The first question:
Osho,
Do you have a message for sannyasins and friends gathering at the Cafe Royal, London, for the “March Event?”
Anand Poonam, sannyas is a rebellion against both the past and the future. Man has either lived in the past or in the future, but never in the present, and the present is the only reality there is, nothing else exists. Existence knows only one time, that is now; and one space, that is here. But mind either lives in the past, which is no more, or in the future, which is not yet. Mind exists in the nonexistential, hence mind never comes across the reality; it cannot come across the reality by its very functioning.
Sannyas is a rebellion against the mind itself. It is a way of life in which the mind is not the master, no-mind is the master, and the mind functions only as a servant. The mind actually is a mechanism. It is good as a beautiful device of nature, but the moment the servant becomes the master there is danger, great danger, then your life is bound to be a mess, a chaos. The servant is blind, unintelligent, unaware. To live according to the mind is not to live at all, it is sheer stupidity. The mind is never original, never intelligent; it is always repetitive, it is always borrowed, it is always mechanical – hence stupid, hence unintelligent. Sannyas is a tremendous jump into reality, an escape to reality from the unreal.
There have been societies whose golden age was in the past. For example Indian society: it believes that the future is going to be darker and darker every day, that there is no hope. Hence Indian society lives in a state of depression, hopelessness, with no possibility of any change for the better. It lives in misery, poverty, sickness. And because of the idea that the golden age has already passed long ago, thousands of years ago – and we are falling, by and by, every day – it does not believe in evolution. It believes in involution, it believes in regression. It is a regressive philosophy, not a progressive one.
The West lives in the future, its golden age is yet to come: the classless society, the crescendo of communism, the world of equality and freedom, the stateless state. Those golden days are far ahead. In a way, they are both the same. If one has to choose between the two of them, then I would suggest choose a progressive stupidity rather than a regressive one – if that is the only choice! At least with the progressive stupidity you have some hope, you have some thrill, you have some excitement; you are working for a better future. It is never going to come, but at least you are occupied with beautiful dreams. It has never been there before, it is not going to be there ever in the future. It is now. It is already the case.
Adam and Eve have never been expelled from the Garden of Eden! That is my declaration, my message. That whole story is invented by the priests. Adam and Eve are still living in the Garden of Eden – they have just eaten the fruit of knowledge. And who has given them the fruit of knowledge? It is not the serpent – it is the priest, it is the theologian, it is the philosopher. The fruit of knowledge does not grow on trees! It grows in churches, in temples, in the universities. It carries degrees – PhD’s, DLitt’s, DD’s – and it comes in all shapes and all sizes.
There is the Hindu world of knowledge, the Mohammedan world of knowledge, the Christian world of knowledge. You can choose your own fruit, you can shop for it. It is available for everybody’s requirement, according to everybody’s needs. The misery that has happened to man is not because he has lost the original paradise. He is still there, but he has fallen asleep, and in his dreams he has become a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Jew, and whatnot: a theist, an atheist, a communist, a socialist, a fascist. Only in his dreams has he lost track of paradise and to dream simply means to live either in the memories – that is the past; or to live in fantasies – that is the future.
Anand Poonam, this is my message for the March Event in London, where thousands of sannyasins are gathering together for the first time to celebrate a new opening – the British buddhafield. Tell them, “Get rid of the past and the future, and live herenow! It is suicidal to live anywhere else than herenow because each moment that is passing is precious, so precious that you cannot get it back. Don’t waste it!”
But all the religions have been suicidal. Of course, they don’t call it suicide, they give it beautiful names: asceticism, tapascharya; but basically it is nothing but masochism, self-torture. They call it renunciation, but it is nothing but destroying yourself gradually, slowly. All the religions of the world up to now have lived with a philosophy of life denial.
My fundamental approach is that of life acceptance, total life affirmation. There is no God other than life. The very idea of God other than life is dangerous because if God is other than life, then naturally you will start choosing God against life. You will be pro-God and anti-life because life is momentary and God gives you the greed of being eternal, forever.
I say to you, there is no other God than life. Hence the question of choice does not arise at all. Live! Live totally, live passionately, live intelligently, live lovingly. Become a flame, so intense, so total, that each moment starts having the flavor of eternity.
Remember, eternity is not horizontal. It is not like a line going from A to B, from B to C, from C to D – it is not horizontal. Eternity is intensity, it is vertical. It is diving from A to a deeper A, not going to B: from A to A1, from A1 to A2, from A2 to A3. In fact as far as intensity is concerned, A is the only alphabet. In fact, the word alphabet comes from A; it comes from Arabic, alif. A is enough! And when you can get A, why bother about B?

A man with a parrot on his shoulder comes to a stop at the border crossing.
“You have to pay duty on the parrot, sir,” says the customs official.
“How much?” asks the man.
“Let’s see,” says the official, paging through his book. “Parrots: live, fifty pounds; stuffed, ten pounds.”
“Bill, don’t get any crazy ideas!” screams the parrot.

Even parrots are far more intelligent than your priests. But man has lived under the dark shadow of a suicidal approach: “Renounce life! Escape from life to the monasteries, to the deserts, to the mountain caves. Go as far away from life as possible!” Because it has been taught, and taught for so long, the mind has become conditioned to the idea that the farther you are from life, the closer you will be to God. This is just bullshit! The closer you are to life, the closer you are to existence. Existence is the very core of life.

Two castaways from a sunken ship landed on a desert island. They survived there for a few days without food or water. There was no chance of escape as the sea was full of sharks.
Finally, one of the men fell on his knees, raised his hands to the sky and implored, “God, save us! If you do, I promise that I will always go to church and sing your praises, I will never drink again, never play cards or smoke, never make love to women and never read any novels or see any movies!”
The second castaway looked at him and croaked, “Then why do you want to survive?”

The so-called religious people have lived, but one wonders for what? If going away from life is the only way to reach godliness, then why commit a gradual suicide? Why not do it quickly and be finished with it?
In fact, there are aboriginal tribes still alive in the world where nobody has ever committed suicide, the very idea does not exist. It must be because of these foolish religions that the idea has entered man’s mind. No animal in its wild state ever commits suicide, but some animals commit suicide when they are forced to live in a zoo, when they lose their freedom, when they are cramped, crowded. They need a certain space around themselves. When their territorial imperative is destroyed, when they are being disciplined by human beings according to their ideas, they start losing interest in life.
There have been cases where zoo animals have committed suicide, or gone mad, or have become sexually perverted – but it never happens in the wild. No sexual perversion, no homosexuality exists in the wild, but in zoos it exists. It is very indicative. It shows that if you put people in an unnatural environment they start losing their instinctive intelligence, they start losing their natural understanding, they start becoming crazy. Either they go mad, or they become perverted, or they commit suicide.
Humanity has been doing all these things. It has to be recognized, it is time to recognize that the religions have turned the earth into a zoo. It is these so-called saints and mahatmas who have made human beings perverted. And the most surprising thing is that they are the people who condemn all perversions – and they are the original creators of perversions! Homosexuality is a religious phenomenon. All sexual perversions started in monasteries.
Monasteries are zoos where people are forced to live according to certain ideas determined by others maybe thousands of years ago. Those clothes were not tailored for them – now they are being tailored for the clothes; they are being cut according to the clothes. The clothes may have been made by Moses or Mohammed or Jesus or Buddha and they may have perfectly fitted the people they were prepared for, but now, after three thousand years, two thousand years, or even five thousand years…
The Hindu code was written five thousand years ago – Manu wrote it – it is still being followed. In five thousand years everything has changed. If Manu came to earth, I don’t think he would be able to recognize anything; he would not be able to recognize anything at all, everything has changed. But Hindus are trying to live according to Manu – this creates perversion.
The clothes are made by ancient people according to their ideas, according to their understandings, according to their needs, according to their situations. And they are being forced upon people who have a totally different world to live in. Now, the only way is either you cut the clothes or you cut the individuals, and religions have decided to cut the individuals.
If the clothes are bigger than you, you have to be massaged and stretched and Rolfed, tortured in every possible way. Or if the clothes are shorter than you, you have to be cut, some plastic surgery has to be done on you. Your head has to be chopped off or your legs have to be chopped off. Man has to live for certain ideas – as if ideas are more important than man, as if man is made to live for ideas. I am against all this nonsense. My sannyasins have to live as individuals. I am not giving you any discipline because every discipline creates perversion, every discipline only fits the person who evolves it. Just look at all the disciplines that have been propounded down the ages.
Buddha loved to eat once a day; now that is being followed by every Buddhist. That is not right, that is dangerous. It creates guilt because if you feel hungry twice a day then you feel guilty. And if you are an American you will feel hungry five times a day! Then, how much guilt?
And, in fact, it is very strange that Buddha should have loved to eat only once a day. There is only one reason – he was born into a meat-eating family, he was born into the warrior race, the son of a king. Now, meat-eating animals eat only once a day; the lion eats only once in twenty-four hours because meat once a day is enough. It has no roughage in it. If you eat vegetables once a day you will starve because ninety percent is roughage. The meat can be absorbed totally, it is already digested by another animal. It is digested food, it is pure food. But when you are eating vegetables you have to eat many times more. Watch – monkeys are vegetarians, they eat the whole day; lions eat only once a day.
Buddha was born into a meat-eating family, purely nonvegetarian, this became his habit. Of course, when he became enlightened he dropped eating meat, but the old habit of thirty years continued. Habits don’t change so easily. But now fools are following him and they are eating once a day, and they are nonvegetarians or vegetarians – it makes no difference. If they are vegetarians they should not do it, it is dangerous to their health, it is dangerous to their energy. The same is true of every discipline – the Ten Commandments, or other religious principles.
Just the other day, a sannyasin wrote to me that he cannot go to sleep early at night, he can only fall asleep at three o’clock in the morning. Of course he feels very guilty. A religious person should go early to bed and should get up in brahmamuhurt – before the sun rises. He is feeling very guilty. Now there is no need to feel any guilt. This is perfectly okay, he is sleeping perfectly well. He sleeps for seven hours, from three in the morning to ten; he is getting enough sleep. This is his body clock, not somebody else’s principle about it; it is his body chemistry that has to be considered.
All the religious scriptures were written by old people, and old people find it difficult to sleep in the morning. A child in the mother’s womb sleeps for twenty-four hours; then out of the womb, slowly, slowly the sleep is reduced – twenty-two hours, twenty hours, eighteen hours, sixteen hours. By the time he is a young person, it is fixed somewhere between eight and six hours. As one becomes older, sleep becomes less. When one is seventy, eighty, then two or three hours sleep is enough.
And the scriptures were written by old people because of the idea that the older you are, the wiser you are. No young man has written any religious scripture; nobody would have taken note of a young man writing a religious scripture. You have to be very ancient and old, and then you can write a scripture. Age was of tremendous importance in the past. Of course these people have written that three hours’ sleep is enough; more than that is lethargy, tamas – it is not good, it is evil. This idea is good for old people.
Now this young sannyasin is unnecessarily worried. He has tried everything, his whole life he has been struggling. It is useless – the whole struggle is useless. In fact, it is now a well-known scientific fact that everybody has his own body clock and everybody has to follow his own body’s needs.
In a better society, which is more scientific, more rational, more intelligent, we would have totally different kinds of working hours. This is ugly – everybody has to go to work at eleven o’clock, everybody has to go to school at the same time, to university at the same time. This is not right. This is inhuman. Universities, offices, factories, should be open round the clock, and whenever people feel good they should work, and when they feel good they should sleep. This should be their birthright.
And, in fact, it will help immensely because every college building will function as three colleges, every office building can be used as three buildings. You will not have this traffic jam on the roads because it will all be distributed over twenty-four hours. And everybody will have a little more freedom to live according to his innermost like–dislike, his instinctiveness. My approach is of freedom. My sannyasins should live a life-affirmative philosophy, accepting, respecting whatsoever one is, not creating “shoulds” and “should-nots.” They are ugly, they are monstrous.

The Mother Superior called all the nuns of the convent together. “While walking round the convent this morning, I saw a man’s footprints outside the main gate,” she announced.
Ninety-nine nuns shrieked in terror, “Ah God!”
One nun secretly giggled, “Hee-hee!”
“I followed the footprints. They led directly into our dormitory.”
Ninety-nine nuns screamed in horror, “Ah God!”
One nun secretly giggled, “Hee-hee!”
“The footprints led to one bed, and under the bed I found a condom!”
Ninety-nine nuns gasped in fright, “Ah God!”
One nun secretly giggled. “Hee-hee!”
“The condom was used!” continued the Mother Superior.
Ninety-nine nuns squealed in disgust, “Ah God!”
One nun secretly giggled, “Hee-hee!”
“But it had a hole in it!”
Ninety-nine nuns secretly giggled, “Hee-hee!”
One nun screamed in shock, “Ah God!”

These stupid people have been dominating humanity. Beware of them!

A student social worker was doing research on the use of contraceptives and visited several women. He asked the first, “What kind of contraceptives do you use?”
She answered, “Rubbers.”
The second question was, “How do you like them?”
“Well, sometimes they slip off, but in general we manage.”
After he noted this data, he asked the neighbor of the woman the same question. She used the pill and since her lover helped her to remember to take it, they preferred this method.
When the third woman, the wife of a Christian theologian, was asked what kind of contraceptive they used, she said, “We always use a bucket, a plastic bucket. Previously we used a zinc one, but that made too much noise for the neighbors; since we use the plastic one it is okay.”
The investigator noted this data and said good-bye to the lady. However, he became very puzzled. “A plastic bucket! My professor will not believe this. I will have to go back and ask the woman how it works.” So he rang and asked the woman how it was possible with a bucket.
“Well,” said the lady, “I will explain. I am rather tall and my husband is very small and we do it standing up. My husband stands on the bucket and by the time he starts rolling his eyes, I kick the bucket away!”

Anand Poonam, tell my British buddhafield sannyasins there is no need to use buckets – zinc or plastic, it doesn’t matter. Be natural, be simple, be ordinary. There is a danger because once you become a sannyasin you can start having an old, holier-than-thou outlook. My sannyasins are not to be holier-than-thou. Remember, I don’t make any distinction between the sacred and the profane. To me the ordinary life is the only life. Yes, there is a way to live it – with beauty or ugliness, with insight or blindness, with awareness or unawareness. One can live this same ordinary life in such an exquisite, extraordinary way that it becomes sacred, but there is no other life than this. You have to learn the art of transforming this very ordinary life into something beautiful.
So don’t become theologians, don’t become missionaries. I hate missionaries! My sannyasins are not to be missionaries. Be contagious, but not missionaries. Infect people, but don’t be missionaries.

A Christian theologian was driving along a deserted road one night when his car broke down. He started looking for a place to spend the night. Finding a small cottage, he knocked on the door. It was opened by a lovely young woman. The man explained his problem. The young woman was reluctant, but the man reassured her, “Don’t be worried, madam, you can trust me. I am a Christian theologian.”
So she agreed. They shared a delicious dinner and had a pleasant evening. Before saying goodnight, the young woman put on a transparent nightdress and said to the visitor, “You can sleep here in the living room, but if you need something, just call. I will leave the door of my room open.”
She went to bed and spent an anxious night listening to the man snoring. Next morning, exhausted, she went out to feed her chickens.
The man came out, looking refreshed, and remarked, “You have a lot of beautiful chickens.”
“Yes, but only fifteen.”
“Only fifteen?” said the man. “Then why do you have two cocks for such a small number?”
“That’s not a problem,” replied the young woman. “One of the cocks is a Christian theologian!”

Be simple, be natural, be spontaneous. I teach ecstasy – and ecstasy in the ordinary life. Life has not to be in any way renounced, but transformed. Renunciation is escapism, it is cowardliness, and you have worshipped cowards as saints up to now. You have worshipped people who were not courageous enough to accept all the challenges of life – and there are millions of challenges, every moment there is a challenge. The coward escapes. The coward has to be condemned, not respected.
My sannyasins have to live in the world, totally in the world, responding to every challenge because the more you respond to the challenges of life, the more intelligent you become. Intelligence is like a sword: the more you use it, the more it remains sharp. If you don’t use it, it starts getting rusty, it loses its sharpness – it becomes absolutely useless.
Hence your saints look dull, dead. But we have been conditioned to respect these dead corpses. We have been told for thousands of years that these are the real people. They are not real at all. They are very plastic, very phony. A coward can never be a real person. Reality needs all the challenges of life, all the dangers of life, all the insecurities of life. Only then integrity arises, authenticity arises, responsibility arises.
Be in the world, but don’t be of it. Live in the world, but don’t allow the world to live in you. That is my message.
There is a Zen saying:
The wild geese do not intend
to cast their reflections.
The water has no mind
to receive their image.
The wild geese have no desire to cast their reflections on the water, and the water has no desire and no mind to receive their image – although it happens. When the wild geese fly, the water reflects them. The reflection is there, the image is there, but the water has no mind to reflect and the wild geese do not hanker to be reflected either.
This should be the way of my sannyasins. Be in the world, live in the world, live totally, without ambitions, without desires because all desires distract you from living, all ambitions sacrifice your present. Don’t be greedy because greed takes you into the future; don’t be possessive because possessiveness keeps you clinging to the past. A man who wants to live in the present has to be free of greed, of possessiveness, of ambitions, of desires.
That’s what I call the whole art of meditation. Be aware, be alert, so all these thieves have no possibility to enter and contaminate you. Be meditative, but be in the world. And it is my experience that the world helps immensely – it helps immensely to make you meditative. It gives you all the opportunities to be distracted, but if you don’t get distracted then each success becomes a tremendous joy. You remain centered, you become the center of the cyclone; the cyclone goes on roaring around you, but your center remains unaffected.
Be a lotus flower. In the East, the lotus flower symbolizes the essence of sannyas. The lotus flower grows in the mud, dirty mud. It does not escape, it remains there. It floats in the lake in water, but there is a beauty, a tremendous phenomenon: it is in the water, but the water never touches it. It is so velvety that in the morning, if you go and see, you will find dewdrops gathered on the petals of the lotus, on the leaves of the lotus; and they shine like pearls in the early morning sun. But they are not touching it. The lotus leaf or the lotus petal remains dry, it does not become wet. The dewdrops rest there, but they remain separate.
That’s the way of a true sannyasin – being in the world, but remaining untouched, unaffected by it. When meditation happens, and this is what I call meditation – being in the world and remaining untouched – love comes as a by-product.
These are the pillars of my sannyasins: first, life-affirmation, unconditional life-affirmation. These are the four pillars of my temple: second, meditation; third, love; and the fourth cannot be expressed in words. It can only be called the fourth, turiya. If you live life totally, meditatively, lovingly, you come to experience something which is inexpressible. Lao Tzu calls it Tao, Buddha calls it dhamma, and Jesus calls it Logos – different names indicating toward the nameless experience. If you prefer, you can call it God. My own liking is to call it godliness, not God because God gives you the idea of a person, and godliness simply gives you the idea of a presence.
These are the four pillars of my temple, and each sannyasin has to grow these four pillars because each sannyasin has to become a temple of godliness.

The second question:
Osho,
The Free University of Amsterdam in Holland is a university with a distinctive character, which lies in its choice of a religious position. This is formulated in the constitution and the purpose of the university.
All members of the university community are expected to act as much as they can in the spirit of this purpose, in obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the daily practice, however, it seems to be very difficult for most members of the university community to communicate with love and to enjoy their work. It seems easier just to function in a deadly serious way and to keep each other at a distance.
Do you have a message for the members of the community of this free university, who try to work in the spirit of Jesus Christ?
The first thing to be remembered is that you can function in the spirit of Jesus Christ only if you are a Jesus Christ, otherwise not. And remember also that existence never repeats itself. Two thousand years have passed, there has not been another Jesus Christ and there is not going to be any other in the future either. It is so clear. Twenty-five centuries have passed since Gautam the Buddha, and no other Buddha has happened; five thousand years have passed since Krishna, and no other Krishna has happened either. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Moses, all the awakened ones have remained unrepeated.
What to say about the awakened ones? Even the unawakened ones are unique! There is not anybody like you anywhere in the world – there has never been before and there will never be again. You are the only one. But religions have not accepted this simple fact. Existence is not repetitive, and it is good that it is not repetitive. Just think of a world where millions of Gautam Buddhas were sitting under bodhi trees – it would be so boring! Or millions of Jesus Christs were carrying their crosses and roaming all around the world. They would not even be able to find somebody to crucify them because others would also be carrying crosses. Who would have time to crucify anybody? It would be ugly, it would be boring. One Jesus has a beauty, many Jesuses would look as if they have been produced in a factory on an assembly line, like Ford motorcars. Every minute a car coming out, every minute a Jesus coming out – well-equipped with the cross, etcetera, with those twelve apostles following him. And they would go on coming out of the factory, round the clock. What would you do with so many Jesus Christs? What would you do with so many Mahaviras, so many Buddhas? No, it is not needed.
Each individual is unique – uniqueness is a gift from existence. But why have these religions been teaching, “Live in the spirit of Jesus Christ,” or “in the spirit of Gautam Buddha” – why? Don’t you have your own spirit? Then drink alcohol, get some spirit! Make some spirit of your own! Why Jesus Christ? What wrong has this poor fellow done to you? Can’t you stop crucifying him? Will you never be able to forgive him?
The whole idea is of imitation – “Imitate!” You have no right to be yourself, you have to imitate. You can be accepted only if you are somebody else: Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, Kabir, Nanak, but not yourself. And can’t you see a simple fact? – Jesus was not Moses. He should have repeated, then he would have saved his life. He would not have been crucified by the Jews if he had lived the spirit of Moses. But he tried to create his own spirit, he tried to be an individual, and that was his crime. If he had simply repeated, he would have been respected, glorified as a great rabbi. But he became a rebel.
Everybody has to become a rebel, not an imitator. That’s why you see people living there are deadly serious, they don’t love their work, they don’t enjoy their work. How can they enjoy it? They are not doing their work. You can never enjoy somebody else’s life, howsoever beautiful it is – it is not your life. You can only enjoy being yourself. A roseflower can be blissful only as a rose. If you force a roseflower to become a marigold it will be deadly serious; it will lose all joy, all fragrance.
That’s what is happening. It is not only happening there in the so-called Free University of Amsterdam, it is happening everywhere. Hindus are trying to be like Krishnas, or Ramas; Jainas are trying to be like Mahaviras; Mohammedans are trying to be like Mohammeds; Christians are trying to be like Christ – everybody is imitative. The whole world has become full of imitation, and the whole world is looking sad. It is inevitable, this sadness. And it is not only sadness. Hidden behind this sadness is a state of schizophrenia because basically nobody can be anybody else than himself. So deep down he is himself but on top of it he is pretending to be somebody else, hence everybody is a hypocrite.
All the religions have done this to humanity: they have created a hypocrite world, a schizophrenic humanity, a split personality. This is their gift. It is a curse, but this is what they call a gift to humanity. Everybody is living a split life, a double life – from the front door, one life; from the back door, totally another. And of course, between the two he is caught in a tension, in anxiety; he cannot be totally either this or that. He is torn apart. Hence the misery in people’s eyes, the sadness, the deadness.
Nobody needs to be anybody else. Just be yourself. Show some respect to your life. Respect yourself. Love yourself because unless you respect yourself you will not respect anybody else in the world. If you cannot even respect your life, how can you respect anybody else? You can pretend, but pretension is not truth, and it is not liberating. Truth liberates. Pretension creates a bondage around you. It becomes an imprisonment, and one hates imprisonment.
It is not accidental that Friedrich Nietzsche had to declare – I say, had to declare – that God is dead and man is now free. It was not only his individual opinion, it is really the voice of the millions who have no courage to speak. If God is destroying your freedom then it is better to kill God and save freedom, rather than killing freedom and saving God.
Why should one be like Jesus Christ? Why should one live in the spirit of Jesus Christ? There is no need. He never imitated anybody. If you really understand Jesus, you should not repeat him. Buddha never repeated anybody. He could have easily become a Krishna, he had as much intelligence; he could have pretended to be a Krishna, but he never did anything like that. Hindus have not been able to forgive him because he was not following the trodden path, he was not following the crowd, he was not part of the mob psychology. He went on his own; he created his own small footpath toward truth.
Everybody has to create his own footpath. There are no superhighways toward truth, only footpaths, and they too are not ready-made, available; you have to walk and create them. You have to search for truth, and in your very search you create the path. The path is not already there so that you can simply go to the truth. The search for truth is an immense adventure; each moment one is in for a great surprise. So the whole idea is wrong, and that idea is creating the trouble. And still these people call it “The Free University”! And what kind of free university is this, which has a religious position, which has a constitution and the purpose to propagate Christianity?
“All members of the university community are expected to act as much as they can in the spirit of this purpose, in obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Then what kind of free university is this? There is only one free university in the world and it is herenow. There has never been a free university before and there is none anywhere else yet – except this one.
A free university simply means that there is no expectation from you. You are helped to be free, you are nourished to be free, you are supported to be free. You are given individuality. If there are expectations, freedom is destroyed. Expectations are a subtle way, a cunning way, to dominate. If the expectation is to live in obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ then the whole thing is just a façade, in the name of freedom they are propagating an old slavery. Jesus is a free man, but Christians are not free.
Friedrich Nietzsche is again right when he says that the first and the last Christian died on the cross two thousand years ago – the first and the last. In fact, there cannot be anybody else who is a Christ. These are rare flowers.
You are also a rare flower. Maybe you have not blossomed yet, hence you are unaware of your rareness. And you will not blossom if you go on fulfilling these expectations. Don’t fulfill any expectations of anybody. You have only one responsibility and that is toward your own being. If you try to fulfill others’ expectations you will be in trouble because they will impose, they will dominate, they will cripple and paralyze you. They are your enemies. Anybody who expects anything from you is your enemy – beware! A real friend simply gives you freedom. Love gives freedom: there is no expectation, there is no desire to manipulate you, not even indirectly. Freedom is the highest value in life – and if freedom were there, you would have seen a totally different phenomenon.
You can see it here. People are working here – in fact I don’t think people are working anywhere else so hard, so totally, so devotedly – but there is great joy. They are rejoicing in it! People who come from the outside cannot understand it; and because they cannot understand it, they go on spreading rumors.
Just now, hundreds of newspaper clippings are coming from Germany – so many rumors, so many false statements about Vimalkirti’s death. Nobody seems to try to understand. They are all saying that he was forced, regimented, almost as if he was in the army – he was forced to do the lowest menial jobs. That is their idea, that any job is low, but they go on imposing their categories.
Yes, Vimalkirti was doing all kinds of jobs. He was cleaning the toilets, and to them this is inconceivable. The great-grandson of the last German emperor, nephew of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip of England, connected with almost all the royal families of Europe. One of his aunts died just two days ago, Queen Frederica, she was the Queen of Greece. Another aunt is the Queen of Spain, Princess Sophia. His own mother has three titles: Princess of Greece because she was born into the Greek royal family; Princess of Denmark because she was married to the Danish king; and then the Danish king died and she got married to the Prince of Hanover. Prince Charles is his cousin, and this Vimalkirti, Prince Welf of Hanover was cleaning toilets – naturally he must have been forced, violently forced, to do such a thing!
And they are all saying that slowly, slowly, after four years, he got promoted, he had come to a certain position – he became a guard. This is sheer stupidity, inability to understand anything. Nobody had told him to clean the toilets – he had chosen to. He was tired of being a prince, was fed up with being a prince, and wanted to know life from all dimensions. So he was a cleaner, he was a gardener, he was a group leader, he was a guard. He was doing all kinds of things and he loved all his jobs. He was immensely happy – but they would not see his happiness.
They think that there is some hierarchy here in the ashram, that cleaners are the lowest. The fact is that they are at the top. They are not only cleaners, they are the cleanest people too. When I choose my mediums most of them come from the cleaners because they are really clean!
Now Vinod Khanna is here, he is a famous Indian actor. He has lived luxuriously, and he is immensely happy to get a small room. It must be all of the same size as him, six by four! But he is immensely happy. It is the same room where Vimalkirti lived. And one should be aware – Francis House has had two enlightened persons – watch out for Vinod! And from today he is going to start work in Lao Tzu garden – a man who has been earning lakhs of rupees per month, living the most luxurious life possible in India. Now he will be under Mukta’s charge, and Mukta is a hard master! Vimalkirti was also under her charge once.
You say that people there are not working with love and are not enjoying their work. How can they? They are trying to fulfill certain expectations, they are trying to live up to certain standards. That creates seriousness; that creates sadness.
If everybody is allowed to be just as he is, accepted, respected, loved unconditionally, then whatsoever he wants to do… And all kinds of work is needed: the gardeners are needed, the cleaners are needed, the managers are needed, the trustees are needed, the guards are needed, all kinds of people are needed.
In a commune there is no hierarchy. Everybody is fulfilling his work with joy; it is because of joy that he has chosen to be in that particular work. Nobody is forcing, nobody is expecting. If he does not feel good he can change his work, there is no problem with it, he will not be condemned for it. But this is possible only when individuality is given the highest value. In this so-called Free University of Amsterdam in Holland it is not possible, the very foundation is wrong – a religious position. In fact, to start with any position is going to be wrong.
Here, we are not starting with any position; there is no religious position here. It is just a caravan of drunkards, gamblers, far closer to a pub than to a temple! Just when I was answering Poonam’s question, I remembered, “This is not right what I am saying, ‘Four pillars of my temple?’ This is not right. Four pillars of my pub!” But that would have been too much for the buddhafield in Britain, so I thought, “Let it be four pillars of the temple” because British buddhas are going to be British buddhas! I don’t have any expectations of them – they are going to be British buddhas. It is going to be a totally different kind of buddhahood.
We have only one British buddha here – Proper Sagar. The day he becomes enlightened, the whole of Britain will be enlightened! But he is coming closer, he is rising higher and higher. Now he is working in the same position as Vimalkirti – he is my guard. His duty is to open the door of my Rolls Royce. Now he is constantly thinking of only one thing, but has not been able to decide whether it is proper or not – that’s why he is called Proper Sagar – there are many Sagars here, but he is the only Proper Sagar. I gave him a hat, long ago, a beautiful hat. You could have seen it on the head of the Emperor Haile Selassie – a Haile Selassie hat. So now he is wondering and inquiring, can he wear it while he opens the door of my car? I have told Vivek, “Keep the camera ready. Whenever he wears that hat, a photograph has to be taken because sooner or later he will become enlightened – then we will need these photographs!”
When you go to the Free University of Amsterdam, first tell them: it is not a free university. It cannot be free if it goes on insisting, expecting, that people should live in the spirit of Christ.
Is it so easy to live in the spirit of Christ? Christ is not the name of a person; it is the name of the ultimate state of consciousness. It is exactly what we call in the East, buddhahood, awakenedness. Jesus is one thing; christ consciousness is a totally different phenomenon. It happened to Jesus. You can never be a Jesus, but you can be a christ. But if you are a Christian, then it is impossible to be a christ. To Christians it is impossible because once you accept that you are a Christian, you start living with the idea that you cannot be Christ – he is the only begotten son of God.
Only begotten son of God. What happened to God after that? – sterilization? And what was he doing before that? – just sitting and sitting and thinking whether to produce a child or not, for infinity? Mighty slow thinker! Then finally he gave birth to this Jesus Christ, and the name of the woman is not known because the Christian trinity has no woman in it. Perhaps the Holy Ghost functions both ways – maybe the Holy Ghost is bisexual. Ghosts are known to do strange things. Otherwise, “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” and where is the mother? The whole story seems to be very concocted. The trinity has no woman, and then Jesus is born to a woman, and the woman has no man to father the child. Strange type of game!
Once you accept yourself as a Christian you have debarred yourself from being a christ. You have become a follower, and the follower is only an imitator. He is bound to remain plastic. Yes, you can be a christ, but for that the first thing to drop is being a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan. You have to be a seeker of truth, and you cannot seek truth if you have already got certain prejudices. If you have already accumulated beliefs, you cannot seek and search truth.
Truth is available only to the agnostic, one who says, “I don’t know anything, but I am ready to know. I am ready to go through all the processes of knowing, but I will not believe unless I see.” Seeing should be the only cause of believing; no other way should belief enter in you. Then you can be a christ, but then you are also a buddha, and you are also a lao tzu, and you are also a jaina – because these are different names, different languages, indicating toward the same ultimate consciousness.
Tell those people that it is not a free university. You have to get rid of Christianity if you want it to be really free, you have to drop all positions. A true seeker cannot start from any position; he has to start from scratch, not with a position. He has to start utterly empty, just like a zero, a tabula rasa.
And that’s what I call meditation. Meditation makes you utterly empty of all thoughts, prejudices, concepts, beliefs, and then there is a possibility to know the truth. Knowing the truth makes you a christ, a buddha; and then naturally whatsoever you do will be done in that spirit, never before it.
Enough for today.

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