how do you explain this?
I don’t call it – this is one of the problems; it is others who started calling it that. And I can understand their difficulty, they have to label it something. And it is not only in this case. For example, Germans don’t call their country Germany; it is others who call it that. Germans have their own name for their country, but nobody bothers about their name.
India has its own name, but nobody knows about it outside India. They have never called it India; it was others who started calling it India – for a very strange reason. When Alexander the Great – who was the first invader – reached the boundaries of India, on the boundary there was an immensely beautiful big river which is called Sindh. The Greeks could not call it Sindh; they called it Indh. And from their “Indh” the country became India. No Indian has ever called it India, no scripture of India ever mentions it as India. It was Alexander and his armies who coined the name Indh, India, Indian – and that became the name to the whole world.
That’s what is happening to us. We don’t have any ism, but people had to label it something. But it is just like a name: you are born without a name, people give you a name because without a name it is really going to be difficult for them – how to address you? It is others who started calling it an ism.
I am against all isms, including Rajneeshism. The very idea of ism is ugly. It means you have come to a conclusion, to the full point – now there is going to be no growth. Every ism is a dead thing – and I am still alive. Please at least wait for me to die, then you can call it an ism. But while I am alive… And every day I am contradicting myself knowingly, for the simple reason that with so many contradictions, nobody will be able to create an ism even when I am gone.
Is there a difference between a Rajneeshee and a sannyasin?
There is. Rajneeshee is the name given by others to my people. Sannyas is my peoples’ decision to be with me, to allow me to reach their hearts, to be open to me, to remain available to me.
Sannyas simply means your decision that you would like to be in as intimate contact with me as possible. It is a totally individual decision. And all my sannyasins are related to me directly, individually. They are together because they all love me; otherwise there is no ism that is binding them together. Their love is the only thing that is binding them together. Because they love me, naturally they have started loving each other.
Sannyas is a totally different thing. It is not an ism, it is a love affair. Yes, exactly a love affair.
There are some people who don't get sannyas. How do you explain the phenomenon that some people don't get sannyas?
It is up to them. There can be a thousand and one reasons, and for every individual it will be different. There are people who would like to become sannyasins – for example, you! I can see that you would like to become a sannyasin, but there may be a thousand and one things hindering. To be or not to be – but trust me, I am going to get you. You cannot escape.
I know my people. I recognize them immediately. There are many people who would like to become sannyasins but they have problems, and I can understand. For example, many Mohammedans from the Middle East have come to me. They want to become sannyasins but they would be killed.
So, people from the Middle East want to become sannyasins; they have come with tears in their eyes, but they say, “Then we cannot go back to our country, to our family. We will immediately be killed.”
There are Russians who want to become sannyasins. There are other communist countries where people want to become sannyasins, but there are problems. Now in Russia they have found that I have a few groups, and they are persecuting them, for no reason at all. They are not creating any problems, any harm, anything, but the KGB is calling them, interrogating them, harassing them, threatening them.
And now, just a few days ago, they have published an article against me which is absolute fiction. It has nothing to do with me; not a single thing is right in it. And in it they have declared the names of twenty people who are suspected of being my people. Now, those twenty people will be in difficulty everywhere – in the restaurant, in the village, in the job; with their wives, with their parents, with the communist party. Now, those twenty people will be in difficulty everywhere.
But for the sixty years after the revolution in Russia, the young man has lost something tremendously valuable which is an intrinsic part of being young. That is the dream of a revolution, the dream of a change, the dream of a utopia. They are not allowed to have any dreams of this kind: the revolution has happened and now there is going to be no revolution.
But young people will always need something – that is part of their romantic youth. So they have found me. They are smuggling in literature, they are typing my books, spreading those books. Cyclostyled books, handwritten books, typed books, are moving from hand to hand, underground. They meet in basements – and they are more excited than anybody else. They had been asking me, “Can we wear red clothes? Can we wear a mala?” I tell them not to do such things, “because you will be in trouble and I don’t want anybody to be in trouble. You are my sannyasins without the mala, without red clothes.”
Strangely enough, red had been the monopoly of the communists, it is now my monopoly. They have already lost a great monopoly. Now they have only a flag. I have all my people in red – everybody is a flag.
There are problems with people. One old man comes here, for the whole year he has been coming. He is a billionaire. Now, that is his problem because his family – he’s old, almost seventy, but he is the head of the family, the head of all the corporations, the head who controls all the money. Now the family is worried that he is coming here too much. Every month he is here for one week.
He wanted to become a sannyasin, but the family went to a deprogrammer, and the deprogrammer said, “He is not a young kid that you can deprogram – he is seventy years old. If you try to force him to come here you will be really forcing him into sannyas. He has not taken sannyas yet – just keep quiet. Be more loving to him, be more respectful to him, and don’t disturb him.”
Is he an American?
He is an American. And he is still coming and he will become a sannyasin. He has asked me twice and I said wait, because I don’t want to disturb that old man with his family and everything. I have been preventing him by telling him, “You will be unnecessarily troubled. Right now, go on coming, meditate, but remain underground.”
I have many underground sannyasins around the world, because there are countries where they have thrown my sannyasins out of their jobs; universities have thrown professors out of their jobs because they became sannyasins. Strange. They are fighting cases in the courts, because you can be a Christian and nobody throws you out. Christianity has power, the majority, and the politicians are in the hands of the majority. They cannot do anything against Christianity – and they themselves are Christians. And now suddenly a person appears who is intelligent, well-educated, a professor, and he has never been found doing anything wrong, but just becoming a sannyasin… He will still be teaching the same things, he will still be doing the same work – what has gone wrong?
Now, I don’t want anybody to unnecessarily be a martyr. I don’t want anybody to be unnecessarily tortured. I will suggest to drop the red clothes, keep the mala at home, and take the job. Tell them you are no longer a sannyasin. It does not matter; what matters is your love towards me – nobody can take that. What matters is your meditation – nobody can take that, nobody can even know about it.
The essential is such that it is invisible. These are non-essential things which I have created just to shock the crowd, just to make my sannyasins have a certain identity, so they can create more enemies, more hostility. That is my way of working – that’s how I have got one million sannyasins around the world, without going anywhere. I simply sit in my room.
Buddha traveled continuously for forty-two years, and still he did not have as many people as I have without moving out of my room. I will not move out of my room, and I am going to have many more millions of sannyasins. And now I have opened a new area – underground sannyasins. Those who want to be sannyasins are willing to sacrifice, but I am against sacrifice. Why should you sacrifice? You can have it without any sacrifice. It is something inner. You can go on pretending to be a Christian, and even if you have to go to church every Sunday, go and have a good morning nap – there is no problem in it. I am not a fanatic about anything.
So people come…if they stay here a little, then they are bound to fall in love with my people. If they just come and have a look and run away, then they will carry hostility, all kinds of jealousies – and they will feel inferior and they will take revenge.
You ask me why particularly the Germans are so hostile. Because the Germans have suffered two world wars – and particularly the Second World War, in the hands of a very charismatic but crackpot Adolf Hitler. The Germans are worried because the German youth is getting too attracted to me, the same way the German youth was attracted to Adolf Hitler. They don’t know that I am just the opposite kind of person.
For example, the Swiss haven't had any war since one hundred years.
I know, that’s why there are not many Swiss sannyasins. They are living comfortably, well.
They don't need it.
They need it…
Why?
…but they don’t know it. They are comfortable and it is difficult to drop comforts.
Why should they?
They will have to drop comforts if they want to have luxuries. I am against poverty, but I am against just mere comforts. I am for luxury I am always for the best.
You have said that you are the guru of the rich people. Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world – are you the guru of the Swiss people?
Soon I will be – just start it! It is not going to be long. Only the rich can understand me, because only the rich need me. They have seen everything in life and it is not fulfilling them; it is not what they were looking for. They have everything and yet there is tremendous discontent inside.
The poor man is hungry. He needs bread, he needs clothes, he needs shelter. To talk about meditation to a poor man is simply inhuman. I will not do that – it is not his need. It is as if he is hungry and you tell him, “Listen to Mozart, look at the paintings of van Gogh.” It would be very inhuman. And meditation is far higher than any Mozart or any van Gogh. It is the ultimate in luxury, because only in meditation will you find what you have been looking for, for many lives.
The rich man is capable of understanding me and is in need of me. He just has to come to know about me. So make an effort that the rich people in Switzerland become aware of me, that I can give them what they cannot purchase. I can give them that which no money can ever purchase.
Do you have any special projects for Switzerland already?
No, but I have my commune there. They are working well, perfectly well, and soon they will be spreading. It takes a little time and it is very delicate. But I am the talk of the whole world, nobody can escape me. He will have to decide either for me or against me, he cannot ignore me. And either way I am happy. Decide for or against – I have taken possession of you.
So, my people are there and they have a beautiful commune in Zurich. I can come there any day.
Osho,
Today in the discourse you talked about women's menstruation. Some weeks ago you said that you are for nature and for natural things. I was surprised that you were saying that the menstruation should be prevented by medicine.
I understand. I have always spoken for nature; it does not mean that we cannot go beyond nature. We should not go against nature, but we can go beyond nature – otherwise what is your intelligence for? Nature has given you intelligence, and the simple reason is to make you capable of going beyond. Up to now you have used your intelligence for going against.
I would like man to improve upon nature. There are many things which can be improved. And nature has given you intelligence, so it is nature itself improving. You are part of nature. For example, this monthly blues of women is simply something very crude and primitive. Nature can be improved upon and we will not be going against nature.
If we can make all the women of the world free from this torture that they have to go through for six days, seven days, some for ten days, I don’t think we are doing anything against nature. We are helping the woman to become more healthy, more loving, less nagging. We are not only helping the woman, we are also helping the man, because for those ten days of the woman she is continuously a nuisance! She is suffering, she is in pain, she is almost in a kind of temporary insanity. Everything she does she will regret after the period is over. She will say, “It is because of the period that I was throwing plates and breaking things unnecessarily.”
So the distinction has to be remembered: I am against anybody going against nature but if you are going beyond, I am all for you. And intelligence is really part of nature. Nature itself wants to transcend all mistakes, all errors through intelligence. Intelligence is part of nature, otherwise nature is blind. Intelligence is nature’s eyes.
So everything… For example, if a plastic heart gives you better health, a longer life with no possibility of a heart attack, I will support the plastic heart. And I would not say that this is going against nature, because whatever nature could do, you are doing in a better way. And you are part of nature, so it is nature itself improving on itself.
So I am for everything. I am not a fanatical person who believes in “back to nature.” Then you will be in the trees!
Osho,
What do you think about homeopathy?
Nonsense, German nonsense.
Why?
Because it was born in Germany.
Why a nonsense?
Because it is just sugar pills and nothing else. But it can help idiots who are suffering from diseases which do not exist, which are just their creations. It can help, so I am not saying to stop it. But a better way would be that people should be made more intelligent, so that they don’t suffer from hallucinatory sicknesses. There are many “pathies,” not only homeopathy. There is naturopathy, there is ayurveda in India, there is acupuncture in China, and there are many others in every country. And only allopathy is scientific; all others are just belief systems.
If you believe in naturopathy, it can be of great help in at least eighty percent of diseases, because those diseases don’t exist. They are just in your mind. So anything – in India people will go to the so-called saints and just wash their feet, drink the water and they are healed. No homeopathy, no naturopathy, no allopathy, nothing is needed – just washing the feet of the saint and drinking that water and they are healed! They were never sick in the first place; that’s why allopathy could not help them.
Allopathy can only help if the sickness is real. If the sickness is unreal, then allopathy is dangerous, because you are giving medicines for a sickness which does not exist. Your medicines will have their own after-effects, because medicines have of all kinds of poisons. They are meant to kill a certain virus, certain causes of sickness, but if the sickness is only in the mind, just an idea, then allopathy is dangerous. The person should go to homeopathy, to other pathies, naturopathy…
But if we can raise human consciousness just a little bit, eighty percent of diseases will simply disappear. And with eighty percent of diseases disappearing, homeopathy, naturopathy, ayurveda, acupuncture, all nonsense will disappear. There is going to be only one science of medicine, and for the twenty percent of diseases which are actual, it is enough.
The difference is exactly like other religions and my religion: all those religions are homeopathy; my religion is allopathy. All those religions are superstition; my religion is science. Those superstitions have exploited man for thousands of years: they create the disease, then they give the medicine to you. Naturally it is cured. They create guilt, then they give you prayer; they create guilt, then they say, “Confess to the priest.” They give you guilt, then they say, “Trust in God. He is compassionate, forgiving” – a very cunning game.
My people are guilt-free, hence nobody needs any prayer, nobody needs any Holy Bible, nobody needs any God. Even if God comes to Rajneeshpuram, the people who are dancing in the disco will not come out to see him. Who cares about God?
If you are guilty, if you feel you are a sinner, if you feel that on the judgment day God will be the person to decide where to send you – to hell or to heaven – then naturally if somebody appears on the streets and declares, “I am God,” a few people are going to believe in him. They will be the people who are suffering from fictitious ideas. God will be a tremendous consolation to them. That’s what your messiahs, your saviors, your prophets have been doing. The whole business of religion is dependent on lies, absolute lies.
The search for truth is a totally different thing. It is not out of guilt, it is not out of the sense that you are born in sin; it is born out of your intelligence. Naturally an intelligent person wants to know, “Why am I here? Why is this existence here? What is the meaning of it? What is the source of it and where are we going?” Any intelligent person is bound to be curious, with so many significant questions. Then there is a totally different religion.
When I hear you speaking I feel that humanity developed in the wrong direction for thousands of years.
That’s true.
Why?
It developed in the wrong direction because the cunning people could exploit it only if it developed in the wrong direction. And there are cunning people around – politicians, priests. These are the real criminals, not the people who are in prisons. They are poor people; they have done some small, trivial thing. The real criminals are your politicians and your priests, because their whole existence depends on man not knowing the truth: man should be diverted into directions where he finds nothing. That’s why humanity has gone in wrong directions – and is still going.
Is it natural that it's going in the wrong direction?
No, it is not natural. It is because of the criminal minds of a few people who have dominated. And the criminal mind always wants to dominate. If it fails then it has to suffer the indignity of imprisonment; if it succeeds it becomes a president of a country or a prime minister or a pope. But all those people are criminals.
Simple humanity, innocent humanity, is available to those criminals, and nobody is standing against them. That’s why they are all against me. They may be against each other – it is a very strange situation: they are all against each other, but as far as I am concerned they are all together against me, because I am trying for the first time to cut their business from the very roots.
My effort is that man should be freed from guilt and sin, and immediately you would see such a flare-up of intelligence around the world, which has been repressed for thousands of years. Suddenly you would see new faces, fresh, without any mask, young. Once they dropped out of the direction that has been forced on them and started living simply, naturally, silently, through their own intrinsic insight – not depending on Jesus Christ or Moses or Buddha or Mohammed, just taking the whole responsibility on themselves – you would see a beautiful world arising. And it is not far away; it is going to happen, because people are really fed up, tired. They have been exploited too much. They just need the alternative, which we are trying to create.
All these communes around the world are to finally become the alternative. This is our answer to the society which is suffering unnecessarily, is miserable unnecessarily, is poor unnecessarily. And I don’t want just to talk about it, because that will not help. I want existential proof of what I am saying, and my people are going to become the existential proof. They don’t have any God, they don’t fear any hell, they are not greedy for any paradise. They are creating paradise here, now. And anybody can come and see and experience.
We are going to take over the world. It is a wildfire that I am creating which no fire brigade can stop. It just takes time, it is a big world.
So maybe sometime there ninety percent of the population of the world will be sannyasins, and the other ten percent non-sannyasins – what would you do then?
No problem; let those ten percent suffer. They are already punishing themselves, no further punishment is needed for them. If ninety percent of people are rejoicing and ten percent are mourning in the church because Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, because they will be comforted,” so let them mourn. We don’t want anybody to comfort us, we are already immensely fulfilled. We don’t need anybody to comfort us.
So those ten percent, or any percentage of people – those who do not want to change, who cling to their misery, suffering, anxiety, anguish, and who do not want to live, and their hopes are directed beyond death – it is up to them. They are free to suffer, they are free to torture themselves – and that’s what they have been doing for centuries. What have your saints been doing? – torturing themselves. And the more they torture themselves, the more they are respected. The more they are respected, the more they torture themselves, because then their ego is fulfilled. Just a vicious circle. They fast and people respect them. They start fasting more and people respect them more, they become great saints.
There have been strange kinds of religious sects. One Christian sect believed in flogging themselves every morning. The more you flog yourself, lash yourself, and blood flows from your body, the greater a Christian you are. And the saints, of course, were torturing themselves more than their followers.
In Russia there was a Christian sect which used to cut off their genitals, and they were tremendously respected. Women were in a difficulty, because the men were becoming saints – they were cutting off their genitals – but the women…? Finally they found a way, they started cutting off their breasts. Every year there was a day in that sect when people would get into a frenzy and would start cutting off their genitals, their breasts. And those who did it became saints – nothing else to do.
In India all kinds of masochists have been respected as great saints. And of course, those who follow them have to do something on the same lines.
I teach my people to rejoice, not to live in any torture. Suffering is not a quality, a value. Creativity is a value. Create something that will make you a great musician, a great dancer, a great poet. These will be my saints because they have contributed to the happiness of man, to his pleasure, to his comfort. They have made the world better, they have improved upon nature. They should be called saints and they should have all the respect, honor – not these idiots who are cutting off their genitals or hitting themselves with…
A strange kind of instrument was developed in the Middle Ages by Christianity. A certain kind of shoes in which there were nails – you put your feet in and those nails go into your feet, and you have to walk on those shoes, blood oozing – and those nails make permanent wounds, because the saint has to use them every day. They made belts with nails going into your skin, and you are not supposed even to take those belts off when you go to sleep.
In India there are still people – if you go to Varanasi you will find people lying down on a bed of nails, specially made. Their whole body is in immense torture, but thousands of people are worshipping them. You will find people who are not sitting, not sleeping, but just standing for years – that is their great achievement. They have to stand with support, so ropes hang from the ceiling, a rod is fixed in the ropes and they put their hands on the rod. Slowly, slowly the blood goes on and on filling their legs; their head and their upper body shrinks and their legs become elephant legs. They are really creating elephantitis – a certain kind of disease – but they are known as saints. And you will not see any intelligence in their eyes. From where will intelligence come? Their blood does not reach their head anymore. You need to sleep sometimes so that blood can reach your head, clean it, take away the old cells, bring new cells.
But those people have been standing for twelve years or twenty years, and the dead cells have not been removed by the blood. In fact, all the blood has moved into their legs because of gravitation,. Now, even if they want to sit they cannot; their body has lost the elasticity. They cannot bend their legs, their knees have disappeared long ago. But they have the respect of thousands of people.
And I have been asking people, “If somebody suffers from elephantitis, do you think of him as a saint?” These people are creating the disease themselves; they are idiots! What is their contribution to humanity, to the world? They have not given a single poem, a single painting, a single song. All that they have done is this stupid thing, and now they have followers who are practicing standing just the way the great master is doing. They have lost all intelligence; they cannot even speak. But this is what has been done in the past.
I am not against it unnecessarily. Every intelligent person in the world should be against it, and we should create an atmosphere in which man is freed from all these mad ideas. And that’s what my work is: a sannyasin is one who is freed from all insane ideas, who has dropped the cage and opened his wings into the sky. Now he knows the beauty of being free, he knows the tremendous joy of moving towards the faraway stars – the immensity of the universe is all his.
And every sannyasin has to contribute; nobody should leave this world the same as he has found it. He should contribute something – that is my religion. He should improve something. He should make more songs, more music, more dances. He should make more beautiful flowers. Nature has to be improved.
You can crossbreed plants; you can create new flowers which have never existed. It is not against nature – it is simply that you were intelligent enough to use the potential of nature, when nature was always ready to crossbreed. You can crossbreed fruits and you can have new fruits, with new taste, which no human being has ever tasted before. You will be the first to taste it. And you can arrange the taste the way you want – an apple having also a little taste of lemon in it will be more juicy. Or you can make it more sweet…
The same has to be done with animals, and the same has to be done with man. I am all for human engineering. Up to now, man has been just an accident. We have to improve upon it. Because of this accidental thing there are so many idiots in the world who could have been prevented, and there could have been in their place so many geniuses. It is not against nature; it is simply using your intelligence and the potential of nature.
In a single intercourse a man releases millions of living cells. In those million people there may be an Albert Einstein, there may be a Shakespeare, there may be a Milton, there may be a Dante – and there are going to be thousands of idiots, mediocre people. And it is just left to accident who reaches to the female egg first. And as far as I know, geniuses are always lazy. I myself always wonder how I managed to reach the egg first, with so many idiots in the race. Just by accident.
Up to now we have lived with accidental humanity; now we can live with a planned humanity. So, if we need one thousand Albert Einsteins we can produce one thousand Albert Einsteins. If we need more doctors, then there is no need to force people to be doctors, because a forced man – for example, I myself.
My parents wanted me either to become a doctor or an engineer or a scientist, and I simply refused. I said, “I am going to study philosophy.” They said, “You are mad! Philosophy pays nothing. You will not even get a job.”
I said, “I am not bothered about a job. I can beg, but I am going to study philosophy.”
My whole family was against it, and they all said, “Then you can go, but we will not be giving you any financial support.”
I said, “That is decided. There is no problem in it. I am going against you, it is expected that you should not give me any economic support. But remember, even if someday you want to give me support, I will not take it.”
For two years I had to work in the night as an editor on a newspaper and in the day to attend the university. Slowly, slowly, my family started feeling guilty that they were destroying my health. I was working the whole night, then in the day I was going to the university, and here and there I found time to sleep.
My father came to me with tears in his eyes. He said, “Forgive us, but please accept – stop what you are doing and drop this job. We will be sending you enough money.”
I said, “But it was decided. I will not take it, because I have not followed your idea. Why should you be unnecessarily burdened financially, to help somebody who has disobeyed you, always disobeyed you? No, it is perfectly good. I have no grudge, no complaint against you. I have done it knowingly. Even before you said it, I knew that that would be the last pressure. But I don’t want to see you crying.”
But he would not leave. He said, “I will not go from the hostel till you accept the money.”
Finally I had to accept but I told him, “I am taking this money only because of your tears. I don’t want anybody to be miserable. Otherwise, I don’t deserve it. I am accepting it only because you will never be able to forgive yourself, and I don’t want anybody to feel guilty on my account.”
There is no need to force anybody to become a doctor or an engineer or a scientist. We can produce exactly what we want. This whole life is a mess: the person who needed to become a plumber has become a professor; the person who needed to be a professor is just a plumber. A strange world. Both are unhappy, both are inadequate in their work, neither can ever be total in their work. Neither of them is going to reach to the height of his creativity and potentiality. They are in the wrong places.
We can improve upon nature, we should improve upon nature. And it is not against nature. Nature is already giving one million living beings to you; now it is up to you who wins the race. Help the right person, because the right person may be lazy. The right person may not run so fast. The right person may not care at all. Poets, painters, dancers, scientists, philosophers, mystics, may perhaps stand by the side and let the crowd go by. This type of people don’t like crowds! We have to remove the crowd from the traffic jam and bring those people who are standing by the side of the road.
And we know now that the cell has everything. What it is going to be, what its potentialities are, how long its life will be, what kind of diseases the person will suffer, what color the person will have, can be read, because the living cell has everything built in. And we can change it. That too is possible now. Why should this man unnecessarily suffer diseases when we can remove them from the plan from the very beginning? We can reprogram the person. We can take out all the possibilities of sicknesses; we can take out old age. We can let the person live a long, healthy and young life. Old age can simply disappear from the world. Sicknesses can be prevented from the very beginning, rather than fighting with your sicknesses your whole life – and thousands of hospitals and millions of doctors and nurses. A sheer waste. All this could have been prevented.
Even whether the person is going to be a criminal or not can be read. The whole map of his life is available. We can take out his criminal element, his political element, his effort to become a priest or a pope – we can take out all these stupid things. And we can give him a new program: how you can live more joyously, how to relish the small things of life. A cup of tea – you can enjoy it as if it is the ultimate bliss.
I call it going beyond nature and I say it is nature’s own project, it is not against nature. Intelligence is the proof. Nature has given you intelligence, now use it.
Okay?
Get ready for sannyas!