The first question:
Osho,
I have heard that the German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, declared on television that sannyasins were very dangerous people for the state and society, and should not be engaged for public service or by respectable companies any more. Lots of Germans are television-watchers and behave according to what the politicians say.
In fact, I don't want to have anything to do with society. But by being regarded as an enemy of society I don't enjoy the idea of not getting a job because of my orange clothes, or being molested by people on the street, as they very often become aggressive toward outsiders.
You said that sannyasins are meant to be a provocation for the world, but do you want us to fight or to go underground? And do you think it is cowardly that I am considering staying in India not only to be close to you but also to avoid these troubles?
It is good news! The politicians become afraid only when something really significant is happening – and they are becoming afraid all around the world. It is a good sign. It is immensely beautiful that my sannyasins are not being ignored. That’s the ugliest thing that can happen to anybody.
What the German Chancellor has said is right: sannyasins are very dangerous people. Religion is always dangerous; the moment it is not dangerous it is no longer religion at all. Jesus is dangerous, Christianity is not dangerous; hence Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus. Buddha is dangerous, Buddhists are not dangerous. They have turned against their master; they have compromised with the society, with all that is rotten, dead, traditional.
It is bound to be so if you are trying to live life authentically, lovingly. Then the politicians are bound to be against. They have created a society which is based on hatred, violence, division, distrust, cunningness, hypocrisy. To be religious simply means to be against all these things.
To be religious means to live a life full of love, joy, innocence, freedom, individuality, to the extent that even if life has to be sacrificed for the higher values of freedom, love, truth, then one sacrifices it joyously. It is worth it. Freedom cannot be sacrificed, bliss cannot be sacrificed, love cannot be sacrificed; and life is significant only if these things are flowering, blossoming. The moment these things are sacrificed there is no point in living. Then living is simply vegetating.
Socrates was given the option that if he stopped talking to people about his philosophy of truth, then he could be released from the court and he could save his life. He laughed and simply rejected the very idea. What he said is something worth remembering. He said, “To say the truth, to live the truth, is my life. If I cannot say the truth, if I cannot live the truth, then what I am supposed to live for?”
A life is life only when there is something higher in it – higher than life itself. Remember, only that which is higher than life brings significance to life, brings meaning to life. If life has nothing higher than itself then it is empty, utterly futile; then it is absurd. I am giving you something to live and something to die for – and the greatest joy in life is to have something to die for. Only when you have something to die for do you have something to live for.
This kind of threat is going to happen all over the world; it should be accepted – not only accepted, welcomed. It is good news. It is immensely satisfying that my sannyasins are making themselves felt.
It is true that I would like the society that has existed up to now to disappear. It is a very primitive society. It is almost animal, it is not yet human. Humanity has to happen, it has not happened yet, it is something still in the future. It is only a potential, it has not become an actuality; what more joy can there be than making this potential actual? What more adventure can you hope for in life? What can be more ecstatic than making a tremendous effort to introduce humanity on this condemned earth?
Unless societies disappear – German, Italian, Indian, Japanese – there cannot be a humanity. Unless these small divisions, which are absolutely pointless, are totally destroyed, totally erased, the one civilization, the one culture, the one religiousness cannot be born. I am against societies, against nations, against states because they have done enough harm to us. Look at the whole of history. It is monstrous, murderous, it is full of blood. In three thousand years’ history there have been five thousand wars. What kind of civilization, what kind of culture has there been? – as if we are here only to kill each other.
But the politician thrives on these divisions. The moment a global civilization comes into existence, these politicians are bound to disappear. How can there be a German Chancellor then, or an American President, or an Iranian Prime Minister?
The politicians and the priests have been in a very subtle conspiracy against humanity. They know one thing for certain: that they can exist only in a divided world. The religions – I mean the organized religions, the dogmatic religions, the creeds, the cults, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Mohammedanism – they keep humanity divided. That’s how the pope, the ayatollah, the shankaracharya, the imam, and all these hocus-pocus people can exist. If humanity is one, then these people will disappear. They will become things of the past, of an ugly past, of a nightmarish past.
In the same way, if nations are no longer there – and nations are only on maps, the earth is not divided but the maps have become so important, more than the earth itself, more than humanity itself. In the so-called religions, the scriptures, the words have become so important that man can easily be killed for words. For the Bible, for the Koran, for the Gita, man can be killed and destroyed, as if man exists only for the Bible and the Koran and the Gita.
The truth is just the opposite: all these scriptures exist for man; man does not exist for any scripture. And the same is true on the outside, in the world of politics. The inner being of man is dominated by the priest and the outer side is dominated by the politician, and they are in a conspiracy, an ancient conspiracy. They both have understood the fact very clearly: keep man divided – in states, in churches, in nations, in religions – and then you will remain in power.
These power-hungry people, these egoists, are bound to be afraid of my sannyasins because this is something absolutely new that has never existed before. Jesus was followed only by a few Jews; Buddha was followed only by a few Hindus. My sannyasins belong to all kinds, all religions, all nations. The whole world has gathered together. It is the meeting of the East and the West.
My sannyasins are proving with absolute certainty that what Rudyard Kipling has said was wrong. He said, “West is West and East is East, and never the twain shall meet.” They are meeting! They have met! They have met in the being of my sannyasins.
Here no divisions exist – and we are not making any effort to destroy those divisions because I am never for fighting with darkness, I am always for kindling the light. The moment the light is there, darkness disappears. That’s where I differ from many nice people who have tried to create a certain synthesis.
Mahatma Gandhi was one. He was trying in India to create a synthesis between Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism. But to try to make an effort for a synthesis presupposes that you have accepted the division already. I don’t accept the division at all; hence there is no effort to make any synthesis.
And Gandhi failed immensely. He could not convince anybody – he could not even convince himself. His whole life he was singing a devotional song that he and his followers had made according to his philosophy: “Ishwar Allah Tere Naam – Ishwar, Allah, God, are all thy names.” But when he was killed and shot he forgot all other names, he simply remembered one name: “Hey, Ram!” He didn’t then say, “Hey, Allah!” At that moment he remembered only Rama, the Hindu god, the Hindu name for God. Suddenly from his deepest unconscious it must have arisen. He had remained a Hindu his whole life. Yes, he was trying to create a synthesis; he was finding in the Koran and the Bible the same message as is in the Gita, but the effort was basically cunning and political.
The Gita was right – that was indubitable for him; there was no question about it. The Koran could also be right if it coincided, corresponded, supported the ideology of the Gita. So he would choose only those pieces from the Koran and the Bible and the Dhammapada which were in support of Krishna’s message in the Gita, and he could not talk about other passages which were absolutely against the Gita. And he was thinking that he was creating a synthesis. He was simply reading the Gita in other scriptures, but the Gita remained the criterion.
With my people, the only criterion is your own experience, your own meditativeness – neither the Gita, nor the Koran, nor the Bible. I am not teaching you any scripture; I am trying to help you to read the scripture of your own heart. And the moment you know your own heart, the moment you become attuned with your own being, you will know that the whole humanity is one. Languages differ, but there are not many religions – there cannot be.
If there is only one science about the objective reality, how can there be many religions about the inner reality, the subjective reality? If the objective truth is one – there is nothing like Hindu physics or Christian chemistry or Buddhist biology or Mohammedan mathematics. If the objective reality is one, whether you are experimenting in India or in Russia or in America, it makes no difference, you will come to the same conclusion. Then how can it be that the subjective reality is divided into three hundred religions?
There are three hundred religions in the world and there must be three thousand sects of these three hundred religions and thirty thousand sub-sects, and so on and so forth. It is just ridiculous! Religiousness is one, love is one, truth is one, the taste of freedom is one. I am not trying to create a synthesis. I am simply creating a situation in which you can experience your own interiority. And the moment you have experienced it, you have experienced the very interiority of existence itself. Then there are no nations, no churches, no states.
The German Chancellor is right. I am against the state and society because the state and society have been destructive. They are cancerous growths in the very heart of humanity. They have to be destroyed mercilessly. Man has to become free from politics and religious politics – both are politics. Man has to transcend all divisions. Naturally the people who are nourished by divisions, who exploit the divisions, will be against me and my sannyasins.
But this is a beautiful challenge – you have to face it. And if it brings suffering, enjoy that suffering too because to suffer for anything beautiful is a benediction. One can live a very comfortable life, convenient, if one compromises with all kinds of lies, but then your life will be flat; it will not have any ecstatic peaks.
We have to fight. Of course our fight is going to be totally different. We are not going to kill people, but we are going to give a tough fight to their minds. We are not actually to behead them, but metaphorically, of course, we have to behead them! Only then will they become aware of their hearts – when they lose their heads.
You will have to suffer many things, you will lose your respectability. But do you think Jesus was respectable? The Polack Pope is respectable. See the strange ways of the world, the Polack Pope is respectable and Jesus was not respectable; Jesus was condemned like a criminal.
Al-Hillaj Mansoor was not respectable. He was murdered, butchered, and in a very cruel way. Jesus’ crucifixion is far more human because al-Hillaj Mansoor was cut up piece by piece. First his legs were cut off, then his hands were cut off, then his tongue was cut out, and then his eyes were taken out. It is the cruelest kind of murder that has ever happened. Still, he was laughing to the very end. Even the murderers became a little puzzled, “Is he mad or something?”
One of the murderers asked him, “Why are you laughing?”
He said, “I am laughing because you can kill my body, but you cannot kill me. And I am also laughing at God. You will not understand that,” he said, “because you cannot see God, but I am laughing at God too. I am telling him, ‘You can do whatsoever you want to do with me, you can come like murderers as you have come today, but I will still recognize you. I can see you in these people who are murdering me. You cannot deceive me any more. I will recognize you in any disguise you come. I have recognized you even in these murderers.’”
My sannyasins will have to suffer, but suffering in itself is not bad, suffering in itself is not misery. If you are suffering because you cannot compromise, if you are suffering because you want to live your truth, it is a joy, it is bliss. You have to become the very salt of the earth.
And I know people believe the politicians. They will create all kinds of troubles for you, but I know that only through those troubles you will grow. So whenever I hear that people are going to create trouble for you, secretly I giggle. I say, “Hee-hee!”
You have also asked, “And do you think it is cowardly that I am considering staying in India not only to be close to you but also to avoid these troubles?” It depends. It is up to you to be clear. If you want to be here just to be close to me, there is no question of cowardliness because here also you will have to face troubles – in fact many more because the main troublemaker is here! I have always enjoyed mischief and I still enjoy it – I don’t want to hide it from you. From my very childhood I have enjoyed all kinds of mischief, and my enlightenment has not made any difference. At the most it has made my mischiefs a little bit enlightened, that’s all, but the basic foundation remains the same. Of course, now I make mischief on vaster, greater planes; my canvas is bigger, but I enjoy it!
So if you want to be here just to be close to me it is beautiful, but you will not be avoiding any trouble. In Germany you will be far better off because I have not heard yet that any sannyasin has been molested in Germany, raped in Germany, murdered in Germany, but in India all these things have happened. And many cases have happened because India is far more uncultured, far more uncivilized, far more irreligious than anywhere else in the world – for the simple reason that Indians believe that they are religious. Their belief of being religious hides their irreligiousness. They are the greatest hypocrites in the whole world.
If you just want to avoid trouble, don’t be here. Germany is far better. Secondly, if you are here only to avoid troubles there, you will not be close to me; it will be a negative kind of closeness, and unless it is positive it is meaningless. If you are here to be with me, then it is perfectly beautiful. Otherwise, go to Germany and earn a positive relationship – accept the challenges there.
I am not for going underground – there is no need. Only in China and Russia have I allowed my sannyasins to remain underground. Now, two of my sannyasins from Russia are here. They have been underground there; somehow they have escaped. Only in China and Russia can it be understood that it will be impossible to declare openly, but a few Russian sannyasins are still doing it openly; they have found a beautiful way. If you are really ready then you can always find a way.
They are moving in red clothes and they say, “This is the color of Communism!” They are moving with a picture of mine in their malas and they say, “This is nobody but Karl Marx!” If one wants to find a way, one can find a way. And they are enjoying, and I love the idea – nothing is wrong in it because nobody knows about me, so they think, “Maybe this is Karl Marx.” Red is certainly a Communist color so there is no problem about it, and you can always read my books hiding them inside Das Kapital, the Communist manifesto.
But except for China and Russia I will not allow underground work anywhere else. Remain above ground and give a good fight! And I am giving you so many weapons to fight with. In fact, the people you have to fight with are already dead. Just a little push and they will fall flat on the ground. Much wrestling is not needed at all. They have been long dead, they are just standing there because nobody pushes them!

The second question:
Osho,
More and more people are putting their faith in all sorts of saints, swamis and god-men. What do you think of this phenomenon? What is your opinion on saints like Mahesh Yogi, Mother Teresa, Prabhupada, Muktananda, Satya Sai Baba, J. Krishnamurti, Anand Mai, etcetera, etcetera?
What criteria should a person use to judge the worth of a god-man and to ensure he is not taken for a ride?
The first thing to be remembered is that it is not something new that is happening today. You say to me, “More and more people are putting their faith in all sorts of saints…”
They have always done that – this is not new. In fact, less and less people are doing it now, not more and more. Otherwise, how you can explain millions of Hindus, millions of Buddhists, millions of Christians, millions of Mohammedans? In fact, everybody on the earth belongs to some kind of religion. How can you explain this?
Even Communism is a godless religion; it is a church. It has its own Bible – Das Kapital. It has its own unholy trinity: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V. I. Lenin. It has its own conflicting sects, so many Communist Parties in the world: the Chinese camp, the Russian camp, just like Catholics, Protestants; Shias, Sunnis; different interpretations of their scriptures, believing in different interpreters. Somebody believes in Fidel Castro, somebody believes in Mao Zedong, and somebody believes in Tito, and somebody believes in Joseph Stalin, and somebody believes in Leon Trotsky. Communism is also the same kind of phenomenon.
A few people go to the Kaaba, a few people go to the Kremlin. It is the same phenomenon, the same pilgrimage. You are doomed if at least once in your life you don’t go to the Kaaba if you are a Mohammedan, and if you don’t go to the Kremlin at least once in your life if you are a Communist. Karl Marx’s books are worshipped, are thought to be infallible, in the same way as other religions have done with books.
So if you look, then you will not be able to say, “More and more people are putting their faith in all sorts of saints, swamis and god-men. What do you think of this phenomenon?” This has always been so.
Yes, one thing new is happening and that is: many more people are changing from one religion to another, are going astray from their forefathers. That is something new, and that is something good, that is something beautiful. It was for centuries an accepted fact that religion has something to do with your birth. It has nothing to do with your birth.
Just the other day I came across a statement of Mother Teresa. Somebody had asked her about me, and what I had said about her, and she said, “Osho has no reason to interfere with my work. He should not interfere.” Why should I not interfere? I have every reason. If a crime is happening, I have to interfere, I have to say that it is criminal.
She says she is fighting abortion by adoption – but who is responsible for abortion? – Mother Teresa, the Polack Pope, and the whole company. They are responsible for abortion because they are against contraceptives, they are against birth control. And if you are against contraceptives, against birth control, then abortion is bound to happen. First they manage that abortion should continue and then they fight abortion by adoption!
The questioner said to Mother Teresa that I had been criticizing her because she refused a Protestant child to be adopted by a Protestant family; she wanted a Catholic family to adopt the child. Responding to this, Mother Teresa said that each child has a birthright to choose his religion. But who is she to choose? The child has the birthright – that I can understand, and I accept it. And if that is true, no child should be baptized until the child is grown up and decides on his own, without any manipulation, conditioning, teaching. He should be left alone to inquire, and when he decides to become a Christian or a Buddhist or a Mohammedan, of course he has the right. But a small child, how do you decide what religion he wants to choose?
Mother Teresa was asked this, so she said, “First we decide according to what religion he has been born into.” Now, religion has nothing to do with birth. You may be born into a Hindu family; that does not mean that you have become a Hindu. You may be born into a Communist family; that does not mean that you have to become a Communist. You may be born into a family where the father is a doctor and the mother is a doctor, that does not mean that you have to become a doctor. Should it be that when two doctors give birth to a child he should immediately be given a certificate that he is an MD? This is nonsense. Religion has to be chosen.
The questioner also asked, “If you don’t know the family of the child – because many of the children you bring into your orphanage are thrown-away children, you don’t know their family, you don’t know their background – then how do you decide?” Then she said, “Because I am a Catholic and I have been bringing them up, then they should go into Catholicism, they are Catholics. I decide!”
Where is the birthright of the child then? Somebody else decides!
This old stupidity is disappearing a little bit. People have started inquiring on their own. Now the people who surround me – today there are five thousand sannyasins here; all over the earth there are now more than two hundred thousand sannyasins – these are the people who have decided on their own. This is their decision, and when religion is your own decision then it becomes a commitment, then it is involvement. Then you are fulfilling your own heart’s desire. Then there is joy and then there is love. Then it is a love affair.
In the past, people were born into a certain family and that was their religion. Today, only one new thing is happening, and that is more and more people are becoming mature, more and more people are understanding their birthright, are understanding that they have to choose their own religion. Only then can they put their heart into it; only then can they be ready, if the need arises, to sacrifice their life.
The people who chose Jesus were Jews. According to Mother Teresa they were doing something wrong. Jesus himself was a Jew, he was not a Christian – that much is absolutely certain. He had not even heard the word Christian. He lived as a Jew and he died as a Jew. And the people who had gathered around him – a small group – they were all Jews. According to Mother Teresa they must have remained Jews. Then there would have been no Mother Teresa and no Christianity! But they had chosen a path of their own; they had decided to go beyond the mob psychology. They had chosen to go against the crowd.
A religious person is always a rebel. Religion is rebellion; that’s its basic flavor, its fragrance. And now more and more people are becoming capable of doing it. This is a good sign; this shows that humanity is coming of age.
You ask me, “More and more people are putting their faith in all sorts of saints, swamis and god-men. What do you think of this phenomenon? What is your opinion on saints like Mahesh Yogi, Mother Teresa, Prabhupada, Muktananda, Satya Sai Baba, J. Krishnamurti, Anand Mai, etcetera?”
One gets the master one deserves – and that’s natural, inevitable. So I divide these saints into three categories. First, the idiots – there are millions of idiots in the world; they need their own saints, and they have every right. And what else can they do? They are idiots – whatsoever they do will be idiotic. And whenever there is demand, there is supply. So Prabhupada, Muktananda, Satya Sai Baba fulfill their needs. They are absolutely needed, otherwise the needs of the idiots will be neglected. Who will take care of them? They have every right to have their own saints, swamis and god-men.
The second category belongs to the average IQ’s. Anand Mai, Mother Teresa, Mahesh Yogi, these belong to the average – neither idiots nor intellectuals, just middlers; the followers of the golden mean. Cautiously they move, calculatingly they move. These are the people who will follow Anand Mai, Mother Teresa, Mahesh Yogi.
And the third category is of the intellectuals; they will follow people like J. Krishnamurti. His whole approach is purely intellectual.
I don’t belong to any of these categories. I belong to a fourth category: the crazies, the mad. They are the most beautiful people on the earth – they are the real people. In fact, these mad people were around Jesus, around Socrates, around Buddha, around Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu. These are the people who have created the greatest flowers of mysticism because mysticism is a kind of madness, a madness with a method. It is going beyond mind.
When somebody goes out of his mind you call him mad. Going beyond mind is also going out of mind. The madman falls below the mind and the mystic falls above the mind, but both go outside the mind, that much is similar. Hence every mystic has some similarity with the madman, and every madman also has some similarity with the mystic. You will find some place where they overlap. But this fourth category is the real category.
For the first category…

There was once a man who traveled to a far distant land to seek enlightenment. Finally he arrived at the dwelling of a sage who was reputed to be a master of masters. At the precise moment that he was ushered into the presence of the “Great One,” a strange agitation seized him and he fell to the ground, feeling that the very earth might open up and swallow him.
“At last… At last!” he stammered, “You have stirred my innermost being, oh master!”
“Not at all – that was an earthquake,” replied the master calmly.

Now, this man reached the wrong master. He needed a Muktananda, a Prabhupada, who would have nodded, and he would have said, “Yes, this is the arousal of kundalini! Your kundalini has arisen. It happens when somebody comes to me – my kundalini triggers his kundalini.”
Now, the master must have been a man like me. He simply said the truth, “Don’t be a fool! It is just an earthquake – nothing has happened.”

An Irishman was in an airplane watching a movie. When he realized he had already seen it, he got up and walked out the door of the plane. After a long time floating in the ocean he landed on a small island.
Many years later a beautiful woman in a wet suit came out of the sea and approached the Irishman. She unzipped one of the top pockets of the suit and said, “I bet you have not had a smoke for a long time,” and she handed him a cigarette.
Next she unzipped her other top pocket and said, “I bet you have not had a drink for a long time,” and she produced a flask of whiskey from the pocket.
Slowly unzipping the front of her wet suit she said, “I will bet there is something else you have not done for a long time!”
The Irishman exclaimed, “My God! Have you got golf clubs in there too?”

Now, these people also need masters, saints, swamis, god-men, and their need is authentic, very authentic, and they are in the majority. These are the people who live in Californialand!

A politician in California was addressing a group of concerned citizens on the problem of overpopulation. “Do you realize,” he said, “that while we sit here, every minute a woman is giving birth to a child? What are we going to do about this?”
From the back of the room a voice piped up, “Well, the first thing we had better do is find that woman!”

A Polack arrived in the big city for the first time. He stood gaping at a fifty-story building which housed the country’s biggest newspaper press. He asked a passerby, “What is this huge building for?”
Seeing how naive the Polack was, the passerby said, “Why, that is where Brutus the Giant lives!”
The Polack hung around in front of the building all day, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the giant.
At ten o’clock in the evening, the same passerby saw the Polack still standing there and took pity on him.
“Look, there is not any giant in there, I was just joking.”
“Joking, my foot!” replied the Polack. “Five minutes ago a truck arrived loaded with huge rolls of toilet paper for him!”

A Polack found a twenty-dollar bill. He thought for a few minutes about how to spend it. Finally he flipped a coin. “Heads, I will eat it away; tails, I will drink it.”
The coin spun in the air, fell on his lap, and disappeared between the buttons of his fly. “Aha!” grinned the Polack. “That’s another possibility!”

For these people, Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna Movement, is almost like a magnet; he attracts the uttermost idiots in the world. That much credit must be given to him. Muktananda – he is not as great as Prabhupada but comes very close. Now he is sitting on Miami Beach – that is the right place, that’s where these people are needed.
And for the second category, the average, intelligent person: Mother Teresa, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Anand Mai, these people will do.

The police station received a call: “Philip’s residence!” a hoarse voice shrieked. “Get over here quick! There is a cat in the house!”
“A cat? And you called us up for that? To whom am I talking anyway?”
“Philip’s parrot!”

Average intelligence!

Murphy, the father of ten children, asked the pharmacist for a packet of contraceptives. He returned six weeks later to complain, “They did not do any good at all. My wife is pregnant again. I think they were too big, even though I cut off a droopy bit at the end!”

And for the third category, the people who are attracted to Krishnamurti…

A fat Jewish lady walked slowly home to her apartment after shopping. She had a tremendous problem: for the last block she had badly needed to fart. But she managed to hold onto it until she got into the elevator. Then, to her great relief, she let it go.
Worried, however, that the ripe smell would disturb anyone who entered the elevator before she got to her twenty-fifth-story apartment, she took out from her bag an aerosol can of pine-spray and sprayed the elevator.
At the fifth floor two professors got on. They immediately clapped their hands over their noses. After the fat Jewish lady got off at the twenty-fifth floor, one professor said to the other, “Christ, what a smell! What do you reckon it is?”
The other replied, “Smells to me as if someone has just shit behind a pine tree!”

Enough for today.

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